Michael Pearce - The Face in the Cemetery

Schneider shrugged.

‘Maybe you’re just out of date,’ he suggested.

Maybe he was, thought Owen, as he drove back to Minya in one of the company trucks, lent for the occasion.

But now it nagged at him even more.

Trucks were still new in Egypt and it was the first time he had ridden in one. He wasn’t sure that he liked it. The sensation of speed was disturbing and it was very bumpy. Once they had left the cane behind them they were driving across open desert. There was no real road and they were thrown about heavily. He and McPhee both put their sun helmets on to protect their heads when they hit the roof. What with the unfamiliar motion, the constant jolting and the fumes from the engine, he began to feel more than a little queasy. He saw that McPhee’s face was looking increasingly strained, too.

Still, it certainly got you there quickly. He glanced at his watch. At this rate they would soon get to Minya and with any luck would be able to catch the afternoon boat.

‘Have you got them all now?’ asked the mamur.

‘I think so.’

‘Except for her, of course.’

‘Ought we to have something in writing?’ asked McPhee.

‘To say she’s dead?’

‘If we don’t, she’ll stay on a list somewhere and that could cause endless trouble.’

Owen looked at the mamur.

‘Will you be sending in a report?’

‘Report?’ said the mamur, as if it was the last thing that would occur to him.

‘She’s a foreigner. You have to file a report.’

The mamur looked very unhappy.

‘Certainly, certainly,’ he muttered.

Owen guessed there was no certainty at all.

‘When you do, I’d like to be sent a copy.’

‘Of course!’ said the mamur, even more unhappily.

The party was already assembled on the landing stage. Some had bags, some had cases. A little group of spectators watched curiously.

‘That it?’ asked Owen, as he went down on to the landing stage.

A police sergeant came forward and saluted smartly.

‘That’s it, Effendi,’ he said.

A woman suddenly broke away from the group, rushed up to Owen and held out her hands.

‘Take me!’ she said frantically, waving her hands in front of him. ‘Take me!’

‘You’re not German, are you?’

‘I’m married to one. That’s him, there. You can’t take him and not take me. He’s my husband!’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Owen. ‘We’re only taking Germans.’

‘But I’m married to one! That’s the same, isn’t it? We’ve been married for forty years! You can’t take him and not take me!’

‘I’m sorry.’

He hated this. He hated the whole thing. It was not what he had come into policing for. But then, when he had first become Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, there hadn’t been a war on.

War had come to Egypt like a bolt from the blue. Looking back, Owen could see that there had been plenty of signs that it was coming, but at the time he, like everyone else in Egypt, had not taken them seriously. He had put them down to the infantile war games that the Great Powers were forever engaging in, manoeuvres which were merely ritual. And then, suddenly, barely more than a month ago, the manoeuvres had turned out to be not merely ritual.

What had made it even more of a surprise was that no one in Egypt had been paying much attention. The declaration had come during the hottest part of the year, when everything in Egypt had closed down. Most members of the Government were on holiday on the Riviera. Those British officials whose turn had come round had left for England. Egyptian officials had headed for the coast. Kitchener himself, the Englishman in whose hands most of the strings of power in Egypt lay, had departed for Europe; for which relief Owen, who had not got on with the Consul-General, had been giving much thanks.

The great Government offices were largely empty, their occupants having migrated, like the rest of the population of Cairo, to the cafés, where the Mamur Zapt, confident that in the extreme heat even the most desperate of criminals would not be thinking of crime, tended to join them.

And so when the news hit Egypt it did not at first really register. After the initial shock, Egypt had shrugged its shoulders and got on with doing what it normally did in August. That is, nothing.

But then the first orders began to arrive from London and among them was the instruction to arrest, detain and place in internment all German nationals and other suspicious foreigners. In the cafés, unkind Egyptians asked if that included Englishmen.

Owen had hardly got into his office when he heard the phone ringing; and he had hardly got it into his hand before the person on the other end was speaking, or, rather, bellowing.

‘Owen, is that you? Look, this is damned silly! They’ve taken Becker.’

‘Becker?’

‘Sluices. He’s the one who knows about sluices. Do you know about sluices? No, I’m not surprised. Not many do. They’re tricky things. And once you’ve got someone who knows about them, you don’t muck him about! What is more, you hang on to him. Because if he goes, you won’t find another.

‘Now this chap’s really good. He’s been working for us for fifteen years. It’s got so now that I can’t do without him. With him gone, the whole bloody system will close down. Sluices, dams, then the lot.

‘How would they like that, then? You tell me. The whole country depends on water, the water depends on the dams, the dams depend on the sluices and the sluices depend on – yes, you’re right: this man Becker!’

‘I take it he’s German.’

‘Of course he’s German! Or something. What the hell’s that got to do with it? He does his job, like everyone else. Only much better, that’s the point.’

‘Yes, I know, but there’s a war on, and there’s this policy of intern –’

‘Sod the war! The whole system will collapse, I tell you. Look, Owen, you’ve got to do something, make an exception …

‘You can’t? It’s nothing to do with you? Then who the hell is it to do with? Don’t tell me. I know. It’s London, is it? I might have guessed. Well, look, you can bloody tell London –

‘Yes, I know, but they’ll listen to you more than they will to me. I’m just a stupid engineer, just someone who makes everything work. You’ve got the gift of the gab, their gab –

‘They won’t? All right, talk to someone here, then. How about Kitchener? He’s not entirely without sense, have a go at him –

‘He’s not here? He’s in London, too? I might have bloody known it! Look, there must be someone you can talk to about this man of mine –

‘All right, all right, I know there’s a policy of internment, and it’s got to be general, I can see that. But surely it can be applied sensibly? Surely people can be reasonable, surely you –

‘Why should you be an exception, Owen?!’

He decided, nevertheless, that he ought to do something. Calls like this were coming in all the time. He took his helmet and went across to the Consulate to have a word with his friend, Paul. Paul had been one of Kitchener’s ADCs and was now the Oriental Secretary.

He found him in Kitchener’s office; sitting indeed, in Kitchener’s chair.

‘At last!’ said Paul, with a dramatic sweep of his hand. ‘They held me back, but now I’ve made it!’

‘You’re not really in charge?’

‘Cunningham is nominally.’ Cunningham was the Financial Adviser. ‘But, as always, the reality of power is different.’

He wriggled in his seat.

‘Just trying it out for size,’ he said. ‘I find it a little small for me.’

‘All right, if you’re really in charge, there’s something you can do. It’s this damned internment policy.’