The Night of the Dog (18 page)

“Either way there is shame,” said Owen, “but one way the shame is yours and yours alone. The other way the shame is on your father too.”

Andrus sat for a long time. Owen let him sit. When at last Andrus looked up, his face was haggard.

“I will do what you wish,” he said.

“What do you want?” said Osman suspiciously.

“I want you to withdraw all your people from the streets, to send them home and to tell them to stay at home. That is, at least until after the Moulid. They are not to let themselves be provoked by the Copts. After today the Copts will be very anxious not to provoke you, but should some foolish man do so then you are to instruct your people not to respond.”

“What?” said Osman, unbelieving.

“You are to confine yourself to a mosque until after the Moulid. You will not go out in the streets and you will not say anything in public. There are to be no speeches and no sermons. Not until after the Moulid.”

“I shall say what I like and go where I like,” said Osman. “As for the Copts, I will cut their throats and dance in their blood.”

“You will not,” said Owen, who took an equable view of Arab rhetoric.

“No?” said Osman belligerently. “Why won’t I?”

“Because if you do,” said Owen, “I will tell everyone that you are the man who receives money from Copts.”

“I?” said Osman. “I? I receive no money from Copts.”

“You go to Mordecai, don’t you?”

“He is not a Copt. He is a Jew.”

“And where do you think he gets the money from?”

“Not from Copts?” said Osman, with a sinking heart.

“He is just the man in the middle. The Copts bring the money and Osman takes it. Every Friday. On the Sabbath.”

Osman reeled.

“Do you swear this?” he said thickly.

“On the Book.”

Osman shook his heavy, turbanned head from side to side as if bemused.

“I did not know it came from them!” he muttered. “How was I to know? A man came to me and said there were friends with money. They wished to keep themselves secret and therefore I was to go to Mordecai. But how can they be Copts? Copts would not give money for use against Copts. Unless—”

He smashed his great fists on the table.

“They have tricked me. It was a trap. And I fell into it. Fool that I am!” He buried his head in his arms and rolled about the table in his agony. “Fool! Fool!”

“Osman takes money from Copts. So it will be known.”

“Fool! Fool!” groaned Osman. “Oh, the cunning devils! They have beaten me. How shall I show my face? Osman takes Copt money! Oh, the shame of it!”

“If you do as I say,” said Owen, “you will be able to show your face. No one will know about it.”

“The Copts will tell,” groaned Osman.

“They won’t,” said Owen.

Something in his voice made Osman look at him.

“How do you know?”

“I have talked with them.”

“Do not believe them. They are cunning devils.”

“On this occasion,” said Owen, “I think they may be believed.”

“You do not know them like I do,” said Osman.

“They have no choice,” said Owen. “They are in a trap as deep as yours.”

“A trap?” Osman began to sound hopeful. “Of your devising?”

“Yes.”

Osman pounded the desk joyfully.

“They are in a trap. The Mamur Zapt has tricked them. They have tricked me but have themselves been tricked.”

“That’s about it.”

“You swear it? On the Book?”

“On the Book.”

“Then I will go happily to prison.”

“You are not going to prison. You are going to take your people off the streets. Remember?”

“I can’t do that,” said Osman in consternation.

“You must do it. Or I will see to it that everyone in Cairo knows who is the sheikh who takes money from Copts.”

There was a short silence.

“If I do what you ask,” said Osman, “can I be sure that the Copts will do the same?”

“You can be sure.”

“I do not like it.”

“Nor do they.”

“No,” said Osman, beginning to smile. “Of that one can be confident.”

He struck his fist on the table.

“I will do it!” he said.

“At once. Tonight,” said Owen.

Osman nodded.

“At once,” he agreed. “So it shall be.”

He left looking quite pleased. Owen was not sure that whatever lesson Osman had learned had been quite the right one.

Later in the morning Owen paid one of his infrequent visits to the Ministry of Finance. As he was walking along one of the long, green-painted corridors he ran into John Postlethwaite.

“Hello, lad,” said John Postlethwaite. “What are you doing here? Come for a bit of pocket money?”

“In a manner of speaking,” said Owen. “Not personally, but for the office.”

“You’ll be lucky. What have you been up to?”

“Not been up to anything. It’s all this trouble between Copts and Moslems. It costs money.”

“Too true. That’s only too true,” John Postlethwaite agreed enthusiastically. “That’s what I’m always saying. However you look at it, it costs money. These colonies are millstones around our necks, as a noble lord of my acquaintance once said. Mind you, he’s a millstone round our necks too, him and all the other lords.”

Owen thought that Paul might not like the turn the conversation was taking so hastily shifted tack.

“The real problem is the levy,” he said.

“Levy?” said John Postlethwaite sharply. “I’ve not heard about that.”

Owen explained.

“A levy is a mistake,” said John Postlethwaite. “It’s bad accounting principle. It’s a one-off business, you see. You do it once and then that’s an end to it. What you want is a charge on something that regularly recurs. You can go on forever then.”

“The Khedive’s insisting on it. He needs the money.”

“What does he need it for?”

Owen thought he hadn’t better mention Monte Carlo.

“Oh, a special function he has in mind, I think,” he said vaguely.

“If it’s an unusual item, then maybe the best thing is a straightforward loan,” said John Postlethwaite. “I don’t normally approve of loans, unless I’m lending, of course, but sometimes they’re the answer.”

At the other end of the corridor Owen saw Ramses come out of a door. He began to edge away.

“Come and see us sometime,” said John Postlethwaite. “I know Jane would like to see you. She gets a bit cooped up in that hotel.”

“Hello,” said Ramses. “What are you after? Still in trouble with the Compensation Fund? I might be able to do something for you next year but there’s not much chance this year, I’m afraid. We’re still stuck in our log-jam.”

“Postlethwaite thinks the levy’s a bad idea.”

“Same here. Unfortunately—”

“He thinks a loan might be better.”

“So it might,” said Ramses, “if anyone could be found stupid enough to lend to the Khedive.”

“I was wondering,” said Owen, “if, in return for the levy being abandoned—”

“A loan? You wouldn’t get your money back.”

“Suppose,” said Owen, “somebody made a loan, and the idea of the levy was withdrawn, and Patros became Prime Minister, couldn’t he raise taxes?”

“He certainly could and almost certainly will.”

“Then the loan could be repaid out of the increase in taxes.”

“Why,” said Ramses admiringly, “you’re beginning to think just like an accountant! Yes, in principle it could be done. I could get a few Copt bankers to club together to find a sufficient sum. It would have to be a loan to the Government, mind, not to the Khedive personally. A special loan so that, say, all the statues in Cairo can be cleaned on time for the Khedive’s birthday. They wouldn’t be cleaned, of course, but no one would know. A public loan like that would have the added advantage of showing the Khedive what loyal subjects we Copts are and how greatly we admire him.”

“You think you could stitch that up?”

“Yes. On condition that the levy were withdrawn. Patros would have to become Prime Minister, too, so that we could be sure that the money would be repaid. Incidentally, I see problems there.”

“The Consul-General will agree.”

“Yes, but some of our side won’t be very happy. As you probably know, there’s a strong party among the Copts who are utterly opposed to any Coptic participation in the Government, even on a personal basis.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Owen, “I think you may find that in future that party is not quite as strong as it has been.”

Before leaving the Ministry, Owen rang Paul at the Consul-General’s Residency.

“Oh yes,” said Paul. “I think that can be managed. I’ll have a word with the Old Man. But do you think the Copts will really deliver?”

“I think they will if you can get the Old Man to twist the Khedive’s arm enough to persuade him to withdraw the levy.”

“OK,” said Paul. “I’ll see he gets twisting.”

Instead of going to the Club as he usually did for lunch, Owen went to Zeinab’s apartment. She was surprised and pleased to see him. Afterwards, as she lay drowsily in his arms, she said:

“How is your little Nonconformiste?”

“All right, I think. I haven’t seen her since the opera.”

“I’m not jealous,” Zeinab assured him. “If you want her, you can have her.”

“She may have her own views about that.”

“Are you taking her to the Moulid?”

“Paul wants me to.”

Zeinab was quiet for a moment or two.

“Have you ever been to the Moulid?” she asked.

“Not this one.”

“Ah. Then you must take her. Yes, you must certainly take her.”

“Perhaps I will,” said Owen innocently.

Later, as Zeinab sat brushing her hair, she said:

“How is Yussuf?”

“In the cells.”

“Poor man. It is time you let him out.”

“I would if I was sure he wouldn’t go straight back and do it again.”

“He ought to remarry Fatima.”

“That’s what I’m trying to achieve.”

“Have you talked to the man, the one who married her?”

“Suleiman? No. I’ve talked to Fatima, though. She says that Suleiman will want money.”

“Of course.”

“Yes, but I haven’t any. The Compensation Fund is exhausted. Anyway, it’s a bad accounting principle.”

“Accounting principle?” said Zeinab, surprised.

“Yes. Give him some and they’ll all be doing it.”

“That is accounting principle?”

“More or less. Financial control, anyway.”

Zeinab shrugged. One of her shoulders emerged from her gown and Owen went across and kissed it.

“I have been thinking,” said Zeinab, laying down her brush. “Has Fatima any family?”

“I don’t know. I expect so. Why?”

“It is one thing taking a woman into your house,” said Zeinab. “It is another thing taking her family.”

“So?”

“If she has a large family and some of them are unprovided for, say, for instance, she has unmarried sisters and aunts and nieces, then it is only right, since her husband has married into the family, that he should provide for them, too.”

“Yes, but will he see it like that?”

“It is a duty to provide for your wife’s family as for your own. Why don’t you suggest it to Fatima? She sounds the sort of woman who wouldn’t like to let things slip.”

“I might do that.”

“Yes. If you did,” said Zeinab, “you might even find Suleiman ready to think again.”

Owen had taken a house in the old part of the city not far from the Mar Girgis. Through the heavy fretwork of its top windows he could see the towering minarets of the Bab es Zuweyla, and from the box window of the storey below, where he was standing when Sesostris approached, he had a good view along the street in both directions.

It was dark and the lamps were lit and they might not have seen Sesostris if he had not had to step aside to avoid a porter with a heavy bundle on his back and stand for a moment in the light from a shopfront. They watched him come to the door.

Owen had had the house cleared and the servant who let Sesostris in was one of his own men. They heard the door close and the footsteps begin to climb the stairs.

In the room Andrus twisted his hands nervously. He was a shell of the man he had been previously. Owen gave him a warning glance. He did not want things to go wrong at this stage.

He glanced round the room to make sure all was in order. It was a modest but comfortably furnished room with a divan, low tables and large leather cushions on the floor. The walls were covered with fine red carpets. Georgiades held one of these aside and stood waiting.

Behind the carpet was a shallow recess in which the bedding was normally stored. When Georgiades and he were standing inside it and the carpet replaced, the wall looked like any other wall.

Sesostris came into the room.

“Well, Andrus?” they heard him say.

“Greetings, Sesostris,” Andrus said with difficulty.

“Why have you brought me here?”

“Because it is safest,” said Andrus, as they had agreed. “They are watching our houses. My house—and yours.”

“Mine?”

“They have found out. The Mamur Zapt knows.”

“What does he know? And how do you know that he knows?”

“I have a man in his office. Nikos.”

Owen winced. He thought that an unnecessary touch of Georgiades’s.

“He has told me.”

“How much does the Mamur Zapt know?”

“He knows about the money. And to whom it goes.”

“If he knows, why has he not moved?”

“To know is one thing. To be able to prove is another. That is why he is having the houses watched.”

“So he is not confident yet. Well, that is useful to know.”

Sesostris did not speak for some time. They heard him moving. He seemed to be walking up and down.

“It gives me a chance,” they heard him mutter, as much to himself as to Andrus. “The question is whether to stop now or go on.”

“I think we should stop, Sesostris,” Andrus squeaked uneasily. This part had not been in the script.

“It would be a pity to stop now, just when we are nearly there. A few more days, a week perhaps, would be sufficient. Two weeks at the outside.”

“The Mamur Zapt knows.”

“But cannot prove. Let us make sure that for the next two weeks he still cannot prove.”