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 ha
d 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.
• • •
IF 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.”
“Then?”
“Then the world collapsed. Half of Shiraz was in the Gulf and half of that was in Dubai and property. We still haven’t recovered.”
“How much? How much did you lose?”
Qazai ran a hand through his hair. “Over half. Without what we owed the banks. And then Rad appeared again.”
“Appeared?”
“There was a letter. Asking to meet. This time in Belgrade.”
“Do you think they knew?”
“Probably.”
“And they wanted their money?”
“All of it.”
“How much?”
“Two point seven billion.”
Webster raised an eyebrow. “That’s enough. How much do you have?”
“Less.” Qazai sighed. “Until I sell.”
Astonishing though it was, Webster sensed that after everything Qazai was still reluctant to part with his empire. He fought his irritation.
“So. The Americans are ready?”
Qazai chewed his lip and sighed. “Yes. They’re ready.”
“Can it happen in a week?”
“At the price they’re getting we could do it in a day. They’re flying in on Wednesday. We’ll sign the papers then.”
Neither said anything for a moment.
“What happened to Yves?” Qazai asked finally.
That was an excellent question. Webster fielded it warily.
“They tried to shoot us. In the desert. Yves seemed keen to help them out.”
Qazai looked blank.
“He had a gun. I think he wanted me to sacrifice myself.”
“And?”
“I hit him. And left him there.”
The revelation seemed to give Qazai pause. He watched Webster closely, as if reassessing him.
“So he was in on it?” Webster punctured his thoughts.
“Yves?”
“Yes. He knew about your dark little secret?”
“Someone had to.”
“Was he blackmailing you?”
Qazai’s expression went dark. “No. But I paid him well.”
“So that was the hold he had over you.”
Qazai didn’t respond.
“Ava thought it had to do with your divorce but it wasn’t, was it? He was milking you.” He paused. “Did you know he was talking to them?”
“I’m sorry?”
“With this.”
Webster fished Senechal’s phone out of his pocket and chucked it into Qazai’s lap. Qazai looked at it, puzzled, working out what it meant.
“You did know really, didn’t you?” said Webster. “Deep down. He had two masters. And none.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Oh, it does. If I was Rad and I wanted someone to keep tabs on you he’d be my choice. I’d pay him well for it, too. Maybe he threw in extras for them. Like Timur’s schedule. Like when your grandchildren swim.”
Qazai continued to stare at the phone. “Why kill him?” he said at last.
&nb
sp; “Because he outlived his usefulness. Because they thought you no longer trusted him. Or just because it’s neat.”
The stewardess came and asked them if they wanted more drinks or anything to eat. Qazai asked for water, and as he was waiting for his glass to be filled Webster watched him closely. After everything, he wasn’t broken. A few minutes ago when he was telling his story he seemed to have given up on the notion of his greatness, and his unassailable sense of self seemed to have crumpled with the fiction that had supported it. But any shame he was feeling, Webster began to realize, was for the mistakes he had made, not for the lie he had spent his life telling. That deep, deep pride was showing signs of reviving.
Qazai sipped at his water. It was clear that something was exercising him, and Webster waited for it.
“If you’d just done what you were asked,” he said at last, looking away from Webster, the words bitter.
Webster blinked, frowning. “Are you serious?”
“I’m completely serious.”
“I did just that.”
“Nonsense. It was a crusade. Some sort of . . . obsession. And for what? What were you hoping? To expose the truth?” Qazai shook his head. “No. I do not understand. Who benefited? Who won?”
“I wasn’t prepared to lose.”
“Not to me.”
“No.” Webster said it quietly. “Not to you.”
“I thought for a while that you might stop for Ava’s benefit. That she might have power over you where Yves and I had none.”
There was a faint taunt in his eyes as he said it that made the blood rush to Webster’s head. With effort he checked himself.
“Then you were wrong about that as well.” He paused. “What will you tell her?”
Qazai closed his eyes, shook his head. As Webster had hoped, the thought clearly unsettled him.
“She can’t know.” He fixed his eye on Webster’s. “She cannot know.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure. If you tell her what you told me she might go for it. I wouldn’t mention how much of the money you made went on arms. Or how much ended up as rocket launchers in the hands of terrorists. Or how many assassinations of her friends it’s paid for over the years. If you leave all that out you might be all right. Until it dawns on her that you caused her brother’s death.”
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