Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

“Is that as far as it goes?”

“He’s trying to find out what happened to it. He probably can’t. And singling out a private flight to Switzerland from Dubai around that time? I checked. There are at least three or four a day.”

For the time being she was done. Webster smiled his approval.

“Any more?”

“One thing. I’ve done some work on Qazai’s companies as well. Tabriz is his big one. Dozens of funds, regulated in London, everything gold-plated. But he has another fund that invests his own money. It’s called Shiraz. Shiraz Holding AG.”

Webster nodded. Qazai had told him as much.

“Shiraz barely features anywhere. It’s based in Switzerland, unregulated—it can invest in whatever it wants. No one knows what it’s doing. Very low profile. But I found a claim in the high court from an investor trying to get his money back.”

Webster looked puzzled. “I thought it was all Qazai’s money.”

“Apparently not.”

“Who was it?”

“Some Swiss fund. It looks like another family office. The claim doesn’t give much away. They invested twenty-five million dollars in 2007 and wanted it back earlier this year. Qazai told them they couldn’t have it, that the fund was gated.”

“This year?” said Hammer.

Dobbs nodded.

Webster looked at Hammer. “He told us he needed cash.”

“He did,” said Hammer. “Do we know what happened?”

“They settled last month,” Dobbs said.

“Interesting,” said Hammer, with a slow, exaggerated nod to no one in particular. “Interesting.”

Dobbs, finished, closed her folder, and Webster thanked her.

“Dieter?”

While Dobbs had been talking Dieter had been surreptitiously going through his own notes, getting himself prepared. With a glance at Hammer he looked down at them again and began.

“Shokhor is not a prominent man. There is very little on him. There is almost nothing in the media.” He looked up. “I can go through the articles if you would like.”

“Are they interesting?” asked Hammer.

“Not really.”

“Let’s get to the interesting stuff.”

Dieter, abashed, turned his attention back to his notes.

“I have found two things. One is an article in the Paris Match that had a picture of Ava Qazai, the daughter, at the same party as a Yusuf Shokhor, who appears to be Shokhor’s son. They were photographed together. They seemed to know each other quite well.”

Hammer pushed his lip out. “Anything else?”

“Well. I found no links between Shokhor and Cyrus Mehr, the dead man. But one of his old companies—Shokhor’s old companies—I found it in the Cyprus corporate registry. It was struck off in 2001, but I thought I recognized its office address. And when I checked it was the same as a Tabriz company. Tabriz Investments Cyprus Limited. That was dissolved in 2003, but for four years they were in the same office building.”

“The same floor?” asked Hammer.

“It didn’t specify the floor.”

Hammer tapped out a tattoo on the table with his fingers. “Satisfactory. Definitely satisfactory.”

Behind his beard Dieter blushed and Webster, pleased, brought the meeting to an end.

He and Hammer stayed behind. Outside the sun was shining hard on Lincoln’s Inn and through the trees he could just make out groups of people eating their lunch on the grass.

“Well?” said Hammer.

“Why are you so hard on Dieter?”

“That’s not hard. You’re too easy.”

“I’m not sure he enjoys it.”

“He’s not meant to. But he’ll be better for it.” Hammer finished shading in a long spiral, like a spring, that he had been drawing in his notebook. “When are you seeing Qazai?”

“Tomorrow.”

“What have you got?”

“I’ve been trying to find the Swiss dealer. After the first Gulf War there was a guy in Zurich who was rumored to have returned some valuable piece to the Iraqis after it somehow came his way. There’s lots of chat about it on various blogs. I thought I might have a word with him.”

“Go and see him.”

“I might. I’m going to Dubai first. Visit Fletcher. See if Shokhor will grant us an audience.”

Hammer threw his head back and gave a deep groan. “Oh God. Fletcher?”

“You love Fletcher.”

“I love Fletcher like a brother, but the two of you should not be left alone with this case.”

“And I’m trying to find out how Mehr died.”

“I thought we knew how he died.”

“We know what the Iranian news agency said. Not much more.”

“Is it relevant?”

“Possibly not. Qazai gets accused of looting. So does Mehr, and dies for it. All in the space of a month. You tell me.”

ON THE LOW TABLEin front of Webster the sweetmeats were beginning to pile up. When he had arrived at Qazai’s house he had been given tea and with it squares of nougat on flowered plates and almond biscuits flavored with rosewater. He and Qazai had been talking for half an hour now and three new deliveries had been made: a glass jug of orange juice and two small glasses, some fat dates, and a tray of baklava, the neat rolls of pastry shining with honey. Qazai’s housekeeper offered him more tea but he declined. He had thought at first that Qazai wanted to be interviewed at home because it was discreet, but now he wondered whether it was to make him feel at once intimate and uncomfortable. This was emphatically not a place of work.

The house stood on Mount Street, in Mayfair, and had grandeur but no charm. It was narrow for its five stories, slightly wrong in its proportions, consummately built. It looked like a hospital for the rich.

Inside, its Edwardian arrogance had been tamed. All but obscuring the dark mahogany paneling a dozen Persian carpets hung from the high ceiling while another, vast, covered the flagstones in the hall with flowering buds and arabesques. Two gauze blinds let in a soft, yellow light from the brilliant spring day, setting the reds and ochres of the walls aglow. The house was silent; the rugs seemed to absorb all sound.

Webster had been shown by the butler into the first room on the left, a large sitting room—also paneled, also hung with rugs, lit with the same warm light—where three deep sofas sat in relaxed fashion around a coffee table heavy with thick art books, many showing the stamp of the Qazai Foundation. The rugs had made some space for two paintings: one, over the stone fireplace, was of a Persian general in battle; the other, the only concession to Europe in sight, was a Dutch street scene, three houses face-on and beyond them, just visible through an open door, two children playing in a sunlit yard. A vase of towering lilies in each corner gave off a strong, sweet scent.

The butler had explained that Qazai would be a few minutes and left Webster studying the contents of a glass display case that dominated one of the long walls. All manner of artifacts were there: pages of ancient Korans, their edges brown and eaten with age; a flask of brilliant-blue glass; a long, thin lacquer box, two lovers in an orchard painted on its side; a pottery lion, turquoise in color, its eyes and mouth worn to shallow impressions; and a dagger, the blade bright and glisteningly sharp, the hilt wrought in gilt with inscriptions in Arabic.

Qazai had kept him waiting just long enough to remind him who was the client, but not long enough to be rude. To Webster’s relief he was alone; Senechal was not playing chaperone it seemed. Qazai wore a double-breasted suit of fine navy wool with a faint chalk stripe, a white shirt and a tie of the darkest green, and was as polished and urbane as he had been after Mehr’s memorial service. He had asked after Hammer, after Ikertu, after Webster’s family, and before ushering him toward one of the sofas had talked him through the various pieces in the cabinet. Which was the most valuable, he had wanted to know, and seemed pleased when Webster, understanding the game, correctly chose the least showy of them all, a fragment of the Koran aged to feathery thinness by its passage from the Arabian peninsula over almost fourteen hundred years.