The Mark of the Pasha

by Michael Pearce

  The Mark of the Pasha

  A Mamur Zapt Mystery

  Michael Pearce

  Poisoned Pen Press

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2008, 2017

  First E-book Edition 2017

  ISBN: 9781464208898 ebook

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.

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  Contents

  The Mark of the Pasha

  Copyright

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  More from this Author

  Contact Us

  Chapter One

  ‘You can have a car,’ said Willoughby generously.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. And you can keep it afterwards for a week or two. For your personal use.’

  ‘Gosh!’

  ‘Well, why not? The Ministers have each got one now, Garvin’s got one. Why shouldn’t the Mamur Zapt have one?’

  Why not, indeed?

  ‘You should do justice to yourself, Owen,’ said the High Commissioner kindly.

  Yes, he should! He was Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, damn it!

  All the same, a car! There were, now that the War had ended, a few in Cairo, but not many.

  ‘I’ve never had a car before,’ he confided.

  ‘Well, now’s your chance. You can have one of your own. And ride at the front of the procession.’

  Golden visions swam before Owen’s eyes.

  But, then, at the very edge of the vision, a dark spot, rather like one of those spots that sometimes runs across in front of your eyes when you’ve got the lids closed.

  ‘But, hey, if I’m at the front, they’ll shoot me first!’

  ‘There is that, of course,’ agreed the High Commissioner.

  ***

  There was to be a procession the following Thursday and they had just been finalising the details. Owen had been against it from the first. For the past three weeks Cairo had been under a state of emergency and this, in Owen’s view, was no time for processions. But the Khedive had been determined. Ever since the rejection of the two delegations (two, because Egypt had been unable to agree on a united approach) the Khedive had been looking for ways to put his nose back into joint. One of the delegations, led by the Prime Minister, had been his; the other, led by the leader of the Opposition, had not. In the end it had made no difference because Britain had declined to receive either delegation, whereupon Egypt had exploded.

  There had been rioting in the streets and demonstrations in the university. Windows had been smashed and Europeans stoned. So far, not too bad. Owen was used to such things. But then people had been killed. Some Armenians had been picked on, as they often were, and some Copts attacked, as was not infrequently the case, too; but then some Civil Servants had been stabbed. They were English, and this was serious.

  The Army had at once been brought in. The soldiers had been looking forward to being demobbed, now that the War had ended, and were not best pleased, so that the rioters had been handled roughly. That, of course, had brought more rioters on to the streets.

  It was at this point that the Khedive, Egypt’s ruler, had decided to display his authority. Hence the procession.

  ‘It’s lunacy,’ said Owen, when he got back to his office.

  Nikos, the Official Clerk, rather agreed with him; but then, Nikos was a Copt. The Copts, who had a talent for bureaucracy, had been running Egypt for about three thousand years under a succession of occupying powers, Pharaohs, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, French, and British, and they thought they knew something about the way things worked in Egypt. So did Willoughby, the High Commissioner, but he hadn’t been as long in his job. He was in favour of the procession.

  ‘It will calm things down,’ he said. ‘We’ll have troops everywhere, and it will remind people of the realities of the situation.’

  Owen was rather afraid that it would.

  ***

  ‘Georgiades wants to see you,’ said Nikos.

  ‘Tell him to come in,’ said Owen, going on into his office.

  A fat, unhealthy-looking Greek appeared in the doorway.

  Georgiades was one of Owen’s agents and mostly he slouched around Cairo doing nothing. This was invaluable, since he picked up a lot of information that way.

  ‘There’s going to be a procession,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘The Khedive is going to drive round Cairo with his Ministers.’

  ‘I know.’

  Georgiades wandered across the room and perched himself on the edge of Owen’s desk.

  ‘The Khedive’s not too popular at the moment.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor are his Ministers.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘There’s going to be an attempt to blow him up.’

  ‘Is that definite?’ said Owen, after a pause. ‘Or just talk?’

  Georgiades hesitated.

  ‘Talk,’ he said. ‘But informed talk. I think we should take it seriously.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Owen.

  ‘It’s going to be in the Sharia Nubar Pasha. Just after the Midan Kanteret. Opposite the Hotel des Voyageurs.’

  ‘That’s very specific.’

  ‘That’s why we should take it seriously.’

  ‘Who did you get it from?’

  ‘Ali Baig.’

  Owen nodded.

  He knew Ali Baig. He could be relied upon.

  He called Nikos.

  ‘I heard,’ said Nikos, getting up from his desk and coming through. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Re-route. The procession will be going the usual way, up past the Ezbekiya Gardens. When it gets to the Midan Kanteret I’ll lead it off down the Kanteret ed-Dekka.’

  ‘You’ll lead it off?’

  ‘In my car,’ said Owen, with an air of nonchalance.

  ***

  At the end of the morning he went to pick up Zeinab from the hospital where she worked. Work, in those leisurely days, finished for the day, at least in most Government offices, at two, when the whole city went into a slumber. It reawoke at four, when all the shops opened again, and then continued merrily until about three in the morning, which was, possibly, the reason why most Government officials, exhausted, went home early the next day.

  Neither Owen nor Zeinab worked regular hours but, still in the first flush of their marriage, they liked to meet at mid-day twice a week and go home for lunch together and siesta afterwards. Owen was never able to sleep in the afternoon but now he had found something better to do than sleep and had developed a new enthusiasm for siesta.

  There was
an army car at the front of the hospital and in it was Zeinab. She waved to him but didn’t get out and a moment later the car started up and weaved unsteadily round the square in front of the hospital. There was a soldier sitting in front alongside her and it was only after they had passed him that it occurred to Owen that it wasn’t the soldier who was driving.

  The car stopped and the solider got out and saluted.

  ‘Your car, sir. I delivered it to your house but the lady said take it to the hospital so that she could try it.’

  ‘She could try it?’

  ‘Takes to it like a natural, sir.’

  ‘I could drive you home,’ said Zeinab optimistically.

  Owen was new in experience of married life but old in experience of Zeinab and knew he would get nowhere by frontal objection.

  ‘Where would we put it?’ he said.

  Since their marriage they had moved into an ancient Mameluke house in the old part of the city, a compromise between the poky bachelor flat that Owen was used to and the palatial quarters that Zeinab was used to (her father was a Pasha). The house was in a very narrow street. Its box-like meshrebiya windows on the upper floor almost touched those of the house opposite. There were no windows on the ground floor, which had security advantages. Since Owen was Chief of the Secret Police this mattered. There was, however, a door, a heavy wooden affair which led straight into a little courtyard.

  Too little to put a car in, always supposing you could turn in the narrow, medieval street.

  ‘Oh, you don’t have to keep it, Sir,’ said the driver. ‘I’ll look after it at the Barracks and pick you up whenever you require.’

  ‘This is more like it,’ said Zeinab happily, as they were driven home. ‘It shows you’re getting somewhere at last.’

  Owen forbore to tell her exactly where it was getting him.

  ***

  Zeinab was putting the finishing touches to the dummy.

  ‘That’s my best suit,’ Owen complained.

  ‘This is a Royal procession, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but suppose it gets messed up?’

  ‘It won’t be the only thing that gets messed up,’ Zeinab pointed out, ‘if the bomb goes off.’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ said the driver.

  ‘Oh, we’ll be all right,’ Owen assured him. ‘It’ll go off behind us—if it goes off at all.’

  ‘All the same, sir, I think—if it’s all right with you—I’ll drop the car into the workshop when I get back and have a few extra armoured plates rigged up,’ said the driver.

  ‘Okay, but remember I, or, at least, the dummy, have got to be seen.’

  The driver looked thoughtful.

  ‘I know, sir,’ he said, ‘we’ll have you sitting up high. While I’m sitting down low.’

  Owen could see disadvantages in this.

  ‘Don’t forget, I’ve got to be able to get out quickly. Just before we put the dummy up.’

  ‘Yes, sir, you get out. And I go on. Thank you very much, sir.’

  ‘You’ll be all right. You won’t even be in the street when it’s supposed to go off. But I will.’

  Even Zeinab was struck now by doubts.

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea, darling?’

  ‘No, it’s a bloody bad idea. But it goes with the job.’

  ‘Right, then,’ said Zeinab, getting up. ‘I’ll be off to the hospital. I want to make sure we’ve got our emergency arrangements in place. For the casualties.’

  ***

  Owen was standing talking to Paul Trevelyan, the Oriental Secretary, in the forecourt of the Abdin Palace, watching the party assemble.

  ‘It’s lunacy,’ Paul was saying. ‘But, then, the whole thing’s lunacy. They ought to at least have given them something. Not refused even to see them!’

  ‘Couldn’t you get them to see reason?’

  ‘I tried. But everybody in London is focused on other things at the moment. There’s a big Conference at Versailles about to come off and their minds are full of that. It’s going to set the world right. At last. Or so the American President thinks, and he’s a key mover. It will bring in democracy everywhere.’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ said Owen sceptically.

  ‘More important, they’ll all be staying in hotels in Paris. That’s what their minds are really on. Paris! Whoopee! Egypt? Don’t want to know about it.’

  ‘It was like that, was it?’

  ‘Exactly like that. And they wouldn’t even let me go over to Paris myself to put our point of view! Bastards.’

  Owen laughed.

  ‘So what are we going to do now, Paul?’

  ‘I’ve proposed they set up a Committee of Enquiry. They’ll like that. It’s the standard bureaucratic thing to do. It means they don’t have to take a decision immediately.’

  ‘But will Egypt accept it?’

  ‘No. But they’ll make such a to-do that it will probably persuade London that they’ve got to accept it.’

  ‘And meanwhile?’

  Paul looked around him at all the cars lining up.

  ‘Meanwhile,’ he said, ‘we’ve got this.’

  An elderly Egyptian in a smart European suit and a red fez came bustling across the forecourt towards them. He took Owen by both hands.

  ‘My dear boy!’ he said.

  It was Zeinab’s father.

  ‘Hello, Nuri! Are you in on this jaunt, too?’

  ‘No, no. I was asked but I thought…well, I thought better of it. I have just been explaining to Aban Taib that unfortunately other commitments—’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘He said: ‘Lucky sod!’ And what about you, Mr. Trevelyan?’

  ‘Unfortunately, I have other commitments too.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Owen. ‘Unlucky sod.’

  ‘Ah, but you’ll have the car,’ said Nuri Pasha. ‘Zeinab has been telling me about it. Why don’t you bring it round, old boy? We could go for a spin.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe.’

  Nuri was glancing round.

  ‘Ah, there’s Rushdi Pasha. I think I’ll have a word with him.’

  Rushdi Pasha was the Prime Minister.

  ‘I don’t think it would be worth you having a word with him just now, Nuri Pasha,’ said Paul.

  Nuri was always trying to have a word with people in power. He still had lingering hopes of a recall to Ministerial office.

  ‘He’s tried to resign twice,’ said Paul.

  ‘Oh, yes, but the Khedive has turned him down. Insisted, positively insisted, that he stay.’

  ‘I’ll bet he wishes he were Zaghlul right now.’

  Zaghlul Pasha was the Leader of the Opposition.

  ‘Why, there is Zaghlul!’ said Owen.

  ‘Looking very unhappy,’ said Paul. ‘The Khedive has insisted that he be in the procession, too. It’s not much of a safeguard but every little helps.’

  Zaghlul saw them talking and came across.

  ‘I hope you’ve got this all under control, Mamur Zapt,’ he said to Owen.

  ‘I’m just advisory, just advisory,’ said Owen hurriedly.

  That was the convenient fiction that sustained British power in Egypt: that the British officials there were just advisory. Beside every Egyptian Minister there was a British Advisor, beside every senior Egyptian official, a British one: just advising.

  ‘No, you’re not!’ said Zaghlul Pasha. ‘You’re the exception. You’re a direct appointee of the Khedive and responsible only to him.’

  Well, not quite only. In practice. As Zaghlul knew very well. And the situation was unlikely to continue if, as seemed more than likely, Zaghlul came to power.

  ***

  The procession drove out through the Palace gates and into the vast Abdin Square, Owen’s little car
well out in front.

  The Khedive was escorted as usual by a company of Egyptian cavalry, fine fellows all and immaculately turned out, very devils if it came to swords and lances but not quite so good against bombs and bullets. The cars had to drive slowly to allow the cavalry to keep up with them but at least, as Owen’s driver remarked, they were a moving target.

  Out in the middle of the huge square they were a long way from the crowds around its sides, but soon they turned into the Sharia Abd-el-Aziz, which, although one of the biggest streets in Cairo, was still a little too narrow for Owen’s comfort. Both sides of the street were lined with soldiers, immaculate again, in their blue uniforms, fezzes, and white puttees. For the most part they were Sudanis, great, tall men and carrying unusually long ugly-looking bayonets which, Owen hoped, would put the fear of God into any unruly-minded spectators.

  Not, apparently, too much need for that at the moment. Cairenes loved a spectacle and the crowds, kept well back behind the soldiers, were all cheering and applauding.

  Apart from Owen and his driver there wasn’t an Englishman in sight. The High Commissioner had prudently stopped at home. This, it was hoped to convey, was a purely Egyptian occasion, which maybe would reduce the risk of hostilities.

  In fact, there were plenty of British soldiers around but they were kept discreetly off-stage, away from the streets the procession would pass through, but not so far away that they couldn’t be deployed en masse and very quickly should the need arise.

  They came to the Place Ataba-el-Khadra, usually thronging with people (since this was the main bus terminus of Cairo) and vehicles—carts and carriages—and animals—donkeys, camels, and tame sheep being fattened domestically for Passover, in bright ribbons and blue paint and running wild, always getting between people’s legs. Today they had been cleared away, and round the square, alongside the soldiers, were the Cairo police, deployed when crowd control was necessary.

  No problem here, either. Then off to the left past the Tribunaux Mixtes, the Opera, and the Ezbekiya Gardens; and then up right past the European hotels, first the Continentale and then Shepheard’s, where trouble might have been expected. Garvin, the Commandant of the Cairo Police, had allowed for it and his big, truncheon-carrying policemen were everywhere. The terrace in front of Shepheard’s was full of European sightseers, a tempting target on another occasion, particularly in the present emergency, but probably safe today with the terrorists having other plans.