The Jackal's Share (24 page)

Qazai was certainly that. Since standing and moving he had gone pale and was finding it hard to keep his head up. Webster fixed a smile on his face, pushed Qazai ahead of him and when they reached the path back to the hotel tried to adopt a casual gait, his arm still around his charge.

As ever, this all came down to timing. If the policemen spent a minute or two in Qazai’s villa, inspected the spent bottles and the slept-in bed, there would be enough time to get to Driss.

But the bottles. He had forgotten the water bottles. If they were decent policemen they would notice that they were still cold and assume that Qazai couldn’t be far away. He quickened their pace.

“Slow down,” said Qazai. “I don’t . . . I’m not feeling well.”

Christ, thought Webster. We don’t have time for him to be sick.

“It’s not far. Twenty yards.” It was at least a hundred. He held Qazai up as best he could, but he was increasingly a dead weight and the effort greater and greater. He didn’t want to be lugging a body through reception. Behind them the Moroccans would surely have left the villa by now.

As he entered the cool of the hotel’s main building he hitched Qazai up, tried, hopelessly, to arrange him to look as respectable as possible, and set off for the final stretch, keeping a low commentary going to help sustain him, as one might a toddler that needed coaxing.

“That’s it. Just through the lobby. Only a few more yards.”

God he was heavy. Webster was beginning to slow.

“Not far now. That’s it.”

He tried to keep his eyes straight ahead but couldn’t help glancing at the receptionists, three of them in a row. One was busy with a guest, another had his head down on his computer screen, but the third was watching them, and as Webster looked away she made to pick up her phone. He could stop, reassure her, but there was no point. All they had to do was get to the car.

They were at the steps down to the driveway; Webster hadn’t noticed them when he arrived, but now they seemed long and sheer. Watched by an intrigued doorman, and bent almost double, Qazai took them one by one, like a child.

This was hopeless. They’d never make the last fifty yards.

“Stay here,” he said to Qazai, and to the doorman, “Hold him a second, would you? He’s not well.”

Qazai staggered a couple of steps, came to a halt, tried to straighten himself, then closed his eyes and brought a hand to his mouth. Hardly daring to look at him, Webster ran through the gates to the street and seeing the brown Peugeot started waving at it, beckoning it forward.

“Thank you,” he said, returning to the doorman. “Come on. The car’s here.”

The car drew up at the gates, and Webster guided Qazai into the backseat, pushing him across the worn fabric.

“Go. Drive. Get us to the airport.”

“Is he going to vomit?”

“Almost certainly.”

As the car moved off, waiting a second for traffic to pass and then accelerating sharply, Webster saw through the back window two men appear at the top of the hotel steps and look swiftly around. He lost sight of them when Driss took a sharp right, but by then they were skipping down the steps, and the doorman was pointing in Webster’s direction.

“How long to the airport?”

“Ten minutes,” said Driss. “There’s not so much traffic now.” He looked in the rearview mirror. “What are you doing?”

“Finding his fucking phone. Christ. This man has caused me a lot of trouble.”

“What will you do at the airport?”

“Get on his plane. God knows how.”

“But your passport.”

“I know, I know. I don’t suppose you know anyone who works there?”

Driss merely shrugged.

The phone, when he finally found it and had Qazai, with clumsy fingers, unlock it for him, showed five missed calls from the same number, a UK cell phone that Webster didn’t recognize, and a text:

Mr. Q. Trying to call. Will miss slot if not confirmed by 12:20. Paperwork filed. Please advise. Carl.

Webster called the number and told the pilot to prepare the plane for an unwell Mr. Qazai. Carl baulked at taking instructions from someone he didn’t know, but Qazai managed to frame a sentence or two of reassurance, and in the end all was set: they had ten minutes to be at the airport, ten to clear security, and another ten to find and board the plane. It could be done—or at least, it could be done by someone leaving the country with a legitimate passport and unimpeded by police. Then it could be done.

While Webster was wondering whether the police would suspect that Qazai was going to the airport, and deciding that on balance there was no way of knowing one way or another no matter how carefully you tried to think it through, the heat and the jolting suspension were taking their toll on Qazai, who was awkwardly slumped against a door with his eyes tightly closed. A mile short of the airport Webster felt a hand on his arm and knew immediately what it meant.

“Driss. Stop the car. Now.”

It was too late. Qazai leaned forward and a quick stream of watery vomit burst from his mouth, onto his trousers, the back of Driss’s seat, Webster’s shoes. Alcoholic fumes rose from it. As the car slowed at the side of the road Webster leaned across and opened Qazai’s door, trying to prop it open.

“Do it that way. Outside.” With his spare hand he pushed Qazai in the right direction as cars zipped past. “That’s it. Christ. May as well get it all out.” He had only ever done this for his children before.

Driss had swiveled in his seat and was watching with a look of pained regret.

“I’m sorry,” said Webster. “I’ll pay for it. Can you put it on my expenses?” Driss raised an eyebrow, sighed, and turned back to the road.

Webster patted Qazai on the back. “Are you done? You’re done. Let’s go. Let’s go.”

A little after twenty past, Driss pulled up onto the concourse of Menara and slowed to a stop by a door marked “Private Flights.” Webster didn’t really know what to expect inside. Nor, he imagined, would the airport staff: he and Qazai—bandaged, dusty, beaten, stinking—would have looked improbable catching a bus together, let alone their own jet.

“Driss,” he said, “thank you. I owe you.”

They shook hands.

“You do,” said Driss.

“You never know,” said Webster, “I may be calling you in half an hour from a cell downtown.” Driss didn’t know the word. “From jail. Thank your mother for me, and tell Youssef to buy himself some new clothes. He’s paying.” He nodded at Qazai, who had managed to get out of the car himself and was taking deep breaths by the curb.

Inside, all was cool and peaceful. There were no tourists, no baggage trolleys, no taxi touts: just a single check-in desk and two airport officials, a man and a woman, with little or nothing to do. Consciously standing tall, clearly trying to gather as much of his dignity as he could, Qazai told them in French who he was and presented his passport. The woman tapped at her keyboard, asked if there were any bags to check, and printed off a piece of paper that told him his plane was on stand twenty-three. She didn’t so much as look them up and down, and Webster realized that in his pessimism he hadn’t banked on the blanket entitlement conferred by money. If you had paid for your private jet you could fly in it naked for all anyone would care. She didn’t ask to see his passport either, and for a moment his heart rose hopefully in his chest.

But even billionaires, and their guests, need to go through immigration, and as they made their way down corridors to their gate they found their way blocked by a security scanner, and beyond that a glass booth with a Moroccan border policeman sitting inside it. As he emptied his pockets Webster counted his money—Senechal’s money, in fact—in preparation. Sixteen hundred dirham; a hundred and eighty dollars. That might do it.

Collecting his things he whispered to Qazai, “Let me go first,” and taking him by the upper arm led him up to the yellow line, where they stood for a moment waiting for the policeman to look up. At his nod they approached. Webster’s breathing quickened and he could feel his heart working harder. He couldn’t bring himself to think what would happen if this didn’t work.

“Passports.”

Webster tried his best, laughably, to look respectable.

“Good morning, ” he said, and got no response. “
Bonjour
. I am this man’s doctor, and I need to make sure he is handed over to medical staff waiting on the plane. I do not have a passport but will not be flying.”

The policeman, slouching on his chair, stuck out his lower lip and shook his head. He didn’t seem to understand. Webster tried again, in his basic, unpracticed French.

“
Je suis un médecin. Cet homme est mon . .
 . Je suis avec cet homme. Il faut que je vais avec lui sur l’avion, parce-qu’il est très malade. Très malade, et il y a médecins sur l’avion qui lui attendent. Je n’ai pas de passeport mais je reste ici. Je ne vais pas voyager
.”

Under heavy lids the policeman’s eyes gave him a long, searching look. Slowly, he shook his head.

“No passport, no entry.”

“
Mais c’est imperatif
.” Was
imperatif
a word? He had no idea. He could feel the situation slipping from him. “
Mon
 . . .” God how he wished he knew the word for “patient.” “
Il est très malade, et je suis son médecin
.”

The policeman raised his eyebrows and shook his head again, looking down at his desk.

“OK,” said Webster. “
D’accord. Je voudrais . . . non, je suis heureux payer un, un
,” Christ, what was “fee”?
Droit
—that was it—“
Un droit médical, pour votre cooperation
.” God, that was horrible. It was a long time since he had tried to bribe an official, and somehow in Russian it had always felt easier. He produced Senechal’s cash from his jacket pocket, and put it on the counter. “
Un droit médical
.”

The notes sat there for what seemed like an age while the policeman looked first at them and then at Webster, steadily in the eye. Whether he was making a moral or financial calculation wasn’t clear, but at last he shook his head, said a few words in French that Webster couldn’t make out, and reached for his phone.

Then Qazai spoke. In Arabic, with great authority and even greater seriousness, his voice clear and deep. The policeman straightened in his seat. Whatever Qazai had to say it was short, and when he had finished he waited grandly for a response. Without looking up the policeman reached up to the counter, took the money, and nodded them through.

Neither man said anything until they had reached the gate and were taking the stairs down to the tarmac.

“How did you do that?” said Webster.

Some color had returned to Qazai’s face but he still looked pained. “I told him he should take the money. And that if he didn’t I would tell the director of the airport police that he tried to solicit a bribe from us.”

Webster nodded, grateful and not a little embarrassed.

“I didn’t know you could speak Arabic.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know.”

Webster, still not entirely confident that they had outrun the police, took one last look around at the airport, buzzing with heat in the midday sun.

“That’s about to change,” he said, and let Qazai go first up the steps to the plane.

22.

I
T HAD ALL BEEN
the doing of a man called Nezam; in a sense, he had ordained all this thirty years ago from his office in Tehran. Dead for twenty, he had no doubt imagined this day, or one like it, and would have been saddened to see his careful arrangements finally coming undone. That was what Webster had to understand. It would be no exaggeration to say that Qazai had had no choice then, just as he seemed to have so few now.

People imagine that revolutions are clean-cut affairs: the emperor loses his head, his followers flee or are put to the sword, the state is transfused with fresh blood. No one from the old guard is meant to remain; there were no aristocrats on the Committee of Public Safety, no Whites on the Council of Public Commissars. In Iran, though, where politics is ancient and complicated, despite the reach and the viciousness of the revolution, despite the departure or death of almost everyone who had held a post of importance in the old regime, there was one place where one man somehow managed to stay on, darkly welcomed by his new masters, and that place was the secret police.

The odd junior officer from the ranks made the same jump—experience, after all, was hard to come by—but Kamal Nezam was a senior man, the deputy head of the service, in charge of monitoring sedition for the Shah, and to the Ayatollah no one should have been more deserving of a swift and public death. But either because he was already a traitor, or because he knew too well how valuable he might be to a government desperate to control the people it had just freed, he stayed on, smoothly making the switch from the Shah’s service to the service of the revolution, from SAVAK to SAVAMA, from one sinister acronym to another.

Whatever path he had taken, Nezam was no idealist. He was a technician of the highest order who set about creating an efficient, brutal, nasty little agency that mirrored many of the qualities of the revolution itself, and one of his first, critical jobs was to help the new government find a place for its money. In those days Iran wasn’t rich but it wasn’t poor, either: oil dollars were still coming in but it was soon spending most of them on its war with Iraq. Nevertheless, it had enough to put some aside for its youthful but ambitious foreign intelligence service, or for operations outside its borders, or for lining its own pockets, perhaps. And it wanted its money to accumulate, of course, which it wasn’t going to do sitting around in a recently nationalized bank in Tehran. So Nezam had gone to Paris to meet an old friend of his, and the old friend had suggested that he consider Parviz Qazai, who had recently arrived in London and was setting up a little bank that might be to purpose.

Here Qazai paused. He drained his glass of water, swirled the ice for a moment, put it down and looked out of the window. It was clear below, barely a cloud in sight, and Webster, facing forward, could see the west coast of Morocco stretching in front of him and in the distance, just visible through the haze, southern Spain and the points of the Strait of Gibraltar pinching together. Qazai was looking a little better. He had showered and changed into some loose gray pajamas that made him look as if he was about to start meditating, and though he looked drawn—pale, somehow, beneath the tan—he was lucid enough, and had been telling his story with odd, pained attention, almost relish. Webster had expected to have to force out the truth, but all he had done was ask what was really going on, and after a pause and a deep, sorrowful breath Qazai had begun, tired but constructing his sentences with care, as if he were laying down a piece of history that deserved total clarity.

But something had brought him to a stop, and for perhaps half a minute he closed his eyes before going on.

“For years I’ve wondered . . . I have tried not to blame my father for all this. He wasn’t a bad man. He needed more brilliance, I think. If he’d been more brilliant there wouldn’t have been so much room for his fears. And when he got to London I have to believe he was really afraid. About my future, for one thing.” There was an ironic note in his clipped laugh. “But I think we can agree that he set me up very nicely.”

Webster, not knowing whether the double meaning was intended, tried to keep his expression clear of sympathy or judgment and let Qazai go on.

Father and son had drawn up the first plans for their London bank during the summer of 1979, when Qazai was twenty-eight and a little lost; not a loafer, exactly, but wanting direction. In Paris, five years earlier, he had studied philosophy and economics at the Sorbonne and had done well enough, but his heart—no, his soul—was in art. When he was twelve, and committed to boyish notions of romance and adventure, he had read a novel by Stevenson that had seemed to capture precisely what he wanted his life to be. In it, the son of a stony, conservative, rich American goes to Paris to become a sculptor, before being led by an impetuous friend to chase after treasure lying in the wreck of a ship in the middle of the Pacific. That was living, the young Qazai had thought, and in a way, not that he had ever seen it in that light before, his progress since had indeed followed a similar track.

His sculpture was no better, in truth, than Stevenson’s hero’s had been, and when the revolution came about—or rather, when all the rich Iranians started leaving the country some months before it happened—he had been back from Paris for three years, in Tehran, working at this job or that but spending most of his energy planning (and delaying) a business that would export Persian art to London and New York. Life, in short, was too easy then. Too comfortable.

Exile was not. After they were forced to leave Iran he watched his father become fearful, prone to irrational alarms about the future, anxious about his reputation and his influence in this new city, which, while not hostile, was hardly friendly. That, rather than exile itself, was what had shocked Qazai into changing: he was overcome by a powerful desire never to be cowed in the same way by life and its possible misfortunes. Money, he realized, was the key to fearlessness, and he had surprised his father with his enthusiasm for the idea that they set up in business together. Later he would surprise him with his talent for investing, which had turned out to be his real genius, but for a time the job they had before them was simple—to raise funds—and for a dreary six months their lives had been nothing but meetings, and the same meeting every time at that: they would explain their idea, answer questions, and be shown out, with varying degrees of politeness.

After a while Qazai began to wonder whether it was his father’s profession, and not his character, that had caused his collapse. Finance was not like art. It had no soft edges. Either you had money, or you didn’t; either you were making more, or you weren’t. And if you weren’t making anything, you were nothing. A bad sculptor keeps his sculptures and may think them good, but a banker who cannot raise money has nothing at all, and slowly Qazai came to understand the distinct atmosphere of exclusion that his father must have been forced to breathe since leaving Iran.

So when his father told him—some time in April 1980, it was—that he had secured a little funding, it had felt like a deliverance, and he remembered wondering why he was the only one who seemed to be relieved. They had fifteen million pounds to invest, from one investor, whose name was never mentioned; ten of it conservatively, the rest with some imagination, a commodity that Qazai possessed in larger quantity than his father. They divided it accordingly, and the following year Qazai made his first real investment: an apartment building in Swiss Cottage. Within a year he had made a return of thirty percent, and his other decisions were coming good. He began to realize that he was a natural. He could see value. He could look at a complicated, scattered set of facts and know exactly where one could make money, and at what risk. The heady power of that realization had never really left him. Not, at least, until the last two months.

Anyway. The unseen investor entrusted the Qazais with more funds; they took an office in Mayfair, hired a secretary and a property analyst, and began to do well. Then his father became ill. He was a smoker, and his lungs were shot. When he found out how bad it was, he became unusually concerned, even by his standards, about the future of the business—started talking about the “legacy,” rather as if it was a curse and not an asset. All this seemed to worry him more than his illness, and one day, looking weak, he had flown to Paris to see their investor, whom Qazai had never met and whose name he still did not know.

Qazai was living in Kensington then, with Eleanor, and though they were not yet married she was pregnant with Timur. It was early on, and no one knew. It was a time of promise and excitement. That evening his father phoned to say that he had come back from Paris with the investor, and that they should all meet. Eleanor had been out with her sister, and Qazai suggested the meeting take place in his apartment. His father rather shakily agreed.

Nezam introduced himself that evening only as Kamal; it had taken Qazai another ten years to learn his full name. In a smooth, low voice like the drone of a wasp that unsettled Qazai straight away, he explained that the money they had in their care was more than usually precious. With it, great things would be done, all for the greater glory of Iran. At first Qazai thought that the money must be a fighting fund of some kind for the country’s opposition, but as Kamal explained, his tone growing more threatening, that just as keeping the money was a sacred trust that would be well rewarded, so losing it or betraying its whereabouts was an act of heresy that would merit acute punishment, it began to be obvious that he spoke for the enemy. He didn’t mention the revolution, or the Ayatollah, or the Revolutionary Guard, but he didn’t have to. Throughout this speech, Qazai’s father had looked down at the floor, stifling a cough from time to time and failing to meet his son’s eye.

And that was that. It was made clear to them both that what had begun as a family business could never leave the family, and that the younger Qazai would abide by the same, stark rules as his father: no fraud, and not a word out of place. Failure to observe these two simple precepts would result in death, for them and those dear to them. From time to time they would receive more money; from time to time withdrawals would be made, when funds were required elsewhere. Qazai hadn’t liked to ask his client how that money was spent.

So. Fifteen million had become twenty, thirty, sixty, a hundred. When the number was somewhere in the thirties Qazai’s father had died. But on the strength of his skill and his record, after three years Qazai had gone looking for other investors and found, some without difficulty, wealthy families who wanted a decent return. That was Shiraz, and it made him his first fortune. The Iranian funds continued to grow but were no longer everything, and when he founded Tabriz and let the real money pour in—the pension money, the insurance money, more cautious but vast—there were times when he could forget the mixed, poisonous inheritance his father had left him. Never for long, mind: they were an odd client, undemanding and incurious generally, but hard work nevertheless. Funds always arrived from surprising directions and had to leave by the most meandering routes, usually through companies incorporated in bizarre places by Qazai himself—or by Senechal, his loyal lieutenant.

The mention of the name seemed to stop Qazai’s flow, and for a moment he stared blankly ahead and said nothing. Throughout his monologue he had hardly once looked at Webster, and this was so unusual that Webster had no doubt of the truth of what he was saying. Nor was his tale incredible, for all that it was astonishing. Now that it was out, it made a grotesque sense; it fit.

•   •   •

I
F YOU TOOK THE
man Qazai wanted to be and inverted him, here he was. Not a great patriot but a paltry traitor, his weakness, after all, the same as his father’s: love of money, and a greater fear of there not being enough. While Webster was letting the story settle, alternately feeling sympathy and repugnance, the one thought that grew stronger and stronger was that Timur need not have died.

“So why didn’t you just sell the whole thing? I don’t get it.”

Qazai was silent.

“None of this need have happened.”

Qazai scratched at his beard. “Perhaps.”

“You know it.”

“I wanted to leave it for Timur.” He paused, stopped scratching. “I really did.”

“I’m not sure he wanted it.”

Qazai stared at Webster and in his eyes there was a suggestion of the old imperiousness. But it softened, in an instant, and he looked away, resting his forehead on his hand, pinching his brow.

“They never threatened him. They said they could destroy my life. I didn’t know they meant by taking his.”

“After what happened to Parviz?”

“I thought they were just trying to scare me.”

“If only they had.” Qazai glanced up and nodded, his eyes looking inward. “What about Mehr?”

“That was on their territory. I thought . . . I thought it was opportunist.”

Webster snorted. “They invited him.”

Qazai said nothing, and for a minute or two there was an exhausted silence between them.

“Who is Rad?” said Webster.

Qazai clasped his hands together and stared down at them.

“Does he have a first name?” said Webster.

“Not that I know.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s intelligence. I assume.”

“No shit.”

“That’s all I know. I’ve only met him three times. When Ahmadinejad came to power everything changed. After Nezam I dealt with the same man for over fifteen years. Mutlaq, his name was. I would see him once a year, always somewhere different.”

“How did you communicate?”

“We had a brass-plaque office in Mayfair. Just a letterbox. I checked it once a week.”

“Do you still have it?”

“A different one.”

“What if you wanted to talk to him?”

“We had emergency procedures. I never needed them.”

“Go on.”

“So. Two years ago I went to meet Mutlaq in Caracas and he wasn’t there. Rad was in his place. He told me that things in Tehran had changed, that they were concerned about the money. What I was doing with it. Investing it in Sunni businesses, in American companies. It was strange, but before that no one seemed to care where their money went. He told me from now on I would need to consider my investments differently. I told him I would see what I could do but it might be difficult to change. He just looked at me from behind those glasses and told me that I had better remember who had made me.” Qazai paused. “That was the first meeting.”