The Mamur Zapt and the Donkey-Vous

‘Did he buy anything?’

‘No. Just came straight back.’

‘To the Frenchman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Spoke to him?’

Mr Colthorpe Hartley hesitated.

‘Think so. Stopped looking. Can’t go on watching a chap forever, you know. Bad form.’

‘So you looked away.’

‘Yes.’

‘And when you looked again, the Frenchman had gone?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Just one thing more, Mr Colthorpe Hartley,’ said Owen. ‘You spoke of seeing a suffragi. Or one of the others. One of the others?’

‘One of the other chaps from the hotel. The ones who go out with parties. Take you to the bazaar.’

‘A dragoman?’

‘That’s right. A dragoman.’

‘Would you be able to identify him if we paraded the hotel dragomans before you?’

‘These chaps all look alike to me,’ said Mr Colthorpe Hartley.

Mahmoud established with Reception the name of Monsieur Moulin’s petite amie and sent a note up asking if she could see him. Madame Chévènement replied that she was still indisposed but would make an effort to see him on the following morning at eleven o’clock.

Nikos was going through Owen’s engagements for the week. He had not included the Moulin affair. When Owen drew attention to this he shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘You’re not going to be spending much time on this, surely?’

‘Garvin wants me to. He says it’s political.’

‘It will all be over by next week. They’ll pay, won’t they?’

‘Probably. Though whether we ought to let it go at that’s a different matter.’

‘There’s not much else you can do, is there? They won’t want you interfering.’

‘Yes, but it’s the principle of the thing. If you let Zawia get away with it once, they’ll try it again. And again. Until they’re caught.’

‘In the end they’ll make a mistake and then we’ll catch them. Until then there’s no sense in bothering about them.’

‘If we don’t work on the case how will we know about the mistake?’

‘Your friend El Zaki is working on the case, isn’t he?’ Nikos disapproved of too warm relationships with other departments. ‘Why don’t you leave it to him?’

‘It could blow up in our face. That’s what Garvin’s worried about.’

‘The French are quite efficient at this sort of thing.’

‘They’re the ones who are on to me.’

‘Well, obviously they’re not going to miss a chance to make trouble. Anyway, if they can take it out on you they won’t feel so bad about paying.’

‘We don’t know they will pay yet.’

‘Of course they’ll pay. Incidentally, has the follow-up message got through yet?’

‘About paying? No, I don’t think so.’

‘It probably has. They’ll keep quiet about it.’

‘I think I’d have heard. They’d have warned me off.’

‘Perhaps it hasn’t, then.’ Nikos considered. ‘If you’re so worried about it,’ he said, ‘I could ask our man at the hotel to keep an eye open for it.’

‘Have we got a man at the hotel?’

‘We’ve got a man at all the hotels. The main ones. It doesn’t cost much,’ he assured Owen, thinking he detected a shade of concern and assuming, naturally, that the concern was financial and not moral.

On becoming Mamur Zapt Owen had inherited a huge information network, which Nikos administered with pride. What was striking about it was not its size, since a highly developed political secret service was normal in the Ottoman Empire and the British had merely taken it over, nor its ability to find informers, since people came cheap in Cairo: rather, it was its efficiency, which was not at all characteristic of the Ottoman Empire. It was, however, characteristic of Nikos, who brought the pure passion of the born bureaucrat to his work.

‘Where is he?’

‘At Reception.’

‘That might be useful.’

‘It was where the first message was left.’

Owen thought about it. ‘If we could get a look at it—’

Nikos nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. Note the contents and pass it on.’

‘It could all go ahead.’

‘They would pay.’

‘Moulin would be released.’

‘And with any luck,’ said Nikos,’ we would be watching and could follow it up.’