Box 88 : A Novel (2020) Read online

  BOX 88

  Charles Cumming

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

  Copyright © Charles Cumming 2020

  Cover design by Stephen Mulcahey © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Cover photographs © Marina Endermar/Dreamstime.com (church), CollaborationJS/Arcangel Images (man)

  Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008200367

  Ebook Edition © October 2020 ISBN: 9780008200381

  Version: 2020-08-19

  Dedication

  for Harriette

  Epigraph

  ‘We have as many personalities as

  we have friends’

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Index of Characters

  21 December 1988

  London, the present day

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Keep Reading …

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  By Charles Cumming

  About the Publisher

  Index of Characters

  The Kite family:

  Lachlan Kite (‘Lockie’), intelligence officer

  Isobel Paulsen, Lachlan’s Swedish-American wife, a doctor

  Cheryl Kite (née Chapman), Lachlan’s mother

  Patrick Kite (‘Paddy’), Lachlan’s father (d.1982)

  The Bonnard family:

  Xavier Bonnard, Kite’s childhood friend

  Luc Bonnard, Xavier’s father

  Rosamund Bonnard (née Penley), Xavier’s mother

  Jacqueline Ward (‘Jacqui’), Xavier’s younger sister

  BOX 88:

  Michael Strawson, veteran CIA officer and co-founder of BOX 88

  Rita Ayinde, senior officer (UK)

  Jason Franks, head of Black Ops (a ‘Closer’)

  Carl Fowler, surveillance officer (a ‘Falcon’)

  Freddie Lane, computer analyst (a ‘Turing’)

  Ward Hansell, senior officer (US)

  James (‘Jock’) and Eleanor (‘Miss Ellie’) Carpmael, office managers at ‘The Cathedral’

  The Reverend Anthony Childs, a vicar

  Alford College:

  Lionel Jones-Lewis, Kite’s housemaster, known by the initials ‘LJL’

  Cosmo de Paul, joined Alford in the same year as Kite

  William ‘Billy’ Peele, history teacher

  The Security Service (MI5):

  Robert Vosse, leader of MI5 investigation into BOX 88

  Cara Jannaway, intelligence officer

  Matt Tomkins, intelligence officer

  Other Characters:

  Ali Eskandarian, an Iranian

  Abbas Karrubi, bodyguard to Ali Eskandarian

  Hana Dufour, a friend of Ali Eskandarian

  Ramin Torabi, an Iranian businessman

  Martha Raine, a schoolfriend of Jacqueline Ward

  Zoltan Pavkov, a Serb

  Bijan Vaziri, an Iranian exile

  21 December 1988

  They were just another American family heading home for the holidays.

  A taxi had been booked to take them from their house in Pimlico, little Gaby facing backwards on the fold-down chair, her legs not yet long enough to reach the floor, every inch of the cab crammed with suitcases and boxes and Harrod’s carrier bags full of presents wrapped for Christmas. Mommy and Daddy were facing her, side by side on the back seat, her giant Hamleys’ teddy bear wedged between them. Whenever the driver braked, Gaby could feel herself pulled backwards and then forwards, weightless for an instant, like the feeling of being on the swings in Battersea Park and wanting to fly off into the afternoon sky. Her mother said: ‘Careful, sweetie,’ but there was no way she was going to fall, not with the suitcases to steady her and the handle on the door to hold onto. She loved the growl of the taxi’s engine, the Christmas lights receding in the back window, her father’s voice as he pointed out the Italian restaurant they had been to for Grandpa’s birthday, then the home of the Martins in Chelsea, the other American family they knew in London with their golden retriever, Montana, who licked Gaby’s face whenever she gave him a hug.

  Mommy had told her that there were only three more bedtimes until Christmas Eve. One tonight, on the aeroplane which was taking them across the ocean to New York, then two in her bedroom at the house in Stamford. Gaby felt giddy with excitement. She would miss her friends from school – Claire and JenJen, Billy and Pi – but they had promised to stay in touch and write postcards to one another from wherever they were going.

  Soon the taxi started going faster and they were on the freeway heading out to Heathrow. At the airport, the driver found a trolley. Gaby watched her parents pile the suitcases one on top of the other until Daddy insisted Mommy fetch a second trolley to cope with all the bags. He had given the driver thirty pounds saying: ‘Keep the change.’ The driver�
�s name was Barry. When he asked where they were going, Gaby told him: ‘New York. Pan Am flight number 103. Have you ever been to New York?’

  ‘’Fraid not,’ Barry replied. ‘You have a safe trip, sweetheart, lovely Christmas.’

  There was a tree with tinsel but no lights near the desk where they queued with the trolleys. Afterwards Gaby showed her passport to a man wearing a turban who wished her a happy Christmas. She had to walk through a special door that detected metal while her rucksack and teddy bear went through the X-ray machine. A boy beside her was crying. Gaby couldn’t understand why someone would be crying when there were only three more bedtimes until Christmas.

  Eventually, after Mommy had taken her to the bathroom and bought some earplugs in a pharmacy inside the terminal, they walked down a long corridor to a big room where the other passengers were waiting to board the aeroplane. Gaby heard American accents, lots of them, saw older children listening to music on Walkmans, a woman lying asleep, sprawled across three chairs. There was a family of Indians sitting in the corner of the lounge. The mother had a red spot in the centre of her forehead.

  ‘Flight’s on time,’ her daddy whispered, pointing outside to the waiting aircraft. ‘That’s the cockpit. Can you read that, sweetie?’

  Words had been painted on the front of the plane, right beneath where the captain was sitting. Gaby could see him through the window, flicking switches above his head.

  ‘That’s easy,’ she said. ‘It says Clipper Maid of the Seas.’

  They were allowed to board first because Gaby was part of a family. There were other children behind her, but no sign of the boy who had been crying when they walked past the X-ray machine. It was cold in the tunnel. There was a colour photograph on the wall of the Statue of Liberty and the Hudson River, the Twin Towers behind them glinting in the sun. A tall stewardess wearing red lipstick and a pretty blue skirt said: ‘Hi there! Love your teddy bear! He’s huge!’ as Gaby walked through the big open door, right behind where the captain was sitting in the cockpit. It was dark now and the sound of the airport was deafening, but as soon as she entered the cabin and started following her father towards her seat, the noise seemed to fade away, as if Gaby had put in her mommy’s new earplugs.

  They were seated towards the front of the plane. The stewardess strapped her in and gave her a set of headphones, explaining that a film would start playing once the plane was airborne over Scotland.

  ‘Scotland?’ Daddy asked. He sounded surprised.

  ‘Weather diversion,’ the stewardess replied. ‘Little bumpy tonight over Ireland.’

  That was when she told Gaby that Teddy was so big he was going to have to go in a cupboard until after take-off. The cupboards were full of cases and handbags; it looked as though he was going to be squashed in there. Gaby felt like crying but she wanted to seem grown-up in front of the other passengers. The stewardess said she would give her candy to make her feel better.

  ‘You know they call candy “sweets” in London,’ Gaby told her.

  ‘Is that right?’ the stewardess replied, looking sideways at Mommy. ‘Sweets, huh?’ She had a pretty smile and very white teeth. ‘So does Santa Claus know where you’re going to be on Christmas Eve, honey? Have you told him?’

  ‘I don’t believe in Santa Claus. My friend Billy says it’s just my daddy dressed up with a beard.’

  ‘News to me,’ said Daddy, and secured his seat belt as the stewardess walked off. She was smiling.

  Gaby owned a yellow Swatch. She looked at it as the plane took off; it said twenty-five past six. Mommy hated flying so she always sat between them, Daddy holding her right hand, Gaby holding her left. Mommy closed her eyes as the aeroplane climbed through the sky. It was a better feeling even than the swings in Battersea Park, the noise and the rattle and the power of the big plane taking them up towards the moon.

  ‘Set your watch to New York time, honey,’ said her father, reaching across and touching her wrist. ‘We’re going home.’

  Beneath them, in the chill of the hold, was the luggage Gaby’s parents had checked in at Heathrow a little more than an hour earlier: clothes, toiletries, Christmas presents. Close by, secured inside a brown Samsonite suitcase loaded onto a feeder flight at Malta airport that morning, was a timer-activated bomb constructed with the odourless plastic explosive Semtex and hidden inside a Toshiba cassette recorder by agents working on behalf of the Libyan government.

  Gaby and her parents and the more than 250 souls on board Pan Am 103 would never reach New York City, never return to their families for Christmas. At three minutes past seven, as the aircraft was passing over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, the bomb exploded. Those sitting towards the front of the plane were killed instantly. Others fell for over five miles, some still strapped in their seats, thrown free of the fuselage yet conscious for up to three minutes as they plunged to the ground. The wreckage of the obliterated plane, scattered over an area of 850 square miles, destroyed twenty-one houses and killed eleven residents of Lockerbie. In an instant the Clipper Maid of the Seas had been transformed into a flight of angels, violated by terror.

  London, the present day

  1

  It was Martha, of all people, who rang Kite to tell him that Xavier Bonnard had killed himself.

  The call, logged to Kite’s mobile at 11.24 GMT, transcripted by GCHQ before midday and copied to Thames House, was traced to a cell phone in the New York metropolitan area registered to ‘Martha Felicity Raine’ of 127 Verona Street, Brooklyn. The take quality was considered moderate, but a recording had been automatically archived. An analyst in Cheltenham was able to provide a full account of the brief conversation.

  LACHLAN KITE (LK): Hello?

  MARTHA RAINE (MR): Lockie. It’s me.

  LK: Martha. God. What a surprise.

  MR: Yes.

  [break, 1 second]

  LK: Is everything all right? Are you OK?

  MR: I’m afraid it’s something awful.

  LK: What’s happened? Are the children all right?

  MR: You’re sweet. They’re fine. They’re both well. No, something else.

  LK: What is it?

  MR: It’s Xavier. He’s gone. Xavier has died.

  [break, 2 seconds]

  I thought you would want to know. Perhaps you already do.

  LK: No. I didn’t. I didn’t know.

  [break, 1 second]

  I appreciate you ringing. Must be early there.

  MR: I only just found out. Thought I should ring straight away.

  LK: Yes. What happened? What …

  MR [overlapping]: They think it was suicide. They’re not 100 per cent sure. He was in Paris. In an apartment. Not his father’s place, somebody else’s.

  LK: Who’s ‘they’?

  MR: Jacqui. She rang me. She’s in Singapore these days.

  LK: What about Lena? Were they still together?

  MR: I think so, yes. Just about. Living in London. They still have the Onslow Square house. I don’t know where the children are.

  LK: (Inaudible)

  [break, 2 seconds]

  MR: Are you there? Are you all right, Lockie?

  LK: I’m fine. I’m in the country. Sussex. We have a cottage here.

  MR: We?

  LK: Yes. I met somebody. I got married.

  [break, 1 second]

  MR: Right. Yes, I did hear that. On the grapevine. I’m happy for you. Finally settling down. What’s her name? What does she do?

  LK: She’s a doctor. Isobel.

  [break, 2 seconds]

  MR: And what about everything else? Are you still doing those things you used to do? That life?

  LK: I’ll tell you when I see you. We can talk about it then.

  MR: Of course. Silly of me to ask. Must be beautiful there. Lovely England. I never get back …

  LK: Killed himself how?

  MR: They think an overdose. I didn’t want to pry. Jacqui didn’t go into details. Obvio
usly she was very upset.

  LK: Yes, of course. Christ …

  MR: I’m sorry, Lock. I have to go. The kids …

  LK: Of course. School run? They must be big now.

  MR: Gigantic. Are you sure you’re OK?

  LK: I’m fine. I’ll be absolutely fine. You?

  MR: Yes. Just makes me think of the old days, you know. He was such a lovely man, such a mess. A lost soul.

  LK: Yes. He was all of those things.

  [break, 1 second]

  Thank you for telling me, Martha. I really appreciate it. It’s been good to hear your voice, if nothing else.

  MR: Yours too. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get to the funeral if it’s next week. There’s just too much on here. Jonas is going away, he has work. My au pair just quit …

  LK: I’m sure the Bonnards will understand. There’ll be lots of people there.

  MR: Everybody from that time.

  LK: Yes. Everybody.

  The four members of the MI5 team gathered around an IKEA kitchen table in a damp, under-hoovered safe flat in Acton, read the transcript and, later, listened to the recording of the conversation several times. One excerpt in particular – the question Are you still doing those things you used to do? – gave team leader Robert Vosse the shot of operational adrenaline he had been craving ever since his investigation into BOX 88 had begun. Like a detective happening upon the clue that at last placed his suspect at the scene of the crime, Vosse – a big-boned, amiable man of forty-one with outsized features who wore thick-rimmed glasses and clothes from Marks & Spencer – was convinced that Martha Raine had provided concrete evidence that Lachlan Kite was a spy.

  ‘We’ve been digging into every nook and cranny of Kite’s existence for the past three weeks and come up with precisely sweet Fanny Adams. Nothing recorded against, not even a parking fine or a speeding ticket. A six-person surveillance team – the best of the best – has been following him around like Rain Man waiting for Kite to pop his head into Vauxhall Cross or catch a flight to Langley. Has he done that? Has he bollocks. Here is a man we are told is the operational commander of a secret Anglo-American spy unit that’s been running off the books for almost forty years, but the most Lachlan Kite has done this month is get himself a haircut and book a weekend break to Florence. Now, finally, he takes a phone call. A woman from his past says, “Are you still doing the things you used to do?” What did she mean by that? What else could she possibly have meant other than “Are you still operational as a spy?”’