A Cold Touch of Ice

by Michael Pearce

  ‘If they’re racing camels, we won’t catch up with them.’

  ‘Unless you meet them at the caravan,’ said Owen.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Back in Cairo, as Nikos reminded him the next morning, there was still that message from Kitchener. It asked him to call in on the Consul-General at his earliest convenience. Nikos rang to see if the Consul-General happened to have space that morning. Unfortunately, he had. The Appointments Secretary added that there was a degree of urgency about the summons.

  When Owen went in he found Kitchener standing impatiently by the window looking out on the residency roses. He probably tended them with his own hands, too, thought Owen.

  ‘At last!’

  He wheeled and sat down at his desk. The fish-like eyes regarded Owen coldly.

  ‘I don’t like to hear accusations that my officers are insufficiently diligent,’ he said. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Assuan.’

  ‘On work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh!’ Kitchener seemed momentarily disconcerted. ‘Thought you were exclusively a Cairo man,’ he said.

  ‘If you remember, I was given an extra responsibility for regulating arms traffic.’

  ‘That’s what I wanted to see you about,’ said Kitchener, unbending. ‘Ferducci is complaining that the arrangement isn’t working, that nothing’s being done. That you’re not doing anything!’

  Ferducci was the Italian Consul.

  Owen shrugged.

  ‘Assuan?’ said Kitchener. ‘What were you doing at Assuan? I thought the traffic was along the coast.’

  ‘That’s what we all thought,’ said Owen.

  ‘And it’s not the case?’

  ‘They’re running them across the south.’

  This did make him pause.

  ‘Well, I’m damned! You’re sure about this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kitchener, after a moment, ‘that puts a different complexion on things. Yes,’ he said, almost rubbing his hands, ‘quite a different complexion.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I have a meeting very shortly which I was not looking forward to. Now’—he smiled, not altogether pleasantly—‘I am.’

  He picked up the small bell on his desk and rang it.

  ‘It’s with Ferducci and Ismet Bey,’ he said. ‘You’d better come too.’

  An orderly hurried in.

  ‘Coffee,’ instructed Kitchener. ‘For two.’

  He smiled, almost savagely, and this time he really did rub his hands.

  He waved a hand in Owen’s direction and Owen sat down. He hadn’t realized how much he had been sweating. He almost stuck to the leather.

  ‘How did you find out?’ asked Kitchener curiously.

  ‘Oh, intelligence, sir.’

  ‘You’re not saying?’

  ‘I’m in the middle of an operation, sir.’

  ‘Well, that’s probably right. Yes, it’s probably right.’

  He gave Owen a smile which was almost friendly.

  ***

  ‘Absolutely nothing!’ said the Italian Consul indignantly. ‘I hate to say this, Lord Kitchener, of one of your men, but—’

  ‘Not my man,’ said Kitchener. ‘He works for the Khedive.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ murmured the Khedive’s representative.

  ‘The arms are still getting through! And I’m afraid I am forced to ask, Lord Kitchener, whether this is just incompetence or whether it is something more sinister, a reflection of a position that His Majesty’s government is taking up!’

  ‘Incompetence,’ said Ismet Bey genially.

  ‘Constructive incompetence,’ suggested the Khedive’s representative, smiling.

  ‘In either case,’ said the Italian Consul hotly, ‘I demand a change in the arrangements. And in the personnel!’

  ‘That seems a bit hard,’ said Kitchener, ‘when Captain Owen has just made such an important discovery.’

  ‘Discovery?’

  Kitchener turned to Owen.

  ‘You tell them,’ he said.

  ‘We have discovered that the route the arms are following is not, as we had previously thought, along the Mediterranean coast but further south, south of Assuan, in fact, across the desert.’

  ‘Across the desert?’ said the Khedive’s representative incredulously.

  ‘Ridiculous!’ said Ismet Bey, geniality fading.

  ‘What!’ cried the Italian Consul, almost starting out of his chair. ‘But this is outrageous!’

  ‘It is quite impossible,’ said Ismet Bey. ‘How are the arms being transported, for a start? No roads, the heat—’

  ‘By caravan from the Red Sea coast,’ said Owen.

  Ismet Bey sat back.

  ‘I do not believe there have been any such caravans,’ he said flatly. ‘If there had been, they would have called in at Assuan and word would certainly have—’

  ‘They are not calling in at Assuan,’ said Owen.

  ‘But that makes it an incredible journey!’ said the Khedive’s representative. ‘From the coast to Assuan, I could understand. But to go straight across to Tripolitania without calling in anywhere—! It would require some remarkable riders.’

  ‘They are some remarkable riders.’

  The Khedive’s representative still looked doubtful.

  ‘Have you any evidence?’ he said sceptically.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Owen, and hoped that by now he had.

  ***

  The Ministry of Waqfs, that is to say, Religious Bequests, was not like the other Cairo Ministries. For a start, its Minister had no British Adviser sitting alongside him. This was because the Ministry’s function was essentially religious. Muslims were enjoined in the holy scripture to give generously to charities and over the centuries some of their bequests had built up to quite considerable amounts. Whether or not that had happened, there were thousands and thousands of such bequests and a whole Ministry had been set up to regulate them.

  The difference in character between it and the other Ministries was apparent the moment you entered the building. Instead of clerks with their tarbooshes neatly parked on the desk beside them, the workers all wore turbans, and instead of smart, dark suits, long flowing gowns. There were fewer modern appurtenances; fans, for instance, but to make up for that the rooms were high and dark and spacious, which gave some degree of relief from the heat. There was, too, a different smell from that of the other Ministries, the smell of old books, of parchment, a general kind of dustiness.

  A young man came forward to greet Owen and, when he announced his errand, led him into a small office where an older man was sitting at a desk. He rose and they shook hands.

  ‘It’s not often that we see the Mamur Zapt here,’ he said curiously.

  ‘Well, no, and I shall not interrupt you for long. I come on something small. It is really, I must confess, almost just a matter of satisfying my personal curiosity.’

  ‘Our Mr Habashi, I believe?’

  ‘Yes. No longer yours, I gather?’

  ‘That is so. He left last week.’

  ‘Can you tell me something about him?’

  ‘There is little to tell. He hadn’t been with us long, he was very junior, and he wasn’t particularly good.’

  ‘An orderly, I believe?’

  ‘Well, a little more, perhaps. Though not much. He used to bring the files up from the basement when someone needed them. Of course, you have to be able to read to do that, so he was a little more than a simple orderly.’

  ‘What sort of person was he?’

  The man hesitated.

  ‘You know why he left, presumably?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I must tell you, Captain Owen, that I have some sympathy with his gesture.’

  ‘I am not
without sympathy myself,’ said Owen. ‘Still, it is a surprising gesture, is it not? From one so junior?’

  ‘Not when you know him. He was always a big talker. He led, how shall I put this, a larger life in conversation than he did in humdrum reality. He had Nationalist sympathies, as, of course, you know, and felt strongly about this recent action of Lord Kitchener’s, and I can quite see him drawing himself into a dramatic gesture such as this.’

  He looked at Owen.

  ‘But I don’t think you need to make too much of this, Captain Owen. It was just talk. There are many who feel at the moment rather as he does but we don’t all act with such precipitancy.’

  ‘He’s just a young lad.’

  ‘Well, yes. And more given to talk than action. So I don’t think, Captain Owen, if I may say so, that you really need to be very concerned about him.’

  ‘I am not really concerned, not in the way that you think. It was something smaller that was interesting me. I was wondering if, in the course of his work, he had access to the Government Handbook? You know, the directory of addresses of government personnel?’

  ‘The Government Handbook?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, we do have a number of copies, of course. We even have one in our section. I was looking for it myself the other day—’

  ***

  A message came from the Signora asking him to call. When he arrived, he was shown into the courtyard, where he found, a little to his surprise, not just the Signora but also Morelli’s three domino-playing friends, Abd al Jawad, Hamdan and Fahmy. They rose and embraced him courteously.

  ‘It is good to meet old friends,’ said Abd al Jawad.

  ‘And good to see them together,’ responded Owen, his smile taking in the Signora as well.

  Hamdan made a deprecatory gesture.

  ‘We come only to sample the Signora’s lemon juice,’ he said with a laugh.

  ‘Well, not quite that,’ said Abd al Jawad.

  ‘It was I who asked them to come,’ said the Signora. ‘For when one needs advice, to whom should one turn but one’s friends?’

  ‘What are friends for?’ said Fahmy, with an apologetic shrug.

  ‘Shukri has stopped coming again,’ said the Signora.

  ‘For the money?’

  ‘Twice now he has missed.’

  Owen looked at the other three.

  ‘Is it just the Signora that he has left out?’

  They nodded.

  ‘Twice, you say?’

  ‘He has come two weeks running,’ said Fahmy. ‘The first time it was just that he was late because of the Moulid. He did not wish to come when the streets were busy. And then he had others to visit. And then he came again this week for this is his normal time.’

  ‘And on neither occasion did he come to me,’ said the Signora.

  ‘Next time he comes, I will ask him,’ said Hamdan.

  ‘But meanwhile—’ murmured Abd al Jawad.

  ‘The last time he did not come,’ said the Signora, ‘Morelli died. Who will it be this time?’

  Abd al Jawad, very unusually for a man to a woman, placed his hand on hers.

  ‘It may mean nothing,’ he said softly.

  ‘Or, it may mean something,’ she said. ‘And so I went to my friends.’

  ‘And we are glad you did,’ said Fahmy, ‘for this is not to be borne alone.’

  ‘I think I know what it means,’ said Owen, ‘and it does not mean death. At least, not, I think, for anyone in the Nahhasin.’

  Abd al Jawad turned to him.

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I do. And I have reason.’

  Abd al Jawad turned back to the Signora.

  ‘Well, that is good.’

  ‘It is good, too, that you have told me,’ said Owen, ‘for there are things I can do.’

  ‘There are things we can do, too,’ said Fahmy.

  It transpired that the three friends had offered to take it in turn to sleep at the Signora’s house each night at the foot of the stairs: ‘Until this thing shall pass.’ The Signora, touched, said that there was no need.

  ‘But there is,’ said Fahmy, gently insistent.

  So it was agreed; but then the whole argument was rendered incidental because the foreman, learning of the outcome and shocked beyond measure at what he considered a slight to himself, insisted that it was his duty to guard the Signora. ‘Besides,’ he whispered to Owen out of the corner of his mouth, ‘what use would they be if it came to blows?’

  ‘Let it be, Abdul,’ said the Signora, ‘but thank you, my friends. It is at times like this that one learns the value of friendship. And it is in the Nahhasin that friendship shows most truly.’

  ‘You are of the Nahhasin, signora,’ said Abd al Jawad, pressing his hand to his breast. ‘How could it not do?’

  ***

  Coming away, Owen met Mahmoud. He told him about the conversation.

  ‘I am glad she has found her friends again,’ he said. ‘Or, rather, her husband’s friends. I thought at first, immediately after Morelli’s death, that she was, you know, reacting a bit against them. Against the whole of the Nahhasin. But the Nahhasin is a warm place and its warmth is just what she needs.’

  He had thought that Mahmoud would be pleased by the compliment to the Nahhasin but, to his surprise, he didn’t seem entirely to acquiesce.

  ‘These bonds are good, of course,’ he said, frowning, ‘the bonds of friendship; but sometimes they work in, well, not so good ways.’

  Owen didn’t know what he was driving at and they walked on for a little time in silence, while he was trying to work out what Mahmoud had meant. In the end he couldn’t, so he asked him.

  ‘I was thinking about the Signora,’ Mahmoud said, ‘and about why it was that she wouldn’t tell the name of the person her husband had been talking to on the night before he was killed. We know that Morelli knew the man and that he was, very probably, a friend. We know, too, that the Signora also knew the man and, I suspect, also viewed him as a friend. Which is why, I think, she wouldn’t tell us his name. She was confident that he had nothing to do with her husband’s death and that, for her, was enough. As for the guns, well—’

  ‘Not important in the Nahhasin’s eyes, I agree.’

  ‘And she was enough of a Nahhasiner for them not to matter to her. And also,’ said Mahmoud, ‘enough of a Nahhasiner to hold her tongue about a friend. But that,’ he said, ‘is just the trouble! It is good to be loyal to one’s friends. But sometimes not so good. And in the Nahhasin you have to have both. The Nahhasin,’ said Mahmoud, ‘is sometimes quite impossible.

  ‘Take that business about the fakir, the one who is supposed to have spread the story about Morelli’s visitor. Now, one thing about the Nahhasin is that everybody knows everything. So if there was a fakir everyone—or, at least, someone—would know about him. Someone other than Amina. But they don’t. No one’s ever seen him. So what I deduce from this is that Amina hasn’t seen him either. He doesn’t exist.

  ‘So why did she say he did? Well, Amina is a great passer-on of news but also a great storyteller. If the news is dull, she improves it, and goodness knows what sometimes goes on in her head. So she could have made it up just to improve the story; or perhaps because in fact she did not know and did not want to say so in case it reflected on her standing as someone who knows everything.

  ‘But there is another possibility. She was doing it to protect someone. That is what I mean about the Nahhasin. You stay loyal to your friends when sometimes you shouldn’t. Now, if all this is true, the question is: who did she think she was protecting?’

  ***

  In the little streets behind the bazaars everything drooped in the heat. The women kept to the shade of their doorsteps and talked across the street to their neighbours on the other side. The men at the
tables in the coffee houses—for there were already men at the tables even though it was only mid-morning—had withdrawn into the deeper darkness inside. There was hardly anyone at the fruit and vegetable stalls. These days, with the heat so intense, people did their shopping early. The produce on the stalls wilted and shrivelled almost visibly. The stallholders themselves were abandoning their stalls, stretching out beneath the tables already for their midday sleep or, in some cases, packing up for the day. A listless dog nosed at the spilt vegetables lying in the dust, a reluctant donkey nodded along the street.

  Beneath Owen’s feet he could feel the sand burning through his shoes. Beside him the sweat dripped from Selim’s arms and formed a little pool in the dust which evaporated even as he noticed it.

  Selim stirred. Owen pushed him back into the doorway of the shop, then stepped back into it himself. He didn’t want to risk being seen a second time.

  The shopkeeper raised his eyes, then saw Selim’s uniform, and the effendi standing alongside him, and discreetly lowered them again.

  Around the corner the ice man’s donkey came padding, Mustapha sitting on its back above the blocks of ice, Amina walking alongside, poking the animal from time to time with a short stick. She seemed preoccupied, hardly bothering to look around her. Or perhaps it was just the heat.

  The donkey passed, leaving a little trail of drops behind it.

  Amina did not see them. The donkey moved on down the street and turned up in the direction of the ice house.

  And now someone else was coming along the street, keeping to the shadow. Selim stirred again.

  The figure turned into one of the shops. By the time it came out again Selim had already stationed himself beside the door.

  ‘You again,’ said Shukri resignedly.

  ***

  ‘It is an act of friendship,’ protested Owen, when they had got him back to the Bab-el-Khalk.

  ‘I could do without such friendship,’ said Shukri.

  ‘One day you will bless me for it,’ promised Owen.

  ‘I bless you every day, Effendi; but especially on those days on which I do not see you. Which are, alas, becoming less and less frequent.’