The Men Behind (22 page)

“That all?”

“As far as I was concerned, yes.”

“Do you know what was going to happen then?”

“The arabeah would slow down to go up the hill—this was all going to happen at the Citadel—and as it slowed, someone would step out of the crowd and fire. There would be two men, one on each side.”

“Two men,” said Owen.

“That’s right. He didn’t say anything about them, though.”

“No matter,” said Owen.

“Then I was to go home.”

“OK. Well, all that’s very useful. You’ll be able to show us the place where you are to stand, presumably?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. And when is all this going to happen?”

“Tomorrow. Just before sunset. There is to be a small gathering to celebrate the Massacre of the Mamelukes. Symbolic, you see. The end of an old regime. The bit I’m concerned with is going to be symbolic too.”

“How many are going to be at this gathering?”

“Only about a dozen. Less than twenty. They want to keep it selective, you see. Only some of the Pashas, those with political ambitions.”

“Pashas?”

“Yes. It’s to be an intimate gathering, you see, the chosen few. Only it has to be in public because they want everybody to know they’re the chosen few.”

“Have they actually been chosen?”

“Not as far as I know. The whole thing is really intended as a hint to the Khedive that they should be chosen.”

“And it’s Pashas? All Pashas?” asked Owen, puzzled.

“Yes.”

“No one else?”

“No.”

“Then who—who is the one who is going to be attacked?”

“Ali Osman.”

“Ali Osman?” said Owen incredulously. “But that’s— that’s ridiculous!”

“Yes,” said Mahmoud, “they have told me. Ali Osman.”

“Ali Osman
Pasha
?”

“That’s right. He’s one of the old party hacks.”

“I know who he is. I’m just—surprised.”

“Why are you surprised? I would have thought he was quite a natural target for the terrorists. Identified with the old regime, friend of the Khedive, feudal landlord, known to be corrupt and harsh. I would have said he was just the sort of target you might expect.”

“Well, yes, it’s just that I was, well, working along different lines.”

He told Mahmoud about Hamada and about the guns and the slaves.

“Slave traffic?” said Mahmoud, his face darkening. He was both a liberal and a firm believer in law as the basis of a just society. “I thought that had been abolished.”

“I thought so too. But he’s in it in a big way.”

“Why haven’t you arrested him?”

Owen started to explain, then stopped. Mahmoud was a Nationalist, too, and he wasn’t likely to take kindly to the view that it was undesirable to move against Ali Osman because of the strength of the British interests he had lined up behind him.

Especially in the present circumstances.

“I’m trying to get it right,” Owen said weakly, “politically right, I mean.”

Mahmoud nodded. He was Cairene enough to know that things had to be politically right before you could do them.

“I’ll get him,” Owen promised, “but I want to let things run as they are just for the moment.”

“Of course!” said Mahmoud enthusiastically. “You want to find out who his associates are. Pull in the whole lot of them.”

“That’s right. And there’s another thing too. Something that particularly interested me. It might interest you. One of his associates is Rashid.”

“Rashid? My Rashid?”

Owen nodded. “Your Rashid.”

“But—but that can’t be.”

“That’s what I thought. When you told me that Ali Osman was going to be the next target.”

They were sitting outside a café in one of the small, crowded streets near the Bab el Wezir. Above them towered the famous rock, on the brow of which stood the Citadel.

Much of Saladin’s marvelous castle was now in ruins. The stateliest part of it, Joseph’s Hall, had been blown up in 1824 to make room for a still more fabulous building, the mosque of Mehemet Ali, with its Arabian Nights-like domes and minarets. Nowadays, too, it shared the space with the headquarters of the British Artillery stationed in Egypt, located in the deserted palace of a former Khedive.

Four conquerors, then, and each in his time had passed away, leaving only a building behind them.

Except, of course, the British.

A place of myth. And the most potent of the myths was the Massacre of the Mamelukes.

One day in March 1811, Mehemet Ali invited the Mamelukes, the princes who had ruled Egypt for over five hundred years, to a reception in the Citadel and, when it was over, suggested they ride in state through the city, escorted by his troops.

As the Mamelukes proceeded between the two lines of the Pasha’s troops down the steep lane, hemmed in by rock and rampart, which leads from the Bab el Wastani to the Bab el Azab, the troops fell on them and killed them. One only, according to legend, escaped.

There was an added potency in the myth. By the time their dynasty came to an end, the Mamelukes had declined greatly from the warrior caste they had originally been. They had become decadent and corrupt—as decadent and corrupt, might it be said, as the Khedives and Pashas who had succeeded them? And might it not be their turn to be swept away as brutally and dramatically as the Mamelukes had been by Mehemet Ali?

Owen, aware of the power of myth and symbol to stir the Islamic mind, felt uneasy. The attack was intended to be symbolic, Elbawi had said. Owen was as much concerned about the symbol as about the attack itself.

“Obviously we’re not going to let it happen,” he said. “We’ll have our people there and they’ll pick up the men as soon as they spot them. No hanging around this time. We’re not going to make
that
mistake again. At least we’ll have the killers out of the way. But, of course, the one we’re really after is Rashid. And that’s where you come in.”

“He’s really clever,” said Mahmoud. “He never does anything himself. He always works through other people.”

“That’s why this is so important. If he really does want to speak to you in person.”

“That’s what the message was.”

“I can’t quite see—I mean, why should he approach you now, when he’s already set something up?”

“Perhaps he’s thinking ahead to the next one.”

“Yes. Or perhaps—” Owen suddenly sat up—“perhaps there’s another part to this one. Something we don’t know about yet.”

“Someone else to be killed?”

“Another Pasha, perhaps. Someone besides Ali Osman. I’ll have a look at the party and see who else is to be there.”

Mahmoud finished his coffee.

“Of course,” he said, “it may not be a case of someone else.”

“What do you mean?”

“It might be more than one. Have you forgotten that Rashid has a predilection for bombs?”

Mahmoud left first. Owen sat on at the table drinking another cup of coffee. The café was well away from the Law School and from the Bab el Khalk and there was little chance of their being recognized. All the same it was as well to be careful.

Owen felt a hand on his shoulder. A small hand. Soraya slipped into the chair vacated by Mahmoud. “Your friend has gone. You can talk to me now.”

“What are you doing here?” said Owen, surprised.

“I live here,” said Soraya, pointing along the street. “Would you like to come home with me?”

Owen had forgotten that this was the area of the gypsies.

“That would be very nice,” he said. “However, I am working.”

“In the café? You are like my man. He sits in the café drinking tea when he should be stealing.”

“Are you and your man together again?”

“Sort of,” said Soraya vaguely.

The owner of the café came out, looked at Soraya sternly, and Owen questioningly, then shrugged his shoulders and went back inside.

Soraya beamed and drank some of Owen’s coffee. “Your friend looked nice, too,” she said. “Nicer than your other friend.”

“Roper, you mean? That is certainly true.”

“Is he married?”

“Mahmoud? No.”

“It is time he was,” said Soraya censoriously. “You too.”

“I dare say we’ll get around to it sometime.”

“Among my people,” said Soraya pointedly, “it is the custom to marry young.”

“Are you married?”

“I dare say I’ll get around to it. One day.”

“To do this to me!” said Ali Osman, upset. “Rashid!”

“He was your man, wasn’t he?”

“Up to a point.”

“Up to what point?”

“Does that matter?” asked Ali Osman. “Obviously not to the point when it would stop him from killing me.”

“Yes, it does matter. He did things for you. What things?”

“Oh, various bits of business.”

“Liaison with illegal Nationalist groups?”

“Well, yes, you might say that.”

“Getting them to follow public servants? So that you could create an atmosphere of crisis which you could turn to political advantage?”

“My dear fellow!” said Ali Osman, staring. “What can you mean?”

“To shoot at Fairclough?”

“Certainly not!” said Ali Osman firmly. “The idea!”

“To throw bombs?”

“The one in the café was left, wasn’t it?”

“The one at Nuri was thrown.”

“I had nothing to do with either.”

“But Rashid did.”

“If he did,” said Ali Osman earnestly, “that was nothing to do with me.”

“He was your man, wasn’t he?”

“Not in this. Not in this,” said Ali Osman fervently.

“My question was,” said Owen, “up to what point?”

Ali Osman sat silent for a long time, looking at Owen seriously. At last he said: “I shall have to tell you, shan’t I?”

“Yes.”

The Pasha was silent for a moment or two longer. Then he pulled himself together.

“Since you obviously know the answer already,” he said, “I will tell you. Rashid is the nephew of Haround Rashid, my lawyer. The Rashids are good people, have worked for me for a long time. Entirely trustworthy. Except for Narouz Rashid.”

“Narouz Rashid is the one at the Law School?”

“Yes. The bright one of the family. And the most untrustworthy. Mark that, my dear fellow! The two go together. Education is a bad thing and should be confined to those too stupid to benefit from it. That is why I only send dull boys up to Cairo to be educated. That is why—”

“Yes, yes. Did you send Narouz Rashid to be educated?”

“No. The Rashid family had more or less left my estate. They had set themselves up independently in Cairo. That was even before I inherited. Of course, they still worked for us, were still heavily dependent on us. But by then they could pay for their own education.”

“And they all went to the Law School?”

“It is, after all, the only place. If you want to become a lawyer.”

“And Narouz?”

“Went there too. Paid for by his grandfather. A clever boy, as I said. Too clever by half. He had ideas of his own. ‘Haround,’ I said, ‘this boy is dangerous. He will end up by getting you all in trouble. Take my advice and get rid of him.’ Well, of course, they did. Very sensibly.”

“Let us get this straight,” said Owen. “You make them get rid of him; and yet he now works for you?”

“On commission. On occasional commission. You don’t make much money as a lecturer at the Law School. I bear him no ill will.”

“The question is,” said Owen, “does he bear you ill-will?”

Ali Osman regarded him thoughtfully. “It would appear so,” he said, “wouldn’t it?”

“Tell me about the commissions.”

Ali Osman spread his hands and shrugged.

“Very well,” he said, “if you must know. Narouz Rashid has links with a wide variety of Nationalist groups. The sort of groups that are not officially part of the Nationalist Party. The sort of groups that the Nationalist Party likes to steer clear of. At a time like this such groups can be useful. They will cause trouble on the streets. If you pay them.”

“And you were paying them?”

“Rashid was paying them. I was merely providing the money.”

“And what exactly were you paying them for?”

“He was paying them,” corrected Ali Osman. “I was providing the money. What I wanted was trouble in the streets. You know, at public meetings and processions and demonstrations. Not too much, naturally. Just enough to worry the Khedive. And to embarrass the Nationalists.”

“And that was as far as it was to go?”

Ali Osman looked at him soberly. “That, I swear, was as far as it was to go.”

Owen thought it over.

“The other,” said Ali Osman, “was something he added for himself.”

Owen was still thinking. He felt half inclined to believe Ali Osman. The other half, however, said that here was someone who would cheerfully use others for his own advantage and would not be too particular about what happened to anyone who got in his way.

“Very well,” he said, “I shall put you to the test. You will go to the Citadel exactly as arranged. You will carry on as if you knew nothing. My men will be in the crowd. You will have nothing to fear.”

“I certainly hope so,” said Ali Osman.

“And if we pick up those two men I shall perhaps be disposed to take a lenient view of your actions. Some of them,” he added, remembering the slave-trading and gunrunning.

Ali Osman bowed his head in acquiescence.

“And Rashid?”

“There, too. I shall need your help.”

Ali Osman smiled thinly. “It will be given,” he said, “with the very greatest of pleasure.”

Mahmoud rang.

“I’ve seen him,” he said.

“Rashid?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked me to throw a bomb. At the group of Pashas which would assemble in the Citadel.”

“He actually asked you? Straight out?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ve got him,” said Owen exultantly.

“Don’t pick him up just on my say-so. He could always claim he hadn’t meant it. Been testing me or something. Wait till I’m actually given the bomb.”

“When will that be?”

“At the Citadel.”

“Someone will give it you?”

“Yes. Elbawi.”

“Elbawi!”

“Yes. He doesn’t know yet. He thinks he’s just there to give a signal when Ali Osman’s arabeah arrives. Just before he sets out he’ll be given a package to deliver.”