The Mingrelian Conspiracy mz-9

by Michael Pearce

  ‘And does he speak the truth?’

  ‘When he is among friends, Effendi.’

  ‘I will, I think, speak with this man, Abdulla.’

  ‘Do so, Effendi. You will find him a big bladder of wind. But he will tell you, I think, that a certain man came to him and gave him money that he might take the box away without the gate-man asking him questions.’

  ‘The gate-man, too, then, could have a story to tell?’

  ‘He will tell it, Effendi, only if he knows that it is useless to deny it.’

  ‘I will speak to Abdulla first, then. And thank you, Sidi, for all you have told me.’

  ‘Effendi, I know I do not merit the entire reward-’

  ‘But you merit some of it. And shall have it.’

  ‘I had hopes, Effendi, of buying a donkey.’

  ‘Hope, even of two,’ said Owen.

  'Improper. The Orderly Room was shocked.

  ‘A woman,’ said Nikos, disapprovingly. ‘Alone,’ he added with emphasis.

  Everyone knew that a woman should not speak for herself. If she had business to transact, it should be done through her nearest male relative; if there were no male relatives, then through a friend or a senior figure in the community. Where would we be if women took it upon themselves to urge their own causes? Things would fall apart and the centre would not hold.

  On the other hand, this lady was plainly not for turning, at least, not turning away. After their experience with Sidi, the Orderly Room had lost a little confidence, and the issue was put to Nikos. Nikos was not at his best in anything to do with women. He was not especially against them, he was not particularly for them. He was puzzled, in fact, why they had been made. One thing was clear, however; they had been made second, and this was good enough excuse for Nikos not having got round to them yet. In office management, prioritization was all.

  He would, therefore, have postponed the matter, and, indeed, gone on postponing it until the woman went away. She showed obstinate signs, however, of staying. Worse, she said that she was acquainted with the Mamur Zapt, which, if true, meant that the Mamur Zapt was acquainted with her. If, now, he denied her access, who knows through what disreputable route communication might be made? Better to have it here, where Nikos could keep a controlling eye on things.

  ‘A woman,’ said Nikos unwillingly. ‘Alone,’ he added, in a voice which indicated both the gravity of the situation and disapproval.

  ‘Show her in,’ said Owen, preoccupied with other things and therefore unaware of the heavy currents swirling about the office.

  In came the woman, shapeless black from head to foot, heavily veiled with the double veil, the one that went up and the one that came down, covering head, shoulders and front almost down to the waist. Something might still be detected; height, for instance. The woman was taller than the usual Egyptian; in fact-?

  ‘Leave us.’

  Katarina threw back the top over-veil.

  ‘How about the other one?’

  Above the other veil, however, Katarina’s eyes did not respond.

  He handed her to a chair, which she sank down on almost with relief.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’ he asked.

  She didn’t reply at once. She just sat there looking at him, as if she was weighing him up.

  ‘Coffee?’

  She shook her head.

  He went across to the pitcher of water cooling in the window and passed her a glass. She took it but did not drink. She still seemed to be studying him.

  He pulled up a chair opposite her, sat down and waited.

  ‘You were right,’ she said suddenly. ‘There are explosives.’

  ‘The ones that came in through Suez?’

  She nodded.

  ‘They have been brought to Cairo.’

  ‘And are in the Der?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘they are in the Der.’

  ‘Do you know where?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I know where.’

  ‘Can you show me?’

  She did not reply at once. Owen did not press.

  ‘Will it be as you say?’ she suddenly burst out. ‘That they will kill a lot of people?’

  ‘It depends how they are used,’ he said. ‘But, yes, they could kill a lot of people.’

  He waited, and then, as she did not speak, he said, ‘Have you any idea how they are going to be used?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I just know they are there.’

  ‘And will be used.’

  She nodded slowly.

  ‘Unless you tell me.’

  He could see she was hesitating.

  ‘I would tell you,’ she said, ‘if only I could be sure-’

  ‘What do you want to be sure about?’

  ‘There are people,’ she said. ‘I want to give you the explosives; but I don’t want to give you the people.’

  ‘The explosives are what matter,’ said Owen. ‘No explosives, no killing. Although even then we could not be sure. It would be better if I knew the people.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It has to be a deal,’ she said. ‘I tell you about the explosives; you don’t ask me about the people.’

  ‘Very well, I accept that.’

  ‘Also,’ she stipulated, ‘you don’t use the knowledge to trap the people.’

  ‘It is hard to separate knowledge out. What if I already have knowledge? How can I set that aside?’

  ‘What I meant,’ she said, ‘was that you must not set a trap for them. You must not lie in wait for them.’

  ‘It might be better if I did.’

  She shook her head firmly.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You must promise me that. Otherwise I shall tell you nothing.’

  ‘What if I take them by other means?’

  He was afraid she was going to stipulate an immunity but she did not.

  ‘If you find out in other ways,’ she said in a low voice, ‘let it be so. But you must not take them through any action of mine.’

  ‘I give you my promise.’

  She put her hand up to her face, unclipped the veil and took a drink of water. Then she replaced the veil and stood up.

  ‘Let us go then,’ she said.

  Once again Owen found himself in the Fustat, and once again he lost himself in the narrow, overhung streets and had to find his way to the ferry for orientation. He realized suddenly that in this part of the Fustat that was what you did. Everyone thought instinctively in terms of the river. The smell of the river lingered in the dark streets, the tall masts of the gyassas tied to the bank hung over the low houses. The little alleyways all led down to the river.

  The river was the centre of people’s lives. It provided work for the men, whether as boatmen working the little boats that went to and fro across the river with vegetables or fish, or the bigger gyassas that went up and down the Nile carrying grain, or as porters unloading the grain in its gaily patterned biscuit-coloured sacks, or as boat builders working with little bits of wood not much bigger than bricks out of which most Nile boats were built. There were rope yards and tarring pits, porters’ cafes such as the one in which the gang had had its headquarters, lettuce carts waiting for the vegetables to be unloaded, sentry boxes protecting men from the sun as they sold the water from the public taps-and, of course, the low dancing booths with their low ladies.

  It had never quite come home to him before how different this part of Cairo was, different from the modern city which was hardly orientated to the river at all, different, too, from the world of the Ders which was only a few hundred yards away. The difference could be seen in the attitudes to thoroughfares. For the dock people, the Nile was the great thoroughfare along which all traffic flowed. In the Ders there were no thoroughfares, there were hardly any streets. You passed from building to building by going through underground passages, from vault to vault. There was nothing by which to orientate yourself. You had to know the way.

  Once she was in the Der, Katarin
a did. More surely than Georgiades, she picked her way through the cloisters and tunnels until they came out into the sunlight and saw up above them the magnificent curtain wall of the old Roman fortress and the great arch of the old Roman gate. He knew now where he was; and was not so very surprised to find himself climbing once more the handsome staircase which swept up to the Hanging Church, the Mo’allaka.

  Once more he saw the antique swinging lamps with their tiny flames, the golden ikons, the slender outlines of the delicate marble pulpit standing out against the overpowering richness of the dark screen, the low Moresco arches outlined with ivory which led into the sanctuary.

  He looked across the church to the corner where the restorers had been working, but this time there was no subdued lamp, nothing moved in the darkness.

  Katarina led him across the church and behind the screen. There was space to walk and giving off the space were various little cabinets or chapels. One had an image of the Virgin, soft and delicate, painted by Roman hands before dour Byzantine ideas crushed human outlines out of holy faces. Another had a strange painted cabinet with a lamp swaying in front of it, and wooden drums like shells for modern field guns which contained holy relics. Ostrich eggs hung from the roof.

  To the left of the sanctuary was a low arch, so low that Katarina had to stoop deeply to go through it and Owen had to go down almost on to his knees. There was no light and for a moment or two he could not tell where he was. But then he saw the top of a very large tank and realized that he was in the baptismal room. Copts baptized by immersion.

  He advanced cautiously to the tank and looked down, expecting to see water. There was, however, only a dry, cold musty smell. The tank had not been used for many years.

  On one side of the tank, going down into it, there were wooden meshrebiya steps, slippery smooth to the touch. Katarina directed his hand down beneath them. He groped uncertainly but found nothing.

  Katarina put her own hand down, gave a little surprised gasp and then clambered down into the tank. He could feel her scrabbling at the bottom.

  Then she stood up.

  ‘They’ve gone,’ she said.

  In the church a priest was lighting candles.

  ‘The restorers!’ said Owen. ‘Where are they?’

  The priest looked up, surprised.

  ‘Aren’t they here? They were here. The workshops, perhaps?’ Owen ran down the stairs. In the courtyard a donkey was contentedly cropping the foliage that pushed through the trellis. The workshop was empty.

  Back in the courtyard he found the donkey’s owner washing his face in the fountain.

  ‘Peace be with you!’ he said.

  And with you, peace!’

  ‘I am looking for two men. They work in the church here.’

  ‘Do they wear boots?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The donkey’s owner nodded.

  ‘I know them.’

  ‘They are neither Arab nor Copt.’

  ‘They wear boots,’ said the man, picking out the-for him-salient thing.

  ‘That is so. And I look for them.’

  ‘You are fortunate, then, for I have seen them.’

  ‘This morning?’

  ‘But shortly. As I was coming in at the gate.’

  ‘Were they carrying anything?’

  ‘Not they, but their donkey. Two heavy bags that made the donkey groan.’

  ‘They would go slowly, then.’

  ‘Slower still, were it not for the donkey.’

  The gate was still the tremendous gate of the Roman builders. Its columns dwarfed the steady stream of passers-through below and were large enough to admit even heavy stone carts, although what happened to them once they had entered, and how they managed with the low arches and tunnels, Owen could not think. There was the usual crowd of beggars at the gate and to them Owen made application.

  Two men with a donkey? Alas, there were many men with donkeys, too many to recall, Effendi. With boots? Ah, that was a different matter. Two men, neither Copt nor Arab, had passed through the gate scarcely more than an hour since.

  The direction? As, in the Fustat, you would expect. The Effendi was not in the Der now. All roads in the Fustat led not to Babylon but to the river.

  And there was the river ahead of him, glinting in the sunlight, with a felucca stooping and skimming-and then it disappeared, and as always near the docks, he lost his way in the medieval alleys as the houses crowded together overhead and he lost sight even of the masts rising up along the river bank. He had to ask the way, yet again, to the ferry.

  Two men, neither Arab nor Copt, in boots and with a donkey? There was the usual crowd of onlookers at the ferry, but this time he drew a blank.

  Well, they had not gone over the ferry, then. He walked along the waterfront, repeating his question.

  And then he saw two men ahead of him whom he recognized. They were not the Georgians but his own men, the men who had been keeping them under observation. They were gazing stupidly out across the water.

  ‘Effendi, they got on to a boat! And another with them!’

  ‘Another?’ said Owen.

  Boats, on the river, were as distinguishable as donkeys in a village. Other men had seen the boat put out and some of them were knowledgeable waterfront men. They were able to identify the boat immediately.

  ‘It belongs to Hussein al-Fadal, Effendi,’ they said.

  ‘Hussein al-Fadal? Ah, I have heard of him.’

  ‘Who has not heard of him, Effendi? In this part of the Fustat, anyway.’

  ‘Where is the boat bound for?’

  ‘It is one of his ordinary boats. They go up to Assuan.’

  Which seemed at first not to be particularly helpful. Why would the Georgians want to take explosives up to Assuan? Was it, perhaps, after all, that they merely intended to take them further, to sell them, perhaps, to potential insurgents in the Sudan? If so, that would be reprehensible, certainly, and must be stopped; but it was nothing to do with the Grand Duke. Unless…

  In other circumstances Owen would have relished the journey. Views differed about the best way to travel on the Nile; some favoured Mr. Cook’s new steamers, which were certainly very comfortable, others the traditional dahabeeyah, which was how most tourists had made the journey upriver until comparatively recently. For Owen, though, there was nothing like a felucca. It was a much smaller craft than most of those on the river, taking only three or four men, and with its low sides and its tall mast-most of the sailing boats on the Nile had tall masts to lift their sails above the palm trees which lined the river in some places-it seemed to plane over the water.

  Speed was what decided it. The Georgians were travelling in a gyassa, a heavy grain boat but one which carried a lot of sail and, going before the wind, could travel with surprising speed. Going by steamer was out of the question since they were tied to a tourist timetable. In the end, Owen had decided to go by train for the first part of the journey, as far as Minia, and then switch to felucca.

  The train, too, had its timetable but it was faster than going by boat and when they went down to the port they found that the gyassa had not yet arrived.

  Towards evening it crept in and tied up to the landing stage. No one disembarked. Owen had not really expected them to. The gyassa was on its outward journey and would pick up the cargo somewhere beyond Assuan. It was, of course, possible that the Georgians might choose this as the place but somehow he did not expect them to. The Grand Duke’s boat was still some way upriver.

  In the morning the gyassa pulled out and set sail; and this time Owen set sail with it.

  With him in the felucca were Georgiades and Selim, apart from the crew. That was all the felucca could take. Owen had other men but he had sent them on to Assyut by train.

  It was at Assyut that he thought that the attack might take place for it was there that Duke Nicholas’s dahabeeyah would tie up for the night preparatory to his visit the following day to the monuments at Beni Hassan and the cat cemetery at Sp
eos Artemides. The stop at Assyut the Georgians might know about, since the Grand Duke’s itinerary would be common talk on the river, and they might be able to guess at the excursions on the following day, although they would not be sure of them. The Duke might have had enough of visits by then.

  For the moment Owen was content to keep the gyassa in view as they skimmed gently up the river. The wind, from the north as usual, had died down and the gyassa laboured. The lighter felucca soon overtook it but Owen would not let it get too far ahead.

  With the wind light and the flow of the river against them strong, it took two days for the gyassa to get to Assyut. They passed the night tied up to the bank with only the mosquitoes to keep them company, although Owen enjoyed the pelicans next morning. Georgiades did not. He was a city man and such excursions as this only served to confirm his prejudice. Selim, a country boy, breathed in the air as if he had forgotten what it was.

  ‘These peasants!’ he said scornfully, however, as they passed some fellahin working in the fields. ‘Not bad!’ he said appreciatively though as they came upon some women walking down to the river with large jars balanced on their heads, an opportunity for them to display and Selim to evaluate.

  As they approached Assyut he saw ahead of him the outlines of the new barrage. The ends springing out from the banks had been joined the previous year and the barrage was just about operational though there was still building on it to be completed. Part of the idea of the Grand Duke’s visit (or the Khedive’s idea of the Grand Duke’s visit) was to see the works of modern Egypt and this was one of the most remarkable. The Khedive had considered asking the Grand Duke to officially open it, until it was pointed out that he himself was going to open it later on in the year. Besides, if Duke Nicholas opened it, the Khedive himself would have to be present and that meant travelling south at the hottest time of the year. The Khedive decided to postpone the pleasure.

  Since the Grand Duke would be passing, however, he could have the pleasure at least of inspecting the barrage. His dahabeeyah had arrived the previous evening and there it was, tied up at the entrance to the vast new lock which the steamers would use. His Royal Highness had spent the day seeing over the works and, no doubt, would shortly be returning to his dahabeeyah to collapse in comfort.