Christopher Jones - The Jackal's Share

Qazai nodded, bidding Hammer to go on.

“Ben.”

So this was to be his role. Hammer would be nice to Qazai; Webster would accuse him.

“They think you’re a smuggler.” He hoped to see in the reaction some confirmation that Qazai already knew what the report said, but his only response was to look up and narrow his eyes a little.

“A smuggler?”

“Yes.”

“What do I smuggle?”

“Specifically? A stone relief from the eighth century B.C.”

“The Sargon relief?”

“You know it?”

“Of course I know it. It’s one of the great masterpieces of Assyrian art. Of art full stop. Everyone knows it.” He gave a single, abrupt laugh, throwing his head back. “They think that was me? I wish they were right.” Smiling, his brow raised, he looked at Senechal for confirmation of the sheer absurdity of the accusation; Senechal nodded once, gravely, in response.

“So you know it was looted?”

“From the National Museum in Baghdad. Of course. It is probably the most important piece still missing.”

Webster watched him carefully but could see no hint of a lie.

“Do you know a man called Zia Shokhor?”

Qazai shook his head. “Yves. Do we know a Shokhor?”

“Not that I am aware, sir.”

“He’s an Iraqi,” said Webster. “Lives in Dubai. The report says that some time in the spring of 2003, just after the invasion, he arranged for the relief to be taken by truck through Kuwait and then by sea to Dubai, where it sat for a week in the free trade zone. Then it went to Geneva on a private plane, and into the hands of a Swiss dealer, whose name we don’t have.”

“And he sells it to me?”

“No. Not exactly. He sells it to Cyrus Mehr, who sells it to you.”

Qazai raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms, the levity gone from his face. “Naturally.”

“Apparently you ordered it,” said Hammer.

“Excuse me?”

“The theory goes,” said Webster, “that no thief would choose to steal something that distinctive if it wasn’t already sold. Especially when it weighs half a ton.”

“Where did they get this nonsense?”

“The report doesn’t say. Those parts have been redacted. But my guess is it’s taken from the U.S. Army investigation into the looting. There’s a lot of detail in there, and the only name missing is the Swiss dealer’s. Maybe it comes from him.”

Qazai sat back in his chair, took a deep breath through his nose and shook his head.

“And you don’t know who he is?”

“Not yet,” said Webster.

THE PHONE COULD NEVERdo justice to Fletcher Constance, but even over a weak line there seemed to be a great deal of him and Webster, as always, had to adjust himself, as if stepping back to take in the tremendous whole.

“Benedict!” His voice was seldom less than a roar, his full Boston vowels unsoftened by thirty years away from home. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Lying low. You?”

“Me? In Dubai, as usual. I don’t know how I stand it. Can’t remember the last time I saw Beirut. My housekeeper thinks I’m dead. Ha.” A single, staccato laugh. “Sometimes I’m not sure I’m not. In this shiny mausoleum.”

“You wouldn’t be anywhere else.”

Constance sighed a long, bass sigh. “Ben, when was the last time you were here?”

“God. Three years ago.”

“With Ike?”

“That’s right.”

“Three years ago. That was an innocent time, wasn’t it? That was fun. They were still building then. Towers going up easy as you’d set ten pins. Now they’re up and empty, and one day someone’ll come along with a big ball and bang, down they’ll all come, but I’ll tell you this, Ben my boy, fuck me if the money isn’t coming back. Unbelievable. Is that why you’re calling?”

Webster laughed. “Not exactly.”

One of the many pleasures and difficulties of dealing with Constance was providing him with an audience. He couldn’t survive without one. Most of his ranting he did in writing, on his blog, but there was nothing so rewarding for both parties as being railed at in person, when his height and breadth, his creased linen suits and extravagant neckwear (sometimes a blooming cravat), his antique beard and the solid boom of that rhythmic voice made a total, compelling performance, with a great deal of the old American showman about it.

Fletcher Constance was an unlikely banker, by trade, and a controversialist in every ounce of his nature. He had arrived in the Gulf in 1986, working for an American bank and leaving when, in his words, “I realized that my colleagues were halfwits trying to patronize their betters, and I was probably the worst of them all.” This was disingenuous, of course, not least because he had been taken on by one of his clients and for a fruitful five years or so had found and made deals on his behalf. The two had fallen out around the turn of the century and now Constance—wealthy, unencumbered with either debts or family—did little but rage against the world, or at least that large part of it that he found venal, shallow, unjust or corrupt.

He occasionally did this in print, for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes magazine, but most of his impressive output found the world through his blog—cheerily called “The Gulf Apart”—in the form of a daily sermon on the region’s commercial excesses. Recent posts had included a diatribe against the management of an underperforming construction company, bold predictions about the number of Gulf businesses that would default on their debt within the coming year, and an analysis of United Arab Emirates politics that had compared the relationship between Dubai and Abu Dhabi to that between “a hooker and her john.” What made him so valuable was that he was no crank, that when his enthusiasms didn’t get in the way he was usually right, and that for all his noise and bluster he knew everybody—everybody, from sheikhs to ex-pats—and a little under half of them liked him. For as long as Webster could remember, Constance had been trying to leave Dubai to retire to Beirut, to a beautiful 1930s house in the hills whose picture he would produce at the smallest opportunity.

Ike knew him best. They had become friends when Hammer had spent time as a journalist in Kuwait after the first Gulf War, and now if Constance liked the story or the cause he would help Ikertu with what he knew or could find out. His was the most effortless cover: no one ever believed that someone so relentlessly loud could possibly have been a spy.

“So when are you coming out?” said Constance.

“Next week.”

“Get out of town. Well, that is good news. Need a place to stay?”

Webster could hear him drawing energetically on a cigarette. “I think I may be someone’s guest. We’ll see.”

“Just say the word.”

“I shall.” Webster paused. “I wanted to run a name past you. It may not be your patch.”

“I love a name. Tell me.”

“Darius Qazai.”

Constance gave a great chuckle. “Darius Qazai? The Iranian Knight? Ah, my friend, you spoil me. There is no greater fraud in the Gulf. You may have contenders in London but here, in his quiet, oh-so-elegant way, he is without peer.”

A rational voice told him to be wary of Constance’s obsessions. “Really? You hardly write about him.”

“That, it grieves me to say, is because he is litigious, and I am, how shall we say, light on facts. If I had the facts I’d print ’em, and if he wasn’t so fucking keen to take all my savings I’d print any old shit. As it is we are at something of a stalemate. Tell me you’re about to break it. What’s he done?”

“Maybe nothing. Maybe receiving stolen goods. Maybe ordering them to be stolen.”