The Mamur Zapt and the Men Behind. Michael Pearce

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      They had, however, recovered two of the spent bullets and sent them to the Government Laboratories for examination. First analysis had failed to match them with any gun used in previous terrorist attempts.

      This was quite significant, as in Egypt terrorists tended to cling on to their firearms, using them repeatedly and making no effort to cover their tracks by employing new ones. It was a pattern of behaviour inherited from the country’s rural areas, where a gun was a treasured possession, jealously guarded and preserved, bound together with bits of wire, until it was long past an age of decent retirement.

      If a private quarrel was ruled out, this suggested that a new terrorist group was beginning to operate, a hypothesis Nikos favoured on other grounds.

      ‘They’re inexperienced,’ he said. ‘They fired from too far away.’

      Beginners often did that, either because they were nervous or because they did not know the characteristics of their weapons. Small arms were effective only at very close range. The most successful assassination attempts occurred when the assailant ran right up to the victim and shot him at point-blank range, a fact which it was very useful to know when arranging protection for the Consul-General or Khedive.

      Of course, such evidence was very speculative and Nikos, who took a detached view of such things, was really waiting for other evidence to come along; such as another attack.

      Meanwhile, he was attempting an analysis of the reports of following that had come in. There were dozens of them.

      ‘Nearly all of them imaginary,’ he complained.

      ‘Mine wasn’t bloody imaginary,’ said Owen.

      ‘Wasn’t it?’

      ‘Of course it bloody wasn’t, I saw two men.’

      ‘Yes, but were they anything to do with it?’

      ‘Of course they were something to do with it!’

      ‘How do you know? They were just standing there. They might have been buying a camel or something.’

      Owen, who found Nikos’s pedantic logic very tiresome on occasions, resisted a temptation to kick his ass.

      ‘Anyway,’ said Nikos, ‘you haven’t described them properly.’

      ‘What do you mean, I haven’t described them properly?’

      ‘No detail.’

      ‘There wasn’t time to notice detail.’

      ‘They didn’t just disappear. They must have walked away. That would take time.’

      ‘A couple of steps?’

      ‘Long enough to see something.’

      ‘Not from where I was. My view was interrupted.’

      ‘It was a chance,’ said Nikos accusingly.

      ‘Look,’ said Owen, ‘there was a reason why I didn’t stand out in the middle of the street and examine them carefully. It was that I didn’t want to get a bullet in my head.’

      Nikos bent prudently over the papers on his desk.

      Owen stalked indignantly over to the earthenware pot standing in the window where it would keep cool and poured himself a glass of water. He picked up a copy of the Parquet’s first report and settled down to read it.

      A few moments went by. Then Nikos coughed slightly.

      Owen looked up.

      ‘Young or old?’ said Nikos.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Young or old? Those two men. Were they young or old?’

      ‘Young, I think.’

      ‘Galabeahs?’

      ‘Shirt and trousers, I think.’

      ‘Short, fat, tall, thin?’

      ‘About medium, I’d say. Slightly built, perhaps.’

      ‘Young,’ said Nikos.

      ‘Probably. It would go with them being inexperienced.’

      ‘They needn’t be the same two. The group as a whole might be young. In fact, it probably would be.’

      ‘What about the other cases?’

      ‘The other reports? Nine-tenths imaginary or so vague as to be useless. About six worth looking at.’

      ‘Including mine?’

      ‘You’re on the margin.’

      ‘Fairclough’s?’

      ‘No detail on the following. Useful detail from the shooting, though not much of it.’

      ‘What did you get from the others?’

      ‘Two people, nearly always. Men, young, Western-style clothes.’

      Owen thought for a moment.

      ‘That could be good,’ he said.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘It could mean there’s only one group operating. If it’s the same pattern in each case.’

      ‘It’s the same pattern, I think.’

      ‘I hope it is. That would make things a lot easier.’

      ‘Did you think it wasn’t?’

      ‘No, no, not particularly. You always worry in a situation like this, with general unrest, that they might all start coming at you, from all sides. It’s much easier if there’s only one group to handle.’

      ‘You’ve still got the general restiveness to cope with.’

      ‘Yes, but you handle the two in different ways. The general stuff is all right provided you keep a sense of proportion. You’ve not got to let it get out of hand but at the same time you’ve not got to overreact. If you start thinking they’re all bloody terrorist groups you tend to overreact. But that only makes it worse because it provokes people, and then what starts as a demonstration becomes a bloody riot.’

      ‘You don’t think demonstrations might grow into terrorism if they’re not put down?’

      ‘No,’ said Owen.

      ‘I hope you’re right,’ said Nikos. ‘We’ll soon see, won’t we?’

      Keeping a sense of proportion was all very well but it wasn’t only Owen who had to guard against overreacting. The next morning he had a meeting at the Residency and when he came out he found that the СКАЧАТЬ