“Excuse me?”
“The damage. To your client.”
“It is an irritant.”
“Because this is expensive work.”
“I know,” said Senechal, with another unexpressive smile.
“Who is your client?”
“I cannot say.”
“I can’t help you until you do.”
Senechal reached down for his briefcase and put it on the table. He took a key from a ticket pocket inside his jacket, unlocked the single clasp and from within drew out two or three pages of paper bound in a Perspex folder. Sliding the briefcase to one side he placed the document neatly in front of him.
“This,” he said, “is an agreement I wish you to sign. It commits you to make a proposal in general terms. You will tell us how you work and how much it will cost. If we are satisfied I will reveal my client’s identity to you and we can decide the specific things. Between times you will not tell anyone of this conversation.”
Webster smiled. “I’m afraid we don’t work like that.”
Senechal shifted forward in his chair and leaned his elbows carefully on the table.
“This matter is sensitive. Very sensitive. If we do not like the way you work, my client must have protection.”
“Everything you say in this room is confidential. As is the fact that you’re here. But I’m afraid I won’t sign anything until I know who you work for.”
Senechal’s eyes registered a moment’s confusion, as if he found something illogical. “This is a lucrative project. For a significant client.”
“I won’t make commitments to a man I don’t know.”
Senechal breathed in sharply, rubbed his chin, made to say something and after some internal calculation thought better of it. Fixing his gaze on Webster and letting him know by it what a foolish decision he had just made, he stood up. “Very well. We can go elsewhere. Thank you for your time.”
Webster nodded and at that moment realized what had been troubling him: Senechal’s eyes did not belong in his face. Somewhere deep inside them, behind the gray irises, there was a fervor, all too alive, that his pallid body struggled to contain.
He saw his peculiar visitor to the elevators, thanked him, and without anxiety filed him among Ikertu’s discarded clients, a motley group of suspicious husbands, miserly bankers and sinister fantasists whose cases were too slippery or too preposterous to take. The client who was too grand to be identified was a rare subclass that would usually have piqued his interest, but some strong instinct told him that he had been right not to compromise—that whatever conflicting forces drove this odd, unpalatable man they were not worth closer acquaintance.
Senechal, though, was too ghostly not to haunt him, and he wasn’t surprised when he returned. Two days later an envelope had arrived at Ikertu’s offices, of the finest cream paper, addressed to Webster in looping black ink. It had been delivered by hand. The lettering was bold, just short of elaborate, and on the flap was embossed a capital Q. Inside was an invitation to Mehr’s memorial service and a note, in the same hand, on a small sheet of paper with another Q at its head:
Dear Mr. Webster,
I would be honored if you and Mr. Hammer would join me at this important service. We will have time to talk afterward. I may need to call upon your assistance.
Looking back, Webster thought that this had been a fitting introduction—grand, proper, apparently frank but in the end thoroughly calculated—but at the beginning he was intrigued, as anyone would be. Qazai had never been a target, nor a client, but if the rich lists were to be believed, it was only a matter of time before he became one or the other. And if this was Senechal’s master, he might become both.
3.
AFTER THE SERVICE SENECHAL’S DRIVER took them west across town through Knightsbridge and Kensington, the sun now low ahead of them and London, all red brick and cream stucco, lit up with spring light. The trees of Hyde Park were newly in leaf. Hammer talked, as he always did, quizzing Senechal about his business, his acquaintances in Paris, his views on colonial corruption, Camus, football. Senechal’s replies were courteous, brief and unsatisfying. Webster watched the city glide past and listened to Hammer show off his range.
The car eventually stopped outside a restaurant on an otherwise residential street in Olympia. Lavash, it was called: Iranian cuisine, Berian our specialty. It was early still, and they were the first people in the place. Senechal was clearly known here, and the manager ushered them through the cramped restaurant to a private room that gave onto a courtyard at the back of the building. The simple decoration did its best to conjure Iran. Two of the walls were hung with a gold fabric, a third with a dozen photographs of Iranian landscapes: a fortress in the mountains, a palace on a lake, shepherds’ huts on green foothills. Opposite, through the French doors, a band of light touched the roofs of the houses beyond.
Drinks were brought, with olives and flat bread, and the three men sat, Senechal unhurriedly typing e-mails on his BlackBerry, Hammer—finally out of questions—stirring his Scotch and soda, and Webster wondering silently whether a glass of white wine was likely to do much to encourage Senechal to open up. He eventually broke the silence.
“So it was Qazai.”
Senechal tapped a few last keys and put down his phone. He looked no more human than he had under the bright office lights of Cursitor Street, and his black teeth showed as he talked.
“Yes. It was Qazai.”
“When I looked you up after our meeting I found no mention of him.”
“Good. That is as it should be. I am Mr. Qazai’s personal lawyer. I never engage with his public affairs.”
A moment’s silence, broken by Hammer. “Who else do you represent, Mr. Senechal?”
“That is not relevant here. But most of my time I dedicate to Mr. Qazai and his family.”
Hammer nodded. “The faithful retainer. Could you tell us a little about him? While we’re waiting.”
“You have done some research, I imagine,” said Senechal. Not an objection, just a statement of fact.
“Only so much.”
Senechal paused a moment, looking at Hammer and making a decision.
“I will start with his business, then I will talk about him and finally his family.” He said it with the air of a man who leaves nothing unorganized.
Senechal gave them a well-rehearsed account, beginning with some figures that were clearly intended to impress. Tabriz Asset Management was one of the largest asset management companies in the world. Its headquarters were in London but a large office in Dubai, run by Qazai’s son Timur, looked after its many clients and investments in the Middle East. Altogether it looked after some sixty-three billion dollars of clients’ money, investing it in debt, properties, currencies, public companies, private companies—anywhere it believed it could make money. And it made money. In the previous decade it had made a return, on average, of twelve percent a year: a million dollars invested in 2000 was now worth three. Hammer said that he wished he’d had a million dollars back then, and Senechal ignored the pleasantry as completely as if it made no sense to him at all. Hammer sat back and let their stand-in host continue his eulogy uninterrupted.
Tabriz was not a company, it was an institution. It had been built by the vision and fortitude of one man, and if they took the job they would soon discover how great Darius Qazai truly was. In 1978, still young, he and his family, alongside so many of his countrymen, had been forced to flee to London from Iran; and with his father, a senior banker and confidant of the Shah, he had set up the first Tabriz company. Poor health had seen the father retire not long afterward, but Qazai was unstoppable. He had invested heavily in property in the eighties and emerging markets in the nineties, had made a fortune in both and today could be said to be the most successful Iranian businessman in the world.