The arabeah was waiting for them in the Ataba el Khadra, the busy square from which nearly all the tramways of Cairo started. Georgiades had considered, since it was such a hot day, asking Ali’s uncle to pick them up from the Bab el Khalk but had decided that so close a proximity to the police headquarters would alarm him unnecessarily.
He was alarmed enough as it was, staring fearfully at them from his perch at the front of the cab. The cab itself was old but roomy, with torn, shabby seating leather and a distinct smell of sweat. The two white horses were twitching at the flies with their hennaed tails and Owen was able to impress Georgiades by referring familiarly to the obvious newness of one of them.
New or not, it shared its senior’s obvious reluctance to raise its pace above a steady amble. The place they were going to was on the outskirts of the city and Owen soon realized that it was going to take them a long time to get there.
He used the time to bring Georgiades up to date on recent developments: such as the collapse of the arrangements to ransom Moulin.
“They’re getting cocky, aren’t they?” said Georgiades. “One hundred thousand piastres is a lot of money. You’d think they’d take it and run.”
“They think they can make more. That’s the trouble about giving in too quickly. It gets taken as a sign of weakness.”
“You’ve got to start dealing at some point. It’s hard to get it right.”
“If you have to start dealing.”
“If you don’t, you get what that poor bastard Tsakatellis got.” The arabeah turned toward the river and began to go across the bridge. They got the first puff of the river breeze.
“Incidentally,” said Georgiades, “about Tsakatellis; you talked to his mother. Did you talk to anyone else in the family?”
“Only the Copt who ran the shop.”
“It might be interesting to talk to someone else. In the family.”
“She rather gave me the impression she was in charge.”
“Greek mothers are like that,” said Georgiades, sighing. “She handled the whole kidnapping thing herself.”
“That’s why I’d like to talk to someone else about it. Do you mind if I do?”
“Go ahead,” said Owen. “You’re the expert on things Greek.”
Crossing the bridge, revived by the breeze, the horses had positively-well, at least strolled. Now they seemed to have stopped altogether.
“What’s going on?” said Georgiades.
“Nothing is going on,” said Ali’s uncle.
“I know. That’s why I’m asking. Why have the horses stopped?”
“They have not stopped,” said Ali’s uncle, hurt. “They have merely slackened their pace.”
“Why?”
“There is a camel in front.”
“Then overtake it.”
“I cannot.”
“Why not?”
“Because in front of the camel there is a cart.”
“Cannot you pass both of them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because coming in the opposite direction is a donkey with a load.”
Georgiades leaned out to inspect.
“The donkey is still far away. Even your horses could pass. Where is your spirit, man? Are you not an arabeah-driver?” Thus goaded, Ali’s uncle attempted to overtake, but so half-heartedly that in the end he was obliged to cut in on the cart, which earned him a torrent of abuse from the carter. Instead of instantly responding in kind, as most arabeah-drivers would have done, delighted at the chance to display their own rhetorical skills, he cracked his whip over his horses and scuttled away fearfully. He seemed as low-spirited as his nephew.
“How did Izkat Bey come to choose him?” asked Owen, astonished.
Izkat Bey was the man who had been in the arabeah when it had picked up Madame Chevenement and Berthelot from Shepheard’s.
“Accident. He came out into the street looking for an arabeah and to his misfortune he found this one.”
Ali’s uncle, who did not usually attract such splendid custom, had been only too ready to reveal the identity of so distinguished a person to Georgiades.
“Why didn’t he use his own arabeah?” asked Owen.
“Didn’t want to be recognized, I suppose.”
Izkat Bey was one of the Khedive’s senior Court Officials. His function at Court was obscure but of his power there was no doubt. He was close to the Khedive and, like most of those close to the Khedive, a Turk. He shared the ruling circle’s arrogance toward the Egyptians and antipathy to the British and seemed particularly to relish those commissions of the Khedive which gave him opportunities to display both those qualities. His name was one of those that appeared on Zeinab’s list.
When Owen had asked Abdul for a list of Samira’s guests she had at first refused. “I do not spy on my friends,” she said haughtily. Then, characteristically changing her mind, she had furnished him with a list. “It is not complete, however,” she had warned him. “I have left off all my friends.” The inference was that Izkat Bey was not one of Zeinab’s friends. This was quite likely as the Bey had a traditional view of the role of women. He came to Samira’s because she was royal and because he was bidden; and Owen guessed that he saw the occasion as one for the transaction of business rather than for the pleasures of social intercourse.
The arabeah threaded its way along beside the river bank until it had left most of the built-up area behind it. They came to an area of market gardens, cultivated fields and fields of maize. They came suddenly upon a great pile of pumpkins which marked the spot where a small secondary track, barely a yard wide, ran off to the left down to the river. All around were patches of peas, beans, tomatoes, onions, cauliflowers, mangoes, guavas, figs and watermelons. There was no one in sight except for over to the left where a small boy on a buffalo was working a sakiya, one of the traditional, heavy wooden water-wheels.
It was here that Ali’s uncle stopped.
Chapter 7
"This is where you brought them?” asked Owen.
“Yes, effendi,” said Ali’s uncle humbly.
“If you are playing tricks with me-”
“I am not, effendi. I swear it!” Ali’s uncle protested vigorously.
“You brought them here? To this very spot?”
“Yes, effendi.”
Owen climbed out of the arabeah and looked around him. In the distance he could hear the regular, rhythmic creaking of the water-wheel and then, far away across the cauliflower and maize, the faint singing of peasants at work in the fields. “Did they come here to meet someone?”
“I do not think so, effendi,” said Abdul’s uncle diffidently.
“You saw no one?”
“No, effendi.”
“They just came here and looked around?”
“They talked, effendi.”
“What did they talk about?”
“I do not know, effendi. I did not hear.”
“They just sat and talked?”
“They stood and talked. They descended from the arabeah.”
“And then they went home again?”
“Yes, effendi.”
Owen looked around, completely baffled. There seemed nothing here but garden crops and in the distance fields of berseem, the green fodder which the camels brought in every day across the bridge for the use of the donkey-boys and the arabeah-drivers.
Owen’s heart began to sink.
“Have they tricked us again?” he said to Georgiades, who had come across and was standing beside him.
“They can’t have! They couldn’t have known.”
“They might have done it as a precaution.”
“Just on the off-chance that someone would be trying to check on the journeys they had made?”
“It sounds ridiculous.”
“It is ridiculous. No,” said Georgiades, shaking his head. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
Georgiades walked over to inspect the cauliflowers. They were planted in rows and there were little channels running between them. The channels were hard-caked and smooth. As he watched, a little trickle of water began to run along them.