The Men Behind

by Michael Pearce

  What concerned Owen as Mamur Zapt were the political aspects of the affair. The Mamur Zapt was roughly the equivalent of the Head of the Political Branch of the CID in England. Only roughly, because the post was unique to Cairo and included such things as responsibility for the Secret Police, a body of considerable importance to some previous Khedives when they were establishing their power but now significant only as an intelligence-gathering network.

  Fairclough as the near-victim of some private quarrel or dispute did not interest him; Fairclough as the near-victim of a terrorist attack was a very different matter.

  Up till now there had been no conclusive evidence that it was one or the other. The Parquet’s investigations had so far failed to uncover any private grudge. Nor had they been able to unearth any further information about his attackers.

  They had, however, recovered two of the spent bullets and sent them to Government Laboratories for examination. First analysis had failed to match them with any gun used in previous terrorist attempts.

  This was quite significant, as in Egypt terrorists tended to cling on to their firearms, using them repeatedly and making no effort to cover their tracks by employing new ones. It was a pattern of behavior inherited from the country’s rural areas, where a gun was a treasured possession, jealously guarded and preserved, bound together with bits of wire, until it was long past an age of decent retirement.

  If a private quarrel was ruled out, this suggested that a new terrorist group was beginning to operate, a hypothesis Nikos favored on other grounds.

  “They’re inexperienced,” he said. “They fired from too far away.”

  Beginners often did that, either because they were nervous or because they did not know the characteristics of their weapons. Small arms were effective only at very close range. The most successful assassination attempts occurred when the assailant ran right up to the victim and shot him at point-blank range, a fact which it was very useful to know when arranging protection for the Consul-General or Khedive.

  Of course, such evidence was very speculative and Nikos, who took a detached view of such things, was really waiting for other evidence to come along; such as another attack.

  Meanwhile, he was attempting an analysis of the reports of following that had come in. There were dozens of them.

  “Nearly all of them imaginary,” he complained.

  “Mine wasn’t bloody imaginary,” said Owen.

  “Wasn’t it?”

  “Of course it bloody wasn’t, I saw two men.”

  “Yes, but were they anything to do with it?”

  “Of course they were something to do with it!”

  “How do you know? They were just standing there. They might have been buying a camel or something.”

  Owen, who found Nikos’s pedantic logic very tiresome on occasions, resisted a temptation to kick his ass.

  “Anyway,” said Nikos, “you haven’t described them properly.”

  “What do you mean, I haven’t described them properly?”

  “No detail.”

  “There wasn’t time to notice detail.”

  “They didn’t just disappear. They must have walked away. That would take time.”

  “A couple of steps?”

  “Long enough to see something.”

  “Not from where I was. My view was interrupted.”

  “It was a chance,” said Nikos accusingly.

  “Look,” said Owen, “there was a reason why I didn’t stand out in the middle of the street and examine them carefully. It was that I didn’t want to get a bullet in my head.”

  Nikos bent prudently over the papers on his desk.

  Owen stalked indignantly over to the earthenware pot standing in the window where it would keep cool and poured himself a glass of water. He picked up a copy of the Parquet’s first report and settled down to read it.

  A few moments went by. Then Nikos coughed slightly.

  Owen looked up.

  “Young or old?” said Nikos.

  “What?”

  “Young or old? Those two men. Were they young or old?”

  “Young, I think.”

  “Galabeahs?”

  “Shirt and trousers, I think.”

  “Short, fat, tall, thin?”

  “About medium, I’d say. Slightly built, perhaps.”

  “Young,” said Nikos.

  “Probably. It would go with them being inexperienced.”

  “They needn’t be the same two. The group as a whole might be young. In fact, it probably would be.”

  “What about the other cases?”

  “The other reports? Nine-tenths imaginary or so vague as to be useless. About six worth looking at.”

  “Including mine?”

  “You’re on the margin.”

  “Fairclough’s?”

  “No detail on the following. Useful detail from the shooting, though not much of it.”

  “What did you get from the others?”

  “Two people, nearly always. Men, young, Western-style clothes.”

  Owen thought for a moment.

  “That could be good,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “It could mean there’s only one group operating. If it’s the same pattern in each case.”

  “It’s the same pattern, I think.”

  “I hope it is. That would make things a lot easier.”

  “Did you think it wasn’t?”

  “No, no, not particularly. You always worry in a situation like this, with general unrest, that they might all start coming at you, from all sides. It’s much easier if there’s only one group to handle.”

  “You’ve still got the general restiveness to cope with.”

  “Yes, but you handle the two in different ways. The general stuff is all right provided you keep a sense of proportion. You’ve got to not let it get out of hand but at the same time you’ve got to not overreact. If you start thinking they’re all bloody terrorist groups you tend to overreact. But that only makes it worse because it provokes people, and then what starts as a demonstration becomes a bloody riot.”

  “You don’t think demonstrations might grow into terrorism if they’re not put down?”

  “No,” said Owen.

  “I hope you’re right,” said Nikos. “We’ll soon see, won’t we?”

  ***

  Keeping a sense of proportion was all very well but it wasn’t only Owen who had to guard against overreacting. The next morning he had a meeting at the Residency and when he came out he found that the Army was building roadblocks in all the neighboring streets.

  “What the bloody hell is this?” he asked the sergeant who seemed to be in charge.

  “Defenses, sir,” said the sergeant.

  “Defenses? What the hell against?”

  “Search me, sir, I don’t know. All them Arabs, I expect.”

  An Egyptian who had been at the meeting with Owen and had followed him out emerged onto the street and turned right, where he walked straight into a roadblock.

  “’Ere, where do you think you’re going?” asked the corporal manning it.

  “Along to the Ministry.”

  “Not this way, you’re not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I bloody say so, that’s why not. And because I’ve got this—” the corporal patted the butt of his rifle—“to back me up.”

  “But I’m only going to the Ministry!”

  “’Ard luck.”

  “I work there.”

  “You’ll just have to work somewhere else.”

  “But—”

  The Egyptian looked around in bewilderment. Owen stepped forward.

  “I must get there at once,” said the Egyptian. “I’ve got an important meeting!”

 
; “Why don’t you just go away?” suggested the corporal.

  “Hallo, Mr. Fahmy,” said Owen. “Can I help?”

  The Egyptian made a bemused gesture.

  “This is the Minister of the Interior,” said Owen.

  The corporal flinched.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said, as much to Owen as to the Minister. Although Owen was not in uniform—he was, in fact, on secondment from the Indian Army—the corporal knew at once that he was an Army officer.

  “He needs to get to the Ministry,” said Owen. “Obviously.”

  The corporal looked troubled.

  “I—I know, sir,” he said. “The trouble is, I’ve been instructed not to let anyone pass along this street. Orders, sir.” The sergeant, who had followed Owen along when he saw how things were going, intervened.

  “You go and fetch Captain Fenniman,” he told the corporal. “I’ll look after things here.”

  Relieved, the corporal took himself off.

  “Sorry, sir,” said the sergeant, including Fahmy in his “sir.” “Would you mind waiting a minute?”

  “I’m as much in the dark as you,” Owen said to Fahmy.

  Fahmy shrugged.

  The corporal came hurrying back with a young officer in tow.

  “Yes?” he said sharply.

  “This is Mr. Fahmy, Minister of the Interior,” said Owen. The Captain nodded politely. “He wants to be allowed to get to the Ministry.”

  The captain hesitated.

  “I think he should,” said Owen.

  Fenniman made up his mind.

  “Very well,” he said. “Hawley, will you escort this gentleman through our blocks? Bennett, you stay here. Sorry to inconvenience you,” he said to Fahmy. “But you’ll understand that we have to take precautions.”

  The Egyptian shrugged again. As he went off with the sergeant he gave Owen a wry smile.

  “I don’t understand why you’ve got to take precautions,” said Owen.

  “Haven’t you heard? There’s been an attack on a senior member of the Administration. More are on the way, apparently.”

  “Senior member of the Administration?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Fairclough?”

  “I think that’s his name.”

  “Fairclough isn’t a senior member of anything. Except possibly the bridge club.”

  “Oh? Well, that’s what I heard.”

  “There’s been an attack, certainly. But why the hell all this?” Owen indicated the barricades.

  “Guarding the Residency. The CG could be the next target.”

  “This isn’t your bright idea, is it?”

  “It seems a good idea to me,” said Fenniman defensively.

  “It’s a stupid idea,” said Owen.

  “Oh? And what exactly do you know about it, Mr.—?”

  “Owen. The Mamur Zapt. Responsible for law and order in this bloody city. Which you are messing up.”

  Owen steamed back into the Residency. His friend Paul, the Consul-General’s personal aide, who had been secretarying the meeting, was still packing up. Owen told him about the barricades.

  “Jesus!” said Paul. “All we asked for was an extra couple of guards.”

  Owen told him about the Minister.

  “The bloody fools! I’ll get on to him at once and apologize.”

  “Can’t you do something about the barricades?”

  “You think they’re a bit de trop?”

  “I bloody do.”

  They went back to Paul’s office. Paul rang up the Commander-in-Chief’s office and asked to speak to one of his aides.

  “John? Is that you? What’s going on? Have you declared war or something?”

  “Not as far as I know. We can’t anyway, because I’m playing tennis this afternoon.”

  “Who’s responsible for putting these barricades all over the place?”

  “Barricades?”

  Paul told him.

  “Sounds like Hardwicke to me. Want me to have a word with him?”

  “Yes. I have a friend of yours here, an old foe from the tennis courts, who thinks they merely add to the already overwhelming difficulties of his life.”

  “If he’d only leave Zeinab alone, he’d have a lot less difficulty in his life.”

  “I’ll tell him that. Oh, I think he’s heard. Oh, and, John, one more thing: it would lessen the difficulties in my life if the Army stopped arresting Ministers of His Royal Highness’s Government.”

  “That the barricades too? OK, I’ll see what I can do. Ring you back.”

  Within a few moments he rang back.

  “It was Hardwicke. And I’m sorry to say he’s being difficult. He says the CG requested it.”

  “All we requested was an extra guard. I sent the memo myself.”

  “He’s digging his heels in. If the CG is changing his mind he’s got to be told formally.”

  “I’ll send him a chitty.”

  “That won’t be enough. He wants a meeting.”

  “A meeting! I’ve got too many of those already.”

  “With the CG.”

  “He’ll be lucky! The Old Man’s off to the coast this afternoon.”

  “He won’t move without a meeting.”

  “Oh, very well. We’d better have one, then. I’ll fix it up. And as for you, boyo,” Paul said to Owen, “you’re going to have to repay me for this. Richly.”

  The Army had erected barricades not just round the Residency but at other “strategic points” in the city. As Owen discovered when he returned to his office. These included the railway station.

  “Sheer bloody lunacy,” Owen complained at the meeting the next day. “There’s a Hadji due back from Mecca and they’ll all be meeting him off the train and then processing back to his house.”

  “They’ll just have to do without the processing this time,” said the Brigadier grimly.

  “If you try and stop it, there’ll be a riot.”

  “We know how to handle that.”

  “We’ve got enough on our plate without that,” said Paul, chairing the meeting in the unavoidable absence of the Consul-General.

  Brigadier Hardwicke, at the personal request of the Consul-General, relayed through Paul, had reluctantly agreed to remove the barricades around the Residency. He was digging his heels in, however, over the other barricades.

  “This is a particularly tense time in the city,” Owen said. “We don’t want to do anything provocative.”

  “If they’re shooting our people,” said the Brigadier, “we need to teach them a lesson they won’t forget.”

  “We need to teach the people who are doing the shooting, not the others. If we come down heavily on the others, all we’ll do is drive them into supporting the extremists.”

  “You’re soft, Owen,” said the Brigadier.

  “I’ve seen it in India,” said Owen, who knew that the Brigadier’s own service had been confined hitherto to the Home Counties. “It didn’t work there either.”

  The argument continued for some time. Eventually Paul, who had been following it with delight, pronounced the verdict on behalf of the Consul-General: the barricades were to come down.

  “You might as well confine the Army to barracks,” said the Brigadier.

  “As a matter of fact,” said Owen, who was in an unforgiving mood, “that might be an excellent idea.”

  “If that’s what you want,” said the Brigadier, rising from the table in a fury, “then you can have it.”

  “Do we need to go that far?” asked Paul.

  “Yes,” said Owen.

  The Brigadier walked out. As he reached the door he paused and looked back over his shoulder.

  “You’d better be right, Owen,” he said. “Because if things go wr
ong now…”

  Paul saw him out and then returned for his papers.

  “I would not ordinarily agree with the Brigadier,” he said. “However, on this particular point…”

  ***

  Nikos brought the note in at once. It had been scribbled in haste and read: “Am being followed. Have gone into Andalaft’s. Will stay there until you come. George Jullians.”

  Owen knew Jullians. He was a judge in the Mixed Courts, a calm, experienced man, unlikely to take alarm without cause.

  “Tell Abdul Kerim to come,” he said, “and send me two trackers.”

  Andalaft’s was in the Khan el Khalil, among the bazaars. It was a shop for connoisseurs. It had only a small stock of tourists’ brass and embroideries. Andalaft’s real interest was in old enamels, in Persian jewelry and lusterware and in old illuminated Korans.

  When Owen went in he was talking quietly to Jullians at the back of the shop. They were fingering lovingly a fine old Persian box, set with large turquoises and used for containing a verse of the Koran.

  Andalaft put it down and came to greet Owen.

  “The Mamur Zapt,” he said. “I’m so glad you’ve come. I didn’t know if my messenger would find you.”

  Jullians glanced at his watch. “It didn’t take you long,” he said. “They may still be there.”

  “You’re definite, are you?” asked Owen.

  Jullians nodded. “Pretty sure,” he said. “I think they’ve done it before. Yesterday I had a strong sense of being followed and saw these two men. I saw them again today. I tried to shake them off but couldn’t. So I dodged into Andalaft’s.”

  “Mr. Jullians often comes here,” said Andalaft softly.

  “They may even know that,” said Jullians. “It depends on how long they’ve been following me.”

  Andalaft looked at Owen.

  “We have another exit,” he said. “Mr. Jullians could have left in safety.”

  Jullians shrugged. “They’d only catch me some other time,” he said, “perhaps when I was less prepared. I thought if I could get a message to you, you might be able to catch them. That’s really the only way, isn’t it?”

  “There may be others,” said Owen. “I’d like to catch them too.”

  “OK,” said Jullians. “Well, I’m ready.”

  “I’d like you to point them out to us. Perhaps we can use your back door?” he said to Andalaft. Andalaft nodded. “And then—do you feel up to walking on?” he asked Jullians.