And there was the river ahead of him, glinting in the sunlight, with a felucca stooping and skimming-and then it disappeared, and as always near the docks, he lost his way in the medieval alleys as the houses crowded together overhead and he lost sight even of the masts rising up along the river bank. He had to ask the way, yet again, to the ferry.
Two men, neither Arab nor Copt, in boots and with a donkey? There was the usual crowd of onlookers at the ferry, but this time he drew a blank.
Well, they had not gone over the ferry, then. He walked along the waterfront, repeating his question.
And then he saw two men ahead of him whom he recognized. They were not the Georgians but his own men, the men who had been keeping them under observation. They were gazing stupidly out across the water.
‘Effendi, they got on to a boat! And another with them!’
‘Another?’ said Owen.
Boats, on the river, were as distinguishable as donkeys in a village. Other men had seen the boat put out and some of them were knowledgeable waterfront men. They were able to identify the boat immediately.
‘It belongs to Hussein al-Fadal, Effendi,’ they said.
‘Hussein al-Fadal? Ah, I have heard of him.’
‘Who has not heard of him, Effendi? In this part of the Fustat, anyway.’
‘Where is the boat bound for?’
‘It is one of his ordinary boats. They go up to Assuan.’
Which seemed at first not to be particularly helpful. Why would the Georgians want to take explosives up to Assuan? Was it, perhaps, after all, that they merely intended to take them further, to sell them, perhaps, to potential insurgents in the Sudan? If so, that would be reprehensible, certainly, and must be stopped; but it was nothing to do with the Grand Duke. Unless…
In other circumstances Owen would have relished the journey. Views differed about the best way to travel on the Nile; some favoured Mr. Cook’s new steamers, which were certainly very comfortable, others the traditional dahabeeyah, which was how most tourists had made the journey upriver until comparatively recently. For Owen, though, there was nothing like a felucca. It was a much smaller craft than most of those on the river, taking only three or four men, and with its low sides and its tall mast-most of the sailing boats on the Nile had tall masts to lift their sails above the palm trees which lined the river in some places-it seemed to plane over the water.
Speed was what decided it. The Georgians were travelling in a gyassa, a heavy grain boat but one which carried a lot of sail and, going before the wind, could travel with surprising speed. Going by steamer was out of the question since they were tied to a tourist timetable. In the end, Owen had decided to go by train for the first part of the journey, as far as Minia, and then switch to felucca.
The train, too, had its timetable but it was faster than going by boat and when they went down to the port they found that the gyassa had not yet arrived.
Towards evening it crept in and tied up to the landing stage. No one disembarked. Owen had not really expected them to. The gyassa was on its outward journey and would pick up the cargo somewhere beyond Assuan. It was, of course, possible that the Georgians might choose this as the place but somehow he did not expect them to. The Grand Duke’s boat was still some way upriver.
In the morning the gyassa pulled out and set sail; and this time Owen set sail with it.
With him in the felucca were Georgiades and Selim, apart from the crew. That was all the felucca could take. Owen had other men but he had sent them on to Assyut by train.
It was at Assyut that he thought that the attack might take place for it was there that Duke Nicholas’s dahabeeyah would tie up for the night preparatory to his visit the following day to the monuments at Beni Hassan and the cat cemetery at Speos Artemides. The stop at Assyut the Georgians might know about, since the Grand Duke’s itinerary would be common talk on the river, and they might be able to guess at the excursions on the following day, although they would not be sure of them. The Duke might have had enough of visits by then.
For the moment Owen was content to keep the gyassa in view as they skimmed gently up the river. The wind, from the north as usual, had died down and the gyassa laboured. The lighter felucca soon overtook it but Owen would not let it get too far ahead.
With the wind light and the flow of the river against them strong, it took two days for the gyassa to get to Assyut. They passed the night tied up to the bank with only the mosquitoes to keep them company, although Owen enjoyed the pelicans next morning. Georgiades did not. He was a city man and such excursions as this only served to confirm his prejudice. Selim, a country boy, breathed in the air as if he had forgotten what it was.
‘These peasants!’ he said scornfully, however, as they passed some fellahin working in the fields. ‘Not bad!’ he said appreciatively though as they came upon some women walking down to the river with large jars balanced on their heads, an opportunity for them to display and Selim to evaluate.
As they approached Assyut he saw ahead of him the outlines of the new barrage. The ends springing out from the banks had been joined the previous year and the barrage was just about operational though there was still building on it to be completed. Part of the idea of the Grand Duke’s visit (or the Khedive’s idea of the Grand Duke’s visit) was to see the works of modern Egypt and this was one of the most remarkable. The Khedive had considered asking the Grand Duke to officially open it, until it was pointed out that he himself was going to open it later on in the year. Besides, if Duke Nicholas opened it, the Khedive himself would have to be present and that meant travelling south at the hottest time of the year. The Khedive decided to postpone the pleasure.
Since the Grand Duke would be passing, however, he could have the pleasure at least of inspecting the barrage. His dahabeeyah had arrived the previous evening and there it was, tied up at the entrance to the vast new lock which the steamers would use. His Royal Highness had spent the day seeing over the works and, no doubt, would shortly be returning to his dahabeeyah to collapse in comfort.
The gyassa had arrived in the afternoon when all work, indeed, life, was at a standstill and there were few people about to see the three men, in boots and carrying two heavy bags, walk down the gangway and on to the bank. From there they made their way into the town and entered a low house near the mile-long bazaar. They did not emerge from it until well after the sun had set in glorious red and gold upon the river and the Duke was already on his third ice-cooled vodka.
There was some delay while a donkey was obtained but once it was loaded they set off through the dark streets. If there was anything unusual about the scene it was only that men were working.
When they came to the entrance of the lock they sat down and waited. Some twenty yards from the shore the Grand Duke’s great dahabeeyah turned slowly in the flow of the river, reached the limit of its mooring ropes and then turned back again. There were lights on the vessel and occasionally through the windows one caught the flash of tureens and the scurrying white of suffragis-the Duke had gone native to the extent that while on board he had allowed himself to be served by local Egyptians. Fairly local, that was, for crew, suffragis and servants belonged, like the boat itself, to a Levantine millionaire who had lent it to the Khedive for the occasion.
The men on the bank sat on in silence until gradually the activity on the dahabeeyah subsided and one by one the lights went out.
Then they stirred.
Two of them went off along the river bank and a little later returned in a small boat, inexpertly but quietly paddled, nudging its way along the river’s edge. The third man, meanwhile, had been bent over the bags.