The Mamur Zapt & the Return of the Carpet

by Michael Pearce

  Owen thought back over the party. The introduction to Daouad, the firm pointing at al Liwa, the apparently incidental analysis of Nationalist politics, the pinpointing of key factions. Oh yes, Fakhri had been obliging, all right. He had told him, or had seen that he learned, everything he needed to know. Everything he wanted to know. Because Fakhri had probably seen the drift of his thinking and carefully fed him things which would confirm it and distract.

  Fakhri was a shrewd political operator. And that was it! Owen should have realized he was being operated on. Fakhri was part of Egyptian politics, he had a political position of his own. He was not just an independent commentator. He had his own game to play.

  Whatever that game was, he played it very well. Fakhri’s innocent brown eyes and chubby, sympathetic face floated before him. The convivial chatter, the apparently unconscious giveaways, the way he made you feel that you were in control and he was just a clumsy, fat pigeon struggling unavailingly in your grasp.

  God, Fakhri had run rings round him. He had round everybody. Especially the British! The British thought they were in control and all the time Fakhri, apparently accepting, perpetually deferring, forever giving way, was doing exactly as he pleased.

  And to think they’d got on to him through Hamid! The super-subtle brought down by the super-simple! It was the kind of irony Cairo would relish.

  It would relish even more, he thought uncomfortably, the story of how Fakhri had made a monkey of the Mamur Zapt.

  Never mind. There would be one person at least who would not be sharing in the general enjoyment.

  Owen waited grimly.

  Eventually Fakhri rose to his feet, said his farewells and came into the warm chamber. After a dutiful interval the two men followed him.

  On their way they nearly collided with a figure so densely wrapped in towels it was evident he could hardly see. The man apologized profusely, stepped aside to let them pass ahead of him and then followed. Owen guessed that it was Mahmoud.

  Fakhri went over to the other side of the room and sat down with his back turned to the two men. They found a couch some way off and sat down, very obviously waiting.

  They had to wait some time.

  Fakhri, clearly enjoying his pretending, called for coffee and then more coffee. He seemed to know everyone in the hammam. Everyone, that is, except for Owen and the morose, densely towelled Mahmoud who had planted himself down on the couch next to that of the two men.

  After a while Owen himself stood up and walked on through into the outer room, where he collected his clothes and valuables. There was no need to hurry through. He could linger as long as he liked. Here, too, one could sit on cushions and drink more coffee, and enjoy the singing birds suspended from the pillars in their fine gilt cages. Here, too, the main object appeared to be conversation. Owen fell into earnest discussion with his neighbour, a portly gentleman who, it appeared, supplied chestnuts to half the stands around the Ezbekiyeh Gardens and was more than happy to describe at length both their virtues and the problems he had in getting them there. Owen listened with rapt attention, a towel draped over his head to soak up the last drips of moisture.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fakhri come in and collect his clothes. The two men came in close behind him. They all three went over to one side behind a pillar and he lost sight of them, though he noticed that Mahmoud, towelling his head vigorously, had placed himself where he could see them.

  The three emerged from behind the pillar and soon afterwards the two men left.

  Fakhri himself took his time. Even when he had finished dressing he did not leave at once but fell into conversation with a newcomer. He then spent some time tipping the attendant.

  When, finally, he left, Owen and Mahmoud were just behind him. As they stepped out into the warm evening air they drew alongside.

  “Hello, Fakhri,” said Owen.

  Chapter Eleven

  “No,” said Fakhri. “No. It wasn’t like that at all.”

  “You arranged the attack,” said Owen. “Are you telling us you didn’t?”

  “I arranged the attack,” Fakhri admitted, “but I didn’t mean him to be hurt.”

  “No?” said Mahmoud sceptically.

  “It was a signal. That was all.”

  “Who was the signal to?” asked Mahmoud.

  “Nuri, of course.”

  “What was it saying?”

  “You know,” said Fakhri. He looked at them almost appealingly. “You know it all,” he said.

  “Tell us.”

  They were in Owen’s office. The others were in the cell below. Hamid had identified both the men and Fakhri as they entered the baths. When the men came out they had been followed. They had gone straight to a small square a kilometre or so away where the other men were waiting. Georgiades had arrested the lot. Now he was questioning them.

  “I didn’t want to hurt the boy. Really. The men were told—” The brown eyes regarded them anxiously. “They didn’t make a mistake, did they?”

  “Go on,” said Owen, refusing to be drawn.

  “I wouldn’t want you to believe—”

  He read the message in their faces and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Very well, then,” he said quietly. “Nuri had been meddling. He is always meddling. Trying to create new alliances. His own faction, which is very small now, and other moderates usually. This time he was after the Nationalists. He was trying to do a deal with Abdul Murr. He thought that if he could get Abdul Murr to go in with him the Khedive might see them as a possible government.”

  “Never in a million years!” said Owen.

  “He might!” Fakhri insisted. “If he thought he was securing a new base of popular support.”

  “The Nationalists would never go along,” said Mahmoud.

  “They would,” said Fakhri, “if they thought there was power at the end of it.”

  “Jemal?” said Mahmoud sceptically. “El Gazzari?”

  “Not them,” Fakhri conceded. “But others would. Abdul Murr.”

  “Never!”

  “He might,” said Fakhri. “He’s got very fed up with Jemal and el Gazzari lately. Understandably,” he added.

  “Fed up is one thing,” said Mahmoud. “Going in with a man like Nuri is another.”

  “It’s not just that,” said Fakhri. “Abdul Murr is no fool. He thinks that if the Nationalists could once get into power and show they could govern, then the Khedive wouldn’t be able to do without them.”

  It was plausible. Certainly Owen felt so, and probably Mahmoud felt so. Mahmoud, however, clearly had a distaste for the whole thing. It ran counter both to his strong dislike of Nuri and his equally strong sympathy for the Nationalists.

  “Nuri in a Nationalist government?” he said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “It wouldn’t be a Nationalist government,” said Fakhri. “The Khedive won’t agree to that. It would have to be a coalition and Nuri would have to lead it.”

  “Lead it!” cried Mahmoud.

  “The Khedive won’t agree on any other terms,” said Fakhri. “That’s why Nuri is in such a strong position.”

  “They won’t go along,” said Mahmoud.

  “You’d be surprised!” said Fakhri.

  There was a little silence. Owen could see Mahmoud struggling to come to terms with what Fakhri had said. He was still reluctant to accept it.

  “You say these things, Fakhri,” he said, “but how real are they?”

  “Very real.”

  “How real?”

  “Real enough to worry all the other political groupings. Real enough,” said Fakhri, with a glance at Owen, “to worry the Mamur Zapt apparently. When I saw you taking an interest,” he said to Owen, “I guessed that the British suspected something.”

  Owen let it pass. Sometimes there were dangers in being oversu
btle.

  He noticed Mahmoud look at him, however, and wondered if he would have some explaining to do.

  “It could be a powerful combination,” he said, “the Nationalists and the Khedive.”

  “That’s just it,” said Fakhri. “It worried us, too.”

  “Us?”

  “Everybody, really. There are various factions around the Khedive, rivals of Nuri. They don’t want it to happen. Then there are the Nationalists themselves. Plenty of them are opposed to it. Jemal and el Gazzari for a start. And then, of course,” said Fakhri, “there are moderate groups, like my own, who are worried about being left out in the cold.”

  “And you were worried especially.”

  “Not especially,” said Fakhri. “Why do you think that?”

  “Because you did something about it.”

  Fakhri was silent for a moment.

  “Not especially,” he said again. “It was just that someone had to do something.”

  “And that someone just happened to be you?” said Owen sceptically.

  “Yes,” said Fakhri defiantly.

  Owen let the pause drag on.

  “So you decided,” he said at last, “to send Nuri a signal?”

  “Yes. We thought that if we sent him a direct warning—”

  “By killing Ahmed?”

  “Killing?” Fakhri looked shaken. “No,” he said, “how could you think that? We wanted to give him a good thrashing. That was all.”

  “Why pick on Ahmed?”

  “Because he’s Nuri’s son. Because Nuri loves him. Because Nuri has been using him as a go-between.”

  He looked at Owen.

  “I did try to tell you,” he said, almost reproachfully. “I’ve been trying to point you in his direction. I thought if you knew how far things had got, you might find a way of stopping it.”

  “How far had they got?” asked Owen.

  “Further than we thought they would. Nuri is a cunning old devil. He seemed to be persuading Abdul Murr. It suddenly looked as if things were coming to a head. As if he might succeed.”

  “Was that the point of Nuri’s visit to the al Liwa offices?”

  “Yes. That was part of it, though the real fixing was to come later, in private. Anyway, we had to do something. I wanted to let Nuri know that we knew. So—” Fakhri shrugged. “I hired those men. They didn’t overdo it, did they?”

  Again the sympathetic brown eyes regarded Owen anxiously. Again Owen did not reply. The longer Fakhri was kept on the hook the better.

  “I am sorry,” said Fakhri softly. “It was just one of those things. Just politics.”

  ***

  Even the coffee did not help. Sensing the mood that Owen was in, Yussuf entered silently, filled the mug and withdrew without saying a word. The shutters, which had been opened first thing to air the room, had long since been closed. Owen had been in for three hours already, and all the time he had been thinking about what Fakhri had said the evening before.

  They had got nowhere, nowhere on anything really important. Ahmed’s thrashing, his and Nuri’s visit to al Liwa, what Nuri was up to, all this had been explained, and it did not seem to have advanced matters one little jot. The original attack on Nuri, the grenades, the Tademah connection, if there was a Tademah connection, they knew no more about now than they did before he and Mahmoud had gone to the hammam.

  He had thought for a moment, the moment when Fakhri had revealed himself, that everything had suddenly tumbled into place. It had been a shock but once he had recovered he had felt that he had grasped the true pattern. The man behind had finally declared himself.

  But it was not true. Fakhri was not the man behind, or if he was behind anything, it was only the most trivial parts of the pattern. At first in his fury Owen had thought Fakhri capable of anything. Now he had simmered down he realized that Fakhri was not really like that. The trouble was that Owen believed him. He believed what Fakhri had said the previous night. That Nuri was scheming along those lines was completely credible, knowing Nuri. That the Nationalists, or some of them, were tempted, was entirely likely, despite what Mahmoud might think. That the Khedive would play along, distinctly probable. That the other parties would be worried, certain. Even that Fakhri, who was definitely not a man without resource, would take it upon himself to do something about it.

  And if he did decide to intervene, it was not at all unlikely that he would act in the way he said he had: choosing the gentler path of issuing a warning, picking his target with perception and ensuring that things did not go too far. No knives. Owen had noticed it himself.

  The nub of it was that he did not believe Fakhri was a killer. He had only his feelings to go on, and he had already been deceived by Fakhri. Still, he stood by his feelings. He did not believe Fakhri was a killer.

  But then, how did he know there was a killer involved? No one had been killed yet. The attempt on Nuri’s life had not succeeded. It had been bungled. If someone like Mustafa had been chosen to perform the actual act, that did not exactly argue for someone behind the scenes who really knew his business, a cold, calculating killer by proxy.

  All he had to go on was the whiff of fear in the Cairo air. He smelt it himself.

  Not just that. The grenades. They were what chilled him. If you went for grenades you meant business. In a crowded city especially. The attack on Nuri was one thing. At the end of the day it was not very important, and anyway he could leave that to Mahmoud.

  But the grenades were quite another thing. And that he could not leave to anybody else. They were his pigeon. Now that he had been put in charge of arrangements for the Carpet, his pigeon only.

  But then, were all these things related to each other anyway? They might all be separate, nothing to do with each other. The attack on Nuri, the grenades, Ahmed’s thrashing—they might all be entirely unconnected, just brought together in his mind because by chance they all came over his desk in the same week. The last of them, Ahmed’s thrashing, was almost certainly nothing to do with the other two. Perhaps the other two were not connected either. They were all separate. The only thing they had in common was that he had to solve them.

  It wouldn’t do. He knew what was bothering him. The grenades. The Carpet. The only way he could set his mind at rest about the arrangements for the Carpet was by finding out who had those missing grenades: finding out and catching them. And the only lead he had to that was the Syrian, the gun and the attack on Nuri. And on that front he had made absolutely no progress at all.

  As the morning wore on he became more and more conscious of the Return of the Carpet hanging over him like a heavy black cloud.

  ***

  As soon as Mahmoud spoke, Owen knew that something was wrong.

  “Are you going to be holding Fakhri?” Mahmoud asked, without preamble.

  “Yes,” said Owen, surprised. “I think so.”

  “On security grounds?”

  “Yes,” said Owen. “Why?”

  “I would challenge your decision. There seems no security issue. It is a straightforward criminal offence.”

  “So?”

  “So Fakhri should be transferred at once into the custody of the Parquet.”

  Owen held the telephone away from his ear and looked at it. What was wrong with Mahmoud this morning?

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Nothing’s the matter. It’s just that I would like Fakhri transferred at once, please.”

  “Is this official?”

  “What do you mean?” The voice sounded slightly puzzled.

  “Are your bosses on to you or something?”

  “No one is on to me at all,” said Mahmoud stiffly.

  Owen found it hard to believe. Unless—unless something had happened to upset Mahmoud. Perhaps at their meeting yesterday. He racked his brains to think of what it co
uld be. Something he had said? It was obviously only too easy to touch off the sensitive Mahmoud. But he was not aware of having said or done anything which could have this effect. Something Fakhri had said?

  “I was thinking of questioning him again later today,” he said into the mouthpiece.

  “If you will see that he’s sent round immediately,” said Mahmoud, “I will ensure that he is properly questioned.”

  It was the “properly” that did it; that, and the lingering, rankling memory of the “amateur” remark earlier.

  “I am afraid I am unable to release the prisoner for questioning by the Parquet,” Owen said coldly, and put the phone down.

  If it had not been for Mahmoud’s tone he might well have been willing to transfer Fakhri. Fakhri was of no real interest to him. But Mahmoud had irritated him. He had thought Mahmoud a person he could get on with, but if he continually blew hot and cold in this way he would be a strain to be with; and Owen was beginning to wonder this morning whether the strain was worthwhile.

  He wondered what it was that had rubbed Mahmoud up the wrong way. Had it been that remark of Fakhri’s, no, perhaps he’d not actually said it, just implied it: that Owen had known all along what Nuri was plotting? Owen had not had a chance to deny it and he had seen Mahmoud look at him. That was just the sort of thing to touch Mahmoud off.

  He shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing he could do just now to put the matter right, if that was the matter. That was supposing he even wanted to try. And right now he wasn’t too sure about that.

  He returned to his brooding. The heavy black cloud was still there. If anything, it was even heavier and blacker than before.

  ***

  Worse.

  Guzman rang.

  “That’s all I bloody need!” said Owen. “Tell him I’m tied up in a meeting.”

  A few moments later Nikos came back.

  “He doesn’t believe you,” he said. “I can’t think why. He says get you out of the meeting.”

  Owen picked up the phone resignedly.