The Private Sector (A Peter Marlow spy thriller)

by Joseph Hone

  *

  Henry and I were with Farid when Mustafa came up to tell us that Bahaddin looked more than drunk. And he did. When we got to the cabin amidships he was quite obviously dead.

  “My God. At my birthday party. Are you sure?” And Farid looked at us hopefully, humming something light-hearted under his breath, as if there were still some small chance that the evening’s entertainment might yet be saved.

  “How can you be sure?” he continued desperately. Henry told him to shut up.

  They had opened Bahaddin’s frilly collar and he lay on the bare coiled springs of an immense brass bedstead with Farouk’s initial worked in gilded metal above his head. The cabin had been part of the king’s private quarters and was now used as an office and a store room so that Bahaddin lay surrounded by crates of whisky and wine and piles of tablecloths which had been thrown off the bed on his arrival. One of Farid’s assistants sat at his desk, talking to the police, apparently unaware that Bahaddin was dead, for he kept on mentioning the word “drunk”.

  “Yes, completely drunk, passed out. Can you send someone round to take him off? Yes—the Prince. Bahaddin. Yes, I’ll be careful. No. Just too much to drink.” He turned to look at the little group round the bed as if to confirm this last point but Henry had moved to block his view. He looked at me briefly and then nodded towards the door. Farid was still fussing round the body, pinching Bahaddin’s cheeks, slapping his face, vigorously massaging his chest—as if his life, and not Bahaddin’s, depended on it. He was almost in tears.

  “My God—what will I do? He cannot be dead!” He might have been his father.

  “Just stay here, Farid. Ill get a doctor.” And we left the room.

  “Get Bridget off the boat. Go to the Gezira Club. I’ll join you there. Don’t wait. Hurry—move.”

  I picked up Bridget and we got off the boat moments before a police car swung off the bridge behind us and turned into the Gezira corniche.

  “What’s happened to Bahaddin? What’s going on?”

  “He’s dead. I don’t know how. Henry’s going to meet us at the Club.”

  “No. That’s nonsense. Let’s go back.” She spoke seriously, precisely, as if I were drunk and playing some stupid prank. She turned and we both looked back at the boat. Already the police had barred both gangways, a second car had arrived with plainclothesmen and the music had stopped: there was a confused angry murmur of voices, the sounds of orders and imprecations. We walked on briskly towards the Club.

  It struck me how quick and efficient the police had been in getting to the boat—just for a drunk. And then I remembered that it was a dead drunk and the implications were suddenly clear: I’d come to see Bahaddin in several ways: as a friend, as an engaging part of the city’s décor—the eternal playboy always doing his “O” levels, suitably weary, almost middle-aged; as head prefect at Maadi, taking assembly, going in first to bat, sharing his endless packets of Player’s with me late at night in my room; Bahaddin with his suite on the top floor of the Cosmopolitan and his many wives back home. And that was the clue, the thing about him I’d quite forgotten: Bahaddin, the scion of one of the great families of Islam, heir to one of the richest thousand square miles in the world, to an ancient kingdom whose strategic, financial and moral position in the Middle East was of vast importance to Nasser in his bid for leadership of that world.

  To have such a figure publicly drunk as a guest in one’s country was bad enough; that he should die apparently as a result of that excess suggested an embarrassment to Egypt so monumental that I could only guess at its political implications. But that was what it amounted to. And the next step was easy enough. What if someone had contrived such an embarrassment?—and there were many who might have—the French, the Israelis, the British; they had done their best to get Nasser off the map a year previously; how better to continue their efforts than by eroding Nasser’s prestige among his Arab neighbours—by knocking off one of their Crown Princes? And finally there was Bahaddin the British agent, his last role, which everything else had been a cover against, and perhaps the one that had killed him. It hardly seemed credible, least of all when Henry explained that he’d had a heart attack.

  We’d met later on that evening in one of the Club lounges looking over the cricket and croquet pitches, the last few elderly members folding up their bridge games under the table lights so that we were almost in darkness.

  “Yes, I got a doctor. And there was another who came from his Embassy. A coronary.”

  Bridget had been numb with some sort of emotion and had hardly said a word in the half hour that we’d waited for Henry. Now, her fear or nerves quite gone, she levelled a barrage of impatient whispered questions at Henry.

  “How? A heart attack? He was perfectly well. They must have got on to him, that he was with us. I thought they’d got you too.”

  “No. There was no question of that. It was the dancing, I suppose. It must have been. Some people just go like that. Suddenly.”

  I remembered the girl with the dark hair.

  “The girl then. What about the girl?”

  “What about her?” Henry said. “Unless she knew that Bahaddin had some sort of heart condition. What’s she got to do with it?”

  “They’ll do a post-mortem?” Bridget asked.

  “I doubt it. His father was coming over here anyway next week. They’ll take the body home. Untouched. Like the Jews, these families don’t go in for the idea of cutting up their relatives. I can’t see why it wasn’t just an attack—why do you think it wasn’t?”

  “I can’t see why you’re so sure it was. It’s too convenient. People of Bahaddin’s age, whatever it was, don’t drop dead after a few drinks and a dance. He’d been doing that sort of thing most of his life.”

  “Perhaps that’s what happened. It finally hit him.”

  “The point is, Henry—and you’re being very thick about it—surely he was murdered in some way: if they weren’t after Bahaddin because of us, then what could they have been after him for—and who could? Anyone who wanted to do Nasser a very bad turn. And who would that most likely be?”

  “A lot of people—”

  “But particularly who?”

  “The French, the Israelis—” Henry paused, resenting the logic of Bridget’s questions.

  “And the British,” she added. “What about them? What about London?”

  “Don’t be mad. I’d have known about it.”

  “They could have sent someone in.”

  “Why would they? He was crucial to the circle out here. London knew that perfectly well—worth far more alive, for his work, than as a pawn in any power game. The main thing is they’re not after us.”

  “How do you know? Security here may have had a lead on Bahaddin—which would have led to us—if he hadn’t had his ‘heart attack’. That would have been reason enough to get rid of him.”

  “You mean Crowther and Usher? They had something to do with it—and didn’t tell me? Hardly.”

  “You said they were madmen, quite fanatic about the whole thing out here—that they’d do anything,” I added. “If they’d heard something about Bahaddin …”

  “I don’t know what you’re going on about. There’s a chance he may have been killed. All right. It’s a possibility. Some personal trouble or jealousy back home—one of his numerous uncles or brothers wanting a crack at the throne, it’s happening all the time where he comes from. But the idea that he was part of some international plot is absolute conjecture, I don’t go for theories. Until I know any more I’ll settle for what the doctors said it was—heart failure.”

  *

  And so his death was described on the back page of the Egyptian Gazette the following day. What wasn’t reported, on that day or any other, was that the Sheik’s Mission to Egypt was withdrawn by the end of the week, along with thirty-eight million sterling held on deposit with the Bank Misr as part of a development loan to Egypt, and that the Ambassadors and other senior officials of three other
Arab states had left the country by the end of the month. A good part of the Arab world outside Egypt was aflame with indignant editorials though no breath of this appeared in the Egyptian press and no other papers which dealt with the topic got further than the censor at the airport. None the less these facts and rumours—this scandal, along with its glittering centre-piece—quickly spread among the bars and cafés of the city: that Bahaddin had been poisoned. By whom? Unlike Henry, the Cairenes were much given to theories and Bahaddin’s death provided them with an orgy of speculation.

  Incidental to all this, everyone who had dealt with Bahaddin at the school, or who had been in any way connected with him in the city, was closely questioned by the police. It must have been a long job, which in my case, at least, was conducted with meticulous thoroughness.

  “Yes, I was on the boat that night. We spoke to Bahaddin just before he joined Farid’s party. I was a teacher at Maadi, out here on a contract, yes, you know about that. With the ex-British schools …”

  I rambled on through the details of my connection with Bahaddin and my presence in Egypt. And Colonel Hassan Hamdy, from the Army’s special security branch, I assumed, made a pretence of noting these facts although I could see that he had in front of him my file from the Ministry of Education and must have known nearly as much about my activities in Egypt as I did.

  For some reason I’d been called not to the main police building up by the railway station in Ramses Square but to an office at the top of a new twelve-storey apartment block which housed the Ministry of Information in Soliman Pasha. And then it struck me that, of course, with anyone who’d been as closely involved with Bahaddin as I’d been—and likely to give a lead—this part of the investigation would have been passed over to the Army who ran everything of importance in Egypt in those days—then as now.

  “Forgive me for pressing these details but you can see our embarrassment in the whole affair. We have to go into everything very carefully. You’ve heard the rumours of course?”

  “I’ve heard a few, yes.”

  “You don’t have to worry about incriminating yourself, Mr. Marlow, this isn’t Scotland Yard. I mean, that he was murdered, poisoned?”

  “I’d heard that, yes.”

  “Of course there’s no proof. They wouldn’t let us touch the body. But the police doctor thinks it wasn’t a heart attack, some sort of quick poisoning. Of course normally we would have thought that he’d been killed by one of his own people, a relation, a rival for the succession. But that’s not the way his family see it. And I must admit that nothing’s happened in his own country since to suggest that any sort of coup de palais was the reason for his death. So we have to look into all the other possible motives.”

  Colonel Hamdy was unlike the usual Egyptian army officer at that time in that he spoke English perfectly, with barely any accent, and was middle-aged—early fifties, I’d have said. He might have been a British colonel really, with his little half-moustache, his tired, civilized features, his lanky frame and air of casual lack of interest in everything. He seemed to have finished with his wars long ago; there was no sense of urgency or viciousness in his approach, which I had expected. We might almost have been chatting in a London club, except for the heat, which the tiny fan on his desk did nothing to alleviate, and the baking smells of refuse and hot tar which rose from the street engulfing the small room. He pressed a buzzer on his desk and ordered coffee.

  “How do you like it—mazbout?”

  “Please.”

  He came out from behind his desk and we sat down at a table with a tourist map of Egypt embedded between two sheets of glass on top of it. He must have taken over the office from someone in that division of Egyptian Information and I noticed an elaborate legend on the map, surrounded by dolphins and a mass of coloured fishes, south of Suez town, advertising a new underwater fishing resort on the Red Sea.

  “Suez,” Usher had said. “We need someone in Suez.” But I wasn’t worried that the Colonel knew anything of this. I’d not yet come to think of myself as being on the far side of the law.

  “You like it here, don’t you, Mr. Marlow? I suppose most people in your position would have gone home—having lost their job. Most of your colleagues have left, haven’t they? When their contracts ran out.”

  “Yes, I like it. I’m married to an Egyptian.”

  “Oh? At All Saints’?”

  “No. The British Consulate.”

  “Mr. Crowther?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not English.”

  “No. But there’s no Irish Consulate here. And I was born in London. They can do that sort of thing—you take out dual nationality.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. It just seems strange—your being Irish. I thought you people didn’t get on too well with the British …?”

  “That was years ago.”

  “So you intend staying on here then?”

  “Yes, for the time being anyway. I was hoping for another job. Teaching.”

  “Well, I wish you luck.”

  The Colonel switched the conversation rather awkwardly, as if, having done his duty in putting me at my ease, he had now, regretfully, to embark on the real purpose of our meeting, a more delicate topic.

  “You knew the Prince pretty well—didn’t you?”

  “He was a friend, yes. I liked him, we got on well together. I suppose you could describe him as being rather mature for a schoolboy. We got on as equals. I can’t see why anyone would have wanted to kill him,” I added without thinking, as if the dialogue we were having was part of a play.

  “Can’t you?”

  “I mean—apart from one of his relations, as you said.”

  “You mean he wasn’t the sort of person to be mixed up in these sort of affairs, these political intrigues?”

  “Yes. What intrigues—?” I stopped short. The dialogue had suddenly gone wildly astray from the text.

  “Well, he was a British agent, their Middle East Intelligence. The Cairo-Albert circle. Called after the school I suppose. Rather a hopeless outfit, though of course they’re short-handed at the moment. Even so, it was extraordinarily amateur. I hope you may do better in it. Add a little sense to the whole thing. You’re not a fool.”

  The Colonel looked at me with an easy, appreciative expression and went over to his desk where he picked up a pipe and a flimsy sheet of paper which he brought back and handed to me. It was a copy of some sort of Intelligence report, with the heading United Arab Republic: Ministry for the Interior. It was in Arabic except for the anglicized names which were written down in a column mid-way through:

  Usher

  Crowther

  Edwards

  Girgis

  Prince Bahaddin

  And then with some sort of explanation in Arabic before my own name:

  Marlow

  “I see our Security people here assume that you’ve already joined them.” The Colonel lit a pipe. “Their usual optimism. You’re still thinking about it, aren’t you? And Miss Girgis—she’s your wife. Isn’t that right?” There was a polite tone of enquiry in his voice, almost of condolence, as if she’d had an accident. “Mrs. Marlow it should be now of course. A husband-and-wife team. That was rather an ambitious ploy of Usher’s, wasn’t it? Getting you involved with them in that way. I wouldn’t have credited him with it How would you describe it? Investing in the private sector?”

  *

  “You see, Usher found out that we were on to Bahaddin—and had him killed. It suited him rather well really. Apart from stopping Bahaddin talking, and I fancy our people here would have got him to do that, there was the bonus, the quite substantial bonus, of the embarrassment he knew his death would make for us. And he was quite right: one of the few professional things Usher’s ever done. Quite in line with the accepted principles of this sort of work—a pawn for a queen. What puzzles me is how Bahaddin ever got involved with them in the first place, what they had on him, how they got him in. In his position I’d hav
e kept a mile away from Usher and his friends. He must have realized that he was a more than usually valuable property in the game, marvellous potential as a sacrifice, not so much for his work but because of his political importance. He must have known they’d get rid of him if his cover was ever broken, if not before, for the sake of the capital gain.”

  The Colonel’s voice took on a chatty, enquiring tone. He seemed genuinely curious about the whole matter and to be inviting my comments on it. I said nothing.

  “Perhaps it was all just part of his Anglophilia—like Hussein of Jordan, walking around without proper security and shopping at Harrods; a sort of dare-devil foolhardiness. I suppose that English school at Maadi bowled him over with those old-fashioned ideas, about adventure and empire and the lesser breeds. He may have seen himself as a sort of Lawrence of Arabia in reverse—‘Bahaddin of England’—I’ve seen a lot of my contemporaries go like that out here. I can’t see what’s wrong with being an Arab. He was a real one too. You’d have understood that surely? Being Irish. And married to an Egyptian. Don’t you find it all rather tiresome? This wanting to be something else, somebody else, in life—and not what you are?”

  “It’s the curse of the profession, I should think. But I agree. It is stupid. I said so at the time.”

  “You’ve not joined up with them yet then—have you?”

  “No.”

  I knew already what Colonel Hamdy had in mind: the same sort of blackmail that Crowther and Usher had used, except that he would introduce it more discreetly, in the same agreeable manner that he’d brought to our conversation since the beginning.

  “Can you have lunch with me? I must just change my clothes.”

  When he came back, the Colonel was in almost bell-bottomed slacks, a yellow cotton shirt and faded silk cravat.

  “I have a room at the Semiramis—a dining room. You go on. The first floor, at the end, number 136. I’ll meet you there.”