The Mingrelian Conspiracy mz-9 Page 19

  The gyassa had arrived in the afternoon when all work, indeed, life, was at a standstill and there were few people about to see the three men, in boots and carrying two heavy bags, walk down the gangway and on to the bank. From there they made their way into the town and entered a low house near the mile-long bazaar. They did not emerge from it until well after the sun had set in glorious red and gold upon the river and the Duke was already on his third ice-cooled vodka.

  There was some delay while a donkey was obtained but once it was loaded they set off through the dark streets. If there was anything unusual about the scene it was only that men were working.

  When they came to the entrance of the lock they sat down and waited. Some twenty yards from the shore the Grand Duke’s great dahabeeyah turned slowly in the flow of the river, reached the limit of its mooring ropes and then turned back again. There were lights on the vessel and occasionally through the windows one caught the flash of tureens and the scurrying white of suffragis-the Duke had gone native to the extent that while on board he had allowed himself to be served by local Egyptians. Fairly local, that was, for crew, suffragis and servants belonged, like the boat itself, to a Levantine millionaire who had lent it to the Khedive for the occasion.

  The men on the bank sat on in silence until gradually the activity on the dahabeeyah subsided and one by one the lights went out.

  Then they stirred.

  Two of them went off along the river bank and a little later returned in a small boat, inexpertly but quietly paddled, nudging its way along the river’s edge. The third man, meanwhile, had been bent over the bags.

  One of the men got out of the boat and came up the bank. He and the man left on shore picked up one of the bags and began to carry it down to the water.

  And then dark figures were all around them.

  Chapter 13

  'Before you depart,’ said Owen, ‘there are one or two things I would like to know. Small things first: how did you know the explosives had arrived in the docks?’

  ‘The man in the office was looking out for them,’ said Katarina’s father.

  ‘Abdulla Arbat? What was he looking out for?’

  ‘A consignment from Aleppo marked Baking Powder. He had the names, fictitious, of course, of consigner and consignee.’

  ‘You were paying him, naturally?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘And then you collected them yourself. Unwise, surely?’

  ‘Unwise,’ Katarina’s father agreed. ‘But then, time was short and there were so few people I could trust. And I was in Suez myself, having just disembarked.’

  ‘It gave us a positive identification.’

  ‘The boy?’ Katarina’s father looked glum. ‘The problem was that time was so short! I would have had to get people from Cairo and I knew that you were having them watched. Besides, by that time I felt that I had better do it myself. So many things had gone wrong. Mishandled! I’m not blaming my father, but there were so many things he didn’t know. Gold, for instance! My God, when I heard-! And Djugashvili was not much better. They’d never done anything criminal in their lives before.’

  ‘Whereas you-?’

  Katarina’s father laughed.

  ‘The trouble was that I was in Paris. It all blew up very suddenly, you see: the Grand Duke’s visit, the idea that this might give us a chance to strike back-’

  ‘Whose was the idea?’

  Katarina’s father looked at him.

  ‘I shan’t tell you,’ he said. ‘At first I thought, well, a good idea but I’m too far away and there isn’t time to organize anything. But then when I heard there was support-’

  ‘Not as much support as you supposed.’

  ‘No,’ Katarina’s father agreed, ‘not as much as I supposed.’

  ‘Your father’s enthusiasm ran away with him.’

  ‘Perhaps. His letters at first were optimistic and confident. Good young men, he said, men of action. Well, we know, don’t we,’ said Katarina’s father, looking at Owen, ‘that men of action are a lot rarer than men of words. Intelligent action, at any rate. And so it proved.’ He shook his head. ‘At first I thought I could stay out of it, that they would manage without me. I thought it might even be better if I stayed in Paris, doing things from afar. I knew by that time that you were interested in my father. I thought it would be better for me to stay behind the scenes.’

  ‘And so it would have been.’

  Katarina’s father spread his hands.

  ‘But then things began to go wrong. They had problems finding money for the explosives-’

  ‘You had money,’ said Owen. ‘Why didn’t you pay?’

  ‘I would have done. But at that time I thought it wasn’t a problem. My father assured me-’

  ‘Ever optimistic!’ said Owen.

  ‘Yes, ever optimistic. Besides’-he broke off and gave Owen a quick look-‘you may not believe this, but I thought of the money as not being mine but the storytellers’. What I was in it for was for the stories, not for the money. The money I meant to be theirs. It was a genuine Benefit Society-’

  ‘Criminal,’ said Owen.

  ‘Well, yes, criminal. But-’

  ‘Tell me about the explosives. Why did you hit on them in the first place?’

  ‘Why not a bullet, you mean?’ Katarina’s father sighed. ‘Their idea, not mine. They wanted the Duke to go out with as big a bang as possible. The bigger the bang, they thought, the greater the attention that would be paid-to the Mingrelians, to what Russia had been doing in the Caucasus. They seemed so pleased with the idea that I did not intervene. Besides, I thought there was more chance of them succeeding with a bomb. You have to get it just right with a bullet, and already I was beginning to have doubts-’

  ‘One thing that puzzles me,’ said Owen: ‘Djugashvili. I pulled him in, as you know, and when I spoke to him he did not seem to know that you had already got hold of the explosives.’

  ‘He didn’t know. When I landed at Suez I found a message from my father awaiting me. He was in despair. You had just seized the gold and he thought this was the end. Well, I was in Suez and I knew Abdulla Arbat of old, so I decided to act. No one knew about it till later.’

  Owen nodded.

  Katarina’s father hesitated.

  ‘May I ask when you knew?’

  ‘About you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was looking for someone else. Near Sorgos. I ruled you out, first because you were abroad and then because, well, I got the impression from your father that you were bookish-’

  ‘Ineffectual?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  Katarina’s father smiled.

  ‘He still thinks I’m ineffectual.’

  ‘And not greatly interested in the kinds of battles he wants to fight.’

  ‘Well, in a way he’s right. I wasn’t altogether misleading you when I said in the shop the other day that the battles I wanted to fight were cultural ones.’

  ‘Nevertheless, you came down on his side in the end.’

  ‘On the side of political action?’

  ‘Violence.’

  ‘Yes. I’m still not happy about it.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to think it over, won’t you?’

  Katarina’s father shrugged.

  ‘Actually,’ said Owen, ‘you did not mislead me. Rather the reverse. You see, I already knew about you and the storytellers. If I had had any notion that you were merely bookish, in your father’s sense, that had already been dispelled. I had been looking for a manager, someone who was giving the whole thing direction. At first I thought it might be Djugashvili but he always seemed too limited, a man of the Der. When I met you and realized that you were here, back in Cairo, I began to wonder. And when you went to such pains to direct attention away from yourself, even at the expense of your father, I began to suspect.’

  ‘I should have stayed behind the scenes.’

  ‘Or out of it.’

  ‘What wil
l you do with my father?’

  ‘Release him.’

  And Katarina?’

  ‘Leave her alone.’

  ‘Not too alone, I hope,’ said Katarina’s father politely. Sorgos’s son and Mingrelian to the last.

  The procession wheeled left at the Bab-el-Louk. Ahead of him Owen could see the wide open space of Abdin Square.

  Once there he could afford to relax. The square was lined with soldiers and anyway, the procession, crossing straight across the middle, would be sufficiently far from the crowd for only the steadiest shot to succeed, and in Cairo assassins’ hands were often fervent but seldom steady. At the other end of the square was Abdin Palace and once there, behind its iron railings, the Khedive and the Grand Duke would be safe.

  It was, actually, the Khedive that Owen was worried about more. For the most part he stayed prudently out of sight of his people, seldom appearing in public, and the opportunity to take a pot shot at him might prove irresistible. The same thought had occurred to the Khedive himself of the previous day with the result that at the last moment the route originally planned had been drastically shortened. The only drawback to the shortened route was that it took the procession past the School of Law, a hotbed of nationalism, where the students would certainly have demonstrated had they not been sent home for the day and the buildings locked. Even so, Owen had been a little apprehensive. The hazard had been safely negotiated, however, and now, with the Bab-el-Louk turned, the end was in sight.

  There was the Royal Carriage, with the plumes and tufted lances of the Royal Guard riding alongside. Owen had strongly advocated this arrangement, not on the grounds of their fighting qualities but because there was a better chance of them intercepting a bullet meant for the royal pair. So far as military action went, he had a great deal more faith in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, a point which had not escaped the Welsh Fusiliers when they had suggested them for the Guard of Honour.

  The Fusiliers were standing a little to the right of Owen, lining both sides of the street at the entrance to Abdin Square. They were placing bets on how many of the Light Infantry would collapse before the procession reached the cool harbour of the Palace grounds.

  ‘Two gaps second rank from the rear-there must be more than that!’

  ‘They’ve closed ranks. At least four!’

  ‘No, no, I make it six!’

  ‘There’s another going to go at any moment-there he goes!’

  One of the Fusiliers stepped out and dragged him into the side out of the way of the horses.

  ‘You’re all right now, mate. Just lie there. You’re well out of it. They’ll be marking time in the square for the next half hour.’

  The rest of the escort went past. With the exception of the Light Infantry, they were all from the Egyptian Army, and very picturesque they looked: the Mounted Camel Brigade, the Mounted Horse, the Sudanese infantry with their tall red fezzes and their long bayonets, sundry Egyptian regiments under the Khedive’s banner.

  Meanwhile, the British soldiers lined the streets, their sun helmets blocking the view for the crowd massed behind them.

  The Royal Carriage swept at last into the Square, the Khedive waving a royal hand, the Grand Duke inclining a ducal back. The Guard closed in around it. As the other detachments came into the Square they took up positions to the left and right until eventually the royal carriage was barely visible.

  The Fusiliers had been right. The Guard had to mark time while the rest of the escort was deploying into the Square. Two more Light Infantry fell over.

  At last the Royal Carriage rumbled forward and entered the Palace gates, the Light Infantry now running behind, with the Royal Guard still strung alongside. The detachments in the Square came to a halt.

  ‘Very satisfactory,’ said Shearer at the debriefing next day.

  ‘Casualties?’

  ‘About fifty down with sunstroke, sir.’

  ‘Oh, not bad!’ said the major.

  ‘All British?’ asked Paul.

  ‘If we exclude what went on in the cafes and bars last night,’ said Owen.

  ‘Understandable reaction,’ said the major hastily. ‘Men been on parade since dawn.’

  ‘But I thought Captain Shearer still held responsibility? Until midnight?’

  ‘I don’t feel, sir,’ said Shearer unhappily, ‘that we should abandon the concept of unified policing just because of this one instance-’

  ‘Unified policing?’ said Paul. ‘Ah, yes, but under whom?’

  ‘I think the Army has shown what it can do, sir.’

  ‘But the crucial arrest, I understood, took place on water. Now, I believe the views of the Navy are-’

  ‘Again, perhaps?’ murmured Zeinab.

  ‘Certainly,’ said Owen.

  Afterwards, Zeinab was disposed to chat.

  ‘I could, I suppose, become an opera singer,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve got everything it takes,’ said Owen encouragingly. ‘Bar the voice, of course.’

  ‘Does that really matter?’ asked Zeinab. ‘Couldn’t I hire a claque? Oh, of course, I was forgetting! That would cost money and rather destroy the point.’

  ‘What point?’ asked Owen drowsily. ‘Why do you want to become an opera singer, anyway?’

  ‘To make money.’

  ‘What’s happened to the allowance from your father?’

  ‘Nothing’s happened to it. I just need more, that’s all.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To support you.’

  ‘Support me?’ said Owen, waking up. ‘Why are you going to have to do that?’

  ‘Well, you’re certainly not going to support me, are you? Not on the pitiful pay you get.’

  Owen knew where he was now. Zeinab was talking about marriage. Or was she? Seriously? As opposed to merely entertaining the idea? Zeinab liked, he knew, to entertain the idea of marriage, especially in moments of tenderness; but that was not quite the same as really thinking about it. When they really thought about it, they tended to shy away from the sheer difficulty of the whole business. Zeinab at these moments took refuge behind such apparently practical problems as where would they find enough money to live on. For Owen, who never thought about money anyway, that wasn’t the problem at all. What was the problem was how a British official could marry an Egyptian and stay in his job, particularly a job as sensitive as that of the Mamur Zapt. What effect would it have on his career? And what, come to think of it, was happening to his career anyway? In British service overseas you retired early. You’d hardly got there before they were heaving you out. Wherever you were going to get to, you had to get there quick. Had he already got there? If so, what had happened to that period of affluence which he had always supposed would intervene between impecunious apprenticeship and equally impecunious superannuation? With these and similar considerations it was easy to deflect the more serious issues which clustered around their relationship.

  Entertaining the idea of marriage, as opposed to seriously facing it, was, perhaps, what they both did. It occurred to him that Zeinab had been entertaining the idea rather more often lately. God, what did that mean-?

  He stole a glance at her as she lay beside him. Relaxed, now, she lay back comfortably with a half smile on her lips.

  He was thoroughly awake now. God, this was serious. He had some real thinking to do. What would the Consul-General say? What the Khedive? Would it have to go to the Secretary of State? How would they manage? If he had to get another job? What job? But he would do it if she asked him. Wait a minute: wasn’t that the wrong way round? Oughtn’t he to be asking her? God, this was serious, much more serious than Grand Dukes or any of that stuff, you could massacre the whole damned lot for all he cared. This was serious!

  Or was it? Highly satisfied, Zeinab lay back and enjoyed the game.

  It was the very last engagement of the Grand Duke’s visit.

  The Fusiliers stood stiff and straight in the Grand Hall of the Palace.

  ‘Servic
es to the Tsar!’ intoned the Russian Charge.

  The Grand Duke pinned on another medal. He came to the end of the line.

  ‘Captain Owen, sir,’ whispered the Charge.

  ‘Order of Saint Vasili and Saint Vladimir!’

  ‘Well deserved!’ said the Grand Duke. ‘Well deserved! What was it for?’ he whispered to the Charge.

  ‘Suppressing the Mingrelian Conspiracy,’ said the Charge.

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