The Golden One (43 page)

‘We are taking him to His Excellency the Kaimakam,’ the officer went on.

‘The governor? Why?’

‘Because – because – why, because he is an assassin! One of those fanatics who would rebel against our benevolent rule, who – ’

‘No,’ Sahin said. The handle of the whip caught Ramses under the chin and forced his head up. The Turk studied him thoughtfully for a few seconds. Then he leaned down and with a
powerful jerk pulled the beard off, taking several square inches of skin with it. Ramses straightened and met the Turk’s inquiring gaze. He was in for it now.

‘Ah,’ Sahin Pasha said, and smiled. ‘I relieve you of your prisoner, Bimbashi.’

‘But, Your Excellency – ’

‘He is an English spy. Espionage is my department, Bimbashi. Do you question my authority?’ He beckoned his servant, who dismounted and untied the rope from the officer’s
saddle.

The officer didn’t like what was happening. A direct refusal was more than he dared risk, but he ventured to protest. ‘You will need an escort, Excellency. He fights like a demon. It
took six of my men – ’

‘No need for that,’ Sahin said affably. He raised his arm and brought the whip handle down.

Chapter Ten

From Manuscript H (continued)

The only discordant note was a headache of stupendous proportions. He raised his hand to his temple, and a familiar voice said, ‘Try this. I do not indulge, of course, but I keep it for
certain of my guests.’

It wasn’t a dream. Ramses sat up. A few feet away, cross-legged on a pile of tasselled cushions, Sahin held out a glass half-filled with an amber liquid.

Ramses started to shake his head and thought better of it. ‘No, thank you,’ he mumbled in Turkish – the same language the other man had used.

‘It is not drugged. But, as you like.’ His host placed the glass on a brass tray and reached for the mouthpiece of his water pipe. He smoked contentedly for a time, for all the world
like a courteous host waiting for his guest to get his wits back.

It took a while. When the Turk’s blow had landed, sinking him into unconsciousness, Ramses expected he would wake up in a dark, verminous cell, with various people holding various sharp,
heavy, or red-hot implements. This room was airy and bright, probably the mandarah, the principal chamber where guests were received. The central part of the room was several inches lower than the
rest, tiled in tasteful patterns of red and black and white, with a small fountain at one end. The alcove in which he was now sitting was draped with silk and floored with cushions. He was wearing
only a shirt and drawers; they had removed his stained robe and dirty sandals, and cleaned the worst of the muck off his body. One wouldn’t want those satin cushions smeared with rotten fruit
and donkey dung.

‘I regret the necessity of that,’ Sahin said, as Ramses explored the lump on his head with cautious fingers. ‘I knew you would not come willingly, and resistance might have
caused you serious injury.’

‘How can I ever thank you?’ Ramses inquired, slipping into English. The Turk laughed aloud.

‘It is a pleasure to match wits with you again, my young friend. I was delighted to hear that against all my expectations you had survived that interesting affair outside Cairo, but I am
uncertain as to the details. How did you manage it?’

Ramses considered the question. It was loaded with potential pitfalls, and the genial conversational tone, the comfortable surroundings, were designed to lower his guard. A new interrogation
technique? He preferred it to the methods the Turks usually employed, but he would have to be careful.

‘My affectionate family came to the rescue,’ he said, feeling certain that this information must have reached Sahin’s ears. ‘You know my father.’

‘By reputation only. It is a formidable reputation. I hope one day to have the honour of meeting him. So he heard of your – er – dilemma – from your friend, whom I did
not succeed in killing after all? I might have done, had you not spoiled my aim.’

‘Possibly.’

Sahin drew the smoke deep into his lungs. ‘You also spoiled a pretty little scheme which had been long in the making. What are you after now? Why are you here?’

‘Just having a look round.’

‘I do admire the imprecision of the English language,’ Sahin said. ‘So useful when one wishes to avoid answering a question.’

‘Would you prefer to speak Turkish? I don’t find it as easy to equivocate in that language.’

Sahin’s beard parted, showing his teeth. ‘I think you could equivocate in any language, my boy. In this case, it is a waste of time. You were caught in the act. A particularly futile
act, I might add. In that jostling crowd you had little chance of killing him.’

‘I didn’t succeed, did I?’

‘You hit the governor,’ Sahin said, his smile broadening. ‘A flesh wound in a particularly awkward place. He’s very annoyed with you.’

No mention of anyone else. Did that mean Chetwode had got away? Good luck to the young fool, Ramses thought sourly. He had only been obeying orders. He put his head in his hands. Thinking about
Chetwode worsened his headache.

‘What can I offer you?’ Sahin asked solicitously. ‘If you don’t want brandy, what about coffee or mint tea?’

He clapped his hands. The servant who entered was so anxious to show the proper deference, he was bent over at the waist, his face only a few inches from the tray he carried. Obeying a brusque
gesture from Sahin, he deposited it on a low table beside Ramses and backed out, still at a right angle. The heavy curtains closed after him. ‘Please help yourself,’ Sahin said.
‘They have not been drugged.’

Ramses’s throat was painfully dry, and he concluded it would be expedient to accept something. To refuse hospitality was an affront, and it was unlikely Sahin had ordered the drinks to be
drugged. And what difference would it make if he had?

So he picked up the glass of tea and sipped it gratefully, holding the hot glass by the rim, while the Turk smoked in pensive silence. Then he said suddenly, ‘I have a daughter.’

‘My felicitations,’ Ramses said, wondering what the devil this had to do with anything. ‘When did the happy event occur?’

‘Eighteen years ago.’

‘Eighteen – ’

‘Yes, she should have been married long before this. It is not for lack of offers. She is beautiful, well born, and educated. She speaks and writes English. She is somewhat headstrong, but
I believe you prefer women of that sort.’ He looked hopefully at Ramses, who had begun to feel like Alice. What sort of rabbit hole had he fallen into? Surely Sahin Pasha didn’t mean .
. . Silence seemed the safest course.

‘The war cannot last forever,’ the Turk went on. ‘We will not always be enemies. You have the qualities I would like in a son.’

‘But . . .’ Ramses tried to think of a tactful way of refusing this flattering and appalling suggestion. He blurted out, ‘I’m already married!’

‘I know that. But if you were to embrace Islam, you could take another wife. I don’t recommend more. It requires a brave man to manage two women, but three are six times as much
trouble as two, and four – ’

‘You’re joking.’

Sahin’s mouth stretched wider. ‘Am I? It is in the best tradition of our people and yours – forging an alliance through marriage. Think it over. The alternative is far less
attractive.’

‘What is the alternative?’

‘Surely you need not ask. Imprisonment, a considerable degree of discomfort, and eventually a trip to Constantinople, where you will have to face several persons who know you as one of our
most dangerous opponents.’ He leaned forward, his face lengthening. ‘They will execute you, my young friend, publicly and painfully, as an English spy, but before they kill you they
will try to find out everything you know. I consider torture an unreliable means of extracting information, but I fear my enlightened views are not shared by the others in my service. I am offering
you a chance to escape that fate. You are no assassin. You came here for another reason. I can protect you from a death that will cause your wife and your parents much grief if you confide in me
and prove your sincerity by the alliance I have offered. I assure you, the girl is quite presentable.’

Increasingly bewildered, but reminded of his manners, Ramses said, ‘I am sure she is a pearl of rare beauty and a worthy child of her father. You would think less of me, however, if I
betrayed my beliefs and my country for a woman, however desirable.’

‘You would not be the first Englishman to do so.’

He fixed Ramses with a steady stare and Ramses considered how to respond. He wasn’t feeling very clever; insane questions kept popping into his head and it was all he could do to keep from
blurting them out. ‘Anybody I know?’ or ‘You wouldn’t be referring to my uncle, would you?’ He wondered if there had been some drug in the tea after all, or if it was
only the blow on the head that was clouding his thinking. Sahin couldn’t be serious. He was playing some sort of game and Ramses hadn’t the foggiest notion what he was really after.

‘There have been several,’ Ramses began. His voice echoed oddly inside his head. He tried to put the glass down. It tipped, spilling the rest of the tea across the floor. ‘Was
that really necessary?’ he asked thickly.

‘A lesson, which you have not yet learned, it seems,’ Sahin replied equably. ‘Never trust anyone’s word. Now come along like a good lad. I don’t want to hurt
you.’

He clapped his hands. Two men entered. ‘Gently, gently,’ Sahin crooned, as they pulled Ramses to his feet and half led, half dragged him out of the room, up a few steps and down a
few, through the mazelike series of rooms and corridors that were typical of such houses. He was vaguely aware of staring faces, as indistinct as ghosts, and of soft exclamations. Eventually they
escorted him down a long flight of stairs. The smell came up to meet him – wet stone, and mould, and the sickly sweetness of something rotten.

There were three doors along the short passage, heavy wood banded with iron. Two were closed. They took him into the third room, a stonewalled box barely six feet square and six high. Rodent
bones and a thin layer of straw, liquescent with decay, littered the floor. The cell contained a rough wooden bench along one wall, a few crude earthenware vessels, and several sets of chains held
by staples driven deep into floor and wall. Working with silent efficiency, as if they had gone through the procedure many times, the two guards deposited Ramses on the bench. Too dizzy to sit
upright, he toppled forward; one of them had to hold him while the other raised his arms and locked the fetters round his wrists. They chained his feet, too, and then left.

‘Faugh,’ said Sahin Pasha, wrinkling his nose. ‘It’s even worse than I remembered. This house is a temporary loan, from a colleague of mine; my own prisons are more
civilized. I will return in the morning to see if you have changed your mind.’

He drew his elegant robes tightly about him so they wouldn’t touch the filthy wall and backed away. The door slammed shut. The hinges creaked horribly. They would, of course.

Ramses sat with his head bowed, breathing steadily and slowly, hoping he wasn’t going to be sick. Gradually he got his stomach under control and strength began to return to his limbs.
Cautiously he tested the fetters. The iron cuffs had simply snapped into place, they could probably be opened without a key, but his hands were a yard apart and each chain was less than six inches
long. He entertained himself for a while banging and rubbing the cuffs against the stone wall but succeeded only in scraping his knuckles.

He leaned back, overcoming an instinctive reluctance to touch the slimy stone of the wall. His mother would have added several other adjectives – hard, cold, wet, dank, crawling with
curious insects that were gathering to investigate a new source of nourishment. A few of them had already found his feet. He smiled wryly. His mother would also inform him, in that brisk way of
hers, that he’d got himself into a pretty mess this time. No weapons, no useful tools concealed in his boots or clothing. They had even found the needle-thin knife he’d hidden under a
dirty bandage wrapped round his forearm. And all for nothing. He was no wiser about the identity of ‘the holy infidel.’

He closed his eyes and summoned up the image of that bearded face and arrogant nose. He had a good visual memory, but he hadn’t seen enough for a positive identification. Remembering the
innumerable times he had failed to recognize his exasperating uncle, he had known a single glance wouldn’t be enough. He had counted on being able to observe Ismail longer, watching for a
familiar gesture or movement, hearing his voice. The man had been closely guarded, but it might have been a guard of honour. Sahin hadn’t actually confirmed or denied anything, he had only
made a few ambiguous references to turncoats.

It had been a restless night and a tiring day. He fell into a waking doze, jerked upright by the pressure of the shackles against his scraped hands whenever deeper sleep loosened his muscles.
Dream images floated through his mind: Nefret, first and last and always, her blue eyes tender with concern or blazing with fury – at him, for being stupid enough to fall into this trap. It
had been a trap; he had been lied to, used, cold-bloodedly, for the sole purpose of getting that innocent-looking assassin into Gaza. Cartright and his superiors must have known there was a good
chance both of them would be caught or killed if Chetwode carried out his orders . . . The trap, a cage as big as a drawing room, swathed in folds of golden silk that didn’t quite conceal the
rusty bars; soft cushions under him, and a girl in his arms, a girl with long black hair that snaked round his hands, and tightened and hardened into fetters.