“Unfortunately,” he went on nastily, “although I hear, I am not omnipotent, Comrade Salah. Any more than you are. The ability to hear an unrealistic order is no indication that the hearer is capable of carrying it out. I will do what I reasonably can without exciting suspicion. No less, but certainly no more.”
It was a pity that Issa had come into the room while Michael was speaking, to be a witness of this act of insubordination. Even if he had wanted to do so, Ghaled could not have ignored it with Issa there. As it was, Issa gaped, started to say something, then stopped and waited for permission to speak.
He did not get it. Ghaled was staring hard and curiously at Michael, reassessing him. The reassessment made, he looked at me.
“Do you remember the oath you swore?” he asked.
“Of course, Comrade Salah.”
“Do you believe that your employer remembers? Be careful how you answer. Your loyalty here is to me, not to him.”
“Comrade Michael has certainly remembered his oath,” I said. “He has done everything he can to carry out his assigned tasks. In fact, he has seriously neglected his own business in order to do so.”
I knew that Michael was looking at me balefully, but I kept my eyes on Ghaled.
“When did your employer last see Dr. Hawa?”
I was afraid to lie. It was always possible that Ghaled already knew the answer. “A few days ago, in the evening.”
Ghaled looked at Michael again. “And he told you nothing of this directive about which you profess to be so surprised?”
“Our meeting was a social one.” Michael shrugged. “We played backgammon, as a matter of fact. No business was discussed. In any case the issuance of this directive would not have been a subject for discussion. As I said when I first raised the question, the policy decision about this works had already been made.”
“The policy decision which you had been ordered to reverse or modify?”
“The decision which I had hoped to be able to modify. These things cannot be done by edict, not my edict anyway. It is easier to make policy decisions than to reverse or modify them. One needs time. I thought I had time. Obviously I hadn’t enough.” The committee had recovered its composure and was all lined up again behind the managing director. “As for my surprise, I have no reason to profess it. I am surprised. The explanation, presumably, is that, since the Agence Howell is not a principal in this affair, it was not thought necessary or appropriate to consult us before issuing the directive.”
Ghaled thought for a moment, then nodded. “Very well. Pending my own inquiries, I will accept your explanation, your excuse for your failure. But” — he leaned forward — ”for your disrespect there can be no excuse.”
“No disrespect was intended, Comrade Salah. I was merely stating the situation as I saw it.”
“So you say now. I warned you before against your arrogance. I also warned you that it would be punished. Did I or didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“Then having ignored my warnings you must be punished. Who are you to question orders, to decide whether or not they are realistic? We must teach you humility, Comrade Michael, the meaning of discipline. The punishment, therefore, must be one that you will remember. Do you find that reasonable and realistic?”
Michael was looking blandly impassive. I tried to, but less successfully.
“Do you?” Ghaled persisted.
“That depends on the punishment, Comrade Salah.”
“Yes. Since you have other assigned tasks to complete, an Action Force punishment, the kind that comrades Ahmad and Musa are used to inflicting for lapses in discipline, would — what is the phrase?”
“Defeat their own object, Comrade Salah?”
“Yes.” Ghaled smiled unpleasantly. “So you must not be hurt too much, comrade. Perhaps not at all if you are lucky. We shall have to see.” He looked at Issa, who had been listening avidly. “Are you ready for the demonstration?”
“Yes, Comrade Salah. All is prepared.”
“Let us go then.”
Ghaled rose and led the way from Michael’s office, along the passages to the zinc storeroom.
Waiting there was a man I had not seen before. Though neither he nor Michael said anything by way of greeting I saw an exchange of glances which said that they knew one another.
Ghaled addressed him as Comrade Taleb. He was in his thirties, tall and thin with a Nasser moustache and a very clean drip-dry shirt. He wore a tie. When he smiled, showing his teeth, two gold inlays were visible. He was standing behind Ghaled’s trestle table, which had been moved to the centre of the room.
My mind had been running sickeningly on instruments of torture, so that the two objects I saw standing on the table in front of Taleb were, though surprising, also reassuring.
The most prominent was a big clockwork music box of a kind that I had not seen since I was a small child. There had been one like it on a side table in my grandmother’s house in Rome. That one had played four or five different melodies from the operas — arias. This was slightly smaller than the one I remembered and fitted into a battered, black leather carrying case with a purple plush lining; but the box itself was much the same, an oblong casket made of highly polished mahogany with a narrow glass window in the top. Through the window you could see the big metal cylinder with the tiny pins bristling all over it and the long steel comb which sounded the notes. There were levers in front and, at the end, a brass key for winding the clockwork. A worn gold-leaf inscription just visible on the front panel said that this was La Serinette made by Gerard Frères of Paris and that the Tonotechnique Design was protected by patents.
Beside La Serinette on the table stood, incongruously, a Pakistan International Airlines plastic flight bag.
Ghaled looked with amused interest at the music box.
“Does it still play?” he asked.
“Certainly it plays, Comrade Salah.” Taleb was obviously proud of his work, whatever that was. He touched one of the levers, the cylinder revolved, and the box began to play Mozart’s Minuet in G. After two bars he switched it off.
“We must conserve the spring,” he said.
“Of course. Then let us proceed with the demonstration.”
“Yes, Comrade Salah.”
Taleb reached inside the back flap of the carrying case and pulled something out of the plush lining. It was a narrow strip of metal rather like a steel tape measure and about twenty centimetres long. He left it sticking up in the air above the box. Obviously it was not part of the original Serinette.
“That is all?”
“That is all, except for the controls, Comrade Salah. The new ones are on what was the musical change lever here. The first stop now deactivates the speed regulator. The second stop allows the cylinder to revolve freely. The third stop engages the clutch which. .”
Ghaled broke in. “Yes, comrade, we know what the third stop should do. That is what we are to test. Now, Comrade Taleb, I think that this test demonstration would be more convincing if the target were to be moving. Do you not agree?”
“”Moving or stationary, it makes no difference, Comrade Salah.”
“For me,” Ghaled said firmly, “a moving target would provide a much more satisfactory test. And since Comrade Michael has volunteered to assist us … That is correct, Comrade Michael, isn’t it? You have volunteered?”
“If you say so, Comrade Salah.”
“I say so.”
“Then I’m glad to be of assistance.”