“I don’t care tuppence about Moulin.”
“Then why don’t we go away?”
“Because I think there’s something else going on and I want to find out what it is.”
Zeinab reached for a cushion and stuffed it behind her back. “All right,” she said resignedly, “I’ll help you.” She suddenly brightened. “No, I won’t,” she said.
“Bloody hell!”
“Not unless you promise to take me away for a holiday when this is all over.”
“I promise. Samira said she’d get Haidar to lend us his villa at Luxor.”
“Luxor! I’m not going there! It’s just temples!”
“I’d quite like to go to Luxor.”
“It’s got to be some place I’d like to go to.”
“Oh, very well.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Right!” said Zeinab, snuggling back into the cushion. “How can I help you?”
“It’s Madame Chevenement.”
“Her again?”
“This is definitely work.”
“Like that other woman?”
Owen ignored this.
“I asked Samira how Madame Chevenement came to be at her soirees and she said she was a friend of a friend. I take that friend to be the Khedive.”
“Right.”
“What I want to find out is how she came to be a friend of his. What’s the connection? How did they meet? Samira will probably know but she’ll be on her guard. Is there someone else in that circle who would know?”
“I know,” said Zeinab.
“You know?”
“Yes. Everyone does. He met her at Cannes.”
“When was this?” said Owen, astonished.
“Last year. When he was on holiday. He went to Monte Carlo, if you remember.”
Owen remembered. The Khedive had needed extra resourcing in view of his passion for gambling. The funds had been made available but only after a protracted political tug-of-war in which Owen himself had been engaged.
“What else do you know?” he asked.
“About Chevenement? Nothing much. She’s very dull, really. Just right for him.”
“Did he invite her over here?”
“She invited herself, I think. He was glad to renew acquaintance.”
“He’s kept it pretty quiet.”
“You think so?” Zeinab laughed. “Just because you haven’t heard about it, darling, that doesn’t mean it’s been kept quiet. Still, I agree. It’s been kept quieter than she would like. He’s seen her only a few times and never in public.”
“Still, I ought to have known about it.”
She reached out a hand, caught his, and pulled him down. “You’ll just have to come to Samira’s more often, darling.”
“It’s not just that, though,” said Georgiades. “Remember, she took him with her.”
“Berthelot?”
“Yes. On at least two occasions, according to the arabeah-drivers. If she was just having an affair with the Khedive, why did she do that?”
“I think we can safely disregard the more ribald suggestions of the arabeah-drivers,” said Owen.
“And it’s hardly likely to be just a social call. There’s an etiquette for those things and the Khedive makes a big issue of it. Which leaves business-or politics.”
“It’s not going to be politics. The French are not going to have any amateurs coming in on their patch.”
“That leaves business. What sort of business is the Khedive likely to be interested in?”
“Any business that makes money. For him.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“There’s a bit of a problem, though, isn’t there?” said Owen. “He never engages in these things directly. It’s always through the Ministries. If you wanted anything you’d have to go through them.”
“His influence might be a help. Maybe that’s what they were after.”
“Not much of a help. You’d still have to go through the Ministries.”
“He might be able to get a personal favor done.”
“Chevenement? Then why was Berthelot there? Anyway, he’d be able to get one done only if it was a small one. Anything big would have to go through the Ministries. That’s the system. The whole point is to keep his hands off the money. He can’t spend a penny without the Consul-General okaying it.”
“Maybe he wants to bypass the system.”
“He’ll have a job!” said Owen, speaking from painful personal experience.
Georgiades sat for a while brooding. Owen suspected it was because he didn’t want to go out into the heat again too quickly.
“Look at it another way,” said Georgiades, settling himself comfortably: “What sort of business are Berthelot and Chevenement likely to be interested in?”
“Whatever business Moulin is interested in. And we’ve got a pretty good idea of that. Construction, building-”
“Contracts?”
“Yes.”
“The dam contracts?”
“They’ve been allocated already. They were allocated before he arrived. Paul says there might be a subcontract going, a big one to construct a masonry apron, which they might let the French have as a sop. He thinks Moulin’s interested in that.”
“Well, maybe that’s it.”
“The trouble with that,” said Owen, “is that all the action is somewhere else. It’s all Diplomatic now. Government to Government. Foreign Office to Foreign Office. Not for small fry like Berthelot and Chevenement.”
“Maybe they’re just jockeying for position in the tendering?” suggested Georgiades.
“If they are, why not do it in the right place? There’s no point in wasting time on the Khedive. He’s not going to have any say in it whatsoever.”
“I keep coming back to Berthelot,” said Georgiades. “What’s he doing going to see the Khedive? Chevenement I can understand. Private business and good luck. But Berthelot?”
“They’re both in it together, whatever ‘it’ is. Only I should think they’ve got different roles. She makes the first contact, he follows it up.”
“Has he got enough…? I mean, does he know enough to follow it up?”
“I think that they’d have to refer pretty soon to Moulin. And that’s a point! When I first spoke to Berthelot I asked him if any of Moulin’s business friends had been in contact with him. He promised to check but never did.”
“It would be interesting to know who they were. Then we’d get some idea of where particularly his business interests lie. Maybe I’ll have a look at that,” said Georgiades.
“OK. And while you’re doing that, take a look at something else, will you? I’m getting a picture in which Chevenement makes the first contact, then brings Berthelot in. At a very early stage, right at the start, probably, she gets the Khedive’s blessing. That maybe is why she takes him to meet the Khedive. Now they’re going to have to follow that up, which means him meeting other people. Maybe when he meets the Khedive he gets introduced to these people. Even so, he’s going to have to meet them again to get negotiations started. I don’t know if it’s possible for you to find out who these people are. Other visits Berthelot’s been paying. But you might take a look at it.”
“Could the Princess Samira come into this?”
“How?”
“Well, suppose they didn’t meet the people who were going to follow it up for the Khedive when they went to see him. After all, it would take time, and while I don’t go along with the arabeah-drivers altogether, I don’t see the Khedive wanting to spend all the time he has with Chevenement on business matters. In that case he might want to find some other way in which she could meet them. You said he asked the Princess to invite her. Maybe that’s where she made her first follow-up contact. After that there would be another one, this time with Berthelot.”
“I’ll ask Zeinab if she can give me the names of people who’ve been at Samira’s soirees recently. She’s not going to like it, though.”
“I’m going to have to try to get out of the arabeah drivers a list of all the people Berthelot’s been to see. All the places, too, because the drivers are going to know places, not people. To get the people I’m going to have to follow it up. It’ll take hours. In this heat, too! Do you think I like that?”