Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

“No.” Constance made the single syllable last. “What? From where?”

“Half a ton of ancient Assyrian relief. From Baghdad.”

Constance gave a triumphant laugh. “Ha! He’s a looter! A fucking looter. Why are rich men always so fucking greedy? They think they can own the world.” He laughed again. “Grasping little bastard.”

Webster did his best to calm him down. “We don’t know it yet.”

“Of course. Innocent until, and all that. You’re a better man than I, Ben. Who wants us to prove it?”

Webster had thought about this. Tell Constance and heaven knows how he might react; fail to tell him and his reaction would be all too predictable if the truth came out, as one day it surely would.

“He does.”

“Who does?”

“Qazai.”

“Qazai is your client?”

“He’s our client.”

Constance was quiet for a moment. Webster thought he could hear him scratching his beard. When he spoke again his tone was cool, the words clipped.

“So that superfine mind of Ike’s has come undone. I must say I’m surprised. So how does it work? Which poor unfortunate is Qazai fucking?”

“Himself.”

“Neat trick. Could you tell me what you mean?”

Webster explained, both the circumstances of the case and Hammer’s supple thinking about it. He tried not to sound apologetic.

“So your job is to demonstrate that he’s OK.”

“That he didn’t go looting. And that he’s basically OK. If he didn’t and he is.”

“And he pays you?”

“He’s paid us.”

The line went quiet for a moment.

“So he pays me to do my worst?”

“Exactly.”

Constance let out a vast laugh, so loud and close that Webster involuntarily moved the phone away from his ear.

“That,” he said, “is wondrous. I was wrong about Ike. He’s still a genius.” He paused for a moment. “Your sources will be protected, I take it.”

“Not a word.”

“Good, good. Then let me tell you about Darius Qazai.”

Constance set off. Because he was a showman he didn’t think to ask what Ikertu already knew, and much of what he said Webster had heard, but to hear it from a professional contrarian was refreshing. Slowly he moved to the point: Qazai was a fraud because he wanted the respect of the establishment but would take money from anyone. Constance was convinced that behind the pure white facade of Tabriz, Qazai was investing on behalf of people whose money was far from clean.

“Like who?” asked Webster.

“Well, I hear various things. Some Russian money, some African. All dirty. But these are rumors, and much as I like them I can’t support them.”

With his free hand Webster shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. They were straying from the matter in hand. “None of this has much to do with art, sadly.”

“Ah, but it might. When we’re done.” He sniffed, and Webster could hear the click and snap of a lighter as he lit another cigarette. “What do you want me to do?” he said, audibly blowing out smoke.

Webster told him about the Americans’ report, about Shokhor, about the unknown Swiss dealer. “I want to know about Shokhor. Anything you can find. Where he lives, what he does. If you know someone who knows him that would be fantastic.”

“You want to talk to him?”

“Next week, yes. See what you can do with the shipment as well. I’d love to know who it went to in Switzerland.”

“Ben, I am on my way.” He laughed again. “I can’t believe you’re paying me to do this.”

TWO WEEKS AFTER QAZAIhad signed his letter of instruction and agreed all terms—money up front in stages, his full cooperation throughout, access to all documents, Ikertu to explore wherever it liked—Webster called a meeting of his team in his office.

Hammer was there: they had finally agreed between them that he would deal with Qazai while Webster did the work, a neat arrangement that suited them both and might or might not endure. The contract with the client was no less shrewd. Ikertu would investigate the art smuggling allegations and report what it found. It would also run the rule over Qazai himself, and if it found other reasons to believe that he was less than impeccable it would meet its obligation to say so. Senechal hadn’t liked it but Qazai, to Webster’s satisfaction, had overruled him.

Hammer sat at the small table; to his right Rachel Dobbs; opposite him Dieter Klein. Dobbs, six feet tall in her low heels, a little drawn today, as most days, and Hammer’s favorite member of staff, was Ikertu’s most experienced researcher. Twenty years before, she had joined Ikertu as its third employee and was now the longest-serving bar Hammer himself, who adored her for her doggedness, her inspired ability to connect the apparently unconnected and her rigid sense of privacy. Here, in this most curious of offices, no one knew anything about her, beyond the fact that she was married (she wore a ring) and lived in the countryside near Leighton Buzzard (it had said so on her CV, and the company still paid for her season ticket). She was not a sociable person: she never attended the Christmas party, never drank with her colleagues, never talked to them about anything but work. At her interview with Hammer she had warned him about this, and he had loved her for it ever since. Occasionally, in meetings like this one, Webster would look at her thin face, the slight nose and the pressed mouth, the withdrawn eyes, imagine the different lives she might be leading away from this place and conclude that whatever one she actually lived she might be the most contented person he knew. She felt no need to share any part of herself, and if she was quiet it seemed to be less from shyness than from reserve.

Klein, on the other hand, was desperate to communicate his enthusiasm and terrified of making a mistake, particularly in front of Hammer. A serious young man, a graduate of the University of Hanover and business school in France, he had been in the job for almost a year and was still finding it difficult to relax. Webster liked him—he spoke countless languages, wrote well in all of them, understood complicated things quickly—but Hammer wasn’t sure, because he saw Klein as unworldly and unformed. “He treats every case like a dissertation,” he had once said to Webster, and that was harsh but true enough. For his part, Klein, wanting nothing more than to impress Hammer, as everyone did, and sensitive enough to see his doubts, was always on the brink of nervousness in his company, and today looked more than usually callow behind his serious glasses and blond beard. He was also slightly in awe of Dobbs.

Webster’s office was messier than it had been for some time. Documents in scrappy piles covered the desk, and on the walls hung overlapping sheets of flipboard paper on which he was slowly drawing a chart of the world with Darius Qazai at its center.

For now they were considering basics: Qazai, the sculpture, and connections between the two. Hammer raised his eyebrows and looked expectantly around the table. “So. What have we got?”

Dobbs slowly and deliberately opened up the folder placed squarely on the table in front of her and began to speak at a measured pace. She didn’t refer to the document once, didn’t even look down, but kept her palm flat on the first page as if drawing out the information.

“Every detail checks out, but it hasn’t got me very far. Shokhor is an Iraqi by birth but lives in Dubai. He has a company called Calyx that has a single-page website and claims to be in the textile business. The ship that’s meant to have transported the relief is called the Veronese and it does a regular circuit of the Gulf. The container was unloaded at Dubai and after that I can’t find any record of it. I spoke to a friend who put me in touch with an old customs investigator. He knows Calyx, and Shokhor, but claimed not to know what he’s bringing in because no one looks. On the manifest the consignment was listed as cotton clothing. I haven’t found anything to say it wasn’t.”