Georgiades was watching, too, and he saw, a little later, the porters come out of the madrassa and go across the street with Nassir to be paid. Georgiades didn’t need to go with them. He knew about this bit. Instead he waited beneath the columns of the madrassa and when Clarke came out, put his arms in a lock around his neck and waited for Owen’s men to come up and take him away.
In his room at the Bab-el-Khalk Owen sat behind his desk. Opposite him, with his men standing over him, sat Clarke.
‘There is one thing you can do,’ said Owen, ‘to make things easier for yourself. Tell me where the child is.’
Clarke started to deny all knowledge — but then looked at Owen’s face and shrugged.
‘For arms,’ said Owen, ‘you will receive a prison sentence. For the murder of a child, it will be worse.’
‘Not murder,’ said Clarke, shaking his head. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
‘No?’
‘No. I haven’t laid a finger on her.’
‘I need to see her,’ said Owen.
Clarke shrugged again. ‘I have sent her away,’ he said.
‘To?’
‘Denderah. The slaver’s men will pick her up there.’
‘And?’
‘Take her to join the others.’
‘If she comes to harm,’ said Owen, ‘it will be on your head, not just theirs. With the consequences I spoke of.’
Clarke hesitated, then looked at his watch. ‘If you hurry,’ he said, ‘you can get there in time. The Pont Limoun. The train to Luxor leaves in forty minutes.’
Ali and Hussein were moving the bride box yet again. This time it was to go to the court house where the trial was to be held. The order had come late, after the normal working day had ended, and Ali and Hussein had questioned it. That had taken a satisfactory amount of time but had not resulted, as they had hoped, in the job being postponed until the next day. Indeed, they were doing it in the soft warmth of a Cairo evening.
They were just taking a shortcut through the precincts of the Pont Limoun when a girl’s voice said: ‘That’s Soraya’s box! What are you doing with it?’
‘Why,’ said Ali and Hussein, putting the bride box down, ‘it’s that little girl again!’
‘Help! Help!’ Leila cried.
‘Shut up!’ said the man holding her roughly by the arm. He tried to hustle her away.
‘Help!’ cried Leila again. ‘He’s a bad man, and he’s stolen me! And I want to go back home. I want to go back to Zeinab!’
‘Shut up!’ said the man.
‘Oh!’ said Leila. ‘He’s hurting me!’
‘Hey!’ said Ali and Hussein. ‘You can’t do that!’
‘Keep out of it!’ said the man, showing them a knife.
‘Help! Help!’ shrieked Leila.
Others beside the two porters began to take notice.
‘You let her go!’ said Ali.
‘She’s a friend of ours!’ said Hussein.
Leila tried to tear herself away from the man holding her. He cuffed her head and twisted her arm. Leila lowered her face and bit him.
The man swore and let go. Leila threw herself into the arms of Ali and Hussein.
The man was advancing on them with his knife when suddenly there was a sharp crack. The man fell forward over the bride box.
‘Musa! Musa!’ cried Leila.
Throughout the day people came and went at the madrassa, as they usually did. Some of them, as they left, were carrying packages, often rolls which might have been a prayer mat. These people were followed home by Owen’s men. By the end of the day all the guns were gone. But Owen knew who had taken them and where they had gone to. So it was easy that night to pick up both the people and the guns and take them to the Bab-el-Khalk.
Last of all came the Pasha Ali Maher.
‘Tell me,’ said Owen, ‘what the guns were for?’
‘I don’t know anything about any guns-’ began the Pasha, but Owen cut in.
‘I know who they were for, of course, because they came to the madrassa and collected them. Both guns and people are now in my hands. But what were you going to do with them? Start an uprising? Surely not. Even in the Sudan it wouldn’t get anywhere. It would be too small. And the British army would be too big. And in Egypt you would get nowhere.’
‘That is a matter of opinion-’
‘Yes, I know. But it is not just my opinion. I have talked to a number of leading politicians, and do you know what their response was? They just laughed.’
‘They would,’ said Ali Maher bitterly.
‘I know about your hopes to unite the Sudan and Egypt politically. That is a perfectly sensible aim. Unlikely to succeed, but not completely foolish. There are others who think like you, both in the Sudan and in Egypt. But an armed uprising?’
Owen gently shook his head.
‘That … that was not my intention,’ said Ali Maher.
‘No?’
‘No. I knew there was no hope of getting anywhere with that. My supporters are, as you say, not numerous, although they are more numerous than you think. Of course I knew that an armed insurrection was not likely to succeed. But that was not my intention.’
He went on: ‘I intended to organize demonstrations. A lot of them. In the Sudan as well as in Egypt. Public demonstrations which would show the extent of the support there was for the movement.’
‘The movement?’
‘In support of the great cause of uniting the Nile Valley politically, so that it could speak with one voice.’
‘Yours, of course.’
‘I hoped that my voice would be heard, naturally. My voice among others. I hoped that once I had demonstrated the extent of my support the Khedive would feel compelled to take account of it and would call me into the Cabinet. With others, of course. It was not a case of supplanting the government but of augmenting it. I wanted to be taken seriously. To be able to shape the government’s position. Change it.’
‘In favour of unification?’
‘Yes.’
‘So why the arms? Cannot the arguments for your cause be put peacefully? In the normal political way?’
‘They would not be listened to.’
‘Oh, come! There are other politicians making the same points. You are not alone.’
‘But we are not listened to as we would be if the arguments were backed up with guns.’
‘Too small,’ said Owen. ‘Too few guns.’
‘I know. But if there were a number of incidents, all over the place, in the Sudan as well as in Egypt …’
‘You think it would create the illusion of numbers?’
‘Not just the illusion. The reality. People would see and would come to hear more. And so the numbers would grow. They would become real. But without guns …’ He made a gesture of dismissal. ‘And demonstrations all over the place, Captain Owen? Would not you pay attention to that? Would not the Khedive?’
‘Your defence is that you never meant to use the guns?’
Ali Maher looked down at his feet. ‘We might well have used them. But sparingly.’
Owen laughed. ‘In my experience,’ he said, ‘which is extensive, once these things start, they grow. You shoot at us, sparingly. We shoot back at you, sparingly. But it’s not seen or felt as sparingly. And so the incident grows, and in the end no one is firing sparingly! Believe me, Pasha, when soldiers shoot, they do not shoot sparingly. The police might do so, perhaps, with someone standing over them. But soldiers! Believe me, Pasha. I was a soldier once. I know!’
To Ali Maher’s surprise, coffee was brought in.
‘This is unexpected, Mamur Zapt!’
‘Now that there is to be no shooting, we can allow some niceties. It does not, of course, affect the outcome. You will be sent for trial and you will be found guilty.’
‘But punished accordingly?’
‘It will be the Khedive who is punishing you, not the British.’
Ali Maher laughed. ‘Preserving, as you say, the niceties. And, as you say, the outcome will be the same.’
‘Yes. Actually, I wished to speak to you about something else.’