The Mark of the Pasha

by Michael Pearce

  They were coming up now to the Midan Kanteret, where Owen hoped to work his trick of an unexpected re-routing of the procession. It was a little square from which streets led off on all sides. That, too, was crowded with policemen, and Garvin himself was there, making sure that everything was going according to plan.

  There, too, was the Deputy Commandant, McPhee, and that was a bit of a worry. McPhee was an eccentric and one could never be certain that he wouldn’t add an embellishment of his own to proceedings. He had been in Egypt for a long time and was blindly loyal to the Khedive. In fact, he was blindly loyal to most things, a Boy-Scoutish sort of man, which was all very well but in a place like Cairo, where ambiguities abounded and probably needed to be cultivated, not always a man you would want in a position of responsibility. On this occasion, fortunately Garvin would have him firmly in hand.

  The Sharia Nubar Pasha, up which the procession had originally been intended to pass, turned off to the right. It, too, was lined with the troops but it was narrower than the streets they had been through and the soldiers were pressed back against the sides, which were all built up. A bomb could easily be thrown, although that, if Georgiades’ information was correct, was not what was intended. Owen hoped that the terrorists hadn’t changed their plans, too.

  He moved out into the middle of the Midan and then stood up in the car and turned round and pointed as emphatically as he could down the Sharia Kanteret ed-Dekka, which was the direction he wanted. When he was sure the car behind had seen him, he sat down again and his car began to drive slowly along the Kanteret.

  Glancing back, he saw that Garvin had intelligently swung a line of policemen across the entrance to the Nubar Pasha, blocking it off.

  He saw also that the procession was beginning to follow him down the Kanteret.

  ‘Okay,’ he said to the driver, ‘this is it!’

  The car slowed right down. Owen opened the door and sprang out. He pushed through the line of soldiers and the people behind them and stepped into a shop front.

  Looking back, he saw that the driver had immediately lifted the dummy into position and was driving on.

  The procession was following him. He saw the Khedive’s car go past.

  Then he turned and went into the shop behind him.

  ‘Police! Back door!’ he snapped, and pushed on through.

  Someone was quick-witted enough to open a door for him. He went through and found himself in a narrow, refuse-strewn alley way. He went up it and found another one going off to the right. He ran up that, his feet squelching in the rotten vegetation and the excrement, and found himself coming out on to the Sharia Nubar Pasha.

  He forced his way through the puzzled people standing there and between the soldiers and then out on to the street.

  For a moment, stepping out into the sunshine, he couldn’t see anything but then, further up the street, he saw it. A water-cart, going ahead of the procession to sprinkle the street and keep the dust down, appeared to have broken down.

  He saw Georgiades running towards it and began to run himself.

  Two men jumped off the cart and began to run away.

  ‘Get them! Get them!’ he shouted.

  They tried to break through the line of soldiers and policemen but were seized. One of the men twisted away and then ran off up a side alley. The other man ran into a huge policeman who picked him up and rammed his head against the underside of some box windows jutting out across the street. He rammed him again, and then again.

  ‘Okay, Selim!’ called Owen. ‘That will do!’

  Georgiades was bent over the water-cart. Owen went up to him. He had his hand down besides the driver’s seat. As Owen approached, he brought his hand up and showed him something. It was a small glass bottle.

  ‘It should be all right now,’ he said. ‘Just don’t drop anything.’

  ‘We’re not moving it,’ said Owen. ‘We’ll get someone else to do that who knows what they’re doing.’

  He looked along the street to where there was a police sergeant, standing stupefied. He beckoned him over.

  ‘Get your boys to keep everyone back,’ he said. ‘There’s a bomb in that cart. It should be all right now but we don’t want to take any chances. Oh, and send one of your men back to the Midan Kanteret with this.’

  He took out his notebook, scribbled a few words, tore the sheet out and gave it to the sergeant.

  ‘Tell him to give it to Garvin Effendi.’

  The sergeant, recovering, saluted and hurried off.

  Next, Owen went over to the soldiers, who had been watching, wide-eyed.

  ‘Is there a corporal here?’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘There’s a bomb in that cart. Get your men to help the police to keep everyone back.’

  ‘What about the procession? There’s a procession—’

  ‘It’s been diverted. It’s not coming. Now you get on and help the police.’

  ‘Got to stay where we are, sir, until we get orders.’

  ‘You’ve got orders. Now bloody get on with it!’

  The corporal was still standing there, apparently in a state of shock.

  One of the other soldiers pulled at his arm.

  ‘Come on, Mohammed, let’s get on with it.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘He’s the Mamur Zapt. That’s good enough for the Khedive and that’s good enough for the likes of you and me.’

  The corporal still stood there, stunned. Several of the soldiers were already helping the police, however. The corporal allowed himself to be dragged in to join them.

  Two men had followed the man who had run off up the alleyway. One of them now came hurrying back.

  ‘Sorry, Effendi, he got away. I had just about got my hands on him when somebody blocked me. We followed him up to the end of the alley-way but then he disappeared. Talal’s looking around for him now.’

  ‘Pity. You go back and help him. At any rate we’ve got the other one. Selim!’

  ‘Effendi!’

  ‘Bring him over here.’

  The big policeman had the other man firmly in a lock.

  ‘All right,’ said Owen, ‘what’s your name?’

  ‘Hussein,’ said the man sullenly.

  ‘And the name of the other?’

  Hussein kept his lips closed tightly.

  ‘Were you driving the water-cart?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So he was. And the people back at the depot will know his name. So you can tell me.’

  ‘Ahmet.’

  ‘Where will I find him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The depot will know,’ said Georgiades, materialising suddenly beside Owen.

  ‘Get up there, will you? And take Zeid with you.’

  ‘What about this one?’ said Selim.

  ‘Take him to the Bab-el-Khalk. I’ll be along in a minute.’

  He looked down the street. The police and the soldiers had the crowd under control, keeping them well back from the water-cart.

  It was a standard city water-cart. Smart of them to use it. No one would question a water-cart going down the road ahead of the procession to spray the dust down.

  McPhee came running up.

  ‘Can I be of assistance, Owen?’

  ‘You certainly can. Can you see that the people are kept well away from the cart?’

  ‘Is that where it is?’

  ‘It should be all right now. But we’d better make sure.’

  ‘Garvin has sent back to the barracks for a bomb disposal team but it will be some time before they get here.’

  ‘Can you look after things meanwhile? We’ve got one of the men and I want to question him.’

  He took a last look along the street. A little old lady, English, had somehow got through the soldiers
and gone up to the horses. She appeared to be feeding them lumps of sugar.

  ‘Excuse me, Madam…’

  She blinked up at him in a scared sort of fashion, as if she knew he was going to tell her off.

  ‘They like them, you know. And it doesn’t really do them any harm.’

  ‘Madam, there’s a bomb in that cart.’

  ‘Bomb?’ She looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  ‘Yes. Just get back into the crowd, please.’

  She retreated a few steps. But then came back determinedly.

  ‘But what about the horses?’

  ‘I’ll look after the horses. Now if you will just—’

  ‘They ought not to be left like that. Not if there’s a bomb.’

  ‘They won’t be. Now, if you could just—’

  ‘Where’s their driver gone?’

  Owen knew he shoudn’t get involved in daft conversations like this but once you were in, it was hard to get out, especially if you didn’t want to be unkind, and he didn’t want to be, to this cracked old lady.

  ‘He shouldn’t have left them like that!’ she said indignantly. ‘Not with all the people! And a bomb!’

  ‘Yes, well—’

  ‘Where is he?’ she demanded.

  ‘We’re trying to find him.’

  McPhee, unexpectedly, came to his aid.

  ‘Hello, Miss Skiff. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Hello, Mr. McPhee. Can you imagine what has happened. These horses have been abandoned. I had been watching them—the cart broke down just opposite me. And they have such nice faces! And then the drivers ran away and just abandoned them! And there’s a bomb—’

  ‘Good heavens! Well, we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?’

  McPhee, Owen reflected, was a lot better at this sort of thing than he was.

  ‘Should we take them along to the Animal Mission, do you think?’

  ‘Well, no. We’d better not. They might be needed to draw the cart when we’ve mended it. But I’ll tell you what: if you could go back to the Mission and find some nose-bags for them, and we could lay our hands on some hay, I think they’d be quite happy standing here for a little time.’

  Yes, McPhee was definitely better at this sort of thing than he was.

  Miss Skiff went off trustingly.

  There was always one of them, thought Owen.

  Chapter Two

  Overhead there were kite hawks circling. They circled watchfully, not testing the thermal currents for fun, as he imagined some of the other birds doing, but rapaciously, on the look-out forever for food. One of them detached itself from its circle and darted down very near him. He ducked away instinctively. They went for things that glittered, too: glass, buckles, buttons. Once one had even snatched the sunglasses off his face. Ever since, Owen had mounted a subdued holy war of his own against them.

  In the river men were filling black goat-skin water bags. This was the poor man’s water supply. When the bags were full, the men heaved them out and put them across their shoulders, like a yoke. Then they went off through the city bearing water to the poorer houses. There were, of course, no taps in the houses. There were fountains outside most of the mosques to provide for the worshippers’ ritual ablutions and wells in some of the little squares, and there were occasional public pumps. There was, too, a new Water Plant piping decent drinking water to the houses of the rich.

  But the Nile was the main source of Cairo’s water and it was where the water-carts went to stock up with the water with which they sprayed the streets. Dust was a great problem in Cairo and the carts were out from dawn to dusk.

  Except for the period beginning at noon, when the drivers, like the rest of the population, took siesta. The carts had all returned and were drawn up in neat rows, their horses left in the shafts ready for the afternoon’s runs but now taking a break like their masters but, alas, not like them, in the shade.

  In the Depot nothing was moving: but then Zeid came round the lines of water-carts with a short, grey-haired man. His name, he said, was Babikr and he was the Depot Manager.

  ‘This is a bad business, Effendi,’ he said, ‘and will bring shame upon the Depot.’

  ‘Unjustly,’ said Owen, ‘for is not the Depot known for the excellence of its work?’

  ‘It was,’ said the Depot Manager gloomily. ‘But now it will be known as the place which harbours people who try to blow up the Khedive!’

  ‘There are always rotten oranges in the pile,’ said Owen.

  ‘But who would have thought…’ began the Manager, and shook his head.

  ‘Did they have a name for being troublesome?’ asked Owen.

  ‘No, Effendi. Not at all. If they had, they wouldn’t have been here. The work is sought after. It may not seem much to you, Effendi, but to a poor man—! All my drivers know that if they fall short there are many eager to take their place.’

  ‘Perhaps then they keep their troublesomeness for when they are away from the Depot?’

  ‘It may be so, Effendi. I do not know.’

  ‘These are strange times,’ said Owen, ‘and many feel there is change in the air. Some rush to embrace it. Were these two men like that?’

  ‘I know what you mean, Effendi, but—’

  ‘Did they go to meetings? Talk much about how the world might be bettered?’

  ‘Effendi, my men are humble men. They keep their eyes on the ground. Most of them are from outside Cairo and before they came here they worked in the fields. They knew that if you lifted your eyes from the furrow, the Pasha’s man would mark you, and that was when the blow would fall. They are not men to question the way of the world.’

  ‘That is what I would have thought. But why, then…?’

  ‘Money, Effendi. That is what my men say. Strangers came and spoke among the men. They asked first who watered the roads about the Midan Kanteret. And when they learned that it was Ahmet and Hussein, they took them aside.’

  ‘Do you know what was said?’

  ‘No, Effendi. And afterwards Ahmet and Hussein were pleased, and Ahmet said: ‘That will pay the rent for a bit.’ So the men knew they had been promised money.’

  ‘One is not promised money for nothing. What was it that they had to do?’

  ‘That I do not know, Effendi. And nor do my men. For Ahmet and Hussein would not say. However, Effendi-’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I cannot believe that they agreed to do that terrible thing. I know them, Effendi, and I cannot believe… They are not good men, Effendi, that I acknowledge, but they are not bad men either. They would not have done a thing like this if they had known. They must only have been told part of it.’

  ‘I hear your words.’

  ‘Effendi, I would not have had this happen for all the world. How can I go about now among my friends and raise my head? That it should be my men, drivers from my Depot…’

  ***

  The men were coming up from the river with their water-bags. Strictly speaking, they ought not to have been here, since this was the Depot’s land, and the free-lance bag men were frowned upon. But the bank sloped gently into the river at this point and from time immemorial people had walked into the river to fill their bags.

  They saw him watching the hawks, which seemed to have gathered now at a spot about a half mile away and one of them said:

  ‘That’s the hammam in Shafik Street, Effendi. They dumped a fresh load there this morning and the hawks are taking their pick.’

  The hammams were the public baths, much used in Cairo. Their water was heated by burning rubbish, these days refuse collected by the municipal carts, and often the refuse was piled near them in great mounds which smelt abominably.

  ‘Shafik Street? That’s behind the Kasr el Aini, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right, Effendi. I was there this
morning.’ He looked at Owen curiously. ‘You’ve come about that cart, have you, Effendi?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  He was amazed, as he always was, how quickly news travelled in Cairo.

  ‘It’s not back yet.’

  ‘The police will still be looking at it. But it’s not the cart that I’m interested in, it’s the men who were driving it.’

  ‘You won’t find them here, Effendi. They’ll be making themselves scarce for a bit.’

  ‘They don’t need to worry.’ Word might get back through the same bush telegraph. ‘They’re just the little people, the ones who get caught.’

  ‘While the big ones get away with it. That’s always the way with it, isn’t it, Kemal?’ he said to the man standing beside him. ‘That’s the way of the world.’

  ‘Dead right,’ said Kemal.

  ‘It’s the big ones I’m after,’ said Owen. ‘There was a bomb in that cart, a big one. It wouldn’t only have been the Khedive that was killed.’

  They didn’t say anything but he hoped that the point had been registered.

  He walked on a little way beside them.

  Then—

  ‘We saw them,’ said the bag-man unexpectedly.

  ‘Saw—?’

  ‘The men who came here and talked to the drivers. We wondered what they were doing here. I thought maybe they were Babikr’s bosses. But Kemal said they weren’t. Too rich, he said.’

  ‘Too rich?’

  ‘It wasn’t just their suits. They came in a car.’

  ‘Not an arabeah?’

  Arabeahs were the little, horse-drawn, fly-blown carriages which served as taxi-cabs in Cairo.

  ‘No, not an arabeah. They left it waiting for them, Effendi, while they went about their business. Afterwards, we saw them get in.’

  ‘A car of their own?’

  ‘That’s right, Effendi.’

  The man looked at him significantly. Private carriages were much more common than private cars on the streets of Cairo.

  ‘It must be a Pasha at least, I said to Kemal.’