Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

“Who does?”

“Someone with power. Could come from a couple of places.”

Webster took a long drink of orange juice and thought.

“Can you find out?”

“I can try.”

“Who would have done the work?” he said. “In Isfahan.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, there are five men, which is a lot, they have guns, and they know where Mehr is. Either they intercept his calls or they control the antiques dealer.”

“I don’t know. There’s organized crime in Iran, like everywhere.”

“What about the government?”

“Possibly. They’re always up for an op. You have to give ’em that.”

“If it was, who does the work?”

“The Revolutionary Guard. Most likely. Or VEVAK.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Well,” Constance scratched his beard, “understand this. Every dictatorship needs terror. To keep going. But in Iran, it goes beyond necessity. They have a taste for it. It’s not politics, it’s cruelty. Viciousness. This is why they love executing people so much.” He paused. “Do you know the story of the Shiraz martyrs?”

Webster didn’t.

“No reason why you should. You would have been about ten, I guess. Jesus. So three or four years after the revolution, ten women were arrested for teaching religious classes. They were Bahai, and therefore supremely dangerous to the revolution.” He raised an eyebrow and shook his head. “So dangerous that they had to be killed. All ten of them were driven out to a field near Shiraz and hanged, one by one. The older women went first, so that the younger ones might look on and recant. Convert to Islam. But they didn’t. The youngest of them all was seventeen. She kissed the noose before she put it around her neck.”

Webster felt the food in his mouth turn to clay.

“That, my friend,” said Constance, with black cheerfulness, “is called protecting the revolution. The revolution must be protected from religious young girls, and dissidents, and anyone with an ounce of decency or brains or fire. Right now they’re scared fucking witless that they’re going to be the next sorry-ass tyranny to collapse and they’ll have to hide out in Caracas for the rest of their lives with a bunch of mangy Arab dictators—who they despise, because they’re Sunnis, but are in fact no different from them in any particular. That is if they make it out, which they probably won’t. And if the Israelis don’t nuke them to shit. But you know what? They’re right to be vigilant. One day it’ll be a seventeen-year-old that brings it all down. And until then, they’re going to keep killing people.”

Webster swallowed, waiting for Constance to finish.

“Grizzly, huh? They’re organized, of course. You need structures to keep the killing efficient. So the Revolutionary Guard is the army. More powerful. More money. VEVAK is intelligence. They’re both big on killing dissidents, sometimes with a noose around their neck, sometimes with a discreet little bullet in the head.” He gestured with two fingers against his temple. “So you think your guy was political?”

“Not that I know.”

“Everything’s political in Iran.” Constance grinned, took a shank of lamb and with theatrical delight took a hungry, wolfish bite. “Maybe he got sacrificed.”

IF ZIA SHOKHOR HADthought to check up on the man who had called him up the next morning he would have found enough, Webster hoped, to accept a meeting. William Taylor was the managing director of Northwest Associates Limited, a London company that according to its nicely designed but rudimentary Web site sought “to maximize opportunities arising from disparities in finance and trade between developed and emerging economies.” Whatever that meant, Northwest had a respectable address on Savile Row, its own domain name, and a telephone number that went through to a well-spoken receptionist who would offer to connect your call. Its accounts had been up to date since its incorporation in 1991 and its filings at Companies House in order. Taylor had become a director in 2004.

And if Shokhor was the diligent sort he would have found, among the hundreds of thousands of other William Taylors, a handful of hits for this one—enough to demonstrate that he existed, but not so many to alarm anyone who liked their business associates discreet. Taylor had spoken at a conference on Central Asian investment in 2007, and had published a handful of articles in more or less obscure trade magazines. To each was attached his biography: University of Bristol, a career in banking and trade, the specifics artfully elided.

Thorough investigation would find the cracks in the fiction, but for nearly twenty years, ever since Hammer had persuaded a friend of his to sign the documents in return for a small annual fee, it had held up. Taylor, Webster’s double, had made several outings over the years, and had never been found out. For Shokhor he would do, Webster told himself. Just to get a meeting.

He had made the call on a cell phone he kept for these occasions and had had to concentrate hard on sounding more businesslike than he felt. Constance had finally stopped talking at two that morning, or thereabouts, a little while after the opening of a second bottle of whisky. Sitting on his roof, leaning back into a pile of oversized cushions, a half-spent, half-lit cigar in his teeth, he had been telling a long, snaking story about a German businessman who had been relieved of a large amount of money by a conman masquerading as a sheikh. The ending hadn’t seemed like much of an ending, but Webster had grunted his appreciation and tilted his head back to look at the stars, his own cigar short and glowing warmly between his fingers, until he realized, opaquely, that the story hadn’t finished and that Constance was in fact asleep. Laughing to himself, he had staggered up and gone to bed, vainly trying to rouse his host and settling in the end for removing the dead cigar from his mouth and covering him with a rug.

After that it had not been a good night. He hadn’t been able to sleep: with air conditioning it was airless and too cold, and without, instantly sweaty. Constance’s kitchen had run to coffee but not to food, and as he sat on the roof in the early heat waiting for his host to wake and Shokhor to return his call, he felt like all the moisture had been drained from his system and replaced with sand. With luck Shokhor would set their meeting for tomorrow, if ever.

Webster had called the office number on Calyx’s Web site, asked for Mr. Shokhor and told him that he had been given his name by a big collector of art in London, which was true, in a sense; that he was looking for someone to help with moving some large and delicate cargoes from Syria and Iran to Cyprus; and that he would like to meet, if possible, while he was in town for a few days. Shokhor had seemed wary but curious, and promised to call back once he had consulted his diary. That had been an hour ago.

Slow footsteps coming up the stairs to the terrace made Webster turn. Constance was up. Wearing a plain white robe, his hair wiry and crazed, he looked more than ever like some wild prophet, but for the cup of coffee he was guarding carefully with both hands.

“You son of a bitch,” he said, sitting down opposite Webster. Around them low roofs lay stepped like boxes, covered in white satellite dishes that shone blindingly in the sun. “What did you do to me last night?”

Webster squinted back at him. “Nothing untoward. You made it to bed then?”

“I woke up at six with the sun broiling my face.”

Webster laughed. “I’m sorry. I tried to wake you.”

Constance uttered something between a grunt and a groan and looked around him over the rooftops. “Another beautiful day. God, how they run together.” He took a watchful sip of his coffee. “What’s the plan?”