pulled himself together.
‘Well, Pasha, I can only hope you’re right.’
‘It is for the sake of the country, of course.’
‘Of course. And—and you think that Abdul Maher may have got wind of this—change of fortunes and tried to warn you off?’
‘Not warn,’ said Ali Osman reproachfully. ‘Kill.’
‘Attack, anyway. That Ali Maher may have been behind your unfortunate experience yesterday?’
‘Exactly,’ said Ali Osman with satisfaction.
Owen reflected.
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Ali Osman.
‘I shall certainly treat your suggestions very seriously. I shall start investigations at once.’
‘Excellent.’ Ali Osman’s face clouded slightly, however. ‘How long do you think it would be before you were in a position to arrest him?’ he asked, a trifle anxiously.
‘Oh, a week or two. Say two or three. Perhaps four.’
‘You don’t think you could do it more quickly?’
‘I would have to complete my investigations.’
‘Of course. Of course.’
Ali Osman still looked unhappy, however.
‘You don’t think,’ he said tentatively, ‘you don’t think you could, oh, let it be known, publicly, I mean, that you are investigating Abdul Maher?’
‘Why would I want to do that, Pasha?’
‘Oh, the public interest. It would be in the public interest. The people ought to know.’
‘And the Khedive?’
‘The Khedive ought to know, too,’ said Ali Osman, straightfaced.
Owen smiled. He understood Ali Osman’s political manœuvres perfectly.
‘I am sure,’ he said, getting up to go, ‘that this is something you will manage very expertly yourself.’
‘Ali Osman?’ said Nuri Pasha incredulously. ‘The man’s a fool. He stands no chance whatever.’
‘He seems to think he does.’
‘The man’s a joke!’
‘The Khedive has given him a wink. So he says.’
‘Utter nonsense!’
Nuri looked, however, a little upset.
‘Abdul Maher has fallen out of favour.’
‘Abdul Maher never was in favour. The Khedive detests him.’
‘Ali Osman considers him his chief rival. He believes he was behind the recent attack on him.’
‘Ali Osman has a fertile imagination,’ said Nuri. ‘Unfortunately, it vanishes entirely the moment he gets in office.’
‘The attack, at any rate, was genuine.’
‘Was he much hurt?’ asked Nuri, with pleasure rather than concern.
‘Bruised a little.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Nuri.
‘That, actually, was why I’ve come to see you. There have been a number of such attacks recently. I wanted to be sure that you were all right.’
‘Thank you. As you see, I am clinging to life with the skin of my teeth. How is Zeinab?’
Zeinab was Nuri’s daughter and a more than close friend of Owen.
‘She is very well, thank you. She reinforces my concern.’
‘Have you any particular reason for concern?’
‘No. It is just that this could be a time for settling old scores.’
A few years before, Nuri Pasha had been the Minister responsible for carrying through the prosecution and subsequent punishment of some villagers who had attacked a party of British Officers, wounding two and killing one. The punishment, on British insistence, had been exemplary; and Nuri had never been forgiven for it.
Nuri shrugged his shoulders.
‘It is never not a time for settling old scores,’ he said. ‘That is one of the things one just has to get used to.’
‘Has anything come up?’
‘Not out of the ordinary.’
‘Threats?’
‘As always.’
Nuri passed him a note. It read: ‘To the blood-sucking Nuri: The people have not forgotten. Your time is coming. Prepare, Nuri, prepare.’
Owen passed it back.
‘You have been receiving notes like this for years.’
‘And ignored them,’ said Nuri, ‘confident in the assumption that the Egyptian is always more ready to tell what he is going to do than actually to do it.’
‘A reasonable assumption. In general. However, just at the moment I think I would avoid testing it.’
‘Have you a suggestion?’
‘How about a holiday? The Riviera? Paris?’
Nuri, a total francophile, shook his head with genuine regret.
‘Circumstances, alas, keep me here.’
Owen could guess what the circumstances were. Nuri was another of the ever-hopeful veteran politicians. Owen thought, however, that he might be disappointed this time, along with Ali Osman and Abdul Maher. He was too identified with the old regime. There was a need, after Patros, for someone who could satisfy the Nationalists—satisfy, without giving in to them.
‘Would you like a bodyguard?’
‘The police?’ said Nuri sceptically. ‘Thank you, no. I feel safer without. I have, in fact, taken certain steps already.’
Nuri directed Owen’s attention to two ruffians lurking in the bougainvillaea behind him. They were Berbers from the south and armed from head to foot. They beamed at him cordially.
‘I have no fears should there be an attack on me at close quarters. And when I go out I take two Bedawin with me as well. They are excellent shots and used to people attempting to shoot them in the back. No, the only thing that worries me is a bomb.’
‘Surely there is no question of that?’
‘There have been rumours,’ said Nuri.
There were indeed rumours. Cairo was full of them. Owen’s agents brought fresh ones in every day. They came from the Court, from the famous clubs—the Khedivial, frequented by Egyptians and foreigners, the Turf and the Sporting Club, frequented by the British—from the colleges and university, from the cafés and bazaars.
The ones from the Moslem University of El Azhar and the colleges were the most alarming but it was there that the gap between rhetoric and reality was at its greatest. Or so Owen hoped.
The ones from the Court were alarming in a different way, for they were almost exclusively concerned with the current manœuvring about the Khedive, with who had his favour, who didn’t, who might be in, who was definitely out. There seemed to be no sense of anything beyond the narrow confines of the Court, no awareness of the impact the delay was having on the country at large.
The rumours from the Club were testimony to the general jitteriness. Owen tended to discount them, not because they were insignificant—in certain circumstances they might be very significant indeed—but because he felt he knew them already and understood them.
It was the rumours from the cafés and bazaars that he