A Cold Touch of Ice

by Michael Pearce

  ‘Fine,’ said Owen.

  He was still not completely clear what they were talking about. Some kind of general intelligence operation, he supposed. Perhaps it was something that had grown out of the Italian-Turkish war.

  ‘What exactly do you want from me?’ he asked.

  ‘At the moment, not much. Perhaps just that you keep an eye on people. Especially people who come and go. We’re doing that at our end already, of course.’ He smiled. ‘I gather that you’ve come across a certain young lady.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘We’ve been keeping an eye on her for some time. I suggest you do the same.’

  ‘Oh, I will, I will.’

  ‘She’s in Cairo, I gather?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, stick close to her.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Owen. ‘I’m sticking very close.’

  Later, he found himself standing beside Miss Bell.

  ‘Could I have a drink, do you think?’ she said. ‘It’s very hot.’

  Owen beckoned to a waiter.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said, ‘not one of those. I think I’ve had enough already. Could you bring me a glass of water, please?’ she said to the waiter.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Owen hurriedly, ‘I’m not sure that, just at the moment, that would be a good idea.’

  ***

  At the end he was left still wondering what it was all about. Some kind of intelligence operation, almost certainly, and one which stretched outside Egypt’s borders. Owen was not entirely happy about that. He had always seen his work as internal to Egypt and that had made it easier to reconcile the British Administration’s interests with those of the Khedive. They were both trying to run the country, after all. But once you started looking beyond Egypt, their interests might well diverge.

  This sounded to him like Britain’s foreign policy, not like running Egypt. Cavendish was clearly a prime mover in it.

  But had the initiative come from the British Embassy at Constantinople or was it Kitchener’s brainchild? Constantinople was the senior embassy around the Mediterranean littoral, but the fact that they were holding the gathering here and not in Constantinople suggested that either the inspiration had come from Kitchener or that he was playing a big part.

  Owen felt slightly uneasy about this. Kitchener’s predecessor, Gorst, and the Consul-General before him, Cromer, had been content to restrict their role to being Consul-General. It was rumoured that Kitchener’s ambitions extended higher. He would have liked, it was said, to have become Viceroy of India. Maybe, now that he had been disappointed in this, he had his eye on building up the Consul-Generalship until he was able to make himself Viceroy of Egypt.

  But that would mean changing Egypt’s status, making it part of the British Empire, instead of what it was at present, a quasi-independent part of the Ottoman Empire.

  Perhaps, from the way Kitchener was behaving towards the Khedive, that was exactly what he had in mind.

  If it was, Owen wasn’t happy about that either. He really had believed that one day the British would get out and leave the Khedive to run the country on his own. It was that in the end that made the British presence all right. He genuinely had seen himself as serving two masters, the Consul-General and the Khedive, both Britain and Egypt, an odd arrangement, certainly, but which on the whole seemed to work. All right, it was often difficult balancing between them, but that was in the nature of the job.

  Now it seemed to him that Kitchener might have in mind altering that balance. If he had, Owen didn’t like it.

  ***

  Cavendish, he thought, as he made his way that evening to the hotel where Trudi was waiting for him, would have approved of him. He found her in the foyer, talking, to his surprise, to Nuri.

  She waved a hand.

  ‘I was waiting for you,’ she called, ‘but then I got waylaid. You will tell them, won’t you?’ she said to Nuri.

  ‘I certainly will,’ said Nuri.

  ‘Right, then. I’ll be off to fetch my shawl. I won’t be a minute,’ she said to Owen.

  ‘Charming girl!’ said Nuri fondly, as he watched her posterior climb up the stairs.

  ‘You know each other?’ asked Owen.

  ‘First time we’ve met. Purely business,’ said Nuri regretfully. ‘However,’ he said, cheering up, ‘I’ll make sure there’s a need for another meeting.’

  Owen had been slightly discomfited at Zeinab’s father learning that he was calling for Trudi, fearing that word might get back to Zeinab. He saw, however, that Nuri’s mind was moving along other tracks.

  They stood chatting for a little while and then Nuri wandered off into the inner corridors of the hotel.

  Business? What sort of business could Nuri Pasha have with someone like Trudi? What sort of business could Nuri have with anyone, as a matter of fact? Nuri’s chaotic finances were a byword through the city.

  Trudi came down the stairs.

  ‘We’ve got a moment,’ said Owen, glancing at his watch. ‘I called the arabeah for half past. Would you like a drink first?’

  He led the way into the bar. It was long and dark and split up into recesses. In one of them a small group of men was sitting. One of whom was Nuri. Owen recognized two of the others: the Minister of Finance, and a senior official from the Khedive’s office. Owen was surprised. He hadn’t realized that Nuri had retained such friends. He must be moving back into favour again. It was something that Nuri was always hoping for, always angling for, but he had been hoping and angling for some years now.

  Nuri gave them an acknowledging smile. So did one of the others, one of the two men that Owen did not know. Owen had the feeling, though, that the smile was directed to Trudi.

  The others looked away. Almost deliberately, uncomfortably, Owen felt. As if they didn’t want him to see them or, at any rate, didn’t want him to enter into conversation with them.

  It was yet another example, he thought, of the awkwardness that had arisen between the Egyptian servants of the Khedive and the British ones since the start of the war. Or was it since Kitchener had arrived as Consul-General and British Agent? Certainly, he and the Khedive did not get on. His predecessor, Gorst, had been much more popular. With the Egyptians, that was. Not with the British.

  He excused himself and moved along the counter to where the barman was standing polishing glasses, and asked for another shot of soda. As the barman bent towards him, he said:

  ‘Who are the men with Nuri Pasha? Not Sidki Bey and not Ibrahim Meck. I know them.’

  ‘One is a Turk and the other a German,’ said the barman. ‘I do not know their names.’

  ‘Are they staying here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Owen went back to Trudi.

  ‘You must tell me more about your fascinating journeys,’ he said, smiling.

  ***

  The house was a traditional one with a high, windowless wall reaching up from the street to a heavy box window jutting out at the level of the first storey. When he got upstairs he found that the room continued right through the width of the house to another box window on the other side, which looked down into a courtyard.

  Mahmoud’s future father-in-law came forward and embraced him.

  ‘It is an honour! It is an honour!’ he said.

  ‘The honour is mine,’ said Owen, returning the embrace.

  Ibrahim Buktari led him across the room to where some men were sitting on low divans.

  ‘You know some of my friends, I’m sure,’ he said. ‘But know them again under my roof.’

  Owen did indeed recognize some of the faces. There, for instance, was Fahmy, one of Sidi Morelli’s domino-playing friends, and there his young soldier nephew, who raised his glass to Owen.

  ‘Glass!’ said Ibrahim Buktari, and rushed off.

  There,
too, of course, was Mahmoud, looking sheepish. For he was the cause, or at least the excuse, of the occasion. This was the equivalent of what would have been in England a bridegroom’s stag night; only here the guests were not so much the groom’s friends and fellows as family friends and fellows, unduly tending towards the senior in age and status, their presence summoned by the bride’s father.

  Ibrahim Buktari returned with a glass of whisky. Most of the other men were drinking coffee or orange juice.

  ‘Medicine!’ he said, beaming. ‘That’s what Bimbashi Macrae used to say. Hey, Kamal, isn’t that right? I see you’re having some of the same!’

  The young man joined them.

  ‘Quite right,’ he said. ‘I picked the habit up in the Sudan. That’s what the army does for you. Gives you all the wrong habits.’

  ‘Wrong habits!’ cried Ibrahim Buktari. ‘Fahmy, hear what awful things your nephew is saying!’

  ‘Shocking!’ said Fahmy. ‘I don’t know what the next generation is coming to. And I’ve done my best to bring him up as a respectable, God-fearing man like myself!’

  A roar of mock-outrage rose from the divans.

  ‘Steer clear of him, Kamal!’ some advised.

  ‘I try to. But he keeps leading me into vice!’

  Mahmoud rose from the divan and came towards them.

  ‘It is good of you to come,’ he said to Owen affectionately. ‘He is my brother,’ he said to Kamal.

  ‘Yes. Yes.’ Kamal hesitated. ‘But a surprising brother, is he not?’

  ‘When you work together, you grow together,’ said Owen.

  ‘Yes. Yes. That is true. I have found that myself. As individuals, I find my British colleagues, sympathique, très sympathique. But—but we are not just individuals, we are also Egyptian and British. And that is where the difficulty lies. For the Egyptians and the British have different interests and they pull us apart.’

  ‘That is true,’ said Owen. ‘And so it is important that as individuals we try to bridge the differences between us.’

  ‘Yes. But, you see, that can conceal or blur—because in the end it is illogical. And that is what I find so surprising about you, Mahmoud, for you are so logical. We were at school together,’ he said to Owen, ‘and I always looked up to him. I used to say to myself: “Now, come on, Kamal, none of this idling! Model yourself on Mahmoud, who is so able and so hard-working—”’

  ‘Really, Kamal!’

  ‘The future, the future of Egypt, belongs to people like Mahmoud, I said. And now—forgive me, Mahmoud, you are not the same.’

  ‘He has grown up,’ said Ibrahim Buktari.

  ‘I am the same and I am not the same,’ said Mahmoud, frowning.

  ‘It is the situation that we are all in,’ said Owen. ‘And about that I find myself saying what the English always accuse the Egyptians of saying: it is fate, the way things have turned out.’

  ‘And I find myself saying,’ said Kamal delightedly, ‘what the English are always saying: you’ve got to do something about it, you can’t just accept things as they are!’

  They both burst out laughing and Kamal threw his arms round Owen in the emotional, over-the-top Arab way.

  ‘But you,’ he said, ‘I accept. As Mahmoud’s brother. Here. For tonight. And I rejoice that you come to Mahmoud’s wedding.’

  Mahmoud stood there awkwardly, smiling at the two of them.

  ‘If my wedding has brought you together—’

  ‘As individuals,’ said Kamal hurriedly. ‘As individuals.’

  ‘—then that is a good thing.’ He hesitated. ‘It is true, though,’ he said seriously, ‘that there are difficulties.’

  ‘Difficulties!’ cried Ibrahim Buktari. ‘And he says this even before he is married!’

  ***

  Mahmoud, Owen learned later, had spent the day going through Morelli’s books. It was not, perhaps, the way most people would choose to pass the hours just before their wedding, but as his familiar world began to dissolve about him, Mahmoud turned to his work with even greater ferocity. In the process of examining the accounts, he had come across certain recurring payments which were not matched by invoices or identifiable against goods.

  ‘They are withdrawals for our own use,’ the Signora had said.

  ‘No, Signora, they are not,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Withdrawals for your own use are clearly marked as such.’

  ‘Morelli did not mark all—’ began the Signora.

  ‘Ah, but he did. He recorded everything. Damage charged to a porter. An advance to a driver on account of his getting married. Out-of-hand disbursements for extra ice because of the hot weather. But also these recurring payments, made regularly every month, and with a “Sh” marked alongside in brackets.’

  ‘It must be some supplier I do not know,’ the Signora had said.

  ‘The last payment recorded,’ pursued Mahmoud, ‘was made six weeks ago. Why did the payments stop?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said the Signora.

  Mahmoud had sighed.

  ‘Please, Signora,’ he had said, ‘why do you not tell me? When I can guess what it is? Everyone knows that such things occur. And I shall find out anyway.’

  The Signora had hesitated.

  ‘Please, Signora!’

  ‘All right,’ the Signora had said at last. ‘We paid. As all business people do.’

  She was talking about ‘protection’ money.

  The ‘protection’ business was highly developed in Cairo. It probably had its roots in payment made for genuine protection, gifts made to some local ‘sheik’ in return for defence against external marauders, but over the years this had turned into tolls levied by whoever was strongest in the neighbourhood. Increasingly, at least in terms of willingness to use force, this had come to be gangs; and in recent years many of the gangs had come to be the political societies in which Cairo abounded. Most of them were quite legitimate but on the fringe there were quite a few which raised funds through means which were not very different from those employed by the criminal gangs. In any case, the practice of paying ‘protection’ money was widespread.

  ‘Does the gang have a name?’

  ‘The man who comes has a name.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Shukri.’

  ‘What happened six weeks ago?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘Did Shukri come and the Signor refuse to pay him?’

  ‘No. Shukri did not come.’

  ‘He did not come at all?’

  ‘That is right. We wondered about it, because he was regular as clockwork. But this time he did not come, and then still did not come. So then we thought it was perhaps an argument within the gang. Or perhaps between that gang and another. These things happen. I know. They happen in Italy too. There is an argument and then things get settled, and then all goes back to as it was. We thought it would be like that this time. And so we put the money by, knowing that in time they would come for it, and waited.’

  ‘It was just like that, was it?’

  ‘It was just like that.’

  ‘The Signor did not refuse? Please, Signora, you must tell me. This is important.’

  ‘He did not refuse. Why should he refuse? It is the way things are. In Italy as here. We may not like it but we accept it. You have to accept it if you wish to do business. And Morelli wished to do business.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Signora, there might come a time when if he wished to continue to do business, he would not be able to afford to say yes.’

  The Signora shrugged.

  ‘That time has not come.’

  ‘Each time, the records show, the payments were higher.’

  The Signora shrugged again.

  ‘Each time they ask for more, and we give them more. But only a little more.’

  ‘But perhaps this time they were asking for a lot more.’

>   ‘They weren’t.’

  ‘So the Signor did not refuse?’

  ‘No. And they did not kill him because he refused, if that is what you are thinking. Why should they kill the goose that lays the golden egg?’

  ***

  All this Mahmoud reported to Owen. Owen nodded. It did not surprise him. The ‘protection’ business was part of Cairo’s way of life. And on the whole he thought that the Signora was probably right. Morelli had not refused: why refuse something that was part of one’s ordinary way of life? He, like many other businessmen, probably looked on ‘protection’ as merely another kind of tax. You might not like it but you paid it.

  So he thought it unlikely that Morelli had refused to pay; and he thought it even more unlikely that the gang had killed him because of it. There were other processes that would be gone through before it came to killing: wrecking the premises, for instance, and then a beating-up to show that the gang meant business.

  Mahmoud agreed.

  ‘But even so,’ he pointed out, ‘there is something to be explained. Why did they stop? And, especially, is there any significance in the fact that they stopped just before he was killed? Had they been warned off?’

  He thought it might be worth talking to Shukri.

  Owen thought it might be worth doing too. For there was another consideration which, just at the moment, he did not feel like putting to Mahmoud. The gangs of Cairo divided roughly into two. There were the ordinary criminal gangs, just in protection for the money; and there were the ‘political’ gangs, usually offshoots of the entirely legitimate political ‘clubs’, or societies, their fund-collecting arms, so to speak. These latter were often heavily nationalistic. And what would be more likely, at a time like this, than that one of them, for some reason or another, might take a foreign businessman as their target? Particularly, just at the moment, if he happened to be Italian.

  Chapter Six

  Heat bounced back from the warehouse doors flung open on to the street and rose up from the dust on which the first group of camels were lying as the porters unloaded them. Other camels were just coming into view at the end of the street, nodding along through the mass of people, their great loads almost brushing the houses on either side. Inside the warehouse the foreman was instructing the porters where to put the packages and the Signora stood, arms folded, among the piles.