Qazai turned his head to look at him, glanced away and nodded. Under Webster’s hand his shoulder twitched.
“How quickly can you get your plane ready?”
Qazai scratched his jaw. “When . . . when did you see Rad? Did you see him?”
“Is Rad his name?”
Qazai nodded.
“Who is he?” Qazai said nothing, and Webster felt his anger rise. “Who the fuck is he?”
“One of the worst of them. One of the worst.” He looked up at Webster, and his eyes, for the very first time, showed humility. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
• • •
WEBSTER BEGAN TO LOOK around for Qazai’s things. A suitcase stood outside the bedroom door, clearly unopened since he had arrived.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re going. Do you have anything else? Do you have your passport?”
Qazai didn’t hear; he was staring straight ahead and slowly shaking his head. Webster fitted his hand under his arm and helped him up.
“Do you have your passport?”
Qazai felt inside his jacket and nodded.
“How do we get the plane ready? Where’s the pilot?”
“It’s ready.”
“What time were you due to fly?”
Qazai looked puzzled.
“When were you flying back to London? What time?”
“What . . . what time is it?”
Webster sighed sharply and checked his watch. “Eleven thirty. It’s Saturday.”
Qazai screwed his eyes up, rubbed them with the heel of his hand. “Today. Lunchtime. I was going to call.”
“Do you have your phone?”
Qazai nodded.
“Then call.”
Qazai fished around in his jacket pockets, searching for his phone, and as he did so it rang, an unfamiliar tone. It took Webster a moment to realize that in fact it was his own, the new one Kamila had given him.
“Yes.”
“Two policeman are here.” It was Driss, speaking just above a whisper. “Not in uniform.”
“How can you tell?”
“I know. And they are asking for your friend.”
Shit. Webster closed his eyes and thought. “Bring the car around to the front. Twenty meters to the left of the gates.”
He carried the suitcase into the bedroom, opened it and as quickly as he could put the clothes in drawers and the suitcase, now empty, on a stand in the corner. The wash-bag he took into the bathroom, removing the toothbrush and the toothpaste and laying them out on the basin. Back in the bedroom he pulled back the covers on the bed and messed up the pillows. It would have to do.
Qazai was standing now, hardly steadily, and trying to negotiate his phone.
“Leave that,” said Webster, and ushered him toward the door. “Later.”
“My case.”
“Some people are coming. You don’t want to talk to them.” He started pulling Qazai toward the door at a quick walk but he resisted, trying to go back for his suitcase.
“Leave it. I want them to think you haven’t left. Come on,” he moved behind Qazai and shepherded him through the door. “Out. We’ve got to hurry.”
“What about Yves?”
“You don’t need to worry about Yves.”
He took the key from the lock as they left, put it in his pocket and shut the door quietly. With his finger to his lips he looked at Qazai. “Not a sound. We’re going this way,” and instead of going left down the path he led Qazai to the right of the villa in among the shrubs and trees by the pool. Qazai followed meekly enough, but his tread was heavy and the dry needles from the cypresses crunched loudly under his feet.
Webster kept him close and moved as stealthily as he could away from the villa, checking over his shoulder for signs of the police and avoiding the patches of sunlight that cut through the canopy overhead. Over their own footsteps he heard a metallic clink—the latch, he thought, opening or closing on the gate—and he stopped, one finger on his lips, touching Qazai on the arm and gesturing for him to do the same. Looking back toward the light he saw two men in brown suits walking in no particular hurry along the path to the Sultan’s Villa. Beside him Qazai tottered. As one of the policeman knocked on the door, Webster put his arm around Qazai, who was now leaning heavily against him, and started walking him carefully toward the next villa, which was coming into view between the trees. The policemen knocked again, stood back, looked up at the building’s facade, tried the door handle, found it open, and went in.
“Come on,” said Webster. “Quick.”
Half pushing, half dragging Qazai, he came out by another swimming pool, thankfully empty, and noticed too late the middle-aged couple on their sunloungers in the shade of the villa’s porch.
“Security,” he said, reasoning that English was the language they were most likely to understand and praying that they didn’t start talking to him in French. “We had report of an intruder. I’m afraid he’s drunk. Forgive me.”
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.
IT 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.
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