The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt (10 page)

‘The counter-argument,’ said Abu Bakir, who seemed to know a lot about it, ‘is that this was a minor breach of conditions and that Mr el Zaki was being over-zealous in recommending withdrawal of the licence to excavate.’

‘And also,’ said Paul, ‘that this over-zealousness proceeds from a general bias against foreigners and that if action is not taken against him, then this will be taken as evidence of the Government’s general attitude in such matters.’

‘Mahmoud gets disciplined and Parker gets away with it?’

Paul nodded.

‘That’s about right.’

‘I think if the Government did take that view, it would be challenged in the Assembly,’ said Abu Bakir.

Paul looked at Owen.

‘Abu Bakir speaks with authority.’

‘Not authority,’ the Egyptian quietly protested. ‘Knowledge of the probabilities, say.’

‘Good knowledge of the probabilities,’ said Paul, smiling.

Owen remembered Abu Bakir’s Nationalist sympathies.

‘So either way…’ said Paul.

We have a political problem, thought Owen. If the Nationalists took that line, they would be able to stir up a lot of trouble. It would be fertile ground for the cultivation of anti-foreign feeling, which could easily spill over into other areas.

What was worse was that other countries might well feel some sympathy with the Nationalist view and use the issue to exert pressure on Britain to abandon its privileged position in Egypt. Other countries,
most
other countries, would be only too anxious to prise Britain out of Egypt.

‘You see,’ said Paul.

Abu Bakir was watching them carefully.

What was
his
motivation, Owen wondered. Why had he come to Paul? Why, if he was such a Nationalist, had he not just gone ahead, let the issue blow up and then exploited it in the Assembly? Why go to Paul?

‘Tell me,’ he said to Abu Bakir, ‘who is it exactly who is putting pressure on the Ministry?’

‘Foreign interests,’ said Abu Bakir.

‘Directly?’

There was a little pause.

‘Not exactly directly,’ Abu Bakir admitted.

‘Indirectly, then. Through others?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who are the others?’

Abu Bakir shrugged his shoulders. ‘The usual ones.’

‘The Khedive?’

‘Not directly,’ the Egyptian conceded.

‘Indirectly, again? Through intermediaries?’

Abu Bakir nodded.

‘I think we need to know the names of the intermediaries,’ said Owen.

‘I don’t know their names. They’ll be the usual ones. The great Pashas—’

‘Are you sure? This is important.’

‘It’s always the Pashas in the end, in a thing like this, isn’t it?’ said Abu Bakir bitterly.

Behind the front of a popular legislative Assembly, behind the façade of Cabinet Government, Egypt was still a feudal country. The Pashas were its great barons, holding most of the land, employing most of the people outside the big cities, jostling for positions of favour with the Khedive, intriguing, constantly intriguing, to get their hands on the levers of power.

Even the British had not been able to dislodge them. Perhaps they did not try too much. Used to them, seeing them, perhaps, as the equivalent of the great English families which had dominated English politics until very recently, the Administration was content to coexist. So long as it could do what it wanted within its sphere, it was content that the Pashas should do what they wished within theirs.

It would take a revolution to sweep them away. Which was, of course, what the new Nationalist Party was saying.

‘Is it all the Pashas?’ asked Owen. ‘Or just some of them?’

‘It will be just some of them,’ said Paul, ‘on something like this.’

‘Those who have a particular interest, perhaps,’ said Owen, ‘in the export of antiquities?’

Owen had to go and see Finance. He knew what it was about; he had mislaid a trifling sum, well, three thousand piastres, actually, and Finance wanted to know where it was.

Owen knew where it was. It was in the hands of various gentlemen in the Silversmiths’ Bazaar, the Shoemakers’ Bazaar and the Sudanese Bazaar; and it was there for services rendered.

Why was payment not made against a proper invoice? Because these gentlemen were not the sort to send invoices.

And because the services they had rendered were not exactly the kind of thing you sent invoices for.

Could he at least specify the services?

Oh yes. Bribing various camel-herders to reveal what else they carried besides dates; offering inducements to the servants in the Khedive’s uncle’s palace in order to ascertain the connection between the uncle and the slave trade in the Sudan; suborning a kavass in one of the Legations to provide evidence of the relation between some of the Legation’s activities and the traffic in drugs. He could name the Legation—

Perhaps better not. And perhaps it was better not to mention the Khedive’s relations. And that bit about bribes…

The trouble was that the Accounts went back to England, where they were crawled over by a committee of high-minded MPs who shared the new Liberal Government’s distrust of imperial adventure and were prone to unexpected fits of morality.

Better, he had found, to say nothing, or as little as he could. And so he had included the three thousand piastres under a broad heading of ‘General Expenditure’; which was, unfortunately, a little too general for the Finance Department’s liking.

He knew how it would go; and did not hasten his steps.

When he got there it was as he feared.

‘Look, old chap, we can’t have this,’ said the Finance man, tapping the page of accounts with the end of his pen. ‘I mean, three thousand piastres! No invoices. Audit would have our blood. We’ve got to have details.’

‘It’s a bit tricky—’ Owen was beginning, when a door at the other end of the room opened and a voice shouted: ‘Clayton!’

The man opposite rose hurriedly from his chair.

‘Shan’t be a moment,’ he said.

He was gone, however, for twenty minutes and then emerged pink-faced and at a run. He was carrying an armful of ledgers, which he put down on the desk of one of the clerks. He said something tersely and then was heading back into the other room when Owen intercepted him.

‘How long are you going to be?’

‘Christ knows! It’s that bloody woman again!’

‘Well, I’m not sitting here all morning,’ Owen pointed out.

‘Sorry, old chap, it’ll have to be some other time.’

Clayton rushed off.

Owen sat for a moment nursing his wrath.

‘Can you handle this?’ he said to one of the clerks. The clerk glanced at it.

‘Sorry, effendi,’ he said. ‘It’s a policy decision.’

Owen got to his feet.

‘I’m making a policy decision, too,’ he said. ‘Tell Clayton he can bloody well come to me next time. That’s if he wants to see me.’

He stalked out. On the way he passed the door to the other office. Inside he saw Miss Skinner. She was surrounded by files and perspiring Finance people.

‘Surely you have records?’ she was saying.

‘I think they may be at Alexandria,’ one of the perspirers said.

‘May be?’ said Miss Skinner cuttingly. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘They’re probably still in the Douane. Things get delayed,’ said the man sulkily.

Miss Skinner turned some papers over.

‘These are dated three years ago,’ she pointed out. ‘Still in the Douane?’

Serves the so-and-so right, thought Owen with grim satisfaction, and continued on past. He was just going down the stairs when a thought struck him. He hesitated, thought again and then retraced his steps.

‘Why, it’s Captain Owen!’ said Miss Skinner, beaming.

‘Are we on the same errand, I wonder? Checking the duty files on antiquities exports?’

It had never occurred to him.

‘As a matter of fact—’ Then he recovered quickly. ‘But I see you’ve got ahead of me this morning!’

‘It’s the obvious thing to do, isn’t it? You can see at a glance what antiquities have been exported and how much duty has been paid. And do you know what I’ve found?’ She looked pleased.

‘There has been a two hundred and sixty per cent increase in the volume in the last twelve months. There! I expect you have already spotted it but it came as a surprise to me. I suspected there had been an increase but not on this scale!’

‘That is, actually, the very thing I wanted to talk to you about.’

Miss Skinner looked at her watch.

‘I think I have time for a cup of coffee,’ she said. ‘It will give the people here a chance to find some more files for me. They seem to need,’ she added, ‘plenty of time.’

He took her round the corner to a little Arab café.

‘I wonder if I can enlist your aid, Miss Skinner? The Government is, as you know, determined to tackle the question of the flight abroad of Egypt’s national treasures—’

‘The Spoils of Egypt,’ said Miss Skinner, nodding her head approvingly.

‘In doing so, however, it does not wish to jeopardize its excellent relations with other countries. Particularly America—’

‘Since that’s where the money comes from.’

‘Quite. Unfortunately, something has cropped up which may send the wrong signals to your compatriots, Miss Skinner, and I wondered if by any chance we could count on your assistance in persuading the American public of our good intentions.’

‘My uncle, perhaps—’

‘Especially as it concerns something you know about.’ He told her where things stood on the Parker prosecution. ‘The Government might, you see, wish to take up the issue of negligence, but would not wish to do so if it suggested to the community abroad that it was conducting an anti-foreign campaign.’

‘I see your point.’

She was obviously considering the matter. Then she seemed to make up her mind.

‘I will do what I can. All the more so as I feel a particular concern for those two poor men. A personal responsibility, you might say. Yes, you can count on me.’

Owen started to express his thanks, but she interrupted him.

‘And in return,’ she said, putting her hand on his arm, ‘you can do something for me.’

‘Of course.’

‘Tomorrow afternoon I am visiting a friend. A private commission. When I get back I shall ring you and you can forget about it. If I do not ring you by four, will you please go to my hotel and there on my escritoire you will find a sealed envelope which will tell you where I have been. There! That’s it.’

‘But, Miss Skinner,’ said Owen, bewildered, ‘what then do you want me to do?’

‘I am sure, Captain Owen, that, should the occasion arise, you will know very well what to do.’

The Expedition to Punt?’ said Monsieur Peripoulin wrathfully. ‘Over my dead body!’

‘Over your dead body it’s going to have to be, then,’ said Parker. ‘I’ve got a deal.’

‘Deal? I know nothing about deals.’

‘It’s time you learned, then. We had this before we started. We wouldn’t have started otherwise.’

‘What is this “deal”?’ Peripoulin asked Owen. ‘I don’t understand. I know nothing about deals.’

They were at the Museum. Around them on the floor were the spoils from Der el Bahari. Most had already been valued and packed away again in large wooden crates. Only the façade, complete now,—Owen had checked that the leopard cub was there—remained to be packed.

And valued.

‘Not something I can do,’ the under-keeper had said, and had fetched Monsieur Peripoulin.

‘What is this deal?’ Owen said to Parker.

‘When we applied for the licence to excavate,’ said Parker, ‘we were given to understand that we could retain whatever we found.’

‘No.’ Owen shook his head. ‘That couldn’t have been the case. There’s always a reservation. The Museum has the right to retain items of outstanding historical significance.’

‘Sure, I understand that. If you find another Cow of Hathor or something, that goes to the Museum.’

‘The Expedition to the Land of Punt,’ said Monsieur Peripoulin. ‘That is of outstanding historical significance.’ Parker shrugged.

‘Yeah, well, it’s all interesting.’

‘This is exceptional.’

‘Up to a point. The fact is,’ said Parker, ‘you’ve got to let us have something. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth doing.’

‘But not the Land of Punt,’ said Monsieur Peripoulin firmly.

‘I tell you, we’ve got a deal.’

‘It says you can export the Land of Punt?’

‘Not in so many words,’ Parker admitted, ‘but—’

‘This deal,’ pursued Monsieur Peripoulin, ‘it is in writing?’

‘I dare say it’s written down somewhere,’ said Parker off-handedly.

‘
0-oh là-là
! I know about deals like that.’

‘This one’s kosher,’ said Parker. ‘It’s with the Ministry.’

‘The Département? Well, that is strange. For I am in the Département and I have not heard of any such “deal”.’

‘You wouldn’t,’ said Parker. ‘It was confidential.’

‘Ah? It was confidential? So confidential that even I, Peripoulin, have not heard of it! That is strange indeed. Well,’ said Monsieur Peripoulin, ‘until I do hear of it, I shall assume it does not exist. The façade remains here!’ He stalked off.

It took Parker a moment or two to recover. Then he exploded.

‘You can’t do that! You can’t do that! I’ve got a deal!’ For a moment it seemed he was about to charge after him.

‘That’s the most valuable piece of the lot!’ he shouted.

‘Precisely,’ said Monsieur Peripoulin, and disappeared into his office.

Owen put a restraining hand on Parker’s arm. Parker shook it off.

‘What does he think he’s doing? I’ve got a deal!’

‘Have you?’ said Owen.

It took a moment for the words to sink in. Then Parker quietened down.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I sure have. You don’t think we’d move without one, do you? There’s somebody else who’s interested— ’ He broke off. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s bound to be others. But we got first strike. That was the deal.’

‘That doesn’t sound a Department of Antiquities sort of deal.’

‘Well, it was.’

‘Are you sure it was with the Department? Who did you talk to?’

Parker hesitated.

‘It wasn’t quite like that.’ He hesitated again. ‘As a matter of fact, we didn’t approach them directly ourselves. We did it through people with influence—’

‘Oh yes,’ said Owen sceptically.

‘No, really,’ Parker insisted. ‘We wanted to make sure, you see. We knew there was somebody else after it, another consortium. We wanted to be sure we got it. So we went to the top.’

‘Peripoulin’s the top.’

‘No, no. Higher.’

‘Who?’

Parker was silent.

‘You’ve been sold a pup,’ said Owen.

Parker shook his head.

‘No, I haven’t. Don’t think I haven’t done this sort of thing before. I know what to look out for.’

‘Well,’ said Owen, ‘Peripoulin’s not going to change his mind.’

Parker looked at him.

‘Can’t he be made to?’

‘Not by me, if that’s what you’re asking. It would have to be by the people you made the deal with, the people at the top. If they really are at the top.’

‘Well, they are,’ said Parker.

‘Why don’t you call on the services of your friend again? The man with influence?’

A little to his surprise, Parker took him seriously.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Why not?’

He went off to find a phone. Owen thought for a moment of eavesdropping, but it was too late. Then something else occurred to him.

He made his way along the corridor to the main office of the Museum. He wanted to make a phone call himself.

Abu Bakir answered it.

‘The Department of Antiquities?’ he said. ‘But I’m in Finance. Why ask me?’

‘I thought you might have friends there.’

There was a little silence.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

Owen went back to the room with the crates. He found two people looking at the façade: Francesca, the Italian girl from Alexandria, and Tomas, the Copt.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize you two knew each other.’

‘Hello,’ said Francesca. ‘I know you, too. But I’ve known Tomas for even longer.’

Tomas smiled politely.

‘I’m glad you’ve been able to locate the leopard cub,’ Owen said to him.

‘Leopard cub?’ said Francesca, puzzled.

Owen pointed the fragment out to her.

‘It got parted from the others.’

Francesca raised an eyebrow.

‘At Heraq. You remember.’

‘I see,’ said Francesca, and laughed.

‘It was a mistake,’ said Tomas.

‘It certainly was,’ said Francesca. ‘It would have reduced the value of the façade considerably.’

‘What
is
the value of the façade?’ asked Owen.

‘Impossible to say on a thing like that. I expect the Museum’s put a value on it, though.’

‘I think there’s some difficulty about that.’

‘Oh. I see! Alphonse.’

‘Alphonse?’

‘Peripoulin.’

‘That’s right.’

‘He doesn’t want to let it go?’

‘Can you blame him?’

The girl shrugged.

‘I’ve seen so many nice things leave Egypt,’ she said.

‘The Land of Punt, I would have thought, was special. Unique. Priceless.’

‘Not priceless,’ the girl corrected him. ‘And not even a particularly high price as these things go. It would only be of interest to museums. What really fetches the money are smaller things—things that would fit into a private collection.’

‘Like the Cow of Hathor?’

‘That, thank goodness, is safe here. But yes, like the Cow of Hathor.’

‘I like the Land of Punt. I hope Peripoulin wins.’

Tomas, who had been standing quietly by, stirred a little.

‘Yes,’ said the girl, ‘we ought to get on with it. Only we can’t really, not until the business about the façade is settled.’

‘You could take the others,’ Tomas suggested.

‘I suppose I could. And come back for the façade. I’ll be here again next week.’

‘Why are you taking them?’ asked Owen.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why you and not Tomas?’

‘Tomas is just a contractor. Well, not just. It’s a skilled business transporting these. But his work finishes when he gets it to the Museum. After that, I take over.’

‘It’s different,’ said Tomas. ‘The first part is hauling and carrying. The second part is forms.’

‘That’s me,’ said the girl. ‘Coming from Italy, I know all about forms. And bureaucracy.’

Tomas gave her a sheaf of papers.

‘It’s all here,’ he said, glancing round at the crates and then, surreptitiously, at Owen. ‘Now.’

‘Right, then. I’ll get the porters to move it.’

She walked briskly out. Tomas shook hands politely with Owen.

‘What are you doing now? Going back to Der el Bahari?’

‘For the next load,’ said Tomas.

Francesca reappeared with a string of porters.

‘These, and these,’ she said. ‘And I’ve got some more stuff next door. From other customers.’

‘All to the depot?’

‘To the depot. We have a small warehouse,’ she explained to Owen. ‘We sort the things out there, in Alexandria, before taking them along to Customs.’

‘This one?’ asked the leader of the porters, pointing to a large package touched up with gilt paint, which almost blocked the doorway.

‘My goodness, yes. Be careful! It’s a nice one. And don’t get it mixed up with these.’

The man bore it off. It wasn’t long before all the crates had been cleared away. Only the façade was left, lying pieced together jigsaw-like on the floor.

‘I’ll leave you to guard it,’ said Francesca, coming to shake hands.

‘You’re returning to Alexandria?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon. Tonight I am giving myself a treat.
Cavalleria.
I don’t suppose…?’

‘I am already engaged to go there. But perhaps at the interval?’

The telephone in Peripoulin’s office gave a long ring. After a moment Peripoulin emerged slowly. Parker came into the room.

‘Satisfied?’ he said to Peripoulin triumphantly.

‘No,’ said Peripoulin. ‘Not satisfied.’

He came over to the façade and stood looking down at it.

‘Well?’

Peripoulin ignored him and addressed himself to Owen.

‘I have been asked to put a value on this,’ he said. ‘I do so: one million pounds.’

Zeinab was unaccountably out of sorts at the opera that evening: and that was before they met Francesca.

The Opera House had been built by the Khedive Ismail as part of his lavish preparations for the Grand Opening of the Suez Canal. Inside, all was crimson and cream and gold. The boxes, most of which were harem-style, screened to preserve the harem ladies from the gaze of the licentious, were fitted out with red brocade. And one of them was the special perquisite of the Mamur Zapt.

When, on taking up his post, Owen had first discovered that he possessed this private privilege, he had been surprised and touched. What an imaginative, what a civilized way of rewarding service, he had thought!

Of course, it was nothing of the kind. The Khedive Ismail had been determined to make his venture a success and one way of doing it was to guarantee the attendance of the elite. All his Ministers had boxes and woe betide them if they did not attend. The Mamur Zapt, the Chief of the Khedive’s Secret Police, was there in person to make sure that they did.

Cultural standards had declined so much, of course, with the coming of the British that this was no longer one of Owen’s duties. And the Mamur Zapt’s box might have gone forever unused had he not discovered, when he met Zeinab, that this was about the one part of the Mamur Zapt’s office that she took seriously.

Since then they had been assiduous attenders and Owen had come to the conclusion that the Welsh, the Arabs and the Italians had significant things in common, most notably a taste for emotional drama which other, colder nations— the English, for example—would call facile.

Normally, Zeinab succumbed to the spell the moment she entered the House. This evening, though, she seemed to surrender herself to the music slowly and almost unwillingly.

‘Feeling all right?’ asked Owen solicitously.

If she was, this soon altered when they went downstairs at the interval and Owen greeted effusively this tall, beautiful, elegant, European girl.

‘We met at Alexandria,’ Owen explained.

‘Oh!’ said Zeinab.

‘So nice to see you yesterday,’ said Francesca.

‘Yesterday?’ said Zeinab, with raised eyebrows.

‘At the Museum.’

‘In Cairo too, then.’

‘My work takes me there,’ Francesca explained.

‘Work?’ said Zeinab.

This was strange and suspicious. Women did not work. Not unless they were peasants. And this girl was plainly not a peasant.

‘I run an antiquities business.’

‘That’s how we came to meet,’ Owen explained.

‘Oh? Since when have you been interested in antiquities?’

‘Since I got landed with this business about export licensing.’

This time it was Francesca’s eyebrows which were raised.

‘You didn’t tell me about this,’ she said.

‘There are lots of things he doesn’t tell people about,’ said Zeinab.

Both women grew cool, and not just towards each other. In an effort to improve matters, Owen talked to Francesca about the opera they had both seen at Alexandria. Zeinab became even cooler.

Owen felt obliged to explain how they had come to meet at the Opera.

‘By the way,’ said Francesca, ‘have you reached a decision yet on the statue?’

‘Not yet.’

‘The person we would use has a studio here in Cairo. Would it help you to see the sort of work he does?’

‘That’s not really the point, actually—’ Owen began, but Zeinab cut in.

‘I am against statues,’ she said.

‘But they can be so beautiful!’ Francesca cried.

‘Not in Egypt they can’t,’ said Zeinab.

Francesca shrugged.

‘But surely Egypt is looking outwards now? Opera itself—’

‘Egypt is for the Egyptians,’ said Zeinab and moved towards the stairs.

Francesca put her hand on Owen’s arm.

‘Do come and see!’ she said. ‘Vittorio would be so pleased. He’s in the Sharia el Nazdafni. I’ll meet you there at ten o’clock outside the mosque.’

Zeinab was silent for the rest of the evening; silent but stormy.

‘Dante!’ said Vittorio next morning. ‘Ah, Dante! It would not be work, it would be homage.’

His studio was on the roof of an old, crumbling house and opened, as did many of the houses, on to a small roof garden. There were blocks of limestone everywhere. Beyond a trellis covered with heavy swathes of bean flowers, the tips of an angel’s wings rose incongruously.

‘Much of my work is funerary,’ said Vittorio sadly, following Owen’s eye. ‘I don’t get many commissions. Were it not for Francesca—’