The Mingrelian Conspiracy. Michael Pearce

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      The second stage followed immediately afterwards, when people would arise from their evening meal, feel the need for a breath of air, go outside and in no time at all finish up in a café, where they would remain for the rest of the evening. Life in the hot season was best lived out of doors, Cairenes were naturally sociable people, and the café world took over.

      There, if you sat long enough, you would meet everyone you wanted to see. Take that fat Greek, for instance, about to drop into a chair a few tables away; Owen had been wanting to talk to him for days.

      He waved a hand. The Greek came over and joined him.

      ‘Where have you been?’

      ‘Checking out possible places.’

      ‘It’s a bit hit-and-miss.’

      ‘You get a feel.’

      ‘Any particular feels?’

      ‘Well –’ said Georgiades, looking round evasively for the waiter.

      ‘I’ve been thinking. Maybe the best chance we’ve got is catching them at the start of the process. You know, after the first visit.’

      ‘After they’ve left their visiting card? It’s a bit late then, isn’t it? People might be even less inclined to talk.’

      ‘At least we’d have something to go on. Now, in fact, there was a place yesterday –’

      ‘Jesus!’ said Georgiades, scrambling up. ‘It’s Rosa!’

      A very young, thin slip of a girl was standing beside them, arms akimbo, eyes blazing.

      ‘I thought you were supposed to be meeting me?’

      She gestured towards a pile of packages on the pavement.

      ‘On my way! I was on my way!’

      ‘You were sitting here. He spends all his time these days,’ she said to Owen, ‘sitting in cafés.’

      ‘I was working!’ protested Georgiades.

      ‘In a café? Since when is sitting in a café work?’

      ‘It’s what all the bosses do,’ said Georgiades. ‘As soon as they gel anywhere, that’s what they do. Sit down in a café all day.’

      ‘Yes, but you haven’t got anywhere yet.’

      ‘I’m anticipating,’ said Georgiades.

      Owen felt the need to intervene on his behalf.

      ‘It’s my fault, really,’ he said. ‘I caught his eye –’

      ‘He was going to sit down anyway,’ said Rosa. ‘Before he saw you. I was watching.’

      ‘You were watching?’ said Georgiades. He turned to Owen. ‘Hey, she ought to be in this business, not me!’

      ‘Why don’t you join us?’ suggested Owen. ‘You must be tired after carrying all that lot. Tell you what, you sit down and have a cup of coffee, and I’ll pay for an arabeah to take you home.’

      ‘Well –’ said Rosa, weakening.

      But only for a moment.

      ‘Take us both home,’ she stipulated. ‘I don’t want to carry all these damned packages up the stairs. Besides,’ she said generously, ‘he’ll be tired after all this work he’s been doing.’

      Owen held a chair for her. Rosa sat down, pleased. She had a soft spot for Owen. In fact, she told herself, she might well have decided to marry him, not Georgiades, at the time of the wretched business of her father’s kidnapping, had she not known about him and Zeinab. Rosa stood rather in awe of Zeinab, not because she was a great lady, the daughter of a Pasha, no less, but because she had somehow solved, or seemed to have solved, the problem of being an independent woman in a man’s world. She took Zeinab secretly as her model. Zeinab, for instance, would have made no bones about sitting down in this café, populated as it was entirely by men. Rosa sat and lifted her chin.

      She could only, Owen thought, be about sixteen even now. She had married Georgiades (and this was exactly the way to put it, since he had not had much say in the matter) when she was only fourteen. Rosa had sworn blind that she was fifteen, although her parents had been equally convinced that she was fourteen. Fourteen was, in any case, quite allowable in Cairo and Rosa had received unexpected support from her grandmother, who was a little vague about when she herself had married but thought it was young and thoroughly approved Rosa’s following tradition. This was exactly what Rosa had no intention of following. Her grandmother would certainly not have approved of her sitting here; which made it, of course, all the more enjoyable.

      ‘He really is working, you know, when he’s in these cafés,’ said Owen, determined to do his best for Georgiades.

      Rosa nodded, and then thought. She was as sharp as a knife, an implement which she had threatened to use on Georgiades if she caught him straying, and it didn’t take her long to work out that two and two make four.

      ‘It’s protection, is it?’ she said. The cafés?’

      Rosa knew all about the protection racket. Her family had a business. They dealt in such things as lacquered boxes, old jewellery, Assiut shawls and ancient Persian amulets. One day the gangs had called.

      ‘You’re going about it the wrong way,’ she said. ‘Sending him round the cafés. They’ll be too frightened to talk. You’ve got to be able to offer them something.’

      ‘We are offering them something: defence.’

      Rosa shook her head.

      ‘It’s too risky,’ she said. ‘You might catch the gang, you might not. If you don’t, and they’ve talked to you, then they’re in trouble. Why take a chance?’

      ‘Because otherwise they have to pay. And go on paying.’

      ‘You ought to go about it in a different way. Don’t let them think they’re talking to you. Why don’t you have him go round pretending to sell insurance? Insurance against loss? They’ll all be interested in that. They’ll want to know what it covers. It would at least get them talking. And then he might be able to lead them on. He’s good,’ said Rosa, looking unforgivingly at the pile of packages beside her, ‘at leading people on.’

      Owen sent them off in an arabeah, the universal one-horse cab of Cairo, and settled down to wait for the bill. You could wait a long time for that and meanwhile his eyes wandered relaxedly over the scene in front of him. The Ataba-el-Khadra was the meeting place of two worlds. The Musky led straight up from the Old City and you went down it if you were a European wanting to visit the bazaars, or came up it if you were a native intending to visit the shops in the European quarter or, more likely, catch a tram. The Ataba was the terminus for most of Cairo’s tram routes and at any hour of the day or night the square was full of trams, native horse-drawn buses, arabeahs and camels bringing forage for the horses. It was also full of street hawkers selling brushes (why?), ice-cream, СКАЧАТЬ