“There’s still time to lose a fortune,” he said cheerfully. After a little while, seeing how circumspectly Owen was playing, he added: “Though if you want to do it tonight you’ll have to hurry up.”
“Why hurry?” asked Owen.
They had been playing for about half an hour when a suffragi came in.
“A letter,” he said, “for Mr. Stefanopoulos.”
The Greek put up his hand, though without taking his eyes off the play. The bearer stuck the letter in it. The Greek waited until the croupier began to rake in the chips before he opened the envelope.
“It’s from my wife,” he said to the croupier. “She says she forgot to tell me before I left this evening that the house is already sold.”
The croupier smiled mechanically.
“That being so,” said the Greek, “I shall have to earn some more money before making a present of it to Monsieur Anton.”
“ A bientot,” said the croupier as the Greek left the table.
“Such domestic fidelity is an example to us all,” said Owen, and got up too.
Owen and the Greek went down the stairs together. Not until they were outside did the Greek speak. Then he stepped aside into the shadows and said familiarly:
“Which way did he use?”
“The side door.”
“As expected. Good. Who’s following him?”
“Abou and Sadiq. Sadiq is here.”
A man came out of the shadows.
“You are Sadiq?”
“Yes, effendi.”
“Where is he?”
“He is at the Mosque of El Hakim. Waiting.”
“Take us there,” said the Greek, whose name was not Stefanopoulos but Georgiades, and who was one of the Mamur Zapt’s most experienced agents, “and we will wait too.
Chapter 4
At the end of the street was a large, ruined mosque. It was solid and fortresslike, possessing the grandeur but lacking the grace of the other great Cairo mosques. Everything about it was square and formidable. Even its minarets were not true minarets but mabkharas, structures like the pylons of the ancient Egyptian temples. It grew out of Saladin’s old city walls, sharing with them secret rooms and hidden defensive passages. It was the mosque of El Hakim, the fourth oldest of all the mosques of Cairo, one of the few remaining from the former city of El Kahira.
Although it was ruined it was not deserted. The ordinary poor had come to live in it, and now wherever there was an arch intact or a few bricks to give a patch of shade an assembly of cooking utensils and a fire announced the hearth of a household.
There were even, among the ruins, workshops and small factories. Space was scarce in Cairo and enterprising entrepreneurs took it where they could find it.
The Egyptologists, thought Owen, spoke of Egypt’s traditional preoccupation with death and pointed to the Pyramids. But the Pyramids had been built by workmen from the villages roundabout and from those villages also had come generations of grave robbers who had not been afraid to pillage the tombs. The Egyptologists spoke of the Pyramids and not of the grave robbers; but it was the grave robbers with their need and their greed, with their anarchic rejection of the dead hand of authority and with their obstinate instinct for life, who were in the end characteristic of Egyptian society.
It was typical of Egyptians to take over something dead and make it a place for living. The mosque might have been an empty shell; instead, it hummed with life. Even now at night there were pinpricks of light beneath its arches.
Sadiq led them toward one of these, threading his way through a grove of still intact pillars, some of them still supporting arches. They were going through the liwan, the deep central space or room which served as the sanctuary. In the old days, when El Hakim was still functioning as a mosque, the faithful would have gathered round the pillars in the shade of the arches to hear the Holy Word expounded. At the far end of the pillars there was a light.
Sadiq stopped. A second figure appeared beside him. The two figures merged together for a moment and then the second figure detached itself and came across to Owen.
“He is still there, effendi,” a voice whispered in his ear. “No one has come. He sits with the watchman. He has a case with him.”
He put his hand on Owen’s arm and guided him forward. Ahead of him was a deeper darkness, something screening off the light, a wall perhaps.
Abou brought him up to the wall and then stopped. There was a gap through which Owen could see. In front of him two Arabs were sitting on the ground with an oil lamp between them. One of them was an old man in a torn, dirty galabeah, the night watchman presumably. The other was a suffragi in a spruce gown. Owen thought he recognized one of the attendants from the cloakroom. On the ground beside him was Berthelot’s case.
Owen shifted his position and something flashed in his eyes, dazzling him. Involuntarily he jerked his head back and was dazzled again. For a moment he could not work out what was happening. Then he realized. There was some glass opposite him which was catching the light from the oil lamp. Several bits of glass, because as he moved there were different flashes.
He looked more closely. At first he could not make out what it was. Then he saw and could not believe his eyes. The space in front of him was piled deep with lanterns. That was what the “wall” consisted of: lanterns, hundreds of them. They stood in heaps and piles all around this part of the liwan, bright, colored lanterns with gaudy paper and flashy dangling beads.
Then he remembered. The mosque was used to store the lanterns used on feast days to decorate the city’s streets and squares.
The two Arabs went on talking quietly. From time to time the watchman looked at the case. The other man did not stir.
At one point the watchman got to his feet and shuffled off into the night. Owen tensed expectantly but the suffragi did not move nor did anyone come. Eventually the watchman shuffled back, this time with a dirty black can. He produced two small enamel cups from the folds of his galabeah, set them on the ground and filled them from the can. The suffragi drank with appropriately polite smacking of lips.
They resumed their conversation. Owen could follow it only in parts. It was purely trivial in nature. They were just passing the time. Owen felt sure the suffragi was waiting for somebody.
Georgiades had slipped away. Owen knew what he was doing. He was making his way ’round to the other side to cut off possible escape routes.
If the man was coming, though, it would have to be soon. The sky was beginning to lighten.
The watchman produced some bread and an onion and offered to share it with the suffragi. The suffragi refused politely.
Owen was beginning to get bothered now. It was getting light so quickly that a man coming through the liwan would be able to see the watchers. He signalled to Abou, who was standing beside him and they moved in front of two pillars to be less visible from behind.
Still no one came.
In the strange gray light that came before the dawn in Egypt things stood out as clearly as if it were day but with a gentle softness which lacked the harsh clarity of the sun. Owen always woke early. He would be awaking now if this were an ordinary day.
Any moment now the sun would come over the horizon. The watchman leaned forward and extinguished the lamp.
The suffragi rose from his squat and picked up the case. He bade the watchman the usual extended, ceremonious, Arab farewell and then walked off down the colonnaded arcade.
Abou looked at Owen questioningly.
Owen nodded and the tracker slipped off through the pillars. Owen followed a long way behind. Tracking by daylight, when it was so much easier to be seen, was far harder than tracking by night. It was best left to those who knew how to do it.
He could not see Sadiq. Georgiades, he knew, would be doing the same as he was.
They followed the line of the old city wall. The houses in this poor quarter were made of mud. Every year when the heavy rain came it washed away some of the mud and left the houses slightly shapeless, their corners blurred. Then the sun came and dried the mud until it cracked. Little by little it would crumble and then be washed away when the rain came again. Many of the houses were little better than ruins.