Box 88 : A Novel (2020), стр. 77
‘So we’re meeting Martha in Cannes?’ she said. ‘You’ve spoken to her parents?’
Both Xavier and Kite looked up, dogs on a scent.
‘Martha’s coming?’ said Xavier, gulping wine to cover his surprise.
‘Martha Raine?’ said Kite, a chunk of choucroute briefly lodging in his throat. ‘She’s a friend of yours?’
To dozens of pining boys at Alford, Martha Raine was a mythical beauty, a goddess as unattainable as Katherine Ross or Emmanuelle Béart. Kite had glimpsed her only once, at a party the previous summer, tried to engage her in conversation over a bowl of rum punch – and failed miserably. Later, smoking on the balcony as the party was winding down, he had watched her slipping into the passenger seat of an Alfa Romeo Spider driven by an old Alfordian who had once bowled him out for a golden duck in a house cricket match. The image of her driving off in the car, soft-top down, the man’s hand caressing the back of her neck, had remained with Kite as a glimpse of another world as rarefied and as dazzling as the dining room at La Coupole. He could not believe that she was coming to the villa and that her visit would coincide with the surveillance attack on Eskandarian. Had Strawson and Peele known this and yet said nothing?
‘Yeah, we were at school together when we were younger,’ Jacqui replied. ‘Do you know her?’
Xavier played it cool. ‘She’s all right,’ he said.
‘I was talking to Lockie.’
Kite swallowed the chunk of choucroute with a glug of Sancerre.
‘Me? No. Don’t know her. Met her once briefly. At a party. We talked for ten minutes. She was with a boyfriend. It was last summer, I think. Yeah, last summer.’
Rosamund hid a grin behind her hand, aware of Martha’s beauty and immediately intuiting the impact she had made on Xavier’s friend.
‘She had a boyfriend?’ Jacqui asked, screwing up her face.
‘Yeah, some guy with an Alfa Romeo. Older than us. Left Alford three years ago.’
‘He wasn’t her boyfriend, Lockie. He was just a twat from your school.’
‘You seem to know a lot about her,’ Xavier added.
‘Not really.’ Kite felt his face flush with embarrassment. Christ, if he couldn’t conceal a schoolboy crush on Martha Raine, how the hell was he going to keep his activities for BOX 88 a secret from the Bonnards? ‘We just had a good chat. About books.’
‘What books?’ Rosamund joined in the fun.
‘I don’t remember.’
Xavier began to hum the theme to ‘Our Tune’, a popular slot on Radio 1 in which the DJ, Simon Bates, related a saccharine romantic story sent in by a listener. Kite would have told him to fuck off but because he was wearing a jacket and tie and eating dinner in La Coupole courtesy of the Bonnards, he remembered his manners.
‘Very funny,’ he said. ‘How long is she coming for?’
‘Long enough, I would imagine,’ Rosamund replied, catching her husband’s eye. ‘Long enough.’
33
Cara had sat on the hay bale for an hour watching the light fade and the boys on the laptops working their magic. Rita had told her that they were transmitting text messages into the cottage purporting to come from whoever was in charge of the Iranian operation.
‘There are three men in the house holding Isobel,’ she said. Cara had the impression that Rita had known Kite and Isobel for years and was deeply concerned about them. ‘They’re all Farsi-speakers, taking it in shifts to watch her. The house isn’t rigged with explosives, these aren’t martyrdom, virgin-waiting-for-me-in-paradise bozos. It’s personal, using Isobel as leverage. They want something from Lockie. Their boss is interrogating him, says he’s getting somewhere, getting what he wants.’
‘Do they know that?’ Cara asked. She was uncharacteristically nervous talking to Rita, didn’t want to sound ignorant or out of her depth. ‘Do the people guarding Isobel know that Kite is talking?’
‘Who said he’s talking?’ Rita replied sharply. ‘He’ll be telling them what they want to hear. No way he gives up operational secrets. No way.’
‘Of course …’
‘To answer your question. No, they don’t know what we know. They’ve been blind for the past two hours waiting for a message from London. We’ve given them no signal at the cottage, killed the wi-fi. They still think it’s a local problem, not a bubble. We put together a sequence of texts in Farsi matching the style and character of what they’re used to. Released them fifteen minutes ago, along with some genuine texts from the boss. They got them in bursts, like the weather cleared up and the signal suddenly found an extra bar, then lost it, then found it again. Understand?’
‘I understand,’ Cara replied. ‘Mix’n’match. They won’t know what’s genuine, what’s not.’
‘We’ve told them everything’s fine in London. All going according to plan. That way they start to relax. Could be one of them’s allowed to go to sleep, someone else fancies a wash. Either way they start to let their guard down. Jason wants them dozy before he goes in.’
‘Shock and awe,’ said Cara.
‘Shock and awe,’ Rita repeated. She looked out towards the road.
‘Why don’t you just tell them to release her?’ Cara suggested. ‘Send in a text ordering them to abort?’
Rita’s eyes wrinkled in satisfaction. ‘I like your thinking,’ she said. ‘But what if they kill Isobel before they go? She’s heard their voices, maybe even seen their faces. They’d be leaving a living witness.’
Cara felt chastened. ‘Fair enough.’ she said. ‘So when’s Jason going in?’
Rita looked at her watch. ‘Waiting for sunset.’
‘Do you have a clearer idea of where they’re holding Kite?’ Earlier Cara had seen Rita talking to Jason, looking at a map of East London.
‘Only to within