The Men Behind

by Michael Pearce

  Owen looked down at the two buildings just beginning to emerge from the shadows. The sun, creeping up the slopes, began to touch the shrine and turn the whiteness red.

  “Then let us go down,” he said.

  The doors were barred with heavy wooden bolts but not padlocked. The trackers drove the bolts out with the butts of their rifles.

  Inside, all was dark and it took a moment or two for Owen’s eyes to get used to it. All around the floor, stacked against the walls, bales were lying covered with heavy sacks. He pushed one of the sacks aside with his foot. The bale underneath was solid and heavy. A tracker cut it open with his dagger. A little trickle of powder ran out, white and crystalline.

  The tracker tasted it on his finger.

  “Salt,” he said.

  They moved the bale away. Underneath was another bale, less bulky, less solid, more angular. The tracker cut it open. He put in his hand and pulled out a rifle.

  The trackers, interested in such things, took it over to the door where the sunlight fell through and examined it appreciatively.

  It was new and oily. Owen looked over their shoulders. German made.

  He called the trackers back and began to work through the rest of the bales. He wanted to see if there was anything beside rifles.

  They had gone about two-thirds of the way along one of the walls when the trackers stopped and looked at each other. Two of them went over to the door and looked out.

  “Someone is coming.”

  They slipped back into cover, one each side of the door. Gently one of them eased the door to.

  The other trackers covered the door with their guns.

  Whoever it was approaching on foot. There seemed to be only one.

  He came up to the building and gave a grunt of surprise as he saw the open door. Unsuspecting, though, he pushed it open and stepped inside.

  One of the trackers caught him deftly around the neck. The other pinioned his arm by his side.

  “What the hell is this?” said Roper.

  Chapter Eleven

  Never been here before in my life,” said Roper. “Don’t know a thing about it.”

  “Just wandered in off the desert?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Out early, weren’t you?”

  “It’s cooler this time of day.”

  “Surveying?”

  “What else?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you. What else?”

  “Look, what’s all the excitement about? I’m out surveying as usual. I see this building, I come over to take a look. What’s wrong about that?”

  “You take a look in all the buildings you see, do you?”

  “Out here there aren’t many buildings—there aren’t any buildings. So when I see one, I take a look.”

  “Plumley with you?”

  “Not this morning.”

  “Where is he?”

  “About four miles back. Making himself a cup of tea.”

  One of the trackers slipped out.

  “Bring him here,” said Owen.

  “Don’t worry,” Roper said to the tracker. “You’ll find him all right. I haven’t killed him.” He turned back to Owen. “Look, what the hell is this?”

  “I thought you’d finished in these parts?”

  “We have, really. Just checking on something.”

  “What?”

  “The presence of crystalline deposits.”

  “Salt?”

  Roper’s eyes flickered for a moment. “I dare say there’s salt in these hills,” he said, “but that isn’t what I was looking for.”

  “You could show me the deposits?”

  “Glad to. Plumley could, too.”

  “Does he know you’re here?”

  Again the slight flicker. “We don’t always tell each other where we’re going.”

  “Or what you’re doing?”

  “We divide the work between us. It’s a big area.”

  “Anyone else come with you?”

  “Who were you thinking of?”

  “Guide, escort?”

  “We’ve got a couple of Bedawin with us. They’re out hunting.”

  “For hare?” Owen said skeptically. He suddenly remembered something.

  Roper shrugged.

  “Not much else, is there? Might see a gazelle, I suppose, but it’s unlikely. Hare would do. A couple for the pot would be nice.”

  “Add to the breakfast?”

  “That’s right. Look, it’s quite normal for Bedawin to go hunting.”

  “You didn’t feel like going with them?”

  “Surveying’s my business,” said Roper, “my only business.”

  “You don’t know what’s in this building?”

  Roper pushed a sack aside with his foot.

  “Artillery,” he said, “or so it looks.”

  “You don’t know anything about it?”

  “Why should I?”

  “I thought you might have brought it here.”

  Roper glanced up and down the room.

  “Looks a lot for me to carry,” he said drily. “Of course, I could have asked Plumley to help.”

  “Oh, some friends could have done the actual carrying,” said Owen. “I wasn’t thinking of that.”

  “Oh? What were you thinking of?”

  Owen was silent. It had all happened a bit too quickly. He hadn’t had time to prepare his questions, to think them through, as he usually liked to do.

  Roper was looking at him with amusement.

  “I don’t think you’ve got anything on me,” he said.

  The trouble was, he was right. OK, it was suspicious him coming in like that. But his answers were all plausible, or at least sufficiently so as not to leave Owen much immediate purchase.

  Except that the arms were here and Roper was here, and Owen was reluctant to believe that was just coincidence.

  “Can I go, sir?” said Roper, with mock politeness.

  “No,” said Owen, and walked out of the Place of Salt into the morning brightness. He stood for a moment, looking down the slopes, past the shrine, almost dazzling in the early sun, and out across the desert. Far away there were some little dots which were moving towards him.

  “No,” he said, turning back to Roper, who was still standing pinioned at the door. “No, there’s a thing or two I want to check.”

  Deliberately he walked away. He needed time to think. In a few moments Plumley would come and he would have either to release Roper or charge him. That would depend, had to depend, on what Plumley said. And on what questions Owen asked him.

  One of the trackers came out of the Place of Salt and walked off through the rocks to where Roper’s camel was standing hobbled. He stood beside it for a moment silently. Then he walked away and began to wander up and down apparently aimlessly.

  Owen sat down on a rock. It struck surprisingly chill and he got up again and began to walk up and down for warmth. The sun now had flooded the valley with light but it was a light without heat. On the rocks there were a few genuine crystals of frost.

  The dots on the desert had become people. Plumley he could tell at once. There were two Bedawin with him, as well as Owen’s tracker.

  He watched them come up the slopes towards him.

  “Hello?” said Plumley, making his camel kneel so that he could dismount. “What’s the problem?”

  “No problem particularly,” said Owen. “Just a question or two.”

  He led Plumley off to one side where they could not be heard and indeed not seen from the Place of Salt. He did not want Roper calling out.

  “I’m surprised to see you down in these parts,” he said. “I thought you’d finished here?”

  “We have, more or less. There are just one or two
things we wanted to look at again.”

  “You wanted to look at? Or Roper wanted to look at?”

  “Roper, I suppose. Though it’s of interest to both of us.”

  “He was the one who suggested coming back?”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “What was it he particularly wanted to look at?”

  “Rock formations. Layers of quartz.”

  “Crystalline deposits?”

  “Yes. Probably. I say…” Plumley hesitated. “Nothing’s happened to him, has it?”

  “No, no.”

  “I mean, I would blame myself—”

  “No, no. He’s all right.”

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t have let him go by himself.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t take one of the Bedawin.”

  “He didn’t want to. I suggested it. But he said it would be all right. And of course he knows his way around. Almost as well as I do.”

  “He’s not been here before? Apart from with you?”

  “No, no. He knows his way around generally, I mean.”

  “You’ve been out in the desert, I take it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seen anyone?”

  “A few nomads.”

  “A caravan?”

  “No.” Plumley hesitated. “Met someone from one, though. It was out at Falya. There’s a little bit of an oasis. Well, hardly an oasis. Just a tree, really, but it’s one of those hollowed-out baobabs the nomads keep filled with water. Anyway, we met a rider there. He said he was with a caravan.”

  “Did he talk to Roper?”

  “Roper doesn’t speak Arabic.”

  “You spoke for him?”

  “Yes, yes. I suppose you could say that.”

  “Can you tell me what was said?”

  Plumley looked at him with a worried expression on his face.

  “Is anything—” He stopped, shrugged his shoulders, then started again. “I don’t remember, really. Nothing much. One thing, though, one thing that stuck in my mind because it surprised me. The man from the caravan spoke first.”

  “Sorry,” said Owen. “I don’t quite—?”

  “He was the one who started the conversation. He said, Tell the foreigner that—”

  “That?”

  “Well, that’s the bit that surprised me. That phrase. What I had to tell Roper was pretty ordinary. It was just that phrase that struck me. As if he was passing a message. As if he was expected to pass a message.”

  “What was the message?”

  “Nothing much. ‘The goods have been delivered.’ Something like that.”

  “That’ll do,” said Owen.

  He told Plumley to wait where he was and then went back to the Place of Salt.

  The solitary tracker was still wandering up and down. He came across to Owen.

  “The foreigner lies,” he said. “He said he had not been to the Place of Salt before.”

  “But you know he has been?”

  “That is what the tracks say.”

  “Are you sure it was him and not just the camel?”

  The tracker led him over to some rocks. There was a shallow pool of sand beside them in which some indistinct marks were faintly visible.

  “This is where he left his camel. It is the same prints, you see.”

  “He didn’t make them this time?”

  “No.” The tracker was positive.

  “How do you know that he was on it?”

  “Well,” said the tracker, “that’s easy. You can see the way he rides. It’s not the way a Bedawin would ride, not with the weight like that. And then you see, this is where he made the camel kneel. A proper rider wouldn’t do it like that. And, here, this is not an Arab foot. You can follow it, you see. It goes right to the Place of Salt.”

  “Thank you, Abou,” said Owen. “Once again you show that you are a tracker among trackers.”

  The man bowed his head with pleasure.

  Owen went back to Plumley.

  “Have there been any other early morning expeditions?” he asked. “I was wondering whether Roper could have come here before?”

  Plumley thought it over.

  “Yes,” he said finally. “Two days ago. He went off by himself and came back about noon. But—”

  “Thank you,” said Owen, and turned to go.

  Plumley walked a little way with him.

  “What’s it about?” he asked quietly.

  “Guns,” said Owen. “There’s a big shipment of guns over there.”

  Plumley nodded, then dropped back, thinking. Owen went on into the Place of Salt.

  Roper looked up at him.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I think you’re going to have to tell me another story,” said Owen.

  “Oh?” said Roper. “Why is that?”

  “Because the other one wasn’t true.”

  “It sounded all right to me.”

  “You knew the guns were there,” said Owen, “because the man had told you.”

  “What man was this?”

  “The man at the Falya oasis. Where the baobab tree was.”

  “You’ve been talking to someone,” said Roper.

  “Yes.”

  “He misheard,” said Roper. “It’s easy when you don’t speak the language properly.”

  “Plumley speaks the language pretty well.”

  “Oh, sure. It’s a legal point I’m making.”

  “There’s another thing. You said you hadn’t been here before.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I think you have.”

  “Don’t remember it. I’m sure I’d remember going to a place like this.”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Two days ago?” Roper frowned. “I certainly went out by myself. But that was surveying. And a long way from here.”

  “Then what was your track doing here?”

  “Oh,” said Roper. “I see.” He looked at the tracker. “Clever boy!” He shook his head, almost regretfully. “I don’t think it will do, though,” he said. “Not in a court of law. A bit flimsy.”

  “Out here it isn’t. A tracker’s word is enough to hang a man on.”

  “But would it be heard out here?”

  One of the most spectacular injustices of the Egyptian legal system was that part of it known as the Capitulations, a system of privileges conceded to foreigners. These privileges included immunity from direct taxation and immunity from the Egyptian law.

  No European or American could be punished unless it could be proved that he had committed an offense, not against Egyptian law, but against the law of his country. Proof of transgression against the law of his own country—whatever that was, and nationality was pretty elastic in Cairo—was required before a charge could be laid at all. And even if a charge was accepted the alleged offender would have to be tried by his own Consular Court.

  “I think we’d find a way of making sure it was,” said Owen, with more confidence than he actually felt.

  “You see,” said Roper, “I’m a bit of a special case. It’s not just the delegation. It’s the interests behind the delegation. They’re big, you see. They’re in the City, the London City, and they’re big.”

  “Are they behind the arms shipment too?” asked Owen.

  “Oh,” said Roper, “what a suggestion! I’m shocked. You’ve really shocked me, Owen. Have you no faith in your own countrymen? A bloody agent of the Crown, too. For the time being, I mean.”

  “I think I’ll be holding you after all,” said Owen. “Definitely.”

  ***

  “You can’t,” said Paul flatly.

  “Why not?”

  “To start with, he’s applied for bail, and there’s no way the judge can
refuse it.”

  “To hell with the judge. I’m the Mamur Zapt, aren’t I?”

  “Not for long, if you go on at this rate.”

  “I can hold anybody who’s a threat to order.”

  “You can hold anybody normal. Roper isn’t normal. He’s a member of a visiting delegation. Also, he has powerful friends.”

  “I should be holding them as well.”

  “Quite so. But if they’re so powerful that back in London the Prime Minister doesn’t want to know, and here in Egypt the Consul-General thinks he’d better keep quiet, and the Khedive probably sees nothing wrong anyway, who does this chap Owen think he is?”

  “I’m not going to let him get away with it.”

  “Well you haven’t let him get away with it,” said Paul reasonably. “You’ve seized the arms, you’ve stopped the deal from going ahead—”

  “But that so-and-so’s getting off scot-free.”

  Paul shrugged. “Most so-and-sos in that line of business do.”

  “Are you saying I’ve just got to let him go? Take him down to the Gezira and buy him a drink or something?”

  “Let him buy you one. He’d like to. He’s got a great respect for you, Gareth. He says you’re the only straight policeman he’s ever met. And to come across him in Cairo! He’s had a great shock, Gareth. I think he probably needs a drink.”

  “Paul, you’re not taking this seriously.”

  “I am. I am. Seriously enough to counsel you to distinguish your interests from those of mankind and pursue the former, just this once.”

  “It’s a sellout!”

  “Look, Gareth, this is really a sideshow. Aren’t you spending too much time on it? I thought your main business at the moment was supposed to be preventing a major conflagration from developing in Cairo?”

  “These arms will start a conflagration in the Sudan.”

  “Then we’ll be able to send the Army to put it out. That seems an excellent idea. It’s a long way away and they’ll be gone for months. The more I think about it the more I like it.”

  “If it’s a choice between stopping a war in the Sudan and stopping a few terrorist attacks in Cairo, which is the more important?”

  “It depends from whose point of view you’re seeing it. If you could stop people from taking pot shots at us as we’re going to work, I, personally, would regard that as a great achievement, Gareth.”