Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

Webster sat on the edge of the chair opposite and started thrumming his fingers on his thigh, watching the room and waiting for one of the elevators to open and produce the Americans. Tabriz staff wandered through alone or in pairs, studying documents or in hushed conversation; a motorcycle courier arrived, his helmet under his arm, and gave an envelope to one of the receptionists, who talked in low voices about things that Webster just failed to catch. Ava glanced down at his hand and he stopped tapping, his fingers continuing to fidget in his clasped hands.

“I don’t see what you’re nervous about,” she said, shifting around in her chair at the sound of lift doors sliding open.

“I’m not nervous. I’m tense.”

“No word?”

Webster reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out his BlackBerry, even though there would be nothing new there. “No word,” he said, pressing the buttons anyway, checking his e-mails, his texts, his missed calls. Yuri in Antwerp had told him that he would try to locate the phone, but that it would probably take a few hours, and had bristled a little when Webster had told him that it seemed a little pointless to offer a service that could tell you with reasonable accuracy where someone had been a while ago but not where they were right now. No one at Tabriz knew where Qazai was, and nor did the lawyers. His passport was missing, as far as they could tell, but he didn’t appear to have booked any flights or, for that matter, bought anything at all. The chauffeur was still in Mount Street, and his employer’s phone was still very much switched off.

“I’m nervous,” said Ava.

“Don’t be. You’ll be fine.”

“What if they know I’m lying?”

“You’re not lying. Your father wasn’t feeling himself this morning. He’s having a brief rest and will be here shortly. That’s all true.”

Ava raised her eyebrows and let them fall.

“Listen,” said Webster. “They’re here to buy something they really want to buy at a price they probably can’t believe. They’re as keen as we are. A delay won’t matter to them. It matters to us, but not to them. They’ll talk to the lawyers, the lawyers will talk among themselves… it’ll be fine.”

“If it matters so little why can’t those men in there do it? Tell them he’s not here.”

“Your father’s sent you as a mark of respect. It’s the sort of thing he’d do.”

Ava stroked the back of her hand, smoothing it out, staring at her skin as it tightened and released.

“What if he stays away?”

“Then we get you somewhere safe. I’ve made arrangements.”

“Forever?”

Webster gave her his frankest look and tried to sound confident. “I’m working on that.”

Out of the corner of his eye Webster saw the nearest set of elevator doors part and heard the distinctive sound of genial professional conversation, buoyant small talk made by people who know each other and move in the same world. He glanced at Ava, and shifted in his seat. One voice was louder than the rest, richer, full of bonhomie, and as the huddle of suited men stepped out its owner moved into view, ushering his guests into his world as if he had never left it.

Webster watched Qazai cross the lobby, a head taller than the rest, crisp in a silver-gray suit, his white beard neatly trimmed, and doubted that anyone else would see the strain that showed in his tired eyes. As he passed, talking to the Americans, he glanced once at Ava and appeared thrown for the shortest moment, before guiding the group through the glass door toward their meeting.

Ava and Webster looked at each other without saying anything, like people who cannot trust what they have just seen.

EVERY HOUR THAT PASSEDmade the outcome more certain, Webster calculated, but that was no reason to relax, just as Qazai’s apparent composure was no guarantee that when the moment arrived he would take his pen from his pocket, uncap it, look around one last time at the business he had created and put that grand, sweeping signature on the necessary line. People would do strange things before parting with what they loved, and Webster was beginning to understand, finally, that while Qazai’s professional genius might lie in a kind of relentless reasoning about the workings of the world, in his life he applied no such logic. He was as bold as he was spineless; as loving of his children as he had been neglectful of their upbringing; as principled in speaking out against the government in Tehran as he was dissolute in sustaining it. But behind all these contradictions, Webster had come to suspect, was a simple fear: that Darius Qazai was not, after all, a great man, but a simple coward whose craven fealty to money he had inherited whole from his father and had failed to subdue. No one understood better than he how money worked, and still it controlled him.

Who could know, then, how this fear was operating on him today? In that room he had bought companies, seduced investors, fired staff, rebuked traders, entertained statesmen. Tabriz was his court, and now he was being asked, in the stateroom no less, to sign it over as he might one of the thousands of assets he had bought and sold in the previous thirty years.

As Webster glanced up at Ava, he saw her attention switch to something happening behind him, and twisting around he saw through a glass screen the Americans walking their way, jackets draped over shoulders, ties loosened, fastening the catches on their briefcases. They looked, as far as one could tell, like people who had achieved something. The most senior of Qazai’s lawyers was seeing them out, and after a minute of goodbyes they were in an elevator and gone.

“Where’s my father?” Ava stopped the lawyer as he passed.

“I’m sorry?”

“Never mind,” she said, and asking the receptionist to open it marched through the glass door. Webster followed, and the lawyer followed him.

Empty glasses, empty cups, half-eaten plates of biscuits and half-a-dozen chrome coffee pots covered the table, where Qazai sat, his back to the window, watching his lawyers tidy up their papers and appearing not to hear their words of congratulation. Behind him the sun was still high in the sky.

“Leave us, please,” said Ava as she walked in.

To a man, the lawyers stopped what they were doing and stared at her; none offered a reply.

“I need to speak to my father.” There was no doubting her seriousness. “All of you. Go.”

Behind her the senior lawyer nodded at his colleagues, who hurried themselves and left, glancing at Ava as she moved swiftly past them toward her father, giving Webster and his black eye a longer look. The door shut behind them.

Qazai, who had stood up as the lawyers left, was now looking out at the city, contemplating his old domain.

“What the fuck did you do?” Ava was by him now, and as he turned to her she pushed him, hard, so that he lost his balance and stepped back. “What the fuck did you do?”

He looked at her in surprise and incomprehension. “I sold it. The company. For you. For us.”

Ava shook her head, her face cold and set. “Not that. You’re incredible. Not that.” Her eyes were locked on his. “I know now. I know. You didn’t lose a son. You sacrificed him.” Qazai did his best to meet her stare, but could not. “You sacrificed him for this. This shining fraud.”

Qazai rested his head on his hand and shut his eyes. He didn’t see Ava turn and go, and when he looked up, she was halfway across the room.

“Ava. Ava, I didn’t know. Come back.”

“Never,” said Ava, her back to him still, and left.

Qazai pulled a chair toward him and slumped onto it, shaking his head in tiny movements back and forth.