The Mamur Zapt and the return of the Carpet mz-1

by Michael Pearce

  “It fits together,” he said. “Mustafa and the Nationalists, Mustafa and Ahmed. Ahmed and the extremists among the Nationalists, if that leaflet really means anything. Those most likely to want to kill Nuri.” Which made it all the more surprising the next day when one of Owen’s men reported that Nuri and Ahmed had been seen visiting al Liwa’s offices: together.

  CHAPTER 7

  “It’s got to be protection,” said Georgiades and Nikos together. “He’s a rich man,” said Georgiades.

  “A natural target,” Nikos concurred.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if several of the clubs were on to him,” said Georgiades.

  “They are,” said Owen. “I’ve seen their letters.”

  “There you are, then.”

  “And checked them out.”

  “You got nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you check the right ones?” asked Georgiades.

  “I checked the ones I was given,” said Owen, and stopped. “Given by Nuri’s secretary,” he said. “Ahmed.”

  “Yes,” said Nikos, “well…”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference,” said Georgiades. “He wouldn’t have given it you, anyway. And, sure as hell, he won’t give it to you now.”

  “Nuri must know,” said Owen.

  “Do you think he would tell, though?”

  “He told me about the other ones.”

  “Did he?” asked Nikos.

  Owen shrugged. “He made no difficulty about showing me the letters.”

  “Some of them.”

  “Did he tell you whether he’d paid them off?” asked Georgiades. “No,” said Owen. “He rather gave me the impression he disregarded them.”

  “He would,” said Nikos.

  “Do you think he pays?”

  “Of course,” said Nikos.

  “Invariably,” said Georgiades.

  “Everybody does,” said Nikos.

  “Then why did they try to kill him?”

  “Did they try to kill him?” asked Georgiades.

  Owen looked at him. “Are you suggesting they didn’t?” Georgiades spread his hands.

  “Try this,” he said, “for size. He didn’t respond at once. So they tried to frighten him.”

  “Mustafa tried to kill him.”

  “It went wrong,” said Georgiades.

  “Why did it go wrong?” asked Nikos.

  “Because they used that moron Ahmed as a go-between. He set it up wrongly.”

  “Ahmed would try to extort money from his own father?” asked Owen.

  Georgiades spread his hands again, palms up, open as the Cairo day. “Why not?” he said. “Better than trying to kill him.”

  Owen frowned. “It makes sense,” he said. “Some sense. Neither you nor Zeinab thought he was of the stuff that killers are made of.” “Who is this Zeinab?” asked Nikos.

  “A girl,” Georgiades told him. “He’s been doing some research of his own.”

  “He’s been writing some memos of his own, too,” said Nikos, still unforgiving.

  “But there remains the difficulty,” said Owen, disregarding them, “that the societies, or most of them, are professional and Ahmed is a bungling amateur. Why does a professional use an amateur?” “Because he’s Nuri’s son?” offered Nikos.

  “I still don’t see-”

  “It adds to the pleasure,” said Nikos. “Their pleasure. To use the son against the father,” he explained patiently.

  “Now you’ve shocked him, ” said Georgiades to Nikos. “Anyway, I can think of another explanation.”

  “What’s that?”

  “They wanted to give him something to do. Always hanging around. Get him out of their hair.”

  “I prefer that explanation,” Owen said to Nikos.

  Nikos smiled, worldly-wise.

  “We’re still left with the old question, though,” said Owen. “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “We know the answer now, don’t we?” asked Georgiades.

  “Do we?”

  “The ones Nuri and Ahmed went to see at al Liwa. ”

  But that was strange. For the person Nuri and Ahmed had talked to at al Liwa, they later learned from their agent, was Abdul Murr.

  Much to Owen’s surprise, for he had neither expected nor intended the memo to have such an effect, there were three other responses besides Guzman’s to the memo that day.

  The next came at lunch-time. Owen had gone as usual to the club and as he was going in to the dining-room someone hailed him through the open door of the bar.

  It was one of the Consul-General’s bright young men, a personal friend.

  “Hello, Gareth,” he said. “Can I catch you for a minute?”

  He led Owen out on to the verandah and they sat down at a table where they were unlikely to be disturbed.

  “It’s about that memo of yours,” he said, “the one about lapses in military security.”

  “Look, Paul-” Owen began hastily.

  “The Old Man’s concerned. He had the SPG in first thing this morning. Told him a thing or two. And not before time, I must say! The Army behaves as if it’s on a bloody island of its own. Has its own procedures, won’t talk to anyone else, won’t even listen to anyone else. Thinks it knows it all and in reality knows bloody nothing! The Egyptians mightn’t be here at all as far as it’s concerned. And much the same goes for the Civil Branch. We might as well not exist. The Army goes clumping in with its bloody great big boots. Half our time is spent trying to make up for the damage it’s already bloody caused and the other half trying to anticipate what it’s going to cock up next. Liaison-you talk about liaison in your mem-Jesus! they can’t even spell the word!”

  “Some of them particularly,” said Owen, pleased.

  “You’re dead right! Military Security in particular. Mind you, you get all the dummos in that. A fine pig’s ear they’ve been making of things! Supplying arms and ammunition to half the bloody population. And making a few bob out of it on the side, I’ll bet. Those bloody Army storesmen are about as straight as a corkscrew-an implement with which they are all too familiar.”

  “Now, now, Paul,” said Owen. “They drink beer.”

  “You’re bloody right they do! No wonder the place is a desert. Anything liquid they bloody consume.”

  “The trouble is,” said Owen, “the Sirdar will never do anything.”

  “Oh yes he will. This time. The Agent was on to him directly. He’s at risk, too. Great minds think alike for once.”

  “You reckon the memo might have some effect?”

  “It already has. Sirdar’s already kicked some people up the ass.” “He has?” said Owen happily.

  “He certainly has.”

  Paul leaned forward and spoke a trifle more quietly but just as vehemently.

  “And with bloody good reason,” he said. “Because do you know what came out? The Old Man demanded to know if anything had been stolen recently. The SPG had to tell him. And-can you believe it? It turned out that a box of grenades had vanished from Kantara barracks only last Tuesday! Grenades! A box! Jesus!”

  “Kantara?” said Owen. “That’s interesting.”

  “Is it? Well, perhaps it is to you. I must say, Gareth, they’re pretty impressed with you. Timely prescience, the Agent called it. Even the Sirdar thought it was damn good intelligence work.”

  “Well, there you are,” said Owen modestly.

  “But what interests me, ” said Paul, “was that it was a whole bloody box. Could cause absolute havoc if they start chucking a few of those around. And it’s just when we’ve got all the festivals coming up! We’ve got the Carpet next week and the place will be stiff with notables all hanging around for someone to take a pot shot at. Even the Khedive has been persuaded to come to receive the plaudits of his loyal and appreciative subjects. And I’m organizing our side! Christ!” “The Agent?”

  “And the Sirdar!”

  “McPhee’s very good,” said Owen.

&nb
sp; “He’ll have to be,” said Paul gloomily, “if the Army is issuing arms to the whole population of Egypt.”

  “Is this real?” asked Garvin.

  He had an unfortunate way of going to the heart of things.

  “I am afraid it is, sir,” said Owen, straightforward and thanking his lucky stars for the conversation at lunch-time. “A box of grenades went missing from Kantara only this week.”

  “I know,” said Garvin. “The Sirdar told me.” He still looked sceptical. “I must say I was a little surprised at your memo. I hadn’t noticed any build-up. Still, I dare say you rely on information which does not come through in the ordinary way.”

  He looked down at the papers in front of him. Garvin’s distaste for paper-pushing was well known.

  “That’s right, sir,” said Owen immediately. He felt he was sounding too much like McPhee. “And a lot of it of very dubious quality. But when it all points in one direction-”

  “And this did?”

  “Enough to risk a judgement,” said Owen.

  Surprisingly, Garvin seemed satisfied.

  “Well,” he said, “it seems to have been a good judgement. Both the Agent and the Sirdar are pleased with you. And that doesn’t happen often.”

  One of the reasons for that, Owen felt like saying, was that neither of them was particularly anxious to hear about the Mamur Zapt’s activities; and Garvin usually thought it politic not to enlighten them.

  "The only trouble is,” said Garvin, “that now they’ll expect you to do something.”

  "I’ve outlined several things in my memo-” Owen began.

  Garvin brushed this aside.

  “About the grenades,” he said.

  The conversation was beginning to take an unprofitable direction.

  “Isn’t that rather Military Security’s pigeon?” Owen asked.

  “Not any longer. The grenades are out of the camp, aren’t they?”

  Owen was forced to admit that this was so.

  “They’ll have to give me some information,” he said.

  “They will. This time.”

  “We’d never even have heard about the grenades if it had not been for my memo,” he said, still hoping to deflect Garvin back to safer paths.

  “Probably not,” Garvin agreed cheerfully.

  “Still,” he said, “with your contacts- You must have had something to go on in writing your memo.”

  The scepticism had definitely returned.

  “Of course,” Owen agreed hastily. “Of course.”

  “However,” he went on after a moment, “nothing on this, I’m afraid.”

  “It will all fit in,” said Garvin, relaxed. “Never underrate your sources.” It was a favourite maxim of his.

  “No,” said Owen.

  A suffragi brought in some papers for Garvin to sign. He read them carefully and signed deliberately. Although he had been to Cambridge he always gave the impression that writing came hard to him.

  “All I’ve got to go on at the moment,” said Owen, “is that they were taken from Kantara. I’m interested in Kantara for another reason. That’s where the gun came from which was used against Nuri Pasha.”

  He told Garvin about the sergeant. Garvin was not very concerned.

  “Probably happening all the time,” he said. “They probably all do it.”

  “And they all know where to take it to,” said Owen.

  “Yes,” Garvin admitted. “There is that.”

  “Military Security haven’t done anything about that angle,” said Owen, still hoping.

  “Nor have we,” said Garvin. “You’d better start.”

  Owen returned unhappily to his room. This did not appear to be working out as he had hoped.

  There was a message on his desk to ring one of the Sirdar’s aides.

  “Hello, John,” he said.

  “Gareth? That you? Thank goodness for that. I’ve got to go out this evening-the Sirdar’s holding a reception-and I wanted to catch you first. It’s about that memo.”

  “Yes?” said Owen, warily now.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m trying to shake that bugger, Brooker.”

  “Reasonable. He needs shaking. But why bring the whole firmament down as well?”

  “Have you got caught up in it?” asked Owen. “Sorry if you have.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said the other. “I’m not directly involved. The thing is, though, that I’ve been talking to Paul, and he’s reminded me that we’ve got this blasted Carpet thing on next week. I’ve got to be holding the Sirdar's hand at the time and I don’t want to be fending off grenades while I’m doing it.”

  “You’ve got the other hand free,” said Owen.

  “Thank you. Oh thank you.”

  “It’ll be all right,” said Owen. “McPhee’s quite sound.”

  “He’s thick as a post. And erratic as well.”

  “He’s OK at this sort of thing. Anyway, we’ll double up security all round.”

  “The Sirdar thinks something extra is needed.”

  “Such as?”

  “Don’t know. You’re the one who’s supposed to have ideas on things like that. The Sirdar thinks you’re smart.” “I am, I am.”

  “He doesn’t want just a routine operation this time. I must say I’m right with him.”

  “I’ll speak to McPhee.”

  “You’re the one in charge.”

  “No, I’m not. I’m sort of in the background,” Owen explained. “Not this time. Haven’t you heard?”

  Owen’s heart began to sink.

  “No,” he said. “Tell me.”

  “Sorry to be the one to break the news. Thought it would have got through by now.”

  “It hasn’t.”

  “Well, the Sirdar wanted security augmented. He offered the Army. The Agent said no thanks. Wisely. The Sirdar said this was a special situation. The police couldn’t be expected to cope with terrorism. The Agent thought there was something in that. They decided that what was needed was someone who knew about that sort of thing. You. Congratulations.”

  “Christ!” said Owen.

  “Help me catch the grenades, then?”

  “I’ll throw the bloody grenades,” said Owen.

  John roared with laughter.

  “At any rate,” he said, “you’ll be spared the assistance of Military Security. Unless you want it. I offer you Brooker.”

  “That stupid bastard! It’s all his fault,” said Owen unfairly.

  “If he gets in your hair anymore,” John offered, “tell me. I’ll get him posted to Equatoria.”

  “Those grenades were taken from Kantara.”

  “Where that sergeant was?” He whistled. “Pity you couldn’t squeeze something out of him. He’s coming out today, you know.” “Is he? The lucky bastard.”

  “He’ll be celebrating tonight. And every night for the next week, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “He won’t talk now.”

  “No? Couldn’t you frighten him somehow?”

  Owen suddenly had an idea.

  To the north of the Ezbekiyeh Gardens were the streets of ill repute. The chief of these was the Sharia Wagh el Birket, one side of which was taken up by the apartments of the wealthier courtesans. The apartments rose in tiers over the street, each with its balcony, over which its occupants hung in negligees of virgin white.

  The opposite side of the street was arcaded and in the arches were little cafes where strong liquor was sold. The customers sat at tables on the pavement, smoking and drinking, and looking across at the balconies opposite. From time to time one would make up his mind and cross the street.

  At the far end of the street the cafes gave way to houses. Unlike the ones opposite, they were dark and shuttered. To enter, and many people did, you knocked on a small door and waited to be admitted.

  It was to one of these that the sergeant had gone, already reeling from the liquor he had previously consumed. Georgiades had an informant inside
who reported regularly on the sergeant’s progress, which was from drunk to fighting drunk to maudlin to blind drunk and finally to stupor. During the evening, in the intervals between drinking, he had relieved the needs of his flesh with the help of willing assistants, who had even more willingly relieved him of coin, wallet, watch and other valuables.

  “Did you get his belt?” asked Owen.

  Georgiades held up a standard military belt.

  “They did! Good!” said Owen with satisfaction.

  Soldiers often sold their belts for drink. Since belts were military equipment they could then be charged with a different set of offences under military law.

  He took the belt and inspected it almost as a matter of course. It was an offence to file the edges and point of the buckle; the belt made a nasty weapon in a brawl. Officers were required to check belts regularly. Owen looked to see if there was evidence of filing. There was.

  “We’ll keep that,” he said to Georgiades.

  He might be able to use it later.

  Georgiades put the belt on under his trousers.

  “When do you want to go in?” he asked.

  Owen checked his watch. It was not long after two in the morning. The street was still quite busy. The houris were no longer on the balconies but busy inside. However, customers were still coming and going. Small groups of scarlet Tommies twined together staggered down the street singing drunkenly. When they got past the more selective establishments hands would very soon pull them into alleyways. As well, however, there were the usual Cairene clients; too many of them.

  “We’ll wait,” Owen said.

  By three the street was empty. The last Tommies had been swallowed up. The traffic now was out of the houses and not into them. The balconies were empty. The pimps were gone.

  Owen signed with his hand.

  Georgiades went up to the door and knocked upon it. A little shutter opened at eye level. Apparently Georgiades satisfied scrutiny, for the door was opened a crack. Someone big was standing inside. Owen saw Georgiades look up at him as he was talking. The door would be on a chain. It was easier to get it right open.

  Owen saw some money change hands.

  There was the sound of the chain being taken off. Georgiades stepped inside. A man fell suddenly against the door. One of the big Sudanis with Owen pulled him outside and hit him with his truncheon. Georgiades was holding the door open with his shoulders. The other Sudanis piled in.