Книга - Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet

Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet
Michael Pearce


In this classic mystery from the award-winning Michael Pearce, a powerful politician is murdered in Cairo in the 1900s and the Mamur Zapt is called in to investigate.Cairo in the 1900s. As the long period of indirect British rule draws to an end, tensions mount. The attempted assassination of a politician raises the possibility of a terrorist outrage at the city’s religious festival, the Return of the Holy Carpet from Mecca.When the Mamur Zapt, British head of Cairo’s secret police, begins to investigate, he finds himself in a race against a deadly group of terrorists to protect the city from a catastrophic attack.


















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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1988

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1988

Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008259464

Ebook Edition © JULY 2017 ISBN: 9780008257262

Version: 2017-09-04




AUTHOR’S NOTE (#ulink_ba91f17c-2add-5822-bf4d-106c605e81ac)


Cairo, 1908. The heyday — or is it just past the heyday? — of indirect British rule. Thirty years earlier the profligate Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, had brought his country to the edge of bankruptcy. The Western powers had stepped in but at a price, and their yoke bore hard. In 1881 Egyptian unrest became open rebellion. To safeguard its financial interests Britain sent in an army, crushed the rebels and restored the Khedive, but from now on the Khedive governed in name only; the real ruler of Egypt was Cromer, the British Agent and Consul-General. A complex apparatus of control was introduced. There were British ‘advisers’ at the top of all the major ministries; the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Army, the Sirdar, was British; so were the Inspector-General of Prisons, the Commandants of the two key police forces of Cairo and Alexandria; and of course the Mamur Zapt, the Head of the Political CID — the Secret Police.

But by 1908 British rule was not as firmly based as it looked. Other powers were growing jealous. France had cultural links with Egypt which dated back to Napoleon and had never forgiven the British for staying on after crushing the Arabi rebellion. Many of Egypt’s criminal procedures were based upon the Code Napoléon and the judicial system in general followed French lines. This meant that investigation and prosecution were the responsibility not of the police but of the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice; that is, of the Parquet.

Turkey was also jealous, for Egypt was still constitutionally a province of the Ottoman Empire and the Khedive in theory owed allegiance to the Sultan of Istanbul.

And all the time the underground forces of Egyptian Nationalism were growing in strength and now, in 1908, were just beginning to assert themselves.

Egypt was a country of many potential masters. It had four competing legal systems, three principal languages, and several religions, apart from Islam. It had many, many nationalities. It was a country ripe with ambiguities. A country bright with sunlight and dark with shadows. And in the shadows, among the ambiguities, worked the Mamur Zapt.

In this story I have tried to stay close to fact. The streets are those of Cairo in 1908. The terrorist ‘clubs’ were a feature of the period too. There really was a National newspaper called al Liwa and in 1908 Kitchener’s famous screw-gun battery really did accompany the Return of the Carpet. There was even a Mamur Zapt, although perhaps he was not quite like this one.




CONTENTS


Cover (#u6cdaf922-01b7-59c3-9629-a332720c036b)

Title Page (#u6fb5a061-f280-56c6-8e47-1a46112c0571)

Copyright (#u593f64e4-8234-53e7-a256-cb117fa16c39)

Author’s Note (#ulink_b9be235e-41da-5abf-8dc6-8b734d9704fc)

Chapter 1 (#ulink_7dc602a4-3ad4-51a2-88d2-d486968e0c30)

Chapter 2 (#ulink_da1c5afd-000e-519f-a30f-aebef8abe349)

Chapter 3 (#ulink_3da28c17-c389-5a6d-9c5a-8c1e170b0a56)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also By (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_346f87e9-ac17-571f-88ee-eb9ea62fcac7)


The Mamur Zapt was sitting in his office one morning when his orderly, Yussuf, burst into the room.

‘Come quickly, effendi!’ he said. ‘Bimbashi McPhee wants you at once. At once! Nuri Pasha has been killed!’

This was an exaggeration, for the attempt to assassinate the veteran politician had not succeeded; but Yussuf was not one for pedestrian detail.

However, along the corridor Owen could hear the Assistant Commandant’s voice raised critically, so he put a paperweight on the estimates to prevent them from being blown all over the office by the fan, and rose reluctantly to his feet.

There was an Egyptian in McPhee’s room. He was short and plump and apparently very agitated. McPhee was pouring him a glass of water, which he took with effusive thanks and much mopping of his brow. From behind the silk handkerchief steady brown eyes registered Owen’s arrival.

‘Ah!’ said McPhee, catching sight of Owen as he turned: ‘Captain Cadwallader Owen.’

This, too, was an exaggeration. A romantic Welsh mother had insisted on preserving a remote family connection through the middle name, and Owen had once made the mistake of signing his name in full in McPhee’s presence. The Scotsman, another romantic, had ever afterwards insisted on using both barrels.

‘Do you know Fakhri Bey? No?’

They shook hands.

‘Fakhri Bey was passing when it happened.’

‘I was in an arabeah,’ the Egyptian explained. ‘There was nothing I could do. So I told the driver to drive on and came straight here.’

‘I’m very glad you did,’ said McPhee. ‘We’ll get there right away.’

He picked up his sun helmet.

‘In fact, if you’ll excuse us—’

‘Of course. Of course,’ the other protested.

They set off down the corridor.

‘You don’t want me, do you?’ asked Owen.

Normally the Mamur Zapt, as Head of the Political Branch, did not reckon to concern himself with routine killings.

‘Certainly I do,’ said McPhee over his shoulder.

Owen would have preferred to have carried on with the estimates. They were not especially complex but required a certain attention, and he had set aside the morning for that purpose. His predecessor-but-one had been dismissed for corruption and Owen was sensitive on financial matters.

However, he collected his helmet and joined McPhee at the front of the building. The large square of the Bab el Khalk was empty of transport except for one carriage which Fakhri Bey was just getting into.

He stopped as he saw them.

‘You would be very welcome to share my arabeah,’ he said.

‘May we?’ said McPhee. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any other. It would be taking you back—’

‘Not at all,’ said Fakhri. ‘It would be a pleasure.’

The carriage was one of those with two horses and could take three passengers at a pinch. McPhee and Owen wedged themselves in around Fakhri, and the driver, after a great display of urgency, managed to get the horses going at a steady amble along the broad thoroughfare of the Sharia Mohammed Ali.

‘And now,’ said Owen, ‘perhaps you could tell me exactly what happened where.’

‘Nuri Pasha was shot,’ said Fakhri. ‘It was dreadful. I am so sorry. He was a friend of mine, you know,’ he said, glancing sideways at Owen.

‘A good chap,’ said McPhee supportively, but then McPhee considered many people to be good chaps whom Owen knew to be consummate rogues.

‘And where did all this happen?’ he asked.

‘In the Place de l’Opéra,’ said Fakhri, ‘right in front of my eyes. I could not believe it. I could not believe it.’

‘You actually saw the shooting?’ asked Owen, putting a heavy accent, and not too sceptical a one he hoped, on the word ‘saw’.

‘Yes,’ said Fakhri. ‘Yes, I did.’

He hesitated.

‘Or, at least, I thought I did. I was sure I did.’

Again the sidelong glance at Owen.

‘Now I am not so sure,’ he said.

‘Come,’ said McPhee, sympathetic as usual. ‘You certainly did. You told me all about it.’

‘Yes,’ said Fakhri. ‘I know. And I told you what I thought I saw. But when Captain Car—’ Fakhri mumbled a bit—‘Owen asked me in that sharp way of his and I try to recall detail, what seemed clear suddenly becomes misty.’

‘Well,’ said Owen, brightening, ‘that’s a start anyway.’

The usual problem with Egyptian witnesses was not that they could not recall but that they recalled only too well.

‘I expect you’re used to this,’ said Fakhri. ‘The fallibility of witnesses? My legal friends, without exception, assure me that eyewitnesses are not to be trusted.’

‘It’s a funny business,’ said Owen, ‘what you see and what you don’t see.’

‘I thought I saw. Clearly.’

‘Perhaps you did. Start again. Where were you when all this was happening?’

‘In an arabeah.’

‘Which was—precisely—where?’

‘I had come down the Sharia el Maghrabi. I was just crossing the Place de l’Opéra.’

‘Past the statue?’

The statue of Ibrahim Pasha, the famous Egyptian general who had led his army to within a hundred miles of Istanbul, was a well-known Cairo landmark.

‘Right by the statue. I was about to go down the side of the Ezbekiyeh Gardens.’

‘Fine. And you saw?’

‘I saw Nuri Pasha. I think he had just come out of the Hotel Continental. He walked right out into the Place, looking for his arabeah. I think.’

‘About how far from you?’

‘Twenty metres, perhaps.’

‘Anyway, you recognized him?’

‘Oh yes. He is very distinctive. And I know him well. In fact, that was why I was watching him. To exchange greetings. If he saw me.’

‘Did he see you?’

‘No. He was looking about and I thought he might see me.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, I was watching him, and then suddenly there was a loud bang, and I saw Nuri Pasha stagger and put his arms up and fall, and I thought: That must have been a shot. Nuri Pasha must have been shot.’

‘The shot,’ said Owen, ‘sounded close to you?’

‘Very close. It made the horses jump. The arabeah swerved. That was how I lost sight of the man.’

‘Tell me about the man.’

Fakhri put his hands to his head.

‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘It is not clear.’

‘To the left or to the right of Nuri Pasha as you were looking at him?’

‘To the right. But I didn’t really see him. It was just that, as Nuri Pasha fell, in the corner of my eye I thought I saw someone move away.’

‘A blue galabeah?’

‘Yes.’

Fakhri grimaced. ‘Like all the other galabeahs,’ he said.

The long blue gown was the standard garment of the Cairo poor.

They exchanged smiles.

After a while, as Fakhri said nothing more, Owen prompted: ‘And then?’

‘That was all,’ said Fakhri. ‘The arabeah swerved and I lost sight of Nuri Pasha. It was—oh, I suppose three or four minutes before I could look again.’

‘And then there was a crowd ten feet deep round Nuri Pasha and you couldn’t see a thing.’

‘Yes,’ said Fakhri, surprised. ‘That’s right. How did you know?’

The crowd was still thick when they reached the Place de l’Opéra, although the incident must have happened at least half an hour before by the time they got there.

McPhee sprang out of the arabeah and shouldered his way into the throng. A constable appeared from nowhere and joined his efforts to the Bimbashi’s, laying about him with his truncheon. Reluctantly the ranks of the crowd parted and brought McPhee to where a man was lying stretched out in the grit and dust of the square.

‘Make space! Make space!’

McPhee thrust the bystanders apart by main force and held them off.

‘Why!’ he said in disappointed tones, ‘this isn’t Nuri Pasha! Who is this?’

‘It is Ibrahim, sir,’ said a voice from the crowd. ‘He was wounded when Nuri Pasha was shot.’

‘And where is Nuri Pasha?’

‘He was taken into the hotel, sir,’ said the constable.

‘What sort of condition was he in?’

Seeing that the constable did not understand, McPhee changed his question.

‘Was he alive or dead?’

Various voices from the crowd assured him that Nuri Pasha was (a) dead, (b) unhurt, (c) suffering from terrible injuries. Leaving McPhee to sort that out, Owen pushed his way back through the crowd.

To one side of the mêlée two constables were casually talking to a slight, spare Egyptian in a very handsome suit. He looked up as Owen approached.

‘The Mamur Zapt? I did not expect to see you here in an affair of this sort. Mahmoud el Zaki. Parquet.’

The Parquet was the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice.

They shook hands.

‘You were here very quickly,’ said Owen.

The Egyptian shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nuri Pasha is an important man,’ he said.

‘How is Nuri Pasha?’

‘Shaken.’

‘That all?’

‘The shot did not touch him. It slightly grazed a lemonade-seller.’

‘No need for me,’ said Owen.

‘No need for me either,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Though I expect I shall get the case now.’

The Parquet, not the police, were responsible for investigation. It was clear that they already had the case in hand. The Ministry of Justice was nearer than the Bab el Khalk and they must have sent a bright young man down as soon as they had heard. There was nothing that Owen could do.

He pushed his way back through the crowd to where the wounded lemonade-seller lay.

‘Are you badly hurt?’

‘I am dying,’ said the man.

There seemed no evidence of any wound.

‘Where is your hurt?’

The man groaned but said nothing.

‘In the bum, effendi,’ a woman said eagerly. ‘Look!’

She lifted the man’s galabeah. The bullet had glanced along the buttock, leaving a livid furrow.

‘He will survive,’ said Owen.

The man was unconvinced.

‘I am dying.’

‘This is not a houris you see,’ said the woman. ‘It is your wife.’

The man groaned again, louder. The crowd guffawed.

‘Take heart, man,’ said Owen. ‘You might have been hit in the front.’

The woman looked up at him mock-demurely. She was a villager and did not wear a veil.

‘What difference would that have made, effendi?’

‘None at all in his case,’ said a voice from the crowd. ‘He has not been with his woman for weeks.’

The wounded man sat up indignantly.

Owen moved away. There seemed very few casualties from the shooting. Whoever it was had thoroughly bungled his job.

McPhee was talking to the man from the Parquet. He signalled to Owen to come over.

‘They think they’ve got the man,’ he said. ‘He was seized as he tried to run away.’

‘Who by?’ said Owen, surprised.

It was very rare for the ordinary populace to intervene in an assault, which, as opposed to an injury or accident, they tended to regard as a private matter.

‘It’s not so surprising,’ said the man from the Parquet. ‘Come and look.’

He led them across the Place and into the Hotel Continental.

In a small storeroom at the back, guarded by a large, though apprehensive, constable, an Arab lay prone on the floor.

He was completely unconscious. Mahmoud turned the head with his foot so that they could see the face. The eyelids rolled back to reveal white, drugged eyes.

McPhee dropped on one knee beside the man, bent over him and sniffed.

‘Don’t really need to,’ he said. ‘Smell it a mile away. Hashish.’

He began searching the man methodically.

‘I expect you’ve already done this,’ he said apologetically.

‘Police job,’ said Mahmoud.

‘And I don’t expect they’ve done it,’ said McPhee.

Most of the ordinary constables were volunteers on a five-year contract and were recruited from those who had finished their conscript service, again five years, with the Egyptian army. They tended to come from the poorer villages and were nearly all illiterate. They were paid three pounds a month.

‘He wasn’t like this when he was caught, surely?’ said Owen, puzzled.

‘Pretty well,’ said Mahmoud. ‘That’s why they caught him. He more or less fell over.’

‘Then how—?’

‘How did he fire the shot?’ Mahmoud shrugged. ‘My guess is he took the hashish to stiffen himself up. He just about managed to fire the shot, and then it caught up with him. That’s why he shot so poorly.’

‘Maybe,’ said Owen.

The other smiled.

‘The other explanation is, of course, that he was drugged up to the hilt, someone else fired the shot—equally poorly—and then put the gun in his hand.’

McPhee looked up. ‘The gun was definitely in his hand at some point.’

He took up the Arab’s limp hand, smelled it, and then offered it to the other two.

‘No, thanks,’ said Owen.

‘Distinct smell of powder.’

‘I’m surprised you can pick it out among the other things.’

McPhee let the hand drop and rose to his feet.

‘Nothing else,’ he said.

‘Did you find the gun?’ Owen asked Mahmoud.

Mahmoud nodded. ‘On the ground,’ he said.

He signed to the constable, who went away and returned a moment later gingerly carrying a large revolver in a fold of dirty white cloth.

‘Standard Service issue, I think,’ said McPhee, ‘but you’ll know better than I.’

He looked at Owen.

‘New model,’ said Owen. ‘Only started being issued here last February. Wonder where he got that?’

‘I’ll have to check,’ said Mahmoud.

‘You’ll have something to go on at any rate,’ said McPhee.

He was always pleased to put the Parquet in its place.

‘More than that,’ said Owen. ‘I think we’ve got a witness for you.’

Mahmoud looked at him inquiringly.

‘Blue galabeah,’ Owen said to McPhee.

He turned to go.

‘Have a word with Fakhri Bey,’ he said as they went.

Afterwards, Owen and McPhee went to the Sporting Club for lunch, and then Owen had a swim. In the summer working hours were from eight-thirty till two. The whole city had a siesta then, from which it did not stir until about six o’clock. Then the shops reopened, the street stall-holders emerged from under their stalls, the open air cafés filled up, and the narrow streets hummed with life until nearly three in the morning.

Owen had got used to the pattern in India and it did not bother him. However, he never found it possible to sleep in the afternoon. Usually he read the papers at the club and then went for a swim in the club pool. The mothers with their children did not come until after four, so he had the pool to himself and could chug up and down practising the new crawl stroke.

Usually, too, he would return to his office about six and work for a couple of hours in the cool of the evening, undisturbed by clerks and orderlies, agents and petitioners. It was a good time for getting things done.

That evening he had intended to get to grips with the estimates, but when he arrived in his office he found a note on his desk from McPhee, asking him to drop along as soon as he got in.

‘Oh! Hullo!’ said McPhee, when he stuck his head round the door. ‘Just as well you’re here. The Old Man wants to see us.’

Garvin, the professional policeman who had relatively recently been appointed Commandant of the Cairo Police, was, if anything, a little younger than McPhee, but McPhee always liked to refer to him in what Owen considered to be a prep-school manner. McPhee had spent twelve years teaching in the Egyptian equivalent of a minor public school before Garvin’s idiosyncratic, and amateur, predecessor had recruited him as Assistant Commandant at the time of the corruption business.

The choice was not, in fact, as eccentric as might appear. McPhee was patently honest, a necessary qualification in the circumstances and one comparatively rare in worldly-wise Cairo; he spoke Arabic fluently, which was a prime prerequisite for the post so far as the British Agent, Cromer, was concerned; and he possessed boundless physical energy, which, although irritating at times, fitted him quite well for some of the tasks a policeman was called on to do.

He was, however, an amateur, and, Owen considered, would not have stood a cat’s chance in hell of getting the job if Garvin had been making the appointment.

The same was probably true of his own appointment as Mamur Zapt, Head of the Political Branch and the Secret Police.

McPhee himself had been responsible for this. The post of Mamur Zapt had become vacant at the time when McPhee, pending Garvin’s arrival, had been appointed Acting-Commandant. The post was considered too sensitive to be left unfilled for long and McPhee had been asked to advise the Minister. Not a professional soldier himself, he had been over-impressed by Owen’s service on the North-West Frontier in India, and Owen’s facility with languages had clinched the matter.

The shrewd, unsentimental Garvin, thought Owen, would have appointed neither of them; neither the eccentric McPhee nor the inexperienced Owen. He would probably have got on better, Owen thought, with the previous Mamur Zapt: the one who knew the underworld of Cairo just a little too well.

Now, when he and McPhee took up their accustomed chairs before the large desk, Owen felt the usual small-boy-about-to-be-disciplined feeling creeping up on him. He guessed that McPhee felt it, too, but they reacted in different ways. McPhee sat up ramrod-straight and barked ‘Yes, sir!’ Owen lolled back in what he suspected was an absurdly exaggerated manner and said nothing. He suspected that Garvin found him far too easy-going.

The suspicion was soon reinforced.

‘Nuri Pasha,’ said Garvin.

‘Nasty shock, sir,’ said McPhee. ‘But he’s recovering. We have the man who did it.’

‘Oh,’ said Garvin.

McPhee described the circumstances.

Garvin did not seem much interested.

‘So that’s all buttoned up,’ McPhee concluded.

‘Buttoned up?’ Garvin regarded him incredulously. ‘You haven’t bloody begun!’

He turned to the Mamur Zapt.

‘Did you get any warning of this?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Owen thought that was an unfair question.

‘We get any number of warnings,’ he began defensively. ‘Three or four a day—’

Garvin cut across him.

‘Did you get one about this? About Nuri Pasha?’

‘Not specifically,’ Owen admitted.

‘Worrying.’

‘Nine-tenths of them are boloney.’

‘The other tenth isn’t,’ said Garvin.

He brooded for a moment.

‘What do you do about those? The ones that aren’t boloney?’

‘We check them all out,’ said Owen. ‘Boloney or no boloney. The ones that look as if they might have something in them we take action over.’

‘What action?’

‘Notify the appropriate people. Stick a man on. Stay with the source.’

‘Sometimes it works,’ said Garvin.

‘It nearly always works,’ said McPhee loyally.

Garvin ignored him.

‘But those are the cases where you hear something. You didn’t even pick up a whisper this time?’

‘No.’

‘Slip-up,’ said Garvin.

Owen fought back.

‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘Anyone who’s plotting an assassination isn’t going to broadcast the fact. There may have been nothing to pick up.’

‘There’s always something to pick up in Cairo,’ said Garvin dismissively.

He turned his attention back to McPhee.

‘Buttoned up!’ he repeated. ‘You haven’t bloody even started! Whose man was he? What’s behind this? What are they after?’

‘The Parquet—’ Owen began.

Garvin swung round on him.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ he said. ‘Stop messing around! You know damned well this is nothing to do with them. It’s political.’

Garvin’s eyes bored into his.

‘So you’d better bloody get on with it,’ he said. ‘Mamur Zapt.’




CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_e2dd97d3-a504-51c1-b101-e6cc9d4bb322)


Owen was at the Place de l’Opéra shortly before seven the following morning. Early though he was, the Parquet was there before him.

Mahmoud was surprised.

‘The Mamur Zapt?’ he said.

He broke into a smile.

‘They have been leaning on you, too?’

‘They told me to stop messing around and bloody get on with it,’ said Owen.

‘Moi aussi.’

They both laughed.

‘It must be political,’ said Mahmoud.

‘What isn’t?’ said Owen.

‘And big.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re here.’

‘I honestly don’t know anything that makes it big,’ said Owen.

‘Nuri Pasha?’

‘I thought he’d retired from active politics.’

‘Those bastards never retire from active politics,’ said Mahmoud. He looked at Owen curiously. ‘Don’t you know? Really?’

‘No,’ said Owen.

‘I don’t really know either,’ said Mahmoud. ‘I just assumed—’ He broke off.

‘What did you assume?’

Mahmoud hesitated.

‘I’ve got no particular reason for assuming,’ he said at last. ‘I just took it for granted.’

‘What?’

‘That it was to do with Denshawai.’

‘Why should it be to do with Denshawai?’

‘Because Nuri Pasha was an Under-Secretary in the Ministry of Justice at that time.’

The Denshawai Incident had happened in 1906, just before Owen was transferred to Egypt and took up the post of Mamur Zapt.

Some British soldiers had been marching from Cairo to Alexandria and en route five officers had gone to the village of Denshawai to shoot pigeons. Round every Egyptian village were flocks of semi-wild pigeons kept for food and manure. No one was allowed to shoot them without permission from the head man of the village. The officers had misunderstood a guide who was with them and, thinking they were free to shoot, did so. The infuriated villagers had attacked the officers. Two had been wounded and one had died, of sunstroke it was thought, as he lay on the ground. The British-controlled Administration had taken exemplary action against the villagers. Four had been sentenced to death, others sent to prison, and seven had received fifty lashes.

The incident had sparked off widespread protests throughout Egypt. It had not been too popular with the new British Government, either. Word went that Cromer had been in effect forced out over the issue. He had been replaced as Consul General by the more pliable Sir Eldon Gorst, something which hadn’t, in the view of old hands, helped matters one little bit.

‘Denshawai flavours most things,’ said Owen slowly. ‘I don’t know that it is particularly important in this case. How closely was Nuri Pasha involved?’

‘Not very,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Which is why my assumption may be quite wrong.’

He looked around him.

‘And also why,’ he went on breezily, ‘I should get on with my reconstruction before the remaining half million of the Cairo population arrive on the scene to help me.’

The number of people on the Place was indeed beginning to grow. The first water-cart was coming down the Sharia el Maghrabi spraying water behind it to keep down the dust. The first forage camels were weaving their way along the Ezbekiyeh Gardens, great stacks bobbing precariously on their backs. The cab-men and donkey-boys lunched their animals on green forage, and from dawn a steady train of camels slouched over the Nile bridge to supply them. The first donkeys laden with heavy blocks of ice wrapped in dirty sacking were making their way to the hotels. People who had slept on the pavement, or on the wall next to the railings of the Gardens, or in the gutter (which was probably safer since they could not fall off), were beginning to stir. In the early morning it was sometimes quite difficult to get along because of the number of men lying about with their faces covered like corpses, sleeping as soundly as the dead. Now, as he watched some of the white or blue-gowned figures get to their feet, Owen was suddenly reminded of apocalyptic accounts of Judgement Day that he had heard from Welsh preachers. Not normally given to such visions himself, he thrust it out of his mind and concentrated on Mahmoud’s reconstruction. The Parquet followed French practice and usually required a ‘reconstruction’ of a crime by its investigators, and Owen, whose knowledge of standard police procedures was limited, was interested in seeing how Mahmoud approached it. Briskly, it appeared.

The Egyptian went over to a mark he had scuffed in the dust.

‘Nuri Pasha,’ he said, ‘was about here, facing out across the Place towards the Ezbekiyeh Gardens.’

‘According to Fakhri?’

‘And others.’

Mahmoud pointed to where a man was relieving himself in the road.

‘Fakhri’s arabeah was about there.’

‘He would have had a good view,’ said Owen.

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘I think he did. Though between him and Nuri Pasha there were a lot of people.’

‘Did you find any of them?’

‘Yes. The first they knew of it was a loud bang. They looked round to see Nuri Pasha falling—’

‘Why was he falling?’ asked Owen. ‘He wasn’t hit.’

‘Don’t know,’ said Mahmoud. ‘I’ll have to ask him. Reflex, perhaps.’

He darted back and affected to stumble.

‘An old man,’ he said. ‘Dazed, winded and scared. Perhaps half-stunned. Anyway, he lay approximately here until about five hundred people took it upon themselves to carry him into the hotel.’

‘Who took the initiative?’

‘As I was saying,’ said Mahmoud, ‘about five hundred of them. Each one says.’

He looked up and down the road and then walked over to another mark.

‘Meanwhile, an ordinary fellah who had attempted to run away immediately after the shot was seized and brought to the ground, or tripped, or just fell over, about here. Definite, because he stayed there, unconscious, till the police came and one constable, brighter than most, marked the spot.’

‘That’s where he was taken,’ said Owen. ‘Where was he when he fired the shot?’

‘Or when the shot was fired. Don’t know. Fakhri Bey said he moved to the right, so if we move to the left—’ He counted out four paces. ‘He might have been standing here.’

‘About twelve feet from Nuri.’

‘In which case,’ said Mahmoud, ‘why didn’t he hit him?’

‘It’s more difficult than you might think,’ said Owen, ‘even at twelve feet. Especially if you’ve never fired a revolver before.’

‘Which might well have been the case,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Why is it so difficult?’

‘It kicks back in your hand when you fire,’ said Owen. ‘If you’re not holding it properly the barrel jerks upward.’

‘If the shot went upward,’ said Mahmoud, ‘how did it hit the lemonade-seller?’

‘Could have ricocheted.’

‘Off what?’

Mahmoud moved back to where Nuri Pasha had been standing. Owen took up the position they had guessed at for the assailant.

‘Off the statue,’ said Owen. ‘Maybe.’

They went over to the statue of Ibrahim Pasha and examined it.

Mahmoud put his finger on a mark.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

They became aware that a small crowd was watching them with interest.

‘I think your half million is beginning to arrive,’ said Owen.

‘It’s unreal to reconstruct without a crowd,’ said Mahmoud. ‘It’s impossible with one.’

He walked across the Place to where Fakhri might have observed the scene from his arabeah. For a moment he stood there looking. Then he walked slowly back to Owen.

‘Just fixing it in my mind,’ he said, ‘before I talk to them.’

Two heavily-laden brick carts emerged at the same time from adjoining streets and then continued across the Place abreast of each other. A car coming out of the Sharia el Teatro was obliged to brake suddenly and skidded across in front of two arabeahs which had just pulled out of the pavement. All three drivers jumped down from their vehicles and began to abuse the drivers of the brick carts, who themselves felt obliged to descend to the ground, the better to put their own point of view. Other vehicles came to a halt and other drivers joined in. Some Passover sheep, painted in stripes and with silver necklaces around their necks, which had been trotting peacefully along beside the Ezbekiyeh Gardens, abandoned the small boy who was herding them and wandered out into the middle of the traffic. In a moment all was confusion and uproar. The Place, that is, had returned to normal.

‘That,’ said Mahmoud resignedly, ‘is that.’

The two had taken a liking to each other and Mahmoud, unusually for the Parquet, invited Owen to be present at his interrogation. It took place in the Police Headquarters at the Bab el Khalk. They were shown into a bare, green-painted room on the ground floor which looked out on to an enclosed square across which the prisoner was brought from his cell.

He looked dishevelled and his eyes were bloodshot but otherwise he seemed to have completely recovered from his heavy drugging. He looked at them aggressively as the police led him in. In Owen’s experience a fellah, or peasant, caught for the first time in the toils of the alien law tended to respond either with truculent aggression or with helpless bewilderment. This one was truculent.

After the preliminaries Mahmoud got down to business.

‘Your name?’

‘Mustafa,’ the man growled.

‘Where are you from?’

‘El Deyna is my village,’ he said reluctantly.

El Deyna was a small village on the outskirts of old Cairo just beyond the Citadel.

‘You have work in the fields,’ said Mahmoud. ‘What brought you to the city yesterday?’

‘I came to kill Nuri Pasha,’ said the other uncompromisingly.

‘And why did you want to kill Nuri Pasha?’

‘He dishonoured my wife’s sister.’

‘Your story will be checked,’ said Mahmoud.

He waited to see if this had any effect on the man but it did not.

‘How did he dishonour your wife’s sister?’

Mustafa did not reply. Mahmoud repeated the question. Again there was no response. The fellah just sat, brawny arms folded.

Mahmoud tried again.

‘Others will tell us if you do not,’ he said.

The man just sat stubbornly there.

‘Come, man,’ said Mahmoud, not unkindly. ‘We are only trying to get at the truth that lies behind this business.’

‘There is one truth for the rich,’ the villager said bitterly, ‘and another for the poor.’

‘The truth we seek,’ said Mahmoud, ‘is not necessarily that for the rich.’

‘The rich have all the weapons,’ the man said, ‘and you are one of the weapons.’

Unexpectedly, Mahmoud seemed to flinch.

‘I would not have it so,’ he said mildly.

The man had noticed Mahmoud’s reaction. It seemed to mollify him.

‘Nor I,’ he said, mildly too. ‘I would not have it so.’

He rubbed his unshaven chin.

‘Others will tell you,’ he said. ‘My wife’s family works in the fields for Nuri Pasha. One day Nuri went by. He saw my wife’s sister. He said: ‘Tell her to bring some melons to the house.’ She brought the melons and a man took her in. He took her to a dark room and Nuri came to her.’

‘That was wrong,’ said Mahmoud, ‘but it was wrong also to try to kill for that.’

‘What was I to do?’ the man said passionately. ‘I am a poor man and it is a big family. Now she is with child. Before, there was one mouth and she could work in the fields. A man wanted her and would have taken her at a low price. Now there are two mouths and she has been dishonoured. No one will take her now except at a large price. And how can I find a large price for her?’

Unconsciously he had laid his hand on the table palm uppermost as if he was pleading with Mahmoud.

‘How?’ he repeated vehemently. ‘How? I have children of my own.’

Mahmoud leaned across the table and touched him sympathetically on the arm.

‘There is worse, friend,’ he said. ‘How will they manage without you when you are gone?’

The passion went out of the man’s face.

‘There will be money,’ he said, and bowed his head, ‘without me.’

‘How can that be,’ asked Mahmoud softly, ‘when you have none?’

‘Others will provide.’

‘What others? Your family?’

‘Others.’

Both sides seemed to consent to a natural pause, which lasted for several minutes. Owen was impressed. He knew that if he had been conducting the interrogation, in the distant English way, he would never have reached the man as Mahmoud had done.

Mahmoud leaned forward now and touched Mustafa on the sleeve.

‘Tell me, brother,’ he said, ‘about your visit to the city yesterday.’

‘I went to the city,’ said the man, almost as if he was reciting, ‘and there were many people. I was one of a crowd. And I saw that bad one and I fired my gun at him. And he fell over, and I gave thanks to Allah.’

‘How did you know where to find the bad one?’ asked Mahmoud.

The man frowned.

‘I do not know,’ he admitted. ‘He was suddenly there before me.’

‘Someone told you, I expect,’ said Mahmoud.

The man did not pick this up.

‘Have you been to the Place before?’

Mustafa shook his head.

‘Never.’

‘And yet you knew where to find him,’ Mahmoud observed.

He waited, but again the man did not pick it up.

Mahmoud switched.

‘Where did you get the gun?’

The man did not reply.

‘Did the one who told you where to find the bad one also give you the revolver?’

Again there was no reply.

‘If the rich have their weapons,’ said Mahmoud, ‘and I am one of them, you, too, are a weapon. Who is wielding you?’

‘Not the rich!’

‘When the tool is broken it is thrown away.’

‘I am not broken,’ said the man defiantly.

‘As a tool you are broken. As a weapon.’

‘My task is done,’ said the man. ‘I am satisfied.’

‘Nuri is still alive.’

The man looked at him, startled.

‘Didn’t you know? The shot missed.’

‘Is that the truth?’

‘On the Book.’

The man buried his face in his hands.

‘I am a poor weapon.’

‘You have fed too much on the drug,’ said Mahmoud.

‘It gave me the power,’ said the man from behind his hands.

‘It took away your power.’

The man shook his head.

‘Who gave it to you?’

‘A man.’

‘The same who gave you the gun?’

Again the shake of the head.

‘The one who showed you where to find Nuri Pasha?’

The shaking had become continuous. Owen doubted now if it meant negation.

‘The one who will provide for your family when you are gone?’ Mahmoud went on inexorably.

The shaking stopped and the man raised his head.

‘Inshallah,’ he said. ‘If God wills.’

He would say no more and after several further attempts to resume the conversation Mahmoud ordered him to be returned to the cells.

That afternoon they went to el Deyna. Mahmoud decided, on the spur of the moment, that he would like to talk to Mustafa’s family. Then, equally on the spur of the moment, he decided he would ask Owen to go with him.

Owen accepted at once. He liked Mahmoud and, besides, he had grown sensitive enough to Arab style by now to know that if he did not respond with equal warmth it would immediately chill the relationship that was developing between them.

He was, however, a little surprised. Relations between the ministries were not normally as close as this. He wondered whether the invitation was solely the product of an impulse of friendliness. Mahmoud was no fool. Perhaps, operating alone in what might turn out to be politically sensitive areas, he felt the need to guard his back. If so, Owen could certainly sympathize with him.

They met after lunch at the Ataba el Khadra, the terminus for most of the Cairo tramways, and took a tram to the Citadel.

Although it was still relatively early in the afternoon, and extremely hot, the Ataba was, as always, full of people. The ordinary population of Cairo was still impressed by trams and treated them very seriously. To board a tram at the terminus meant forcing one’s way through a mass of street-sellers, all concerned that the passengers might perish en route for lack of sustenance. Water-sellers, peanut-sellers, lemonade-sellers, Turkish-delight-sellers, sellers of tartlets, sweets and sherbet competed for custom.

The tram itself was, of course, crowded. Passengers hung over the driver in his cab and shared his agitation at the continual excesses of arabeah drivers. They bulged out of the tram itself and clung on to the steps. One or two hardy spirits climbed up on to the roof, from which they were dislodged with difficulty by a determined constable, only to be replaced by equally tenacious clamberers at the next stop.

Owen enjoyed all this, but even he had had enough, in the heat, by the time they got to the Citadel. They changed with relief into the small bus which would take them out into the country.

Here, too, there was difficulty in finding a seat. A large fellahin woman with a load of water-melons occupied the whole rear of the bus.

‘Come, mother,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Move your fruit. They take up more space than people.’

The woman started to move the melons and then looked up at Mahmoud.

‘Why is the Englishman here?’ she asked in Arabic, not thinking that Owen understood.

‘He is with me,’ said Mahmoud.

‘He should be in a motor-car,’ said the woman, ‘or in an arabeah.’

The bus had fallen quiet.

Conscious that she held the stage, the woman reached over and picked up two large melons.

She showed them to the passengers.

‘Two fine ones,’ she said.

She cast a sidelong glance at Owen.

‘As big as your balls, Englishman,’ she added, giving the other passengers a wink.

‘As big as they would need to be, woman,’ said Owen, ‘were I your husband.’

The bus exploded with delighted laughter.

The woman moved her melons, with good grace now, having enjoyed the exchange as much as anyone else, and Owen and Mahmoud sat down.

In a way, it was nothing, but Owen had sensed a current of feeling in the bus that had surprised him. Most Englishmen in Egypt would have said that the country-dwelling fellahin were all right, that it was only in the city that there was trouble. He had defused the current so far as he was concerned and the atmosphere was now quite relaxed. But that it should exist at all was significant.

Mahmoud must have sensed the current, too, for throughout the rest of the journey he kept the conversation at the level of general chit-chat; in Arabic.

The village omda, or headman, showed them to Mustafa’s house.

It was a mud brick house with three rooms and a ladder going up to the roof. The floor was beaten earth. In the first room, at night, a donkey and a water-buffalo lay down together. In the inner rooms the family lived, ate and slept. On the roof were the household stores and the rabbits.

There seemed to be at least eight or nine people in the inner rooms, two old people and six or seven children. When the omda explained the purpose of the visit, they all retreated into the furthest room, leaving Mustafa’s wife alone with Mahmoud, Owen and the omda. She held her veil up in front of her face the whole time they were there.

They sat down cross-legged on the floor. After a moment Mahmoud began.

‘Tell me about your husband,’ he said. ‘Is he a good man?’

There seemed to be a shy nod of assent.

‘Does he beat you?’

Owen could not detect any response, but the omda said: ‘He is a good man. He beats her only when she deserves it.’

‘Your children: does he beat them?’

This time there was no mistaking the denial.

‘Those old ones: are they your family or his?’

‘One is hers. One is his,’ said the omda.

‘Tell me about your sister,’ said Mahmoud.

The woman put the veil completely over her face and bowed her head down almost to her knees.

Mahmoud waited, but she said nothing.

‘I am not here to judge,’ he said, ‘merely to know.’

The woman bent her body to the left and right in agitation but could not bring herself to reply in speech.

‘She is ashamed,’ said the omda. ‘Her family is dishonoured.’

‘And Mustafa felt this shame greatly?’ asked Mahmoud.

The woman seemed to signify assent.

‘He took it into his heart?’

More definite this time.

Mahmoud turned to the omda.

‘He spoke about it? Some nurse a hurt in silence, others speak it out.’

‘He spoke it out,’ said the omda.

Mahmoud considered for a moment or two.

‘It is hard to bear dishonour,’ he said at last, ‘but sometimes it is better to bear dishonour than to lift your hand against the great.’

‘True,’ said the omda neutrally, ‘but sometimes a dishonour is too great to be borne.’

‘Was that so with Mustafa?’

‘I do not know,’ said the omda. ‘Mustafa is a good man.’

Mahmoud turned back to the woman and shifted tack.

‘Where is your sister staying?’ he asked.

‘With friends,’ said the omda.

‘In her village or in this?’

‘She will not show her face,’ said the omda, ‘either in her village or in this.’

‘What will happen when her child comes?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘It is a lot to ask of friends.’

The omda was silent. ‘I do not know,’ he said at last.

The woman broke in unexpectedly.

‘She will stay with me,’ she said determinedly.

The omda looked troubled but said nothing.

‘How will you manage?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘The way we have always managed,’ said the woman bitterly.

‘It is hard for a woman to manage alone,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Even if she is used to it.’

The eyes above the veil seemed to flash.

‘When did your husband begin taking hashish?’

The omda made to answer but the woman cut across him.

‘He has always taken hashish,’ she said, ‘a little.’

‘But recently,’ said Mahmoud, ‘he has started taking more.’

Again the eyes seemed to register the remark, but otherwise there was no response.

‘Where did he get it?’

‘There are always those willing to sell,’ said the omda.

‘Whom you know?’

The omda spread his hands. ‘Alas, no,’ he said.

‘There are always those willing to sell,’ said Mahmoud. ‘At a price.’

He leaned forward and addressed the woman directly,

‘Money for hashish,’ he said, ‘comes at the cost of money for food. His family was hungry. Why did he buy hashish?’

‘It made him strong,’ the woman said.

‘Strong in the fields? Or strong in the bed?’

‘In the bed,’ said the woman. ‘In the fields too.’

‘He feared he was losing his strength in the bed?’

‘Yes,’ said the woman.

Mahmoud looked across at Owen.

Owen knew what he was thinking. In villages of this sort bilharzia was rife. Among the symptoms of the disease in males was a kind of overall sensual lassitude which the fellahin often took for loss of sexual potency.

‘Your husband has the worm?’

‘Yes.’

It was common for fellahin to take hashish to counter the lassitude. Ironically, it aggravated the very condition they feared.

In the room behind a small child began to cry. It was hushed by the grandmother but then began to cry again more determinedly. Another joined it.

The woman stirred.

Mahmoud put up his hand.

‘One question more: in this last week your husband has come upon a great supply of the drug. Where did he get it from?’

‘I do not know,’ said the woman.

‘Have strangers been to the village?’

‘No,’ said the omda.

Mahmoud ignored him.

‘Has a stranger been to your house?’

‘No.’

‘Has your husband talked to strangers?’

‘I do not know.’

‘Has he spoken to you of the drug?’

‘He never speaks to me of the drug,’ said the woman bitterly.

Mahmoud sat back and regarded the woman for a moment or two without speaking. Then he suddenly leaned forward.

‘Listen to me,’ he said to the woman, speaking slowly and emphatically. ‘I believe your husband to be a foolish man and not a bad one. He is a tool in the hands of others. I promise you I will try to see that his punishment fits foolishness and not badness. But I need to know whose are the hands that hold the tool. Think about it. Think long and hard.’

He turned to the omda.

‘And you,’ he said, ‘think, too. Think doubly long and hard. Or else you will find yourself in trouble.’

A servant showed them through the house and out into the garden, where Nuri Pasha was waiting for them.

He was sitting in the shade of a large eucalyptus tree, a gold-topped cane between his knees and a rug about his shoulders. His head was resting on the back of the chair and from a distance it looked as if he was asleep, but as they drew nearer Owen saw that the apparently closed eyes were watching them carefully.

‘Monsieur le Parquet! And—’ the watchful eyes lingered a little on Owen—‘le Mamur Zapt!’

Servants brought up wickerwork chairs.

‘I was,’ said Nuri Pasha, ‘about to have a late tea. Would you care to join me? Or something stronger perhaps?’

‘Thank you,’ said Owen. ‘Tea would be very welcome.’

He did not know how strict a Muslim Mahmoud was.

Nuri, it was clear, was a very Europeanized Egyptian. He spoke English perfectly, though with a suggestion that he would rather be speaking French. He was dressed in a dark jacket and light, pin-striped trousers. His shirt was impeccably white and he wore a grey silk tie fastened with a large gold pin.

‘Tea, then.’

Already, across the lawn servants were bringing a table and tea-things. The table was spread with an immaculate white cloth. The tea-pot was silver, the cups of bone china. One of the servants poured the tea and then retired into the background.

‘Good,’ said Nuri, sipping his tea.

He put the cup back in the saucer.

‘And now, what can I do for you two gentlemen?’

‘If it would not distress you,’ said Mahmoud, ‘I would like to hear your account of what happened in the Place de l’Opéra.’

‘Of course, dear boy,’ said Nuri. ‘I am only too glad to be able to assist the Parquet. Especially,’ he smiled, ‘in the circumstances.’

He seemed, however, to be in no hurry to begin. His eyes wandered across the flowerbeds to the other side of the lawn.

‘Beautiful!’ he whispered.

Owen thought at first that he was referring to the freesia or the stocks, or perhaps to the bougainvillaea in bloom along the wall which surrounded the garden, but as he followed the direction of Nuri’s gaze he saw that the Pasha was looking at a young peasant girl who was walking along a raised path just beyond the wall with a tall jar on her head.

‘Beautiful,’ breathed Nuri again.

‘If I was younger,’ he said regretfully, ‘I’d send someone to fetch her. Those girls, when they are washed, are very good in bed. They regard an orgasm as a visitation from Allah. When I was young—’

He went into graphic detail.

The story came to an end and Nuri sat for a moment sunk in the memory of past pleasures.

Owen stretched out a hand towards the cucumber sandwiches. The shadow of a kite hawk fell on the table and he looked up hurriedly, but the hawk was wheeling far above. He helped himself to the sandwich. Sometimes, at the Sporting Club, the hawks would snatch the food out of your very hand.

Mahmoud ventured a little cough.

‘The Place de l’Opéra,’ he murmured.

Nuri affected a start.

‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘Monsieur le Parquet does right to recall us to our business.’ He looked at Mahmoud with a glint of amusement in his eyes. ‘I hope my reminiscences did not bore you?’

‘Oh no,’ protested Mahmoud. ‘Not at all.’

‘Ah? Well, in that case perhaps you would like to hear about the peasant girl on one of my estates. She—’

He stopped with a grin.

‘Or perhaps not. You are busy men. And it is not every day that one receives a visit from the Mamur Zapt.’

‘I shall enjoy reading your memoirs,’ said Owen.

‘I am afraid,’ said Nuri, with real regret, ‘that the best bits have to be left out. Even in Egypt.’

‘The Place de l’Opéra,’ murmured Mahmoud doggedly.

‘The Place de l’Opéra,’ said Nuri. ‘Just so.’

Even then he shot off at a tangent.

‘The case,’ he said. ‘How is it going?’

‘All right,’ said Mahmoud, caught off guard. ‘We are making progress.’

‘Ah? What have you found out?’

‘We are only at the beginning,’ said Mahmoud reluctantly.

‘Nothing, then?’

‘We are holding a man.’

‘The fellah?’

‘Yes.’

Nuri waved a dismissive hand.

‘A tool,’ he said.

Mahmoud rallied determinedly.

‘A number of points have emerged from my inquiries,’ he said, ‘some of which are interesting and which I would like to check. Against your account.’

‘Oh?’ said Nuri. ‘What interesting points?’

‘That, I shall not be altogether certain of until I have heard your account,’ said Mahmoud blandly.

Nuri threw up his hands with a laugh.

‘You have beaten me!’ he conceded. It was evidently his way to play games.

He signalled to one of the servants, who came up and rearranged the rug round the old man’s shoulders.

‘I will tell you what happened,’ said Nuri, ‘although I am afraid it will be a very sketchy account.’

‘Even that may help,’ said Mahmoud.’

‘Yes,’ said Nuri sceptically. ‘It may.’

He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes.

‘I had been meeting colleagues—former colleagues, I should say—in the Hotel Continental. When the meeting was over I went to find my arabeah. It was not there, so I went out into the Place to look for it. Suddenly—’ his eyes opened—‘I saw a man in front of me raising a gun.’

‘How close?’

‘From me to you. Perhaps a little more.’

Mahmoud waited for Nuri to think back.

‘And then?’

Nuri frowned.

‘And then I don’t know what happened.’

‘Were you conscious of the gun going off?’

‘I heard a shot. Yes, I certainly heard a shot. And I fell down. Though whether before or after or at the same time I really cannot remember. Everything is very hazy.’

‘You may have dazed yourself in falling,’ said Mahmoud.

‘The doctor thinks so,’ said Nuri. ‘He claims to detect a bruise on the back of my head. I must say, I am not conscious of it myself, but then, my livelihood does not depend on finding bumps on other people.’

‘You did see the man with the gun, though. Could you describe him?’

‘Not very well. I saw him only fleetingly.’

‘Was he dressed in European clothes?’

Nuri looked at him. ‘I have heard the accounts of my would-be assassin,’ he said drily, ‘and you yourself confirmed that he was a fellah.’

Mahmoud apologized.

‘I was merely trying to prompt you to recall exactly what you saw,’ he said. ‘Was he young or old, for instance, what kind of galabeah was he wearing?’

‘I do not,’ said Nuri Pasha, ‘bother to distinguish one fellah from another.’

There was a little silence.

‘In any case,’ said Nuri, ‘the fellah is not the one that matters. He is merely a tool.’

‘Have you any idea,’ asked Owen, ‘who might be using him as a tool?’

‘I am afraid not.’

‘Can you think of anyone who would wish to kill you?’

Nuri looked at Owen with surprise.

‘Mon cher,’ he said. ‘Everybody wants to kill me. Tout le monde.’

‘Come,’ said Owen, ‘you have enemies enough, I am sure, anyone in your position is bound to, but there is a difference between having an enemy and having an enemy who wants to kill you.’

‘You are right,’ said Nuri Pasha, ‘if a trifle literal. I am plainly guilty of exaggeration. Let me try to be more accurate. Only half the population of Egypt wants to kill me. The other half would just be happy to see it happen.’ He laughed, and then put his hand on Owen’s arm. ‘I joke, mon cher,’ he said, ‘but it is no joke really.’

Owen nodded.

The word ‘Denshawai’ did not need to be spoken.

Nuri’s eyes wandered away again across the garden. The girl had gone, however.

‘The fellah who tried to shoot you,’ said Mahmoud, ‘had a personal grudge against you.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Nuri.

‘It appears you took a liking to his wife’s sister—a peasant girl, like the one we saw. Only on that occasion you did send for her.’

‘Really?’ said Nuri, without much interest. ‘If so, she would have been well paid.’

‘It is just that it gives a motive,’ said Mahmoud, ‘sufficient in itself. We do not necessarily have to look for an ulterior one. The affair, that is,’ he ended carefully, ‘may be merely a private one.’

‘Since when,’ asked Nuri, ‘has the Mamur Zapt been interested in affairs which are merely private?’

‘Have you received any threatening letters?’ asked Owen.

Nuri made a gesture of dismissal.

‘Mon cher!’ he said, almost reproachfully. ‘Dozens!’

‘Recently? In the last two weeks?’

‘I expect so,’ said Nuri. ‘It is not the part of my mail to which I give the greatest attention.’

He looked at Owen.

‘You would not expect a killer to give warning, surely?’

‘It happens surprisingly often,’ said Owen.

Nuri laughed. ‘I expect it is the weakness for rhetoric characteristic of those engaged in politics,’ he said.

He glanced at Mahmoud.

‘Especially Egyptian politics.’

‘Not just Egyptian,’ said Owen. ‘However, there is a different explanation. The terrorist clubs tend to contact their targets first. Especially,’ he added, looking directly at Nuri, ‘when they are trying to extort money.’

Nuri shook his head.

‘If they had asked for money I would probably have paid.’

‘You have received a communication, then?’

‘I was speaking generally.’

Nuri leaned back in his chair and called to one of his servants. The man disappeared into the house.

‘You must speak to Ahmed,’ he said. ‘He deals with my mail.’

A sulky young Egyptian came out of the house. He seemed to walk across the lawn deliberately slowly, placed himself directly in front of Nuri, with his back to Owen and Mahmoud, and said:

‘Yes?’

‘Mon cher,’ said Nuri reproachfully. ‘We have guests.’

The young man deigned to throw them a glance.

‘Interesting guests,’ said Nuri. ‘Le Parquet et le Mamur Zapt.’

The glance the young man threw now was one of undisguised hostility.

Nuri sighed.

‘Our guests were asking if I have received any threatening letters recently?’

‘You always receive threatening letters,’ said the young man harshly. ‘Deservedly.’

‘I would like to see,’ said Owen, ‘any that have been received in the last three weeks.’

The young man looked at Nuri.

‘Please!’ said Nuri. ‘If you have not already consigned them to the wastepaper basket as they deserve.’

‘Very well,’ said the young man, ‘if you wish.’

He went off into the house.

Nuri regarded him fondly.

‘My son,’ he said, ‘by a slave girl. He hates me.’

Ahmed returned with a sheaf of papers which he gave to Nuri, who in turn passed them to Owen.

They were very much as Owen had expected: abusive letters from individuals, either badly written or in the ornate script of the bazaar letter-writer; scurrilous attacks by obscure radical organizations, darkly hinting that Nuri would get his deserts; savage denunciations by extremist religious groups, threatening retribution; and the expected extortionary letters from the new political ‘Clubs’ which had sprung up in such profusion in the last couple of years.

There were four letters in this last category and Owen found no ‘Club’ names among them that he did not recognize. This should make it comparatively easy to check them out.

He passed the sheaf on to Mahmoud.

‘I’d like to keep them for a bit, if I may,’ he said.

‘Of course.’

‘Can I go?’ asked Ahmed.

Nuri looked at Owen.

‘Unless the Mamur Zapt wishes for something else?’ he said.

Owen shook his head. The young man turned away immediately.

Nuri sighed.

The interview came to an end soon after and a servant showed them out.

They went into the house through a large, cool room, all marble and tiles, in which several people were sitting with drinks in their hands.

Among them was Ahmed. As Owen and Mahmoud entered, he ostentatiously turned his back. The woman beside him looked up at Owen with amusement. Owen caught a glimpse of a strong, beaky face and dark hair.

The other guests treated them with polite indifference. They were for the most part elderly, wealthy, Europeanized. In the upper levels of Cairene society it was fairly usual for women to be present and for alcohol to be served; but, Owen reflected, had any of the fundamentalist groups which had written to Nuri been watching, it would have added fuel to their denunciations.

He and Mahmoud walked back to the main street to find an arabeah. By mutual consent they walked slowly. In this wealthy suburb of Cairo the bougainvillaea spilled over the walls and the pepper trees and eucalyptus hung out across the road making it cool and shady. From the green recesses of the trees came a continuous purring and gurgling of doves.

‘A clear-cut case,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Circumstantial evidence, motive, confession.’

‘Believe it?’

‘Not for one moment,’ said Mahmoud.




CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_131d1c34-b978-51d5-81c9-e54f9f2610dc)


Owen could not give all his time to the Nuri Pasha affair. He had his ordinary work to do.

This morning it was the demonstration. One of his men had picked the rumour up in el Azhar, Cairo’s great Islamic university. It was supposed to be taking place that afternoon once the sun had moved off the streets. Intelligently, the man was staying in the university so that he could keep an eye on developments. His reports came every hour. It looked as if the thing was definitely on.

According to his most recent information, the demonstration would take place in Abdin Square, in front of the Khedive’s Palace. The students intended to march there in procession from the university. They would make their way in separate groups through the narrow mediaeval streets which surrounded el Azhar and assemble in the wider Bab Zouweleh, before the Mouayad Mosque. Then they would march along the Sharia Taht er Rebaa, cross the Place Bab el Khalk, and proceed past the Ecole Khediviale de Droit, at which point they would join the law students. From there it was a short step to Abdin Square.

‘Mounted?’ asked Nikos.

Nikos was the Mamur Zapt’s Official Secretary; a sharp young Copt.

Owen nodded.

‘With foot in reserve to mop up. I’ve already spoken to McPhee.’

‘I’ll check,’ said Nikos, rolling up the street plan.

‘And, just in case,’ said Owen, ‘I want both entrances to Abdin Square sealed off.’

‘Both?’

‘The two on the eastern side. The Gami’a Abdin as well as the Bab el Khalk.’

‘It shouldn’t be necessary,’ said Nikos.

‘I know. But I don’t want to risk any of them getting into Abdin Square.’

Nikos inclined his head to show that he had understood. He reached across the desk, took some papers from the out-tray and stuffed them under his arm along with the street map.

‘It means more men,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t a small mounted troop in the Square do instead?’

‘No. It would look bad.’

Nikos raised dark eyebrows. ‘That worries you?’

‘A bit,’ Owen conceded.

‘The Khedive is hardly going to complain.’

‘He might,’ said Owen. ‘Just to be difficult.’

Nikos made a dismissive gesture. He had a Cairene contempt for the powerless.

From along the corridor came the chink of cups and a strong aroma of coffee.

‘It’s not that, though,’ said Owen. ‘It’s the way it might come across in the papers. The international ones, I mean.’

Especially now, he thought, with the new Liberal Government in England feeling extremely sensitive about international opinion after the Denshawai business and trying to get out. He wondered how much Nikos knew. Enough, he suspected. Nikos wasn’t stupid.

Nor, in fact, was the Khedive. He was adept at finding pretexts to cause diplomatic trouble. There were plenty ready to help him. France for one, which had never forgiven the British for the way they had stayed on after crushing the Arabi rebellion. Turkey for another. After all, Egypt was still in theory a province of the Ottoman Empire, with a Head of State, the Khedive, who owed allegiance to the Sultan at Istanbul.

In theory. In practice, the British ran it, and Egypt’s real ruler, for over thirty years now, had been the British Agent; first Cromer and now Gorst. The Khedive appointed his Ministers and they were responsible to him through the Prime Minister and Cabinet for their management of the Departments of State. But at the top of each great Ministry Cromer had put one of his men. They did not direct, they advised; but they expected their advice to be taken, and if it was not, well, there was always the Army: the British Army, not the Egyptian.

And then, of course, there was the Mamur Zapt.

That was the reality. But it did not mean that appearances could be dispensed with. Egypt was still in principle a sovereign state, the Khedive still an independent sovereign. The British presence needed explaining.

The British story was that they were there by invitation and on a temporary basis. They would withdraw once Egypt’s finances were sorted out. Only they had been there for thirty years now.

His Majesty’s Government thought it best, in the circumstances, to emphasize that the British role in Egypt was purely an advisory one. The British Agent merely suggested, never instructed; the ‘advisers’ made ‘recommendations,’ not decisions; and the Army was kept off-stage. Appearances were important.

And so it would not do for the students to demonstrate outside the Palace. It would give all sorts of wrong impressions.

Nikos, of course, understood all this perfectly well. Indeed, like many sophisticated Cairenes, he rather enjoyed the ambiguities of the situation. Not all Egyptians, naturally, had such a developed taste for irony.

Curiously, the British themselves were not entirely at home with the position either. It was too complicated for the military and, even under Cromer’s strong hand, there was always tension between the civil administration, conscious of the diplomatic need to preserve appearances, and the army, impatient to cut through the web of subtleties, evasions and unstated limitations.

The Mamur Zapt inhabited the shadow between the two.

‘Keep McPhee informed,’ he told Nikos. ‘I’m going out later.’

He had an appointment with Mahmoud.

As Nikos left he nearly collided in the doorway with Yussuf, who spun the tray away just in time. Clicking his tongue at the departing Nikos, he slid the tray on to Owen’s desk.

‘The Bimbashi has a visitor,’ he announced. Yussuf was a great purveyor of news. ‘He told me to bring the cups.’

Like McPhee, Owen had his own service-issue mug, which Yussuf now half-filled with coffee. When they had visitors a proper set of cups was produced.

‘Oh,’ said Owen, and then, pretending interest so as not to hurt Yussuf’s feelings. ‘Who is he?’

‘From the Palace, I think,’ said Yussuf, gratified. ‘The Bimbashi looked unhappy.’

McPhee always found relations with the Khedive’s staff very difficult. On the one hand he had great respect for royalty, even foreign royalty; on the other, he knew that not all the Khedive’s requests were to be met. Some were acceptable to the British Agent, others were not, and McPhee lacked the political sense to know which was which. The adroit politicians of the Khedive’s personal staff ran rings round him, forever laying traps which he was forever falling into.

Owen was responsible through Garvin directly to the British Agent and had little to do with the Khediviate, something for which he was very grateful.

On this occasion, however, he was unable to keep out. Shortly after he had heard Yussuf’s slippers slapping away down the corridor, he heard them slap-slapping back. Yussuf appeared in the doorway.

‘The Bimbashi would like you to join him,’ he recited.

He saw that Owen had not finished his coffee.

‘I bring you a cup,’ he said.

The man from the Khedive was a Turk in his late fifties, with close-cropped hair and a grey, humourless face.

‘Guzman Bey,’ said McPhee.

He introduced Owen as the Mamur Zapt. The other barely nodded. Owen returned the greeting as indifferently as it was given.

McPhee sat stiff and uncomfortable.

‘It’s about Nuri Pasha,’ he said to Owen. ‘The Khedive is very concerned.’

‘Naturally,’ said Owen.

‘He would like to know what progress has been made.’

‘It’s very early days yet,’ said Owen, ‘but I believe the Parquet have the matter well in hand.’

‘What progress?’ said the man harshly.

‘A man is held. He has confessed.’

Guzman made a gesture of dismissal.

‘The others?’ he said.

‘The Parquet has onlyjust begun its investigations,’ Owen pointed out.

‘The Parquet!’ said the man impatiently. ‘And you? The Mamur Zapt?’

‘The case is primarily the concern of the Parquet,’ said Owen. ‘I am interested only in security aspects.’

‘Precisely. That is what interests the Khedive.’

‘I am following the case,’ said Owen.

‘No progress has been made?’

‘As I said—’ Owen began.

The man cut him short. ‘The British are responsible for security,’ he said to McPhee. ‘What sort of security is this when a statesman like Nuri Pasha is gunned down in the street?’

‘He was not gunned down,’ said Owen.

‘Thanks to Allah,’ said the man. ‘Not to you.’

Owen was not going to be provoked.

‘The Khedive has many valued friends and allies,’ he said evenly. ‘It is not easy to protect them all.’

‘Why should they need protection?’ said the Turk. ‘That is the question you have to ask.’

‘That is the question the Khedive has to ask,’ said Owen, counter-attacking.

The man gave a short bark of a laugh.

‘If he is not popular,’ he said, ‘then it is because he shares the unpopularity of the British.’

Owen drank up his coffee.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I am afraid that is a problem I cannot help you with.’ He stood up to go. ‘If you will excuse—’

‘The Khedive wants reports.’

‘Reports?’

‘Daily. On the progress you are making in tracking down Nuri Pasha’s killers.’

‘That is a matter for the Parquet.’

‘And the Mamur Zapt. Or so you said.’

‘Security aspects only.’

‘Security,’ said the Turk, ‘is what the Khedive is especially interested in.’

Owen pulled himself together.

‘If the Khedive would genuinely like reports,’ he said, ‘then he shall certainly have them.’

‘Send them to me,’ said Guzman. ‘Directly.’

‘Very well,’ said Owen. ‘I’ll see you get them directly from the Agent.’

‘The Khedive has spoken to the Agent. Directly to me. With a copy to the Agent.’

Owen found the Turk watching him closely. He put on a charming smile.

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Good!’ said the Turk. ‘See to it.’ And walked out.

McPhee swore softly to himself.

‘See to it!’ he reported. ‘I’ll bloody see to him. Just wait till I get to Garvin!’

‘He’s very confident,’ said Owen. ‘He must have got it fixed already.’

‘I’ll bloody unfix it, then. Or Garvin will. We can’t have the Mamur Zapt reporting to the bloody Khedive or where the hell will we be?’

Owen was thinking.

‘Gorst must have agreed.’

‘The stupid bastard!’

There was little liking among the old hands for the liberal Gorst.

‘If he has agreed,’ said Owen, ‘Garvin will find it hard to get him to change his mind.’

‘Stupid bastard!’ said McPhee again. He got up. ‘I’ll go straight to Garvin.’

‘Don’t let it worry you too much,’ said Owen.

McPhee stopped and turned and opened his mouth.

‘If the Khedive wants reports,’ said Owen, ‘he can have them.’

He winked deliberately.

‘All the same,’ said McPhee, soothed, ‘it’s the principle—’

Walking back down the corridor Owen thought that it was doubly advisable that no students should get into Abdin Square.

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud. ‘The Khedive has been on to us, too.’

They were sitting outside an Arab café in one of the small streets off the Place Bab el Khalk. The café was tiny, with one dark inner room in which several Arabs were sitting smoking from narghilehs, the traditional native water pipe, with its hose and water jar, too cumbersome to be carried around so hired out at cafés. Outside in the street was a solitary table drawn back into the shade of the wall. The café was midway between the Parquet and Owen’s office off the Bab el Khalk: on neutral ground.

‘Reports?’

Mahmoud nodded. ‘Daily.’

‘Why is he so worried?’ asked Owen.

Mahmoud shrugged. ‘Perhaps he’s scared. First Nuri, then him.’

‘There have been others,’ said Owen. ‘Why this sudden interest?’

‘He knows something that we don’t?’ offered Mahmoud.

‘If he does,’ said Owen, ‘he’s not going to tell us.’

‘He has his own people,’ said Mahmoud.

‘Guzman?’

‘And others.’

A forage mule made its way soporifically towards them. Its load was so huge as almost to span the narrow street. Owen wondered if they would have to move, but at the last moment the mule was twitched aside and the load, bowing almost to the ground, grazed the table.

They were meeting at Mahmoud’s request. Later that morning he had rung Owen proposing a coffee before lunch.

Mahmoud waited until the mule had passed on down the street and then said: ‘I have been checking on the gun.’

‘Find anything?’

‘Part of a consignment missing last March from the barracks at Kantara. They suspected a sergeant but nothing was ever proved. All they could get him for was negligence – he was in charge of the store. He’s done six months and is due out about now.’

‘Probably sold them,’ said Owen.

Mahmoud nodded. ‘That’s what they thought.’

‘No lead?’

‘He wouldn’t talk.’

‘He won’t talk now,’ said Owen, ‘especially if he’s due out.’

‘If he was told he’d be all right?’

‘Out of the goodness of his heart? No chance.’

‘If he thought he was just shopping an Egyptian—’ suggested Mahmoud tentatively.

His eyes met Owen’s.

He could be right, Owen was forced to admit. In the obscure code of the ordinary Tommy, shopping a mere Egyptian might not count.

‘Just worth trying.’

‘I was wondering—’ began Mahmoud, and then hesitated.

Owen knew what he was thinking. It would have to be an Englishman and would probably need to be army rather than civilian.

‘Would you like me to have a go?’

‘It might be best,’ said Mahmoud.

Owen lunched at the Gezira and then, unusually, went back to his office. Late in the afternoon, when the sun’s fierce heat had softened, he went again into the Place Bab el Khalk.

He was in a light linen suit and wore a tarboosh, the pot-like hat of the Egyptian, on his head. With his dark Celtic colouring and the years of sunburn he looked a Levantine of some sort. He carried an Arabic newspaper.

He chose a tea-stall on the eastern side of the Place and perched himself on a stool. The tea-seller brought him a glass of Russian tea.

From where he sat he could see along the Sharia Taht er Rebaa to where the massive battlemented walls of the Mosque el Mouayad rose on the left. One or two little bunches of black-gowned figures were already beginning to spill out on to the Sharia. From somewhere behind the Mosque came a confined noise which, as he listened, began to settle down into a rhythmic chanting.

‘Wa-ta-ni. Wa-ta-ni. Wa-ta-ni.’

The tea-seller came out from the other side of the counter and looked uneasily down the street.

‘There will be trouble,’ he said.

On the pavement behind him a barber was shaving a plump, sleepy-looking Greek. The barber put his razor in the bowl beside the chair and came out on to the street also.

‘Yes,’ he said, peering towards the Mosque, ‘there will be trouble.’

The Greek opened one eye. ‘What trouble?’

‘Students,’ said the barber, wiping the soapsuds off his hands on to his gown.

‘Again?’ said the Greek. ‘What is it this time?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the barber. ‘What is it this time?’ he called to a bean-seller at an adjoining stall.

The bean-seller was serving some hungry-looking students with bowls of ful madammas, red fava beans cooked in oil and garlic.

‘What is it this time?’ he asked them.

‘We don’t know,’ said the students. ‘It is the students of el Azhar, not us.’

‘They are going to Abdin Square,’ volunteered one of the students, ‘to demonstrate against the Khedive.’

‘Much good that will do,’ said the bean-seller. ‘They will just get their heads busted.’

‘Someone has to,’ said the student.

‘But not you,’ said the bean-seller firmly.

‘You sound like my father,’ said the student.

‘Your father and I,’ said the bean-seller, ‘are men of experience. Learn from us.’

‘Anyway, I cannot go with them today,’ said the student. ‘I have my exams tomorrow.’

‘Have not the el Azhar students exams also?’ called the Greek.

The students shook their heads.

‘They’re not like us,’ they said.

Owen guessed them to be engineering students. Engineering, like other modern subjects, was studied at the Governmental Higher Schools. At el Azhar, the great Islamic university of Cairo, the students studied only the Koran.

The students finished their bowls and left. The bean-seller began clearing away his stall. At the far end of the Taht er Rebaa a crowd was coming into view.

‘You carry on shaving,’ the Greek ordered. ‘I don’t want you running away before you’ve finished.’

‘Who is running away?’ said the barber. ‘There is still plenty of time.’

‘I am running away,’ said the bean-seller. ‘Definitely.’

At this time in the afternoon the Place Bab el Khalk was fairly empty. A few women, dressed in black and heavily-veiled in this part of the city, were slip-slopping across the square, water-jars on heads, to fetch water for the evening meal. Men sat in the open air cafés or at the street-stalls drinking tea. Children played on the balconies, in the doorways, in the gutter.

The bean-seller apart, no one appeared to be paying much attention to the approaching demonstrators, though Owen knew they were well aware of them. When the time came, they would slip back off the streets—not too far, they wouldn’t want to miss anything—and take refuge in the open-fronted shops or in the houses. Every balcony would be crowded.

He could pick out the head of the column distinctly now. They were marching in disciplined, purposeful fashion behind three large green banners and were setting a brisk pace. Behind them the Sharia was packed with black-gowned figures.

Some of the more nervous café-owners were beginning to fold up chairs and tables and move them indoors. Obliging customers picked up their own chairs and took them into the shops and doorways, where they sat down again and continued their absorbing conversations. There were no women on the street now, and children were being called inside.

The barber wiped the last suds from the Greek’s face with a brave flourish.

The Greek felt his chin.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘What about here?’

‘Perfect,’ said the barber.

‘Show me!’ commanded the Greek.

The barber reluctantly produced a tin mirror and held it before him.

‘It’s lop-sided,’ complained the Greek. ‘You’ve done one side and not the other!’

‘Both sides I have done,’ said the barber, casting an uneasy glance down the street. ‘It is just that one side of your face is longer than the other.’

The Greek insisted, and the barber began to snip and scrape at the offending part.

The tea-seller lifted his huge brass urn off the counter and took it up an alleyway. Owen felt in his pocket for the necessary milliemes.

The procession was about a hundred yards away now. At this stage it was still fairly orderly. The students had formed up into ranks about twenty abreast and were marching in a disciplined column, though with the usual untidy fringe around the flanks, which would melt away at the first sign of trouble.

The barber dropped his scissors into a metal bowl with a clang and hurriedly pulled the protective cloth from off the Greek. The Greek stood up and began to wipe his face. The barber threw his things together and made off down a sidestreet. As he went, the Greek dropped some milliemes in the bowl.

Owen folded his newspaper and stepped back into the protective cover of a carpet shop. The shop was, like all the shops, without a front, but the carpets might prove a useful shield if things got really nasty.

The Greek came over and stood beside him.

‘Not long now,’ he said.

The head of the procession entered the Place. Owen’s professional eye picked out among the black gowns several figures in European clothes. These were almost certainly not students but full-time retainers of the various political parties, maintained by them to marshal their own meetings and break up those of their rivals.

As the column marched past, the students seemed to become progressively younger. El Azhar took students as young as thirteen, and some of the students at the back of the column could have been no more than fourteen or fifteen.

The procession was now strung out across the Place, the bulk of it in the open space in the middle and the head approaching the street which led up to Abdin Square.

An open car suddenly shot out of a street at right angles to the procession, cut across in front of it, and stopped. In it was McPhee.

He stood up and waited for the marchers to halt. The four armed policemen in the car with him leaned over the side of the car and trained their rifles on the front row of the demonstrators.

The procession hesitated, wavered, and then came to a stop. Those behind bumped into those in front, spread round the sides and formed a semi-circle around the car.

McPhee began to speak.

The crowd listened in silence for a brief moment and then started muttering. One or two shouts were heard, and then more, and the chanting started up again. The crowd began to press forward at the edges.

Owen saw the first missiles and heard the warning shots.

Then, to the right, came the sound of a bugle and Owen looked up, with the crowd, to see a troop of mounted policemen advancing at the trot.

This was the pride of the Cairo Police: all ex-Egyptian Army cavalry men, all with long police service, experienced, tough and disciplined, mounted on best quality Syrian Arab stallions expertly trained for riot work.

They advanced in three rows, spaced out to give the men swinging room.

Each man had a long pick-axe handle tied to his right wrist by a leather thong.

At an order the handles were raised.

And then the troop was among the crowd. Handles rose and fell. The crowd opened up, and there were horses in the gaps, forcing them open still further. They split the crowd into fragments, and round each fragment the horses wheeled and circled, and the sticks rose and fell.

Whenever a group formed, the horses were on to them.

Students fell to the ground and either scrabbled away from the horses’ hooves or lay motionless. All over the Place were little crumpled heaps.

And now there were very few groups, just people fleeing singly, and no matter how fast they fled, the horses always outpaced them.

All this while, McPhee had stayed in the car, watching. Now he signalled with his hand, and out of the street behind him emerged a mass of policemen on foot.

They spread out into a long, single line and began to work systematically across the Place.

Anyone who was standing they clubbed. Behind them, in an area of the Place which steadily became larger, there was no one standing at all, just people sitting, dazed, holding their heads, or black gowns stretched out.

The last groups broke and fled, harried by the horses.

‘Very expertly done,’ said the Greek.

A student darted in among the stalls and tables close by them, a rider in hot pursuit. The student threw himself on the ground behind a stack of chairs. The horse halted and the policeman leaned over and hit the student once or twice with his stick. Then he rode away.

The student got to his feet, panting and sobbing. He looked back across the Place and saw the line of foot policemen approaching. In a second he had shot off again.

He reminded Owen of a hare on the run, the same heaving sides, panicked eyes, even, with his turban gone and his shaven head, the hare’s laid-back ears.

Another student rushed along behind the row of deserted street-stalls. He brushed right past Owen and then doubled back up an alleyway.

‘That one!’ snapped Owen. ‘Follow him! Find out where he goes!’

Georgiades, the Greek, who was one of Owen’s best agents, was gone in a flash.

The student was Nuri Pasha’s secretary and son, the difficult Ahmed.

The tea-seller put the urn back on his stall with a thump. Without asking, he drew a glass of tea and handed it to Owen.

‘Watching,’ he said, ‘is thirsty work.’

The only students on the square now were walking in ones and twos, sometimes supporting a third. Around the edges of the square, though, the foot police were still in action, prising out the students from their hiding-places among the stalls and chairs. Owen was pleased to see that McPhee had them well in hand. It was only too easy for them to get out of control in a situation such as this.

McPhee, helmetless and with his fair hair all over the place, was plainly enjoying himself. His face was lit up with excitement. It was not that he was a violent man; he just loved, as he would have put it, a bit of a scrap. Strange, thought Owen, for he was a civilian, an ex-teacher. On second thoughts perhaps it was not so strange.

He was using a cane, not a pick-handle. He had a revolver at his waist but had not drawn it throughout the whole business, even when he had been threatened in the car.

He was driving slowly round the square now, ostensibly chivvying the students, in fact, Owen noted, calling off his men.

At the far side of the Place the Mounted Troop had reformed and was sitting at ease, the horses still excited and breathing heavily, pick-handles now hanging loosely again from the riders’ wrists.

Georgiades reappeared.

He spotted the tea-seller and came up to the stall.

‘Here is a man who deserves to be favoured of Fortune,’ he said, ‘the first man back on the street with his tea.’

‘I shall undoubtedly be rich,’ said the tea-seller, ‘but not yet.’

He made Georgiades some mint tea. The Greek took the glass and stood casually by Owen.

‘See how our friend is already rewarded!’ he said to Owen. ‘Heads are the only thing damaged on the street today.’

‘And my head not among them,’ said the tea-seller.

He took the lid off the urn, looked inside and went to fetch some more water.





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