Donkey-Vous (11 page)

One of them, however, after a while summoned up enough assertiveness to ask Owen if he wanted a donkey. He seemed quite relieved when Owen said he didn’t. The ice thus broken, however, he seemed emboldened enough to want to chat.

“You’re often over there, aren’t you?” he said.

“We have been lately,” said Owen.

“Ever since that old man went from the terrace. That was a smart move! No one knows who did it or even how it was done. Smart work!”

“I’ll bet they’ll make a lot of money,” said one of the other boys enviously.

“A hundred thousand piastres!”

They shook their heads almost in disbelief.

“I wouldn’t mind that,” said one.

“They’ll have to share it.”

“Still…”

It was obviously the main topic of conversation in the neighborhood.

“What I’d do with it—!” said a boy dreamily.

“You wouldn’t have it long. The police would get you.”

“Not before I’d spent it. It would be worth it.”

“Anyway,” one of the other boys put in, “the police haven’t found out yet and maybe they never will!”

“If you could get away with it—!”

“One hundred thousand piastres!”

The incident was fueling pipe-dreams all along the Street of the Camel, thought Owen. That was another reason why, even if Moulin were released, it could not be allowed to rest.

“You were talking to Daouad,” said the first donkey-boy diffidently.

“Was I?”

“Yes. Over there!”

He pointed across the street to the other donkey-vous.

“I know Daouad,” he said with pride. “He’s going to marry my sister!”

“Ah. I think I heard them speak of it.”

“It won’t happen,” said another boy spitefully. “Your family can’t pay a dowry big enough for someone like Daouad.”

“My sister’s beautiful.”

“That may be. But someone like Daouad isn’t looking for beauty, not when he marries, that is. He’ll want money.”

“My uncle may help us.”

“Your uncle!”

“He’s doing well. He’s just bought a new horse for his arabeah.”

“To go with his old one. One new horse, one old horse, that isn’t a fortune!”

“Your uncle drives an arabeah, does he?” asked Owen. Arabeah-drivers were generally one up from donkey-boys, though this would have been hotly disputed by the donkey-boys across the road.

“Yes,” said the first boy proudly.

“One of those over there?”

“No. He is in the Ataba el Khadra. Sometimes he brings people to the hotel.”

“Does he ever take people from the hotel?”

“They wouldn’t let him! Not those drivers over there!”

“He took someone last week.”

“Ah, but that was different.”

“Why was it different?” asked Owen.

“Because he was only picking someone up from the hotel. There was someone in the arabeah already.”

“Does that often happen—other carriages come?”

“No. Not often.”

“It happened the other day, though, didn’t it?” said one of the other donkey-boys with a grin.

They all laughed.

“It was for that woman, the one your uncle picked up. We know whose carriage it was, too!”

“A posh one,” suggested Mahmoud.

“Very posh. A bit different from your uncle’s,” they said to Daouad’s friend, who appeared to be something of a butt; though perhaps they were merely envious.

“All the same, your uncle did pick her up,” said Owen consolingly.

“That was on another day. She’s popular, that one.”

“Did he pick up anyone with her?”

“A man.”

“I didn’t know your uncle’s arabeah would take three people, Ali,” said one of the donkey-boys.

“It can do.”

“If they sit on each other’s knees.”

“That new horse of your uncle’s would have to work hard.”

“Because the old one doesn’t.”

“A two-man arabeah will take three people,” Ali insisted. “But not your uncle’s.”

The conversation seemed to be setting into a groove. Owen and Mahmoud walked slowly back across the street. They would pick up the question of Ali’s uncle and his passengers later.

They took an arabeah themselves to the police headquarters at the Bab el Khalk. That was where Owen’s own office was but they weren’t going there. Instead, they went down to the basement and got a clerk to bring them the files of the hotel dragomans.

There was little in them: application forms for a dragoman’s license (all the dragomans could write); health certificates (in case of contagious diseases) and testimonials. There were quite a lot of these, copied out in the ornate script of the bazaar letter-writer. Many were from former guests at hotels, some implausibly effusive, others deliberately ambiguous. Most were politely appreciative, one or two genuinely perceptive. Of Osman someone had commented: “You can trust this man absolutely provided you pay him more than anyone else does.” The testimonial was written in English and transcribed faithfully by the letter-writer. Of Abdul Hafiz someone had written, again in English: “Can be relied on for confidential commissions.” Owen wondered what they were.

Mahmoud went through all the files, including the ones of those dragomans who had been at the Pyramids on the day Moulin had disappeared. He concentrated particularly, though, on the two who had been in the corridor. One of these was Osman.

Osman had been at Shepheard’s longer than any other dragoman, a tribute to his dexterity if not necessarily to his integrity. He was better educated than the other dragomans, having been not only to the madrisseh, the secondary school, but also, for a time, to the University of El Azhar. The university admitted students at an early age and Osman had gone there when he was thirteen and left when he was fifteen, without completing his studies. At El Azhar these were mainly of a religious character. It could well be that Osman’s bent was more for the secular, since he had started by serving in a hotel and worked gradually toward the status of dragoman.

The other dragoman who had been in the corridor, Selim, was more of a shadowy figure. He had worked for some time at Luxor before coming to Cairo and had developed there a vivid but not necessarily accurate knowledge of antiquities which stood him in good stead when he took parties to visit the Pyramids.

The only thing of interest about Abdul Hafiz was that he was a Wahhabi. It was something Owen might almost have guessed from Abdul’s reaction to Osman’s tricks with the cigar smoke, for the Wahhabis were a strict sect with severe standards; so severe, indeed, that it was a little surprising to find Abdul in the post of a dragoman, which would necessarily bring him into contact with the more indulgent standards of the West. Life, and poverty, however, forced compromise on even the strictest and no doubt Abdul, like many Cairenes, was glad of the money. Certainly he had performed his duties, according to the testimonials, in exemplary fashion.

Owen had heard nothing for a while from either Berthelot or from Madame Moulin and suspected he was being deliberately kept ignorant of developments. That there were developments became clear when he received a phone call from his friend Paul at the Consulate-General.

“Keep off Moulin for a bit,” he said.

“Is that an order or a diplomatic request?”

“It’s a Diplomatic Request to us, it’s an order to you.”

“From the French?”

“Who else.”

“It means they’re going to pay.”

“Very likely,” Paul agreed.

“They’re going to meet the kidnappers’ demands.”

“That’s right. And they don’t want you mucking it up this time.”

“Is it really a Diplomatic Request?”

“Yes.”

“And the Old Man has agreed?”

“Why not? It doesn’t cost us anything. And it’s about time we did something to oblige the French.”

“It’s the principle,” Owen complained.

“There are several principles involved. One is not to give in to kidnappers. The other is to oblige the French when it doesn’t matter. The second principle has higher priority at the moment.”

“It hasn’t usually.”

“That’s why it has now. They’re getting restive, not just over the contracts, and we need to give them a sop.”

“It’s OK from the point of view of Moulin himself, poor sod,” said Owen.

“Quite right. A touch of compassion. We have a heart too. I told the French that only this morning.”

“It’s just that it might encourage other people to do the same.”

“Kidnap Frenchmen? Well, as long as it’s Frenchmen…”

“It could be anybody.”

“I know. I’m not suggesting you drop the case. I’m just suggesting you take a break.”

“Go to Luxor?”

“Well…”

“I thought you were saying the other day I didn’t need a break?”

“You don’t. But what you do need for a couple of days is a change of activity. Preferably one which would take you out of Cairo.”

“OK,” said Owen resignedly. “Two days, is it?”

“Make it three. I’ll let you know if you can come back earlier.”

Zeinab’s father, Nuri Pasha, had offered to lend Owen a house in the country, so Owen took him up on the offer. It was a small estate about forty miles out of Cairo with cotton fields and orange trees. Owen found it interesting to ride around the estate and see the work that went on: the picking of the cotton, the threshing of the corn with buffaloes, the milking of the buffaloes and the watering of the oranges. Zeinab did not and sulked most of their stay. Owen had hoped this might count as the holiday he had promised her. Zeinab, comfortable only in Cairo and Paris, made it clear it did not.

No message came from Paul, so they took the full three days. When they got back to the station one of Paul’s bearers was waiting for them. He handed Owen an envelope. Owen opened it. Within was a single sheet of paper on which was written simply (!)—an exclamation mark. There was nothing else.

Later Owen found out that the proposed exchange had fallen through. The kidnappers, at the last moment, had insisted on more money. “If we give in they’ll merely up it again,” Madame Moulin had said, and declined to deal.

It didn’t take Georgiades very long to find out who Ali’s uncle was, nor to find out that on one occasion he had indeed picked up Madame Chévènement and Berthelot from the hotel. And it was the work of the time it takes to drink a cup of tea to find out where he had taken them. It took, however, rather longer to persuade Ali’s uncle to take Georgiades and Owen to the spot himself, but this was because Ali’s uncle, seeing the chance of a bargain, had stuck out for an inordinately large sum of money. In the end, though, he was persuaded to take them there for not much more than the price of an ordinary fare.

The arabeah was waiting for them in the Ataba el Khadra, the busy square from which nearly all the tramways of Cairo started. Georgiades had considered, since it was such a hot day, asking Ali’s uncle to pick them up from the Bab el Khalk but had decided that so close a proximity to the police headquarters would alarm him unnecessarily.

He was alarmed enough as it was, staring fearfully at them from his perch at the front of the cab. The cab itself was old but roomy, with torn, shabby seating leather and a distinct smell of sweat. The two white horses were twitching at the flies with their hennaed tails and Owen was able to impress Georgiades by referring familiarly to the obvious newness of one of them.

New or not, it shared its senior’s obvious reluctance to raise its pace above a steady amble. The place they were going to was on the outskirts of the city and Owen soon realized that it was going to take them a long time to get there.

He used the time to bring Georgiades up to date on recent developments: such as the collapse of the arrangements to ransom Moulin.

“They’re getting cocky, aren’t they?” said Georgiades. “One hundred thousand piastres is a lot of money. You’d think they’d take it and run.”

“They think they can make more. That’s the trouble about giving in too quickly. It gets taken as a sign of weakness.”

“You’ve got to start dealing at some point. It’s hard to get it right.”

“If you have to start dealing.”

“If you don’t, you get what that poor bastard Tsakatellis got.” The arabeah turned toward the river and began to go across the bridge. They got the first puff of the river breeze.

“Incidentally,” said Georgiades, “about Tsakatellis; you talked to his mother. Did you talk to anyone else in the family?”

“Only the Copt who ran the shop.”

“It might be interesting to talk to someone else. In the family.”

“She rather gave me the impression she was in charge.”

“Greek mothers are like that,” said Georgiades, sighing. “She handled the whole kidnapping thing herself.”

“That’s why I’d like to talk to someone else about it. Do you mind if I do?”

“Go ahead,” said Owen. “You’re the expert on things Greek.”

Crossing the bridge, revived by the breeze, the horses had positively—well, at least strolled. Now they seemed to have stopped altogether.

“What’s going on?” said Georgiades.

“Nothing is going on,” said Ali’s uncle.

“I know. That’s why I’m asking. Why have the horses stopped?”

“They have not stopped,” said Ali’s uncle, hurt. “They have merely slackened their pace.”

“Why?”

“There is a camel in front.”

“Then overtake it.”

“I cannot.”

“Why not?”

“Because in front of the camel there is a cart.”

“Cannot you pass both of them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because coming in the opposite direction is a donkey with a load.”

Georgiades leaned out to inspect.

“The donkey is still far away. Even your horses could pass. Where is your spirit, man? Are you not an arabeah-driver?” Thus goaded, Ali’s uncle attempted to overtake, but so half-heartedly that in the end he was obliged to cut in on the cart, which earned him a torrent of abuse from the carter. Instead of instantly responding in kind, as most arabeah-drivers would have done, delighted at the chance to display their own rhetorical skills, he cracked his whip over his horses and scuttled away fearfully. He seemed as low-spirited as his nephew.

“How did Izkat Bey come to choose him?” asked Owen, astonished.