The Mingrelian Conspiracy mz-9

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Yes, well, thanks, Selim-’

  ‘But that is not all, Effendi. When the second man came, that little bastard who was here the other day, I said to myself: I will not stave his head in, but is it right that I should let him go? If I miss the chance, I may lose him forever. I may never see him again. But if one were to follow him home, so that I would know where to look for him-’

  ‘You followed him home?’

  ‘Well, no, Effendi, not I. I’m the one who has the ideas. It is for other people to do the walking. So I told Mekhmet-’

  ‘Mekhmet followed him?’

  ‘Yes, Effendi. He was at first unwilling-Effendi, the man is but a hollow reed-but I persuaded him. So if you would like to give him a piastre, no more, the man’s not worth it, but I wouldn’t mind a couple for myself, Effendi-’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Owen. ‘Are you saying that Mekhmet followed this man all the way home?’

  ‘That’s right, Effendi. It was a bad place they went to, down in the Babylon-’

  ‘Fetch Mekhmet,’ said Owen.

  Chapter 8

  Babylon, or Bab-ei-On, the Old City, had been there before the Muslims came. Its original inhabitants had been the Copts, lineal descendants of the Egyptians in the time of the Pharoahs. Over the centuries they had become Christians and the Ders were essentially Christian enclaves against the Muslim invaders. The Muslim tide had swept over the original fortified churches destroying the forts but leaving the churches, and it was in their precincts that Christians had traditionally gathered. Over the years many Copts had moved out, up to the modern, more prosperous city of the Arabs, but in their place had come other Christians: Greek (which was why there were almost as many Greek churches as there were Coptic in Babylon), Macedonians, Montenegrins and Serbians. Most recently there had come Georgians. Here, too, a generation ago, had come the Mingrelians; and with them had come Sorgos.

  It was in one of the Ders that, with the instinct for alliance characteristic of the new immigrant, he had settled when he had made the journey from his native Caucasus. There he had found his first job, incongruously, perhaps, as an apprentice bookbinder, although one should remember that he was familiar with leather-working. There, in time, he had opened his own workshop. In the same Der he had bought his house and it was there that his son had been born. The Der was where his roots lay; and the place in which, when the time came, he naturally looked to for allies.

  Georgiades had been ferreting them out. The people who had known Sorgos in the early years were now mostly dead but acquaintance had been preserved in their families, was a kind of family matter, and Sorgos was still well known in the Der.

  Yes, he came here often. Not, perhaps, as much as he did, for it was a long way to travel. When his son had opened the bookshop near the Clot Bey, he had moved with him.

  It was in the bookshop that Katarina had been born. The world she had grown up in was very different from that of the Der. Her father, quickly literate, had slipped easily into the Europeanized culture which his trade had opened up to him. Mingrelian, he was still, but Cairo, now, and even Paris, was his intellectual home and not the Caucasus.

  The mother? Mingrelian, of course, and apparently very beautiful. She had died giving birth to Katarina. Her daughter, after the earliest years, had grown up in a household without women, one in which she was actually closer to her father and his world than to her grandfather and the closed world of the Der.

  The Der, said Georgiades, was the thing, not the Mingrelians. They were scattered now around Cairo and there were not many of them. Sorgos, as senior elder, commanded great prestige and the few Mingrelians left worked dutifully to preserve their language, but community they hardly were. Most of them had been assimilated into other communities which were now for them more important. Sorgos might still eat patriotic fire but the attention of the other Mingrelians had passed to other pursuits. A few had been disposed to join him in his Crusade against the Grand Duke but, said Georgiades, the fact that the original public meeting had been held in the Der was not coincidental. It was there, not amongst the Mingrelians, that Sorgos expected to find his allies.

  ‘Not among the Copts,’ said Nikos. The Copts, who had survived through the centuries by keeping their heads down, were not going to stick them up for the sake of parvenus. ‘And not among the Greeks, either,’ said Georgiades.

  It was on the others that Georgiades had concentrated his enquiries and he had very soon found out the men Sorgos had recently been seeing.

  ‘He went round the lot, Serbs, Albanians, Caucasians, and most of them were prepared to join him on the platform for that first meeting. It was after the meeting that the problems began. They couldn’t work together. In the end he walked out in disgust.’

  It was the Georgians, mostly, who had walked with him. Their wrongs were fresher in their minds, the wounds inflicted by the Russians still raw. The men were younger; and in Djugashvili, the man who had run after Sorgos when that first public meeting had ended, Georgiades thought that they might have found a leader.

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Nikos, frowning, ‘have you got anything definite?’

  ‘No,’ said Georgiades. ‘It was just that when I asked, everyone said that he was the man the Georgians naturally turned to.’

  ‘He wasn’t on the platform,’ said Owen.

  ‘No. They don’t really amount to a sizeable community. There are even fewer of them than there are of the Mingrelians. And there doesn’t seem to be any community leader. The fact is,’ said Georgiades, ‘I don’t think they want to become a community. They want to go back to Georgia.’

  ‘So the war against Russia is still real to them?’

  ‘That’s right. So far as they are concerned, it’s never ended. Retreat to Egypt is just a temporary tactical withdrawal.’

  ‘And the Grand Duke fair game?’

  ‘Undoubtedly.’

  ‘There’s still nothing definite,’ said Nikos.

  Georgiades turned to him.

  ‘The gold?’ he said. ‘Isn’t that definite?’

  ‘All we know,’ said Nikos, ‘is that Sorgos is buying gold dust. Which might or might not be used to buy explosives. What’s the connection with the Georgians?’

  ‘They provide the excuse. Sorgos would never have thought of it. It had to be someone who knew about working on ikons. And these people do.’

  ‘It’s not enough,’ said Owen. ‘Yet.’

  ‘Why are you pursuing me?’ demanded Katarina.

  ‘I’m not pursuing you,’ said Owen.

  ‘It’s just an accident that you’re here, is it?’

  ‘That’s right. There are a lot of them about.’

  Katarina moved on to the next stall and began to finger the water melons.

  ‘Is he bothering you, lady?’ asked the stallkeeper.

  ‘I’m her brother,’ Owen assured him.

  Katarina tossed her head indignantly. She was dressed in shapeless black but the shapelessness failed to deny entirely the shape that was beneath and it was this, perhaps, though he hoped not, that had originally caught his attention. Her hair, that most provocative of features for the Muslim, was completely covered and she wore a long veil over the lower part of her face. However independently she might dress at home, going to the suk she took care to dress in exactly the same way as her sisters. Invisibility, at least in public, was what was required of women.

  Naturally enough, in the circumstances, they all observed it. The suk was full of at first sight indistinguishable black-clad forms. Naturally, too, though, most of them subtly denied it. If their hair was covered, their ankles were bare and, as in the goldsmiths’ bazaar, around every shapely ankle was a ton of hardware. Not, of course, in the case of Katarina, and was the face quite as fully covered as in the case of the other women? It was her eyes which, close to, had finally given her away.

  Somewhat to Owen’s surprise, another man approached her as she stood at the stall. He appeared to know her, for he greete
d her warmly.

  ‘You haven’t been to see us for a long time, Abbas,’ she chided him.

  ‘Well, no. I’ve not been working anywhere near the shop, and with your father away-’

  Owen had worked out now that he was a storyteller. He wore the mukleh, the unusually wide, rather formal turban which in old times had marked out the men of letters, a status which storytellers, sometimes unjustifiably, always claimed, but other items of his dress, the rather worn farageeyah, or top robe, suggested a man of letters fallen on hard times.

  ‘Are things going well?’

  ‘People are interested, all right. They like the stories. They’re a bit of a change. Only the old lot with their romances are so well established that it’s hard to get a foot in. There’s a lot of resistance, I can tell you.’

  ‘You’ll just have to keep at it.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Your father was right. It’s the only way.’

  ‘Are you all right for stories?’

  The man fumbled beneath his robes and produced a handful of rather tattered papers.

  ‘Excellent!’ said Katarina. ‘Well, when you need some more-’

  The storyteller bowed politely and moved away.

  ‘Shameless!’ said the stallkeeper indignantly. ‘Allowing herself to be spoken to by men!’

  ‘I know!’ said Owen. ‘That’s the problem, really. That’s why I, as her brother-’

  Katarina gave him a furious glance and stalked off, head held high.

  Owen followed her, at a distance, as she went round the stalls completing her shopping. When she had finished, he stepped up to her.

  ‘Carry your bags, miss?’

  Katarina looked at him levelly.

  ‘That would create a disturbance!’ she said. ‘To have a man doing the carrying!’

  She marched through the stalls to the edge of the suk and then set off down a side street. Owen drew alongside her.

  ‘If you are going to insist-’ she said.

  ‘Just a word.’

  ‘You’d better walk in front, then.’

  He drew two paces in front of her and she took up the woman’s customary position.

  ‘I’d forgotten you were in the storytelling business.’

  ‘Story-selling!’ she corrected. ‘Not telling.’

  ‘They come to you for stories?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I am disillusioned. I thought they all came from oral tradition.’

  ‘The tradition’s died out. We’re trying to revive it. The trouble is, they don’t know the old stories. Not even Elf Leyleh wa-Leyleh.’

  ‘ The Arabian Nights? Not even that?’

  ‘They rely on old manuscripts, or even fragments of old manuscripts. Many are so tattered and worn that they can’t even be read now. My father’s been trying to get them together and make a collection of them. We take in old fragments, I copy them, and then we give them back and try to get them into more general circulation.’

  ‘It certainly seems to be livening up the world of storytelling.’

  As Katarina did not reply, Owen looked over his shoulder. She was still there.

  ‘Did you come to talk to me about that?’ she demanded.

  ‘No. I want to talk about your grandfather.’

  ‘I am with him in everything he does.’

  ‘Should you be?’

  Katarina was silent for a moment. Then she said: ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Why is he buying gold?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why is he?’

  ‘To buy explosives.’

  There was a long silence and again he looked round.

  ‘He knows what he’s doing,’ she said, a little shakily, however.

  ‘Well, does he? Do you know what explosives do? They blow people up. And not just the people you want to blow up; other people, too. People who are nothing to do with it, children, perhaps. Innocent bystanders who only went there to see the fun.’

  ‘The next alley on the right,’ instructed Katarina. ‘That is, if you’re still insisting.’

  ‘Can’t you hear what I’m saying?’

  ‘If you have action to take,’ said Katarina, still shaky but determined, ‘then take it.’

  ‘I’m trying to prevent the need for action.’

  ‘Why are you talking to me?’

  ‘Because you can stop it.’

  ‘I?’ Katarina laughed. ‘I?’

  ‘Yes. You. You could persuade him.’

  ‘What makes you think he would listen to me?’

  ‘He loves you.’

  ‘He loves me,’ said Katarina, ‘but he would not listen.’

  ‘You must try.’

  ‘Must I?’ said Katarina. ‘You are forgetting: I am with him in everything he does. It was my people they killed. My family that they wiped out.’

  ‘You’re the next generation, no, the generation after that, even. It may be right for him to remember but it’s not right for you.’

  ‘What do you expect me to do? Betray him?’

  ‘Dissuade him. Stop him from doing something that you know is not right.’

  ‘I don’t know it. I don’t know what he’s doing and I don’t care.’

  ‘You must care. There are others to think of as well as him. And I don’t mean the Grand Duke. I don’t care tuppence about the bloody Grand Duke. But I do care about the others, the ones who have nothing to do with it. And so ought you.’

  ‘I am with my grandfather,’ said Katarina obstinately, ‘in whatever he does.’

  ‘Think for yourself!’

  ‘I am thinking for myself.’

  ‘You’re not. You’re shut up in that crazy house with him. You listen to him too much. He’s sucked you into his crazy dreams. You need to talk to someone else. I wish to hell your father was back here.’

  ‘Do you?’ said Katarina, looking at him oddly. ‘Do you?’

  Sorgos was very pleased to see him.

  ‘You arrive together? Or perhaps…?’ Taking in Katarina’s slightly flustered state. She immediately disappeared into the recesses of the house.

  ‘Together,’ said Owen.

  Sorgos led him into what served in that small house as the mandar’ah, the reception room and saw him seated on a divan. Then he fussed off calling for Katarina. A little later he returned, carrying a small brazier and lighted coals, which he set down beside Owen.

  ‘I trouble you,’ said Owen.

  ‘No trouble at all,’ said Sorgos. Katarina came into the room with a brass tray on which there were two little cups, which she put down on a table in front of the divan.

  ‘You are well?’

  ‘Thanks be to God!’ Sorgos responded automatically.

  ‘And your granddaughter?’

  ‘Well, too,’ Sorgos beamed. ‘A beautiful girl, isn’t she? And healthy, too. There should be no problem about babies.’ His face clouded. ‘Only she’ll have to get started soon. If she is going to have five.’

  ‘Five?’

  ‘That’s what she should be going for. Now, if she had five, and they were all girls, and then each of them had five- why, our problems would be solved in no time at all!’

  ‘I’m not sure you can bank on-’

  ‘Girls are the key, you see. If you want to preserve the language. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this. Language is imbibed with a mother’s milk. Men are not so important. Of course, it’s a good thing if they have the language, too, but it’s not absolutely essential.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘Let’s face it, there was always a lot of intermarrying among the tribes.’

  ‘Yes, you mentioned the other day that your own wife’s father-’

  ‘Just so. The trouble is, the Russians wiped the other tribes out too. About the time that they slaughtered us. So now we have to go further afield.’

  The old man looked at Owen hopefully.

  ‘Well, yes, perhaps, um…The Russians have a lot to answer for, don’t they?’

 
; ‘And now is the time when they are going to start answering!’ said Sorgos enthusiastically.

  ‘Yes, well, I’m not sure-in fact, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘Going well,’ Sorgos assured him.

  ‘Going well?’

  ‘Yes. Fine young men. Plenty of energy. They get on and do things.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Assassinating Grand Dukes, for instance.’

  This was not quite what Owen wanted to hear.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘Oh, quite sure. I was talking it over with them yesterday. Our preparations are well advanced. One or two things still to do, a lot of problem over the-But it will be solved. No, you don’t need to worry. We’ll be ready when the time comes.’

  ‘I was hoping,’ said Owen, ‘that you might be having second thoughts.’

  ‘Second thoughts?’

  ‘After the conversation we had the other day.’

  ‘Well, um-what was it exactly that you said?’

  ‘You are not in the Caucasus now. You are in a country to which you owe obligations.’

  ‘Oh, we’re not thinking of a general massacre. Just the Grand Duke.’

  ‘It could have international repercussions.’

  ‘You think so?’ said Sorgos, pleased.

  ‘I certainly do.’

  Sorgos almost rubbed his hands.

  ‘Well, that is excellent!’ he said.

  ‘You won’t think it so excellent when it rebounds on you.’

  ‘Why should it rebound on us?’

  ‘Do you think Egypt is going to be very pleased?’

  ‘Well…Egypt!’

  ‘Yes, Egypt. A country which has been very generous to you.’

  ‘England will look after Egypt,’ said Sorgos confidently. ‘Indeed’-his face lit up-‘it might turn out to be a very good thing. If we could only provoke a quarrel between England and Russia-! Now, that really would be something! The Grand Duke dead and war as well!’

  ‘Can we start by getting up to date on the security position?’ said Paul. ‘Mamur Zapt?’

  They were in the committee room again, the one with the trapped flies. But were they the same flies, wondered Owen? Weren’t flies supposed to breed quickly and die quickly? Maybe these were the grandchildren of the ones he’d seen the other day. Quick succession of generations. Sorgos would be interested in this.