The Mamur Zapt and the Spoils of Egypt. Michael Pearce

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      ‘Belong to the world?’ said Nuri, stunned.

      ‘In the sense that they are part of the heritage of us all.’

      ‘Well, yes,’ said Nuri. ‘In that sense. As long as it’s in that sense. Though I still don’t see—’

      There was a little silence. At the other end of the room Miss Skinner and Zeinab chattered happily away.

      Nuri sniffed.

      ‘In any case,’ he said, ‘heritage! Pooh! That is all in the past. We must look to the future. I was saying so to the Khedive only the other day. We were discussing, as it happens, the sale of a temple, complete with colossi—’

      ‘I think,’ said Paul, ‘that would be the kind of thing she had in mind.’

      ‘The sale was to the British Museum, of course.’

      ‘A difficult balance of interests,’ said Paul, smiling and shaking his head. ‘Difficult for all of us.’

      Nuri caught at his arm.

      ‘And therefore, my friend, to be approached with circumspection. You will urge that, won’t you? This could create such problems for us—’

      ‘A few antiquities?’

      ‘Not so few. Not these days. Now that the price of cotton is so low. Some of my colleagues are going in for it in a big way. Raquat Pasha was telling me that he had appointed a European agent. Sidki Narwas Pasha has a permanent arrangement with a German museum. Two or three are getting together. Even the Khedive—’

      Owen listened with deepening gloom. They were all in it, the big Pashas, the Khedive, the museums. It was a national industry.

      ‘We rely on it,’ Nuri was saying with emphasis. ‘Absolutely rely on it. You must do something, my friend.’

      Across the room Zeinab and Miss Skinner were bringing their conversation to an end.

      ‘Surely there is something you can do, mon cher?’ said Nuri earnestly to Paul. ‘Persuade her to take up other interests, perhaps?’

      ‘Well, there is the Women Question—’

      ‘Ah yes,’ said Nuri thoughtfully.

      ‘But more immediately,’ said Paul, ‘there are her archæological interests. I am taking her down to Der el Bahari at the end of this week.’

      ‘Are you? Are you, indeed?’

      The conversation ended and the women rose together.

      ‘You do see now, don’t you, Pasha,’ said Paul quietly, ‘the importance of these political questions?’

      ‘Oh, quite,’ said Nuri. ‘Oh, quite.’

      ‘It would be very unfortunate if Miss Skinner were to get the wrong impression.’

      ‘Don’t worry,’ said Nuri Pasha. ‘I know exactly how to handle Miss Skinner.’

      Owen stuck his head into the bar room.

      ‘Trevelyan here?’

      ‘No,’ said someone. ‘He left this morning. He’s on his way to Der el Bahari by now.’

      ‘With our blessings,’ said someone else.

      ‘There’s a lot of money riding on it,’ said Carmichael, from Customs.

      ‘Why’s that?’ asked Owen, coming definitely into the room.

      ‘It’s that damned woman,’ said someone, Jopling, from Finance. ‘We’ve promised him free drinks for a month if he can keep her down there for a fortnight.’

      ‘More if he can do it for longer.’

      ‘It’s the end of the year,’ someone explained, ‘the financial year, that is. We’re up to our eyeballs in work reconciling everything in sight. And then this damned woman comes along, poking her nose in.’

      ‘I don’t mind her poking her nose in,’ said Jopling. ‘It’s having to take time off to answer her silly questions.’

      ‘If she’d just read the Accounts,’ said someone else, obviously also from Finance, ‘that would be fine. But she wants to go behind them, keeps asking what they mean.’

      ‘As if they meant anything, other than just an end-of-year story to keep everybody happy.’

      ‘So we promised Trevelyan he could have free drinks every evening if he’d only get her out of our hair.’

      ‘It’s worth it.’

      ‘It certainly is,’ said Owen. ‘I’d have cut myself in if I’d known. Wahid whisky-soda, min fadlak.’

      He collected the whisky-soda and sat down in a corner with Jopling and Carmichael.

      ‘Has she been getting in your hair, too?’ asked Carmichael.

      ‘My God, Owen,’ said Jopling, ‘if she’s been looking at your finances—!’

      ‘Thank you, not yet. She’s concentrating on the whitewash boys rather than the workers. It’s the antiques export business,’ he said to Carmichael.

      ‘That? The export licence stuff?’

      ‘She can forget that,’ said Jopling. ‘The Treasury people back in Town are all Free-Traders. Now that the Liberals are back in power. They won’t hear of a licence.’

      ‘I don’t know where she stands on the licence business,’ said Owen. ‘From what I’ve gathered, it’s more a question of whether to allow antiques to be exported at all.’

      ‘She wants to ban that? Bloody hell, that would create a rumpus.’

      ‘It would. It is already.’

      Jopling regarded him curiously.

      ‘How do you come to be involved? It’s not really your line, is it?’ Like many people, he was uncertain exactly what was the Mamur Zapt’s line. ‘More Carmichael’s.’

      ‘Enforcement,’ said Carmichael. ‘He’s on the enforcement side.’

      ‘Stopping the smuggling? Blimey, you’ve got a job on! Good luck, mate!’

      He drained his glass. Carmichael ordered another round.

      ‘That’s not the only thing,’ said Owen. He told them about the incident in the Ataba.

      ‘Somebody tried to push her under a tram?’ said Jopling. ‘Wish I’d thought of that. Might have been cheaper than the beer.’

      ‘No one did anything,’ scoffed Carmichael. ‘She’s imagining things.’

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