“Do you know how difficult it is to find somewhere to live in this city that’s over ten years old?” he said, turning into an unlit street, weaving the Cadillac between potholes. “Damned near impossible. This used to be a beautiful place when I first came here. No building higher than a house. You could see the minarets. Took me six months to find my place. Built in 1936. You’re going to love it. It’s got more class in the fucking can than in the whole of that beached liner they put you in. But first we eat. We eat well.”
Constance grinned at Webster and slowed the car to a stop by two low buildings, each of two stories and built of coral stone and clay, that ran parallel to each other into the darkness. In the wide passageway between them, dark but for the yellow light cast from their small square windows, two old men in Arab dress sat smoking and playing backgammon at a low table. As Constance and Webster passed they looked up.
“Salaamu Alaykum,” said Constance.
“Salaamu Alaykum,” they replied, watching the two strangers as they walked toward the darker end of the buildings and in through the only doorway to bear any decoration: a small red awning and two fabric banners that framed the door itself. Webster hung back on the threshold of a cramped, rug-lined vestibule, a tiny replica of Qazai’s grand hall, while Constance talked in Arabic to a small man with bright white hair who wore a jacket embroidered with silver thread. The man bowed and ushered them through one of three doors into a much larger room, where rugs again covered every surface and three or four groups of men, all in the long white dress of Dubai, some wearing gray suit jackets over the top, sat on the floor, eating and talking. The small man bowed again and gestured for them to sit. Constance bowed and sat on the floor; Webster did the same opposite him, his back to the wall.
Constance looked at him and winked, a huge smile on his face, his gray eyes shining with fun and pleasure. Where it showed through the coarse beard and flowing gray hair his tan was the color of maple, the skin around his eyes dry and flaking, his nose strong and straight. There was a simplicity about Constance, something foolish, something sage, and if it weren’t for his Western dress and his paunch he might have been some man of ancient wisdom, newly returned from months in the desert seeking truth.
“You eaten Yemeni before?”
Webster smiled and shook his head.
“You’re going to love it. We’re in the men’s section. The mixed is for tourists and we, after all, are men.” He raised an eyebrow for effect. “Not that we’ll be able to drink like them but there’s plenty of time for that. You got clean hands?”
“Pretty clean.”
“You’ll be using them.”
A waiter came and spread out a clear plastic sheet. A second weighted it down with a basket of bread, two glasses, a large bottle of mineral water and a huge platter covered in sliced cucumber, lettuce, shining green olives, long, curling peppers, bright pink radishes and bunches of parsley, tarragon and mint. Webster smiled.
“You like this?” said Constance.
“I do. It’s like a dinner I had with Darius Qazai not long ago.”
“You sat on the floor with Darius Qazai?”
“No. We had chairs.”
“That bastard.” Constance roared with laughter. “So fucking grand.”
Constance ordered, without consulting Webster, and when two glasses of orange juice had been brought, he leaned in over the plastic sheet, preparing for confidences.
“So. How is the old fraud?”
“Qazai? Or Ike?”
Constance chuckled. “Qazai. I don’t need to ask after Ike. He’s always OK.”
“Yes, he is. He is always OK.”
“Must be infuriating.”
“Never.” Webster smiled and took an olive. “Qazai,” he said, chewing and spitting out the stone, “is the same as he was. We’ve not found much.”
Constance frowned, grunted and looked up from his food. “You think he’s clean?”
Webster thought for a moment. “No. But I don’t know why.” He bit into a pepper and savored its heat. “I’ve checked out hundreds of people. Usually from afar. And you’re never sure. You get little sniffs, bits and pieces, then you run out of money. The clients don’t care because they want to do the deal anyway. But this is different. I can speak to the man. I get to ask him questions. I get to look him in the eye.”
He paused, and Constance smiled. “He lets you look him in the eye?”
Webster gave a knowing laugh. “For now.”
“Do you like what you see?”
Webster considered the question. “Anyone that polished has to be hiding something.”
Constance rocked back and slapped his thigh. “That’s it! That’s it exactly. All that smoothness isn’t right. People are only smooth when they’ve smoothed something out. That’s a fact.” He held up his glass. “A toast. To the roughing up of Darius Qazai.” And giving Webster’s glass a forceful chink he drank the orange juice down, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he was done. “You sure you don’t want me to find out where his money comes from?”
“No. Unless you have something cast iron.” There was something predictable about this line: it was the easiest thing in the world to call a man a money-launderer, and one of the most difficult to prove. Tiredness had seized him, and though he knew it was just the flight and the time difference—it was always worse coming east—he asked himself whether he really had the energy to scrape away the layers of Constance’s vanity and enthusiasm to determine whether he actually knew anything that might help.
Constance looked a little put out. “You mean to tell me that you don’t care if the whole Qazai palace is built on shit?”
“I do. If it’s shit with evidence.” He shifted his position, sitting up straighter and stretching his back. “What about Shokhor?”
“He can wait.” Constance waved his hand. “This is from a good source, Ben. Very good.” Webster knew what he meant by this; he was always dropping hints that he had a friend in the CIA, and Webster had sometimes suspected that this friend had a habit of playing on Constance’s enthusiasms. This wouldn’t be the first time that someone had planted a seed with him in the hope that it would grow in the repeated telling.
“If he can back it up, I’m all ears. Now. Shokhor.”
Constance, a little deflated, like a schoolboy who has been told he must do his homework before he can go out and play, told Webster what he had found. Shokhor was a creature of the Gulf. If you wanted to move something from one place in the region to another and had reason to believe that law enforcement might raise an objection, he was your man. Money, guns, drugs, art, people: he didn’t specialize. He operated from an office by the port in Jebel Ali and his sole asset, like all respectable businesses, was goodwill—the goodwill of the customs officers and dockworkers and policemen that he kept on his unofficial payroll.
“How well protected is he?”
“He’s still in business. Flourishing. Pretty well, I’d say.”
“Does anyone know him?”
“You mean, can I secure you a polite introduction?”
“Something like that.”
“That needs a little thought.”
“It’s OK. I have some ideas,” said Webster.
Constance glanced up and leaned back to allow two waiters to place three bowls of food on the floor in front of them: one with prawns, one chicken, one lamb, grilled golden and black and laid on top of steaming yellow rice. “This is mandi,” he said reaching for a piece of chicken. “The best thing ever to come out of Yemen. Which is saying something.”