the moment he did not get that feeling. The city was tense, certainly, and, given its normal volatility, there was plenty of potential for an explosion. In a city with over twenty different nationalities, at least five major religions apart from Islam, three principal languages and over a score of minor ones, four competing legal systems and, in effect, two Governments, the smallest spark could set off a major conflagration. Owen always had the feeling that he was sitting on a vast, unstable powder-keg.
But he didn’t have that feeling more than usual. There was trouble in the city, yes, there were incidents, dozens of them, but he felt they would all fade away—in so far as they ever could fade away—if only the Khedive would stop his bloody dithering and form a new Government.
Until that happened he just had to hold on and damp things down. On the whole he thought he would be able to manage that. The Pashas were no great problem. After the attack on Ali Osman they would all be prudently keeping out of sight. The demonstrations, the stone-throwing, the attacks on property, they could all be handled in the normal way.
Even that following business was all right, so long as it stayed at following. It was only if it went beyond that that he would worry.
As in the case of Fairclough.
The attack on Fairclough, simply as crime, did not concern Owen. Investigating it was not his business. Nor was it, curiously, that of the police. In Egypt investigation of crimes was the responsibility of the Department of Prosecutions of the Ministry of Justice, the Parquet, as it was known.
What concerned Owen as Mamur Zapt were the political aspects of the affair. The Mamur Zapt was roughly the equivalent of the Head of the Political Branch of the CID in England. Only roughly, because the post was unique to Cairo and included such things as responsibility for the Secret Police, a body of considerable importance to some previous Khedives when they were establishing their power but now significant only as an intelligence-gathering network.
Fairclough as the near-victim of some private quarrel or dispute did not interest him; Fairclough as the near-victim of a terrorist attack was a very different matter.
Up till now there had been no conclusive evidence that it was one or the other. The Parquet’s investigations had so far failed to uncover any private grudge. Nor had they been able to unearth any further information about his attackers.
They had, however, recovered two of the spent bullets and sent them to the Government Laboratories for examination. First analysis had failed to match them with any gun used in previous terrorist attempts.
This was quite significant, as in Egypt terrorists tended to cling on to their firearms, using them repeatedly and making no effort to cover their tracks by employing new ones. It was a pattern of behaviour inherited from the country’s rural areas, where a gun was a treasured possession, jealously guarded and preserved, bound together with bits of wire, until it was long past an age of decent retirement.
If a private quarrel was ruled out, this suggested that a new terrorist group was beginning to operate, a hypothesis Nikos favoured on other grounds.
‘They’re inexperienced,’ he said. ‘They fired from too far away.’
Beginners often did that, either because they were nervous or because they did not know the characteristics of their weapons. Small arms were effective only at very close range. The most successful assassination attempts occurred when the assailant ran right up to the victim and shot him at point-blank range, a fact which it was very useful to know when arranging protection for the Consul-General or Khedive.
Of course, such evidence was very speculative and Nikos, who took a detached view of such things, was really waiting for other evidence to come along; such as another attack.
Meanwhile, he was attempting an analysis of the reports of following that had come in. There were dozens of them.
‘Nearly all of them imaginary,’ he complained.
‘Mine wasn’t bloody imaginary,’ said Owen.
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘Of course it bloody wasn’t, I saw two men.’
‘Yes, but were they anything to do with it?’
‘Of course they were something to do with it!’
‘How do you know? They were just standing there. They might have been buying a camel or something.’
Owen, who found Nikos’s pedantic logic very tiresome on occasions, resisted a temptation to kick his ass.
‘Anyway,’ said Nikos, ‘you haven’t described them properly.’
‘What do you mean, I haven’t described them properly?’
‘No detail.’
‘There wasn’t time to notice detail.’
‘They didn’t just disappear. They must have walked away. That would take time.’
‘A couple of steps?’
‘Long enough to see something.’
‘Not from where I was. My view was interrupted.’
‘It was a chance,’ said Nikos accusingly.
‘Look,’ said Owen, ‘there was a reason why I didn’t stand out in the middle of the street and examine them carefully. It was that I didn’t want to get a bullet in my head.’
Nikos bent prudently over the papers on his desk.
Owen stalked indignantly over to the earthenware pot standing in the window where it would keep cool and poured himself a glass of water. He picked up a copy of the Parquet’s first report and settled down to read it.
A few moments went by. Then Nikos coughed slightly.
Owen looked up.
‘Young or old?’ said Nikos.
‘What?’
‘Young or old? Those two men. Were they young or old?’
‘Young, I think.’
‘Galabeahs?’
‘Shirt and trousers, I think.’
‘Short, fat, tall, thin?’
‘About medium, I’d say. Slightly built, perhaps.’
‘Young,’ said Nikos.
‘Probably. It would go with them being inexperienced.’
‘They needn’t be the same two. The group as a whole might be young. In fact, it probably would be.’
‘What about the other cases?’
‘The other reports? Nine-tenths imaginary or so vague as to be useless. About six worth looking at.’
‘Including mine?’
‘You’re on the margin.’
‘Fairclough’s?’
‘No detail on the following. Useful detail from the shooting, though not much of it.’
‘What did you get from the others?’
‘Two people, nearly always. Men, young, Western-style clothes.’
Owen thought for a moment.
‘That could be good,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘It could mean there’s only one group operating. If it’s the same pattern in each case.’
‘It’s the same pattern, I think.’
‘I hope it is. That would make things a lot easier.’
‘Did you think it wasn’t?’
‘No, no, not particularly. You always worry in a situation like this, with general unrest, that they might all start coming at you,