Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

“Please, sir,” he said, moving to the back of the car and opening the door for Webster, who for several moments simply stood, not quite knowing what to do. In the end, holding his phone at arm’s length, he took a picture of his car and its driver and got in, sliding back into deep leather seats.

“I have arrived,” he wrote to Elsa, and sent her the photograph.

THROUGH THE ROLLS-ROYCE’S TINTED GLASSDubai was getting steadily darker, and as they approached Jumeirah the last glints of reflected sun on the skyscrapers were giving way to garish digital billboards and fluorescent office lights. In the three years since he had been here the buildings appeared to have doubled, in size and number. Now they crowded around each other in tight rows, straining ever higher, competing for air and sunlight, and Webster found himself wondering how many this dry desert earth could eventually support.

In twenty minutes they had reached Jumeirah Beach, where two hotels, one in the shape of a sail, the other a wave, both in pristine white, commanded the skyline and the shore.

Webster was staying in the sail. It rose up from its own artificial island and could only be reached by a private bridge, which curved gently toward the hotel so that guests could gaze up at it as they arrived. Webster did so now. He remembered reading that it had been designed to resemble the sail of a dhow, an Arabian fishing boat. A single mast of white steel rose a thousand feet out of the sea and from it a sheet of glass seemed to billow out toward land, as if it had just been caught by the wind and at any moment would run aground on the beach. As they approached, the top of the building drew back from sight under the bulge of the sail, and the Rolls-Royce slowed to a stop.

Webster pulled himself out of the car, thanked his driver and was shown into the hotel by two smiling staff, a man and a woman, both young, both from Southeast Asia—Malaysia, perhaps, or Singapore. His eyes automatically looked up as he entered the lobby, which rose to the full height of the sail, endless white landings narrowing slowly to a point above. Outside, the Burj Al Arab was modern, pristine, the only color the blue of the sky reflected in its glass; inside, the decorators had combined luxury cruise ship with the Arabian Nights. The carpet was thick and blue, the chairs green and red, and everything was edged and trimmed and patterned with gold. Columns carved as palm trees reached up four or five floors, their golden fronds forming arches around the giant room. Webster, entranced and horrified, was asked to take a seat on a sofa under a real palm tree. In moments two women in Arab dress had appeared with dates and coffee in a golden pot that gave off the scent of cardamom as it was poured, and then he was left alone to watch the well-heeled guests in their shorts and sports shirts and wonder what on earth he was doing in this demented place.

The coffee was good, sweet and thick. After five minutes, during which time, he assumed, he was meant to acclimate to the extraordinary atmosphere of the Burj, a new flunky appeared, introduced himself as Raj, and asked him whether he was ready to go to his room. Webster resisted the temptation to say that he had been ready for a little while, and was led into a twinkling glass elevator that shot them at stomach-lifting speed to the twenty-third floor.

The room was several rooms; four thousand square feet, Raj told him, with a king-size bed, two bathrooms, a dining area, a cocktail bar, and a living room on each of its two floors. Webster wasn’t very good on areas, but he was fairly sure that his house in London was rather less. Beyond the curved double-height window that formed the outside wall was the flat sweep of Dubai, dark now but studded with lights that glared beside the unbroken black of the sea. Against the eastern horizon a thin band of purple and bronze mirrored the sunset he couldn’t see.

“Would you care to join me in the office, sir?” said Raj, and Webster, beginning to tire of this elaborate induction, asked him why.

“We need to check you in, sir.”

“Couldn’t we have done that downstairs?”

“We think it is more private in your suite, sir.” This was undoubtedly true, although even Webster, who might have had greater reason for discretion than most, had never found checking in to hotels particularly exposed before. “It won’t take a moment.”

Sitting at his desk—inlaid with gold-embossed leather—he was presented with two documents for signature. Neither made any reference to his name (the “client” in each case was Tabriz Asset Management Ltd.)—nor to the rate of the room.

“How much is this place?”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“How much does it cost to stay here? A night?”

“Tabriz have a special rate, sir.”

“I’m sure they do. What’s the standard rate?”

Raj hesitated.

“I could look it up on your website,” said Webster.

“Sixteen thousand dirham, sir.”

“About four thousand dollars.”

“Yes, sir.”

Webster thought for a moment.

“Raj, do you have a smaller room?”

“The hotel is full, sir.”

“No doubt.” Webster looked up at him, looked down at the papers, signed them with a gold hotel pen, and watched Raj leave.

AN HOUR LATER,in fresh clothes and feeling something like himself again, Webster found himself sitting by a wall of glass watching fish swim in an undersea playground of seaweed and rocks.

This was the Al Mahara restaurant, the Oyster, and was not to be confused with the Arab restaurant, or the Japanese restaurant, or any of the other dozen places to eat throughout the hotel. Guests reached it by way of a vestibule mocked-up as a submarine. They entered, had the door sealed behind them, and watched the old-fashioned portals slowly fill with water and various forms of sealife. Once on the sea floor, at the end of this phantom journey, Webster had been shown to a table beside the aquarium, a colossal drum of glowing blue at the center of a circular room whose chairs and walls and carpets were velvety and deeply red. He was the only single person there, and as he surveyed the menu realized that the food was simply too expensive to indulge in alone; at the other tables husbands and wives talked in softened tones, their tans fresh, enjoying the theater. A waitress came and brought him his whisky in a heavy tumbler filled with shaved ice. None of this seemed very Qazai, he thought. Perhaps Timur would turn out to be the gaudy playboy of the family.

Whatever he was, he was late. It was now twenty past nine. Webster read every last word of the menu and then watched the aquarium. Swimmer he might be, but he knew nothing about fish. That one, an intense orange with two bands of white, he had a good idea was a clown fish, and some deep vault in his memory told him that another, its shining yellow stripes drawn as if by hand on turquoise skin, was an angelfish. But the others were anonymous to him, and the thought that he could be so ignorant of something so beautiful shamed him. One, smaller than the rest, its black satin body flecked with tiny dashes of luminous blue, came and floated by, its steady eye appearing to ask a question of him through the thick glass: What are you doing here?

A beep from the table broke his reverie. A text message, from Timur:

Caught on NY call. Many apologies. Come to ours for dinner tomorrow night.

Webster had been caught on New York calls himself; they happened. Looking around him he realized he had no desire to remain in this place; his friend the fish had gone, and he felt a sudden need for company, and air. He dialed a number.

“Webster, you fraud,” Constance’s voice rolled down the line, so loud that a man at the next table looked up in disapproval. “Are you here?”