While Webster was wondering whether the police would suspect that Qazai was going to the airport, and deciding that on balance there was no way of knowing one way or another no matter how carefully you tried to think it through, the heat and the jolting suspension were taking their toll on Qazai, who was awkwardly slumped against a door with his eyes tightly closed. A mile short of the airport Webster felt a hand on his arm and knew immediately what it meant.
“Driss. Stop the car. Now.”
It was too late. Qazai leaned forward and a quick stream of watery vomit burst from his mouth, onto his trousers, the back of Driss’s seat, Webster’s shoes. Alcoholic fumes rose from it. As the car slowed at the side of the road Webster leaned across and opened Qazai’s door, trying to prop it open.
“Do it that way. Outside.” With his spare hand he pushed Qazai in the right direction as cars zipped past. “That’s it. Christ. May as well get it all out.” He had only ever done this for his children before.
Driss had swiveled in his seat and was watching with a look of pained regret.
“I’m sorry,” said Webster. “I’ll pay for it. Can you put it on my expenses?” Driss raised an eyebrow, sighed, and turned back to the road.
Webster patted Qazai on the back. “Are you done? You’re done. Let’s go. Let’s go.”
A little after twenty past, Driss pulled up onto the concourse of Menara and slowed to a stop by a door marked “Private Flights.” Webster didn’t really know what to expect inside. Nor, he imagined, would the airport staff: he and Qazai—bandaged, dusty, beaten, stinking—would have looked improbable catching a bus together, let alone their own jet.
“Driss,” he said, “thank you. I owe you.”
They shook hands.
“You do,” said Driss.
“You never know,” said Webster, “I may be calling you in half an hour from a cell downtown.” Driss didn’t know the word. “From jail. Thank your mother for me, and tell Youssef to buy himself some new clothes. He’s paying.” He nodded at Qazai, who had managed to get out of the car himself and was taking deep breaths by the curb.
Inside, all was cool and peaceful. There were no tourists, no baggage trolleys, no taxi touts: just a single check-in desk and two airport officials, a man and a woman, with little or nothing to do. Consciously standing tall, clearly trying to gather as much of his dignity as he could, Qazai told them in French who he was and presented his passport. The woman tapped at her keyboard, asked if there were any bags to check, and printed off a piece of paper that told him his plane was on stand twenty-three. She didn’t so much as look them up and down, and Webster realized that in his pessimism he hadn’t banked on the blanket entitlement conferred by money. If you had paid for your private jet you could fly in it naked for all anyone would care. She didn’t ask to see his passport either, and for a moment his heart rose hopefully in his chest.
But even billionaires, and their guests, need to go through immigration, and as they made their way down corridors to their gate they found their way blocked by a security scanner, and beyond that a glass booth with a Moroccan border policeman sitting inside it. As he emptied his pockets Webster counted his money—Senechal’s money, in fact—in preparation. Sixteen hundred dirham; a hundred and eighty dollars. That might do it.
Collecting his things he whispered to Qazai, “Let me go first,” and taking him by the upper arm led him up to the yellow line, where they stood for a moment waiting for the policeman to look up. At his nod they approached. Webster’s breathing quickened and he could feel his heart working harder. He couldn’t bring himself to think what would happen if this didn’t work.
“Passports.”
Webster tried his best, laughably, to look respectable.
“Good morning, ” he said, and got no response. “Bonjour. I am this man’s doctor, and I need to make sure he is handed over to medical staff waiting on the plane. I do not have a passport but will not be flying.”
The policeman, slouching on his chair, stuck out his lower lip and shook his head. He didn’t seem to understand. Webster tried again, in his basic, unpracticed French.
“Je suis un médecin. Cet homme est mon… Je suis avec cet homme. Il faut que je vais avec lui sur l’avion, parce-qu’il est très malade. Très malade, et il y a médecins sur l’avion qui lui attendent. Je n’ai pas de passeport mais je reste ici. Je ne vais pas voyager.”
Under heavy lids the policeman’s eyes gave him a long, searching look. Slowly, he shook his head.
“No passport, no entry.”
“Mais c’est imperatif.” Was imperatif a word? He had no idea. He could feel the situation slipping from him. “Mon…” God how he wished he knew the word for “patient.” “Il est très malade, et je suis son médecin.”
The policeman raised his eyebrows and shook his head again, looking down at his desk.
“OK,” said Webster. “D’accord. Je voudrais… non, je suis heureux payer un, un,” Christ, what was “fee”? Droit—that was it—“Un droit médical, pour votre cooperation.” God, that was horrible. It was a long time since he had tried to bribe an official, and somehow in Russian it had always felt easier. He produced Senechal’s cash from his jacket pocket, and put it on the counter. “Un droit médical.”
The notes sat there for what seemed like an age while the policeman looked first at them and then at Webster, steadily in the eye. Whether he was making a moral or financial calculation wasn’t clear, but at last he shook his head, said a few words in French that Webster couldn’t make out, and reached for his phone.
Then Qazai spoke. In Arabic, with great authority and even greater seriousness, his voice clear and deep. The policeman straightened in his seat. Whatever Qazai had to say it was short, and when he had finished he waited grandly for a response. Without looking up the policeman reached up to the counter, took the money, and nodded them through.
Neither man said anything until they had reached the gate and were taking the stairs down to the tarmac.
“How did you do that?” said Webster.
Some color had returned to Qazai’s face but he still looked pained. “I told him he should take the money. And that if he didn’t I would tell the director of the airport police that he tried to solicit a bribe from us.”
Webster nodded, grateful and not a little embarrassed.
“I didn’t know you could speak Arabic.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know.”
Webster, still not entirely confident that they had outrun the police, took one last look around at the airport, buzzing with heat in the midday sun.
“That’s about to change,” he said, and let Qazai go first up the steps to the plane.
22.
IT HAD ALL BEEN the doing of a man called Nezam; in a sense, he had ordained all this thirty years ago from his office in Tehran. Dead for twenty, he had no doubt imagined this day, or one like it, and would have been saddened to see his careful arrangements finally coming undone. That was what Webster had to understand. It would be no exaggeration to say that Qazai had had no choice then, just as he seemed to have so few now.
People imagine that revolutions are clean-cut affairs: the emperor loses his head, his followers flee or are put to the sword, the state is transfused with fresh blood. No one from the old guard is meant to remain; there were no aristocrats on the Committee of Public Safety, no Whites on the Council of Public Commissars. In Iran, though, where politics is ancient and complicated, despite the reach and the viciousness of the revolution, despite the departure or death of almost everyone who had held a post of importance in the old regime, there was one place where one man somehow managed to stay on, darkly welcomed by his new masters, and that place was the secret police.