Box 88 : A Novel (2020), стр. 41
I may have mentioned his name to you in passing, because I’ve been his Modern tutor for the last two years. Lachlan Kite. His father, Patrick (who may have been on MI5’s radar in Ireland in the seventies) drank himself to death seven years ago. The mother, Cheryl, is a famous beauty who still runs the family hotel on the west coast of Scotland where Paddy met his demise. (Vodka, cliff – to borrow from Nabokov.) By all accounts she’s a rather chilly, if undoubtedly glamorous figure prone to mood explosions of Chernobyl-like intensity. Tends to leave a radioactive cloud of disapproval in her wake which sometimes brings her into conflict with her (only) son.
Lachlan is very bright, tough, charming, a hard worker, by all accounts successful with girls. In my many conversations with him, I sense what I often sense with too many boys at this place: the absence of structure, of the family hearth. In other words, he might respond very positively to the welcoming embrace of BOX.
Something else, which prompted this letter. A slice of pure chance which seems so unlikely, so serendipitous, that we’d be foolish to overlook the possibilities. LB’s son, Xavier, is a close friend of Lockie’s and has invited him to the South of France in August. In other words, his visit will coincide more or less exactly with the arrival of Eskandarian.
You can perhaps see where I’m heading. It’s a risk, but we could have a man on the inside. An eighteen-year-old, yes, but we make a virtue of that. For who would suspect a public schoolboy at the start of his gap year – waiting for his A-level results, smoking, nightclubbing, sleeping till midday – of being anything other than what he appears to be? The potential is limitless. Eyes, ears, bins in the bedrooms, Eskandarian’s movements, a sense of his mood and personality, the nature of his relationship with LB, possible intel on Lockerbie etc. For one so young, Lachlan is a very sound judge of character. Sees a lot. Feels a lot. Seems too good an opportunity to pass up, no?
The worry, of course, is that Lockie might be outraged and refuse to deceive his friend, but if my reading of his personality is correct, I believe to a high degree of certainty that this would not be the case. Indeed, I think he would leap at the chance, especially if he knew what was at stake in terms of our relationship with the Iranians and, of course, in preventing further terrorist attacks.
Lachlan is young, yes, but I’ve never known him to be feeble or crestfallen. This place is so buttoned-up and traditional even the cobwebs are Grade II listed, but he’s made a huge success of Alford despite coming from ‘the wrong sort of background’.
Let me know what you think. If you want to run your eye over him, he’ll be working at his mother’s hotel, Killantringan Lodge near Portpatrick, for the bulk of the Easter holidays (give or take one or two days in London at either end). Why not check yourself in and see how he responds to the Strawson treatment?
Speaking of holidays, I hope the General Secretary has packed his sun lotion and a good book. The way things are going – from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic – he’ll soon be out of a job. Riots in Prague, Solidarity in excelsis, Hungary going multi-party, a pisspoor Russian grain harvest that would make Stalin blush – and full Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The end is nigh, Michael!
Yours aye
W.P.
16
Term ended three weeks later. Kite followed his usual pattern of spending a few days in London with friends before reluctantly returning home to work at the hotel. His mother was expecting him back before the final weekend in March to help with the Easter rush. Killantringan was full, she had fired the head waiter for stealing money from the till and Kite was needed as an extra pair of hands both in the kitchen and behind the bar.
He boarded a train at Euston station just after ten o’clock on Good Friday morning, a day later than he had promised to be home, but there had been a party at Mud Club the previous night which he hadn’t wanted to miss. Kite had taken Ecstasy for the first time, with Xavier and Des Elkins. An older woman who owned her own flat in Lambs Conduit Street had dragged him home but passed out in the living room just as Kite was taking off his clothes. He had no time to sleep. He knew that it would take him at least ten hours to reach Killantringan from London and that his mother would combust if he arrived home any later than Friday night. He checked his wallet, wondering if he could afford to catch a taxi back to Xavier’s house, but realised he had spent every penny he possessed on beer, tequila, two Ecstasy tablets and the price of entrance to the club. He searched the woman’s flat unsuccessfully for loose change – finding a passport in the process which placed her age at twenty-seven – and decided to leave her a note. Still high, still hoping that one day he could come back here and go to bed with her, Kite found a sheet of paper in a kitchen drawer and scribbled: Hi Alison. You fell asleep. Sorry I had to go but I live in Scotland and need to catch a train. Heading home today. It was really great to meet you. Lachlan x. He wrote down the number of the hotel but began to worry that if Alison called during the Easter holidays, his mother would answer and let slip that her son was only eighteen years