The Men Behind (9 page)

“That seems a very reasonable compromise,” said Mahmoud.

Mohammed Bishari appeared slightly relieved.

“I was hoping that Mr. Bishari might be able to assist me by letting me have a look at his notes.”

“You have received copies of my reports,” said Mohammed Bishari.

“Ah yes.”

Mahmoud grinned. “I am sure we can do better than that,” he said, “in the circumstances.”

“You can have them,” said Bishari, “though I don’t know that you’ll find them very helpful. Frankly, we weren’t getting anywhere.”

“It was help with the identification that I was hoping for.”

Mohammed Bishari shook his head.

“No such luck,” he said. “Truly.”

Mahmoud and Bishari left together, but a few moments later as Owen was walking along the road Mahmoud caught up with him.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

“Reasonably. Thanks anyway. You’ve been a great help.” Owen hesitated. “I’m still puzzled, though. Why is the Parquet taking this line? What’s special about this case?”

After a moment Mahmoud said: “It’s not the case that is special. It’s the circumstances.”

“I can see the political situation is something special. But why should that affect the case? The Parquet doesn’t usually take a purely Nationalist line. Not overtly, that is. Why now?”

“Can’t think,” said Mahmoud. He looked at Owen deadpan. “Perhaps our Minister has aspirations?”

“That
would
make a difference,” said Paul. “He wouldn’t want to be identified with the British. Not just now.”

“Pity about the case.”

“It’s only hanging fire. They’ll pick it up again once the Khedive’s come to a decision.”

“Any sign of that?”

“None.”

“Does he stand a chance?”

“He’d be good. He’s bright.”

“Doesn’t that rule him out?”

“Now, now,” said Paul. “Though it’s certainly true the Khedive’s scared stiff of him. Not just because he’s bright but because the Khedive thinks he’s too radical. The Khedive wants Nationalism without the pain. But Sa’ad is actually in quite a strong position. He’s got a strong following in the Assembly and he’s popular in the country as well.”

“And just at the moment he doesn’t want to risk that popularity?”

“A bit more than that. He wants to capture Nationalist support. Then he can go to the Khedive and say, look, I’ve got the Nationalists in my pocket. Appoint me and you don’t have to worry about them. It’s a strong card.”

“A winning one?”

“The Khedive’s resisting. He’s frightened of Sa’ad and hopes that if he hangs on a bit, Sa’ad’s support will crumble. Sa’ad on the other hand reckons that if he’s seen to be riding the wave then he’ll come in with it.”

“So we just have to sit and wait?”

“That’s it.”

“Oh, good,” said Owen. “That’s just what I need.”

Outside in the yard Owen could hear scuffling.

“God protect us!” someone cried in an agitated voice.

There were other cries of alarm. A door banged and feet came running. An orderly burst into the room.

“Effendi! Come quickly! Come quickly indeed!”

“What is the matter?” said Owen, rising from his desk.

The orderly pulled at him.

“Quickly, effendi! Come quickly!”

As he hurried along the corridor there were further shouts and everyone seemed to be running.

“What is it?”

“A bad man, effendi, oh, a very bad man.”

Owen came out into the sunlight of the yard. A large, fierce individual was struggling with a knot of orderlies.

The knot suddenly fell apart.

“Guard thyself, effendi!” cried someone in an agonized voice.

The fierce man shook off the remaining restraining hands. An orderly dropped to the ground and remained there praying.

“Effendi!” cried the interloper, a great beam of delight spreading over his face.

He was a tribesman from the south, a giant of a man and bristling with arms from head to foot. There seemed something familiar about him.

He was holding a short piece of iron piping carefully in front of him.

“Effendi!” he cried. “I have found you!”

“Effendi! Effendi! It is a bomb! Do not let him come near you!”

The man stepped forward.

“They tried to keep me from you. The dogs!”

He put his foot firmly on the praying orderly’s head and stood on him.

“They said you were not here. The lying sons of Shaitan!”

“We tried to keep him from you, effendi,” said someone faintly.

Owen pulled himself together.

“What is your business, man?” he said sternly, wishing he had brought his gun with him. It was tucked away in a filing cabinet in his room, buried beneath a pile of estimates.

“You know me, effendi,” said the tribesman confidently.

“I do?”

The tribesman looked anxious.

“Surely you remember, effendi? The other day, at Nuri Pasha’s.”

Light began to dawn.

“You are one of Nuri’s men. I saw you in the bougainvillea.”

“I knew you would remember. I told them so.” He gave one of the orderlies an enormous push.

“What is your name?”

“Omar.”

“Well, Omar, what brings you to see me?”

Omar held out the piping.

“Nuri told me to bring this to you.”

“What is it?”

“It is a bomb, I think.”

“Jesus!”

“We told you, effendi,” murmured one of the orderlies faintly.

Omar held the piping up to his ear and shook it.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t do that! Here! Give it to me!”

Owen took it gingerly.

“Hassan! Go and get a fire bucket and put it by the wall!”

“At once, effendi!”

Hassan scuttled off with alacrity and reemerged with a pail full of sand.

“Over there! By the wall.”

“At once, effendi.”

Owen walked across and set the piping firmly in the pail, taking care to keep it upright.

“Nikos!”

Nikos appeared from a side door. On occasions like this he considered his role to be a backroom one.

“Ring Explosives and tell them to send someone over here immediately!”

“Harrison Effendi is away at the moment.”

“Get them to send someone else.”

“Ja’affer?”

“No, not that stupid bastard. Someone else.”

“There isn’t anyone else.”

“Ring Mines, then. Surely they’ve got someone.”

Nikos disappeared inside. Owen cleared the yard and posted orderlies to keep people away. Then he led Omar up to his office.

“Sit down, Omar.”

Omar sat on the floor.

“Now, Omar, let us get this straight. Nuri Pasha told you to bring this to me?”

“Yes, effendi.”

“How did you come by it?”

“It was thrown at the car.”

“The car? Nuri Pasha’s car?”

“Yes, effendi.”

“I don’t understand. Did it hit the car?”

“No, effendi. I caught it.”

“Caught it?” said Owen incredulously.

“Yes, effendi. I was watching the crowd and I saw a man’s arm move and then this came through the air and I caught it.”

“Jesus!” Owen was impressed.

“I showed it to Nuri Pasha and he went pale and then he told his driver to drive very fast and then he stopped and told me to get down—”

“Get down? said Owen. ”Where were you?”

“On the running board. I stand on one, Ahmed on the other. So I got down and Nuri bade me take it to you and then he drove off again very fast.”

“Did you see the man who threw it?”

“I saw the arm but not the man.”

The movement. That had been enough for Omar. “Well, Omar, you have saved your master.”

“That is my job,” said Omar modestly.

“You have performed it well. And Nuri will no doubt reward you.”

“Nuri Pasha will,” said Omar. “When I go home I shall be able to double my herd of camels. And buy another wife as well.”

“And tell your friends this story.”

“It was nothing. There was no real fighting in it.”

The man from the Mines Department arrived shortly after. His name was Plumley and he was a shy little man with a nervous manner which disappeared completely when he was examining the bomb.

“Oh yes,” he said, “I can see how this works.”

He had taken off one of the screw-top ends and was poking about inside. Now he unscrewed the bottom end and extracted a long metal cylinder containing a liquid. “Picric acid,” he said.

He showed Owen the other end of the piping. Inside the lip there was hung a small glass bottle closed with a loose plug of cotton-wool.

“Nitric acid in this one,” said Plumley. “It’s all right as long as the thing is kept upright. Once it gets out of the vertical, though, the nitric acid oozes into the picric and detonates it.”

“Then how the hell—?”

“Don’t know. Perhaps it stayed vertical.”

Owen thought of Omar holding it up to his ear and shaking it.

“There are a lot of lucky people around,” he said. “Well, yes. It’s quite effective even though it’s very simple. The only thing is, you’d have to be very careful with it. I mean, it could so easily go off.”

Georgiades took up the piping gingerly.

“It’s safe now,” said Plumley.

“I was hoping that.”

He examined the bomb carefully.

“There’s nothing special about the piping,” said Plumley. “Any piping would do.”

“What about the picric? And the nitric?”

“Easily obtainable. Any decent lab. The only difficult bit is fitting the screw-caps and hanging the bottle. And that’s something anyone can do. A workshop would be a help but you could manage without.”

He inspected the ends of the piping.

“A bit amateur, if you ask me,” he said.

“Another one that doesn’t quite fit the pattern?” asked Owen.

“It fits in some respects,” said Nikos defensively.

“Not a public servant.”

“Isn’t a Minister a public servant?”

“Nuri’s an ex-Minister. And I thought you were ruling out Pashas.”

“Clearly some Pashas should be included,” said Nikos coolly. “As more data comes in we can be more precise about our categorization.”

“Maybe your original categorization only applies to one of the groups,” said Georgiades. “That is, if there
are
two groups. Suppose there are two groups,” he said, amplifying. “One is a following/shooting group and one is a bombing group. The following/shooting group confines itself to public servants—Fairclough, Jullians, that sort of people. The other group, the bombing one—”

He stopped.

“Pashas,” said Owen.

“Students,” said Georgiades. “That’s the hard one to explain.”

“Anyway,” said Nikos, “it doesn’t work. Ali Osman is in the Pasha category and also in the ‘following’ category. That is,” he added with a sniff, “if he genuinely is in the ‘following’ category.”

“I would have thought the ‘following’ might cut across categories,” said Owen. “It’s part of the homework you’d do before making an attack of any kind.”

“What about the attack on Nuri?”

“They’d have had to have known that the car was going to be going past. Presumably it’s a regular journey.”

“If it is,” said Georgiades, “you can bet that Nuri’s changing that!”

“We ought to check. We ought to check in the street where the bomb was thrown, too. Someone may have seen something.”

“It would all have happened too fast. The car didn’t stop.”

“Better check, anyway.”

“OK,” said Georgiades. “I’ll do that. There’s something else I want to do, too.” He picked up the piping. “Mind if I take this away?”

One of the perquisites of the Mamur Zapt’s office was a box at the opera. How this had come about Owen did not care to ask. The office of Mamur Zapt in Cairo had been traditionally one of considerable prestige and among Owen’s Ottoman predecessors had been those who had known how to turn that to advantage.

Owen was fond of music and, coming from a Welsh background, had an ear for singing. Until he had arrived in Egypt he had not, however, ever been to the opera. Now, though, he went almost every week. And he saw no reason why, just because of the present crisis, that custom should be broken.

He had, moreover, an extra reason to be there. Plumley had mentioned that that evening he would be taking a guest to the opera and in the course of conversation it emerged that that guest would be Roper.

Owen had rung Paul immediately.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s nothing to do with me,” said Paul defensively. “It’s Mines. That’s where he’s based now.”

“Yes, but—Plumley!”

“I’ll have a word with them.”

A little later he rang back.

“It’s OK. They know each other. Plumley’s the bloke he’s working with.”

“It’s not OK. It took about five men to get him into an arabeah last night.”

“Drunk?”

“He’s always drunk. But sometimes he’s fighting drunk.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. Then Paul said: “Are you going to the opera yourself tonight by any chance?”

“Yes, I am and I’m taking Zeinab and I’m bloody going in order to enjoy the opera.”

“I shall be there myself, too,” said Paul, “with similar hopes. Still, it is encouraging to know you will be there. It is always helpful to have around a man who can knock other people on the head if the need arises.”

“Yes, but that’s not what I had in mind for this evening. Whose bloody crazy idea was it to take Roper to the opera anyway?”

“Plumley’s. He’s fond of opera himself and thought it would be a nice thing to take a visitor to.”

“He’s insane. Or possibly a bit simple. All those people who muck around with explosives are. Can’t you talk to him?”

“No. He and Roper are out at Gebel Zabarrah. They’ll be out all day. They’ll just have time to get back and change.”

“Look, the only thing Roper will be interested in after a day in the desert is drinking himself into insensibility as speedily as he bloody well can. Not in going to the opera.”

“Don’t you think he might point that out himself?”

“There’s a chance, I suppose. All the same… !”

All the same, when Owen entered the foyer with Zeinab on his arm, there were Plumley and Roper, dressed in cool white suits, their hair still wet from the shower, dutifully scanning the program.

Roper greeted Owen warmly. His eyes automatically undressed Zeinab.

“You’ve got a nice piece there,” he said. “How much was she?”

“
Qui est ce cochon
?” Zeinab asked Owen.

“You won’t say that when you get to know me, sweetheart,” said Roper.

“She isn’t going to get to know you,” said Owen.

Plumley went pink.

“I’ve seen you here before, haven’t I?” he said hastily to Zeinab. “Have you a passion for opera?”

“You bet she has,” said Roper. “And other things as well.”

“Da Souza won’t be singing tonight, I hear,” Plumley continued heroically. “She’s unwell.”

“I feel unwell too,” said Zeinab. “Perhaps I will not stay.”

“Oh no. Do, please do, I’m sure—”

“I do not like the people here.”

“She doesn’t have a knife, does she?” Roper asked anxiously. “I mean, that other girl of yours—”

“What girl was this?” demanded Zeinab ominously.

“Someone we met,” said Owen. “She didn’t like him either.”

Paul suddenly materialized beside them.

“Hello!” he said. “Hello, Zeinab. You’re looking marvelous this evening. That gown! The Princess noticed it at once. I think she’d like to ask you where it was from. Paris, of course, but which of the houses? Is someone doing something new? I was out of my depth, I’m afraid, so I said I’d ask you if you could bear to join us at the interval. I have a table…”

Etcetera. Zeinab, pleased, simmered down. The warning bell rang and they started to make their way to the boxes.

“Where is this table?” asked Roper.

Paul looked over his shoulder.

“Not you, you shit,” he said.

The Princess Lamlun was a Cairo institution. She owed her position in society formally to the fact that she was the Khedive’s aunt, but without the addition of her formidable personality the simple status would have been nothing. It was rumored that the Khedive was terrified of her. Certainly his spirits lifted noticeably when she returned to Deauville at the end of the Cairo season.

During the season, however, she held sway over Cairo Society. Her salon was the major center of intrigue and gossip and although her sphere of influence was theoretically limited to the social, as was proper for a woman in an Islamic society, there were many who felt that it extended covertly to other areas as well, including the political.

The party which gathered, then, at the Consul-General’s table during the interval was an imposing one and Zeinab, despite herself, was impressed. Owen didn’t believe for one moment that the Princess had said anything at all about Zeinab’s dress, but when they joined the party Paul so managed it that within seconds she and the Princess were chatting away happily together.