The Syrian was at the bottom of the stairs, his way up barred by one of Owen’s men. Both fell back as Owen came down the stairs. Owen pushed past them and went on into the living-room. He sat down on one of the low divans and motioned to the Syrian to sit on another before him.
Everything in the room was low, the divans, the tables, even the lamps. There were no chairs. There were no sideboards or shelves, no wall furniture of any kind to detract from the sumptuous carpets on the walls. On some of the little tables that were scattered around beside the divans there were fine boxes and bowls, all of silver.
A door opened at the far end of the room and a woman’s face looked in. The Syrian waved her irritably away. She looked worried.
The Syrian himself had lost his apprehension and was waiting, almost confidently, for Owen to begin. Owen guessed that he was still thinking in terms of a bribe.
Owen decided he would try to shake him.
“You sometimes have British soldiers among your customers,” he said, more as a statement than a question.
The Syrian looked slightly puzzled.
“Not often,” he said. “The pay is not good,”
“Among your suppliers,” said Owen.
“No,” said the Syrian, too quickly, “no, I don’t think so.”
After a moment he said: “I deal mostly in brassware and silverware. With a few things for the tourists. If an officer’s wife, perhaps, brought me a family heirloom I might consider that. But I don’t really deal in English things.”
“Do you keep a list of customers?”
“In my head,” said the Syrian. “Only in my head.”
Owen wondered whether it would be worth going through the books. Georgiades would not have time, though. McPhee could do it but Owen wanted him in the shop to take care of the man from the consulate. None of the other men would be any good. In any case it would probably be pointless. It would be as the Syrian said; the customers who mattered would be in his head.
The Syrian still waited expectantly.
“You don’t deal in anything else?” Owen asked. “Arms, for instance?”
For the tiniest flicker of a second Owen thought he saw the face register. Then it returned to its normal impassivity.
“No,” said the Syrian. “I don’t deal in arms. Except—” he smiled. “—Crusaders’ arms. Was that what you meant?”
Owen ignored him. He desperately needed something from Georgiades if he was to make anything out of this -exchange. Out of the whole raid, for that matter. They had staked everything on being able to find something incriminating. If not the grenades, then at least something. Now it all seemed to be evaporating.
The Syrian’s air of expectancy had disappeared. He now knew what Owen had come for. Knew, and was not bothered.
“And now I have to ask you,” said the Syrian, “to what do I owe this outrageous visit?”
Owen said nothing.
The Syrian leaned forward even more confidently.
“Even the Mamur Zapt,” he said with emphasis, “cannot get away with this!”
And now Owen’s ears caught what perhaps the Syrian had already heard. A new voice had entered into debate with McPhee downstairs.
“I shall complain to my consul,” said the Syrian. “It is not just as a private citizen but also as a foreign national that I have rights.”
Georgiades appeared at the door.
“Wait there!” said Owen to the Syrian. Outside, Georgiades showed him two revolvers, new, still heavily greased from the store, of the same type as the one used by Mustafa.
“That’s all,” said Georgiades apologetically.
“Every little helps,” said Owen, “and it helps quite a bit just at the moment.”
He went back into the room.
“My people have found British Army equipment,” he said coldly. “Stolen from British Army installations. Now in your possession.”
The Syrian spread his hands. “The guns?” he said. “They were stolen? The man swore they had been officially disposed of as surplus to Army needs.”
“New ones?”
The Syrian shrugged apologetically. “I am afraid I do not know new ones from old ones. I am not a military man, I bought them for protection. I have a lot of valuable silver.”
Owen could hear the man from the consulate coming up the stairs.
“I am sorry if I have done something illegal,” said the Syrian, “but I hardly think it warrants an invasion on this scale.”
“This is an outrage,” began the consular official as Owen brushed past him. “I shall complain—”
A grim-faced McPhee was waiting downstairs. They left the shop without a word. Outside, a small crowd had gathered, sensing that something exciting was going on.
“Make way! Make way!” snapped McPhee, still upset.
The bright white glare of the street was dazzling after the cool darkness of the house and they stopped momentarily to adjust.
Georgiades came running round the corner.
“The roof!” he shouted. “The roof!”
He plunged back into the shop. Two of his men rushed in after him.
Abdul Kassem appeared from a sidestreet.
“There’s a man on the roof!” he said, and doubled back.
Owen ran after him, closely followed by McPhee, closely followed by the entire crowd.
The sidestreet bent round into a wide square from which they could look back at the roofline.
At first they could see nothing.
Abdul Kassem pulled them to one side and pointed.
“There! There!”
Half obscured by the small minaret of a mosque they saw a man on the flat roof of one of the houses. He appeared to be dragging something.
“That’s him!” cried McPhee exultantly. He pulled out his revolver.
“Don’t shoot, for Christ’s sake!” said Owen. “It’s grenades up there!”
Another man suddenly appeared on a roof some way to the right of the first man. It was Georgiades. He began running across the roofs. Two other men emerged and raced after him.
The first man disappeared behind a parapet.
“He could come down anywhere!” said Owen in agony.
He looked around. He still had four men with him.
“You take those two,” he said to McPhee, “and try and get round behind him on that side. I’ll take the others!”
McPhee ran off instantly.
Abdul Kassem did not wait for Owen but set off through the back-streets on the near side.
They soon lost sight of the roofs.
“Christ!” said Owen again. “He could come down anywhere.”
They came out into a long street which ran roughly parallel to the man’s course.
“You stay here,” Owen said to the other constable. “You can see the whole street.”
He himself ran on after Abdul Kassem. The Egyptian was much better than he was at this sort of thing. He knew, or was able to sense, the pattern of the tiny, twisting streets. Owen knew he was holding him back.
“You go on,” he gasped. “Try and get in front of him.”
Abdul Kassem shot off.
Owen came to a corner and stopped. His heart was pounding and his eyes were blinded with sweat. He took out a handkerchief to wipe his face and tried to think. There was no point in just running aimlessly along the street. He needed to know where the man was. He had a vague sense of him being to the right and heading northward, but in this warren of tiny streets forever twisting back on themselves that did not help much.
He walked along until he came to a square and then tried to look up at the roofs, but the square was small and the houses which surrounded it so high that he could see very little. He needed to be up higher.
At the corner of the square was a little m
osque with a minaret rising above it. He ran over to it and tried to go in but the door was heavily bolted. Still, the idea was a good one, and as he ran on he kept his eye open for a mosque that was not barred.
The street narrowed still further and then opened out into a kind of piazza which did not seem to have any way out of it. Exactly opposite him was a sebil, a fountain-house, whose steeply curved sides, guarded with grilles of intricate metalwork, rose up high to an arcaded upper storey. It was approached by a sweeping flight of steps with an ornate marble balustrade.
Without stopping to think, Owen ran straight up the steps. At the top, set in among the arcades where it would be cool, was an open recess obviously used as a kuttub, a place where little children received their first lessons in the Koran. The kuttub was empty, but an old man lay sleeping against a pillar.
Besides him another flight of stairs, much narrower, led up to the roof. Owen leaped up them and came out on to the flat top of the arcades.
To one side, behind him, he could see out over modern Cairo as far as the Nile and the brown desert beyond it. To the other was the fantastic skyline of old Cairo, with its minarets and cupolas, the high towers of the mosques, the arcades and domes of the old houses, and in among them the flat spaces where people came up to take the evening air.
Now, with the sun still very hot, the roofs were deserted. There was no movement, anywhere.
He felt a hand plucking at his sleeve. It was the old man. Owen could see now that he was blind. He had found him by hearing alone.
“I will show you the way down, father,” he said.
But the old man could get down without his aid. He kept asking Owen what he wanted. Owen explained lamely that he was looking out over the roofs in search of a thief. The old man shook his head, whether in disbelief or commiseration at the world’s iniquity. He kept touching Owen’s arm. He was obviously puzzled. Something about Owen, the -accent, perhaps just the bodily presence, told him that Owen was a foreigner.
Owen apologized again, excused himself, and descended to the ground. Half way down he met a black-veiled woman carrying a bowl for the old man. She shrank back against the wall as Owen passed.
Little streets, so little they were hardly streets, ran off from the piazza on every side. There seemed nothing to tell one from another. It came over Owen how pointless it was trying to intercept a man in this maze.
He made his way back to the Syrian’s shop.
McPhee arrived at almost the same moment.
“Like looking for a needle in a haystack,” he said. “Useless!”
One of the men who had been with Georgiades on the roof came out of the shop carrying a large box.
“Thank Christ for that!” said McPhee. “At least we’ve got something.”
A moment later Georgiades himself appeared. He was mopping his face with a large blue handkerchief.
“The next time we do this,” he said to Owen, “it had better be in the cooler part of the day.”
“You didn’t get him,” said Owen.
Georgiades shook his head regretfully.
“No,” he said. “What a waste! After running over the roofs of half Cairo!”
He looked down at the big box.
“We got this, though,” he said. “When I got close to him he put it down and ran.”
The Syrian came out of the shop with the man from the consulate in attendance.
“This your property?” asked Owen, indicating the box.
“Yes,” said the man from the consulate.
“I have never seen it on my life before,” declared the Syrian solemnly.
“It’s a box of grenades,” said Owen.
“You heard my client,” said the man from the consulate. “He has never seen this in his life before. You have made a mistake.”
“And so have you,” said McPhee, taking the Syrian by the arm.
“What are you doing?” said the man from the consulate, stepping between them.
“Taking him to the police headquarters,” said McPhee.
“You cannot do that,” said the man from the consulate. “He is a Syrian citizen.”
“Caught redhanded,” said McPhee indignantly, “with the arms in his possession.”
“He knows nothing about the arms!” said the man from the consulate. “Someone else had put them there!”
“Oh, yes,” said McPhee sarcastically. “Who?”
“I don’t know,” said the man from the consulate. “It’s not my job to find out. It’s your job.”
“We have found out,” said McPhee.
“I don’t know about that,” said the man. “It would have to be tested in a court.”
“That’s exactly what I’m planning,” said McPhee.
“A Consular Court,” said the man.
“A Consular Court?” said McPhee incredulously. “The man’s been caught with arms in his possession.”
“A Mixed Tribunal, then.”
Even when a foreigner could be proved to have transgressed against the law of his own country he had the right to be tried by his own Consular Court. Where there was a dispute between foreigners, or between foreigners and Egyptians, the case was heard by a Mixed Tribunal, on which the majority of the judges were foreign. But that applied only to civil cases, and it had yet to be established whether this fell into that category. It almost certainly did not.
“Anyway,” said the man from the consulate, “you certainly cannot arrest him.”
“We’ll see about that,” said McPhee grimly, producing a pair of handcuffs.
“I protest!” said the consular official. “My client is a native Syrian and is outside your jurisdiction.”
Owen was tempted to let McPhee go ahead. At any rate, it might give the Syrian a shaking. But it was not worth the trouble. They would have to release him at once.
“Leave him for the time being,” he said to McPhee. “We shall be taking this up,” he said to the official.
It was possible, in certain circumstances, which included a threat to security, to expel a foreigner from the country; but it took a long time.
“I shall be taking this up, too,” said the man. “This is a gross invasion of Syrian territory. I shall be lodging an official complaint.”
“Do!” said Owen.
The consular official took the Syrian by the arm and they went back into the shop. McPhee was purple with fury.
“It makes you lose heart,” said Georgiades.
“We’ve got the grenades anyway,” said Owen.
“Not all of them,” said Georgiades.
“What?”
“Haven’t you looked?” He flipped back the top of the box. Three grenades were missing.
McPhee swore.
“When did he take them?” asked Owen. “Or were they missing before?”
“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 Mamur Zapt & the Return of the Carpet Page 14
