He walked back to his room and opened it.
He read a headline in a fairly prominent position:
DEATH STRIKES NEW LINER
And in smaller print:
RETIRED COLONEL HAS HEART ATTACK IN STATEROOM
The small man smiled momentarily in satisfaction, showing bad teeth, and then he walked down into the hall again. Taking up the telephone, he rang a number in the suburb of Clontarf across the harbour. And shortly after he had passed a brief message a further telephone connexion was made, this time between Clontarf and a restaurant in King’s Cross not far from Woolloomooloo.
CHAPTER NINE
The morning after Gresham’s sea burial Shaw received Latymer’s confirmation that he was after all to continue with the ship to Sydney. Latymer made no reference to his earlier information about Karstad’s death, but suggested that Shaw should watch Andersson closely and should not bring matters to a head until the man had given a clear lead.
That evening the New South Wales reduced speed and slid in towards the land. A little later she moved slowly and stately out of the Eastern Mediterranean, along the thin finger of the breakwater and into Port Said harbour, past the blazing neons of Simon Artz, the tourists’ Mecca, elbowed her way through the harbour traffic, the bum-boats, the busy launches standing by to send their hordes of port officials aboard the incoming liner as she crept through the dark water and the stifling, airless heat.
The port doctor boarded to clear the ship inwards; and he only glanced casually at the entry regarding Gresham’s death, asked Dr O’Hara one or two questions, and that was all.
Soon after 8 p.m. the New South Wales, moving slowly on, secured to a buoy just clear of the Roads to await the southbound convoy for the passage through the canal. The accommodation-ladder was lowered and an Egyptian armed guard, sweating into a blue tunic, took up his position as usual by the top platform. A barge nosed up alongside with the canal searchlights, which were brought aboard and placed well for’ard to give full illumination of the banks when the liner’s great beamy hull moved through the narrow waterway, a trip which she would start just after midnight. Soon, her decks were thronged with passengers making deals with the milling bum-boats, from which, by means of a spider’s web of thin ropes hauling baskets, there came up silks and toys and fezes, watches, trashy jewellery, leather goods and pornographic literature unobtainable in England. The gulli-gulli man was aboard and performing on the veranda deck until he was chased away by a ship’s officer; there was a fortuneteller and a man who extracted corns with a little arrangement that looked like a blow-pipe and which he applied to the corn, sucking vigorously through it… Shaw had seen all this many times before, but Judith, enjoying the thrill of breaking new ground, was enthralled by all the supposed glamour of the Middle East. She laughed delightedly at the gulli-gulli man, tried to persuade Shaw to let her buy something from the bum-boatmen; but he absolutely refused.
He said, grinning down at the eager girclass="underline" “Not on your young life. If there was anything that was the slightest good, I’d buy it for you myself. Take my word for it — there isn’t! It’s all junk. And darned expensive at that.” He added, “By the way, I’m going ashore. I’ll have to leave you now — I’ve got to get my passport stamped by the police. They’ve set up shop in the lounge.”
She asked, “Can’t I come ashore?”
He looked down at her, took her arm gently. His eyes roved over the girl’s fresh white frock, which set off the sun-browned, slim body, looked at her eyes alight with interest in everything around her. He felt a sudden longing to forget the job and take her ashore, to be, for one evening’s fun, just an ordinary tourist. He sighed a little, said: “I’d rather you didn’t. I want to do this on my own.” She looked up and saw the determination in his face and she knew she had
to accept that. “All right, then,” she said. “What are you going to do?”
He smiled, took her chin in his fist for a moment and examined her. He said, “None of your business, young lady! Can you amuse yourself for the evening?”
She said quietly, “Oh, I’ll manage.”
“Don’t take any chances. Try and keep where there’s people, in the public rooms.”
“Why?”
“Just because I say so. We don’t want anything to happen to you.”
He left her then, got his passport stamped, put his special identity card (which would be useless and dangerous in Egyptian territory) into his cabin safe, and after that he hung about the lower promenade deck until he saw Anders-son emerge from the starboard accommodation-ladder and step down on the floodlit floating pontoon, the ‘snake’ pontoon which had been positioned to link ship with shore. An-dersson had got a fair start by the time Shaw had reached the ladder, obtained a receipt for his stamped passport which was collected at the gangway, crossed the pontoon and reached dry land; Shaw pressed on after him, caught up and then remained at a discreet distance as Andersson made for the centre of the city. There was nothing suspicious about Andersson so far; he didn’t appear even to be in a hurry. He stopped now and again to stare into the windows of shops still open as they reached the main streets, glanced round once but didn’t appear to notice Shaw. He went into a shop and came out five minutes later with a wrapped parcel; while he was in there, Shaw moved across the street and kept him under observation from there. But there was nothing out of the ordinary, and afterwards Andersson walked on again, unhurriedly still, carrying his parcel.
A few minutes later he was walking up towards a refrigerator show-room, where he stopped. He lit a cigar. Shaw turned and looked into a shop-window, watched Andersson from the corner of his eye. The man was doing something funny with his cigar, almost as though he were signalling. And then he was moving on, puffing at the cigar; he turned a corner, disappeared. Shaw put on speed. If Andersson was allowed to vanish round that corner for long, the chances would be that he’d be gone altogether.
And then, as Shaw came up to the show-room, a small mob of young Egyptians suddenly gathered. One of the youths, glancing round and eyeing Shaw, stepped smartly backwards. He thrust a leg between Shaw’s feet in a quick movement which must have been entirely unnoticed by any of the passers-by. Shaw, caught off balance and completely by surprise, staggered, slipped, fell flat. There was a howl of high-pitched, gleeful laughter from the group of young men as Shaw jumped up, and one of them danced towards him on his toes, fists raised mockingly as though inviting the Englishman to fight it out.
Shaw noted that the group was closing in around him. There was no time to make an issue of this. He demanded icily, “Do you mind letting me pass?”
There was another laugh and a stream of saliva shot towards him, caught him on the front of his light jacket before he could dodge. He clenched his fists, and then, without thinking, he grabbed the spitter’s arm and at once the youth began to yell. Immediately Shaw was in the middle of a big and growing crowd from which, mysteriously, all Europeans seemed to have been excluded; no one from the liner was near enough to help. The crowd was clearly angry and Shaw was being roughly handled when three armed police materialized from a doorway. It was almost as though they’d been standing there ready for trouble; they shouldered their way through the crowd and as they came up close several young Egyptians began yelling at once, and gesticulating towards Shaw, who sensed that he was being accused of assault and battery on a pretty big scale.