‘Yes, or he might be a sweeper in the Scentmakers’ Bazaar who’s got a pretty wife whom someone’s got his eye on and wants him out of the way!’
‘All these things are possible,’ Nikos agreed.
‘Yes, but do you expect me to waste my time on…?’
Yes, unfortunately; not just Nikos’ answer, but that of the dimwits back in London also.
***
Normally, Owen did the arresting and somebody else did the ferrying to the internment camps. This morning, though, the man in charge of the ferrying was down with malaria and Owen, short-staffed, decided to do the job himself.
There was, too, a particular reason for going with this convoy. It was taking people to the camp to which Fricker, the inspector who had produced the report on the ghaffirs, had been transferred. Owen thought he might have a word with him.
The convoy went first by train and then by cart. They got out of the train at a halt marked only by water tanks and a great arm which swung out over the engine. A line of open carts was drawn up nearby. There followed a long, jolting ride across the desert until suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, Owen saw hundreds and hundreds of tents. When he got closer he saw that they were surrounded by barbed wire.
Soldiers opened a gate in the barbed wire and they drove through. Inside, men laden with pots and pans were queuing up at a stand-by pump for water. They looked at the arrivals curiously and some of them called out greetings.
Owen found Fricker sitting in the entrance to one of the tents, reading a book.
He shrugged.
‘No, it is not very nice,’ he said. ‘But I see the necessity for it. From the British point of view, that is. I have made a list of some suggested improvements. Please be so kind as to give them to the camp commandant when you leave.’
Inside the tent were four angribs, native rope beds without mattresses, on two of which men were lying. Beneath each bed was a suitcase, and beside it was a packing case, which served as a bedside table, on top of which some of the men had put personal effects: a set of writing materials, for example. There were remarkably few signs of personal occupation, however. Used to army tents as Owen was, he was struck by how meticulously tidy this one was, and how scant in anything personal; a reflection, he suspected, of Fricker’s character.
Fricker went across to the packing case with the writing materials upon it and took out a sheet of paper, which he gave to Owen. It was neatly set out with headings, sub-headings and sub-sub-headings.
Owen folded it and put it in his pocket.
‘I was reading a report of yours recently,’ he said. ‘The one on the ghaffirs. I thought it was good.’
Fricker seemed pleased.
‘I tried to think of the ghaffirs as a system,’ he said. ‘It is, I think, the first time that anyone has done that.’
‘Yes, the ghaffir has always been seen merely as an individual or as just part of the village.’
‘That is so. But if one thinks functionally…’
They discussed the report for a while. Then Owen said:
‘There is one part, though, that I don’t think I go along with you on. Arming the ghaffirs.’
‘But they must be armed, if they are to do their duties properly!’
‘But need they be armed quite so heavily?’
Fricker shrugged.
‘They need to be armed well enough to do the job,’ he said.
‘The job is usually quite humble. Scaring away the birds, that sort of thing.’
‘Usually, but not always. Sometimes they have to fight brigands.’
‘Yes, I saw your reference to the situation at Minya.’
‘Minya, yes. That is an interesting place.’
‘But exceptional, surely? Ghaffirs don’t usually have to fight brigands.’
‘You have to build it into the system specification, though.’
‘Well, do you? I don’t think it’s fair to expect a ghaffir to fight brigands.’
‘Not a ghaffir on his own, no. But that is the point of my report. He should not be asked to fight on his own. When it comes to brigands, he should be operating as part of a group. A trained group, trained for such operations. And with the right weapons to do the job. Superior force, that is the point. At the moment, the ghaffirs do not have superior force. But that is not their fault, it is a fault of the system. And to put that right we have to think of it as a system.’
Owen could see the logic, although he remained unconvinced. He could see, too, why Fricker might appeal to McKitterick. He was analytical, a quality always useful in senior administrators. His mind dwelt too much on the theoretical parameters of his system for Owen’s taste, but he could see how it might appeal to others.
What he could not see, however, was any sign that Fricker was playing a deeper game. If anything, his mind seemed to be entirely preoccupied with his work.
Owen asked how he found the Ministry. Was it a congenial place? Congenial? Fricker seemed puzzled. ‘A good place to work,’ amplified Owen, thinking he might not have understood him. ‘Oh, yes, most interesting,’ said Fricker. Owen decided that it was the concept, not the vocabulary, that was the problem for him.
He asked how Fricker found the Minister. Fricker didn’t have much to do with him, not directly. McKitterick? He quite liked McKitterick. He thought he was a very open man. (Open? McKitterick?) But he didn’t really have a lot to do with him either. As an inspector, he explained, he worked very much on his own. He was often away touring the provinces. Sometimes he would stay in a place for weeks.
Owen could get no feeling for his private life. He began to suspect he didn’t have one. Everything seemed to begin and end in work.
Fricker asked how his colleagues were managing in his absence.
Owen said that they were, of course, below establishment now, which inevitably made a difference.
Fricker shook his head and said that it was very regrettable.
‘And unnecessary,’ he said. ‘For, surely, here in Egypt there is no war. German and Englishman are on the same side. We work together. We are both servants of the Khedive.’
Owen was not without sympathy for this point of view. All the same, it was pretty naïve. And it made it all the more unlikely that Fricker was engaged in the kind of deep plotting that McPhee had supposed. No, Fricker was just an ordinary chap: hard-working, a little narrow, perhaps a bit rigid—even unimaginative.
Which certainly could not be said of McPhee.
***
‘Yes, I know,’ said the camp commandant defensively, when Owen gave him Fricker’s paper. ‘It’s not satisfactory. We’re working damned hard, but we’re not keeping up. That’s because you’re sending us so many people. At least it’s dry, though. When it rains, the place will turn into a morass, and that’s when disease will start. I’ve been in places like this before. In South Africa.
‘But it’s not because they’re prisoners. Go five miles in that direction—’ he pointed with his hand—‘and you’ll find another camp like this. It, too, is full of people. Only they happen to be soldiers. Our soldiers. That’s war for you. Now please get out of my way.’
***
Zeinab wasn’t speaking to him. But she wasn’t moving out, either. He took this as a good sign, although he suspected that it merely meant war hadn’t been opened on that front yet.
In any case, he still hadn’t really made up his mind about volunteering. When he had been with John and the other officers he had been conscious of old fellow-feeling; but now he was remembering that he had left the Army in India precisely because he had thought he didn’t have enough fellow-feeling with the officers he met there. Would it be any different in France? Or in Mesopotamia?
But that wasn’t really the point, was it?
***
The war seemed to come closer that lunch-time in the bar of
the Sporting Club. Paul was there with two men freshly arrived in Cairo, both of whom Owen knew. One was a man named Cavendish, from the British Embassy in Constantinople, whose role there Owen was not quite sure of but who seemed to feel that he had something in common with Owen.
The other person was a little fair-headed archaeologist, a bit of a know-all, whom Owen hadn’t got on with when they had previously met.
‘You see,’ Cavendish was saying, ‘if they play the “holy war” card, it could really cause trouble for us.’
‘I don’t think it would,’ said the archaeologist. ‘Not in the Peninsula, at any rate. Tribal rivalries are stronger than religion.’
‘How about Egypt, Owen?’ said Cavendish, turning towards him.
‘Too early to say. In any case, it would be a difficult card to play, wouldn’t it? For the Germans.’
‘Yes, but not for the Turks.’
‘Will they definitely come in?’
‘Any day, now. That’s why I left Constantinople,’ said Cavendish.
‘It might be a difficult card even for them. At least, as far as Egypt is concerned. All right, they’ve got religion in common, but there’s as much Nationalist feeling here against the Turks as there is against the British. Almost.’
‘If you’re really worried about the “holy war” card,’ said the little archaeologist, ‘you want to get talking to the Sherif.’
‘Yes, but he’s at Mecca.’
‘Go there.’
‘I can’t,’ said Paul. ‘Not with Kitchener away.’
‘I could,’ said the archaeologist.
Both Paul and Cavendish seemed rather taken aback.
‘It ought to be someone more senior,’ said Cavendish.
‘Ought it?’ said the archaeologist. ‘I could sound him out and then, if he seemed at all responsive, you could send someone more senior.’
Neither Cavendish nor Paul seemed to like the idea.
‘We’d better hold it,’ said Paul, ‘until Kitchener gets back.’
‘Is he coming back?’
Paul seemed surprised.
‘Well, isn’t he?’
‘Britain’s leading soldier. A war on. They might have something else in mind for him.’
It had never occurred to Owen that Kitchener might not return to Egypt. That would certainly alter things. He had a sudden feeling of elation.
The other three put down their glasses and turned to go, obviously off to some meeting or other.
Cavendish nodded to him.
‘We’ll be seeing quite a lot of each other,’ he said, ‘now that I’m here permanently. We’ll probably be setting up some kind of committee, or even a Bureau. I’d like you to be on it.’
‘Owen’s internal,’ said the archaeologist, dissenting.
‘That might come in handy,’ said Cavendish.
‘The war isn’t going to be fought in Egypt,’ said the archaeologist.
He always rubbed Owen up the wrong way and now something about his tone made Owen take exception.
‘There’ll be more going on in Egypt than there will be in Mecca,’ he retorted.
‘Come on, Lawrence,’ said Paul impatiently, from the doorway.
***
He was thinking about it later that afternoon as he drove back over the Kasr-en-Nil Bridge. Below him he could see feluccas shimmering across the water, their graceful lateen sails bowing under the weight of the wind, and at the edge of the river water-sellers wading into the water with their black goatskin bags to fill up for another load.
He asked himself why he took against the man so. They had only met about three times and each time they had rubbed each other up the wrong way.
The first time, Lawrence had made some remark, which Owen had taken to be disparaging, about Owen’s ignorance of the world of Oxford colleges that both Lawrence and Paul had once inhabited. Why Owen had taken umbrage at this he couldn’t now think. There were plenty of worlds he was on the outside of and usually it didn’t bother him.
He decided it must have been the affectation of superiority. Owen didn’t take kindly to other people thinking they were superior to him; and Lawrence seemed hardly able to speak without implying that he knew more than the person he was addressing.
He couldn’t see them working together on that committee, or Bureau, of Cavendish’s. Cavendish himself he didn’t exactly warm to, but at least he could get along with him for five minutes without quarrelling. Whereas Lawrence—
And what the hell was the committee all about anyway? It sounded to him like Intelligence work, and he was not sure that he wanted to get involved in that sort of thing. Everything at the moment seemed to be taking him away from his real work. First, all this damned internment stuff, and now, it appeared, Intelligence work of some kind. It was the war, of course. It was affecting everything. He didn’t have to go to it. It would come to him, whether he went or stayed, whether he liked it or not.
***
‘And then there’s another one,’ said the man from the Swiss Consulate, glancing at his list. ‘A Mrs Aziz Hanafi.’
‘Are you sure she’s German?’
The Swiss Consulate had taken over responsibility for looking after the interests of German nationals when the German Consulate had been withdrawn. Problems had come up in the cases of some of the people interned and they were going through them now.
‘Yes. Hanafi is her married name. She married an Egyptian. Her original name was Langer. Hilde Langer.’
‘Langer?’
The name rang a bell.
‘Yes. Actually our concerns here are different from those in the case of the others. This one is deceased.’
‘Was she down in Minya?’
‘That’s right. You know her?’
‘I know of her.’
She was the one who had been found in the cat pit.
‘Apparently she died in suspicious circumstances.’
‘Yes.’
‘We don’t actually know all the details.’
‘I can tell you some of them.’
The man from the Consulate noted them down.
‘It’s a case of informing the family,’ he said. ‘Or, rather, of informing our diplomatic colleagues so that they can inform the family.’
He read through the notes.
‘It’s not very much,’ he said. ‘I think the family will want to know more.’
‘Well, of course, the death is the subject of an investigation.’
‘Ye-e-es.’
He sounded doubtful.
‘The man in charge of the case now is extremely competent.’
‘That’s good. Yes, that will help. Do you happen to know his name?’
He wrote it down.
‘I’ll contact him directly and ask him to keep us informed.’
He hesitated.
‘But, you know…’
‘He really is good, I can assure you.’
‘Yes. Yes, I’m sure.’ He hesitated again. ‘But, you know, these are rather special times, and it would be so easy for things to slip.’
‘He won’t let them slip, believe me.’
‘No, no. Perhaps not.’ He hesitated again and then went on resolutely. ‘But, you know, in normal times one would have the extra guarantee, in the case of non-Egyptian nationals, that the Mamur Zapt was keeping an eye on things.’
‘I’ll keep an eye on things, if you want.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
He looked down at his notes. He seemed a decent enough man. This kind of thing was trying and it must be particularly difficult when they weren’t even of your own nationality. Owen got up and went to the earthenware jug, covered with a towel, which stood in the window, as in all Cairo offices, and poured him some water. The air coming through the slats of the blinds was sup
posed to cool the water. He had an uneasy feeling that today the heat was winning. He returned and gave it to the man.
‘Thank you.’
He looked down at his notes again and then raised his eyes to Owen resolutely.
‘But then there’s the other point, you see: her nationality. And you—forgive me—are English.’
‘Well…’
‘Yes, yes, I know. But it would be only natural…An enemy, after all…war. And you are a busy man, I can see that.’ He gestured at the pile of papers on Owen’s desk. ‘You will have other preoccupations. It would be so easy…so easy for this poor woman to fall through the cracks. What is a single person when there is a war on? Especially an unimportant woman. And yet, Captain Owen, it is important. I can say that because I am a neutral. I am outside the war and perhaps I can see things more objectively. It is important because she is unimportant. Do you—do you follow me?’
‘I follow you.’
‘Even during a war. Perhaps especially during a war.’
‘I will see that she doesn’t fall through the cracks.’
‘I will hold you to that. My country—which is not especially fond of Germany—will hold you to that. Will hold England. And Egypt. But above all, Captain Owen, since this is a time when individuals are important, I will hold you.’
Chapter Five
That was all very well, but Mahmoud was actually the one who was conducting the investigation and Owen saw no reason why he should take it over himself. Mahmoud would see it as a personal slight and the strongly Nationalistic Parquet would certainly resist it. Besides, Mahmoud would probably conduct the investigation better than he would. In professional matters, he cut like a knife. This was anyway more Mahmoud’s kind of thing than it was Owen’s. Owen’s experience was on the political side, with the revolutionary ‘clubs’ and conspiratorial groups with which Cairo abounded, and he didn’t imagine that would be of much help in investigating Hilde Langer’s death. The murder was much more likely to have been the result of some domestic dispute, he thought, and that was Mahmoud’s field, not his.
He wrote to Mahmoud asking to be kept informed, as the Swiss Consulate, acting on behalf of Germany, was taking a particular interest in the matter.
The Face in the Cemetery Page 5