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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1990

Copyright © Michael Pearce 1990

Michael Pearce asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008259389

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2017 ISBN: 9780008257231

Version: 2017-08-30

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also By

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

Owen arrived at the hotel shortly afterwards.

McPhee came down the steps of the terrace to meet him.

‘Thank goodness you’re here!’ he said.

A cobra stretched lazily in the dirt at the foot of the steps stirred slightly. McPhee paused in his descent for a second and in that second its charmer thrust out a bowl at him. McPhee, flustered, dropped in a few milliemes.

‘For heaven’s sake!’ protested Owen. ‘You’ll have them all on to us!’

The crowd surged over them. Hands reached out at McPhee from all sides. Owen found his own hand taken in soft, confiding fingers and looked down to see who his new friend was. It was a large, dog-faced baboon with grey chinchilla-like fur.

‘Imshi! Imshi! Get off!’ shouted McPhee, recovering. One of his constables came down from the terrace and beat back the crowd with his baton. In the yard or two of space so gained a street acrobat in red tights suddenly turned a cartwheel. He cannoned heavily, however, into the snake-charmer and ricocheted off into a row of donkeys tethered to the railings, where he was chased off by indignant donkey-boys. Taking advantage of the confusion, Owen joined McPhee on the steps.

‘What’s it all about?’

‘You got my message?’

‘You’d better tell me.’

McPhee had sent a bearer. The man had run all the way and arrived in such a state of incoherence that all Owen had been able to get out of him was that the Bimbashi was at Shepheard’s and needed Owen urgently.

‘A kidnapping,’ said McPhee.

‘Here?’ Owen was surprised. Kidnapping was not uncommon in Cairo but it did not usually involve foreigners. ‘Someone from the hotel?’

‘A Frenchman.’

‘Are you sure it was a kidnapping?’ said Owen doubtfully. ‘They don’t usually take tourists. Has there been a note?’

‘Not yet,’ McPhee admitted.

‘It could be something else, then.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said McPhee, ‘at first.’

‘If it’s just that he’s gone missing,’ said Owen, ‘there could be a variety of explanations’.

‘It’s not just that he’s gone missing,’ said McPhee, ‘it’s where he’s gone missing from.’

He took Owen up to the top of the steps and pointed to a table a couple of yards into the terrace. The table was empty apart from a few tea-things. A proud constable guarded it jealously.

‘That’s where he was sitting when he disappeared.’

‘Disappeared?’ said Owen sceptically.

‘Into thin air!’

‘Surely,’ said Owen, trying not to sound too obviously patient, ‘people don’t just disappear.’

‘One moment he was sitting there and the next he wasn’t.’

‘Well,’ said Owen, and felt he really was overdoing the patience, ‘perhaps he just walked down the steps.’

‘He couldn’t do that.’

‘Oh? Why not?’

‘Because he can hardly walk. He is an infirm old man, who gets around only with the aid of sticks. It’s about all he can do to make it on to the terrace.’

‘If he can make it on to the terrace,’ said Owen, ‘he can surely make it on to the steps. Perhaps he just came down the steps and took an arabeah.’

There was a row of the horse-drawn Cairo cabs to the left of the steps.

‘Naturally,’ said McPhee, with a certain edge to his voice, ‘one of the first things I did was to check with the arabeah-drivers.’

‘I see.’

‘I also checked with the donkey-boys.’

‘He surely wouldn’t have—’

‘No, but they would have seen him if he had come down the steps.’

‘And they didn’t?’

‘No,’ said McPhee, ‘they didn’t.’

‘Well, if he’s not come down the steps he must have gone back into the hotel. Perhaps he went for a pee …?’

‘Look,’ said McPhee, finally losing his temper, ‘what do you think I’ve been doing for the last two hours? They’ve turned the place upside down. They did that twice before they sent for me. And they’ve done it twice since with my men helping them. They’re going through it again now. For the fifth time!’

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry!’ said Owen hastily. ‘It’s just that …’ He looked along the terrace. It was packed with people. Every table was taken. ‘Was it like this?’

‘Yes. Everyone out for their tea.’

‘And no one saw what happened?’

‘Not so far as I have been able to discover.’

‘You’re sure he was there in the first place? I mean—’

‘He was certainly there. We know, because a waiter took his order. It was his usual waiter, so there’s no question of wrong identification. When he came back the old man was gone. Disappeared,’ said McPhee firmly, ‘into thin air.’

‘Naturally you’ve been along the terrace?’

‘Naturally I’ve been along the terrace,’ McPhee agreed.

‘Friends? Relations? Is he with anyone?’

‘His nephew. Who is as bewildered as we are.’

‘He wasn’t with him at the time?’

‘No, no. He was in his room. Still having his siesta.’

‘There’s probably some quite simple explanation.’

‘Yes,’ said McPhee. ‘You’ve been giving me some.’

‘Sorry!’ Owen looked along the terrace again. ‘It’s just that …’

‘I know,’ said McPhee.

‘This is the last place you would choose if you wanted to kidnap someone.’

‘I know. The terrace at Shepheard’s!’

‘About the most conspicuous place in Cairo!’

The manager of the hotel came through the palms with two men in tow. One Owen recognized as the Chargé d’Affaires at the French Consulate. The other he guessed, correctly, to be the nephew of the missing Frenchman. The nephew saw McPhee and rushed forward.

‘Monsieur le Bimbashi—’

He stopped when he saw that McPhee was in conversation.

McPhee introduced them.

‘Monsieur Berthelot—’

The young man bowed.

‘Captain Cadwallader Owen.’

Owen winced. The middle name was genuine enough but something he preferred to keep a decent secret. McPhee, however, had a romantic fondness for things of the Celtic twilight and could not be restrained from savouring it in public.

‘Carwallah—?’ The young man struggled and then fell back on the part he recognized. ‘Capitaine? Ah, you are of the military?’

‘C’est le directeur de l’intelligence britannique,’ said the man from the Consulate.

‘Not at all,’ said Owen quickly. ‘I am the Mamur Zapt.’

‘Mamur Zapt?’

‘The Mamur Zapt is a post peculiar to Cairo, Monsieur Berthelot,’ McPhee explained. ‘Captain Cadwallader Owen is, roughly, Head of the Political Branch. Of the police, that is,’ he added, looking at the Chargé d’Affaires reprovingly. He wasn’t going to stand any nonsense from the French.

‘Politicale,’ murmured Monsieur Berthelot doubtfully, only half comprehending.

‘We hold you responsible for Monsieur Moulin’s safety,’ the Chargé said to Owen.

‘I will do everything I can,’ said Owen, choosing to take the remark as referring to him personally and not the British Administration in general. The French had previously shared, under the system of Dual Control, in the administration of Egypt and had been edged out when the British army had come in to suppress the Arabi rebellion, something they unsurprisingly resented. ‘However, I doubt whether this is a political matter.’

‘Politicale?’ The young man was still having difficulties.

‘I only deal with political matters,’ Owen explained. ‘Assassinations, riots, that sort of thing. I suspect this will turn out to be a routine criminal investigation. The police,’ he simplified, seeing that Monsieur Berthelot was not entirely following.

‘The police? Ah, the Bimbashi—’

‘Well, no, actually.’

Owen wondered how to explain the Egyptian system. The Egyptian police fell under one Ministry, the Ministry of the Interior. Criminal investigation, however, fell under another, the Ministry of Justice. When a crime was reported the police had to notify the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, the Parquet, as the Department was called. The Parquet would then send a man along who would take over the investigation from the police and see it through.

He looked at the Chargé for help. The Chargé shrugged his shoulders.

‘It’s like the French system,’ he said, ‘quite.’

Egyptian criminal procedure was in fact based upon the Code Napoléon, a product of an earlier French administration.

‘Ah!’ Monsieur Berthelot was clearly relieved.

‘Has the Parquet been notified?’ asked the Chargé.

‘Yes,’ said McPhee.

‘I’d better get on to them,’ said the Chargé, ‘and make sure they send along someone bright.’

He started back into the hotel.

‘Tell them to send El Zaki,’ Owen called after him. ‘Mahmoud el Zaki.’

‘Thanks,’ said the Chargé, and disappeared indoors.

‘And now, Monsieur,’ said Owen, turning to the bemused young man, ‘about your uncle …’

Monsieur Berthelot was in fact able to tell them very little. Like his uncle and in common with almost everyone else in the hotel, he had taken a siesta after lunch. His had been more protracted than his uncle’s and he had still been in his room when the Assistant Manager had knocked on his door. He had gone at once to his uncle’s suite but found that he had not returned there after going down to the terrace. He had then gone down to the terrace and walked right along it, thinking that perhaps his uncle, unusually, had been taken up by some acquaintances.

Unusually? His uncle did not care for companionship, perhaps? Well, it wasn’t so much that, it was just that his uncle generally preferred to be on his own when he got up from his siesta. He was like that in the morning, too, preferring to breakfast alone. He was always, the nephew said, ‘un peu morose’ after waking up. That was why he, the nephew, took his time about joining him, both in the morning and in the afternoon. It worked out better that way.

And he always went to the same table? Yes, that was part of it. He didn’t like to take decisions when he was still waking up. He preferred everything to be ‘automatique’. Besides, that particular table was the one nearest the door of the hotel and he had less far to walk.

His uncle suffered from some disability? He had had a stroke two years previously which had left him semi-paralysed down one side. He was recovering, he was much better now than he had been, but he walked with difficulty. Twenty or thirty metres was all he could manage.

They didn’t go to the bazaars, then? No, there was no question of that. They had seen some of the sights but always from an arabeah.

And always Monsieur Berthelot had gone with him? Well, that was the point of him being there. His uncle liked to have someone perpetually by him whom he could call on for support. Monsieur Berthelot looked a little glum.

Had his uncle ever gone off on his own before? Never! The young man was adamant. Never once since they had been in Cairo! Again he seemed a little depressed.

And how long, in fact, had they been in Cairo? About six weeks now. They would have to go back soon or they would face the ‘reproches’ of his aunt, Madame Moulin. The young man gave the impression that this was something neither of them viewed with equanimity.

This was, then, purely a holiday? Not entirely. Monsieur Moulin had business interests in Egypt too.

What sort of business?

Contracting. Monsieur Moulin represented, was indeed a director of, a number of substantial French firms with building interests. But the chief point of their stay was recreational. Owen suspected it was as much to get away from Madame Moulin as anything else.

Had Monsieur Moulin received any messages? From his business friends, perhaps? Monsieur Berthelot did not think so, but would check if the messieurs desired. In any case, though, the friends would have come to Monsieur Moulin and not vice versa. Monsieur Moulin did not like leaving the hotel. He found the heat of the streets and the density of the crowds oppressive. Shepheard’s alone was where he felt comfortable, and Shepheard’s he rarely left. The young man could not understand what had happened on this occasion. He was at a loss. Surely his uncle had not left the hotel without telling him! He would never have done so voluntarily. But perhaps he had not left voluntarily.

He turned luminous, slightly protuberant eyes on Owen. The Bimbashi had spoken of kidnapping. Did Monsieur think—

No, no, no, no. Monsieur did not think. There was probably some quite simple explanation.

That was what he kept telling himself. He was sure Monsieur was right. Only … He suddenly buried his face in his hands.

They were in one of the alcoves of the grand central hall of the hotel. It had once been an open courtyard but had been roofed over with a magnificent glass dome. Traditional Moorish arches, painted and striped, gave on to recesses and alcoves screened off with heavily fretted arabic panelling. Inside the alcoves and scattered around the floor generally were thick Persian rugs, the predominant colour of which, cardinal red, matched the deep red of the comfortable leather divans and chairs. Beside the divans were low, honey-coloured alabaster tables and backless pearl-inlaid tabourets. Suffragis in spotless white gowns and vivid red sashes moved silently through the hall on errands for guests. Owen found the opulence rather oppressive.

McPhee stirred slightly and the young man jerked upright.

A thousand apologies! He was delaying them, and when there was so much to be done. Was there anything else the messieurs wished to know? No? Then …

As they left the alcove Monsieur Berthelot said, almost wistfully, that his uncle had always preferred the light of the terrace to the dark of the hall. ‘He came from the South, you see—the bright sunshine.’ And then there was always so much to see on the terrace!

A smartly-dressed young Egyptian ran up the steps.

‘Parquet!’ he said briskly.

The manager hurried forward.

‘Monsieur …’

‘Mahmoud el Zaki, Parquet.’ He caught sight of Owen and his face broke into a smile. ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘Are you on it, too?’

‘Not exactly,’ said Owen. ‘McPhee thinks it might be a kidnapping.’

‘A kidnapping? Here?’

‘I know. But there are some odd features.’

‘They don’t usually take foreigners.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Odd!’ He turned to the manager. ‘I shall need a room.’

‘My office.’ The manager hesitated. ‘I hope it won’t be necessary to—to disaccommodate the guests.’

‘As little as possible. However, I may have to ask them a few questions.’

The manager looked doubtful. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course, I was hoping—would you not prefer to talk to my staff?’

‘Them too.’

The manager shrugged but still looked worried. He led them to his office.

‘I will send you some coffee,’ he said.

‘How is it that Mr McPhee is involved?’ asked Mahmoud. ‘Surely they didn’t send for you directly?’

‘They did. A foreigner. They thought it important,’ said Owen.

He listened intently while McPhee brought him up to date. Then they went out on to the terrace. The tea-things had all gone from the tables now, except for the one table. In their place drinks were appearing. It was already growing dark. Night came quickly and early in Egypt. The short period of twilight, though, when it was still light enough to see and yet the heat had gone out of the sun, was one of the pleasantest parts of the day and lots of people were coming out on to the terrace to enjoy the evening air.

All along the front of the terrace was a thick row of street-vendors pushing their wares through the railings at the tourists above: ostrich feathers, hippopotamus-hide whips, fly switches, fezzes, birds in cages, snakes coiled around the arms of their owners, bunches of brightly-coloured flowers—roses, carnations, narcissi, hyacinths—trays of Turkish Delight and sticky boiled sweets, souvenirs straight from the tombs of the Pharaohs (astonishingly, some of them were), ‘interesting’ postcards.

The street behind them was thick with people, too. They could not be described as passers-by since they had stopped passing. Mostly they gathered round the pastry-sellers and sherbert-sellers, who stood in the middle of the road for the convenience of trade but to the great inconvenience of the arabeah-drivers, and just looked at the spectacle on the terrace above them.

‘With all these people looking,’ said Mahmoud, ‘you would have thought that someone, somewhere, must have seen something.’

He went down the steps into the crowd. Owen hesitated for a moment and then decided to join him. McPhee turned back into the hotel to conduct yet another search.

Mahmoud went straight to the snake-charmer and squatted down beside him. The snake-charmer had rather lost heart and was trying to find an untenanted patch of wall against which he could rest his back. From time to time he played a few unconvincing notes on his flute, which the snake, now completely inert, ignored.

The snake-charmer pushed his bowl automatically in Mahmoud’s direction. Mahmoud dropped in a few milliemes.

‘It has been a long day, father,’ he said to the charmer. ‘Even your snake thinks so.’

‘It needs a drink,’ said the charmer. ‘I shall have to take it home soon.’

‘Has it been a good day?’

‘No day is good,’ said the charmer, ‘but some days are less bad than others.’

‘You have been here all day?’

‘Since dawn. You have to get here early these days or someone else will take your place. Fazal, for instance, only he finds it hard to get up in the morning.’

‘And all day you have been here on the steps?’

‘It is a good place.’

‘They come and go, the great ones,’ said Mahmoud.

‘Yes, they all pass here.’

‘My friend—’ Mahmoud indicated Owen, who dropped into a sympathetic squat—‘cannot find his friend and wonders if he has gone without him. His friend is an old man with sticks.’

‘I remember him,’ said the snake-charmer. ‘He comes with another, younger, who is not his servant but to whom he gives orders.’

‘That would be him,’ said Owen. ‘Have you seen him?’

‘No,’ said the charmer, ‘but then, I wouldn’t.’

He turned his face towards Owen and Owen saw that he was blind.

‘Nevertheless,’ said Mahmoud softly, ‘you would know if he had passed this way.’

‘I would,’ the old man agreed.

‘And did he?’

For a long time the old man did not reply. Mahmoud waited patiently. Owen knew better than to prompt. Arab conversation has its rhythms and of these Mahmoud was a master.

At last the old man said: ‘Sometimes it is best not to know.’

‘Why?’

‘Because knowing may bring trouble.’

‘It can bring reward, too.’

Mahmoud took a coin out of his pocket and pressed it into the old man’s hand.

‘Feel that,’ he said. ‘That is real. The trouble may never come.’ He closed the old man’s fingers round the coin. ‘The coin stays with you. The words are lost in the wind.’

‘Someone may throw them back in my face.’

‘No one will ever know that you have spoken them. I swear it!’

‘On the Book?’

‘On the Book.’

The old man still hesitated. ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘It is not clear in my mind.’

‘The one we spoke of,’ said Mahmoud, ‘the old man with sticks: is he clear in your mind?’

‘Yes. He is clear in my mind.’

‘Did he come down the steps this afternoon?’

‘Yes.’ The old man hesitated, though. ‘Yes, he came down the steps.’

‘By himself or with others?’

‘With another.’

‘The young one you spoke of?’

‘No, not him. Another.’

‘Known to you?’

There was another pause.

‘I do not know,’ said the old man. ‘He does not come down the steps,’ he added.

‘Ah. He is of the hotel?’

‘That may be. He does not come down the steps.’

‘But he did this afternoon. With the old man?’

‘Yes. But not to the bottom.’

‘The other, though, the old one with sticks, did come to the bottom?’

‘Yes, yes. I think so.’

‘And then?’

The snake-charmer made a gesture of bewilderment.

‘I—I do not know.’

‘He took an arabeah, perhaps?’

‘No, no.’

‘A donkey? Surely not!’

‘No, no. None of those things.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘I do not know,’ said the charmer. ‘I do not know. I was confused.’

‘You know all things that happen on the steps,’ said Mahmoud. ‘How is it that you do not know this?’

‘I do not see,’ protested the charmer.

‘But you hear. What did you hear on the steps this afternoon?’

‘I heard nothing.’

‘You must have heard something.’

‘I could not hear properly,’ protested the charmer. ‘There were people—’

‘Was he seized?’

‘I do not know. How should I know?’

‘Was there a blow? A scuffle, perhaps.’

‘I do not know. I was confused.’

‘You know all that happens on the steps. You would know this.’

The snake-charmer was silent for so long that Owen thought the conversation was at an end. Then he spoke.

‘I ought to know,’ he said in a troubled voice. ‘I ought to know. But—but I don’t!’

The donkey-boys were having their evening meal. They were having it on the pavement, the restaurant having come to them, like Mohamet to the mountain, rather than them having gone to the restaurant.

The restaurant was a circular tray, about a yard and a half across, with rings of bread stuck on nails all round the rim and little blue-and-white china bowls filled with various kinds of sauces and pickles taking up most of the middle, the rest being devoted to unpromising parts of meat hashed up in batter. The donkey-boys in fact usually preferred their own bread, which looked like puffed-up muffins, but liked to stuff it out with pieces of pickle or fry. They offered some to Mahmoud as he squatted beside them.

‘Try that!’ they invited. ‘You look as if you could do with a good meal.’

Mahmoud accepted politely and dipped his bread in some of the pickle.

‘You can have some too if you like,’ they said to Owen. ‘That is, unless you’re eating up there.’

‘Not for me. That’s for rich people.’

‘You must have a piastre or two. You’re English, aren’t you?’

‘Welsh,’ said Mahmoud for Owen.

‘What’s that?’

‘Pays Galles,’ said a knowledgeable donkey-boy. Many of them were trilingual.

This sparked off quite a discussion. Several of them had a fair idea of where Wales was but there were a lot of questions about its relation to England.

‘They conquered you, did they?’

‘It was a long time ago.’

‘It’s hard being a subject people,’ they commiserated. ‘We should know! Look at us!’

‘The Arabs.’

‘The Mamelukes.’

‘The Turks.’

‘The French.’

‘The British.’

‘We’ve had a lot of rulers,’ someone said thoughtfully. ‘When’s it going to end?’

‘Very soon, if the Nationalists have it their way,’ said someone else.

That set off a new round of discussion. Most of the donkey-boys were broadly in sympathy with the Nationalist movement but one and all were sceptical about its chances of success.

‘They’re the ones with the power,’ said somebody, gesticulating in the direction of the terrace, ‘and they’re not letting it go.’

‘They’ve got the guns.’

‘And the money.’

‘At least we’re getting some of that,’ said someone else.

‘You’re doing all right, are you?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘Not at the moment we’re not.’

‘When the next ship gets in we’ll be all right,’ said someone.

‘When a new lot arrive at the hotel,’ one of the donkey-boys explained, ‘the first thing they do is come down to us and have their pictures taken with the donkeys.’

‘For which we charge them.’

‘It’s better than hiring them out for riding. You don’t tire out the donkeys.’

‘Or yourself,’ said someone.

There was a general laugh.

‘The children are best.’

‘It’s a bit late in the year for them, though,’ said someone.

‘Not too busy, then, today?’ suggested Mahmoud.

‘Busy enough,’ they said neutrally. The donkey-boys did not believe in depreciating their craft.

‘There’s been a lot of excitement up there today,’ one of them said.

‘Oh?’

‘They’ve lost someone.’

All the donkey-boys laughed.

‘It’s easy enough for these foreigners to lose themselves in the bazaars,’ said Mahmoud.

‘Oh, he didn’t lose himself in the bazaars.’

‘No?’

‘He lost himself on the terrace.’

There was a renewed burst of laughter.

‘Get away!’

‘No, really! There he was, sitting up on the terrace as bold as life, and then the next minute, there he wasn’t!’

Again they all laughed.

‘You’re making this up.’

‘No, we’re not. That’s how it was. One minute he was there, the next he wasn’t.’

‘He just walked down the steps?’

‘Him? That old chap? He couldn’t even fall down them.’

‘He went back into the hotel.’

‘They can search all they like,’ said someone, ‘but they won’t find him there.’

‘You’ve got me beat,’ said Mahmoud. ‘Where is he, then?’

‘Ah!’

‘Try the Wagh el Birket,’ someone suggested.

They all fell about with laughter. The Sharia Wagh el Birket, which was just round the corner, was a street of ill-repute.

‘If you don’t find him there,’ said someone, ‘you’ll find every other Frenchman in Cairo!’

‘And Englishman, too!’

‘But not Welshman,’ said someone kindly.

‘They know something,’ said Owen.

‘Yes.’

Owen and Mahmoud were sitting wearily at a table on the terrace. It was after eleven and the hotel manager had just sent them out some coffee. The night was still warm and there were plenty of people still at the tables. Across the road they could see the brightly-coloured lamps of the Ezbekiyeh Gardens but here on the terrace there were fewer lights. There was just the occasional standard lamp, set well back from the tables because it drew the insects, which circled it continuously in a thick halo. Because of the relative darkness, the stars in the yet unpolluted Egyptian sky seemed very close, almost brushed by the fringed tops of the palms. The air was heavy with the heady perfume of jasmine from the trays which the flower-sellers held up to the railings for inspection. Some women went past their table and another set of perfumes drifted across the terrace. In the warm air the perfumes gathered and lingered almost overwhelmingly.

Owen watched the light dresses to the end of the terrace. There was a burst of laughter and chatter as they reached their table and the scrape of chairs. Someone called for a waiter, a suffragi came hurrying and a moment later waiters were scurrying past with ice-buckets and champagne. A cork popped.

The railings were still crowded with vendors and the crowd in the street seemed as thick as ever. Every so often an arabeah would negotiate its way through and deposit its passenger at the foot of the hotel steps. Then it would join the row of arabeahs standing in the street. The row was growing longer. There were few outward journeys from the hotel now.

The donkey-boys had stopped all pretence of expecting business and were absorbed in a game they played with sticks and a board. They threw the sticks against the wall of the terrace and moved broken bits of pot forward on the board depending on how the sticks fell. The scoring appeared to be related to the number of sticks which fell white side uppermost. The dark sides didn’t seem to count unless all the sticks fell dark side uppermost, which was a winning throw.

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, ‘they know something. But how much do they know?’

‘They know how he disappeared.’

‘Yes,’ Mahmoud admitted, ‘they might know that.’

‘They said he didn’t come down the steps.’

‘They didn’t quite say that. Anyway, I believe the snake-charmer.’

‘The charmer said the old man had been helped down. We haven’t been able to find anyone who helped him.’

‘Not on the hotel staff. It might have been a guest.’

‘We could ask around, I suppose. It won’t be popular with the hotel.’

‘A crime has been committed,’ Mahmoud pointed out. When in pursuit of his duties, he was not disposed to make concessions.

‘We don’t know that yet.’

‘At least we could try the ones on the tables nearest him.’

‘If we could find out who they were.’

‘The waiters will have a good idea. They’ll be intelligent in place like this. I’ve got them making a list.’

‘Even if we knew,’ said Owen, ‘would it help much? I mean, it might have been just a casual thing. Somebody saw him trying to get down the steps and helped him out of kindness.’

‘We’d know definitely that he came down the steps. It would confirm the charmer’s story.’

‘And challenge the donkey-boys’.’

‘Yes. We would be back to the donkey-boys.’

‘But they’re not talking. Why aren’t they talking?’

‘Why should they help the authorities? Especially if they’re not their authorities.’

‘Well, hell, they’re the only authorities they’ve got.’

‘The one thing Egyptians have learned over the centuries,’ said Mahmoud, ‘if they’ve learned anything over the centuries, is to keep clear of the authorities, never mind who they are. Anyway,’ he added, ‘there’s probably another explanation.’

‘Which is?’

‘They’ve been paid to keep their mouths shut.’

‘Like the charmer?’

‘No. He’s not been paid. He’s just frightened.’

‘You think someone’s frightened him?’

‘Possibly.’

‘And paid the donkey-boys?’

‘Possibly.’

‘So you think it was a kidnapping, then?’

‘I haven’t got that far yet. I’m waiting for the note.’

It came just before midnight. McPhee emerged from the hotel and walked slowly across to them. He was carrying a slip of paper in his hand which he laid on the table in front of them. Owen read it by the light of one of the standard lamps. It was in the ornate script of the bazaar letter-writer.

Mr Yves Berthelot.

Greetings. This letter is from the Zawia Group. We have taken your esteemed uncle. If you want to see him again you must pay the sum of 100,000 piastres which we know you will do as you are a generous person and will want to see your uncle again. If you do not pay, your uncle will be killed. We will tell you later how to get the money to us.

Meanwhile, I remain, Sir, your humble and obedient servant

The Leader of the Zawia Group.

‘Zawia?’ said Mahmoud. ‘Have you heard of them?’

‘No,’ said Owen, ‘they’re new.’

‘Taking tourists is new, too,’ said McPhee.

‘Yes. It doesn’t look like the usual kind of group.’

‘I take it you’ll have nothing in the files?’ said Mahmoud.

‘I’ll get Nikos to check. I don’t recognize the name but maybe we will.’

‘How did it come?’

‘It appeared in Moulin’s pigeonhole. Berthelot found it when he went to check the mail. I’ve had him checking it at regular intervals.’

‘Presumably it was just handed in?’

‘Left on the counter when the receptionist was busy.’

‘He didn’t notice who left it?’

‘No.’

Mahmoud sighed.

Owen looked along the terrace. The conviviality at the far end had developed into quite a party. Corks were popping, people laughing, suffragis bustling with new bottles. The general gaiety spread far out into the night. At the intervening tables people were sitting more quietly. They were mostly in evening dress, having come out into the cool air after dinner. They looked relaxed, confident, immune. But from somewhere out in the darkness something had struck at these bright, impervious people: struck once and could strike again.

CHAPTER 2

‘Even if it is a kidnapping,’ said Owen, ‘there’s no need for me to be involved.’

‘Oh?’ said Garvin. ‘Why not?’

Garvin was the Commandant of the Cairo Police. It was an indication of something special that he was taking an interest in the case. Normally he left such matters to his deputy, the Assistant Commander, McPhee.

‘It’s not political.’

‘If it’s a Frenchman,’ said Garvin, ‘then it is political.’

‘Zawia?’ said Nikos. ‘That’s a new one. It’s not the usual sort of name, either.’

Most of the kidnappings in Cairo were carried out by political ‘clubs’, extremist in character and therefore banned, therefore secret. It was a standard way of raising money for political purposes. The ‘clubs’ tended to have names like ‘The Black Hand’, ‘The Cobra Group’ or ‘The Red Dagger’. Owen sometimes found the political underworld of Cairo disconcertingly similar to the pages of the Boy’s Own Paper. There was in fact a reason for the similarity. Many of the ‘clubs’ were based on the great El Azhar university, where the students tended to be younger than in European universities. In England, indeed, they would have been still at school, a fact which did not stop them from kidnapping, garrotting and demanding money with menaces but which led them to express their demands in a luridly melodramatic way.

‘Zawia?’ said Owen. ‘I don’t know that word. What does it mean?’

‘A place for disciples. A—I think you would call it—a convent.’

‘A place for women?’

‘Certainly not!’ said Nikos, astonished yet again at the ignorance of his masters. Nikos was the Mamur Zapt’s Official Secretary, a post of considerable power, which Nikos relished, and much potential for patronage, which Nikos had so far, to the best of Owen’s knowledge, not thought fit to use. ‘It is a Senussi term.’

The Senussi were an Islamic order, not strong in Egypt, but strong everywhere else in North Africa.

‘It also means corner, junction, turning-point.’

‘Turning-point?’ said Owen, alert to all the shades of significance of revolutionary rhetoric. ‘I’m not sure I like that.’

‘I’m not sure I like it if it’s a convent,’ said Nikos. ‘Particularly if it’s a Senussi one.’

Midway through the morning Nikos put a phone call through to him. It was one of the Consul-General’s aides. Since the British Consul-General was the man who really ran Egypt Owen paid attention. Anyway, the aide was a friend of his.

‘It’s about Octave Moulin,’ his friend said.

‘Moulin?’

‘The one who was kidnapped. I take it you’re involved?’

‘On the fringe.’

‘If I were you I’d move off the fringe pretty quickly and get into the centre.’

‘Because he’s a Frenchman?’

‘Because of the sort of Frenchman he is. His wife is a cousin of the French President’s wife.’

‘The French Chargé was round pretty quickly.’

‘He would be. They know Moulin at the Consulate, of course.’

‘Because of his wife?’

‘And other things. You know what he’s doing here, don’t you?’

‘Business interests?’

‘The Aswan Dam. He represents a consortium of French interests who are tendering for the next phase.’

‘I thought it had gone to Aird and Co.?’

‘Well, it has, and the French are not too happy about that. They say that all the contracts have gone to British firms and they wonder why.’

‘Cheaper?’

‘Dearer, actually.’

‘Better engineers?’

‘We say so, naturally. The French have a different view. They say it’s to do with who awards the contracts.’

‘The Ministry of Public Works. Egyptians.’

‘And with a British Adviser at the head.’

Most of the great ministries had British Advisers. It was one of the ways in which the Consul-General’s power was exercised. In theory Egypt was still a province of the Ottoman Empire and the Khedive, its nominal ruler, owed allegiance to the Sultan at Istanbul. Earlier in the last century, however, a strong Khedive had effectively declared himself independent of Istanbul. Weaker successors had run the country into debt and exchanged dependence on Turkey for dependence on European bankers. In order to retrieve the tottering Khedivial finances, and recover their loans, the British had moved in; and had not moved out. For twenty-five years Egypt had been ‘guided’ by the British Consul-General: first by Cromer’s strong hand, more recently by the less certain Gorst.

‘There’s a lot of money involved.’

‘That’s what the French think. They’ve made a Diplomatic protest.’

‘And got nowhere, I presume.’

‘It’s a bit embarrassing all the same. So we might give them something to shut them up. There’s a sub-contract to go out for constructing a masonry apron downstream of the dam sluices to protect the rock. We might let them have that. That’s where Moulin comes in. At least we think so. There are a lot of French interests jostling for the contract.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘Find him.’

‘That’s a bit of a tall order.’

‘And quickly. Before the contract is awarded. You see, the French think we might have had a hand in it!’

‘In what?’

‘The kidnapping.’

‘They think we kidnapped him? That’s ridiculous!’

‘It’s too well organized for us to be behind it, you mean? I tried that argument on the Old Man but he doesn’t like it.’

‘Why would we want to kidnap him?’

‘To affect the bidding. The French think we are still determined to influence the result. They have an inflated regard for our duplicity.’

‘That’s because they are so duplicitous themselves they can’t believe anyone else would act straight.’

‘I’ll try that one on him too.’

‘However,’ said Owen, ‘I wasn’t really planning to get involved in this one.’

‘I think you ought to revise your plans. The French are holding us responsible for Moulin’s safety.’

‘In a general way, of course …’

‘In a particular way. They say that the Mamur Zapt is responsible for law and order in Cairo. The kidnapping of a French citizen is a matter of law and order. Therefore the Mamur Zapt is responsible for Monsieur Moulin. Personally responsible.’

‘Ridiculous!’

‘They think they’ve got you, boyo. If I were you I wouldn’t stay on the fringe.’

The Press had asked for a conference.

‘They’ll just be wanting a briefing. You handle it,’ Garvin had said.

Owen, whose duties included Press censorship, was used to the Press. But that was the Egyptian Press. The conference included representatives of the European Press and he was not used to them.

‘Would the Mamur Zapt show the same lack of urgency if Monsieur Moulin were a British subject?’ asked the man from Paris-Soir.

‘I am not showing a lack of urgency. I am treating the matter with extreme seriousness.’

‘Then why haven’t you been to the Hotel today? Surely the investigation is not complete?’

‘The investigation is being carried out, as is usual in Egypt, by the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, the Parquet. It is in the capable hands of my colleague, Mr El Zaki, who, I am sure, is giving it all his attention.’

‘Are you treating this as a routine criminal investigation?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it routine for someone to be kidnapped from the terrace at Shepheard’s?’

‘No.’

‘Would the Mamur Zapt agree that security is lax when a prominent foreign visitor is kidnapped from the terrace of one of the world’s most famous hotels?’

No, the Mamur Zapt would not agree.

‘Are you worried about the effect on tourism?’ asked an American correspondent.

‘No. Tourists are quite safe provided that they don’t do anything stupidly reckless.’

‘Like having tea on the terrace at Shepheard’s?’ asked the man from Paris-Soir.

Owen saw Garvin standing at the back of the room. When the conference was over he came forward.

‘Political enough for you?’ he asked unkindly.

The waiters had provided a list of guests who had been in that part of the terrace at the time Monsieur Moulin disappeared and Mahmoud had spent the whole morning working through it. He had just reached an English family when Owen arrived. It consisted of a mother and daughter, and a young man with straight back and ultra-smart clothes whom Owen at once identified as an army officer.

‘An elderly gentleman?’ the mother was saying. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘He always sat at the same table, the one at the top of the stairs.’

‘No, I’m afraid not.’

‘Of course you do, Mummy!’ the daughter said sharply. ‘You pointed him out to me yourself. An old man with droopy moustaches and sticks.’

‘“A gentleman” I think Mr—ahem, the Inspector, said.’

‘Well, he was a gentleman of sorts. Foreign, of course.’

‘Not much of one,’ the young man put in heavily. ‘It’s my belief that he took that table so that he could ogle all the girls as they went in and out.’

‘Oh, come on, Gerald!’ the girl said, laughing. ‘He’s about ninety-five! Mind you,’ she added, ‘that didn’t stop him pressing up against me in the foyer the other evening.’

‘Did he really?’ The young man’s neck turned red with anger.

‘I was encouraging him, of course.’

‘Lucy! That is quite enough! I think Mr—ahem, Inspector, you have had your answer. We have no knowledge of this, ah, person. Gentleman or not.’

‘But, Madame, your daughter—’

‘Thank you. And now, Lucy, I am afraid it is time for us to prepare for lunch.’ She gathered her things and began to get up.

Mahmoud half rose and then sat down again determinedly.

‘I am afraid I have not quite finished, Madame. A moment or two longer, je vous en prie.’

‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ said the young man, jutting his jaw.

Mahmoud looked at him coldly.

‘This is a criminal investigation, Mr Naylor. Would you mind leaving us?’

The young man stared at him unbelievingly. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said would you mind leaving us.’

The young man’s face flushed crimson.

‘Gerald!’ said the mother warningly.

Gerald leaped to his feet. ‘I’m not putting up with this,’ he said. ‘Not from a bloody Egyptian!’

‘Gerald!’ said the woman very sharply.

The young man turned to her. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Colthorpe Hartley,’ he said, ‘but there’s really no reason why you should be exposed to this sort of thing. This fellow—’

‘Excuse me,’ said Owen.

The woman looked up. He addressed himself to her rather than to the man.

‘Mrs Colthorpe Hartley?’ He put out his hand. ‘Captain Owen.’ He seemed to be always using his rank these days. Perhaps it was something to do with Shepheard’s. ‘I am afraid Mr El Zaki is quite right. It is rather important. Although—’ he smiled—‘perhaps not so important as to risk sacrificing your lunch. I wonder, though, whether your daughter could spare us a moment? It won’t be longer, I promise you. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind, would you, Miss Colthorpe Hartley?’

‘Well, no, of course,’ said the girl, slightly flustered. ‘I haven’t met you at any of the balls, have I?’ she asked, recovering.

‘Not yet,’ said Owen, piloting her firmly away into another alcove and leaving mother and young man floundering. He sat her down on a divan and pulled up a chair for himself, leaving the one opposite for Mahmoud.

‘Mr El Zaki is an old friend of mine.’

‘Is he? You speak English jolly well,’ she said to Mahmoud.

‘And French too,’ said Owen.

‘I wish I could,’ said Lucy. ‘The people here speak French, don’t they? As much as English, I mean.’

‘It’s a great mixture.’

‘Have you been in Egypt long?’ she asked Owen.

‘Two or three years.’

‘You look so brown!’

‘I was in India before that.’

‘Were you? Gosh, I’d like to go to India. Only Daddy says it is too expensive.’

‘Where is your father?’ said Owen, looking round.

‘Having a drink, I expect. He can’t bear to come shopping with us.’

‘Was he on the terrace too?’ asked Mahmoud.

‘He joined us out there.’

‘About what time was that?’

‘Four o’clockish. Mummy always likes her tea about then.’

‘That was when your father joined you?’

‘Yes. He was a bit behind us, as usual. He always takes ages over his shower.’

‘When you came out on to the terrace was Monsieur Moulin already there?’

‘You mean that old man with sticks?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘I sort of noticed him, I think, though I couldn’t swear to it. Wait a minute, yes, I did notice him. He was looking around. I thought perhaps he’d lost that girl of his.’

‘What girl of his?’

‘You know, that girl who’s always hanging round him. His bit of fluff.’

‘Bit of fluff?’ said Mahmoud, completely lost.

‘Yes.’ Lucy frowned in concentration. ‘His petite amie. That’s what you would say, isn’t it?’ She smiled at Mahmoud.

‘Well, maybe,’ said Owen. ‘That would depend on the circumstances. Can you tell us about this lady, Miss Colthorpe Hartley?’

‘Well, she’s—well, first of all, I think my mother would say she’s not a lady. Not just foreign, I mean, but definitely not a lady.’

‘She’s French, is she?’

‘Yes, I think so. She’s blonde, not dark like they usually are, and it’s real blonde too, not dyed. Although she’s common, she’s also quite sophisticated, if you know what I mean, at least that’s how she strikes me. She’s terribly well dressed. It must have cost a fortune. If only Daddy would let me spend that amount of money! That’s sugar-daddy sort of money, not daddy sort of money. I say, that’s pretty good, isn’t it! I must tell Gerald that.’

‘Would he understand?’ asked Owen.

Lucy laughed merrily. ‘He’s not as stupid as all that,’ she protested. ‘Well, not quite as stupid. You don’t like Gerald much, do you, Captain Owen?’

‘Not much.

Why was he saying that? This was supposed to be a formal investigation, not party chit-chat. He must have caught it from her.

‘But are you sure she’s Monsieur Moulin’s petite amie and not Monsieur Berthelot’s?’ Mahmoud intervened.

‘Monsieur—?’

‘Berthelot. The young man who accompanied Monsieur Moulin. His nephew.’

‘Oh, I know the one you mean. The one with the bulging eyes. Well, no, I don’t think so, though you often see them together.’

‘Does she come out on the terrace too?’

‘Only in the evening. I expect,’ said Lucy acidly, ‘that she doesn’t have time. It takes her so long to make up.’

‘Then why,’ asked Mahmoud, ‘when you came out on to the terrace yesterday afternoon and saw Monsieur Moulin looking around, did you think he had lost her?’

‘My goodness!’ said Lucy. ‘You are sharp! He’s caught me out, hasn’t he?’ she appealed to Owen.

‘He has.’

‘I don’t know why I said that. It’s my silly tongue running away with me again. What did I mean?’ She thought hard.

‘Well, it’s true,’ she said after a moment, ‘or it might have been true. She’s always hanging round him. It’s so blatant. I should think he jolly well might have felt lost when she wasn’t there for once.’

‘And she wasn’t there?’

‘No. And it is true that you don’t usually see her on the terrace in the afternoons. Not till later. I think,’ said Lucy, giggling, ‘that she finds it hard to get up. Perhaps she’s worn out!’

Lucy shrieked with laughter. Mrs Colthorpe Hartley, sitting obediently outside the alcove but not abandoning her post, looked at her disapprovingly. The young man beside her stirred unhappily.

‘So she definitely wasn’t on the terrace yesterday afternoon but he definitely was?’

‘Yes, that’s right. You’ve got it.’

‘And you’re sure about that? About him being there, I mean?’

Lucy thought again. ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure.’ She tossed her head. ‘No, I’m definitely sure.’

‘And that would have been about fourish. You’re not able to place the time more precisely?’

‘About five to four. We’re always on the terrace by four.’

‘And then you had tea. Was Monsieur Moulin having tea?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘He was just sitting at the table?’

‘Yes.’

‘Looking around for someone? As if he was expecting them?’

‘Yes. Of course, now I think about it, it might not have been her.’

‘And then what?’

‘Well, then we finished our tea.’

‘And did you notice Monsieur Moulin any more? Did you see him leave his table, for instance?’

‘No.’

‘Go down the steps?’

‘He might have been ogling me,’ said Lucy with a toss of her curls, ‘but I wasn’t ogling him.’

‘You stayed on the terrace for about how long?’

‘About an hour.’

‘And when you left, was Monsieur Moulin still at his table?’

‘No,’ said Lucy.

‘That’s definite, is it?’

‘Yes, because I can remember seeing the tea-things on the table and wondering why the waiters hadn’t cleared them. They’re very good here, you know.’

‘One last question, Miss Colthorpe Hartley,’ said Mahmoud. ‘You said your father joined you later?’

‘A bit later.’

‘Thank you. In fact, thank you very much for being so helpful.’

‘I’m glad I’ve been helpful,’ said Lucy. ‘I’m not usually. Daddy says I’m scatterbrained, but I’m not really. I just sometimes choose to be scatterbrained.’

She got up to go. Mahmoud rose too.

‘You’re very nice, aren’t you?’ she said to him. ‘You’ve got such sweet brown eyes. But such a sad face!’

‘I haven’t got a sad face, have I?’ asked Mahmoud.

They were having lunch round the corner. By the time they had finished with Miss Colthorpe Hartley, it was nearly noon. The heat had driven everyone off the terrace and back into the cool of the hotel, first to lunch and then to the darkness of their bedrooms.

Owen normally worked till one-thirty and then went to lunch at the Sporting Club but today it was too hot even to do that, so he and Mahmoud found a small Turkish café in one of the side streets near the hotel. Even that was nearly deserted. Although these were one or two tables outside, none of them was taken. The few customers had retreated with the proprietor into the dark depths of the interior where the sun never penetrated. A small boy served them with cups of Turkish coffee and glasses of iced water. They would eat later.

‘No, I don’t think so.’ Owen considered him. ‘No, I don’t think so at all.’

Mahmoud if anything looked very bright and alert. Miss Colthorpe Hartley must have been misled by his Arab looks.

‘Sometimes I feel depressed,’ said Mahmoud. ‘I felt depressed this morning when I was talking to the old lady and the man.’

‘Don’t take any notice of him. He’s just a stupid bastard.’

Mahmoud shrugged. ‘He’s just Army, that’s all. I’m used to people like him. But the old lady was different. She was very polite but she made me more depressed, if anything. She reminded me of Nuri.’

Nuri Pasha was a common acquaintance and the father of what might have been called, if anyone had dared risk the description since there was nothing petite about Zeinab and she was a forceful person, Owen’s own petite amie.

‘It’s because they’re the same generation and have similar social backgrounds,’ said Owen. ‘She put my back up too.’

‘She’s rich, of course. She must be, to be at the hotel.’

‘It’s not just that.’

‘It’s the way they look down on you.’

‘I wouldn’t let it bother you.’

‘It’s easier for you.’

‘Not much.’

‘Being British, I mean.’

‘We escape some things, but don’t escape others.’

‘You feel about her the way I feel about Nuri?’

‘More or less.’

Mahmoud thought this over. Then he said: ‘Of course it adds to it when they’re foreign. I sometimes feel quite pleased when something like this happens.’

‘A kidnapping?’

‘When a Moulin gets kidnapped.’

‘You’ve got to take action.’

‘Oh, I know that. And I do.’ He suddenly cheered up. ‘Though not in the hottest part of the day. There’s no point in going back now. I’ll go back about four. He’ll be up from his siesta then.’

‘He?’

‘Mr Colthorpe Hartley. He came out on the terrace later, remember. He may have seen something.’

‘Fellow with long moustaches and sticks?’ said Mr Colthorpe Hartley. ‘Yes, I saw him. Always sitting there. Same table, same time. Looking as if he’s growing there.’

‘You’re sure it was yesterday?’

Mr Colthorpe Hartley considered a moment.

‘Yes. Definitely. Saw him when I came out of the hotel. I was a bit behind the others, you know. Had a longer shower than usual. Bit damned hot just at the moment, isn’t it? You need a shower even when you’ve just been lying down.’

‘And you definitely saw him?’

‘Oh yes. Exchanged nods. Don’t know the chap, of course, but you sort of know him when you see him every day. We pass the time of day. I say something, he says something back. Nothing much. I don’t think he speaks much English. And I certainly don’t speak French.’

‘He didn’t say anything yesterday? I mean, nothing particular.’

‘No. Hardly noticed me. Seemed a bit preoccupied. Mind on other things. Didn’t stay there long.’

‘Did you see him go?’

‘Did I see him go? Let me think. No. I don’t think I saw him go. Saw he’d gone, but that’s not the same thing.’

‘Can you pinpoint when that was? About how long after you’d got to the terrace?’

‘Well, I must have got to the terrace about four. Saw him then. Nodded to him. Sat down. Had tea. Noticed he was a bit fidgety. Then when I next looked up he had gone. Say about twenty minutes. Between twenty past four and half past four.’

‘But you didn’t actually see him go?’

‘No.’

‘You didn’t see him go down the steps, for instance?’

‘No. Don’t think he would have gone down the steps. Not by himself. A bit too shaky on his pins.’

‘With someone helping him?’

‘Oh, he could have managed it then, all right.’

‘But you didn’t see anyone?’

‘Helping him? No.’

Mr Colthorpe Hartley rubbed his chin and stared thoughtfully into space. A suffragi hurried past with a tray of coffee. The aroma came strongly across the room.

‘Saw someone else, though,’ he said suddenly. ‘One of those chaps. Or not one of those chaps, one of the others. He was speaking to the Frenchman. Then he went across to the railings. Spoke to someone. As if he was on an errand for the Frenchman. Buying something for him.’

‘Did he buy anything?’

‘No. Just came straight back.’

‘To the Frenchman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Spoke to him?’

Mr Colthorpe Hartley hesitated.

‘Think so. Stopped looking. Can’t go on watching a chap forever, you know. Bad form.’

‘So you looked away.’

‘Yes.’

‘And when you looked again, the Frenchman had gone?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Just one thing more, Mr Colthorpe Hartley,’ said Owen. ‘You spoke of seeing a suffragi. Or one of the others. One of the others?’

‘One of the other chaps from the hotel. The ones who go out with parties. Take you to the bazaar.’

‘A dragoman?’

‘That’s right. A dragoman.’

‘Would you be able to identify him if we paraded the hotel dragomans before you?’

‘These chaps all look alike to me,’ said Mr Colthorpe Hartley.

Mahmoud established with Reception the name of Monsieur Moulin’s petite amie and sent a note up asking if she could see him. Madame Chévènement replied that she was still indisposed but would make an effort to see him on the following morning at eleven o’clock.

Nikos was going through Owen’s engagements for the week. He had not included the Moulin affair. When Owen drew attention to this he shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘You’re not going to be spending much time on this, surely?’

‘Garvin wants me to. He says it’s political.’

‘It will all be over by next week. They’ll pay, won’t they?’

‘Probably. Though whether we ought to let it go at that’s a different matter.’

‘There’s not much else you can do, is there? They won’t want you interfering.’

‘Yes, but it’s the principle of the thing. If you let Zawia get away with it once, they’ll try it again. And again. Until they’re caught.’

‘In the end they’ll make a mistake and then we’ll catch them. Until then there’s no sense in bothering about them.’

‘If we don’t work on the case how will we know about the mistake?’

‘Your friend El Zaki is working on the case, isn’t he?’ Nikos disapproved of too warm relationships with other departments. ‘Why don’t you leave it to him?’

‘It could blow up in our face. That’s what Garvin’s worried about.’

‘The French are quite efficient at this sort of thing.’

‘They’re the ones who are on to me.’

‘Well, obviously they’re not going to miss a chance to make trouble. Anyway, if they can take it out on you they won’t feel so bad about paying.’

‘We don’t know they will pay yet.’

‘Of course they’ll pay. Incidentally, has the follow-up message got through yet?’

‘About paying? No, I don’t think so.’

‘It probably has. They’ll keep quiet about it.’

‘I think I’d have heard. They’d have warned me off.’

‘Perhaps it hasn’t, then.’ Nikos considered. ‘If you’re so worried about it,’ he said, ‘I could ask our man at the hotel to keep an eye open for it.’

‘Have we got a man at the hotel?’

‘We’ve got a man at all the hotels. The main ones. It doesn’t cost much,’ he assured Owen, thinking he detected a shade of concern and assuming, naturally, that the concern was financial and not moral.

On becoming Mamur Zapt Owen had inherited a huge information network, which Nikos administered with pride. What was striking about it was not its size, since a highly developed political secret service was normal in the Ottoman Empire and the British had merely taken it over, nor its ability to find informers, since people came cheap in Cairo: rather, it was its efficiency, which was not at all characteristic of the Ottoman Empire. It was, however, characteristic of Nikos, who brought the pure passion of the born bureaucrat to his work.

‘Where is he?’

‘At Reception.’

‘That might be useful.’

‘It was where the first message was left.’

Owen thought about it. ‘If we could get a look at it—’

Nikos nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. Note the contents and pass it on.’

‘It could all go ahead.’

‘They would pay.’

‘Moulin would be released.’

‘And with any luck,’ said Nikos,’ we would be watching and could follow it up.’

‘I’d go along with that,’ said Owen, ‘I’d go along with that.’

Later in the morning, Nikos came into Owen’s room just as he was about to go out to keep his appointment with Mahmoud and Madame Chévènement.

‘I’ve been checking through the files to see if I could find anythying on Zawia. There’s nothing on any group of that name.’

‘It’s a new group,’ said Owen.

‘Yes. But often new groups are re-forming from members of old groups, so I looked through to see if there were any references to groups with associated names.’

‘And did you find any?’

Nikos hesitated.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘this kind of stuff is just conjecture. But what about the Wekils?’

‘The Wekils?’

‘Came on the scene last year. Two known kidnappings. One, a Syrian, notified to us in June. Case went dead, family left the country. My guess is they paid and got out. No point in us going back over that case. But we might look at the other. A Greek shopkeeper, taken about six months ago. Again the case went dead, so they probably paid. But I think the family is still here, so we might be able to find out something.’

‘Why is “Wekil” an associated name?’

‘It’s a Senussi name. The Wekils are those Brothers who take charge of business matters and so are permitted to have dealings with Christians. As I said, it’s just conjecture.’

Mahmoud was waiting for him at Reception.

‘Room 216,’ he said.

They climbed the stairs together. The door of 216 was open and suffragis were coming out carrying suitcases. Mahmoud and Owen went straight in. A row of already packed suitcases stood by the bed. The doors of the wardrobe were hanging open. It was quite empty. A man was bending over the suitcases. He turned as they came in. It was the French Chargé d’Affaires.

‘Madame Chévènement?’ asked Mahmoud.

The Chargé spread his hands apologetically.

CHAPTER 3

‘But she’s a material witness,’ said Mahmoud.

‘Sorry!’ said the Chargé.

‘You can’t do this!’

The Chargé shrugged.

‘I—I shall protest!’

‘We will receive your protest. If it’s made through the proper diplomatic channels.’

Mahmoud looked ready to explode.

‘She’s not really a material witness,’ said the Chargé. ‘She doesn’t know a thing.’

‘Then why are you removing her?’ asked Owen.

The Chargé looked at his watch.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘perhaps I owe you something. How about an apéritif downstairs?’

Mahmoud, furious, and strict Moslem anyway, refused. Owen accepted. The Chargé ordered two cognacs.

‘And a coffee for my friend,’ he added.

He led them over to an alcove.

‘Sorry about this,’ he said. ‘I can assure you it was necessary. Absolutely necessary.’

‘Why?’ asked Owen.

The Chargé hesitated.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s like this. We heard the wife was coming. The old lady. Madame Moulin. I ask you: would it be proper for her to find …? Well, you know.’

‘You did this out of a sense of propriety?’

The Chargé looked at him seriously.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We French are very proper people.’

‘Monsieur Moulin too?’

‘Sex doesn’t come into it. That’s quite separate.’

‘Well, where have you put her? Can we talk to her?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ said the Chargé. ‘She’s on her way home. With a diplomatic passport.’

‘For reasons of propriety?’

‘For reasons of state.’

‘Reasons of state?’

‘Madame Moulin’s a cousin of the President’s wife. That’s quite a reason of state.’

‘Come on!’ said Owen. ‘Why did you do it?’

‘That’s why we did it. I’ve just told you. We couldn’t have the French President’s wife’s cousin coming out and finding some floozie in her husband’s bed. It wouldn’t be decent. The President would get to hear about it and we’d all get our asses kicked. The last thing I need just now, I can tell you, is a posting to the Gabon. I’ve a little friend of my own here.’

Mahmoud fumed.

The Chargé patted him on the knee ‘Don’t worry about it! These things happen.’

‘That’s why I worry about it,’ said Mahmoud sullenly.

The Chargé signalled to the waiter. ‘Another two cognacs,’ he said. He looked at Mahmoud’s coffee. ‘I wish I could put something in that.’

‘No, thanks,’ said Mahmoud.

The Chargé sipped his cognac and put it down.

‘Didn’t I know your father?’ he said. ‘Ahmed el Zaki? A lawyer?’

‘Yes,’ said Mahmoud, surprised. ‘That’s my father.’

‘I met him in a case we had when I first came out here. He acted for us.’

Owen was surprised too. Mahmoud had never spoken about his father.

‘How is he?’ asked the Chargé.

‘He died three years ago.’

‘Ah. Pardon. These things happen.’ The Chargé shook his head sadly. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. He was a good man. You’re very like him in some ways.’ He finished his cognac.

‘I’ve got to go. Look, I’m sorry about all this. We’re thinking of the family. That’s all. Reasons of the heart, you might say.’

‘You might,’ said Owen.

The shop was in the Khan-el-Khalil, the part of the bazaar area most familiar to tourists. Some of Cairo’s best-known shops were there, places like Andalaft’s or Cohen’s. The Greek’s shop, however, was not in their class. It was one of dozens of smaller shops all catering in their different ways for the tourist trade. Most of them sold a mixture of old brassware, harem embroideries, lacework, enamels and pottery. In the height of the season the Khan-el-Khalil would be packed with tourists, though the extent to which they made their way to a particular shop would depend on the extent to which the proprietor had greased the palms of the dragomans with piastres. It was now past the peak of the season but there were still plenty of small parties of tourists, each guided by a knowing dragoman. Traffic was growing less now, though, and this was the time when greasing was all-important. Some of the shops were almost deserted while others still hummed with business.

The Greek’s shop was one of the latter. As Owen ducked through the bead curtain he almost collided with an English couple, a mother and daughter, who were just emerging.

‘Why, it’s Captain Owen!’ said Lucy Colthorpe Hartley delightedly.

Her mother looked at Owen with less pleasure and would have gone on if Lucy had not firmly stopped.

‘Look what I’ve bought!’ she said, and showed Owen her purchase. It was a small heap of turquoise stones. ‘Aren’t they lovely? I’m going to have them made up when I get back. Or would I do better to have them made up here?’

‘Here, but not in one of these shops. Get Andalaft to advise you.’

‘I like them because they’re such a beautiful Cambridge blue. Daddy went to Cambridge. Did you, Captain Owen?’

‘No.’

‘Gerald didn’t, either. He’s rather sore about it.’

‘Lucy, dear, we must not detain Captain Owen. He has business, I am sure.’

‘Business among the bazaars. What is your business, Captain Owen? It’s obviously something to do with the police, but Daddy says you’re not a proper policeman. Gerald says you’re not a proper soldier either. So what are you, Captain Owen?’

‘Obviously not proper.’

‘He is the Mamur Zapt,’ said their dragoman, who had just followed them out of the shop.

‘So I gathered,’ said Lucy. ‘But what exactly, or who exactly, is the Mamur Zapt?’

Owen hesitated.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘You don’t want to tell me.’

‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘It’s just that it would take some time.’

‘Which just now you haven’t got.’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Then you must tell me some other time,’ she said. ‘This evening, perhaps?’

Mrs Colthorpe Hartley turned determinedly away and Lucy was obliged to follow her. She gave Owen a parting wave over the dragoman’s shoulder.

‘Tonight at six,’ she called.

The shop was dark and cool and full of subtle smells from the lacquered boxes, the sandalwood carvings, heavy embroideries and spangled Assiut shawls which lined its walls. As Owen’s eyes became used to the light they picked out more objects: flat, heart-shaped gold and silver boxes set with large turquoises and used to hold verses from the Koran, old Persian arm amulets, Persian boxes with portraits of the famous beauties of Ispahan and Shiraz, old illuminated Korans. The precious stones and jewellery were kept in an inner room, better lighted and down a step. A gentle-faced Copt looked up as Owen entered.

‘Où est le propiétaire?’

‘Elle est en dedans.’

Elle? A silver-haired woman came out of an inner recess.

‘Madame Tsakatellis?’

‘Oui.’

‘Are you the owner?’

‘Yes.’

‘I was expecting to speak to your husband.’

‘He is dead.’

‘Dead? I am sorry.’

‘It was a long time ago.’

Light began to dawn.

‘Of course! You are the elder Mrs Tsakatellis. I am so sorry. I think the person I am trying to see is your son.’

‘My son is dead too.’

‘The Monsieur Tsakatellis who owned the shop?’

‘Both have owned the shop.’

‘The second one stopped owning the shop only a short time ago?’

‘That is correct.’

‘I am the Mamur Zapt. I have come about your son.’

‘It is a little late.’

Owen acknowledged this with a slight inclination of his head.

‘I am sorry. I did not know. Did not the police come?’

‘They came,’ said the woman dismissively, ‘and did nothing.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘Now you have come,’ said the woman. ‘What is it you wish to know?’

‘I want to know what happened.’

‘Why do you want to know? It is not,’ said the woman bitterly, ‘for Tsakatellis’s sake.’

‘It has happened again. And it may be the same people.’

‘So now you take an interest. How many people have to be taken,’ the woman asked scornfully, ‘before the Mamur Zapt shows an interest?’

‘There are, alas, many such cases in Cairo. I cannot follow them all. I had thought Tsakatellis might have been restored to you.’

‘Why should he have been restored?’

‘Have you not paid?’

‘No.’ The woman looked him straight in the face. ‘I do not pay. Even for my son.’

‘Most people pay.’

‘If you pay they will come again. If not to you, to another.’

‘All the same,’ said Owen gently, ‘it is hard not to pay. When it is one’s own.’

The woman was silent. Then she said: ‘For the Greeks life is always hard.’

She called to the Copt.

‘You wished to know what happened. Thutmose will tell you.’

The Copt came down into the room and smiled politely at Owen.

‘Tell him!’ the woman directed. ‘Tell him what happened the night your master was taken.’

‘I wish to know,’ said Owen, ‘so that I can help others. I am the Mamur Zapt.’

‘There is little to tell,’ the Copt said softly. ‘That night was as other nights. We worked late. It was nearly midnight when we closed the shop. There was a little bookkeeping to do so I stayed behind.’

‘You have a key?’

‘The master left me his key.’

‘He must have trusted you.’

The Copt bowed his head in acknowledgement.

‘And then?’

‘And then I did not see him again, nor suspected anything till the servant came knocking on my door.’

Owen looked at Madame Tsakatellis.

‘When Tsakatellis did not come home,’ she said, ‘at first we thought nothing of it. He often works late. When he had not come home by one I began to wonder. When he had still not come home at two I went to his wife and found her crying.’

‘She knew something,’ asked Owen, ‘or she guessed?’

The woman made a gesture of dismissal.

‘The woman has silly thoughts. She thought Tsakatellis might be with another woman. What if he was? A wife has to get used to these things. In any case, Tsakatellis was not like that. I sent a servant in case he had stumbled and fallen or been attacked and was lying in the road. The servant came back and said he had found nothing. I sent him out again to wake Thutmose.’

‘I knew nothing,’ said Thutmose. ‘I came at once.’

‘We went out again,’ said the woman, ‘and walked by every way he might have taken. When the dawn came we began to suspect.’

‘The letter was delivered to the shop,’ said Thutmose. ‘When I saw it, I guessed.’

‘Who delivered it?’

‘A boy. Who ran off.’

‘You have the letter?’ Owen asked Madame Tsakatellis.

She went back into her recess and came back with a piece of paper.

Greetings. We have taken your man. If you want to see him again you must pay the sum of 20,000 piastres which we know you will do as you are a loving woman. If you do not pay, you will not see your man again. Wait for instructions. Tell no one.

The Wekil Group

‘Who was the letter addressed to?’

‘It was meant for her.’

‘But Thutmose brought it to you?’

‘I took it from her. She was useless. I sent a man to tell the police. A man came from the Parquet.’

‘He found nothing?’

‘He did nothing. After a while he went away and we did not see him again. Nor anyone else. Nor you, until now.’

‘And did the instructions come?’

‘No.’ The woman lifted her head and looked Owen levelly in the eyes. ‘They must have known I had sent for the police.’

‘It may not be so.’

‘It is so. I killed him. That is what she thinks.’

‘They take fright,’ said Owen, ‘for many reasons. That may not have been the reason.’

‘It would have happened anyway,’ said the woman, ‘for I would not have paid.’

There was little more to be learned, as the man from the Parquet must have found. He would have made inquiries to check if anyone had seen Tsakatellis on his way home, but the streets would have been deserted and even if someone had seen him it was unlikely that they would come forward. Cairenes did not believe in volunteering themselves for contact with the authorities. He would ask Mahmoud to check the Parquet records but he thought it unlikely that whoever had conducted the initial investigation had found anything of interest.

One last question.

‘Did Tsakatellis have enemies?’

The woman made a crushing gesture with her hand.

‘The world,’ she said.

Sometimes people used kidnapping as a way of settling old scores.

‘But no one particular? Who had sworn revenge?’

‘Tsakatellis had no enemies of that sort.’

‘A husband, perhaps?’

‘No,’ said the woman definitely.

The only question, then, was what had brought Tsakatellis to the notice of his potential kidnappers. Some display of wealth, perhaps? Unlikely. The Greeks kept themselves to themselves. They worked hard, made money and did not flaunt it.

‘What else did Tsakatellis do?’ he asked. ‘Apart from work?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Church?’

‘Ah, well, but—’

‘Did he serve on committees?’

‘No.’

‘Do things for the community?’

‘What community?’

‘Are not the Greeks a community?’

‘We have friends,’ the woman said, ‘but not many. Tsakatellis’s father had been ill for a long time before he died. The business had to be nursed back. Tsakatellis worked long hours. Had done so since he was a boy. He had no time for other things.’

‘I was wondering how they came to hear of him.’

‘I have asked myself that. Why Tsakatellis? Why not Stavros or Petrides?’

‘And what answer did you come to?’

‘I came to no answer. Except this. There is no reason. You lead your life. Then one day God reaches down and plucks you out. And throws you into the fire!’

‘It is not God who does these things. It is man.’

‘That is a comfort. With man there is always the possibility of revenge.’

Nikos was waiting for him when he got back to the office.

‘It’s come,’ he said.

‘What’s come?’

‘The second note.’

‘Telling them the arrangements for paying?’

‘Yes.’

Owen hung up his sun helmet and poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher which stood in the window where the air would cool it.

‘What does it say?’

‘They’re to put the money in a case. Berthelot’s to take it to Anton’s at about midnight and check it in to the cloakroom. He’s then to go on into the salon and stay there for about two hours. While they’re counting, presumably. When he comes out they’ll give him a receipt. On the receipt will be an address. That’s where he’ll find Moulin.’

‘Anton’s. Is he in it?’

‘Probably not. They’re just using his place, but the cloakroom people have got to be in it.’

‘They’ll only be in part of it, though, the money-passing bit. Still, that’s responsible.’

‘Incidentally,’ said Nikos, ‘they don’t tell Berthelot how to get to Anton’s.’

‘They know he already knows?’

Nikos nodded.

‘Interesting. I thought that young man didn’t get around.’

‘He gets around and they know it.’

‘That, too, is interesting.’

‘Yes. They’re unusually well informed.’

‘It doesn’t sound like a student group.’

‘Nor an ordinary Nationalist group either,’ said Nikos. ‘Certainly not a fundamentalist Nationalist group. These people know too much about tourists.’

Owen drank another half glass of water. One glass was really his ration. When it was hot you needed to take in a little liquid often, not a lot at once. He put the glass down and went on through into his own office. Nikos followed him in with an armful of papers.

‘Are you going to leave it alone?’ he asked.

‘Why not? I want the poor bastard free as much as the French do. It’s only money, after all.’

‘Well, yes,’ said Nikos, ‘but …’

‘I know what you’re going to say. Sometimes it’s not just money. It’s just money only if you’re willing to play ball. If you’re not willing it gets nasty. As in the case of the other poor bastard, that Greek shopkeeper, Tsakatellis, whom they killed.’

‘That’s not what I was going to say,’ said Nikos. ‘What I was going to say was that this is the first time they’ve taken a tourist. If you let them get away with it, it might become a habit. And then a lot of people might get interested.’

Nikos always took a detached view of cases which were merely individual. On the other hand, he had a keen eye for political essentials.

Six o’clock that evening found Owen himself on the terrace at Shepheard’s waiting for Lucy Colthorpe Hartley. Quite how he came to be there he was not certain. He had not had time to say no when Lucy had made the appointment; and would he have said no if he had? On the grounds that he was poor and they were tiresome, he made it a general practice to steer clear of the fishing fleet, as the young ladies were called who arrived in scores for the Cairo season in search, it was alleged, of husbands from among the ranks of wealthy young army officers. Besides, he considered himself more or less bound to Zeinab. On the other hand, meeting Lucy Colthorpe Hartley for a drink was hardly work, although he had said that it was when Zeinab had suggested he pick her up at six after her visit to the hairdresser’s. He decided to salve his conscience by asking Lucy some work questions when she arrived.

If she arrived at all. It was already five minutes after six, which by Owen’s standards was being late for an appointment. Perhaps she wouldn’t come, in which case he would feel a complete fool. He hoped no one would see him.

At that moment his friend, the Consul-General’s aide-de-camp, went past with a visiting foreign worthy. He gave Owen a wave behind the worthy’s back. Owen returned the wave half-heartedly.

Garvin went past talking to an Adviser from one of the Ministries. He interrupted his talking to give Owen a smile of recognition. Some hope, thought Owen bitterly, that no one would see him. Out here on the terrace he was as conspicuous as—

Well, as Moulin must have been. And how the hell had he disappeared from the terrace without anyone seeing anything?

Owen looked down the steps. There was the snake-charmer as on the day of Moulin’s kidnapping, squatting so near to the steps as to be virtually sitting on them; there were the donkey-boys playing one of their interminable games within two yards of the foot of the steps. If Moulin had gone down the steps they must have seen him.

And if he hadn’t gone down the steps? The only place he could have gone was back into the hotel. To do so he would have had to pass the Reception clerk and the people on the desk swore that he hadn’t. There were two of them, they were some of the brightest people on the hotel’s staff, the desk was public and busy, they had to be and were alert—hell, one of them was even on Owen’s own payroll!

All the same, they could have missed him. It was a busy area and they might have been busy. Also, they could only see what passed them. Reception was actually inside the hotel, in the foyer, and the people on the desk couldn’t see out on to the terrace itself. Suppose something had happened between the table where Moulin was sitting and the entrance to the hotel: Reception would not have seen it, the snake-charmer couldn’t have seen it, and the donkey-boys, well, they might or might not have seen it.

But, surely, if anything had happened on the terrace someone would have seen it? Someone at a neighbouring table? The tables were, after all, only a few feet apart. If there had been a struggle or anything of that sort—well, there couldn’t have been. The Colthorpe Hartleys, who had been at the very next table, would certainly have seen it.

But suppose the incident, whatever it was, had been smaller in scale, apparently trivial? Suppose it had occurred at a time when their attention had been distracted, perhaps deliberately? That was a possibility. He would have to ask Lucy Colthorpe Hartley if anything like that had occurred.

Owen was sitting at a table a little further into the terrace than either the one Moulin habitually occupied or the one the Colthorpe Hartleys had been sitting at that day. The table was right at the front of the terrace, so close to the railing that the street vendors touched his foot as they poked their wares through the bars. Hippopotamus-hide whips, splendid red tarbooshes, and filmy ladies’ underwear jostled for his attention. A long brown arm with a snake coiled round it was suddenly thrust in his direction; and in an instant a whole pack of postcards of scantily dressed ladies fanned itself open in the air before his astonished eyes.

‘Gracious, Captain Owen!’ said Lucy Colthorpe Hartley. ‘I did not know you were such a connoisseur.’

‘Friends of yours?’ he asked, recovering quickly.

‘Intimate,’ she replied, sinking into a chair. ‘Abdul here greets me with a different nosegay every day.’

A beaming vendor, rather darker than the others, laid a bunch of sweetly-smelling flowers on the terrace beside her.

‘They don’t last long,’ she said, ‘but for a while they brighten up the room.’

She fumbled in her purse for some token piastres.

‘Allow me,’ said Owen.

Lucy put a restraining hand on his arm.

‘Certainly not!’ she said. ‘You are interfering with long-established custom. What you can do, though,’ she added, peering into her purse, ‘is help me count up the necessary milliemes as I seem to have run out of piastres.’

‘That’s enough. A little money goes a long way here.’

‘You’d better have a talk with my father. He doesn’t seem to think so.’

‘I’m sure he won’t mind the flowers.’

‘No. But he did mind the turquoises. I took them in to Andalaft’s as you suggested, Captain Owen, and he is going to find someone to make them up for me.’

‘Do you have other regulars among the vendors, Miss Colthorpe Hartley?’

‘I have a faithful following,’ said Lucy, ‘which I attribute more to misplaced hope than to my personal charms.’

‘They follow you wherever you sit?’

‘We usually sit in the same place.’

‘Which is at this end of the terrace, of course.’

‘It is exactly there,’ said Lucy, pointing. ‘How disillusioning! There I was hoping that what had brought you here was the attraction of my big blue eyes when all the time you are merely getting on with your work.’

‘I am combining work with pleasure. A little work and a lot of pleasure.’

‘At least you have the proportions right,’ said Lucy. ‘You were, if you remember, going to tell me exactly what was your work, Mamur Zapt.’

‘Well …’ said Owen.

‘How fascinating!’ said Lucy Colthorpe Hartley, resting her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands and gazing straight into his eyes.

‘It didn’t look like work to me,’ said Zeinab.

Zeinab, unfortunately, had passed by in an arabeah on her way home from her hairdresser’s.

‘I was asking her about the street-vendors.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Zeinab sceptically.

‘Yes I was. I wanted to know if they were always the same. You see, if they were, they might have been there when Moulin was kidnapped and seen something.’

‘You were trying to see something,’ said Zeinab. ‘You were looking down the front of her dress.’

‘For heaven’s sake! She was across the table. How could I?’

‘She was leaning forward. Deliberately.’

‘Anyway she didn’t have on that sort of dress.’

‘You see! You did try!’

‘For God’s sake!’ said Owen, aware that he had lost yet another argument with Zeinab.

‘Well,’ demanded Nikos, ‘are you going to do something about it or not?’

‘I’m not going to stop it, if that’s what you mean.’

‘That’s not what I mean. The question is: do you want it watched? We don’t have to interfere at all. We could let it all go ahead as they’ve arranged, let the money change hands, wait till Moulin is freed—and only take action afterwards. That way we would get both Moulin and Zawia.’

‘Nice in theory, not so easy in practice. You’d have to be able to watch them all the way. Is that possible?’

‘It’s not easy,’ Nikos admitted.

Owen saw why when they made a reconnaissance that evening. The gambling salon was in a block of flats on the Sharia Imad-el-Din. It was on the first floor and was disguised as a scent factory. Nikos had been informing himself of its defences.

‘You get to it through the main entrance,’ he said. ‘There’s a door on to the stairs which is kept locked and has to be opened by the porter. At the top of the stairs there’s another door with a spyhole.’

‘Pretty standard.’

‘Yes. There’s an electric bell downstairs by the porter’s hand to give warning. Oh, and there’s a consular representative across the street.’

‘Which nationality is Anton claiming this week?’

‘Lebanese, I think.’

Since under the system of legal concessions to foreign governments known as the Capitulations the Egyptian police did not have right of entry to premises owned by foreigners, most gambling houses had taken the precaution of acquiring foreign ‘ownership’. To guard against misunderstandings—and misunderstandings were quite frequent as the police had often met the proprietor the week before when he was of a different nationality—the wealthier salons had taken to keeping a consular official handy on a permanent retainer for use in the event of an unexpected raid.

‘We’re not thinking of a raid, though,’ said Owen, ‘so it doesn’t matter.’

‘We’ll have to have someone inside.’

Owen looked doubtful. ‘What good would that do? They’d have to be customers. They couldn’t hang around the cloakroom. They’d have to go inside and play. They wouldn’t be able to see anything. What’s the internal geography of the place?’

‘You go through the door into a sort of vestibule. The cloakroom—it’s very small, barely room for the two attendants—is on one side. The tripot is on the other. You get to it through an arch.’

‘So you might be able to see something.’

‘You might. You’d be able to tell if someone left the tripot and went to the cloakroom. But my guess is that’s not how it will happen, anyway. I’ve been checking on the attendants in the cloakroom. There are two of them. One of them goes off duty at about one-thirty and another man comes in. I reckon that the one who goes off duty will be carrying the money with him. The timing fits. Berthelot gets there at about midnight and stays till two. By then there will have been time to count the money and the attendant will have been gone half an hour—long enough for him to be able to pass over the money.’

‘How does he leave the building?’

‘Through a side-door. I’ll have him tailed.’

‘He might not go that way this time.’

‘I think he will. They’ll want to keep it as normal as possible. In any case, though, I’ll put people all round the building. And on the roof.’

‘It’s a block of flats. There’ll be people coming and going all the time.’

‘At one o’clock in the morning? Carrying something? You’d have to have a bag or a case to carry that amount of money.’

‘I wish we could watch the cloakroom all the time.’

‘Can’t be done.’

‘What’s on the next floor up? Directly above the cloakroom?’

‘A sewing shop. Try moving all those girls.’

‘Why don’t we bribe one of Anton’s people and ask them to keep an eye on the cloakroom?’

‘They’ve got their jobs to do. They wouldn’t be able to watch all the time.’

‘All the same …’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Nikos, ‘I already have.’

Owen had men watching Monsieur Berthelot. The following afternoon they reported that Berthelot had been to the bank twice. The second time he had come away carrying a small leather case. On both occasions he had been accompanied by a member of the staff of the French Consulate.

On a hunch Owen checked steamer bookings. Two passages had been reserved under the name of Berthelot on a boat leaving Alexandria in thirty-six hours’ time.

Mahmoud had heard nothing of any deal. Unlike Owen, he was dead against it.

‘Do it once and you’ll soon be doing it all the time,’ he said.

‘But people are doing it all the time,’ said Owen.

He could get Mahmoud not to intervene only by telling him what he himself was proposing to do.

He went back to his office and worked late. Soon after ten he went home and changed into evening dress. He put a tarboosh on his head and slipped some dark glasses into his pocket. He would not be the only one wearing them. Others besides himself would have reasons for wishing to preserve their anonymity.

It was still relatively early in the evening in Cairo terms and there were only about thirty people round the table. Berthelot was at the far end intent on the play. The table was brilliantly lit up. All the rest of the room was in shadow.

Owen played standing up, reaching an arm in when it was necessary. In that way he could keep out of the light. He wasn’t sure how effective his disguise was. He was still relatively new in Cairo and thought his face generally unknown. Still, it was the doorman’s job to know these things and he might well have spotted him. Owen thought it probably wouldn’t matter if he had. He would tell Anton and Anton would worry; but so long as Anton himself was not involved in the plot he would probably keep his worries to himself. Even if he knew what was going on in the cloakroom he would probably stay out of it. He might have received an inducement to turn a blind eye, but a blind eye was what he would turn, especially with the Mamur Zapt there. Owen doubted if he would warn them.

The important thing was that Berthelot shouldn’t recognize him. Owen didn’t think he would. He thought the disguise and the darkness was proof against that. Anyway, Berthelot was concentrating on the play.

‘Faîtes vos jeux, messieurs,’ the croupier said. ‘Faîtes vos jeux.’

Berthelot hesitated, then added to his stake.

‘Rien ne va plus.’

The croupier spun the wheel. There was a sudden intentness, a catch of the breath. The wheel slowed and came to a halt. Berthelot shrugged and turned away. The croupier began to rake in the chips.

‘It’s Anton’s lucky night tonight,’ said a Greek standing beside Berthelot.

‘It’s Anton’s lucky night every night,’ said someone from across the table.

There was a general stirring and one or two people left the table, either to refresh themselves from the jugs of iced lemonade which stood on a shelf behind them or simply to ease their backs.

Berthelot and the Greek turned at the same time.

‘Pardon, monsieur.’

‘Pardon!’

Berthelot made way for the Greek, who went over to the shelf and poured himself a glass of lemonade.

‘Monsieur?’

He offered to pour for Berthelot.

‘Merci, monsieur.’

They stood sipping the lemonade together.

‘It’s a hot night,’ said the Greek.

‘Is it always as hot as this?’

There were fans working but since the room had no windows they merely moved the hot air round.

‘It’s been hot all day. Monsieur is new to Cairo?’

‘We’ve been here just over a month.’

‘Ah. Not long enough to get used to it.’

‘How long does it take to get used to it?’

The Greek spread his hands. ‘A lifetime. And then it’s no use!’

They went back to the table. The play began again.

The room was long and thin with deep luxurious carpets and heavy wood panelling. A door led off into an inner room, out of which waiters emerged regularly with drinks. They brought the drinks to the players. There was no bar as such. Drink was incidental at Anton’s. Besides, most of the players were Moslem.

An arch behind Owen led back into the entrance vestibule. Through it he could see one end of the cloakroom counter. Since Berthelot had arrived one player had left and four more had entered. The one who had left had departed soon after Berthelot had appeared and, Owen thought, had gone straight past the cloakroom. It was a hot evening and very few people had brought coats. A number had brought walking sticks which they deposited.

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