The Men Behind

by Michael Pearce

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because that would explain it,” said the Greek. “I mean, if the British thought there was somebody dangerous there, that might explain why they left the bomb.”

  Sympathetic brown eyes gazed trustingly at the students. He was obviously a bit naïve but didn’t seem to intend any harm.

  “It would explain it,” said the more moderate student. “I don’t think there was anyone there like that, though.”

  “We wouldn’t tell you if there was,” said the scarred student.

  “Oh? No, of course not. Quite right, too.”

  The Greek backed off hurriedly. He wasn’t really nosey, he was just a bit childlike.

  “Well,” he said, “one thing’s certain anyway. You won’t be using that café again.”

  “No,” said the scarred student, “we’ve got to use places like this.” He waved a dismissive hand.

  “What’s wrong with this?” demanded one of the other customers, lowering his newspaper.

  “Nothing’s wrong with it,” said one of the other students hurriedly. “It’s just not our kind of place.”

  The customer disappeared again behind his newspaper. There were several other newspaper-readers in the café, among them Owen. In his light, Cairo-made suit, dark glasses and tarboosh, there was little to distinguish him from the Levantines at the other tables. There were a lot of them. The café, though near the Law School, was on a boulevard-like main street and its cosmopolitan clientele included businessmen, civil servants, journalists and teachers, as well, of course, as plenty of people who it seemed had absolutely nothing to do.

  Quite a few people spent most of the day in the café. They came first thing in the morning, picked up a newspaper and ensconced themselves in their favorite seat. At some point in the morning coffee and perhaps a roll would appear before them and just before lunch the coffee would be supplemented by aniseed.

  The café would empty at lunchtime and begin to fill up again once siesta was over. In the evening it was so crowded that its tables spilled out into the road. It had a vigorous life of its own and the students were invaders.

  “I kept thinking about those boys,” said the fat Greek, “the poor boys who were killed. How their parents must have felt! They had families, presumably?”

  The students weren’t sure.

  “They kept themselves very much to themselves.”

  “They must have had families, though,” said one of them.

  “They came from the country, didn’t they?”

  “I don’t know. I never really spoke to them.”

  “They weren’t law students, you see,” one of the students explained.

  “They weren’t?”

  “No. They were at the School of Engineering.”

  “What were they doing over here?”

  “We get around a lot. They had a friend, I expect.”

  “If they had, he hasn’t come forward.”

  “Perhaps he’s under the rubble. They’re still looking, aren’t they?”

  “I thought they’d finished,” said the Greek.

  “You’d have expected them to have finished.”

  “They’re not really trying. Shocking, isn’t it? They don’t really care.”

  “When are they being buried?”

  “It’s not known yet. The British haven’t released the bodies.”

  “When they do we ought to see that it doesn’t go unnoticed.”

  “We ought to have a procession.”

  “Yes!”

  The students blazed up.

  “That’s what we’ll do! We will go to the British and show them the bodies and say: ‘These are the corpses of the men you have murdered.’”

  “Yes!”

  “Yes!”

  Newspapers rustled.

  “What is it now?” asked someone wearily.

  “We are going to have a procession.”

  “Another one? Don’t you ever do any work?”

  “What is work?” said one of the students. “This is our work.”

  “Don’t you ever have any exams?”

  “They’re not for a bit yet.”

  “They ought to have them more often,” said another newspaper-reader.

  The scarred student sprang to his feet.

  “This is what we’re fighting against!” he declared, with a dramatic sweep of his arm. “You are what holds us back!”

  “I’m not holding you back,” a newspaper-reader objected. “I’m all for study.”

  “We all are,” someone else said. “It’s just that we’d like you to do it a bit more.”

  “You don’t care about Egypt, do you?” said the scarred student in a fury.

  Someone lowered a newspaper.

  “Egypt? What do you know about Egypt? You’re a Sudani by the look of you.”

  “I come from Halfa,” said the student with dignity.

  “There you are! That’s the Sudan. It’s a bit hot down there. Perhaps it’s affected your head.”

  Friends pulled the student down. Other friends sprang up in his place.

  “Halfa belongs to Egypt,” they shouted.

  “He’s as good an Egyptian as you are!”

  “Better! At least he tries to do something about what is wrong!”

  “You just accept it! Slave!”

  “You are all slaves! Slaves to the British!”

  Not a newspaper was batted.

  “One day we’ll sweep you all away!”

  “One day the examiner will sweep you all away,” retorted a newspaper-reader. “And that day’s likely to come first.”

  “Slaves!”

  “Tyrants!”

  Despite the turmoil around the students’ table, the rest of the café was surprisingly calm.

  Suddenly, through the uproar, there came the sound of a bell. The students looked at each other in consternation.

  “It’s the next lecture!”

  They rushed out.

  “Ah, ces révolutionnaires!” muttered someone.

  ***

  “Why students?” said the fat Greek. “The British, I can understand. Pashas, I can understand. But students?”

  He and Owen were walking back to the office together. His name was Georgiades and he was one of Owen’s most useful agents. People would pour out their soul to Georgiades. He had a most remarkable capacity for eliciting confidences. One glance of those soulful, sympathetic brown eyes and people were ready to confide their innermost secrets.

  Particularly their problems. Everybody had problems and Georgiades somehow was the sort of person you wanted to talk to about them. He seldom came up with solutions, as Nikos pointed out, but for pure sympathetic listening Georgiades had few equals.

  He had spent the last two or three days listening in the Law School and already seemed to have been part of the place forever. No one was quite sure what he was doing there. He didn’t quite seem to be a student—he was a bit old for that. He certainly wasn’t a lecturer.

  People rather gathered the impression that he was a student from a previous year. Perhaps, if the truth be known, several previous years, one of those unfortunates who regularly came unstuck when it got to exam time.

  No one quite liked to ask him because that would have been unkind. The truth, actually, was obvious, though no one wished to press it. The poor chap was none too bright.

  You had to explain a lot of pretty obvious things to him. He didn’t seem to have even heard of them. Not just legal things, the sort of points that came up in lectures, but ordinary things you took for granted, like the fact that Cairo was clearly in a revolutionary situation, or the tensions between evolutionary determinism and the autonomous “I,” or the roots of crime in neo-Imperialist substructures.

  Mi
nd you, he was quite able to pick them up when you explained them to him, which only went to show how unjust and partial the examination system was. The poor chap was a victim. That’s what he was: a victim.

  So Georgiades was not only tolerated, he was actually the object of considerable sympathy in the Law School. People talked about taking another look at his case and seeing whether something couldn’t be done for him. But that, of course, would have to wait on the whole system being put right, which, fortunately, was just around the corner.

  “You’re making the assumption they’re connected,” said Owen. “They might not be.”

  “Two groups?”

  “Yes. One shooting and following, the other bombing.”

  “Perhaps.” Georgiades was unconvinced.

  “There’s only one thing they’ve got in common,” said Owen, “apart from timing and the fact they’re all acts of terrorism. And even that’s pretty tenuous. Make the assumption that the two men who followed Jullians are in some way connected with, or the same as, the two men who followed and shot at Fairclough. Where our trackers lost sight of those two men was the Law School. And the Law School is right by Ali’s café.”

  “The Law School is what they’ve got in common?”

  “It might be.”

  “Pretty tenuous,” said Georgiades, “as you said.”

  “It’s not so nutty. We know, or at any rate we’re pretty sure, that we’re dealing with at least one Society. Societies are strong among students. The sightings we’ve had always report the men as being in European dress. That rules out El-Azhar, and makes it more likely they’re from one of the Higher Schools. If they’re from one of the Schools, it’s more likely to be the Law School, not just because that’s the one we’ve got the most pointers to, but because that’s the one that always causes the most trouble.”

  “One of the things that always puzzles me,” said Georgiades, “is how it is that all the lawyers I know are loving, conventional, rather dull people, whereas law students are rebellious, troublesome and a general pain in the ass. What happens to them?”

  “The bright ones are too busy making money to make trouble. The next brightest go into the Parquet. The dimmest become Public Prosecutors in country districts. Oh, and the troublesome ones become politicians.”

  “There ought to be more politicians,” said Georgiades.

  “What about that lot in the café?”

  “Parquet, I think.”

  “There was a lot of big talk.”

  “That’s right—big talk.”

  “They said they were members of Societies.”

  “There are Societies and Societies. The ones we’re bothered about are not the ones that do the talking.”

  “You don’t reckon there’s anything in it?”

  “I don’t reckon there’s anything in it. Nor, incidentally, do I reckon there’s much in your notion of Ali’s café being a Society headquarters. I thought they ruled that out.”

  “It was only an idea. And it provided a reason for somebody to bomb it. Without that we don’t have any reason at all.”

  “As I said,” said Georgiades. “Why students?”

  ***

  “You think so?” said Ali Osman doubtfully.

  “I’m sure of it, Pasha,” Owen said heartily. If he could get Ali Osman out of his hair it was worth any amount of deceit.

  For the last few days his messengers had been coming every day. One day it was a sinister-looking man lurking at his gates; the next it was a complaint about troublemakers being allowed to gather across the street from him and shout abusive words and threats.

  Owen replied soothingly to all the messages and otherwise did nothing about them. This morning, however, he had secured a message which made him pause.

  Ali Osman reported that he had been followed.

  “He’s just heard that other people have been,” said Nikos scathingly. “Take no notice.”

  Owen, these days, was reluctant to take a chance on it, not just because of the Khedive’s solicitousness on behalf of Ali Osman. He took the message and went down into the yard, where, as he had hoped, the messenger was still waiting.

  The messenger was a cheerful Sudani from the south, middleaged and sensible looking.

  “Hello,” said Owen. “You’re far from home, aren’t you? Where is it you come from?”

  “Dongola, effendi.”

  “Then you are a long way from home. I’ve been there once but it was a long time ago now.”

  “It’s even longer since I was there,” said the messenger. “The Pasha brought me as a boy to his estate at Hamada, where I have been ever since. That is where my wife and children are too. But for the last four years I have been at the Pasha’s house in the city.”

  “Long enough to know your way around,” said Owen.

  “I know the city pretty well. The Pasha often makes use of me.”

  “He has sent a lot of messengers to me lately but I have not seen your face before.”

  “No. But this time is different.”

  “Why is it different?”

  “He wants to be sure the message reaches you.”

  “His messages have always reached me.”

  “So they should. But this message is important and he wanted to be sure.”

  “You know what the message was?”

  The man hesitated. “The Pasha does not tell me these things,” he said, “nor can I read them.”

  “But you know.”

  “Well…” said the man.

  “The Pasha believes he has been followed by bad men.”

  The messenger nodded.

  “Were you with the Pasha when he was followed?”

  “No. Hamid was.”

  “He has spoken of it?”

  “A little.”

  “About being followed?”

  “He told us about it when he got back. He said the Pasha was disturbed.”

  “Did he himself see those who followed?”

  “Suleiman was with him. The Pasha said: ‘Do you see those two men?’ They both looked and Suleiman thought he saw the men. Hamid was not sure. The Pasha said: ‘I saw them before, in the Midan Nasriyeh. Now I see them again. Let us go home quickly. Tell me if you see them again.’”

  “And did they see them again?”

  “No. Suleiman thought they might have seen them looking and knew they were on their guard. But the Pasha was mightily disturbed and hurried home.”

  “Tell him I will come,” said Owen.

  “You are wasting your time,” said Nikos, when Owen went back to the office to fetch his hat. “He’s imagining it. It doesn’t fit the pattern.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is only people like Mr. Jullians who are followed. People who serve the Administration. Not Pashas.”

  “Pashas sometimes serve the Administration.”

  “Ali Osman?”

  “He was a member of the Government.”

  “Pashas are not part of the pattern,” Nikos repeated stubbornly.

  All the same, Owen went.

  He found Ali Osman, as before, lying on the dais, plumped up by cushions and surrounded by servants. The Pasha’s eyes lit up when he saw Owen.

  “Ah! The Khedive has sent you?”

  “I am afraid not. Not on this occasion. I came in response to your own message.”

  “Ah well. It doesn’t matter.”

  Ali Osman seemed, however, downcast.

  He waved a plump hand and servants arranged the cushions for Owen to sit on the edge of the dais.

  “It is good of you to come, old fellow,” said the Pasha. “Things are getting serious.”

  “Abdul Maher—?”

  “Not Abdul Maher,” the Pasha said soberly. “Not this time.”

&
nbsp; His own description of what had happened matched the other ones Owen had received, was similar, indeed, to his own experience. It was sufficiently similar to incline Owen to take it seriously, despite what Nikos had said. At the same time it was as sketchy as all the other accounts and there might be nothing in it.

  “I need your help, Captain Owen,” said Ali Osman Pasha, “badly.”

  He clapped his hands. Two servants came into the room carrying an object covered with a cloth. They put it on the dais beside Owen and removed the cloth. It was a marvelous old mosque lamp of enameled glass made at the end of the Middle Ages with a workmanship which had not been equaled since.

  “For you,” said Ali Osman.

  Owen took it in both hands.

  “It is exquisite,” he said. He was not a true collector but even he could see at once what a remarkable piece it was. “Exquisite!”

  He put it down regretfully.

  “Alas, Pasha, much, very much, as I would like to, I cannot accept it. These tiresome English customs, you know. It is our masters at home. They are so afraid of our falling into the delightful ways of the East that they make it a rule that no one in Government employment can accept or give presents.”

  “Oh, it’s not a present,” said Ali Osman, “it’s a loan. Think of it as a loan, a long loan. And if it worries you, you can lend it yourself to the Collection in the Museum until such time as you leave Egypt, when you can take it with you as a small memento of your time here.”

  Owen laughed. “You are very persuasive, Pasha, and I can see how successful a Parliamentarian you must be. But even a loan—well, I’m afraid not. Though I shall retain the memory of your kind gesture and take that away with me as a delightful memento of our friendship.”

  Ali Osman let the lamp remain on the dais as continuing blandishment.

  “In any case,” said Owen, “it would make no difference to our eagerness to offer you as much protection as we can. I can certainly arrange a bodyguard, if you wish. However—”

  It was then that he had made his suggestion, the same one he had made to Nuri. Might not this be a good time for a fatigued public servant to take a vacation, either abroad or on his estates? At any rate, away from Cairo.

  Unlike Nuri, Ali Osman did not at once dismiss it.