The Donkey-Vous

by Michael Pearce

  In the end one couldn’t be absolutely sure that no one had slid away unobserved, but Owen felt inclined to believe them. The dragomans, behind the parade they put on for the benefit of tourists, were serious, intelligent men. They understood exactly what effect this second kidnapping might have on the hotel’s trade and indirectly on them. Besides, several of them were plainly shocked. They were involved with their clients and were upset that such a thing should happen to them. Their cooperation, he felt, was considered and genuine.

  “If anyone had slipped away,” said Osman quietly, “we would have seen them and we would tell.”

  Which was all very well, but where did it leave the inquiry?

  “Right back at the beginning,” said Garvin.

  Right back at the beginning, very much as it had been on the day that Moulin disappeared. They had found out some things, but they were not things that appeared to lead anywhere. Berthelot was clearly up to something, but whatever he was up to was hardly likely to involve Colthorpe Hartley. The second kidnapping took them back to first facts, which were that Moulin had been kidnapped by a terrorist group called Zawia about which nothing was known beyond their name, and that they had declared themselves.

  Not surprisingly, other people noticed the lack of progress; and fingers began to be pointed. They were pointed, obviously, at Owen.

  “New in the country,” he overhead someone say. “Still wet behind the ears. A good job they’ve brought Garvin in now.”

  Too trusting, was the charge. Even more deadly: “Too friendly with the Gyppies.”

  Increasingly, though, the fingers began to be pointed at Mahmoud. He was, after all, formally in charge of the investigation. “Not really his show,” Owen’s defenders maintained on behalf of Owen. But it was inescapably Mahmoud’s show. He had been conducting the investigation since the hour of Moulin’s disappearance and what results had he to offer? You need time for an investigation like this, the Parquet’s defenders—and there were few of them in the British community—argued. “Gyppies always need time,” was the reply. “The forever bokra boys.”

  Bokra. Tomorrow. Mañana. It was unfair on Mahmoud, who of all people was the most businesslike and undilatory. But then, people weren’t thinking in personal terms. It wasn’t Moulin and Colthorpe Hartley who had been attacked but foreigners in general, not Colthorpe Hartley as an individual but the British community in Egypt as a whole. Mahmoud was an Egyptian and that was enough.

  Meanwhile, they had to get on with their work. Mahmoud went through his questioning as meticulously as before but with the same result. No one had seen anything or heard anything: not even, this time, the old snake charmer, who merely stood shaking his head as if totally confused.

  Like Moulin, Colthorpe Hartley had disappeared “into thin air,” as McPhee infuriatingly kept putting it.

  The ransom note came and Lucy Colthorpe Hartley brought it out to them. It was in much the same terms as before and for the same amount. As before, it was signed “Zawia.”

  “A hundred thousand piastres,” said Owen. “It’s a lot of money, Miss Colthorpe Hartley. Can you pay it?”

  Lucy hesitated.

  “I suppose we can,” she said, “if we sell a few things. A lot of things. Daddy isn’t as well off as you might think. But ought we to pay it?”

  Owen took his time about replying.

  “No,” said Mahmoud. “No, Miss Colthorpe Hartley, you should not pay it.”

  Lucy looked at him.

  “I know you’re right in principle, Mr. El Zaki. Still, when it’s your own father…” She turned away and went back into the hotel.

  “I wouldn’t press her,” said Owen.

  “You see where you get if you give in,” said Mahmoud savagely. “After Moulin, Colthorpe Hartley. Give in over him and there will be another. And another, and another, until people refuse to pay.”

  “Or until we catch them.”

  “We haven’t made much progress so far.” Mahmoud looked weary.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Owen.

  They walked across the street and into the Wagh el Birket, where they found a table outside a restaurant.

  “I don’t understand it,” said Mahmoud, pulling a chair into the shade and sinking down tiredly. “You usually come across a loose end, something you can pull and go on pulling.”

  “The loose end was the dragoman, wasn’t it?”

  “In the case of Moulin, yes. But even then, pulling it doesn’t seem to have got us very far.”

  “It doesn’t seem even a loose end so far as Colthorpe Hartley goes.”

  “Except in so far as he might have been about to identify the dragoman who spoke to Moulin.”

  “True.”

  The boy brought coffee and two large tumblers of iced water.

  “There could be a dragoman in it,” said Mahmoud, sipping the water first. “There’s obviously someone involved who knows the hotel well. That’s true for the latest one, too. Whoever took Colthorpe Hartley knew his habits well enough to be sure that he would be on the terrace at that particular time. So they’d have to be connected in some way with the hotel—”

  “With the front of the hotel,” said Owen. “That’s all the knowledge they’d need. It could be someone on the street.”

  “A vendor? Yes. Though don’t forget they also knew about Berthelot’s visits to Anton’s, which argues some inside knowledge. That’s more likely to be a dragoman than a vendor.”

  “If it was a dragoman, though, would he be in Zawia?”

  “Why shouldn’t he be in Zawia?”

  “If it’s fundamentalist. Or nationalist.”

  “Look,” said Mahmoud, “the only thing that makes you think it could be fundamentalist or nationalist is the name.”

  “Yes, but the names usually mean something.”

  “‘The Bloody Hand?’ ‘The Evil Eye?’ That means something?”

  “‘Revenge of Islam.’ ‘Free Egypt.’ ‘Sword for the Oppressors.’ They mean something.”

  Mahmoud could not restrain his exasperation.

  “The only thing that makes you think it’s that sort of group is the name. And that could mean a variety of things. It doesn’t just mean a convent or religious center. It means—”

  “Turning point. I know.”

  “Corner.”

  “You turn the corner and you get to something different. A different way of life. Revolution.”

  “You still think it’s nationalist, don’t you?”

  “I think it could be. Why else should it be aimed at foreigners?”

  “It’s not aimed at foreigners. Moulin and Colthorpe Hartley have been taken not because they’re foreigners but because they’re rich.”

  “They’re rich and foreign. A good target.”

  “Tsakatellis—if he’s anything to do with it and not someone dragged in by some crazy association of Nikos’s—”

  “Nikos is perceptive on these matters,” said Owen coldly. Too coldly. He hadn’t meant it to come out like that. “Anyway, doesn’t Tsakatellis support my argument? He’s foreign.”

  “He’s not foreign!” Mahmoud made an angry gesture with his hand. Dismissive. Contemptuous.

  “To an Islamic fundamentalist he’s foreign.”

  “To a nationalist, too, I suppose?” Mahmoud suddenly boiled over. “Why are you so suspicious?” he shouted. “Why are you always so suspicious?”

  “I’m not—”

  “You don’t trust us! You are like all the British. You don’t trust Egyptians. You hate us!”

  “For God’s sake—”

  Mahmoud leaped to his feet and pounded his fist dramatically upon his chest.

  “You don’t trust me! Your friend!”

  Faces began to peer out of doorways. There was a succession of bangs as the shutters on the
doors of the flats of the ladies of the night above began to be flung open.

  “Sit down, for goodness’ sake!”

  “You are cold! Deep down you are like all the British. Cold!”

  “Sit down. Just sit down.”

  “You drink coffee with me and then you do not trust me! Your friend.”

  “Of course I trust you, I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about Zaw—”

  Mahmoud stormed off.

  Owen was left agape. This kind of thing had happened before. It was not, in fact, untypical either of Mahmoud or of Arabs. But it always took him by surprise. Something would happen to upset them and then suddenly out of a clear blue sky you’d have a raging storm. The good thing was that it was likely to blow away as quickly as it had come. Even so…

  You expected more sense from Mahmoud. This kind of thing was ridiculous. To fly off the handle over a thing like this! It was only a suggestion, damn it all, and not such a bad one at that. It was all very well for Mahmoud to go on about it just being to do with the name but the names terrorist groups chose for themselves often were significant. OK, some of the student groups chose names straight out of the Boy’s Own Paper, they were very young after all, fifteen, sixteen, though that didn’t stop them kidnapping and garrotting. But the names of the serious groups often really did tell you something about the groups. It was a sort of declaration of their allegiances and purposes. Nikos knew more about this sort of thing than Mahmoud did. It was all very well for Mahmoud to talk so dismissively of Nikos’s crazy associations, but Nikos spent all his time dealing with Cairo’s uneasy political underworld and knew the way it worked. Mahmoud was just a straight crime man.

  Not only that, Mahmoud was hardly a neutral in these matters. He was himself a Nationalist. OK, the Nationalist Party was fairly moderate and committed to legitimate constitutional change, but it was often hard to draw the line between moderate nationalism, and the sort of crazy stuff that Owen often encountered. Mahmoud was a reasonable guy and thought that everyone else was a reasonable guy. Well, they weren’t, they certainly weren’t. For a start, anyone who kidnapped two elderly men from the terrace at Shepheard’s was hardly moderate and committed to legitimate processes.

  Why had they gone to the lengths of taking them from to the terrace, anyway? It would have been much easier from have done it somewhere else, in the bazaars, perhaps. OK, then you would have had to kidnap someone else because neither Moulin nor Colthorpe Hartley went to the bazaars, but if you were just after money it wouldn’t really matter who you took, there were plenty of rich Europeans, or rich Egyptians, for that matter. They could have kidnapped Nuri, for a start. No, perhaps they’d better not take him, Christ knows how Zeinab would react, but there were plenty of others. It would have been easy. But to do it from the terrace at Shepheard’s, in full view of everybody, that wasn’t easy, in fact it was going out of your way to make it difficult. Why had they done that?

  There could be only one answer. They had done it precisely because it was difficult, because it was in the public eye. They had wanted to show that it could be done, that all these fine people strutting up there on the terrace were just as vulnerable as anyone else. And why was it important to show that? Because those people up there were those who ruled, those who governed Egypt. OK, not directly. They were merely representative. But what they represented were Britain and France.

  That was it! Why Moulin? Because he was French. Why Colthorpe Hartley? Because he was British. Why Shepheard’s? Because everyone could see.

  You could strike back at the oppressors. That was the lesson. That was what they wanted to show. And they wanted to show it in the most conspicuous way possible. Shepheard’s! The very symbol of foreign privilege! The terrace! The most conspicuous place in Cairo.

  And if that wasn’t a nationalist lesson, Owen was a Dutchman.

  Mahmoud was up the creek. For all that fancy French reasoning of his, he was missing the point. He had his blind spots and nationalism was one of them. There were some things he didn’t like to face. The fact that there was a continuum between legitimate nationalist activity and illegitimate nationalist activity was something he could not accept.

  Well, you could understand that. But it was a blind spot all the same. It meant there were some things you could work with Mahmoud on and some things you couldn’t. That was the plain fact of it. He had gone on about trusting, made a big thing of it. Well, Owen did trust him, in that he believed him to be completely sincere and honest. He would stake his life on that. But that didn’t mean accepting that he had no blind spots. Nationalism was one of them and on anything to do with nationalism, well, no, at the end of the day you couldn’t trust him. That wasn’t because he was disloyal or dishonest, it was just that, well, he couldn’t be relied on. His judgment wasn’t as good on that as it was on other things. He was too emotionally involved.

  That was another thing. Mahmoud was too emotional. Underneath that cool, French, Parquet-style logic Mahmoud was still very much an Arab, emotional, intuitive, hyper-sensitive. Owen often thought he could understand Mahmoud, and perhaps Arabs in general, better than most Englishmen because he himself was not really an Englishman but a Welshman and Welshmen were supposed to be a bit like that themselves. Usually he got along well with Mahmoud but there were times…

  He sighed and sipped his coffee. On the opposite side of the street little boys were putting out tables for the evening. The cafés on that side of the street filled up in the evenings because the tables gave a good view of the ladies of the night in the rooms above Owen. They bent over the balconies in their filmy gowns, giving observers opposite a great deal more pleasure, Owen suspected than they actually obtained when they plucked up enough courage to cross the street and go inside.

  Why had Mahmoud chosen this moment of all moments to fly off the handle, just when it was particularly necessary to keep a clear head? OK, he had been working hard and it was damned hot and he was probably a bit on edge anyway. Maybe he’d heard some of the criticism. Well, Christ, Owen had heard some of the criticism too. You had to put up with these things. It was no good being thin-skinned.

  Of course, it wasn’t so easy for an Egyptian, there were other things in it as well for them, the fact that the British were their bosses and foreigners, for instance. It wasn’t easy to take—he didn’t find it easy himself that bit about Garvin coming in over him for a start—but you hadn’t got to let it rattle you. You just had to get on with the job. God knows, they weren’t doing too well in that line just at the moment.

  The thought came to him that maybe that was why Mahmoud was so rattled. It wasn’t like him, though.

  Then another thought struck him. Perhaps the reason why Mahmoud had blown his top was that he had not wanted to admit, not even to himself, that there might be truth in what Owen had said, that there was, indeed, a nationalist connection.

  The thought occurred to other people, too. Along with the earlier whispers about Mahmoud came a new one. If Mahmoud was so good, why hadn’t he found out more? Because he wasn’t trying to, came the answer.

  Chapter Nine

  Owen’s relations with the Army were not universally unfriendly. He sometimes played tennis with one of the Commander-in-Chief’s aides-de-camp and had been doing so that afternoon. Afterward they had gone to the bar. This was not purely a matter of conviviality. Playing in that heat meant that the body lost water heavily and it was necessary to replenish it. They were, in fact, drinking pints of lemonade, which was certainly not the case with all the other people in the bar at the Sporting Club.

  Among these was a group of young Army officers. They included Naylor. He and Owen nodded to each other politely and Naylor looked curiously at John, whom he knew to be a pukka Army officer and therefore, in his view, surprising company for the Mamur Zapt. One of the other subalterns actually knew John and it was not long before they were drawn into a common conversation.
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br />   “Bad show, this kidnapping business,” one of the group remarked to Owen, on learning from John who his companion was. “How are you getting on?”

  “Slowly.”

  “Not easy,” said the other sympathetically, “not with all these Egyptians having a finger in the pie.”

  Owen muttered something noncommittal.

  “Is it true that the Senussi are involved?” another officer asked.

  “The Senussi?” said Naylor.

  “So I’ve heard. I’m sure you’re in a better position to answer that, though, than I am, sir.”

  He turned politely to Owen. The Mamur Zapt, he vaguely knew, was something to do with Intelligence. Besides, Owen was senior.

  “There have been rumors, yes.”

  “I thought the Senussi were desert people,” said someone.

  “They are. That’s why the rumors are unlikely to be true.”

  “They have contacts in the main cities, though, don’t they?” said the subaltern who had first asked about the Senussi. “I’ve been reading about them in the latest batch of newspapers from London. There’s a new book just come out. Caused quite a stir. It’s reviewed in all the papers.”

  “Which book was that?”

  “The Grand Senussi Conspiracy, it’s called. The chap who wrote it actually spent some time in the Senussi convents at Siwa.”

  “Convents?” said Owen.

  “That’s what they call them. Sort of religious centers.”