But this, too, was indulgent. With a black laugh, thick with phlegm and blood, he acknowledged the only truth he could depend on, sobering and shaming: that despite these passions, for all that he might love his family and strive to be good, he had for months been inviting a living death, courting with a kind of grim glee an existence where everything he held dear might reject him without any help from Qazai or his enemies.
He tried the door, which was indeed locked. A single window the size of a shoebox showed through its four bars that it was still dark outside. For a minute or two he wondered how he might escape: find a way to get someone to open the door, overpower them, run. But previous experience showed that no one would answer his calls, and in any case he wouldn’t be running anywhere. He could barely stand.
An hour passed. No noise reached him; the silence was as total as the light was unyielding. He had had no water for over eight hours, and even though it was now nighttime the room had lost none of its heat. Through a slow process of squirming and pulling he managed to bring the robe up to his waist and, after much pain, over his head. His shirt was dark all over with sweat, his mouth so dry it took effort to force his lips apart. He lay down on the floor, watched a beetle clicking along the far wall, and with the robe folded under his head tried to sleep; but every time he closed his eyes a jerking montage of the day’s events played across them and wouldn’t let him rest.
AT FOUR, OR JUST BEFORE, a key turned in the lock and the door opened. As Webster sat up the first thing he saw was a large bottle of mineral water being held by the cap in someone’s hand; the second, as his eyes rose, was Senechal, perfectly pressed in a fresh suit, his skin translucent under the fluorescent bulb. As if from another world he looked down at Webster, closed the door behind him, sniffed in distaste, moved around to the far side of the desk and began to wipe the chair with a handkerchief that he pulled from his top pocket. Grudgingly satisfied, he sat. The door locked behind him.
“Asseyez-vous.”
It was the same thin rasp of a voice, but it was no longer ingratiating, no longer sly. Webster looked at him warily from the floor, trying to calculate why he was here and what in heaven’s name it meant. All he knew was that the aversion he had once felt to him had become the most intense and disarming loathing, and if it hadn’t been for the promise of water he would have stayed where he was. In that moment, his imagination wild, Webster saw Senechal as an administrator of death, a man whose talent was to bury things—problems, money, color, life—and who had now come to bury him. Somehow he knew it.
Using the wall to steady himself he stood, moved to the desk and took the bottle, uncapping it and bringing it up to his mouth in a single motion. As he drank, feeling the water cooling his throat, he kept his eyes on Senechal, who stared right back at him.
“Sit,” he said, when Webster was done, and watched him coldly as he sank, clutching the bottle, onto the chair. “You, Mr. Webster, are the most difficult consultant I have ever met. We all know that consultants do not do what you pay them to do, but you? With you it is ridiculous.”
Webster didn’t reply.
“We ask you to do a simple thing, but you are not a simple person and you will not do it. Well. Now you are in Marrakech, and it is not such a simple thing to leave.”
Webster looked at him openmouthed; his side sang with pain. He shook his head in confusion and disbelief.
“So you’re working for them.”
Senechal adjusted himself on his chair so that he was upright and correct, and smiled a tight little smile.
“Truly you are the great detective. You have understood it all.” He shook his head briskly. “No, Mr. Webster. I see you have no idea what is going on. Let me explain a little to you. You have put yourself in the way of an important transaction. Now, I am happy to say, the transaction can go ahead without you. This means that you are no longer necessary for what we want to do.”
Webster closed his eyes tight, wishing Senechal away. But he went on.
“The men you met earlier are efficient people. They do not waste energy.”
“I’d noticed.”
“Confidentially, they do not see a reason to keep you alive. They say you threatened them, and that has not impressed them.” He paused. “But I am efficient too, and it may be that it is less effort to keep you alive. I do not mind. To decide, I have to discover what is in your head. I have to tell them what you know. What you have to bargain with, in short.” He smiled again. “I suspect it is not very much, in which case this will be the last room you see.”
In the harsh light Senechal’s face was inhuman; more than ever he looked like a clay figure granted some weak and temporary sort of life. Webster considered for a moment what might be gained from pushing the table over onto him, from knocking him off his chair, from taking his head and beating it against the wall.
“When London wakes up,” he said, “my report will be going to the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the twenty largest investors in Tabriz. What did your master say? If he is your master. All he has is his reputation. In about five hours he won’t be selling anything.”
Senechal considered Webster for a moment, scanning his bloodied face for signs of a bluff.
“The thing is, Mr. Webster, you know nothing that could hurt Mr. Qazai.”
“I know I’m here. Eventually others will know I was.”
“You are in a police station. You caused an accident in the medina and the police brought you here. You had no papers and were dressed, ridiculously, as a local. They suspected you of planning some sort of atrocity. I came—for the second time—to see that you were freed and received proper medical treatment.” He paused. “Unfortunately I was too late. Being here means nothing.”
“Where’s Qazai?”
“I have no idea. I am not his keeper.”
“Tell him that I know all about Kurus, and Chiba, and where the money goes. What it buys. Tell him…”
“He is not here, Mr. Webster. You will deal with me.”
Webster leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desk, never taking his eyes off Senechal. He lowered his voice. “I’m not talking to you. Tell him. He’ll understand.”
Senechal regarded him with cold disdain and just a trace, he thought, of concern. Certainly he had been made to think.
“This is nonsense. You have been missing for hours. Your report would already be on its way. If it exists.”
Webster raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “You know, I’ve been trying to work out from the start who pulls whose strings. Looks like I’m about to find out. That’s a big call for a lawyer to make on his own.”
Senechal held his eye for a good ten seconds, stood up and left the room.
WEBSTER WATCHED THE DOOR close behind him, heard it lock, and thought that he might happily stay forever in this bleak little room if it meant he never had to see that man again. What could he be doing? Whose interests did he serve? A dozen scenarios suggested themselves, all preposterous, all colliding. Like a man suddenly realizing that he has been lost for miles, Webster looked back and tried to identify the turning that had led him astray.