Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

“To a courageous man.”

Repeating the words everyone drank, and Patrick Webster, still smiling, turned to his son and gave a deep, humble nod.

BECAUSE IT WAS SUCH A WARM DAY,Qazai told Webster as he greeted him, lunch would be served on the loggia overlooking the lake, if that sounded agreeable; quite often, even in late May, the breeze coming off the water could carry something of a chill, but today truly felt like the first day of summer, did it not? Timur and his family had arrived the previous evening and Ava was expected any minute.

Qazai motioned to a servant to take the bags from the taxi driver and putting his hand lightly on Webster’s back ushered him into the house, inquiring after his journey and instructing Francesco, a neat man in his fifties standing by the huge double doors, to show their guest to the principal guest suite. Lunch would be at one.

The principal guest of the Villa Foresi, it turned out, received regal treatment. The room was in a corner of the building on the first floor, with Lake Como on one side and on the other a lawned terrace edged with towering cypresses. The walls, a refined light gray, were hung with fragments of textiles in frames, and a fine green silk rug covered half the tiled floor. These were the only touches of Qazai’s taste; everything else, Webster suspected, had been designed fairly recently by a professional of enormous discretion.

French doors opened onto a balcony, and in the half an hour before he was due downstairs Webster sat outside, watching the boats on the lake and the servants making preparations for lunch and smoking what he was sure wouldn’t be the last cigarette of the day.

He missed Elsa. She would have liked it here. The house occupied a small peninsula, heavily wooded with chestnuts and cypresses and jutting grandly into the lake, and looked in fact like three houses progressing in steps down the hill to the water. It must have been two hundred years old, perhaps three, and even though everything was spotlessly kept—the apricot walls and verdigris shutters freshly painted, the terraced gardens neatly clipped, the rhododendrons and azaleas and camellias freshly in bloom—it had the dignity and reserve of age, as if its current occupiers were fleeting tenants and not a matter of great concern. So yes, she would have liked it, and he would have liked her to be here, but at the same time he was relieved beyond measure that she hadn’t come.

At five to one he made his way downstairs and found the Qazais sitting at a table under an open arcade. Only Ava was not yet there. Timur rose and coming to greet him shook his hand stiffly; Raisa was warmer, and remembered him to Farhad and to Parviz, who smiled shyly.

Webster sat opposite Ava’s empty seat next to Qazai, who took the head. A waiter in a white jacket, white shirt and black tie poured him water, switched bottles deftly and before Webster could consider or object had poured him a glass of white wine.

“Your good health, Mr. Webster,” said Qazai, raising his glass, “we are delighted to see you here.”

Webster raised his and gently clinked the other glasses. “Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be invited.” It sounded stiff as he said it. “You have a very beautiful house.” Behind Ava’s empty seat the lake seemed to stretch across his entire vision, still and evenly blue, and from it on the far shore rose green forested mountains, the highest in the range beyond still tipped with snow.

“Thank you,” said Qazai, with a little bow of his head. He wore an open-necked white shirt and seemed relaxed; but despite the casual air Webster thought his eyes looked tired, and the skin under them dry and dark. “This is probably where I am happiest. Right here. With my family.” He raised his glass again, and drank a silent toast to them.

“Ava!” Farhad, Parviz’s brother, had slid off his chair and was running across the lawn with his arms spread wide, clutching Ava’s leg as he reached her. She ruffled his hair, squatting down and kissing him, then picked him up to swing him around in a low arc. Smiling and taking off her sunglasses, she crossed the grass to the table and went straight to Parviz, crouching down by him and giving him an enveloping hug. When she finally pulled away she held his face in her hands and looked at him for several seconds, her eyes full of intensity as if she were about to cry.

At last she let go of Parviz, gave him an earnest smile and went to Qazai, hugging him and Raisa and her brother in turn. Webster stood.

“You remember Mr. Webster,” said Qazai.

“I do. Hello, Mr. Webster.” She held out her hand, smiling, her eyes no longer intense but playful. “What do you make of our lakeside retreat? Not to be confused with the seaside retreat, or the mountain retreat, or all the other retreats.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Ava sat, her eyes on Webster, and waited for her wine to be poured.

Now that everyone was here Qazai unfolded his napkin and placed it carefully in his lap. “I was just telling Mr. Webster, darling, that this is my favorite place. There is something about the lake and the mountains…”

“That reminds you of Iran. Yes, we know.” Ava was smiling but there was a hint of needle in her voice.

Qazai also smiled, a little stiffly. “My daughter knows me too well,” he said, to no one in particular. “But did you know,” he leaned in to the table, pointing at the gardens, “that the cypress was planted in all the ancient gardens of Iran? They do not look quite like this—more bushy, less straight—but they have been in my country since history began.”

Ava shook her head several times in mock surprise. “No. I honestly didn’t know that.” She turned to Timur. “Did you know that?”

Timur frowned a little, as if he couldn’t quite understand what Ava was doing, and glanced at Raisa. “No, I didn’t.”

“The oldest tree in Asia,” said Qazai, watching Ava closely as she turned back to him, “is an Iranian cypress.”

Ava nodded briskly. “So. Mr. Webster. Have you ever been to Iran?”

“I haven’t, no. I’m not sure that someone in my profession should try.”

Ava raised her eyebrows, as if to ask him why not.

“They might decide I’m a spy.”

“Which of course you’re not.”

Webster smiled.

“How old are you, Mr. Webster?” said Qazai.

“Thirty-eight.”

“Then I hope you get the chance one day.”

“Do you think I might?”

Qazai sat back, took a slow breath, and made a show of thinking. From the end of the table came the sound of Farhad clinking his knife and fork.

“I have high hopes. High hopes. Mixed with real fear.”

Timur quietly took Farhad’s cutlery from him, and they all waited for Qazai to go on, allowing the patriarch his moment. Ava looked down and tapped her fingers lightly on the tablecloth. Her nails were long and unpainted.

“It is not possible,” said Qazai, “for such weak people to stifle a country that old, that… valiant for long. They are pariahs. They are desert dogs. Iran will wring their necks. But for now—for this year, for next—they will do what they have learned to do so well these past two decades. They will try to terrify their people.” He was animated now, and he took a drink of wine before continuing. “But we are not as afraid as we were. It may not take much longer. What has happened in Egypt, in Tunisia—people see that it can be done. They sense the trick of power. The illusion.”

Qazai leaned forward and put down his wine glass to signal that for now he was done; Ava sat back and crossed her arms, and Webster thought he heard her give a little sigh as she did so. No one spoke for a moment, and Qazai merely looked at his daughter calmly but pointedly, as if to say that he saw that she objected in some way but was not prepared to pursue it in company. Not meeting his eye she raised her eyebrows a fraction, glanced at Parviz and Raisa in turn, and reached forward for the bread that the waiter had just placed on her side plate with a pair of silver tongs. Timur and Raisa quietly tried to engage Farhad, who was growing restless.