Michael Pearce: The Donkey-Vous

“I take it you’ll have nothing in the files?” said Mahmoud.

“I’ll get Nikos to check. I don’t recognize the name but maybe he will.”

“How did it come?”

“It appeared in Moulin’s pigeonhole. Berthelot found it when he went to check the mail. I’ve had him checking it at regular intervals.”

“Presumably it was just handed in?”

“Left on the counter when the receptionist was busy.”

“He didn’t notice who left it?”

“No.”

Mahmoud sighed.

Owen looked along the terrace. The conviviality at the far end had developed into quite a party. Corks were popping, people laughing, suffragis bustling with new bottles. The general gaiety spread far out into the night. At the intervening tables people were sitting more quietly. They were mostly in evening dress, having come out into the cool air after dinner. They looked relaxed, confident, immune. But from somewhere out in the darkness something had struck at these bright, impervious people: struck once and could strike again.

"Even if it is a kidnapping,” said Owen, “there’s no need for me to be involved.”

“Oh?” said Garvin. “Why not?”

Garvin was the Commandant of the Cairo Police. It was an indication of something special that he was taking an interest in the case. Normally he left such matters to his deputy, the Assistant Commander, McPhee.

“It’s not political.”

“If it’s a Frenchman,” said Garvin, “then it is political.”

“Zawia?” said Nikos. “That’s a new one. It’s not the usual sort of name, either.”

Most of the kidnappings in Cairo were carried out by political “clubs,” extremist in character and therefore banned, therefore secret. It was a standard way of raising money for political purposes. The “clubs” tended to have names like “The Black Hand,” “The Cobra Group,” or “The Red Dagger.” Owen sometimes found the political underworld of Cairo disconcertingly similar to the pages of the Boy’s Own Paper. There was in fact a reason for the similarity. Many of the “clubs” were based on the great El Azhar university, where the students tended to be younger than in European universities. In England, indeed, they would have been still at school, a fact which did not stop them from kidnapping, garrotting, and demanding money with menaces but which led them to express their demands in a luridly melodramatic way.

“Zawia?” said Owen. “I don’t know that word. What does it mean?”

“A place for disciples. A-I think you would call it-a convent.”

“A place for women?”

“Certainly not!” said Nikos, astonished yet again at the ignorance of his masters. Nikos was the Mamur Zapt’s Official Secretary, a post of considerable power, which Nikos relished, and much potential for patronage, which Nikos had so far, to the best of Owen’s knowledge, not thought fit to use. “It is a Senussi term.”

The Senussi were an Islamic order, not strong in Egypt, but strong everywhere else in North Africa.

“It also means corner, junction, turning point.”

“Turning point?” said Owen, alert to all the shades of significance of revolutionary rhetoric. “I’m not sure I like that.”

“I’m not sure I like it if it’s a convent,” said Nikos. “Particularly if it’s a Senussi one.”

Midway through the morning Nikos put a phone call through to him. It was one of the Consul-General’s aides. Since the British Consul-General was the man who really ran Egypt Owen paid attention. Anyway, the aide was a friend of his. “It’s about Octave Moulin,” his friend said.

“Moulin?”

“The one who was kidnapped. I take it you’re involved?”

“On the fringe.”

“If I were you I’d move off the fringe pretty quickly and get into the center.”

“Because he’s a Frenchman?”

“Because of the sort of Frenchman he is. His wife is a cousin of the French President’s wife.”

“The French Charge was ’round pretty quickly.”

“He would be. They know Moulin at the Consulate, of course.”

“Because of his wife?”

“And other things. You know what he’s doing here, don’t you?”

“Business interests?”

“The Aswan Dam. He represents a consortium of French interests who are tendering for the next phase.”

“I thought it had gone to Aird and Co.?”

“Well, it has, and the French are not too happy about that. They say that all the contracts have gone to British firms and they wonder why.”

“Cheaper?”

“Dearer, actually.”

“Better engineers?”

“We say so, naturally. The French have a different view. They say it’s to do with who awards the contracts.”

“The Ministry of Public Works. Egyptians.”

“And with a British Adviser at the head.”

Most of the great ministries had British Advisers. It was one of the ways in which the Consul-General’s power was exercised. In theory Egypt was still a province of the Ottoman Empire and the Khedive, its nominal ruler, owed allegiance to the Sultan at Istanbul. Earlier in the last century, however, a strong Khedive had effectively declared himself independent of Istanbul. Weaker successors had run the country into debt and exchanged dependence on Turkey for dependence on European bankers. In order to retrieve the tottering Khedivial finances, and recover their loans, the British had moved in; and had not moved out. For twenty-five years Egypt had been “guided” by the British Consul-General: first by Cromer’s strong hand, more recently by the less certain Gorst. “There’s a lot of money involved.”

“That’s what the French think. They’ve made a Diplomatic protest.”

“And got nowhere, I presume.”

“It’s a bit embarrassing all the same. So we might give them something to shut them up. There’s a subcontract to go out for constructing a masonry apron downstream of the dam sluices to protect the rock. We might let them have that. That’s where Moulin comes in. At least we think so. There are a lot of French interests jostling for the contract.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Find him.”

“That’s a bit of a tall order.”

“And quickly. Before the contract is awarded. You see, the French think we might have had a hand in it!”

“In what?”

“The kidnapping.”

“They think we kidnapped him? That’s ridiculous!”

“It’s too well organized for us to be behind it, you mean? I tried that argument on the Old Man but he doesn’t like it.”

“Why would we want to kidnap him?”

“To affect the bidding. The French think we are still determined to influence the result. They have an inflated regard for our duplicity.”

“That’s because they are so duplicitous themselves they can’t believe anyone else would act straight.”

“I’ll try that one on him too.”

“However,” said Owen, “I wasn’t really planning to get involved in this one.”

“I think you ought to revise your plans. The French are holding us responsible for Moulin’s safety.”

“In a general way, of course…”

“In a particular way. They say that the Mamur Zapt is responsible for law and order in Cairo. The kidnapping of a French citizen is a matter of law and order. Therefore the Mamur Zapt is responsible for Monsieur Moulin. Personally responsible.”

“Ridiculous!”

“They think you’ve got you, boyo. If I were you I wouldn’t stay on the fringe.”

The Press had asked for a conference.

“They’ll just be wanting a briefing. You handle it,” Garvin had said.

Owen, whose duties included Press censorship, was used to the Press. But that was the Egyptian Press. The conference included representatives of the European Press and he was not used to them.