Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

With clarity more blinding than the light around him Webster all at once understood. They thought he was Qazai’s man—his detective, his spy, his security person. If they had been monitoring Qazai’s movements over the last month, or his phone, or his bank accounts, they would have seen Webster working, apparently doing his client’s bidding. And why else would he have come to Marrakech—a day ahead, no less, to make his preparations—if not to make sure that Qazai was safe here, and to conspire against his enemies?

Safe in London, he might have laughed at the irony of it. Mehr had died, Timur had died, and now he would die as a Qazai loyalist, all to convince his master to pay up what he owed or honor his contract or return whatever wasn’t his. Such was his bloody-mindedness that even now he resented meeting his end on Qazai business, bound for all eternity to his interests and never fully understanding how.

Surely that wasn’t necessary. There had to be a way. Qazai’s enemy may not be his friend, but if they knew, at least, that no purpose would be served by killing him—that Qazai might laugh sooner than mourn—perhaps they would think twice about making the effort. If effort it was.

Webster shook his head, scolded himself for being fanciful. He was alive because they wanted to know what he knew, that was all, and his only real hope was to offer, but not deliver, something that was valuable to them, something whose value was not yet apparent. That would be his slender strategy: explain his relationship with Qazai, try to find out what they wanted and think of something—create something if necessary—that he could offer them that required him to be freed from this room. It wasn’t much, but briefly he felt better. He had a purpose, a feeble claim on hope.

Having addressed how he might survive, though, his thoughts turned to what would happen if he didn’t. Webster was not a cowardly man. The notion of death didn’t scare him. If there was meaning to it—if some part of him lived on beyond it—he retained just enough of his religious schooling to trust that the process would be benign; and if there was no meaning he wouldn’t be around to miss it. No, the passing from one state to another didn’t trouble him, but he found it hard to imagine an afterlife that wasn’t consumed by a raging grief at what you had been forced to leave behind. At one with not existing he might be, but never again to watch his children sleep, or talk with Elsa in bed, or take their boat out to the mouth of the estuary in the rain—take those things away and he wasn’t sure, in fact, how much of him would in any case remain.

But this, too, was indulgent. With a black laugh, thick with phlegm and blood, he acknowledged the only truth he could depend on, sobering and shaming: that despite these passions, for all that he might love his family and strive to be good, he had for months been inviting a living death, courting with a kind of grim glee an existence where everything he held dear might reject him without any help from Qazai or his enemies.

He tried the door, which was indeed locked. A single window the size of a shoebox showed through its four bars that it was still dark outside. For a minute or two he wondered how he might escape: find a way to get someone to open the door, overpower them, run. But previous experience showed that no one would answer his calls, and in any case he wouldn’t be running anywhere. He could barely stand.

An hour passed. No noise reached him; the silence was as total as the light was unyielding. He had had no water for over eight hours, and even though it was now nighttime the room had lost none of its heat. Through a slow process of squirming and pulling he managed to bring the robe up to his waist and, after much pain, over his head. His shirt was dark all over with sweat, his mouth so dry it took effort to force his lips apart. He lay down on the floor, watched a beetle clicking along the far wall, and with the robe folded under his head tried to sleep; but every time he closed his eyes a jerking montage of the day’s events played across them and wouldn’t let him rest.

AT FOUR, OR JUST BEFORE,a key turned in the lock and the door opened. As Webster sat up the first thing he saw was a large bottle of mineral water being held by the cap in someone’s hand; the second, as his eyes rose, was Senechal, perfectly pressed in a fresh suit, his skin translucent under the fluorescent bulb. As if from another world he looked down at Webster, closed the door behind him, sniffed in distaste, moved around to the far side of the desk and began to wipe the chair with a handkerchief that he pulled from his top pocket. Grudgingly satisfied, he sat. The door locked behind him.

“ Asseyez-vous .”

It was the same thin rasp of a voice, but it was no longer ingratiating, no longer sly. Webster looked at him warily from the floor, trying to calculate why he was here and what in heaven’s name it meant. All he knew was that the aversion he had once felt to him had become the most intense and disarming loathing, and if it hadn’t been for the promise of water he would have stayed where he was. In that moment, his imagination wild, Webster saw Senechal as an administrator of death, a man whose talent was to bury things—problems, money, color, life—and who had now come to bury him. Somehow he knew it.

Using the wall to steady himself he stood, moved to the desk and took the bottle, uncapping it and bringing it up to his mouth in a single motion. As he drank, feeling the water cooling his throat, he kept his eyes on Senechal, who stared right back at him.

“Sit,” he said, when Webster was done, and watched him coldly as he sank, clutching the bottle, onto the chair. “You, Mr. Webster, are the most difficult consultant I have ever met. We all know that consultants do not do what you pay them to do, but you? With you it is ridiculous.”

Webster didn’t reply.

“We ask you to do a simple thing, but you are not a simple person and you will not do it. Well. Now you are in Marrakech, and it is not such a simple thing to leave.”

Webster looked at him openmouthed; his side sang with pain. He shook his head in confusion and disbelief.

“So you’re working for them.”

Senechal adjusted himself on his chair so that he was upright and correct, and smiled a tight little smile.

“Truly you are the great detective. You have understood it all.” He shook his head briskly. “No, Mr. Webster. I see you have no idea what is going on. Let me explain a little to you. You have put yourself in the way of an important transaction. Now, I am happy to say, the transaction can go ahead without you. This means that you are no longer necessary for what we want to do.”

Webster closed his eyes tight, wishing Senechal away. But he went on.

“The men you met earlier are efficient people. They do not waste energy.”

“I’d noticed.”

“Confidentially, they do not see a reason to keep you alive. They say you threatened them, and that has not impressed them.” He paused. “But I am efficient too, and it may be that it is less effort to keep you alive. I do not mind. To decide, I have to discover what is in your head. I have to tell them what you know. What you have to bargain with, in short.” He smiled again. “I suspect it is not very much, in which case this will be the last room you see.”

In the harsh light Senechal’s face was inhuman; more than ever he looked like a clay figure granted some weak and temporary sort of life. Webster considered for a moment what might be gained from pushing the table over onto him, from knocking him off his chair, from taking his head and beating it against the wall.

“When London wakes up,” he said, “my report will be going to the Financial Times , the Wall Street Journal , and the twenty largest investors in Tabriz. What did your master say? If he is your master. All he has is his reputation. In about five hours he won’t be selling anything.”