One of the men got out of the boat and came up the bank. He and the man left on shore picked up one of the bags and began to carry it down to the water.
And then dark figures were all around them.
Chapter 13
'Before you depart,’ said Owen, ‘there are one or two things I would like to know. Small things first: how did you know the explosives had arrived in the docks?’
‘The man in the office was looking out for them,’ said Katarina’s father.
‘Abdulla Arbat? What was he looking out for?’
‘A consignment from Aleppo marked Baking Powder. He had the names, fictitious, of course, of consigner and consignee.’
‘You were paying him, naturally?’
‘Naturally.’
‘And then you collected them yourself. Unwise, surely?’
‘Unwise,’ Katarina’s father agreed. ‘But then, time was short and there were so few people I could trust. And I was in Suez myself, having just disembarked.’
‘It gave us a positive identification.’
‘The boy?’ Katarina’s father looked glum. ‘The problem was that time was so short! I would have had to get people from Cairo and I knew that you were having them watched. Besides, by that time I felt that I had better do it myself. So many things had gone wrong. Mishandled! I’m not blaming my father, but there were so many things he didn’t know. Gold, for instance! My God, when I heard-! And Djugashvili was not much better. They’d never done anything criminal in their lives before.’
‘Whereas you-?’
Katarina’s father laughed.
‘The trouble was that I was in Paris. It all blew up very suddenly, you see: the Grand Duke’s visit, the idea that this might give us a chance to strike back-’
‘Whose was the idea?’
Katarina’s father looked at him.
‘I shan’t tell you,’ he said. ‘At first I thought, well, a good idea but I’m too far away and there isn’t time to organize anything. But then when I heard there was support-’
‘Not as much support as you supposed.’
‘No,’ Katarina’s father agreed, ‘not as much as I supposed.’
‘Your father’s enthusiasm ran away with him.’
‘Perhaps. His letters at first were optimistic and confident. Good young men, he said, men of action. Well, we know, don’t we,’ said Katarina’s father, looking at Owen, ‘that men of action are a lot rarer than men of words. Intelligent action, at any rate. And so it proved.’ He shook his head. ‘At first I thought I could stay out of it, that they would manage without me. I thought it might even be better if I stayed in Paris, doing things from afar. I knew by that time that you were interested in my father. I thought it would be better for me to stay behind the scenes.’
‘And so it would have been.’
Katarina’s father spread his hands.
‘But then things began to go wrong. They had problems finding money for the explosives-’
‘You had money,’ said Owen. ‘Why didn’t you pay?’
‘I would have done. But at that time I thought it wasn’t a problem. My father assured me-’
‘Ever optimistic!’ said Owen.
‘Yes, ever optimistic. Besides’-he broke off and gave Owen a quick look-‘you may not believe this, but I thought of the money as not being mine but the storytellers’. What I was in it for was for the stories, not for the money. The money I meant to be theirs. It was a genuine Benefit Society-’
‘Criminal,’ said Owen.
‘Well, yes, criminal. But-’
‘Tell me about the explosives. Why did you hit on them in the first place?’
‘Why not a bullet, you mean?’ Katarina’s father sighed. ‘Their idea, not mine. They wanted the Duke to go out with as big a bang as possible. The bigger the bang, they thought, the greater the attention that would be paid-to the Mingrelians, to what Russia had been doing in the Caucasus. They seemed so pleased with the idea that I did not intervene. Besides, I thought there was more chance of them succeeding with a bomb. You have to get it just right with a bullet, and already I was beginning to have doubts-’
‘One thing that puzzles me,’ said Owen: ‘Djugashvili. I pulled him in, as you know, and when I spoke to him he did not seem to know that you had already got hold of the explosives.’
‘He didn’t know. When I landed at Suez I found a message from my father awaiting me. He was in despair. You had just seized the gold and he thought this was the end. Well, I was in Suez and I knew Abdulla Arbat of old, so I decided to act. No one knew about it till later.’
Owen nodded.
Katarina’s father hesitated.
‘May I ask when you knew?’
‘About you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was looking for someone else. Near Sorgos. I ruled you out, first because you were abroad and then because, well, I got the impression from your father that you were bookish-’
‘Ineffectual?’
‘Well, yes.’
Katarina’s father smiled.
‘He still thinks I’m ineffectual.’
‘And not greatly interested in the kinds of battles he wants to fight.’
‘Well, in a way he’s right. I wasn’t altogether misleading you when I said in the shop the other day that the battles I wanted to fight were cultural ones.’
‘Nevertheless, you came down on his side in the end.’
‘On the side of political action?’
‘Violence.’
‘Yes. I’m still not happy about it.’
‘Well, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to think it over, won’t you?’
Katarina’s father shrugged.
‘Actually,’ said Owen, ‘you did not mislead me. Rather the reverse. You see, I already knew about you and the storytellers. If I had had any notion that you were merely bookish, in your father’s sense, that had already been dispelled. I had been looking for a manager, someone who was giving the whole thing direction. At first I thought it might be Djugashvili but he always seemed too limited, a man of the Der. When I met you and realized that you were here, back in Cairo, I began to wonder. And when you went to such pains to direct attention away from yourself, even at the expense of your father, I began to suspect.’
‘I should have stayed behind the scenes.’
‘Or out of it.’
‘What will you do with my father?’
‘Release him.’
And Katarina?’
‘Leave her alone.’
‘Not too alone, I hope,’ said Katarina’s father politely. Sorgos’s son and Mingrelian to the last.
The procession wheeled left at the Bab-el-Louk. Ahead of him Owen could see the wide open space of Abdin Square.
Once there he could afford to relax. The square was lined with soldiers and anyway, the procession, crossing straight across the middle, would be sufficiently far from the crowd for only the steadiest shot to succeed, and in Cairo assassins’ hands were often fervent but seldom steady. At the other end of the square was Abdin Palace and once there, behind its iron railings, the Khedive and the Grand Duke would be safe.
It was, actually, the Khedive that Owen was worried about more. For the most part he stayed prudently out of sight of his people, seldom appearing in public, and the opportunity to take a pot shot at him might prove irresistible. The same thought had occurred to the Khedive himself of the previous day with the result that at the last moment the route originally planned had been drastically shortened. The only drawback to the shortened route was that it took the procession past the School of Law, a hotbed of nationalism, where the students would certainly have demonstrated had they not been sent home for the day and the buildings locked. Even so, Owen had been a little apprehensive. The hazard had been safely negotiated, however, and now, with the Bab-el-Louk turned, the end was in sight.
There was the Royal Carriage, with the plumes and tufted lances of the Royal Guard riding alongside. Owen had strongly advocated this arrangement, not on the grounds of their fighting qualities but because there was a better chance of them intercepting a bullet meant for the royal pair. So far as military action went, he had a great deal more faith in the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry, a point which had not escaped the Welsh Fusiliers when they had suggested them for the Guard of Honour.