But perhaps, thought Owen, listening with half an ear as the speeches entered their third hour, that was where the real issue came in. For what the political manoeuvring was ultimately about was who was going to govern Egypt. Who was going to do the stage-managing-Mr Rabbiki with his doomed question or Paul, behind the scenes, getting the Khedive and his Ministers to act to a script that was written in London?
But, hello, what was this? Something was going wrong with the script, or at least with his part of it! Over at the back of the crowd, in one corner, something was going on. The crowd was swirling around, breaking apart. Fighting? Was that fighting? He trained his field glasses.
Yes, fighting. He could see the clubs and sticks. But not among themselves. Someone was coming in from outside. It looked as if a great wedge had suddenly been driven into the back of the crowd. Surely his men had not come out without orders?
He’d have their blood for this! He turned and made for the outside steps leading down from the roof.
But wait! It wasn’t them. They weren’t in uniform. Who the hell were they? What the hell was going on?
Owen had his runners at the bottom of the steps, waiting for instructions. Each one knew the cafe where he had to go. They went at once. Within minutes, policemen were pouring out of the cafe.
The Cairo constables were for the most part country boys, chosen for their size and strength and, some alleged, their simplicity. Given orders to clear a square, they would.
They had, moreover, the advantage of surprise. The crowd, confused already by the disturbance at the rear, split apart under their charge and the separate parts were forced back upon the exits from the square. Many of the torches fell down or were extinguished and in the darkness it was hard to see anything. There was only the pressure of bodies driving people to the edges of the square, the confused shouting and screaming and the incessant blast of the police whistles.
There was hardly any resistance. The crowd was largely unarmed. There were the usual few with knives and clubs but, hemmed in by people and in the darkness, they were unable to use them.
Only in one part of the square, where the original wedge had burst into the crowd, was there serious fighting. The men there were armed and were holding the constables back.
Owen gathered a few extra men and ran across. There were no torches here, but in the dim light from a nearby cafe he could see a struggling throng of men.
‘Police!’ he shouted. ‘Back!’
There was a moment’s uncertainty and then men detached themselves from the throng and came back towards him.
‘Form into line!’ he shouted.
The men spread out on both sides of him. For a moment they stood breathing heavily and looking at the dark mass of men ahead of them.
‘Line: Advance!’
The line moved forward. This was the moment when training and discipline told. Or so Owen hoped.
Someone pushed up beside him.
‘You might need this.’
He recognized the voice. It was one of his plainclothesmen, a Greek.
He felt a gun being pushed into his hand.
Suddenly, things were different.
‘Line: Halt!’ he shouted. And then, in a moment of inspiration: ‘Prepare to fire!’
The constables halted, obedient but confused. Batons were all they had.
‘This is the Mamur Zapt,’ he called out to the dark mass in front of him. ‘I order you to disperse! If you do not, I shall open fire. I shall fire one shot into the air to show you that I am armed.’
The sharp crack came almost at once.
There was a sudden silence in the square.
‘Disperse immediately! Or I shall open fire.’
He would, too.
But there was no need. The dark line ahead of him wavered and broke. In an instant men were running.
The constables moved in. A man came reeling back, dazed and nursing an arm. Owen caught him by the galabeah and then, as that would tear, by the hair.
The square was emptying rapidly now, as the crowd fled in panic.
‘Not good, though,’ said Owen, as he sat in the bar of the Sporting Club at lunchtime the next day.
‘Not good at all,’ Paul agreed. ‘It’s given Mr Rabbiki his publicity triumph on a plate.’
The veteran politician had not waited long to capitalize on the disaster. Early the next morning he had appeared in Owen’s office, stern but undisguisedly cheerful.
‘An outrage!’ he said. ‘We demand a public apology.’
‘You can have one from me,’ said Owen. ‘I’m damned annoyed at what happened.’
‘Oh, we don’t want one from you,’ said Mr Rabbiki. ‘We want one from the government.’
‘You’ll be lucky!’
‘Well, it doesn’t really matter,’ said Mr Rabbiki, catching the smell of coffee-all meetings in Cairo, whether adversarial or convivial, required coffee-and relaxing, ‘since we’ve got what we wanted.’
‘All went according to plan, did it?’ said Owen sourly. Rabbiki gave him a quick look.
‘No,’ he said, ‘it did not. We had planned a straightforward demonstration. Large, but peaceful. What happened? Who were those men?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Owen, ‘but I’m damned well going to find out!’
‘They weren’t police, I know that.’
‘No, I sent the police in afterwards. Once the fighting had started. I wanted to break it all up before it had a chance of spreading.’
‘You took a risk,’ said Mr Rabbiki accusingly. ‘With all those people, someone might have got killed.’
‘I know that. That’s why I’m so annoyed.’
‘I can tell you who the men were,’ said Mr Rabbiki. ‘They were Syndicate men.’
‘I doubt that. What would be the point?’
‘They know we want to stop the railway from getting to Heliopolis on time. This was intended as a warning.’
‘If it was,’ said Owen, ‘then it was a very stupid one.’
‘We are dealing with some very stupid people.’
‘Are we? I’m not so sure about that.’
‘Nor am I, on second thoughts,’ Mr Rabbiki admitted. ‘Stupid, possibly. Ruthless, certainly.’
‘Well-’
‘As they have shown in the case of that poor man whose body was found on the railway line. I hope, Captain Owen, that while you’re grappling with these wider political issues, you won’t lose sight of what happened to that poor man.’
‘If I did, Mr Rabbiki,’ said Owen, smiling, ‘I’m sure you would put down a question. Coffee?’
‘But was it wise?’ asked the man from the Syndicate, half an hour or so after Mr Rabbiki had gone.
‘Wise?’
‘To break up the demonstration so, well, firmly? I know we’ve asked you to take a strong line but, well, frankly, we’d prefer a little more finesse just at the moment, with the line so near completion. Only another couple of weeks to go! You don’t think you could lie low for that period, do you? We really do appreciate your efforts on our behalf, believe me, we know you’re doing your best, but-you couldn’t handle things with a bit more sensitivity, could you?’
‘Sensitivity!’ he said to Paul indignantly. ‘Those bastards! Me!’
‘They were just having fun,’ said Paul confidendy. ‘Trying to provoke you!’
‘No, they weren’t. They meant it!’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really. That was the message: hold back! Show a bit more sensitivity! Let’s have a bit more finesse! Those brutal sods!’
‘Well,’ said Paul, reflecting, ‘I suppose they think they’ve almost got there. Brutality is what you need on the way; sensitivity and finesse is what it’s called once you’ve got there.’
He signalled to the waiter for another drink.
‘But why,’ he said, ‘would they have taken that line if all the time they were behind it?’