“Where’s Qazai?”
“I have no idea. I am not his keeper.”
“Tell him that I know all about Kurus, and Chiba, and where the money goes. What it buys. Tell him . . .”
“He is not here, Mr. Webster. You will deal with me.”
Webster leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desk, never taking his eyes off Senechal. He lowered his voice. “I’m not talking to you. Tell him. He’ll understand.”
Senechal regarded him with cold disdain and just a trace, he thought, of concern. Certainly he had been made to think.
“This is nonsense. You have been missing for hours. Your report would already be on its way. If it exists.”
Webster raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “You know, I’ve been trying to work out from the start who pulls whose strings. Looks like I’m about to find out. That’s a big call for a lawyer to make on his own.”
Senechal held his eye for a good ten seconds, stood up and left the room.
• • •
WEBSTER WATCHED THE DOOR close behind him, heard it lock, and thought that he might happily stay forever in this bleak little room if it meant he never had to see that man again. What could he be doing? Whose interests did he serve? A dozen scenarios suggested themselves, all preposterous, all colliding. Like a man suddenly realizing that he has been lost for miles, Webster looked back and tried to identify the turning that had led him astray.
He drank deeply from the water bottle, took a bent cigarette from the crumpled pack in his pocket, and lit it.
It made him feel no better. His head ached as it was, and the smoke tasted strange in his throat, acrid and stale. But he continued with it nevertheless, perhaps because it was the only action he could take, and soon the white cell hung with a soft haze and a tired, friendly smell. It was the smell of his life before Ikertu, before children—before Elsa, even, of a time when he was alone, as he was alone again now, just him and the smoke. He pictured his house, curtains and blinds drawn, everyone in their beds, a single light on outside the children’s room, and for the first time felt anguish at the thought he might never be there again, and a greater anguish that he had chosen to desert them.
He was watching the smoke rise off the ember in a thin, twirling line when the lock turned and the door opened. Qazai was there. He stood in the doorway, and when his eyes had adjusted to the light simply studied Webster for what seemed a long time. It was a strange look: solemn, pained, even curious. Thoughtful, as if a long way behind it some delicate matter was being decided. Above all, though, it was not as it had been; the authority had gone from it. It made him appear old, and uncertain, and it suddenly struck Webster that it was meant to communicate something to him. But what it was, he couldn’t catch.
Senechal was behind him, and as if only then becoming conscious of his presence Qazai glanced over his shoulder, raised an eyebrow wearily, and walked slowly around the desk. There was a hint of resentment in the gesture that Webster noticed, and instinctively felt he might exploit.
“So you are here,” said Webster, taking a last pull on the cigarette. “I thought you might be.”
Qazai didn’t reply. He sat on the chair, Senechal standing by him, like his nurse. He was exhausted; his shoulders slumped; that athletic energy that had flowed through him at their first meeting seemed all spent. But he held Webster’s eye, and drew himself up as best he could before speaking.
“I understand that you’re still trying to threaten me.”
Webster dropped his cigarette on the floor and put it out with his foot.
“That’s a bit rich, don’t you think?”
“I’m not threatening you.”
“Ten minutes ago your kept ghoul told me that he was terribly sorry but I was about to be killed.”
“That’s not me.”
“It’s not you. Of course.” Webster nodded. “It’s just the company you keep.” He reached for his cigarettes and pulled another delicately from the pack. “You keep very bad company. Starting with him. Tell him to go.” He looked up. “Leave the fucking room. Go.” He stared hard at Senechal. “Go on. I don’t know which of you is the monkey anymore but I want to talk to him. Alone.” Neither man said anything. “I mean it.”
“I will be staying with my client,” Senechal said at last.
“Whatever he is to you, he’s not your client. We all know that.” He looked at Qazai. “If I’m going to die I want to spend my last minutes with the living. Tell him to go.”
Qazai breathed in deeply through his nose, made a decision and let the breath out. “Yves. Leave us.”
Senechal frowned—it was the most emotion Webster had seen him show—and with a stiff nod walked across the room and knocked on the door, which was opened and locked behind him in a moment.
Webster lit the cigarette. Bits of tobacco stuck to his lip and he pinched them off with his thumb. Qazai, across the desk, watched him charily.
“What did you mean?” he said. “That I’m not his client.”
Webster smiled and shook his head, exhaling smoke. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t trust him with my home address, but you tell him everything. What does he do for you? Was it your idea to pick over my past, or his? Who talked to the Italians? Who suggested you buy me off? Why is he in here on their behalf? Whoever the fuck they are.” He took another drag. “Who’s in charge? That’s the question. I’ve been trying to decide. Is he trying to help you out of this mess or is he out there right now selling what he knows? I would be. Christ knows.”
Qazai looked at him steadily, but not with confidence, and for a minute neither said anything.
“So you have a buyer?” Webster broke the silence.
“I’m selling it all.”
Webster raised an eyebrow.
“To the Americans,” said Qazai. “I have no choice. It’s the end.”
Webster laughed, and his throat hurt as he did. He took another drink from the bottle and tried to understand. “So if it’s all theirs they don’t care about you. You won’t be seen together. You’ll be gone. That’s why you don’t need me.” He shook his head. “Why the fuck didn’t you just do that in the first place?”
Qazai pushed his chair back and made to stand up, looking at Webster with a strange sadness in his eyes.
“The thing is,” said Webster, “when Ike sends my report out to the Wall Street Journal in about . . .” he checked his watch, “in about three hours, no one’s going to be buying anything off you.”
“There’s no report. Hammer doesn’t even know you’re here.”
“Of course he does.”
“Then why did you book your flight yourself?”
To that Webster didn’t have a response. So they had known he was coming.
Qazai watched him, enjoying his unease. “After all this time, Mr. Webster, you don’t know anything. You have no idea who these people are.”
“Tell me.”
Qazai just shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Webster. “I know what they do.” He turned his head to exhale. “Until a few hours ago, I really wanted to know what trouble you’d got yourself into. I really did. And now, I couldn’t care less. Because I can’t help but think that whatever happens to me, you’re fucked too.”
Qazai set his jaw. “I’m afraid only one of us is fucked.” The word sounded odd on his lips.
Webster laughed, a dry cracked laugh.
“You’re serious? No, I see. They can’t break Darius Qazai. You’re too big. You’re a great man. Is that it?” Webster paused and the two looked at each other, Qazai’s eyes dull and uncertain. Webster leaned forward. “Listen. You can’t hold it together anymore. Killing Timur—they did kill Timur, didn’t they?—that wasn’t a threat, it was just the beginning. How much do you owe?”
Qazai said nothing.
“So
it is money. And when you sell the company and you pay them off, you think they’ll walk away? Given how much you know?”
“You don’t know them.”
“You’re a dead man whatever happens.”
Qazai scratched his jaw, his mind working. “You’re not giving me much incentive to save you.”
“You can do that? You’re still in charge?” He laughed. The room was now hazy with smoke. “What’s funny about this is that I’m the only hope you’ve got.”
Qazai swallowed. “Go on.”
“Get us back to England, and I’m in the same boat as you. A pair of loose ends. Your friends don’t seem like the sort to forget.” A pause. “I know how to neutralize them.”
“Tell me.”
“When we’re in England.”
Qazai held Webster’s eye for a moment until an understanding had passed between them, then reached into the pocket of his jacket and brought out a lacquered black pen, an incongruously perfect thing, and a business card. “I’ll tell my friends, as you call them, about the report.” He uncapped the pen and wrote as he talked, bending over the desk. “They may choose to believe you. They may not.”
He handed the card to Webster. Darius Qazai, it said, Chairman and Chief Executive, Tabriz Asset Management. On its reverse, in black capitals, were four words: “YOU HAVE A DEAL.”
Webster looked at it for a moment, before slipping it into his back pocket. And with that Qazai walked to the door, knocked, and was let out.
19.
TEN MINUTES PASSED. When the door opened again, the tall man was there, and he had a gun in his hand. By his side was the man who had brought him from the cell earlier. Webster twisted around to look at them.
“Stand,” the tall man said.
Webster stayed where he was.
“Stand.” The man gestured with his gun. “You go home. Now.”
Either this was true, or they were preparing to take him somewhere more final. In any event, his options were few.
With one hand on the desk he pushed himself upright and shuffled around to face his captors. The tall man kept the gun on him while his colleague wrapped a strip of dirty white material around Webster’s head, adjusting it so that it covered his eyes and tying it tight. Then he pulled his arms behind him, tied them at the wrists, and putting his hand on Webster’s shoulder started to lead him away. The tall man stopped him. Webster felt a hand go into the back pocket of his jeans and come back out again.
Then a hand between his shoulder blades was pushing him roughly forward, through the doorway, down a long bright corridor into a larger space. He put out his hands to feel his way but they found nothing, and after another shove from behind he heard Qazai’s voice say something sharply in a language he didn’t understand and felt a hand on his upper arm, guiding him forward. After half-a-dozen yards the hand brought him to a stop.
By tilting his head back he could see a yard or two of the floor around him. Qazai was there, next to him; Senechal was by his side; two other pairs of black shoes, dusty and scuffed, faced them.
Someone said something in Arabic, or Farsi, or whatever it was they were speaking, and Webster recognized the harsh croak of the man who had beaten him. A dozen words, no more, but in his chest there rose a shameful mix of fear and feeble rage. Then the same voice came closer and spoke in English.
“Now you go to airport. You go home. One week, I have my money. You say anything about me, about him, you die. Your family too. You are not safe. Understand?”
Webster understood.
“You think you know. Things about me. You don’t.” He reached down, put his hand around Webster’s thigh and squeezed, hard, on the center of the bruise he had left. Pain sprang up, ending in a ball of nausea in Webster’s throat. “I will watch you. Always.” He stepped back. “We drive you to airport. Now. You two. Clear?”
No one said anything. Webster felt a hand on his back, but then Senechal spoke, and his voice after the other’s sounded refined, thin, anxious.
“My baggage is at my hotel.”
“We will get. You go now.”
“I can get it myself. It is not a problem.”
“You go now. Both of you. Qazai stays here. I talk to him more.”
“This isn’t . . .”
“You go. Now.”
Senechal chose not to break the silence that followed, but Webster could sense his fear.
They climbed stairs, a single flight. Webster was being guided, as before, and ahead of him, as far as he could tell, were Senechal and another man. A door opened, and the change of air—the slightest breeze in the heat—let him know that they were now outside. It was still dark, and he could hear sporadic traffic some way off, the drone of a car, the thundering of a heavy truck. There was dusty tarmac underfoot, and after perhaps twenty yards the hand on his arm brought him to a stop. From under his blindfold he could see the wheel of a car and two pairs of shoes, Senechal’s and one other. A car door opened and he felt a hand on his head pushing him down and onto a leather seat: he was in the back, on the left-hand side, behind the driver. The leather was cream and the car smelled new. That was all he could make out.
Two doors opened and shut again; Senechal was beside him; the engine engaged with a barely perceptible bass note and Webster felt fresh pain in his ribs as the car accelerated hard and his body was pushed back into the seat. Over the noise he heard another car start up a little distance away.
From what he could tell they were on a main road, almost completely straight, and no longer in Marrakech: there were no street lamps, and the only light came in flashes from passing cars. Occasionally they slowed for a moment before switching lanes and surging past slower traffic. No one spoke, but the car was so quiet, even at speed, that he could hear Senechal taking deep breaths, deliberately, as if calming or collecting himself, and in between them his own, rasping and tight. His ribs hurt so much that he struggled to take in enough air.
“Ils vont nous tuer.” The words came out in a hoarse whisper.
Senechal said nothing.
“Ils nous suivent. Ils sont derrière nous. See for yourself.”
Senechal twisted in his seat to look out of the back windscreen.
“Vous devez liberer les mains. Mes mains.” Webster turned his back toward Senechal, pushing his hands toward him as best he could.
The driver said something sharp in Arabic, or Farsi, and Senechal replied in the same language, the words faltering, his tone ingratiating.
“Ils ne sont pas vos amis.” Webster tried again. “Vraiment. Do it now. Untie me, for fuck’s sake.”
“I will look after myself. Thank you.”
Webster made a leap. “If that’s what you’ve been doing, your usefulness may just have run out. Don’t be sure it hasn’t.”
Senechal was silent for a moment, and then Webster felt a cold touch on his forearm in the dark as two hands began to work quietly at the coarse fabric around his wrists. The knot was tight, and the fingers pulling at it weak and unskilled. Webster willed him to hurry.
As Senechal continued to fumble, the car slowed sharply, pulled off the tarmac onto rougher ground and stopped. Webster heard the rumble of another car moving past and coming to a halt a short distance away, and felt the weight shift in the seat in front of him as their driver got out. For a moment the inside of the car was lit with a warm light; then the door shut behind him and with a beep and a clunk all the doors locked and the darkness returned.
“Hurry up, for fuck’s sake. Use your teeth.” Webster’s face was pressed to the window, his arms out behind him; he had never felt so naked. He wondered whether they would be shot, or burned, or both. “What are you doing?”
The hands had stopped working and Senechal was trying his door.
“It is locked.”
Webster didn’t reply. Feeling the muscles in his shoulders
tense and cramp, he pushed his wrists together and worked them hard against the fabric, looser now, until there was a space large enough for his hand to squeeze through. Senechal was still pulling in panic at the handle of his door.
In one movement Webster tore the blindfold off his eyes and leaned into the front seats, desperately looking for the switch that would release the doors. The car’s alarm started wailing. A dim green glow from the dashboard was the only light; the car’s headlamps had been cut and outside all was black. He ran his hands over the door, between the seats, pressing at everything, trying to keep his head. From the back he could hear Senechal quietly intoning “Mon Dieu, mon Dieu” over and over.
The window he had been sitting by burst with unimaginable noise, and Webster felt glass spray across his back. A second bullet smashed the driver’s window, and he could feel the chassis of the car jar as a third hit his door.
He found the switch.
“Go! Fucking go!”
Sitting back he reached across Senechal, opened his door and shoved him out onto the sand, scrambling after him head first and over the howling alarm hearing the precise clunk of a bullet being pressed into the chamber of a rifle just before another shot cracked the air. He landed on his elbows in the dust.
There were two further shots, close together, as he shut the door and pulled himself against the body of the car. Senechal was to his left, his head leaning back against the other door, his eyes shut. After the brutal noise of the gun there was now silence: no cars, no wind. Webster, his breath quick and painful in his chest, thinking hard, leaned over to peer under the back of the car in the direction of the shots.
“One of us is going to have to . . .”
“Get up. It is you they want.”
When he turned his head he found himself looking right into the black eyes of Senechal, set in a face of pale wax and darker than the night. He was kneeling and holding a small pistol in his right hand. His face was so close that Webster could smell his dead metallic breath as he half whispered, half hissed.
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