The Mingrelian Conspiracy mz-9

by Michael Pearce

  ‘They’re working on some ikon. Down in one of the churches. Or so he said. “In that case,” I said, “you’ll not be wanting brick, you’ll be wanting dust.” No, he said, he’d prefer brick. “Well,” I said, “you’re probably not an expert, but I’m pretty sure that what you really need, if it’s an ikon you’re talking about, is dust. In any case, dust is all I can let you have. I get plenty of that left over. But if you’re talking about material to work, well, I only get as much as I need. You’ve got to pay cash.” Well, he went away, but then he came back and said he’d like dust. I sold him some but then he wanted more and I said, I haven’t got any more, not for a week or two, that is. And he said, it’ll be too late then. So I said, you’d better go and ask someone else, then. And that’s what he did, I think.’

  ‘Can you sell dust?’

  ‘Oh yes. There’s some people who want it. But what would be the point of selling it, if he’s only just bought it? And bought it from the likes of me? I mean, we’re not going to let him have it cheap, are we? I wouldn’t say we’re making a fortune out of it, but it’s not in our usual line of business and you naturally charge a bit extra. He ought to go direct to a supplier. But then, if he did that, they’d always be able to undercut him, wouldn’t they? If he was trying to sell it on!’ Owen agreed it was a funny business and asked how much dust the old man had purchased.

  ‘How many ikons is he doing?’ he said. ‘This seems a lot, if there’s only one.’

  ‘And he wanted more! “You’d better check your particulars,” I said. “With gold, you want to get it right.” ’

  ‘You certainly do,’ agreed Owen. ‘Did he say which church it was?’

  ‘No. It’s down in the Babylon somewhere.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Owen. ‘The Babylon?’

  Owen had arranged to meet Georgiades in the old Greek cathedral. Arriving a little early, he climbed up to the roof to orientate himself. Babylon was spread out below him. Right at his feet were the vineyards which sheltered the seven ancient churches; and, at this height, the walls of the Ders, the fortified precincts, were plainly visible. At ground level it was sometimes difficult to distinguish them. Within the walls the people were going about their daily business: the little boys to school, the women to the pumps and wells for water, or perhaps making an early visit to the suk, the men to the little shops and workshops often set in recesses of the walls to begin their day’s work. Beyond the houses in one direction he could see the Nile, and Roda Island, with its Nilometer, and the ferry crossing the river, and on the other side the village of Gizeh and the pyramids. Turning round, he could see Saladin’s great aqueduct stealing along the sandhills of the Fustat until it reached modern Cairo with its minarets and domes and Saladin’s Citadel on its rock.

  It was against the Muslim invaders that the Copts had built the Ders. For the Copts had been here before the Arabs, before even the Romans. They were the original inhabitants of the place and had clung on to their identity despite successive waves of invaders. Was there not a lesson here for Sorgos, Owen wondered?

  If there was, he was not sure that he liked it. For the Copts had survived by going underground: underground literally, beneath and behind their great walls, but underground in other ways too, burying themselves in the general population, distinguishable by their clothes and their features, but never seemingly asserting themselves. If there was a nationalism here, it was a secret, covert one, though perhaps none the less tenacious for that.

  Owen preferred to look at the Ders from up here. At ground level he had too much of the feeling of being in a ghetto. You were too conscious of the walls barring out the rest of the world. And everything seemed somehow underground. It was an effect, perhaps, of the architectural search for shade, but it made everything dark, claustrophobic.

  He heard footsteps on the stairs. Georgiades emerged, breathing heavily.

  ‘Grandmother’s pleased,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pleased at me coming here,’ he said. ‘To the cathedral. She thinks there’s hope yet.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a grandmother.’

  ‘Not mine, Rosa’s. She used to come here regularly when the family first came to Egypt. They lived down here for a while before moving up to the city.’

  He came across to the parapet and stood beside Owen. The catheral was built into a bastion of the old Roman fortress.

  ‘It’s the vineyards, too. Like home, she says. Greece.’

  He bent over the parapet.

  ‘It’s over there,’ he said, pointing.

  ‘Al-Mo’allaka? The church where they’re restoring ikons?’

  ‘Yes. You can’t really see it from here.’

  ‘I’ve been there, I think.’

  ‘If you had, you’d remember it. Shall we take a look?’ They went back down the stairs and out into the cloisters. Within a few yards Owen lost his bearings. Cloisters became tunnels, tunnels, dark alleyways and then cloisters again. They went through underground arcades where the shops were illuminated only by candles. Eventually they emerged into sunlight, the sunlight of a small palm-tree court with a fountain in its middle. From one end of the court a staircase led upwards. Al-Mo’allaka, the Hanging Church, was at the top of that.

  The church got its name not from the fact of being actually suspended, but from its having been built high up in one of the ancient gateways of the old Roman fort. To reach it you had to climb up the staircase. At the top was a kind of atrium and the church opened off this.

  Owen stopped for a moment in the doorway to let his eyes get used to the darkness. The church was lit by old hanging lamps and the light that came from their tiny flames was hardly enough at first for him to be able to make anything out. But then he saw the antique columns of marble taken, so Georgiades said, from some Roman temple, which broke the space up into the traditional three parts of a Coptic church: the place of the women, the place of the men, and the place of the priests. Gradually he became aware of the old barrel roof, bolted to open woodwork like the timbers of a ship: and then of the low Moresco arches, outlined in ivory, which led to the sanctuary. His eye came back to more marble, that of an incredibly finely carved pulpit, very long and narrow, standing on delicate marble shafts. Only very slowly, because of the darkness of the wood, did he become aware of the backdrop to everything, a screen which, unusually, ran right round the church and which seemed, unbelievably, to glow in the darkness.

  He went forward into the church and saw that the screen was covered with golden ikons. The gold caught the light from the swinging lamps and seemed both to absorb and reflect it, to take it into itself as a kind of inner energy and then to release it again, slowly.

  Georgiades touched his arm. At first he did not see, but then Georgiades pointed and he realized that over in a corner a man was working on one of the ikons.

  They went across. The man looked up. Owen couldn’t see him well but saw enough to know that he was not an Arab. Or a Copt, for that matter.

  ‘Fine work!’ said Owen.

  ‘Just the finishing touches,’ said the man. They spoke in Arabic but although the man spoke it well, it was not his first tongue. ‘We do most of the work in our workshop out the back.’

  ‘You have a lot of work here, then?’

  The man nodded.

  ‘We are working on five. Just restoring, of course.’

  ‘Difficult, with the materials. Is that real gold?’

  The man smiled.

  ‘Dust,’ he said, ‘fixed with paint. I wouldn’t try to get it off.’

  ‘Still,’ said Owen, ‘not cheap!’

  ‘We’re the ones who are cheap,’ said the man, cheerfully, however.

  ‘Even you have to be paid for, though.’

  ‘There is a cost,’ the man agreed.

  ‘I didn’t know the Church was that rich,’ said Owen.

  ‘Oh, this kind of thing isn’t paid for by the Church. It’s financed by donations.’

  ‘And someo
ne has given the money for you to do these?’

  ‘Enough for five of them only, unfortunately.’

  ‘Well, I suppose the cost adds up. I mean, the dust by itself…How much dust would you need to do a job like this?’

  ‘Very little,’ said the man. ‘That’s why it’s not worth your trying to take it off!’

  Owen laughed.

  ‘I’ll have to find some other way of getting rich.’

  They stood watching the man for a little while.

  ‘The workshop’s out the back, if you’d like to put your head in.’

  Owen followed Georgiades down the stairs and out into the court with the palm trees and the fountain. A high wooden trellis of fine old meshrebiya work divided off a small garden at one end, on the other side of which were what looked like low cloisters. A man was working in one of them.

  ‘Just been talking to your mate upstairs,’ said Owen.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  The man stayed bent over his work. It was another ikon and he was gently brushing the face. Out here in the daylight the ikon seemed flatter, had lost its glow.

  ‘Difficult work,’ said Owen.

  ‘Not when you know how.’

  ‘Ah, yes, but it’s the knowing how! Not many people with your skills, I fancy.’

  ‘Not many,’ said the man, ‘but too many.’

  ‘Too many for the jobs available?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Churches aren’t the best customers. Still, from what your mate was saying, someone else is paying this time.’

  ‘Lucky for once.’

  ‘A sick patron?’

  ‘A dead patron. This was a bequest.’

  ‘Ah, so there won’t be any more when it’s finished?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  They watched for a while and then turned away. Back up in the church a priest was lighting candles.

  ‘The bequest? All very fine, but it won’t buy salvation. Not by itself, that is. God isn’t bribable. Though Arturos probably thought he was. He certainly thought everyone else was.’

  ‘It’s a genuine bequest, then?’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘The church has actually received the money?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘And decided to allocate it to restoration of the ikons? Or was that Arturos’s idea?’

  ‘Ours.’

  ‘Ah! A considerable sum?’

  ‘Considerable in Arturos’s eyes.’

  ‘Enough to restore five ikons?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘The materials are costly,’ Owen observed.

  ‘We’re used to tight budgeting.’

  ‘And Arturos himself, what sort of man was he? Interested in the Church?’

  ‘When he thought he was going to die, yes.’

  Owen laughed.

  ‘A lot of us are like that.’

  ‘Everyone is like that,’ said the priest.

  He walked with them to the door. In the court everything was still. Even while they had been inside, it had grown appreciably hotter.

  They heard the tap of boots on the atrium, unusual in a world of slippers and bare feet. A man appeared at the top of the staircase.

  ‘One of the workmen?’

  ‘A friend of theirs, I think.’

  First, the boots, and then the face; Owen recognized the man who had run after Sorgos on the night of the boisterous public meeting in the Der.

  ‘It must be,’ said Nikos. ‘Nicodemus said that Herbst-Wickel was insisting on payment in gold. It must be for the explosives.’

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ said Georgiades; ‘it’s not for the ikons. The amount they need is nothing like the amount he’s getting.’

  ‘It’s got to be the explosives. What else would he want gold dust for?’

  ‘It’s a hell of a clumsy way to get gold, though, isn’t it?’ said Owen.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Georgiades, ‘But-don’t you see? — he’s never done it before. It’s not something you buy everyday. Take me, for instance: I never buy gold. You buy gold?’ he asked Nikos.

  Nikos sniffed disdainfully.

  ‘If I did,’ he said, ‘I’d know how to go about it better than he does.’

  ‘Very amateurish,’ said Owen.

  ‘Ah, yes, but, you see, he is an amateur. It’s the first time he’s ever done anything like this. The same with all of them, probably. Never bought gold, never bought explosives, never even tried to kill a Grand Duke before!’

  ‘Why did they pick on explosives, then? Why not just try and shoot him?’

  Nikos shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps they wanted to make sure.’

  ‘The danger is,’ said Owen, ‘that they try to make too sure and send a lot of other people with him. Explosives are not for amateurs. God knows who they might blow up!’

  ‘The way they’re going,’ said Nikos, ‘they’re not going to be in a position to blow anyone up, not by the time the Grand Duke gets here, anyway. Not if it depends on Sorgos acquiring enough gold to pay for the explosives. If you look at what he must have been able to get in this ham-fisted way, he must still be miles short.’

  ‘That’s our big hope.’

  ‘Well,’ said Georgiades, ‘if it all depends on Sorgos, isn’t the solution obvious?’

  ‘Take him in, you mean?’

  ‘Someone else might do it then,’ said Nikos, ‘someone who’s more efficient.’

  ‘In any case,’ said Owen, ‘I’m hoping he’s going to lead us to the rest of the people involved. You’ve got someone on him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nikos. ‘Apparently he’s still buying.’

  ‘That’s good. Don’t forget, Herbst-Wickel want payment in advance. It means they’ve still not got the explosives.’

  Owen had hoped that, having passed the case over to Mahmoud, for the time being he could forget about protection gangs, but early the next morning he received an agitated summons from Mustapha.

  ‘What’s the trouble?’

  ‘Two!’ said Mustapha, shaking his head disbelievingly. ‘Two on the same night!’

  ‘Two what?’

  ‘More demands from the gangs. I thought you said everything was going to be all right?’

  ‘It will be. Don’t worry. Who were they from?’

  ‘The same as before. One was from the Black Scorpion. You know, like the first time. The other was one of those who came the other time, you know, the time they beat that dope up.’

  He inclined his head in Selim’s direction. Selim, however, was unmoved. Indeed, he was positively beaming.

  ‘This is getting beyond a joke!’ said Mustapha. ‘I don’t mind paying protection to one gang, or, rather, I do, but there’s not much I can do about it. But I can’t pay protection to everyone in Cairo!’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after it.’

  ‘Well, I should hope you would. I pay my taxes, you know. Or, at least, some of them. That’s another bunch of robbers for you! It’s about time I got something back.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You won’t have to pay. I’ll see to it. Or, at least,’-remembering that Mahmoud was now supposed to be looking after this end of things-‘I’ll talk to someone who will.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mustapha sceptically. ‘Passing the buck, are you?’

  ‘No. I’ll get on to him right away. Meanwhile, you’ve got Selim. And friends.’

  ‘Friends?’ said Mustapha, scandalized. ‘You mean that?’

  He drew Owen to the door and pointed along the street. A hulk lying in the shade raised an arm in acknowledgement.

  ‘He looks big enough,’ said Owen.

  ‘Oh, he’s big enough, all right. If he could only manage to drag himself to his feet. And the only time he does that is when he comes in here and asks for something “to keep him going”. Well, I’d like to keep him going, all right, going somewhere else, fast. Protection racket? This man’s a protection racket all on his own!’

 
‘Only coffee, I hope?’

  ‘ Only coffee? Look, coffee costs money, as well as all the other things my wife gives him. Another of these down-and-outs she can’t resist! I tell you, I’m feeding half the population. And the other bloody half is sending me protection notes!’

  At last Owen managed to get away. He had just turned the corner when he heard himself hailed by Selim.

  ‘Effendi! Effendi!’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Effendi, there is much to report!’

  ‘Report away, then.’

  ‘Effendi, I saw those men last night. Including that little bastard who was one of those who attacked me the other day. And I said to myself: I will stave that man’s head in! But then, Effendi, I reflected. Am I not a policeman, I said to myself? Do not I serve the Mamur Zapt? And would he wish me to do a thing like that? Surely not. He would wish me to hold back until I could stave in the heads of all the bastards. So, Effendi,’ said Selim, swelling with pride, ‘I held back!’

  ‘Good for you. Now-’

  ‘Then, Effendi, I thought more. These are evil men, I said, and they will come again. And when they come again, by God, this time I will be ready and I will level the score. And the good thing is, I don’t have to go to them; they will come to me. All I have to do is sit here on my backside. That was pretty good thinking, wasn’t it, Effendi?’ said Selim anxiously.

  ‘Pretty good. Now-’

  ‘I put it to Babakr. That was Babakr up the street, Effendi. I think you saw him?’

  ‘Yes, indeed.’

  ‘Well, I put it to him and he thought it was a good idea too. He said, it’s better that the mountain should not go to Mohammed, especially if it’s very hot, but that Mohammed should come to the mountain. And then we can throw the bloody mountain at him. That was a good thought, wasn’t it, Effendi? I must say, I’d never thought of Babakr as a religious man before, but that was pretty good.’