The Jackal's Share by Christopher Morgan Jones Page B

When he had arrived at Qazai’s house he had been given tea and with it squares of nougat on flowered plates and almond biscuits flavored with rosewater. He and Qazai had been talking for half an hour now and three new deliveries had been made: a glass jug of orange juice and two small glasses, some fat dates, and a tray of baklava, the neat rolls of pastry shining with honey. Qazai’s housekeeper offered him more tea but he declined. He had thought at first that Qazai wanted to be interviewed at home because it was discreet, but now he wondered whether it was to make him feel at once intimate and uncomfortable. This was emphatically not a place of work.
    The house stood on Mount Street, in Mayfair, and had grandeur but no charm. It was narrow for its five stories, slightly wrong in its proportions, consummately built. It looked like a hospital for the rich.
    Inside, its Edwardian arrogance had been tamed. All but obscuring the dark mahogany paneling a dozen Persian carpets hung from the high ceiling while another, vast, covered the flagstones in the hall with flowering buds and arabesques. Two gauze blinds let in a soft, yellow light from the brilliant spring day, setting the reds and ochres of the walls aglow. The house was silent; the rugs seemed to absorb all sound.
    Webster had been shown by the butler into the first room on the left, a large sitting room—also paneled, also hung with rugs, lit with the same warm light—where three deep sofas sat in relaxed fashion around a coffee table heavy with thick art books, many showing the stamp of the Qazai Foundation. The rugs had made some space for two paintings: one, over the stone fireplace, was of a Persian general in battle; the other, the only concession to Europe in sight, was a Dutch street scene, three houses face-on and beyond them, just visible through an open door, two children playing in a sunlit yard. A vase of towering lilies in each corner gave off a strong, sweet scent.
    The butler had explained that Qazai would be a few minutes and left Webster studying the contents of a glass display case that dominated one of the long walls. All manner of artifacts were there: pages of ancient Korans, their edges brown and eaten with age; a flask of brilliant-blue glass; a long, thin lacquer box, two lovers in an orchard painted on its side; a pottery lion, turquoise in color, its eyes and mouth worn to shallow impressions; and a dagger, the blade bright and glisteningly sharp, the hilt wrought in gilt with inscriptions in Arabic.
    Qazai had kept him waiting just long enough to remind him who was the client, but not long enough to be rude. To Webster’s relief he was alone; Senechal was not playing chaperone it seemed. Qazai wore a double-breasted suit of fine navy wool with a faint chalk stripe, a white shirt and a tie of the darkest green, and was as polished and urbane as he had been after Mehr’s memorial service. He had asked after Hammer, after Ikertu, after Webster’s family, and before ushering him toward one of the sofas had talked him through the various pieces in the cabinet. Which was the most valuable, he had wanted to know, and seemed pleased when Webster, understanding the game, correctly chose the least showy of them all, a fragment of the Koran aged to feathery thinness by its passage from the Arabian peninsula over almost fourteen hundred years.
    Webster began by asking about his past, about the history of his companies, and about his investors—for context, he had explained, so that he might understand the significance of his findings, but it was more to put Qazai at his ease, perhaps off his guard. Qazai had nodded and told him to ask whatever he liked. Webster began with questions about his father, the founding of the business, its financing, its first clients. Every answer was pristine, complete and convincing, worked to a shine through repeated telling and so smooth that when Senechal had finally joined them Webster had barely resented the