Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

He rounded one corner to find Kamila, all of six feet away, peering cautiously around another, her palm up behind her to tell him to stop. He stood as still as he could, hearing his own breathing in the silence. She continued to watch, her body tensed, and then, satisfied that she had seen enough, turned and pressed her back to the wall.

“He stopped at a house about five meters down there.” She was whispering. “Knocked once, quietly. Then again. He’s just gone in.”

“What happens now?”

“Wait here.”

She disappeared around the corner, and was gone for a minute.

“OK,” she said. “It could be worse. There’s one man on the door. When they come out they either have to come back around here, or the other way into a long alley with only one turning off it. Three people can cover it. You can’t. Not like that.”

She took her phone from her handbag, dialed, said a few words in French and hung up.

“They’ll be with us in ten minutes. You shouldn’t wait here. Go back the way we came: left, second right, left again. On your right you will see an entrance to a courtyard. A doorway. Hide in there.”

Webster did as he was told, repeating her instructions as he went. He was feeling highly visible and not a little redundant, and found himself imagining what George Black and his people would have made of all this. Most of the time surveillance was carried out in a car on the wide streets of expansive cities, where it was possible to believe that it was a serious discipline; here it resembled nothing so much as a child’s game, a scrappy version of hide and seek.

Hidden, then, he smoked a cigarette, breathing in the smell of raisins in the pack before he took one out and lit it. The smoke drifted around the courtyard, which was calm and clear of people and clutter, and from which three doors led into houses whose windows were all shuttered. When he arrived he could feel his heart beating in his throat, but it soon slowed, and for a time he felt strangely peaceful.

It was Driss who came to get him. He had a bag over his shoulder, and from it pulled a large piece of maroon fabric which he handed to Webster.

“Put this on. Over your clothes.”

As Webster unfolded it he saw it was a robe, with a pointed hood. A djellaba, like Kamila’s. The fabric was coarse in his hands.

“Pull the hood low and no one will know you. Forget your sunglasses.”

It had been a long time since Webster had dressed up, and after a second’s hesitation—more surprise than reluctance—he drew the robe over his head, his arms upright into the sleeves, a movement that he hadn’t made since donning a surplice at school. It was lighter than he had expected and smelled of old books. He drew up the hood with both hands and instantly felt detached from the world, invisible; he might wander off through this endless warren of alleyways and never resume his old life again. The change complete, he followed his guide out of the courtyard.

Killing time is easier in a car, with company, than it is in a featureless passage on your own. For the first half-hour, Webster stood, until he realized that he might save his back and sit cross-legged on the ground, since that was an acceptable thing for a man in a djellaba to do. He tried as best he could to cover his shoes, leather and too English. Except for the call to prayer, which made him feel briefly conspicuous, there was no noise here, and hardly anyone passed: an old man pushing a bicycle, a tall man in a dusty black suit, several men and women dressed as he was. All he could do was watch the wall in front of him, stuccoed like coral, and wait for Kamila to walk past the entrance to his alleyway, which would mean that the meeting had broken up and he was to follow the next person he saw. Driss had brought him a bottle of water, and by sipping it slowly he made it last until six, when the heat was tailing off a little and the sky beginning to turn a cobalt blue. Under his robe his shirt was now wet and cool with sweat.

His phone sat shaming him in his back pocket: he should send Elsa a message. He had called the previous day and she hadn’t answered. Wasn’t he simply protecting his name and his family’s future? And what would Elsa have thought of him if he had simply rolled over for Qazai? He wondered whether she really prized their security over his principles, and whether she would have been so happy to compromise her own.

He became so involved in this one-sided internal argument that when Kamila finally appeared he only noticed her when she whispered “now” at him as she passed. The passage behind her was clear but he could hear footsteps about to round the corner; he bent his head low and stayed still. Two pairs of feet came into view and passed, one in black leather lace-ups, the other in brown suede. Senechal and Qazai. Webster’s heart skipped high in his chest. He and Driss would follow them; Kamila and Youssef would remain in place ready to shadow whoever else came out of that house. He waited for his quarry to round a corner, then moved off. Somewhere behind him, Driss fell into line.

Senechal had a map, and from time to time slowed to refer to it, Qazai, curiously slumped, giving him no assistance and appearing to take no interest. Webster hung back, expecting Driss to appear alongside him; but he never did, and as Senechal moved on he would resume his pursuit. Slowly the alleys grew into streets and the noise of traffic and shouting returned. Webster guessed they were on the edge of the medina now and began to ask himself what he would do if his prey were suddenly to hail a little Peugeot taxi and speed off. Pick them up again at Qazai’s hotel, with any luck, and hope that Kamila and Youssef did better with their end of the job.

After five minutes walking Qazai and Senechal passed through a pointed arch into a broad square that jostled with life. Bicycles and cars zipped across it dodging carts and donkeys in their way, and around its sides the shops were beginning to close, taking their goods down and leaving blank walls behind them. The smell of wood and charcoal burning was in the air. Webster watched the two men head for the far corner, hung back for longer than he would have liked and then cautiously followed, now a good thirty yards behind and trying his best to keep them in sight while negotiating the traffic buzzing around him. Just short of the street that led out of the square Senechal stopped and got out his map. Qazai stood beside him and turned a quarter turn, looking over his shoulder in Webster’s direction.

It was the last thing Webster saw that made any sense. A great weight struck him; he was conscious of feeling helplessly light, of skittering across the dusty ground, of coming to a stop with his face in the dirt. He could see a donkey’s hoof up close, the horn gray and cracked, but he couldn’t raise his head to see more. And then he couldn’t see anything at all.

THE FIRST THING HEwas conscious of, before the pain and the utter dark, was the smell: an invasive mix of mold and urine and ammonia that sat inside his head and produced a sensation of intense nausea throughout his body. Pain coursed up and down his right side as if unable to find a place to settle. His mouth was dry as dust.

For a long time he lay on his side, the better one, trying to make out some trace of light. A sudden fear took him that he couldn’t see, but after a while he knew that there was a different quality to the dark when his eyes were open: it had space, somehow; it gave a sense of extent. He had no desire to move into it but knew that he couldn’t simply lie where he was and wait for the light to come, so by slow degrees he tried to sit up, pushing himself off the hard surface with his elbow bent under him. Immediately his ribs contracted in pain and a flood of sickness rose up through him. He tried again, prepared now for the worst of it, trying to roll forward to give his arm greater purchase and, with the exertion, finding that each breath caused a new release of pain. His right arm could do nothing.