like you to meet’
It was the girl.
‘Fräulein von Ramsberg; the Mamur Zapt.’
‘Ah, the Mamur Zapt!’ said the girl, as if she knew about Mamur Zapts.
‘Fräulein von Ramsberg has just completed a crossing of the Sinai desert. On camel.’
‘Good heavens!’ said Owen.
‘But you yourself, who have lived so long in this part of the world, have no doubt made similar journeys?’ she suggested.
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘No?’
‘I do occasionally go out of Cairo. Reluctantly,’ said Owen.
The girl laughed.
‘You are a city man. Well, there are different sorts of Arabists. I am a desert one.’
‘I do admire people like yourself who make these long, arduous journeys.’
This wasn’t entirely true. In fact, it wasn’t true at all. He thought they were crazy. He had done some camel-riding, which he had found most uncomfortable, and quite a lot of horse-riding, especially in India; but on the whole he preferred sitting in cafés.
‘Fräulein von Ramsberg has a request to make,’ said the attaché.
‘I wish to make a journey, and I wondered if you would give me a firman.’
A firman was a kind of permit.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I want to go west out of Cairo and then drop down to the top of the Old Salt Road.’
‘That’s quite a journey!’
She laughed.
‘That’s the kind of journey that I like.’
Her English was very good.
‘Well, rather you than me.’
‘You wouldn’t like to come with me?’
‘No, thanks!’
‘A pity. Just the firman, then.’
‘Actually, you don’t need a permit to go there.’
‘Nevertheless, a letter of some kind from you would, I am sure, be of great help.’
‘If you wish. But I don’t think it will help much down there.’
‘Does not the word of the Mamur Zapt strike terror into men’s hearts in even the most remote parts of Egypt?’
‘I very much doubt it. When are you setting out?’
‘At the end of the week.’
‘Well, I’ll get it to you before then. And perhaps in return you would like to accompany me on one of my sorts of expedition?’
‘I very much would,’ said Miss von Ramsberg.
‘You great dope!’ said his friend, Paul.
‘Dope? Why?’
‘Agreeing to give her a letter of recommendation.’
‘It’s just a letter!’
‘It will have your name on it, won’t it?’
‘Yes, but it’s not even a firman!’
‘That’s something we ought to think about introducing,’ said Paul. ‘A firman for people like her.’
‘People like her?’
‘What do you think she wants to travel in Egypt for?’
‘She likes travelling. She’s just crossed the Sinai peninsula –’
‘Yes, I know. Another of these great camel-riders. Pain in the ass, all of them. They upset the local tribes, get killed or kidnapped, and then you’ve got to spend a lot of time – and money! – looking for them.’
‘She seems to have managed it all right without any of those things happening.’
‘Oh, sure! Competent, too. Well, if she’s so competent, how come she lost her way?’
‘Lost her way? I didn’t know that.’
‘The Sinai is one of those areas which, being a border region, does require a firman. When she applied for hers she had to specify a route. Which she then did not follow.’
‘Well, hell, all kinds of things –’
‘She didn’t make any attempt to follow it. She didn’t go anywhere near it. Instead she followed the route that Saladin took against the Crusaders.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Which is likely to be the route if anyone else was invading Egypt.’
‘Invading!’
‘It would take the Turks a matter of days to get to the border.’
‘She’s not a Turk, she’s –’
‘A German. Yes, I know. And the Germans are building the railways which are going to help them get to the border.’
‘Paul, you don’t mean –?’
‘Yes, I do.’
The Mamur Zapt’s remit was confined to Egypt and he did not follow very closely what was happening beyond its borders. He thought, however, that Paul was making too much of this. It was unlike him to be so alarmist; but perhaps now that he was working so closely with Kitchener, as his Oriental Secretary, some of Kitchener’s own alarmism with respect to anything beyond his borders was rubbing off on him.
‘We can’t be sure, of course,’ Paul said now, softening slightly, ‘but just in case she is, we oughtn’t to go out of our way to encourage her!’
‘It’s just a letter!’
‘Can you write it in such a way as to lead to information coming back as to where exactly she is?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘She’s in Cairo for the best part of a week. It would be interesting to know what she’s up to while she’s here.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact –’
He had given her a choice of two places: the Semiramis, which had a dining room with a romantic view over the river, and the Mirabelle, which was a French restaurant in the noisy Arab Mouski. She chose the Semiramis; Owen would have chosen the Mirabelle.
‘But then I am romantic,’ she protested.
‘Is that what brought you out to these parts?’
‘Yes. But not in the way that you think. There are two sides to being a romantic the side that gets you bowled over by the moon on the water, and the rebellious side. It was that other side that led to me coming out here.’
‘Who or what were you rebelling against?’
‘My family. The life they were charting for me – the life of a rich woman in Germany. My family are’ – she grimaced – ‘respectable. We have an estate. The men for generations have been soldiers, the women, soldiers’ wives. Which means you spend your whole life in boring garrison towns. And then you retire to your boring estate. And it is all so predictable.
‘My brothers knew from the start that they would be soldiers. For a long time I thought I would be a soldier, too, and joined them in their horse-riding. But then they went off and it suddenly became apparent that all there was for me was marriage to some absolutely dreadful man.
‘I bought time. I said I wanted to travel. Some relations took me out with them to the Bosphorus. And then I looked around.’
‘And