“How do you like it — mazbout?”
“Please.”
He came out from behind his desk and we sat down at a table with a tourist map of Egypt embedded between two sheets of glass on top of it. He must have taken over the office from someone in that division of Egyptian Information and I noticed an elaborate legend on the map, surrounded by dolphins and a mass of coloured fishes, south of Suez town, advertising a new underwater fishing resort on the Red Sea.
“Suez,” Usher had said. “We need someone in Suez.” But I wasn’t worried that the Colonel knew anything of this. I’d not yet come to think of myself as being on the far side of the law.
“You like it here, don’t you, Mr. Marlow? I suppose most people in your position would have gone home — having lost their job. Most of your colleagues have left, haven’t they? When their contracts ran out.”
“Yes, I like it. I’m married to an Egyptian.”
“Oh? At All Saints’?”
“No. The British Consulate.”
“Mr. Crowther?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not English.”
“No. But there’s no Irish Consulate here. And I was born in London. They can do that sort of thing — you take out dual nationality.”
“Yes, I suppose so. It just seems strange — your being Irish. I thought you people didn’t get on too well with the British …?”
“That was years ago.”
“So you intend staying on here then?”
“Yes, for the time being anyway. I was hoping for another job. Teaching.”
“Well, I wish you luck.”
The Colonel switched the conversation rather awkwardly, as if, having done his duty in putting me at my ease, he had now, regretfully, to embark on the real purpose of our meeting, a more delicate topic.
“You knew the Prince pretty well — didn’t you?”
“He was a friend, yes. I liked him, we got on well together. I suppose you could describe him as being rather mature for a schoolboy. We got on as equals. I can’t see why anyone would have wanted to kill him,” I added without thinking, as if the dialogue we were having was part of a play.
“Can’t you?”
“I mean — apart from one of his relations, as you said.”
“You mean he wasn’t the sort of person to be mixed up in these sort of affairs, these political intrigues?”
“Yes. What intrigues — ?” I stopped short. The dialogue had suddenly gone wildly astray from the text.
“Well, he was a British agent, their Middle East Intelligence. The Cairo-Albert circle. Called after the school I suppose. Rather a hopeless outfit, though of course they’re short-handed at the moment. Even so, it was extraordinarily amateur. I hope you may do better in it. Add a little sense to the whole thing. You’re not a fool.”
The Colonel looked at me with an easy, appreciative expression and went over to his desk where he picked up a pipe and a flimsy sheet of paper which he brought back and handed to me. It was a copy of some sort of Intelligence report, with the heading United Arab Republic: Ministry for the Interior. It was in Arabic except for the anglicized names which were written down in a column mid-way through:
Usher
Crowther
Edwards
Girgis
Prince Bahaddin
And then with some sort of explanation in Arabic before my own name:
Marlow
“I see our Security people here assume that you’ve already joined them.” The Colonel lit a pipe. “Their usual optimism. You’re still thinking about it, aren’t you? And Miss Girgis — she’s your wife. Isn’t that right?” There was a polite tone of enquiry in his voice, almost of condolence, as if she’d had an accident. “Mrs. Marlow it should be now of course. A husband-and-wife team. That was rather an ambitious ploy of Usher’s, wasn’t it? Getting you involved with them in that way. I wouldn’t have credited him with it How would you describe it? Investing in the private sector?”
“You see, Usher found out that we were on to Bahaddin — and had him killed. It suited him rather well really. Apart from stopping Bahaddin talking, and I fancy our people here would have got him to do that, there was the bonus, the quite substantial bonus, of the embarrassment he knew his death would make for us. And he was quite right: one of the few professional things Usher’s ever done. Quite in line with the accepted principles of this sort of work — a pawn for a queen. What puzzles me is how Bahaddin ever got involved with them in the first place, what they had on him, how they got him in. In his position I’d have kept a mile away from Usher and his friends. He must have realized that he was a more than usually valuable property in the game, marvellous potential as a sacrifice, not so much for his work but because of his political importance. He must have known they’d get rid of him if his cover was ever broken, if not before, for the sake of the capital gain.”
The Colonel’s voice took on a chatty, enquiring tone. He seemed genuinely curious about the whole matter and to be inviting my comments on it. I said nothing.
“Perhaps it was all just part of his Anglophilia — like Hussein of Jordan, walking around without proper security and shopping at Harrods; a sort of dare-devil foolhardiness. I suppose that English school at Maadi bowled him over with those old-fashioned ideas, about adventure and empire and the lesser breeds. He may have seen himself as a sort of Lawrence of Arabia in reverse — ‘Bahaddin of England’—I’ve seen a lot of my contemporaries go like that out here. I can’t see what’s wrong with being an Arab. He was a real one too. You’d have understood that surely? Being Irish. And married to an Egyptian. Don’t you find it all rather tiresome? This wanting to be something else, somebody else, in life — and not what you are?”
“It’s the curse of the profession, I should think. But I agree. It is stupid. I said so at the time.”
“You’ve not joined up with them yet then — have you?”
“No.”
I knew already what Colonel Hamdy had in mind: the same sort of blackmail that Crowther and Usher had used, except that he would introduce it more discreetly, in the same agreeable manner that he’d brought to our conversation since the beginning.
“Can you have lunch with me? I must just change my clothes.”
When he came back, the Colonel was in almost bell-bottomed slacks, a yellow cotton shirt and faded silk cravat.
“I have a room at the Semiramis — a dining room. You go on. The first floor, at the end, number 136. I’ll meet you there.”
We had lunch on the terrace of what must have been a sort of senior security men’s dining club, under a parasol, looking over the river. There were grilled steaks of Nile perch to start with and a bottle of white Ptolémées on ice.
“From the old Roman vineyards outside Alex. Have you been there? A Greek gentleman — there he is, Gianaclis, on the bottle. I used to know the family — he started it up again in the last century. I rather like it. In fact, unlike some of my colleagues, I’ve never doubted the civilizing influences of all the many cultures who’ve found a place in this country over the centuries. Though I must admit I never expected to see the Irish as part of that great tradition. Your health.”