Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

Qazai turned his head to look at him, glanced away and nodded. Under Webster’s hand his shoulder twitched.

“How quickly can you get your plane ready?”

Qazai scratched his jaw. “When… when did you see Rad? Did you see him?”

“Is Rad his name?”

Qazai nodded.

“Who is he?” Qazai said nothing, and Webster felt his anger rise. “Who the fuck is he?”

“One of the worst of them. One of the worst.” He looked up at Webster, and his eyes, for the very first time, showed humility. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

WEBSTER BEGAN TO LOOKaround for Qazai’s things. A suitcase stood outside the bedroom door, clearly unopened since he had arrived.

“Come on,” he said. “We’re going. Do you have anything else? Do you have your passport?”

Qazai didn’t hear; he was staring straight ahead and slowly shaking his head. Webster fitted his hand under his arm and helped him up.

“Do you have your passport?”

Qazai felt inside his jacket and nodded.

“How do we get the plane ready? Where’s the pilot?”

“It’s ready.”

“What time were you due to fly?”

Qazai looked puzzled.

“When were you flying back to London? What time?”

“What… what time is it?”

Webster sighed sharply and checked his watch. “Eleven thirty. It’s Saturday.”

Qazai screwed his eyes up, rubbed them with the heel of his hand. “Today. Lunchtime. I was going to call.”

“Do you have your phone?”

Qazai nodded.

“Then call.”

Qazai fished around in his jacket pockets, searching for his phone, and as he did so it rang, an unfamiliar tone. It took Webster a moment to realize that in fact it was his own, the new one Kamila had given him.

“Yes.”

“Two policeman are here.” It was Driss, speaking just above a whisper. “Not in uniform.”

“How can you tell?”

“I know. And they are asking for your friend.”

Shit. Webster closed his eyes and thought. “Bring the car around to the front. Twenty meters to the left of the gates.”

He carried the suitcase into the bedroom, opened it and as quickly as he could put the clothes in drawers and the suitcase, now empty, on a stand in the corner. The wash-bag he took into the bathroom, removing the toothbrush and the toothpaste and laying them out on the basin. Back in the bedroom he pulled back the covers on the bed and messed up the pillows. It would have to do.

Qazai was standing now, hardly steadily, and trying to negotiate his phone.

“Leave that,” said Webster, and ushered him toward the door. “Later.”

“My case.”

“Some people are coming. You don’t want to talk to them.” He started pulling Qazai toward the door at a quick walk but he resisted, trying to go back for his suitcase.

“Leave it. I want them to think you haven’t left. Come on,” he moved behind Qazai and shepherded him through the door. “Out. We’ve got to hurry.”

“What about Yves?”

“You don’t need to worry about Yves.”

He took the key from the lock as they left, put it in his pocket and shut the door quietly. With his finger to his lips he looked at Qazai. “Not a sound. We’re going this way,” and instead of going left down the path he led Qazai to the right of the villa in among the shrubs and trees by the pool. Qazai followed meekly enough, but his tread was heavy and the dry needles from the cypresses crunched loudly under his feet.

Webster kept him close and moved as stealthily as he could away from the villa, checking over his shoulder for signs of the police and avoiding the patches of sunlight that cut through the canopy overhead. Over their own footsteps he heard a metallic clink—the latch, he thought, opening or closing on the gate—and he stopped, one finger on his lips, touching Qazai on the arm and gesturing for him to do the same. Looking back toward the light he saw two men in brown suits walking in no particular hurry along the path to the Sultan’s Villa. Beside him Qazai tottered. As one of the policeman knocked on the door, Webster put his arm around Qazai, who was now leaning heavily against him, and started walking him carefully toward the next villa, which was coming into view between the trees. The policemen knocked again, stood back, looked up at the building’s facade, tried the door handle, found it open, and went in.

“Come on,” said Webster. “Quick.”

Half pushing, half dragging Qazai, he came out by another swimming pool, thankfully empty, and noticed too late the middle-aged couple on their sunloungers in the shade of the villa’s porch.

“Security,” he said, reasoning that English was the language they were most likely to understand and praying that they didn’t start talking to him in French. “We had report of an intruder. I’m afraid he’s drunk. Forgive me.”

Qazai was certainly that. Since standing and moving he had gone pale and was finding it hard to keep his head up. Webster fixed a smile on his face, pushed Qazai ahead of him and when they reached the path back to the hotel tried to adopt a casual gait, his arm still around his charge.

As ever, this all came down to timing. If the policemen spent a minute or two in Qazai’s villa, inspected the spent bottles and the slept-in bed, there would be enough time to get to Driss.

But the bottles. He had forgotten the water bottles. If they were decent policemen they would notice that they were still cold and assume that Qazai couldn’t be far away. He quickened their pace.

“Slow down,” said Qazai. “I don’t… I’m not feeling well.”

Christ, thought Webster. We don’t have time for him to be sick.

“It’s not far. Twenty yards.” It was at least a hundred. He held Qazai up as best he could, but he was increasingly a dead weight and the effort greater and greater. He didn’t want to be lugging a body through reception. Behind them the Moroccans would surely have left the villa by now.

As he entered the cool of the hotel’s main building he hitched Qazai up, tried, hopelessly, to arrange him to look as respectable as possible, and set off for the final stretch, keeping a low commentary going to help sustain him, as one might a toddler that needed coaxing.

“That’s it. Just through the lobby. Only a few more yards.”

God he was heavy. Webster was beginning to slow.

“Not far now. That’s it.”

He tried to keep his eyes straight ahead but couldn’t help glancing at the receptionists, three of them in a row. One was busy with a guest, another had his head down on his computer screen, but the third was watching them, and as Webster looked away she made to pick up her phone. He could stop, reassure her, but there was no point. All they had to do was get to the car.

They were at the steps down to the driveway; Webster hadn’t noticed them when he arrived, but now they seemed long and sheer. Watched by an intrigued doorman, and bent almost double, Qazai took them one by one, like a child.

This was hopeless. They’d never make the last fifty yards.

“Stay here,” he said to Qazai, and to the doorman, “Hold him a second, would you? He’s not well.”

Qazai staggered a couple of steps, came to a halt, tried to straighten himself, then closed his eyes and brought a hand to his mouth. Hardly daring to look at him, Webster ran through the gates to the street and seeing the brown Peugeot started waving at it, beckoning it forward.

“Thank you,” he said, returning to the doorman. “Come on. The car’s here.”

The car drew up at the gates, and Webster guided Qazai into the backseat, pushing him across the worn fabric.

“Go. Drive. Get us to the airport.”

“Is he going to vomit?”