“Unbelievable,” said Hammer, looking up the street. “Un-fucking-believable.”
“I told you. He’s a piece of work.”
“Not him, you. We have it all neatly wrapped, ready to go, and you can’t see it through. Can’t just fucking take it.”
He started walking toward Berkeley Square, one arm raised behind him telling Webster to stay where he was, not to talk to him. Then he turned, fury in his face.
“I don’t know who’s worse. You’re a pair of babies. Do me a favor. Stop fucking squabbling, and finish this awful fucking case.”
THE REPORT WAS HARDER WORK, not because Webster didn’t know what to write but because each sentence was a provocation. Every phrase had to be forced from his fingers. The calm he had felt after Timur’s funeral had gone, and above the words struggling onto the screen he could still hear Qazai’s stinging condemnation of him, potent with both lies and truth.
His anger growing, his concentration lost, he let his mind wander over the facts of the case in the hope that he might finally find the design behind them, but it was still deeply buried, and try as he might he couldn’t reach it. Mehr had been murdered, not by bandits but by someone who knew what he was really doing for Qazai. That was a fair assumption. His death had been organized, or at least condoned by someone within the Iranian government—the intelligence services, or the Revolutionary Guard. That was another. An unwelcome thought struck Webster. Perhaps the money that Mehr had been channeling had been destined to fund opposition groups in Iran. Perhaps Qazai’s secret was a noble one, and the death of Timur the terrible price of some quiet heroism.
No. That might fit together, but it didn’t explain why Qazai was so desperate to raise money that he had scarcely paused to mourn his son, or why he was summoned to clandestine meetings every six months, or why he had thought it necessary to threaten Webster’s freedom.
What should have taken a day, then, was dragging into a second and evermore uncertainly into a third when, as Webster was trying to find some agile language for the summary, Oliver called. He looked at the number, let it ring four times, saw it go to voicemail and continued to watch the screen until an alert told him he had a new message.
“Ben, it’s Dean. You never call anymore. Guess what I’ve found? Call me back.”
Webster put his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes. He should let it go. He couldn’t let it go.
“I knew you couldn’t resist,” said Oliver.
“I told you to stop.”
“I had some inquiries outstanding. About Mehr’s money. They came back.” He paused. “Do you want the long version?”
“Just the highlights.”
“I can do that. Last May, about seven million U.S. goes through Mehr’s accounts, then on a tour of the world’s most discreet little islands, before ending up with a company that finally spent some of it—on chartering a ship from Odessa to Dubai. With an interesting cargo. Customs got a tip-off, and when they had a look they found twelve containers full of machine guns and old Russian rockets.”
Webster sat back in his chair. “You’re serious.”
“They denied all knowledge, of course, but no, it happened. I found two articles about it. Then nothing.”
Christ. If only Oliver had found this a week earlier, or not at all.
“You’re saying the money that went through Mehr was used to buy weapons?”
“Looks that way.”
“Jesus. Where were they going? After Dubai?”
“Syria.”
“Syria?”
“Correct. With an onward ticket to Lebanon, I dare say.”
“Sorry. Qazai’s money is buying rockets for Hizbollah?”
“We don’t know for sure it’s his money. I’ve found out where it ends up but not where it comes from.” Oliver sniffed. “Are we on again?”
Webster considered it, and through his scrambling thoughts all he could see was Qazai’s righteous face, full of pride and fury, taunting him with his weaknesses.
“What about the rest of it? Where does that go?”
“I don’t know yet. Give me a chance. In all, I’ve found five groups of payments into Mehr’s company. Forty-three million in total. This is the only batch I’ve traced to the end. But on the way they all go through the same place.”
“Where?”
“Cyprus. A company called Kurus. Shareholders are obscure but one of them is a guy called Chiba. God knows what it does.”
“Who is he?”
“Low-key. Very. According to the filings he’s Lebanese, but there’s nothing else on him anywhere. At all. He could be anything.”
Webster thought for a minute, trying to make out the logic. Whatever was happening, it was serious, and sustained, and Qazai was involved. “Find out if the money really is his. Qazai’s. I’ll look at the shipment, see where it came from. Where it went.”
“You could do that. Or you could see what he’s up to in Marrakech.”
“Excuse me?”
“Qazai’s going on one of his little trips. Flight’s due to leave on Friday. All logged in with the airfield.”
Webster didn’t say anything.
“That cell phone that keeps calling him? He got a call from it yesterday. Lasted forty-five seconds. Half an hour later he filed his flight plan with Farnborough.”
Webster thanked Oliver and hung up. For a minute, perhaps two, he stared at the words on the screen in front of him until they were just black marks on the white. Then he picked up the phone.
16.
THREE HOURS TO AFRICA, that was all, but Webster wished it was longer. He would have liked to sleep. He had spent the night in the spare room, as he sometimes did before early flights, and with the short, terse argument he had had with Elsa still repeating in his head had passed a wakeful night.
He had to go, he had told her, and that much was true. Two days at most, the last act, the only way to finish it: all true. His lies were in the omissions. He hadn’t mentioned that he was paying for everything himself, or that he hadn’t told Ike he was going, or that he had little idea what he might find when he arrived. Had she known these things, she might have screamed at him, but as it was she did what Elsa did so welclass="underline" let him spend time with his own faults.
In his tight, narrow seat, surrounded by holidaymakers and Moroccans heading home, Webster totted up what all this was costing, apart from his relationship with his wife. Seven hundred pounds for his ticket. Eighty pounds a night for his hotel, a little riad recommended to him by Constance. At least he hadn’t brought George Black, as he would have liked. Black insisted on a team of five at least for surveillance, and they would all have flown out and stayed at Webster’s expense; three days of that and he’d have been bankrupt.
No, George was unfortunately not a possibility, and in any case would have been hopeless for Marrakech, where five hulking ex-soldiers might have proved a little conspicuous, but Webster couldn’t operate without someone to help him: he had never been to Morocco before, had no understanding of the place, spoke no Arabic, couldn’t rely on his schoolboy French and would hardly blend in himself. So before he had left the office he had gone into Ikertu’s files and found a handful of cases that had touched on Morocco. There weren’t many, but all had used the services of the same woman, Kamila Nouri, who, judging by the correspondence, was an old friend of Hammer; some of her work dated back to the very first days of the company. Webster had called her, hoping to meet shortly after his arrival, but Kamila, insisting that any friend of Ike’s was a dear friend of hers, had told him that she would meet him off his flight. Webster, who had told Hammer that he was taking a day or two off to write the report, hoped sincerely that she was such a good friend that she wouldn’t think to check out his story.