The Men Behind (2 page)

It was, actually, not uncommon for Owen to be followed. There would often be someone who wanted to have a word with him, to present a petition, make a complaint or lay information against somebody who was too shy to enter the imposing offices at the Bab el Khalk where Owen worked, preferring to wait until they could approach him in the time-honored manner of the East, face to face, in public, in space which was common and where neither was at a disadvantage.

But this was not like that. Anyone like that would walk just a few paces behind so that the great one would become aware of their presence and when he was so minded turn and address them. But there was no comforting shuffle behind him, just the empty street. And yet the feeling that he was being followed burned into his shoulder blades.

An old woman was sitting in the dust under the trees, guarding a huge heap of oranges. She was an old friend of Owen’s and he always greeted her, usually stopping to purchase a few oranges to make a drink with. The oranges were large and green and gave off a pungent smell.

“You’re a strange man,” she said today.

“Why, mother?”

“It’s a strange man who has two shadows.”

Owen thanked her for the warning, bought his oranges and went on.

He left the trees behind him and was walking now between old Mameluke houses. Their walls rose directly from the street in a steep unbroken line until high overhead a row of corbels allowed the first floor to project out over the heads of the passers-by. Higher still, heavily latticed oriel windows carried the harem rooms, where the women lived, a further two feet over the street.

At ground level, though, there was only the high, unbroken line of the wall and the occasional heavy, studded door barred against strangers. All the doors seemed shut. There seemed no escape from the street except that far ahead he could see a break in the line of the houses.

He suddenly felt an intense prickly sensation behind his shoulders.

Just ahead of him he could see a door which was not properly shut. He slowed down, hesitating.

The prickly feeling suddenly became overwhelming. He pushed at the door and then, as it swung back, leaped through it.

The door crashed back against an inside wall and then swung out again. As it closed he jammed his shoulder behind it and held it shut until he could pull the heavy wooden bolts across.

Then, sweating and feeling rather foolish, he stood looking into the inner courtyard.

At this time of day, with the sun directly overhead and the walls offering no shadow, it was, of course, deserted. Along one side, though, was a
takhtabosh
, a long recess with a carved wooden roof supported in front by pillars, which gave it a cool, cloisterlike effect. This was where superior servants might be expected to sit and Owen was slightly relieved to see nobody there.

He walked down the
takhtabosh
to the other end. As he had hoped, there was a smaller door leading out on to a street beyond. It was one of the oldest tricks in the game in Cairo for a thief pursued by the police to dash in at one door and then immediately out at the other while the police were still requesting permission to enter by the first. Owen had often been thwarted by it himself.

The street beyond was a small back street in which there was nothing but one or two donkeys, hobbled and left to doze. The sand here was worn so fine that it was almost silvery and reflected the sun unbearably into his eyes.

Again Owen hesitated. It would be easy now to slip away through the side streets. But the Mamur Zapt, Head of Cairo’s Secret Police, ought to be of sterner stuff. Reluctantly he turned left and went back parallel with the way he had come.

After a little way a narrow alley ran back between the houses. He leaped straight across it and braced himself against the opposite wall. Nothing happened. The alleyway was empty.

He began to walk deliberately along it, noting in passing anything which might offer protection, but keeping his eyes steadily on the daylight at the other end of the alleyway. If anyone looked into the alley he would see them first and the second or two it would give him, while their eyes got used to the darkness, would be all that he would have to get out of their line of fire.

He himself was unarmed; a situation which, he told himself fervently, he would remedy as speedily as possible, if he ever got out of this.

The light at the other end of the alleyway came nearer. He found himself sweating profusely.

It was getting so close now that if anyone appeared, his best chance was to jump them. He tensed himself in readiness.

He was at the entrance into the alleyway now. Directly ahead was the broad thoroughfare of the Masr el Atika.

For a moment he listened and then cautiously, very cautiously, he stuck his head out and looked up and down the street. At first it seemed deserted. But then, at the very far end, he thought he saw, just for an instant, two men. He had time to notice only that they were in European-style shirts and trousers, and then they were gone.

Is this the way,” demanded the note, “that the Khedive’s servants should be treated?”

Privately, Owen suspected it was. However, as the note had come from the Khedive himself he thought it politic to reply soothingly, deploring the insult offered to the Khedive and the injury suffered by his servants, and assuring His Highness that he would do all he could to track down the malefactors.

“You’d better go, too,” said Nikos, the Mamur Zapt’s Official Clerk. “It won’t do any good but it will look better that way.”

So Owen betook himself to the Khedive’s afflicted servant, Ali Osman Pasha. The previous day, on his way home from an audience with the Khedive, Ali Osman had been set upon by a mob. His arabeah had been overturned and he himself desperately injured. If his driver had not been able to sound the alarm, he would undoubtedly have been killed. He was now at home recovering from his wounds.

Owen walked in past the guardian eunuchs, named according to custom after flowers or precious stones, across the courtyard, his feet crunching in the gravel, and into the reception room, the
mandar’ah
, with its sunken marble floor and fountain playing. There was a dais at the back with large feather and silk cushions, on which a man was lying.

He groaned as he saw Owen and waved a hand. Slaves rushed to escort Owen across the room.

“My dear fellow,” said the recumbent man. “
Mon très, très cher ami!
”

“I am sorry to see you so afflicted, Pasha,” said Owen.

“I was fortunate to escape with my life. They would have killed me.”

“Outrageous!”

“Savages! Jacobins!”

Like most of the Egyptian upper class, the Pasha habitually spoke French. He looked on the French culture as his own, identifying, however, more with Louis-Philippe than with the present Republic.

“They shall be tracked down.”

“And tortured,” said Ali Osman with relish. “Flayed alive and nailed out in the sun.”

“Severely dealt with.”

“I would wish to be present myself,” said the Pasha. “In person. Please make arrangements.”

“Certainly. Of course, it may all take a little time… Legal processes, you know…”

Ali Osman raised himself on one arm.

“Justice,” he admonished Owen, “should be swift and certain. Then people know what to expect.”

“Absolutely! But, Pasha, surely you would not wish it to be too soon? Might not your injuries prevent—?”

“Grievous though they are,” said Osman, “for this I would make a special effort.”

He collapsed on his face again and a eunuch hastily began to massage him.

“May I inquire into the nature of your wounds?” asked Owen.

“Severe.”

“No doubt. But—” eyeing the pummeling Ali Osman was receiving from the eunuch—“confined to the surface?”

“The bruising goes deep.”

“Of course. But—bruising only? No stab wounds?”

“Some of them had knives. It was merely a matter of time.”

“Yes. It was fortunate that your driver—”

Ali Osman interrupted him. “They let him off lightly. Why did they pick on me? Why didn’t they beat him? He’s used to it, after all; he wouldn’t have felt it as much.” He seemed to be expecting an answer.

“The great,” said Owen diplomatically, “are the target for the world’s envy.”

“Ah,” said Ali Osman Pasha, “there you have it.”

He lay silent for a while.

“Of course,” he said suddenly, “they didn’t think of this themselves. They were put up to it.”

“You think so?”

“I am sure of it. And I know who is behind it.”

“Really?”

“Abdul Maher.”

“Abdul Maher?”

“Yes.”

“But, Pasha—”

Abdul Maher was a veteran politician, an intimate of the Khedive, a noted public figure. He had occupied some post or other in the last dozen Governments.

The Pasha was looking at him solemnly.

“I know,” he said.

“You must have some reason—”

“Motive,” said Ali Osman.

“Motive?”

“He wished to take my place. Supplant me in the Khedive’s favor.”

“I see,” said Owen, as light began to dawn. “And that would be particularly important just at the moment.”

“Yes.” Ali Osman motioned to him to come closer.

“This is for your ear alone, my friend,” he breathed. “His Highness is close to making a decision. Very close. It has been difficult. He has had to choose between those he knows are loyal to him, those who have served him well in the past. And those others who claim—” Ali Osman snorted
—“claim
, they speak for the new.”

“But surely Abdul Maher—”

“Belongs with the old, you think? Because he has been part of every Government for the last twenty years? You would be wrong, my friend. Because there is the cunning of the man. He claims he speaks for the new!”

“I cannot believe that the Khedive—”

“Of course not. The Khedive knows him far too well. But he is plausible, you see, not just to the Khedive but to others. He speaks well and some may believe him. So the Khedive—well, over the past week or so the Khedive seems to have been inclining to him. But yesterday he— His Highness, that is—told me personally that Abdul Maher is absolutely
out
.”

The Pasha looked at Owen triumphantly.

“So, my friend, if Abdul Maher is
out
, someone else must be
in
.”

“You don’t mean—”

Ali Osman smiled importantly.

“I think, my friend, that I have reason to hope.”

Owen pulled himself together.

“Well, Pasha, I can only hope you’re right.”

“It is for the sake of the country, of course.”

“Of course. And—and you think that Abdul Maher may have got wind of this—change of fortunes and tried to warn you off?”

“Not warn,” said Ali Osman reproachfully. “Kill.”

“Attack, anyway. That Abdul Maher may have been behind your unfortunate experience yesterday?”

“Exactly,” said Ali Osman with satisfaction.

Owen reflected.

“What are you going to do?” asked Ali Osman.

“I shall certainly treat your suggestions very seriously. I shall start investigations at once.”

“Excellent.” Ali Osman’s face clouded slightly, however. “How long do you think it would be before you were in a position to arrest him?” he asked, a trifle anxiously.

“Oh, a week or two. Say two or three. Perhaps four.”

“You don’t think you could do it more quickly?”

“I would have to complete my investigations.”

“Of course. Of course.”

Ali Osman still looked unhappy, however.

“You don’t think,” he said tentatively, “you don’t think vou could, oh, let it be known, publicly, I mean, that you are investigating Abdul Maher?”

“Why would I want to do that, Pasha?”

“Oh, the public interest. It would be in the public interest. The people ought to know.”

“And the Khedive?”

“The Khedive ought to know, too,” said Ali Osman, straightfaced.

Owen smiled. He understood Ali Osman’s political maneuvers perfectly.

“I am sure,” he said, getting up to go, “that this is something you will manage very expertly yourself.”

“Ali Osman?” said Nuri Pasha incredulously. “The man’s a fool. He stands no chance whatever.”

“He seems to think he does.”

“The man’s a joke!”

“The Khedive has given him a wink. So he says.”

“Utter nonsense!”

Nuri looked, however, a little upset.

“Abdul Maher has fallen out of favor.”

“Abdul Maher never was in favor. The Khedive detests him.”

“Ali Osman considers him his chief rival. He believes he was behind the recent attack on him.”

“Ali Osman has a fertile imagination,” said Nuri. “Unfortunately, it vanishes entirely the moment he gets in office.”

“The attack, at any rate, was genuine.”

“Was he much hurt?” asked Nuri, with pleasure rather than concern.

“Bruised a little.”

“Oh dear,” said Nuri.

“That, actually, was why I’ve come to see you. There have been a number of such attacks recently. I wanted to be sure that you were all right.”

“Thank you. As you see, I am clinging to life with the skin of my teeth. How is Zeinab?”

Zeinab was Nuri’s daughter and a more than close friend of Owen.

“She is very well, thank you. She reinforces my concern.”

“Have you any particular reason for concern?”

“No. It is just that this could be a time for settling old scores.”

A few years before, Nuri Pasha had been the Minister responsible for carrying through the prosecution and subsequent punishment of some villagers who had attacked a party of British Officers, wounding two and killing one. The punishment, on British insistence, had been exemplary; and Nuri had never been forgiven for it.

Nuri shrugged his shoulders.

“It is never not a time for settling old scores,” he said. “That is one of the things one just has to get used to.”

“Has anything come up?”

“Not out of the ordinary.”

“Threats?”

“As always.”

Nuri passed him a note. It read: “
To the blood-sucking Nuri: The people have not forgotten. Your time is coming. Prepare, Nuri, prepare
.”

Owen passed it back.

“You have been receiving notes like this for years.”

“And ignored them,” said Nuri, “confident in the assumption that the Egyptian is always more ready to tell what he is going to do than actually to do it.”

“A reasonable assumption. In general. However, just at the moment I think I would avoid testing it.”

“Have you a suggestion?”

“How about a holiday? The Riviera? Paris?”

Nuri, a total Francophile, shook his head with genuine regret.

“Circumstances, alas, keep me here.”

Owen could guess what the circumstances were. Nuri was another of the ever-hopeful veteran politicians. Owen thought, however, that he might be disappointed this time, along with Ali Osman and Abdul Maher. He was too identified with the old regime. There was a need, after Patros, for someone who could satisfy the Nationalists— satisfy, without giving in to them.

“Would you like a bodyguard?”

“The police?” said Nuri skeptically. “Thank you, no. I feel safer without. I have, in fact, taken certain steps already.”

Nuri directed Owen’s attention to two ruffians lurking in the bougainvillea behind him. They were Berbers from the south and armed from head to foot. They beamed at him cordially.

“I have no fears should there be an attack on me at close quarters. And when I go out I take two Bedawin with me as well. They are excellent shots and used to people attempting to shoot them in the back. No, the only thing that worries me is a bomb.”

“Surely there is no question of that?”

“There have been rumors,” said Nuri.

There were indeed rumors. Cairo was full of them. Owen’s agents brought fresh ones in every day. They came from the Court, from the famous clubs—the Khedivial, frequented by Egyptians and foreigners, the Turf and the Sporting Club, frequented by the British—from the colleges and university, from the cafés and bazaars.

The ones from the Moslem University of El Azhar and the colleges were the most alarming but it was there that the gap between rhetoric and reality was at its greatest. Or so Owen hoped.

The ones from the Court were alarming in a different way, for they were almost exclusively concerned with the current maneuvering about the Khedive, with who had his favor, who didn’t, who might be in, who was definitely out. There seemed to be no sense of anything beyond the narrow confines of the Court, no awareness of the impact the delay was having on the country at large.

The rumors from the Club were testimony to the general jitteriness. Owen tended to discount them, not because they were insignificant—in certain circumstances they might be very significant indeed—but because he felt he knew them already and understood them.

It was the rumors from the cafés and bazaars that he gave most attention to, for they were a gauge of the temperature of the city. It was from them that he would learn if things were getting out of hand, if there was a danger of things boiling over.

At the moment he did not get that feeling. The city was tense, certainly, and, given its normal volatility, there was plenty of potential for an explosion. In a city with over twenty different nationalities, at least five major religions apart from Islam, three principal languages and over a score of minor ones, four competing legal systems and, in effect, two Governments, the smallest spark could set off a major conflagration. Owen always had the feeling that he was sitting on a vast, unstable powder keg.

But he didn’t have that feeling more than usual. There was trouble in the city, yes, there were incidents, dozens of them, but he felt they would all fade away—in so far as they ever could fade away—if only the Khedive would stop his bloody dithering and form a new Government.

Until that happened he just had to hold on and damp things down. On the whole he thought he would be able to manage that. The Pashas were no great problem. After the attack on Ali Osman they would all be prudently keeping out of sight. The demonstrations, the stone-throwing, the attacks on property, they could all be handled in the normal way.

Even that following business was all right, so long as it stayed at following. It was only if it went beyond that that he would worry.

As in the case of Fairclough.

The attack on Fairclough, simply as crime, did not concern Owen. Investigating it was not his business. Nor was it, curiously, that of the police. In Egypt investigation of crimes was the responsibility of the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, the Parquet, as it was known.

What concerned Owen as Mamur Zapt were the political aspects of the affair. The Mamur Zapt was roughly the equivalent of the Head of the Political Branch of the CID in England. Only roughly, because the post was unique to Cairo and included such things as responsibility for the Secret Police, a body of considerable importance to some previous Khedives when they were establishing their power but now significant only as an intelligence-gathering network.