Michael Pearce - The Mamur Zapt and the return of the Carpet

“He might!” Fakhri insisted. “If he thought he was securing a new base of popular support.”

“The Nationalists would never go along,” said Mahmoud.

“They would,” said Fakhri, “if they thought there was power at the end of it.”

“Jemal?” said Mahmoud sceptically. “El Gazzari?”

“Not them,” Fakhri conceded. “But others would. Abdul Murr.” “Never!”

“He might,” said Fakhri. “He’s got very fed up with Jemal and el Gazzari lately. Understandably,” he added.

“Fed up is one thing,” said Mahmoud. “Going in with a man like Nuri is another.”

“It’s not just that,” said Fakhri. “Abdul Murr is no fool. He thinks that if the Nationalists could once get into power and show they could govern, then the Khedive wouldn’t be able to do without them.”

It was plausible. Certainly Owen felt so, and probably Mahmoud felt so. Mahmoud, however, clearly had a distaste for the whole thing. It ran counter both to his strong dislike of Nuri and his equally strong sympathy for the Nationalists.

“Nuri in a Nationalist government?” he said. “I don’t believe it.” “It wouldn’t be a Nationalist government,” said Fakhri. “The Khedive won’t agree to that. It would have to be a coalition and Nuri would have to lead it.”

“Lead it!” cried Mahmoud.

“The Khedive won’t agree on any other terms,” said Fakhri. "That’s why Nuri is in such a strong position.”

“They won’t go along,” said Mahmoud.

“You’d be surprised!” said Fakhri.

There was a little silence. Owen could see Mahmoud struggling to come to terms with what Fakhri had said. He was still reluctant to accept it.

“You say these things, Fakhri,” he said, “but how real are they?” “Very real.”

“How real?”

“Real enough to worry all the other political groupings. Real enough,” said Fakhri, with a glance at Owen, “to worry the Mamur Zapt apparently. When I saw you taking an interest,” he said to Owen, “I guessed that the British suspected something.”

Owen let it pass. Sometimes there were dangers in being over-subtle.

He noticed Mahmoud look at him, however, and wondered if he would have some explaining to do.

“It could be a powerful combination,” he said, “the Nationalists and the Khedive.”

“That’s just it,” said Fakhri. “It worried us, too.”

“Us?”

“Everybody, really. There are various factions around the Khedive, rivals of Nuri. They don’t want it to happen. Then there are the Nationalists themselves. Plenty of them are opposed to it. Jemal and el Gazzari for a start. And then, of course,” said Fakhri, “there are moderate groups, like my own, who are worried about being left out in the cold.”

“And you were worried especially.”

“Not especially,” said Fakhri. “Why do you think that?”

“Because you did something about it.”

Fakhri was silent for a moment.

“Not especially,” he said again. “It was just that someone had to do something.”

“And that someone just happened to be you?” said Owen sceptically.

“Yes,” said Fakhri defiantly.

Owen let the pause drag on.

“So you decided,” he said at last, “to send Nuri a signal?”

“Yes. We thought that if we sent him a direct warning-”

“By killing Ahmed?”

“Killing?” Fakhri looked shaken. “No,” he said, “how could you think that? We wanted to give him a good thrashing. That was all.” “Why pick on Ahmed?”

“Because he’s Nuri’s son. Because Nuri loves him. Because Nuri has been using him as a go-between.”

He looked at Owen.

“I did try to tell you,” he said, almost reproachfully. “I’ve been trying to point you in his direction. I thought if you knew how far things had got, you might find a way of stopping it.”

“How far had they got?” asked Owen.

“Further than wp thought they would. Nuri is a cunning old devil. He seemed to be persuading Abdul Murr. It suddenly looked as if things were coming to a head. As if he might succeed.”

“Was that the point of Nuri’s visit to the al Liwa offices?”

“Yes. That was part of it, though the real fixing was to come later, in private. Anyway, we had to do something. I wanted to let Nuri know that we knew. So-” Fakhri shrugged. “I hired those men. They didn’t overdo it, did they?”

Again the sympathetic brown eyes regarded Owen anxiously. Again Owen did not reply. The longer Fakhri was kept on the hook the better.

“I am sorry,” said Fakhri softly. “It was just one of those things. Just politics.”

Even the coffee did not help. Sensing the mood that Owen was in, Yussuf entered silently, filled the mug and withdrew without saying a word. The shutters, which had been opened first thing to air the room, had long since been closed. Owen had been in for three hours already, and all the time he had been thinking about what Fakhri had said the evening before.

They had got nowhere, nowhere on anything really important. Ahmed’s thrashing, his and Nuri’s visit to al Liwa, what Nuri was up to, all this had been explained, and it did not seem to have advanced matters one little jot. The original attack on Nuri, the grenades, the Tademah connection, if there was a Tademah connection, they knew no more about now than they did before he and Mahmoud had gone to the hammam.

He had thought for a moment, the moment when Fakhri had revealed himself, that everything had suddenly tumbled into place. It had been a shock but once he had recovered he had felt that he had grasped the true pattern. The man behind had finally declared himself.

But it was not true. Fakhri was not the man behind, or if he was behind anything, it was only the most trivial parts of the pattern. At first in his fury Owen had thought Fakhri capable of anything. Now he had simmered down he realized that Fakhri was not really like that. The trouble was that Owen believed him. He believed what Fakhri had said the previous night. That Nuri was scheming along those lines was completely credible, knowing Nuri. That the Nationalists, or some of them, were tempted, was entirely likely, despite what Mahmoud might think. That the Khedive would play along, distinctly probable. That the other parties would be worried, certain. Even that Fakhri, who was definitely not a man without resource, would take it upon himself to do something about it.

And if he did decide to intervene, it was not at all unlikely that he would act in the way he said he had: choosing the gentler path of issuing a warning, picking his target with perception and ensuring that things did not go too far. No knives. Owen had noticed it himself.

The nub of it was that he did not believe Fakhri was a killer. He had only his feelings to go on, and he had already been deceived by Fakhri. Still, he stood by his feelings. He did not believe Fakhri was a killer.

But then, how did he know there was a killer involved? No one had been killed yet. The attempt on Nuri’s life had not succeeded. It had been bungled. If someone like Mustafa had been chosen to perform the actual act, that did not exactly argue for someone behind the scenes who really knew his business, a cold, calculating killer by proxy.

All he had to go on was the whiff of fear in the Cairo air. He smelt it himself.

Not just that. The grenades. They were what chilled him. If you went for grenades you meant business. In a crowded city especially. The attack on Nuri was one thing. At the end of the day it was not very important, and anyway he could leave that to Mahmoud.

But the grenades were quite another thing. And that he could not leave to anybody else. They were his pigeon. Now that he had been put in charge of arrangements for the Carpet, his pigeon only.