The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet (17 page)

“I
think he took them when he left the box,” said Georgiades. “He seemed to fumble
inside the box. The lid was open when I got there.”

McPhee
and Owen exchanged glances. Three was enough.
Enough with the
Carpet coming on.

“Got
nowhere,” said Owen.

“Could
be worse,” said McPhee. “At least we’ve got these. You did well,” he said to
Georgiades.

Georgiades
shrugged. He was as disappointed as they were.

One
of the constables shouldered the box and they started off along the street.
Owen felt too depressed to say anything.

They
had just turned the corner when there was a shout behind them. A small boy came
running up.

“Ya
effendi!” he hailed Owen.

“What
is it?”

“I
bring a message,” he panted, “from Abdul Kassem.”

Owen
turned sharply. He had forgotten about Abdul Kassem.

“What
is it?”

The
boy hung back.

“He
said I would be well rewarded,” he said.

“And
so you shall,” said McPhee, bending down to him. “How much was spoken of?” “One
piastre,” said the boy.

“Oh-h!”
said McPhee, affecting incredulity.
“A whole piastre?”

“Half
a piastre,” admitted the boy.

McPhee
fumbled in his pocket. “Here is a half piastre,” he said, “which you shall have
when you have spoken. The other half I might let you have if I think you have
told me correctly.”

The
boy nodded.

“Abdul
Kassem says: Come quickly.”

He
held out his hand.

“Is
that all?” asked McPhee.

“Yes,”
said the boy.

“Come
quickly?
Where to?”

“Give
me another piastre,” said the boy, “and I will take you.”

They
found Abdul Kassem waiting outside an old Mameluke house in the Haret el
Merdani. Soon after they had separated he had had the same idea as Owen. He had
remembered that there was a ruined mosque nearby with its tower still standing,
had climbed up that and then had had a good view of the rooftop chase. He had
seen Georgiades closing on his man, watched the man stoop and do something to
the box, and then had seen the man run off in the direction of the Mosque Darb
el Ahmah, whose distinct turquoise cupola had stood out among the other rooftop
features. He had descended from his own tower and run to the mosque, arriving
just in time to see the man slip out of the mosque itself and cross the square
in front of it. While on the tower he had had a good look at the man and was
sure that this was the same man. No, he had not been carrying anything, not in
his hands, but Abdul Kassem thought he had something stuffed in the front of
his shirt, for it bulged and hung rather than billowed. He had followed the man
down a sidestreet and seen him slip through the door of this house. And then he
had sent the boy.

“Good
work!” said Owen.

McPhee
was looking at him.

“OK,”
said Owen. “In you go!”

The
great gate of the house was slightly ajar, probably to let a breeze blow
through the courtyard. McPhee threw it wide open and the men rushed in. A
porter, asleep in a recess of the entrance, opened his eyes as they went past,
and then jumped up.

The
men fanned out. They knew the structure of a Mameluke house and worked through
systematically. The main reception rooms opened off the courtyard, and there
were various recesses in there where a man could hide. The other rooms on the
ground floor were either
servants’
rooms, mostly
cluttered around the main entrance, or storerooms. It took the men almost no
time to work through them all.

Georgiades looked at Owen inquiringly.
Nearly the whole of the upper portion of a Mameluke house was given up to the
harem. There were no proper bedrooms in the Western sense of the word. Any room
which was not being used for anything else would serve. Beds were just a few
cushions, a pillow and a padded blanket, which was rolled up in the daytime and
put in a cupboard.

The Mamur Zapt’s traditional right of entry
extended, uniquely, to harems but it was not one to exercise without thinking
about it.

“There’s no alternative,” said Owen.

Georgiades shrugged and ran up the stairs,
closely followed by his delighted men. As they spread through the upper part of
the house there were startled shouts and screams.

McPhee remained below.

“I’ll see no one gets out this way,” he
said, a little straightly.

Owen followed his men upstairs. The first
room he came to, the main room of the harem, extended through the whole first
floor of the house, from the old latticed windows at the front to the small
oriels at the back. It was dark and cool, so dark that at first he could not
see anything at all. Then his eyes picked out various women on divans, sitting
bolt upright with shock.

Afterwards, when Owen was questioned at the
club, he had to admit that he took in very little. He was looking for the man
and as soon as he saw the harem was occupied he knew it was unlikely the man
would be there. He had scanned the room to make sure and that had been that.

Required to furnish more detail, he had been
at a loss. No, they were all dressed. They had not been wearing veils, true.
No, he hadn’t noticed their faces, it had been dark. What had they been doing?
Chatting, as far as he could see. Oh, and one or two were embroidering or
sewing or something.

“Sewing!
You are a great
disappointment, Owen!”

No, he had seen nothing erotic, or
particularly exotic for that matter, either. His impression was they they were
just having a good gossip.

“They must have been bored to death!” said
someone.

“And you did nothing about it, Owen!” said
someone else. “I begin to have doubts about you.”
Etcetera.

What he did not tell them was that he had
seen someone he knew.

He
had been about to move on up to the next floor when his eye had picked out a
face against the gloom.

It
was Nuri’s daughter, the one he had met at the party.

Her
face had been rigid with anger.

“You!”
she said. “What are you doing here? Don’t you know it’s forbidden?”

“I’m
looking for a man.”

“Here?
You must be mad!”

“He
came in.”

“Into the harem?”

“Into
the house,” Owen admitted.

“He
has not been in here,” she said. “Nobody has come in here. No man would come in
here.”

“I
am sorry, then,” said Owen, turning away.

“You
don’t just go bursting into people’s houses like that!” she said. “Not even if
the man we’re looking for may have had something to do with the attack on your
father?” asked Owen.

Georgiades
appeared from upstairs and shook his head. He glanced round the room and
pointed to a small door which Owen had taken to be the door of a kazna, a large
cupboard in which such things as bedclothes were kept.

“Does
that go anywhere?”

“Why
not go in and find out?” said Zeinab.

Georgiades’s
hand was almost on the handle when the door opened of its own accord.

“What
is the meaning of this?” said a harsh, unpleasant voice which struck Owen as
oddly familiar.

Georgiades
fell back.

A
man came into the room, short, stocky, bare-chested, dressed only in red silk
pantaloons.

It
,was
Guzman.

CHAPTER 9

“You
have offended the Sirdar,” said Garvin. “You have offended the Khedive. You
have offended the Agent. And you’ve bloody offended me.”

He
picked up a piece of paper from his desk.

“I’ve
even had,” he said, “a letter of complaint from the Kadi about your desecrating
religious property.”

He
put the letter down.

“It takes
some doing to offend
all
the powers of Egypt in the space of about two
hours, but by God, Owen, you’ve done it. The Army, the Khedive, the Kadi—
Not
to mention me.
And for what?”
“We’ve got the grenades.”

“Not
all of them. And you missed the man.”

“How
was I to know it was Guzman’s house?” muttered Owen. “You could have asked,”
said the pitiless Garvin. “The meanest beggar in the street outside would have
told you. Instead, you went charging in. In fact, you spent the whole afternoon
charging round, like a sort of lunatic McPhee. If I want a McPhee as Mamur
Zapt,” said Garvin, “I’ll get a real one.”

This
was proving even more uncomfortable than Owen had expected.

“But
I don’t,” Garvin continued. “I really don’t. The Mamur Zapt isn’t supposed to
work like that. He’s supposed to work behind the scenes, off-stage. Not front
stage at the opera.
The bloody comic opera!”

Owen
felt this hit home. He sat there smarting but judged it best to keep quiet.
Garvin obviously expected some reaction. When none came he was slightly
off-put. His glare became half-hearted.

“It
was a mistake, wasn’t it?” he said, still aggressively but with rather less
vehemence. “Raiding that Syrian? I thought it would be. The trouble with a raid
is that it either works or it doesn’t. If you don’t wrap everything up it kills
off all the leads. I told you it would be better to put a man on the shop!”

If
we’d done that, thought Owen, we would not have got the grenades.

Perhaps
Garvin guessed what he was thinking, for the glare returned, defying Owen to
make his objection.

Owen
sat there impassively.

Satisfied,
Garvin relaxed.

“It
was my fault,” he said unexpectedly. “I shouldn’t have let you.” Now it was
Owen who was off-put. He found himself wanting to demur.

Garvin
was taking no notice, however. He was following his own train of thought.

“Maps!”
he said suddenly.
“Maps!”

“What?”
said Owen,
startled.

Garvin
turned to him.

“Maps,”
he said. “That’s what you need. You need to build up your own set of maps. The
Mamur Zapt is different from the police,” he went on. “The police are
interested in catching the criminal and punishing him. You’re not interested at
all in seeing he gets punished, and not even interested, really, in him getting
caught. What you’re interested in is seeing that certain things don’t happen.
You may have to catch people, you may have to keep them in prison, but that’s
all incidental. You may be able to do your job without it. In fact, it’s better
if you do do your job without it. You’ve got to anticipate, to know in advance
what’s going to happen and then to stop it.
To do that you
need information.
Contacts.
Maps.”

He
looked at Owen.

“I
shouldn’t have let you raid that Syrian, should I?” he said. “We should have
used him to help you build up one of those maps.
Syrian
connections throughout the city.
It would have been worth it.” “Even at
the price of a box of grenades?”

“Even
at the price of a box of grenades,” said Garvin seriously. He considered a
moment. “At the price of something going wrong at the Carpet, though—” He broke
off. “Well,” he said, “it’s never straightforward in this business.”

“Did
I tell you,” he asked, “that the Old Man wants you to be in charge of security
arrangements for the Carpet?”

“Still?”

Garvin
smiled wintrily. “I would think so,” he said.

As Owen went out Garvin said: “The Carpet’s
always a pig. There were riots all over Cairo when I was doing it.”

Owen knew the words were meant encouragingly.

Nikos came
in, unusually agitated.

“There’s a woman to see you,” he said.

“What sort of woman?” asked Owen. “Do you
want me to come out?”

It was rare for a woman to come alone to the
Mamur Zapt’s offices, or, indeed, any other offices for that matter. Usually if
a woman had business with an office she sent a man on her behalf or a male
relative. In the few cases where she came
herself
she
came accompanied. Occasionally, though, a countrywoman would come to see the
Mamur Zapt with a petition. She would wait self-effacingly outside, not
venturing to come in, hoping only to catch the Mamur Zapt as he went past. Owen
had left strict instructions that if a woman was seen waiting like that then he
was to be informed. He would go down to her as soon as he could.

“No,” said Nikos. He hesitated. Then he made
up his mind. “I will bring her along to you.”

Owen sat back surprised. He had very few
visits of that sort.

Nikos ushered in an elegant woman, dressed
in Parisian black. She wore a short, European-style veil but had bound her hair
in an expensive scarf so as to reduce the offence to Islamic susceptibilities.

Owen rose automatically from his desk. Nikos
withdrew. The woman came further into the room and lifted her veil so that Owen
could see her face. It was Nuri’s daughter, the one he had seen the day before,
Zeinab.

“I wanted to see you,” she said. “I thought
I could be of some use.”

Owen drew up a chair for her.

He felt unusually awkward.

For one thing, he had never before spoken to
a young Egyptian woman alone. Arab Egyptian, that was. He had spoken to French
Egyptians, Italian ones, Greek ones, but never previously to an Arab one. Even
the Greek ones were pretty difficult to get to know. The Levantines were nearly
as traditional as the Moslems where their women were concerned.
Especially their daughters.
Their wives were often restive
and it was relatively easy to find a married woman with a taste for adventure.
Their daughters, whether they had a taste or not, were seldom given
the opportunity to indulge it.
Young, single girls were kept as in
purdah. And this was all the more true, of course, of

Arab ones.
You simply never
saw them. Very occasionally you might meet a
very
Europeanized one in the most advanced of circles, as, indeed, he had done, but
even there they hardly ever detached themselves from the crowd. Your only
chance was someone as Europeanized, independent, unconventional and
strong-minded as Nuri’s daughter evidently was.
If, of
course, she was single.

For
another thing, there was this unfortunate business of the harem. “I really must
apologize,” he began. “I had no idea you were—” And stopped.

“A
member of the harem?” she finished for him icily. “I am not. Any more than you
are one of Guzman’s eunuchs.”

There
was a delighted intake of breath in the corridor. Owen wondered who was
listening. Indeed, now he noticed it, there was such a silence along the
corridor that probably
everybody
was listening.

He
got up and shut the door. That made it almost unbearably hot, so he turned on
the fan. That levitated the papers on his desk. He made a grab at them and
weighted them down with a couple of files. Some of them, however, escaped on to
the floor.

He
felt he was being excessively clumsy; in all ways.

He
looked up and found large dark eyes regarding him with definite amusement.

“Anyway,”
he said firmly, pulling
himself
together, “I am
sorry.” “It
was
a little unexpected,” she said.

“It
was a mistake,” said Owen. He felt an urgent need to explain. “We were chasing
a man. One of my people thought he came into the house.”

“Perhaps
he did,” she said cooperatively. “It’s a favourite trick in Cairo for
pickpockets being chased to run into the courtyard of an old house. There’s
usually a second entrance. They run in one and then straight out the other.”

“My
man’s experienced,” said Owen. “He ought to have looked out for that.”

“How
could he?
Unless he had run into the courtyard himself.”
“He had to be careful. The other man had grenades.”

“Yes,”
she said, “so I heard.”

It
must be all over Cairo now, he thought bitterly.

There
was a little silence. Then she said: “But that didn’t stop you from sending your
men in.”

“No.”

“I
was in the house,” she said. “So were others.”

“It
was a risk,” he admitted.

“Yes,”
she said. “It was.
For us!”

“I
had to take it,” said Owen.

The
dark eyes regarded him soberly. Then, suddenly, again there was the flicker of
amusement.

“How
definite of you!” she said drily.
“And how British!”

Owen
began to feel like McPhee again.

“I
am sorry,” he said again.

Then,
feeling that he was being unnecessarily defensive: “You were in the house. I
take it you were visiting?”

“Yes,”
she said firmly. Relenting, she added: “I wasn’t really visiting them, but
since I was in the house I thought I’d better call on them. It means so much to
them when someone calls. They lead such boring lives.”

Owen
wondered if she had been seeing Guzman and felt an unreasonable pang of
jealousy.

“You
remember that girl? Leila? The one my father made pregnant?”

“Mustafa’s
wife’s
—”

“So
that’s his name, is it?” she said. “Yes.
That one.
Well, my father is not such a monster as you think. He always looks after the
women. He asked Guzman to take her in as a washerwoman. Guzman is an old friend
of his. They worked together for the Khedive even before my father became a
minister. I was coming to see how she was.”

“I
thought she was staying with relatives?”

“She
is. She comes in daily. They live not far from here. They are very poor. They
couldn’t manage if she didn’t work.”

“Mustafa
spoke of others providing. Did he mean your father?” “Surely not,” she said.
“He would never accept anything from my father. That’s why my father had to be
indirect.”

Sometimes
it seemed to Owen that the whole of Egypt was bound together by intricate,
interlinked systems of obligations, favours and rewards, subtle reciprocities,
often to do with family, which connected people in unexpected ways. It was an
immensely powerful moral system and if you lived in Egypt you could not escape
its pressure. “This is my brother’s son,” Yussuf had said one day, presenting a
grubby little urchin, and Owen had known that he was expected to do something
about it. McPhee had found the boy a place in the stables and Yussuf’s standing
with his family had been saved. For someone like Nuri the system’s imperatives
probably counted for more than those of the courts.

“I
wanted to see you,” said Zeinab, and then broke off.

“Yes?”
said Owen, expecdng it to be something to do with her father.

“It’s
about Aziz.”

“Aziz?
The Syrian?”

“Yes.
The one whose house you raided yesterday.”

“And
rightly, too, this time,” said Owen. “That’s how we came upon the grenades.”

She
waved a hand dismissively.

“You
know him, too?”

“His wife.
She is Raoul’s
wife’s sister.”

Owen
remembered Raoul from Fakhri’s party and felt another pang of jealousy. He
wondered what, among this web of relationships, was the nature of Raoul’s
relationship with Zeinab.

“She
came to see Raoul this morning. She is very worried.”

She
hesitated.

“And
what precisely is she worried about?” asked Owen, remembering the face he had
seen at the door.

“Aziz
has been foolish,” Zeinab said. “She is worried that now you have found out
about him you will pursue him. He will make another mistake and then you will
put him in prison.”

If
only it was so simple, thought Owen. Out loud he said: “If he deals in grenades
he must expect to be in trouble.”

“He
would like to stop. He only began it because he needed the money.”

“That’s
what they all say.”

“Yes,
but in his case it was different. When he first came to Cairo, about ten years
ago, he worked very hard and built up a legitimate business. Then one of his
partners suddenly pulled out leaving him with huge debts. He had young children
and did not know where to turn. The chance came up, he took it,
it
helped—”