Michael Pearce - The Mingrelian Conspiracy

‘Anyway, it is prejudicing the inquiry,’ said Mahmoud. ‘And that is interfering with the cause of justice.’

‘These people were pretty prejudiced already.’

Mahmoud was silent. He was used, of course, to this kind of situation. But it made him angry.

‘The investigation continues,’ he said coldly.

‘Even if the originating complaint is withdrawn?’

‘It’s on the files now. Besides, we don’t need a complaint. We can proceed without it. It was a clear breach of public order.’

‘No one’s denying that. It’s just a question of what’s the appropriate action. Is it a matter for the civil courts? Or for the military ones?’

This was a mistake, for Mahmoud knew a lot more about the law than he did.

‘Both,’ said Mahmoud. ‘However, what the Army does is no concern of mine. I do not have any say in it. Nor do I expect the Army to have any say in whether there is a civil prosecution or not.’

‘Not “say”,’ said Owen. ‘ “Request”, more like. The Army requests the Parquet to leave the action in this case to its authorities.’

‘Well, if it cares to put in a formal request… I shall oppose it, though the decision, in the end, will not be up to me. It will go to the Minister. And I daresay,’ said Mahmoud bitterly, ‘if you are wondering, that your Legal Adviser will be able to persuade the Minister, as usual, that it is not in his interests to allow the matter to proceed. But I,’ he added furiously, ‘shall lodge a complaint.’

‘That’s four,’ said Owen.

‘Four?’ said Mahmoud, startled.

‘One from you; one from Shearer-that’s that difficult Army captain; one from the Mingrelians, and one from the Russian Charge.’

‘Is he in it?’

‘He was in it. Now he’s withdrawn. In view of the Grand Duke’s visit,’ he explained, thinking this might mollify Mahmoud.

‘Grand Duke?’ said Mahmoud.

Owen told him what he knew about Duke Nicholas’s visit. Mahmoud shrugged his shoulders.

‘Excuse me,’ said one of the young effendi at the next table, ‘but I couldn’t help overhearing: this visit of the Russian Duke, what is its nature?’

‘Well, I gather the Khedive hopes to replicate an earlier visit, when the Duke’s uncle came to open the Suez Canal.’

‘Would you say it was cultural in purpose? Or political?’

‘Bit of both, I suppose. But cultural, mainly.’

‘There you are!’ The young man turned back triumphantly to his colleagues. ‘Cultural recognition leads to political recognition!’

‘What the earlier visit led to,’ said one of the young man’s colleagues, ‘was bankruptcy. And that led to the British taking over.’

'Oh, no!’ said the cafe owner.

‘But yes!’ said Owen brightly, looking around for a place to sit and finally choosing one right next to where the owner was sprawled against a table, bandaged legs stretching over a chair in front of him. ‘I like your coffee!’

‘Mekhmet!’

A small, frightened-looking man scuttled in.

‘Mekhmet, some coffee for our guest!’

‘Right, Sidi Mustapha!’ said the man, touching his brow. ‘At once!’

He made for the door.

‘And put some poison in it!’ shouted the owner.

The little man stopped in the doorway, confused.

‘Go on, you fool! It’s only a joke.’

He clapped his hands impatiently.

The little man’s eyes rolled, panic-stricken.

‘Oh, my God!’ said the owner. ‘Get on with it, you fool. Get some coffee!’

A woman stuck her head out of a door at the back. ‘Don’t shout at him!’ she said indignantly. ‘He’s a poor, afflicted creature! He’s doing his best!’

‘He’s not doing anything at all!’ shouted the cafe owner. ‘He’s just standing there!’

‘You’ve confused him! Come on, Mekhmet, love,’ she said kindly. ‘Take no notice of him!’

The owner groaned and put a fist to his head.

‘It’s impossible!’ he said. ‘The man’s a halfwit. Tell him anything and he gets confused. You can’t run a cafe business like that! I’m only employing him because he’s her sister-in-law’s cousin.’

The woman emerged from the back with some coffee for Owen.

‘You’re only employing him because he’s cheap!’ she said tartly. ‘You thought you could get something for nothing.’

‘I was wrong, then, wasn’t I? I haven’t even got something!’

‘You’re a hard-hearted man,’ she said. ‘If you turn your face from God’s poor, He will turn his face from you!’

‘You get back inside, woman!’ shouted Mustapha indignantly. ‘Showing yourself off in public to all the men!’

‘If you’re going to shout at Mekhmet when he brings the coffee, and you’re going to shout at me, who’s going to bring it, I’d like to know? You just tell me that!’

She stalked off. The cafe owner mopped his brow.

‘Just look at that!’ he said. ‘Women are all the same. Difficult! She wouldn’t have married me if it hadn’t been for the dowry. Now she expects me to provide for everybody! Anyone who’s simple or lame or blind she invites in. Turn my face from God’s poor? I’m going to be one of God’s poor if she carries on the way she’s going.’

‘The fact is, you need a man about the place,’ said Owen. Mustapha looked at him.

‘You on that again?’

‘It’s the answer to your prayers.’

Mustapha was silent for some time.

‘Is he smart?’ he said at last.

‘He’s big,’ said Owen.

The cafe owner chuckled.

‘Like that, is it? Well, it’s not altogether a bad thing. Get somebody smart and the next thing you know, they’ve got something going on the side. Big and willing, that’s all you want. At least, that’s what the farmers used to say back in the village when I was a boy. And-he’s not going to cost anything?’

‘Even less than Mekhmet,’ said Owen.

The Grand Duke’s visit had been announced the day before and the newspapers were full of it. The tone was broadly welcoming. Even the Nationalist papers-and most of the papers were Nationalist-took a positive view of the visit as a mark of international recognition.

There were, of course, as always in Cairo, exceptions. For the most part these were confined to the Balkan communities and Owen realized now for the first time how many of these there were in the city. He had been hazily aware, for example, of the Montenegrins parading in their big boots outside the chief hotels for the benefit of tourists, but had not realized until now that they formed a substantial community. He had vaguely registered that Serbs were always fighting Croats and Bosnians Herzegovinians, but since in Egypt at any rate they were prudently not fighting Muslims he had taken this as merely the expression of an over-exuberant national spirit and left it to the ordinary police. Lots of them though there were, there had not been enough for him to register them as a significant political presence. Up till now.

Each community, it soon transpired, was holding a public meeting to protest against Duke Nicholas’s visit. Indeed, some of them were cooperating in holding joint meetings so things must be really serious. Since the meetings were all obligingly announced in the press, Owen assumed at first that he had little to worry about.

‘It’s not public meetings that lead to assassinations,’ he said to Paul, when the Consul-General registered alarm at the vehemence of some of the meetings, ‘but private ones.’

‘What a decent British thing to say!’ said Paul. ‘I only hope that you are right.’

However, he took the precaution of posting observers at all the meetings, whereupon he found that all the meetings were plotting the Grand Duke’s assassination. He was much perturbed and started following developments very closely; until he found that the exuberance of spirit that he had detected earlier worked against agreement on specific proposals. He continued to follow developments but sat back and relaxed until one morning Nikos brought him news of yet another protest meeting scheduled for the following evening in Old Cairo.