Two days of her time, then, at whatever her rate was: probably another two thousand pounds altogether, or close to that. Say three thousand for the whole escapade, at least. That was money he should have been saving, or spending on the family’s holiday. It was not money he had to throw away. The figures in his head, shifting up and down as he rebalanced his calculations, became a new and powerful symbol of his irresponsibility.
And all that expense was going to prove what, exactly? He wasn’t convinced by any of the theories that coursed through his head. But from the scattered facts available two things were clear: that Qazai’s money was being used for dark ends by some vicious people, and that whoever they were, and whatever their relationship with Qazai, something had gone wrong. The payments through Mehr had dried up in December, or shortly afterward, when the pattern would suggest that a payment had been due; Qazai had traveled to Belgrade early last year, Caracas in November and Tripoli in January; Mehr had died in February. And now Timur.
Webster toyed with the possibilities. Blackmail was one: some ugly secret was costing Qazai millions, and he hadn’t been able to keep up the payments. Or, more plausible, having lost a vast amount in the Gulf and realizing that he had to sell his company, Qazai had decided to cut some old ties—to one of his original investors, say, who made his money in ways that might prove embarrassing.
Could that be this man Chiba, Dean’s latest discovery? There was no way to tell. It was a long journey the money took, from the light to the dark, from the apparent shine of Darius Qazai through Cyrus Mehr and a dozen grubby little companies to crates full of guns and rockets in ships bound for Gaza. Chiba might be a money man, a mere processor along the way like the others, but he was near the end of the trail, and if he hadn’t planned it all he would surely know who had. It was possible that he was the one phoning Qazai, summoning him to Marrakech. Webster allowed himself to imagine the perfect outcome of the next two days: a photograph of the two men together; a copy of Chiba’s passport from the register at his hotel. That was all it would take.
The plane landed on time—no holding patterns, no detours, no delaying of the moment when he would have to put his rudimentary plan into action. Follow Qazai, was how it went: pick him up, in the jargon of surveillance, at the airport, and follow him until he had the meeting that he was surely coming here to have. After that, switch to the people he had met and find out who they were.
He met Kamila, as agreed, by the Hertz desk, but her description of herself had been so good he might have recognized her anywhere. “I am short, gray and one eye points wrong,” she had said, and that indeed summed it up. Her head was uncovered, her hair thick waves of silver-gray cut shortish, and her left eye looked off to the left, just a little, making it hard at a first meeting to know which to focus on. A friendly face, open, but alert with it: the nose sharp, the eyes intense, taking in details.
“Welcome, Mr. Webster,” she said, taking his hand and shaking it with a strong grip, beaming her greeting up at him: she was a head shorter at least. She wore a black canvas jacket and under it a long gray dress that did little to hide a neat paunch. “It is a great pleasure to see you here. My son, Driss.”
Driss was tall, skinny, handsome, with a strong Arab nose and quiet eyes. He must have been twenty, no older, and smiled shyly at Webster as they shook hands. His hair was thick like his mother’s, black and shining.
“How is Ike?” asked Kamila, leading them out of the airport building. Driss insisted on taking Webster’s bag.
“In rude health.”
“Still running?”
“Every day. Too much.”
The glass doors slid back to let them out into Marrakech and the heat came rushing at them. It was more intense even than Dubai, more humid with it, and as they walked to the car Webster felt himself start to sweat. For once, thankfully, he wasn’t wearing a suit.
On the drive into town Webster quizzed Kamila about her work for Ikertu and her relationship with Hammer. They had met in Paris fifteen years before, when he had been trying to find evidence that a Russian businessman was part of a growing scandal involving the illegal sale of arms to Africa. Kamila, then a young officer with the DGSE, the French intelligence agency, had met him and told him a number of highly diverting lies. Five years later, when she had left France with her new husband to return to Morocco, the land of her blood but not her birth, she had got in touch with Hammer and told him about her new business, a consultancy that aimed to help foreign companies understand the opaque politics of North Africa. Since then she had worked on half-a-dozen cases for Ikertu, not all of them distinguished: the last one had required her to locate the mistress of a Moroccan politician, which was not what she had imagined herself doing when she arrived here. But she was happy to do that sort of work for Ike—and few others—and when she did she called on the services of her sons, Driss and Youssef, who could do certain things that as a woman she could not. Not that there were many of those. Now: what did Webster have in mind?
He told her that he was interested in a man called Darius Qazai, who was coming here the following day. He wanted to know everything about the people Qazai met: who they were, where they had come from, where they went afterward, how they had paid for their trip. But in the first place all he wanted to know was where Qazai and his lawyer were staying.
“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” said Kamila, leaning over the front seat and grinning at Webster, who smiled back.
WEBSTER, COLD AND STIFF from the air conditioning in his room, was woken by the call to prayer at dawn the next day. He pulled the sheets about him and lay for a moment listening to the muezzin.
His first thought was Elsa. He had called her before dinner and she had asked him to make a vow: that his return be the end of all this, no matter what the result of his intemperate dash to Africa. He had promised, and that had been the end of their short conversation. One more reason to make the day count. He tried to imagine how it would play out, but only its beginning was clear: it would start at the airport, him in Driss’s car waiting for Qazai, and Kamila with Youssef waiting for Senechal. Beyond that it was an anxious blank.
Qazai’s flight was due at noon; Oliver had established that Senechal was coming from Paris, and would land at eleven fifteen. Webster, Kamila and her sons had spent the afternoon and much of the evening trying to find out where the two men would be staying, but with no luck. There were over four hundred hotels in Marrakech and they must have called half of them; the other half were not places someone like Qazai would consider. Chances were they had booked an apartment or were using false names, and while this wasn’t a disaster it did make the whole operation especially precarious, because if they lost Qazai he would almost certainly stay lost. At nine, admitting defeat, Kamila had taken Webster to dinner.
It was now quarter past five, and still dark. Webster took the hotel’s handbook from his bedside table; they didn’t start serving breakfast for two hours. He reached for his book but put it down again without opening it, far too restless to read.
So he got up, showered, neglected to shave, put on his jeans and a light-gray shirt and left his room, stepping out into the cool morning shadows of the medina. The sun was taking its time to rise, and in the narrow alleys the only light came from the occasional street lamp bracketed to a coral pink wall. What a place this was for intrigue: every turning suggested a surprise, every door a secret. For twenty minutes Webster saw no one, as he threaded his way through the maze, and until the call to prayer began the only noise he heard was birdsong.