A Cold Touch of Ice. Michael Pearce

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      ‘All we are asking,’ said Ismet Bey, ‘is that we should be able to move our troops from one part of His Highness’s domains – Palestine – to another – Tripolitania – through a third: Egypt.’

      ‘I do see your point,’ conceded Owen’s friend, Paul, who was chairing the meeting.

      ‘Well, that is something.’

      ‘However –’

      However, thought Owen, there wasn’t a cat’s chance in hell of Britain agreeing to let a Turkish army march through Egypt. Who knows, they might even step aside to assert Ottoman rights in other respects.

      ‘Shouldn’t Egypt herself have a voice in this?’ asked the Khedive’s representative.

      ‘Egypt’s is the point of view that I am expressing,’ said Paul.

      ‘No, it’s not. Yours is the view of the British Administration. We Egyptians strongly condemn Italy’s action as Western aggression and would wish to do everything we could to help Turkey repel its foreign invaders.’

      ‘Have you thought,’ asked Paul, ‘that if you take too active a part, you could yourselves become the object of aggression?’

      ‘We would take care of that,’ said Ismet Bey.

      The British Commander-in-Chief coughed modestly.

      ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that the presence of a British army in Egypt is all the guarantee that you need against foreign invasion.’

      Ismet Bey sighed. They had been here before in the last few months: many times.

      ‘At least,’ he said desperately, ‘allow us to move supplies.’

      ‘Medical supplies, certainly,’ said Paul. ‘As you know, the Consul-General is anxious to provide whatever humanitarian help he can.’

      ‘Arms?’

      ‘I’m not sure that counts as humanitarian.’

      ‘You always used to allow passage.’

      ‘Limited passage. To allow unrestricted passage would be to prejudice our position of neutrality.’

      ‘It’s not even limited now,’ protested the Bey. ‘You’ve stopped passage altogether.’

      ‘That’s because you were sending so much.’

      ‘But –’

      ‘If we include what you’ve been smuggling.’

      ‘Smuggling?’ cried Ismet Bey. ‘How can we be smuggling when it’s our country?’

      ‘Exactly!’ said the Khedive’s representative. ‘And if it’s not his country, then it’s certainly ours!’

      There was a long pause.

      ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Paul conciliatorily: ‘there’s clearly a problem here, and it seems to me that it can best be resolved by appointing someone to regulate the arms traffic whom we can all trust.’

      ‘Well, that sounds very reasonable,’ said the Bey, surprised.

      ‘The Mamur Zapt.’

      ‘What?’ said Owen, waking up.

      ‘Mamur Zapt?’ said the Khedive’s representative.

      ‘Yes. A faithful servant of the Khedive.’

      ‘But he’s a faithful servant of the British too!’ cried the Bey.

      ‘Oh dear, Ismet Bey!’ said Paul, beginning to gather up his papers. ‘What a shocking suggestion!’

      There was, alas, some truth in what Ismet Bey had said. One of the first things the British had done when they arrived was to install their own man as Mamur Zapt, Head of the Khedive’s Secret Police, the man ultimately responsible for political security in Cairo. Successive Mamur Zapts had therefore found themselves serving two masters; something which had hitherto not presented much of a problem to Owen, the present incumbent, since he had happily played off one against the other. Lately, however, that had been getting more difficult. Since the new Consul-General had taken over, relations with the Khedive had become strained and the two were often now pulling in different directions.

      This evening, though, he was putting such difficulties behind him. An Egyptian colleague had invited him round for coffee. Owen was pleased, because although he had known Mahmoud for nearly four years now, this was the first time he had actually been invited into his house.

      The reason for this was partly, he knew, that Mahmoud didn’t really have a home of his own. Although he was now in his thirties, he still lived with his mother. Mahmoud’s father, a lawyer like himself, had died young and Mahmoud had taken over responsibility for the family. Being the man he was, he had probably taken it too seriously, as he tended to do with his work at the Ministry of Justice. Owen doubted if he ever got home much before midnight. He seemed to have very little life apart from his work.

      Mahmoud was, in any case, as Owen had learned over the years, an intensely private individual. Owen was certainly his closest, perhaps his only, friend, but in some respects he felt he had never got to know him. He was delighted now that one of Mahmoud’s defensive walls seemed at last to be coming down.

      The house was a tall, thin, three-storey building just off the Sharia-el-Nahhasin. Across its roof, surprisingly near, he could see the minarets of the Barquk and, yes, that other one was probably the Qu’alun. The street was towards the edge of the old city, balanced precariously between the new Europeanized quarters to the west and the bazaars to the east.

      There was a servant but Mahmoud himself came impatiently to the door and led Owen upstairs to the living room on the first floor. It was a large, sparely furnished room with box windows at both ends, one looking down into an inner courtyard, the other out on to the street. There were fine, rather faded, rugs on the floor and one on the wall, and three low divans, arranged round a brazier, on which a pot of coffee was warming. On the little table next to it were three cups.

      ‘The third is for my father-in-law,’ said Mahmoud.

      ‘What?’ said Owen, stunned. This was the first he had ever heard about Mahmoud being married.

      ‘My father-in-law to be,’ Mahmoud amended.

      He seemed a little embarrassed.

      ‘You are getting married?’

      Mahmoud nodded.

      Owen had never expected this. He had always taken Mahmoud to be one of nature’s celibates. In all the time Owen had known him, he had never shown the slightest sexual interest in any woman they had met.

      Owen pulled himself together.

      ‘Congratulations! Well, this is a surprise!’

      ‘It is to me, too,’ Mahmoud admitted. ‘But my mother felt the time had come.’

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