The Donkey-Vous

by Michael Pearce

  “Sorry!”

  “It wasn’t us,” said Georgiades. “It was the Parquet.”

  “That young chap in the smart suit? He came along and talked to us. He’s quite sharp.”

  “He must make a lot of money,” said another of the men. “Look at that suit.”

  “They all do. Mind you, he works hard. No siestas for him!”

  “That’s the difference between him and us. I like a siesta.”

  “It’s not the only difference,” the other driver insisted stubbornly.

  “He’s cleverer than we are.”

  “He’s got pull,” the stubborn one said. “They all have. That’s how they get these jobs in the first place.”

  “Ah well, the British are different.”

  “Not very.”

  They all laughed.

  “Ah well, it’s the way of the world.”

  “That old man, the one that’s disappeared, he must have pull,” said one of the drivers.

  “Why?”

  “The Parquet’s here, you’re here. The Bimbashi was here the other day.”

  “I don’t know how much pull he’s got,” said Owen. “That’s one of the things I’m trying to find out.”

  “And so you come to us.”

  “So I come to you.”

  “Well, we can’t help you much. We’ve hardly had anything to do with him. He’s never used us much. He doesn’t get around.”

  “It’s his friends we’re interested in.”

  “Yes.” The driver looked at Georgiades. “That’s what your friend said this morning.”

  “Tell my friend what you told me.”

  “About that young one? The one with the bulging eyes? Very well, if you want. He’s a bit of a sly one, that one. You’d think he never did anything. But he slips out from time to time, at night especially. And comes back late.”

  “You’d think he was after the ladies of the night,” said another of the drivers. “But he’s not like that, really.”

  “He prefers the houses.”

  “We know about Anton’s,” said Georgiades. “Which other houses does he go to?”

  The men mentioned several.

  “But Anton’s is his favorite. He goes there regularly. Not just when they’re playing, either.”

  “Not just when they’re playing? Are you sure?”

  “That’s right,” another of the drivers confirmed. “I took him there once myself. That was in the afternoon, about this sort of time, and they certainly weren’t playing then.”

  “Did he go to see someone?”

  The man shrugged his shoulders. “He just went inside.”

  “Did anyone come out with him?”

  “I didn’t see. Anton, perhaps.”

  “How often does he go? When they’re not playing, I mean?”

  The drivers consulted.

  “Not often. Two, three times perhaps.”

  “What about the woman?” asked Georgiades.

  The arabeah-drivers immediately sat up.

  “Ah, now you’re talking!”

  “She gets around?”

  “She certainly does! Andalaft’s, Cohen’s, Haroun’s: she’s got money and knows how to use it!”

  “Apart from shopping, though?”

  “She’s got friends. The Princess Samira, the Prince Haidar—”

  “She’s got bigger friends than that, though.”

  “Oh? Who?”

  “That would be telling.”

  “We don’t really know,” said another of the drivers.

  “We don’t know,” said the third, “because when she goes to visit them she doesn’t use us.”

  “Then how—”

  “They send a carriage. Especially for her.”

  “To the hotel?”

  “Yes. We don’t like it, of course, but we know when to keep our mouths shut.”

  “And did this carriage often pick her up?”

  “Two or three times a week.”

  “And return her?”

  “Yes. A couple of hours later. Long enough.”

  “If you hurry,” said another of the drivers.

  “Perhaps she’s eager.”

  The drivers fell about laughing.

  “Anyway, maybe it’s not that,” said the first driver.

  “What else would it be?”

  They burst into laughter.

  “I’ll tell you what, though,” one of the drivers said to Owen. “Once or twice he went with her.”

  “Who went with her?”

  “That young chap. The one you were asking about. The one with the eyes. Though what contribution he was going to make I can’t think.”

  “You’d better ask Abbas. Abbas!”

  Some way along the row of arabeahs one of the other drivers lifted his head.

  “What?”

  “Suppose a man is with a woman and then another man comes along. What does the other man do?”

  A guffaw ran along the line of recumbent arabeah-drivers. The one who had lifted his head sprang to his feet. “I will kill you, Abdullah!” he said, and reached toward his belt. “Be careful!” one of the other drivers warned him: “The Mamur Zapt is along there!” Abbas stopped in his tracks and stood for a moment undecided. “You wait, Abdullah!” he called eventually. “I will come to you later.” Abdullah seemed unconcerned.

  ***

  Paul rang from the Consul-General’s office.

  “Hello!” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, thanks. Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “Everyone’s been saying how peaky you look and how you obviously need a rest.”

  “It’s this damned heat,” Owen complained. Then it sank in. “Everyone?”

  “Everyone who’s rung me this morning.”

  “Samira?”

  “Samira, for instance. The other one would surprise you.”

  “Go on; surprise me.”

  “The Khedive.”

  “The Khedive?”

  “I knew it would surprise you. It surprised me. He’s never taken an interest in your health before. Nor in the health of anyone else in the Administration. I congratulate you.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Something, obviously. That’s why I rang to let you know.”

  “Samira was on to me yesterday. She told me to lay off Moulin.”

  “And now His Highness is telling you the same thing. Isn’t that interesting? You must be getting warm.”

  “Why should he be bothered about Moulin?”

  “Why indeed. Perhaps he’s not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Perhaps he’s bothered about something else.”

  Owen thought about it.

  “Paul,” he said then, “are you trying to warn me off? Is this something I should clear politically?”

  “Who would you clear it with?”

  “Garvin, I suppose.”

  “What would he know about it?”

  “The Consul-General, then?”

  “Look,” said Paul, “the Consul-General doesn’t have ideas of his own. He only has the ideas I put in his head.”

  “And what ideas are you putting in his head at the moment?”

  “I don’t think you look peaky at all,” said Paul. “Quite the reverse, in fact.”

  ***

  “I need your help,” said Owen.

  Zeinab, lying on the bed, at first seemed deaf to this plea. Then she turned her head slightly.

  “What is it?”

  “I didn’t get anywhere with Samira.”

  “You were talking to her for a long time.”

  “Yes, but she didn’t tell me anything. Not much anyway. She was more
concerned with warning me off Moulin. She suggested I take a holiday. Go away for a few days. Take you.”

  “That seems a good idea,” said Zeinab, sitting up.

  “No, it’s not. It’s just intended to get me out of the way.”

  “Well, why not get out of the way? Let them get on with paying for that poor man. You’re not doing anything to help him. You’re just stopping him from being freed.”

  “I’m not stopping them from paying.”

  “Yes, but they think you are. They think you’re up there like a hawk, hovering, just picking the moment. They don’t know you,” said Zeinab, “like I know you.”

  “I don’t care tuppence about Moulin.”

  “Then why don’t we go away?”

  “Because I think there’s something else going on and I want to find out what it is.”

  Zeinab reached for a cushion and stuffed it behind her back.

  “All right,” she said resignedly, “I’ll help you.” She suddenly brightened. “No, I won’t,” she said.

  “Bloody hell!”

  “Not unless you promise to take me away for a holiday when this is all over.”

  “I promise. Samira said she’d get Haidar to lend us his villa at Luxor.”

  “Luxor! I’m not going there! It’s just temples!”

  “I’d quite like to go to Luxor.”

  “It’s got to be some place I’d like to go to.”

  “Oh, very well.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Right!” said Zeinab, snuggling back into the cushion. “How can I help you?”

  “It’s Madame Chévènement.”

  “Her again?”

  “This is definitely work.”

  “Like that other woman?”

  Owen ignored this.

  “I asked Samira how Madame Chévènement came to be at her soirées and she said she was a friend of a friend. I take that friend to be the Khedive.”

  “Right.”

  “What I want to find out is how she came to be a friend of his. What’s the connection? How did they meet? Samira will probably know but she’ll be on her guard. Is there someone else in that circle who would know?”

  “I know,” said Zeinab.

  “You know?”

  “Yes. Everyone does. He met her at Cannes.”

  “When was this?” said Owen, astonished.

  “Last year. When he was on holiday. He went to Monte Carlo, if you remember.”

  Owen remembered. The Khedive had needed extra resourcing in view of his passion for gambling. The funds had been made available but only after a protracted political tug-of-war in which Owen himself had been engaged.

  “What else do you know?” he asked.

  “About Chévènement? Nothing much. She’s very dull, really. Just right for him.”

  “Did he invite her over here?”

  “She invited herself, I think. He was glad to renew acquaintance.”

  “He’s kept it pretty quiet.”

  “You think so?” Zeinab laughed. “Just because you haven’t heard about it, darling, that doesn’t mean it’s been kept quiet. Still, I agree. It’s been kept quieter than she would like. He’s seen her only a few times and never in public.”

  “Still, I ought to have known about it.”

  She reached out a hand, caught his, and pulled him down.

  “You’ll just have to come to Samira’s more often, darling.”

  ***

  “It’s not just that, though,” said Georgiades. “Remember, she took him with her.”

  “Berthelot?”

  “Yes. On at least two occasions, according to the arabeah-drivers. If she was just having an affair with the Khedive, why did she do that?”

  “I think we can safely disregard the more ribald suggestions of the arabeah-drivers,” said Owen.

  “And it’s hardly likely to be just a social call. There’s an etiquette for those things and the Khedive makes a big issue of it. Which leaves business—or politics.”

  “It’s not going to be politics. The French are not going to have any amateurs coming in on their patch.”

  “That leaves business. What sort of business is the Khedive likely to be interested in?”

  “Any business that makes money. For him.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “There’s a bit of a problem, though, isn’t there?” said Owen. “He never engages in these things directly. It’s always through the Ministries. If you wanted anything you’d have to go through them.”

  “His influence might be a help. Maybe that’s what they were after.”

  “Not much of a help. You’d still have to go through the Ministries.”

  “He might be able to get a personal favor done.”

  “Chévènement? Then why was Berthelot there? Anyway, he’d be able to get one done only if it was a small one. Anything big would have to go through the Ministries. That’s the system. The whole point is to keep his hands off the money. He can’t spend a penny without the Consul-General okaying it.”

  “Maybe he wants to bypass the system.”

  “He’ll have a job!” said Owen, speaking from painful personal experience.

  Georgiades sat for a while brooding. Owen suspected it was because he didn’t want to go out into the heat again too quickly.

  “Look at it another way,” said Georgiades, settling himself comfortably: “What sort of business are Berthelot and Chévènement likely to be interested in?”

  “Whatever business Moulin is interested in. And we’ve got a pretty good idea of that. Construction, building—”

  “Contracts?”

  “Yes.”

  “The dam contracts?”

  “They’ve been allocated already. They were allocated before he arrived. Paul says there might be a subcontract going, a big one to construct a masonry apron, which they might let the French have as a sop. He thinks Moulin’s interested in that.”

  “Well, maybe that’s it.”

  “The trouble with that,” said Owen, “is that all the action is somewhere else. It’s all Diplomatic now. Government to Government. Foreign Office to Foreign Office. Not for small fry like Berthelot and Chévènement.”

  “Maybe they’re just jockeying for position in the tendering?” suggested Georgiades.

  “If they are, why not do it in the right place? There’s no point in wasting time on the Khedive. He’s not going to have any say in it whatsoever.”

  “I keep coming back to Berthelot,” said Georgiades. “What’s he doing going to see the Khedive? Chévènement I can understand. Private business and good luck. But Berthelot?”

  “They’re both in it together, whatever ‘it’ is. Only I should think they’ve got different roles. She makes the first contact, he follows it up.”

  “Has he got enough…? I mean, does he know enough to follow it up?”

  “I think that they’d have to refer pretty soon to Moulin. And that’s a point! When I first spoke to Berthelot I asked him if any of Moulin’s business friends had been in contact with him. He promised to check but never did.”

  “It would be interesting to know who they were. Then we’d get some idea of where particularly his business interests lie. Maybe I’ll have a look at that,” said Georgiades.

  “OK. And while you’re doing that, take a look at something else, will you? I’m getting a picture in which Chévènement makes the first contact, then brings Berthelot in. At a very early stage, right at the start, probably, she gets the Khedive’s blessing. That maybe is why she takes him to meet the Khedive. Now they’re going to have to follow that up, which means him meeting other people. Maybe when he meets the Khedive he gets introduced to these people. Even so, he’s going to have to meet them again to
get negotiations started. I don’t know if it’s possible for you to find out who these people are. Other visits Berthelot’s been paying. But you might take a look at it.”

  “Could the Princess Samira come into this?”

  “How?”

  “Well, suppose they didn’t meet the people who were going to follow it up for the Khedive when they went to see him. After all, it would take time, and while I don’t go along with the arabeah-drivers altogether, I don’t see the Khedive wanting to spend all the time he has with Chévènement on business matters. In that case he might want to find some other way in which she could meet them. You said he asked the Princess to invite her. Maybe that’s where she made her first follow-up contact. After that there would be another one, this time with Berthelot.”

  “I’ll ask Zeinab if she can give me the names of people who’ve been at Samira’s soirées recently. She’s not going to like it, though.”

  “I’m going to have to try to get out of the arabeah drivers a list of all the people Berthelot’s been to see. All the places, too, because the drivers are going to know places, not people. To get the people I’m going to have to follow it up. It’ll take hours. In this heat, too! Do you think I like that?”

  “Yes, but you’re paid to like it and Zeinab’s not.”

  “From what you told me earlier,” said Georgiades, “I think the Lady Zeinab is going to insist on payment too.”

  ***

  Madame Moulin was waiting for him in the grand central hall of the hotel, under the glass dome. She was having coffee with the French Chargé and Mahmoud. There was no sign of Berthelot.

  She was in her early or mid-seventies and was wearing a long black gown which even Owen could see belonged to the last century. Her hair was gray and tied up behind in a severe bun. She had been traveling continuously since she had received news of her husband’s disappearance and had arrived only that afternoon; but the eyes which registered Owen’s entrance were bright and alert.

  “Captain Owen. Le Mamur Zapt,” the Chargé introduced him.

  Owen took her hand.

  “Enchanté de faire votre connaissance, Madame. I am only sorry that it should be in such circumstances.”

  The old lady inclined her head graciously. Then the head came up and the sharp eyes regarded him appraisingly.