Michael Pearce - The Mingrelian Conspiracy

‘He’s tough, all right. He works a fleet of boats out of the Old Docks. They go right up beyond Luxor, fuel and grain, mostly, though some stone from the quarries. In his father’s time they went further still, beyond Khartoum. It was said he used to bring back slaves. A tough old man and a tough son. I suppose you have to be, working on the river. Anyway-this is the point that will interest you-the father is not a native Egyptian. He comes from one of those countries up around the Caucasus, Muslim, so there was no great difficulty about settling here. The story goes that he was driven out by the Russians. That would have been about the time that Sorgos made his departure, too. It’s quite conceivable that they knew each other there and that the father came to ask Sorgos some kind of favour. In which case, of course, the son would have inherited the obligation.’

‘Any evidence of direct contact?’

‘No. Nor, previously, with Djugashvili, either. But, of course, working on the waterfront, he would have plenty of contact with the gangs, not just this one but all those working down by the docks. He would have been just the man to go to if you didn’t know any of the gangs yourself and wanted to be put in touch with one.’

‘Did he have any other role, do you think? Other than intermediary?’

‘Nothing has come out. He has the name of being a hard man. If you owe him a favour, you pay it. Mind you, if he owes you one, he pays too. But they say he sticks to his own business, which is boats. I don’t see him going much outside that. Unless, of course, it was part of returning a favour.’

‘A thief, a pimp, a liar and a vagabond,’ said the voice on the telephone; ‘deceitful, treacherous, conniving and immoral! Nothing bad goes on in these docks and he’s not there! On the fringes, perhaps, but there! And he says he’s a friend of yours.’

‘What’s his name?’ said Owen.

‘Sidi.’

‘Put him on.’

There was a slight pause and then a voice said uncertainly: ‘Effendi?’

‘I am here.’

‘Effendi, this is a strange thing. I have not seen one of these before. Just where are you?’

‘In Cairo.’

‘Then you are not here?’

‘You speak into that and it goes all the way to Cairo. You speak and I can hear.’

‘Well, that is very remarkable. If it is true. Anyway, if this is the way you wish to talk, so let it be. Effendi, I have sad news to report.’

‘Sad news?’

‘The package you asked me to look out for has arrived.’

‘It has? And you have found it? Well, that is good news, not sad.’

‘That, unfortunately, Effendi, is not all. First, it was not I who found it. If it had been, all would have been simple. I would have told no one save you and you would have come. Unfortunately, it was Abou who found it. He told Ibrahim and Ibrahim told the men in the office, as you said. And perhaps a few other people. Or maybe it was that fool, Abou. Effendi, when I become rich, that is definitely one man I shall not employ. Even to lead the donkeys.’

‘Word has got out?’

‘That is right, Effendi. I said to Ibrahim, Ibrahim, this is foolish. Go to the man at the top! That is always the best course. But he would not listen to me, Effendi. He thinks I am too young. But, Effendi, intelligence is nothing to do with age, as I told him. Unfortunately, strength is, and he dealt me a blow and I thought it wisest to say nothing after that. But that meant I had to watch the box by myself-’

‘You were watching the box?’

‘Well, Effendi, someone had to. It was only prudent. There is a lot to the box. I suggested to Ibrahim that a watch be kept, but he said that was not necessary. So I decided I would watch by myself. Unfortunately, Effendi, the long hours-I woke up to find the box gone.’

‘Gone!’

‘I ran at once to the loading bay and found them putting it into a cart. And then I ran to the man in the office. But he would not listen to me, he said: “What do you know about it, foolish boy? What business is it of yours? Begone, or I shall have you beaten!” And I said: “I am not the one who will be beaten when the Mamur Zapt finds out.” And then he agreed to go with me but by the time we got to the bay it was too late. The cart had gone-’

A voice cut in over Sidi’s.

‘Effendi, what the boy says is, alas, on this one occasion, true. It was an unfortunate misunderstanding-’

‘You have let the explosives go?’

‘Effendi, I-’

Owen, considerably less relaxed and feeling not at all benign, sat in his office wondering where it had all gone wrong. He had been so sure of a number of things. He had been sure, for a start, that he had identified the potential troublemakers: Sorgos rousing the rabble and raising money; the Georgians down in the Der, handy when it came to action; Djugashvili, committed to the anti-Russian cause and capable, their likely leader. His agents had brought him reports of no others. They were all under constant observation and could not, positively could not, have gone to Suez and collected the explosives. There must be someone else involved.

He had been sure, too, that there was a connection between the gold-gathering and getting hold of the explosives. It all hung together. Why else had Sorgos been scratching around for gold? Why else go to the lengths of commissioning a gang to screw money out of a cafe? He had been so sure that by seizing the gold they had collected he would put a spoke in their wheel. Now someone had definitely put a spoke in his!

Had he been wrong all along? Was there no connection at all between the gold and the explosives? Were the explosives simply being imported for some other purpose, still, probably, nefarious but of a lesser order of criminality, at least as far as the Mamur Zapt was concerned? Tomb-robbing, say? A matter for the Parquet, not him. Perhaps he should have passed the whole thing over to Mahmoud!

But where did that leave the Grand Duke? Were Sorgos and the others completely innocent of any designs on his life? Not from what Sorgos had said. But was what Sorgos said to be trusted? Wasn’t he just a crazy, cracked old man? But if so, what was he collecting gold for? Mingrelian wedding rings? And these Georgians: innocent? Well, not entirely, if Omar’s identification of Djugashvili as the man who had commissioned the raid on Mustapha’s cafe was to be trusted. But was that necessarily connected with the explosives? Maybe Djugashvili was involved in some other kind of racket.

But no, there was a connection between the gold and the explosives, he was sure. He was sure that was what Sorgos had been raising gold for; and he was almost sure now that that was what the raid on the cafe had been about, to raise money to pay for the gold.

No, that bit was right. Where he had gone wrong was in his assumption that if the plotters were prevented from paying, they would not be able to get their hands on the explosives.

Perhaps they had intended to pay, to buy the explosives in the normal commercial way. Perhaps they were, as Georgiades and Nikos kept saying, criminal naifs, doing it for the first time. Perhaps that had genuinely been their plan. And then, because of his own daft action in seizing the gold, they had altered it. They had gone for the explosives directly.

That was all he could think. What it meant, though, was that the explosives were now in their hands. In their hands and there for use. Only a day ago he had been making a joke of it, mentioning the explosives only out of devilment, just to put the fear of God into Shearer. Well, he had certainly done that. Only now it had turned out not to be a joke at all but very, very real!

And he was the man who had done it.

He was the man, therefore, who must do his best to undo it. He knew what he had to do. He hated taking action like this, he was as bad as Mahmoud about preventive detention. It always seemed to him merely coercive, the antithesis of the way he normally liked to proceed, which had some sort of relation to justice.