The Jackal's Share (30 page)

“They won’t let her go.”

The men had stopped by the last of the parked cars and the driver was bending down to talk through the window. For an age he stood like that, dimly silhouetted against some distant light; then he straightened, the car doors opened, and two men got out, one tall, one short.

The short man closed his door without looking behind him and started walking, ahead of the other three, toward Webster, who moved around to the front of the car, beckoning Qazai to follow him.

He knew it was Rad, but as he drew closer, he realized how accurate his recollection of him had been, in his dreams, in every waking moment: the small, solid frame; the unshaven jaw jutting slightly; the widow’s peak of slick black hair. And the sunglasses, which he was wearing even now, making his way surely toward them with a boxer’s quiet strut. As he drew close Webster felt his body tense, felt pain—a memory, but real—shear through his thigh, and only with concentration resisted the urge to back away.

Rad stopped a yard away, took off his glasses and stared up into Webster’s face, his head cocked ever so slightly on one side. He didn’t look at Qazai. In the darkness his eyes glowed pale gray and cold, and Webster again felt possessed by them.

He heard Qazai’s voice, sensed that he had stepped toward Rad. “Where is she?”

One of Rad’s men moved forward; Rad held Webster’s gaze for a last moment and turned to Qazai, taking him in before answering.

“Where I want.” He let the words hang in the dark, then looked back at Webster. “Show me.”

Webster collected himself. He was now in charge.

“Get in the car,” he said.

“No. Here.”

Webster shook his head. “You need to see these. And they don’t.” He looked over Rad’s shoulder at his henchmen.

Perfectly still, Rad thought. Then he held his hand up, and without looking around said something in Farsi. The three men hesitated a moment, turned and walked back the way they had come. When they were twenty yards away Rad held his arm in the air, clicked his fingers and they stopped.

“Show me here.” He took a phone from his pocket, and lit up its screen.

Webster handed him the documents, watched as Rad took them from the envelope, got them steady in his hand and moved the phone over them. In the greenish light his eyes flitted quickly across each page, scanning them; understanding them.

When he reached the last he put it to the back of the pile and looked up, his lips pressed together. His head turned from Webster to Qazai, then back.

“I am rich.” He had lowered his voice; it sounded clear and scratchy in the night air.

“If you want.”

“No one will believe.”

“They’ll believe. The next thing is we start spending it. There’ll be a house in the Caribbean with your name on it. Works of art. A very unrevolutionary Ferrari.”

Rad’s forehead creased but somehow Webster knew that he understood.

“The thing is,” he went on, quietly, leaning forward, “that’s real money. Sitting there. Everybody believes money. Even your superiors. His clients.” He nodded at Qazai. “They all understand how it works. You made a rational decision. You chose to sell what’s yours. That’s what we all do, surely? Your power over his life. Over my life.” He paused. “But they won’t like it, will they? No one likes to see a fellow revolutionary making the most of his opportunities. How do you think they’ll do it?” Rad’s eyes were fast on his. “Hang you from a bridge? Drive you up with some other enemies of the revolution and leave you dangling in space? Or shoot you while you’re having a coffee in Paris? Is there anyone else who does that sort of thing? Or is that just you?”

He was talking loudly now, and he felt Qazai’s hand on his arm.

Rad snorted, a sort of laugh. He looked off into the darkness, shook his head, and turned back to Webster, rubbing his chin with his hand, squeezing the skin hard as if it wasn’t his own.

“I need him.” He glanced at Qazai.

Webster shook his head. “No. You let Ava go, we walk away, and you get to keep the money. It’s yours. This is a good day for all of us.”

Rad’s thin lips tightened into a smile. “Understand. He is ours. If not me, someone else take him. If he lives, I die anyway. And someone will come for him.”

In the meager light Qazai’s face was ghostly.

“I need him,” said Rad.

“No,” said Webster, his chest tight. “That isn’t the deal. You don’t negotiate.”

Rad breathed a deep, satisfied breath, filling his lungs. He handed the documents to Webster, and spoke to Qazai with the air of someone who isn’t about to say more.

“You. Or her.”

Qazai turned his head to Webster, not in appeal but simply to confirm that there was nowhere left to go. Webster had never felt so helpless. He thought of Lock, just after he had been shot, lying in the snow on his back, a clean black hole in his coat over his heart. He had no ideas. No schemes. But Qazai’s eyes told him he didn’t need any; that this was the end.

Qazai took a step forward.

“I need to know she’s safe.”

Rad looked at him for a moment, then took his phone from his pocket and dialed a number; in the quiet Webster could hear it ring once. After a few words in Farsi, Rad passed it to Qazai.

“Hello? Hello?” He held the phone away from his ear and was about to say something to Rad when a voice, thin and distorted, sounded on the line. “Hello? Ava? Ava. Where are you? Are you OK?” Webster watched Qazai listening to his daughter, his spare hand pressed against his ear to hear better. He looked old, drawn, dignified. “Where are you? . . . Oh, thank God. Thank God . . . Find a taxi. Get home . . . No, I’m in Dubai . . . I don’t know, my angel. I don’t know.”

Rad took the phone from him and ended the call. Qazai was a head taller than him, upright now, braced.

Rad gave Webster a final look. “Leave the money where it is,” he said, and making sure that they understood each other, turned and walked toward his men.

Qazai watched him go, and Webster watched Qazai.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“No need,” said Qazai, and held out his hand.

“I’ll do what I can,” said Webster as they shook.

“There’s no need,” said Qazai, and with a single, deliberate nod followed Rad. Car doors opened and closed; headlights flared on; and Webster watched the blacked-out windows pass him into the night.

Footsteps crunched on gravel behind him, and he realized with a sting of fear that he wasn’t alone: the two men who had driven him here were walking toward him. There was no one else in sight. As he watched them approach he could hear far off the sound of a car’s engine revving deeply in a low gear.

He moved away from them, backing toward the buildings and the restaurant. But the men didn’t look at him. They reached their car, opened the doors and climbed in; the engine started, and they pulled out, turning at him quickly. Webster, dazed, stepped clumsily backward, waiting to be hit, and took a moment to recognize the shining chrome and black of Constance’s car, which had driven up at speed and was now shielding him from the Iranians. For a second or two the two cars simply sat there, Constance with his arm on the sill staring down the Audi, all of a yard away from him, until it reversed a little and with a burst of acceleration that made the gravel spit under its tires, sped away.

“Good thing they didn’t touch the car.” Constance was looking behind him with his arm across the passenger seat.

Webster ignored him and got in. “Go. Turn around.” Constance didn’t respond. “Let’s go.”

Constance slowly shook his head.

“Qazai was in the first car.”

“You want to give them another chance to kill you?” Constance turned to him, his eyes grave.

“They weren’t going to.”

“Sure.”

“Turn the car around. Fletcher, I mean it.”

“Uh-uh. No. You can’t save that man from his sins. This is his share.”

“They’ll kill him.”

“Maybe that’s what he needs,” said Constance, his arms crossed, his head like marble in the gray light.

29.

T
HE MOMENT
W
EBSTER HEARD
that Qazai had died, he sent everything he knew to Constance, with instructions to pass it on immediately to his friends; and because he didn’t wholly trust that it would reach them, he sent a second copy through Hammer to Virginia.

It had been quick, at least; so quick that Webster couldn’t help but believe that the plan had already been in place. Perhaps, perhaps not. He was done with overthinking things.

If the news agencies were right, Qazai’s plane had flown from Dubai to Syria, landing in Damascus some time around midnight. It was thought that he was alone, but no journalist had yet checked the passenger manifest. What was known was that he had booked a suite at the Four Seasons, eaten breakfast there alone on Sunday morning, and then taken a taxi to Bab Touma, in the east of the city. At a little after ten, according to the state news agency, shots were heard inside a carpet shop near the Church of Saint Francis, and when police arrived they had found Qazai in an armchair, shot twice through the head, three cups of tea still warm on the table. The owner of the shop was discovered hiding upstairs, though whether from the gunmen or the police was not clear.

Webster had received the news on the train to Truro: a call from Hammer that he let go to voicemail, and then an e-mail with links to the first agency articles. He read them once, asked Hammer to send the file, switched off his phone and sat with his eyes closed, imagining the strange, late courage required for Qazai to walk knowingly to his death; seeing him being poured his tea as he waited for Rad to arrive, still beautifully dressed, still outwardly the great man. And his mind? Was it full of fear? Contrition? Or some growing sense of peace?

He thought of Ava. If she hadn’t heard, she would soon; there was no need for him to call again. He had tried to speak to her from Constance’s house as he waited for his flight, but had only reached her voicemail, and for an hour or two had worried that Rad had betrayed them, taking another Qazai as his prize. But just before midnight she had rung him, anxious but composed, and wanting to know why he, and not her father, had called so many times. She had known the answer—had feared, in fact, from the moment she was taken, that she was part of an exchange—and had said little in response, reconciled to the news but still not equal to it.

So the sacrifice had been made. He found himself considering the hundred practical questions that Ava would now have to answer. Where to bury the body, if she was given that choice. How to tackle the journalists when they started calling, and how much, eventually, to tell the world. What to do with the money that remained. He would have liked to have helped her, but could not. He was not responsible in the end: not for Qazai, or his daughter.

•   •   •

B
Y THE TIME HE REACHED
Helford it was late. He told George Black to stand down, watched the four anonymous saloon cars leaving up the track until their lights had stopped glowing red in the gloom, and walked through the quiet and the darkening trees down to his parents’ house. The sky was clear, and the light from the moon shone bright and gray on the estuary.

Only Elsa was still up. What he wanted her to understand more than anything else was that he had never meant to bring danger into their lives, but that once it was there his only choice had been to drive it out again. It had been vanity, he told her, and he was finished with it. Elsa listened with professional detachment, coolly pointing out the inconsistencies in his account, making him feel the weight of his recklessness. But behind her anger she was as relieved to see him as he was to see her; he knew it, and it gave him hope.

After a time their words ran out, and while the house slept they walked through the garden down to the little stone quay where the air was warm and still and the tide high enough for them to bathe their feet in the water, and there they sat in silence, not reconciled but together, until the sky began to lighten in the east.

A
LSO BY
C
HRIS
M
ORGAN
J
ONES

The Silent Oligarch