The Mamur Zapt & the Return of the Carpet

by Michael Pearce

  Ahmed still sat on the ground, hunched up, his head buried in his arms. The thin shoulders were shaking.

  Owen dismounted and walked across to him. Ahmed became aware of the boots and looked up.

  “I never thought it would be like this!” he said, weeping.

  “Like what?” said Owen.

  Ahmed’s eyes traveled out to where the horse was lying and then were quickly drawn away again.

  “This!” he said, burying his head in his arms again.

  “Bombs do this,” said Owen. “Didn’t you know?”

  Ahmed shook his head.

  “They didn’t tell you, did they?”

  “No,” said Ahmed.

  “Who gave it you?”

  “What?” said Ahmed, uncomprehending.

  “The grenade. The bomb.”

  Ahmed raised his head and looked back at Owen, shocked.

  “No one,” he said. “No one. I swear!”

  “Where did you get it from?”

  Ahmed looked blank.

  “You threw it,” said Owen. “Where did you get it from?”

  “I didn’t!” Ahmed almost shrieked. “I didn’t! I didn’t! I swear!”

  “Who gave it you?”

  “No one! No one! I swear!”

  Someone touched Owen on the arm. It was the constable who had held on to his stirrup.

  “Effendi,” he said. “It wasn’t him. I saw.”

  “Not him?”

  “No, effendi. The man ran away.”

  The man had recovered from his shock but the eyes were still wide, horrified.

  “Yes,” said Owen. “I remember. You said.”

  “I saw,” said the man. “I saw.”

  Owen looked at McPhee, who led the man aside and began talking to him quietly.

  Owen turned back to Ahmed.

  “I didn’t know!” Ahmed groaned, rocking his body from side to side. “I didn’t know!”

  “What didn’t you know?” said Owen, bending over him.

  “That they would do this. They said—”

  He burst into tears.

  “What did they say?”

  Ahmed was unable to speak. He just rocked to and fro.

  “Come!” said Owen, slipping into Arabic. “Something terrible has been done and I need to know.”

  Ahmed brought himself under control.

  “They said—” he whispered, “they said it was leaflets only.”

  “You were giving them out on the pavement,” said Owen.

  “Yes, I would give them out. And they—”

  “Yes?”

  “They would throw them on to the ground. In front of the policemen and soldiers.”

  “You would do this at the back?” said Owen.

  “Yes.”

  “And someone else would do it at the front?”

  “Yes,” said Ahmed. “In front of the Sirdar.”

  “It was not leaflets,” said Owen.

  “No,” Ahmed whispered. “No.”

  He buried his head in his arms. Owen touched him gently on the shoulder.

  “Who threw it?”

  “Farouz.”

  “Where will I find him?”

  “At Guzman’s. We were to go to Guzman’s after.”

  “Guzman’s?” said Owen incredulously.

  “Yes,” said Ahmed, looking up. “Didn’t you know?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Afterwards, Owen understood. At the time he just had to act. He sent one of the policemen for Georgiades. With the others he headed straight for Guzman’s.

  Georgiades reached him just as they got there.

  “Here we are again,” he said. “What is it this time?”

  “The same as it was last time,” said Owen savagely. “Only then we missed it.”

  He told Georgiades.

  “I always knew he was a bastard,” said Georgiades, “but that didn’t make him stand out.”

  They went straight in. Farouz they caught almost at once. He was drinking water in the kitchen. He wasn’t even armed. Guzman got away. He was in a room upstairs and had more time. Later they learned he had taken refuge in the Syrian consulate.

  McPhee exploded.

  “Sir, I really must protest!” he said to Garvin.

  “You don’t think I like it, do you?” asked Garvin.

  They were in Garvin’s office later that afternoon. The soldiers were back in quarters, the Mahmal resting in a mosque, and the population at its siesta. In the evening they would come out on to the streets again and there might be trouble. Owen had police everywhere, though, and there were -double guards on all military installations. He had great hopes of the day passing off without further incident.

  John had rung him to give the Sirdar’s congratulations.

  “He thinks you’re great,” said John. “He thinks he’s pretty great, too. Steadfastness under fire. Firm as a rock, cool as an iceberg. That sort of thing. Oh yes, and nothing actually happened.”

  “To him,” said Owen.

  “Well,” said John. “That’s what counts, isn’t it? Or isn’t it?”

  The Agent’s praise had been more muted.

  “He’s glad you got the men,” said Paul. “So am I. It might have become a habit.”

  Garvin’s reaction was hard to tell. It was still unfinished business to him, probably, and he was waiting to see how it turned out.

  “Can’t the Agent do something, sir?” asked McPhee.

  “Like what? Protest?”

  “I was hoping for something more, sir,” said McPhee.

  “You mean ask the Sirdar to send in a regiment or something? He wants to do that already.”

  “Well, we do run the country, sir,” said McPhee doggedly.

  “Sometimes I wonder if anybody runs the country,” said Garvin. “I certainly don’t.”

  “Couldn’t he put pressure on the Khedive?”

  “The Khedive’s delighted by the whole business. Anyway, Guzman is a Turk.”

  “What’s he doing in the Syrian consulate, then?”

  “He’s there because he’s a Turk.”

  Since Egypt was still, legalistically, a Turkish possession, the Turks did not need diplomatic representation. If they could not work directly through the Khedive they drew on the services of friendly powers.

  “You mean we can’t get at him at all, sir?” asked McPhee.

  “That’s right,” said Garvin.

  “I’ll get at him,” said Owen.

  ***

  Ahmed was interrogated that evening. Interrogated, or questioned. Owen claimed that he was being interrogated, since he was held under security provisions and this was a military matter. Mahmoud pointed out that he was also being held in connection with the attack on Nuri, that this was a civil affair, and that the Parquet intended to question him. In the end they agreed that Ahmed was to be both interrogated and questioned.

  Ahmed gave his answers in Owen’s office. He was no longer in a state of shock. Nevertheless, it was a very subdued young man who was brought in. He sat in a chair, looking down with unseeing eyes at his feet, waiting numbly for Owen to begin.

  Owen, deliberately, did not begin at once. He had some papers on his desk—the estimates, alas, were still with him—which he pretended to go through, marking them with a pencil. Eventually he put the pencil down and said matter-of-factly:

  “Did they tell you to stand there?”

  Ahmed looked up startled.

  “Outside the Beyt el Betani? That’s where you were, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Ahmed.

  “Giving out leaflets?”

  “Yes.”

  “Right by the water-cart?”

  It was the water-cart which
had taken the main force of the explosion, shielding the people on the pavement and accounting for the low level of serious injury.

  “I think so,” said Ahmed.

  “They told you to stand there?”

  “Yes.”

  “While someone else was going to stand further up the Sharia Mohammed Ali, just where the road narrows?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew that, did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were they going to be in the street, do you know, or in a house?”

  “There was talk of a room.”

  “This was at the meeting before, when you were planning what you would do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was at the meeting?”

  Ahmed hesitated.

  “I don’t know,” he muttered finally, looking down.

  “You were at the meeting, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Ahmed admitted.

  “Who else was there?”

  Again the long hesitation. Owen was just making up his mind to press harder when Ahmed spoke with a rush.

  “I was late,” he said, almost tearfully. “I had an essay to write. It had to be in the next day. He said it would be all right.”

  “Guzman?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you came late?”

  “Yes. They had nearly finished. Well, they had finished really. They were just waiting for me.”

  “You couldn’t help being late.”

  “No,” said Ahmed. “I had run all the way.”

  “Were they angry?”

  “No. They just—sort of joked.” He flushed and looked down.

  “What were they talking about when you arrived?”

  “Nothing really. They were just waiting.”

  “OK,” said Owen. “So what did they say to you?”

  “They told me where to stand.”

  “By Farouz?”

  “Yes.”

  “And give out leaflets?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was all?”

  “Yes.” Ahmed looked at him. “I swear it,” he said.

  Owen kept his face quite blank.

  “And Farouz,” he asked, “what was Farouz to do?”

  “To give out leaflets,” said Ahmed. “I thought…”

  Owen waited.

  “Really!” Ahmed insisted. He seemed suddenly on the verge of tears. “He had a bag over his shoulder. Like mine. I thought—I thought—” He stopped.

  “Yes?” said Owen.

  “That he had leaflets in it,” said Ahmed faintly. “I wondered why he wasn’t giving them to people. I thought perhaps he was saving them to throw before the soldiers.”

  His voice faded away and came to a stop. Owen was beginning to think he had stopped for good when he started again.

  “He didn’t throw,” Ahmed said. “Not for a long time. I kept wondering why.”

  Again the voice faded.

  Owen let the silence drag on for some time before he prompted.

  “But then he did throw.”

  “Yes,” said Ahmed.

  “You saw?”

  “He put his hand in the bag and took something out. I couldn’t see. The crowd was very thick. He tried to throw, but the crowd—he was all hemmed in. It went up in the air. Not very far.”

  Tears began to run down his cheeks.

  “As Allah is my witness,” he whispered, “I did not know.”

  Owen waited for him to say more. When he did not, he said: “Let Allah be your witness still: surely you knew what these men would do?”

  Ahmed shook his head decisively.

  “No,” he said. “No. No.”

  “You knew they were Tademah.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Yes,” said Ahmed at last. “I knew.”

  ***

  At this hour in the evening the office was completely quiet. There were a couple of orderlies at the end of the corridor and occasionally Owen could hear their low voices. The constable who had brought Ahmed up was probably with them. The only other noise was the buzzing of insects around the lamp.

  Owen got up, walked across the room and poured himself a cup of water from the large earthenware jug standing in the window where the night air would cool it. All the offices had water. Yussuf refilled the jugs every morning. At this time of year, when Cairo was so hot, it was necessary.

  He poured out a cup for Mahmoud, and then another for Ahmed, which Ahmed took without looking up.

  “When did you first learn they were Tademah?” he asked, and then, as Ahmed did not reply, “At once, or later?”

  Ahmed’s lips tightened.

  “At once?”

  There was a half-nod, suppressed.

  “When you got back from Turkey?”

  This time Ahmed looked up in surprise. “Yes,” he said. “How did you know?”

  “You were given someone to contact?”

  Again the half-nod.

  “Guzman?”

  The shake of the head was definite.

  “Who, then?”

  Ahmed made no reply.

  “Farouz?”

  No indication. He had obviously made up his mind to say no more.

  Owen sighed. He would have to work harder.

  “You knew they were Tademah,” he said. “Are you saying you didn’t know they would kill?”

  Ahmed’s lips remained tightly compressed.

  “Not even,” said Mahmoud, coming into the conversation for the first time, “when they ordered you to kill your father?”

  Ahmed looked up thunderstruck.

  “No,” he said. “No. How could you think—It wasn’t like that.”

  “Wasn’t it?” said Mahmoud. “What was it like, then?”

  He pulled his chair forward so that he was confronting Ahmed. Owen moved a little to one side to let him take over.

  Ahmed started to say something, stopped, looked from one of them to the other and then said: “It wasn’t like that.”

  “You heard Mustafa at the meeting.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You spoke to him afterwards.”

  “Yes—”

  “You gave him hashish. Too much. More than you were supposed to.”

  “No—”

  “You found him a gun. They gave it you.”

  This time Ahmed was silent.

  “And you gave it to him.”

  Mahmoud paused deliberately and then followed up with concentrated ferocity.

  “To kill your father.”

  “No,” said Ahmed. “No.”

  Mahmoud sat back in his chair but did not relax the pressure.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  “It’s not true!”

  “All those things are true,” said Mahmoud. “I’ve checked them.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Are you saying they’re not?”

  “They’re true,” said Ahmed, almost in a shout, “but not—”

  “Not what?”

  “Not the last.”

  “No?” said Mahmoud disbelievingly.

  “It was to frighten him!” cried Ahmed. “That was all. I swear it!”

  “Mustafa does not say so.”

  “I told him!” said Ahmed, weeping. “I told him!”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him it was to frighten only. That it would be wrong to kill. It was right to punish Nuri for what he had done, but not to commit another wrong! I told him. I swear it!”

  “And Tademah,” said Owen sceptically, “did they want to punish him, too?”

  “No,” said Ahmed. “That was different.”

 
“What did they want?”

  Ahmed was silent.

  “Money?”

  “No,” said Ahmed. “Not money.”

  “There was a note.”

  “I wrote that,” said Ahmed, surprisingly.

  “You wrote it?”

  “Yes. To frighten Nuri. To make him think Tademah would avenge.”

  “Avenge? Denshawai?”

  “No, no,” said Ahmed. “The girl. Mustafa.”

  “It was just part of your personal campaign?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Tademah think?”

  Ahmed lowered his head. “They thought it was foolishness,” he said.

  “They weren’t really interested?”

  “No.”

  “What were they interested in, then?”

  Ahmed was mute.

  “Nuri’s deal? With Abdul Murr?”

  Again Ahmed was surprised.

  “You knew?”

  “They wanted to frighten him off?”

  “Yes,” said Ahmed. “They weren’t really interested in the girl, but when I told them what I planned, they said they would help.”

  “So they gave you the gun?”

  “Yes. They said it would serve a double purpose.”

  “‘They,’” said Mahmoud. “You are always saying ‘they.’ Who are they? What are their names?”

  “I daren’t tell,” said Ahmed. “They would kill me.”

  “You realize,” said Mahmoud softly, “that if you instigated Mustafa to commit a crime, whether Mustafa planned to kill your father or not, then you bear responsibility?”

  Ahmed went ashen.

  “I did not mean…” he whispered.

  “Whether you meant to or not,” said Mahmoud.

  “Who are ‘they’?” asked Owen.

  Ahmed licked his lips. “I dare not,” he said. “They would kill me.”

  “I will start you,” said Mahmoud. “Guzman. Farouz. Ismail. Abu el Mak.”

  The last two were the men Georgiades had arrested.

  He waited.

  “I do not know any others,” Ahmed protested.

  “Were there others?”

  “I do not know,” said Ahmed wretchedly.

  “Did you ever see any others?”

  “No. The printer,” he remembered.

  “That was all?”

  “Yes, I swear.”

  “Did you hear any other names mentioned?”

  Ahmed thought hard.

  “No,” he said. “I do not think so.”