Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

Still he didn’t dare move. He lay in the night and breathed in the hot air. In one corner of the sky he thought he could just make out the black yielding to midnight blue. Two cars passed together on the road, but otherwise all was silence. Putting his watch to his ear he counted the seconds, trying to settle into the calm rhythm of the ticking, but his head was thick with pain and new fears. He needed to know whether the man lying a hundred yards away on the sand was dead.

When he had counted five minutes he shifted onto his front and gradually eased up the bank on his elbows. By the light of a passing truck he could make out the car that had brought him here but nothing else.

He walked to it with the little gun in his hand, waiting for a shot or a burst of light, his heart refusing to slow. Senechal’s body lay still, blood thickly covering his cheek, and for a few seconds Webster stood over him, not daring to know. Then he knelt, felt under the cuff for a pulse, and found one, faint and slow.

He searched the car but found nothing useful except the water—two small bottles. He drank one in one draft and kept the other.

A thought occurred to him. He had no money, no phone, no resources whatever. Dragging himself across the dust he patted Senechal’s jacket, dipped his hand inside its pockets. There was a wallet, with euros, pounds and dirham in it. He took some dirham, a few notes. He left the French passport and a BlackBerry, which was in any case locked. But a second phone, a cheap Samsung, he put in his pocket.

For a moment he stood and looked at the gun, trying to decide how many shots he had fired and whether it was any use to him, before wiping it thoroughly on his shirt tails and leaving it by Senechal’s side.

The phone had power but no signal. He looked through its recently dialed numbers, through its address book: there was only one number recorded there, a Dubai phone, probably a cell phone. Four calls made, seven received, every conversation with the same phone. Maybe Senechal had made his own arrangements after all.

Webster walked, east, toward the dawn, a bottle of water in one hand, the other ready to flag down the first car that passed.

KAMILA RINSED THE CLOTHonce more in the water, now a dirty brown with Webster’s blood, carefully wiped the wound, gently pulling the hair apart, and turned to Driss.

“Take this. Get me some clean water and a fresh cloth.” She looked down at Webster, who was sitting on a stool with his shirt off. A dark purple bruise, lively with greens and yellows, had spread out from the ribs on his left side, up to his armpit and down to his waist; he expected to find another where he had been kneed in the thigh. His breathing was still tight and his head felt like it was wrapped with bands of spikes. Kamila had given him sweet mint tea and he sipped at it using his good arm.

“You provide a comprehensive service,” he said, looking up at her and smiling, with effort.

“You need to go to the hospital.”

“It’s a cracked rib. I’ve had one before. Someone drove into the side of our car when I was twelve. There’s nothing you can do about them. They just hurt.”

Kamila snorted. “There could be internal bleeding.”

Webster watched Driss return carrying the bowl of water and smiling a canny smile that seemed to say you don’t know who you’re dealing with.

“Sorry I woke you,” he said.

“I’m always up at dawn,” said Kamila. And then, pointedly, “How was Ike?”

“Awake. Not particularly happy.” That hadn’t been an easy call, not least because there was so much he hadn’t said and so much he still simply didn’t understand. By the time he had persuaded a car to stop, had reached the outskirts of the city and had found a phone signal, dawn had broken over Marrakech; in London the sun would have been up for at least an hour. He had expected a furious response, not at being roused but at being misled, or left uninformed—even, perhaps, at being wrong; but what he hadn’t banked on was that Ike’s love of a secret on the verge of being revealed was greater than everything else. In the end he had been stiff, but increasingly concerned, and when Webster had finished giving him the fractured outline of events had told him to call Kamila on her home number and to call him again when he had slept and eaten.

Kamila didn’t reply, but her silence meant something. She put the cloth back in the bowl, took a large glass jar, opened it, and into the palm of her hand poured some white powder, which she began to sprinkle from her fingertips onto the wound. It stung keenly and Webster winced.

“He didn’t know I was here.” He looked up at her.

“Keep still. This is alum. It will keep the wound clean.” She sprinkled more powder. “I did wonder.” Inspecting his head closely she gave a small grunt of satisfaction and screwed the lid back on the jar. “There was something you weren’t telling us. And you seemed alone somehow. There,” she stepped back. “We’ll leave that open to the air. I’ll put a dressing on it later. Now Driss will make us eggs and you can tell me what exactly you have got us involved in.”

Throughout all this Webster hadn’t really stopped to consider how his preoccupations might affect these people, and the realization that he had put them at risk made him feel ashamed.

“Sorry,” he said. “It was thoughtless of me.”

“Don’t worry.” She wasn’t smiling but her eyes were lenient. “If I wanted security I would have become an accountant. But I want to know what to expect.”

Webster was surprised by how hungry he was. While they sat in Kamila’s kitchen, Driss brought them flatbread and fruit and eggs, and Webster told them everything he knew, and everything he didn’t.

“But what I don’t get,” he concluded, “is why he’s involved. He’s not an arms dealer. The money he’d make is a pittance to him. I thought for a while he’d sold his soul to the wrong people, early on. Taken the devil’s money. But he’s in a different league now. He could have bought them out ten times over.”

“Maybe they won’t let him.”

“Maybe. But why persecute him now?”

Kamila nodded, thinking. “Maybe he has always done it.”

“What do you mean?”

“How a man makes his first million is always the most interesting story. Has he explained that to you?”

Webster thought back to those inadequate conversations in Mount Street and Como. “No. No, he hasn’t.”

“A lot of people got rich at that time. After the Shah went. Everybody wanted weapons. The diaspora. The revolutionaries. Maybe Darius Qazai was in the right place at the right time. Maybe he has just kept on doing it.”

Webster considered this for a moment. “All I know,” he said, “is that he owes them a lot, and they won’t kill him until they get it. And then they will.”

“They seem happy killing everyone else.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds. Kamila spoke first.

“What are you going to do now?”

Webster rested his head on his hand and pinched his temples. He thought about the various components. Senechal would have been found: Kamila had called an ambulance for him as soon as Webster had contacted her. Qazai might already have left the country.

“You should sleep,” said Kamila. “And then you should leave. Go back to England. Get rid of these people. You don’t need them in your life.”

Webster looked up at her and shook his head. “Sadly they’re already in it. And I’m in theirs. I need to see that man again.”

Kamila frowned. “Why?”

“So he stops trying to kill me. He thinks I know too much.”

“You probably do.”

“I do and I don’t.”