Seven Dials (24 page)

Pitt fished in his shoe. Would it be worth spending what he had, if he still had it, to make allies? They probably knew nothing about Ayesha or Lovat, but they might help him learn-if there was anything worth learning. And he was beginning to doubt that.

Their eyes never moved from him; they barely blinked.

He pulled out about two hundred piasters-enough to pay for his room at the hotel for eight days.

“That’ll do!” Avram said instantly, and before Pitt could even consider a decision, the money was gone and Avram was banging on the door with his fists.

Musa nodded, his shoulders relaxing. “Good,” he said with satisfaction. “Yes-good.”

“That’s two hundred piasters!” The words were out of Pitt’s mouth before he thought. “I want something in return for it!”

Musa lifted his eyebrows. “Oh? And what would you like, then?”

Pitt’s brain raced. “Someone to help me get some real information about Lieutenant Edwin Lovat when he served here with the British army, twelve years ago. I don’t speak Arabic.”

“So you want fifty piasters of my time?” Musa concluded. “Well, you can’t have that if I’m in jail, now, can you?”

“I want a hundred and fifty piasters’ worth of somebody’s time,” Pitt responded. “Or we all stay here.”

Avram looked thoroughly entertained. “Are you making a bargain?” he asked with interest.

“I don’t know,” Pitt responded. “Am I?”

Avram looked at the window, then at the blind door. He raised his eyebrows in question to the others and said something in Arabic. There was a brief conversation. “Yes,” he said finally to Pitt. “Yes, you are.”

Pitt waited.

“I will take you to the village where the British soldiers spent their time off. I’ll speak to the Egyptians for you.” He held out his hand. “Now let’s get out of here, before they come and do something unpleasant.”

PITT HAD VERY LITTLE IDEA of what was said to the guard, but he saw the money change hands, and half an hour later he was walking on Avram’s heels along an alley back on the edge of the city, and heading east again. As always, the flies and mosquitoes were cruel, but it had become habit to swat at them without thinking. His head still ached from the blow in the bazaar.

Delicate, sweet smells mixed with the general ordure as they passed a cook sitting in the dust, leaning with one shoulder against the wall. He wore a shapeless robe of dun-colored linen and canvas shoes without heels. To one side of him was a flat, open-weave basket with dates, onions and what looked like a carrot and a pomegranate. Behind him was a large earthenware jar with a broken lip, and in front of him a brazier piled on bricks, and another earthenware pot on top of it. It was the mixture in that pot which he stirred carefully, and the steam from it which ensnared the passersby. The man’s skin was as black as the dates, his beard trimmed short and his head so closely shaven as to appear bald. There was a mildness and a symmetry to his features which made him almost beautiful.

He ignored Pitt and Avram as if they had been no more interesting than the donkeys in the street or the dromedary standing patiently at the opening onto the square.

Avram was several yards ahead and Pitt hurried to catch up with him. It would be worse than a waste of time to be lost here; it could be dangerous. Since the incident in the carpet bazaar he was more aware of the underlying mood of the men who appeared to be standing around talking or haggling. At times there was a stillness in their faces he realized masked a deep anger they dared not show openly. This was their city, and he was a stranger here, a member of a foreign race who had in effect taken what was theirs. That the British used it to far greater effect, efficiency, and purpose was irrelevant.

Avram turned to make sure Pitt was there, and signaled him sharply to keep up. Thereafter they walked quickly and in silence. It was already late in the afternoon, and at this time of the year the days were shortening rapidly. They needed to reach the village near the military post before dark, and it was apparently a good distance yet.

Pitt trudged through the dust on the baked road, thinking to himself that any peddler in the market who discovered an ointment to repel mosquitoes would make his own weight in gold within a week.

They passed several men with camels, an old woman on foot, a boy with a donkey, and half a dozen people obviously returning from a celebration, singing happily and waving their arms in the air.

They reached the banks of a wide waterway as the sun sank, filling the sky with a soft, yellow light. Long-beaked wading birds stood on the banks a little distance from the reeds, half a dozen in one place, twice as many twenty yards farther off. The walls of squared stones in most buildings seemed bronze, the towering palms like absurd headdresses on stilts, feathery in the still air. The only sound was the steady slurping of water by six oxen knee-deep, heads down and great polished horns looking like golden metal in the fading sun. The shadows were already deepening into shades of mulberry and purple.

“We will stay here,” Avram informed him. “We will eat, and then we can begin to ask your questions.”

Pitt agreed; there was nothing else he could do. So far he had learned nothing which would help Ayesha Zakhari, let alone Ryerson. If Lovat’s murder sprang from anything that had happened in Egypt, he had no idea what it could have been, and only Avram, or someone like him, could question the people who lived here.

They went into one of the smaller mud-brick buildings. Avram was greeted by a man of about twenty-five, wearing a red and dun-colored striped robe and a turban of some pale shade impossible to distinguish in the light of candles and a low fire. They exchanged a few words, and Avram introduced Pitt and gave some explanation of who he was.

Avram turned to Pitt. “This is Ishaq el Shernoubi. His father, Mohamed, was an imam, a holy man. He knew a great deal of what went on here, especially among the men of the army in the past. Ishaq used to run errands for them now and again, and he has a good memory-when he likes to. He understands a great deal more English than he pretends.”

Pitt smiled. He could picture it vividly, although perhaps not with much accuracy. He could also imagine that to English soldiers a young Arab might be more or less invisible, as a servant was at home. Tongues might be equally unguarded, in the assumption that an Arab also would not repeat what he had heard his betters say.

He bowed to Ishaq.

Ishaq bowed back, his eyes so dark as to seem black in the flickering light. Already the sunset had passed from primrose to a far darker burnished gold, and the brilliance was gone. The oxen were moving in the water outside, and Pitt could hear them splashing.

Avram had warned Pitt to accept the hospitality of food and not to offer recompense for it. A gift might be given at a later date when it would not look like payment, which would have been an insult. He had also, unnecessarily, warned Pitt to eat and allow the meal to be over in peace before he approached the subject of information, even obliquely.

Pitt sat cross-legged on the floor, as he was invited, and hoped that after an hour he would still be able to stand when he got up again. As the meal wore on he began to doubt that he would. He fidgeted once or twice, and saw Avram’s warning glance. Avram seemed to have entered into the spirit of the quest as if finding the truth of Lovat’s service here were as important to him as it was to Pitt. Pitt wondered if Avram’s interest was the result of his inveterate curiosity, the love of answers and the exercise of the skill in finding them, or if he too expected some appropriate gift at a later date. Right at the moment, sitting in acute discomfort in the balmy night a thousand miles from home and anything even remotely familiar, it mattered to him not to offend, or disappoint, this curious man, and it would require a fine judgment to succeed.

Finally the last date had been eaten and with a smile Ishaq asked why Pitt had come to Egypt. It was the signal that he was ready to be of help.

“An English soldier has been killed in London,” he replied casually, trying as discreetly as possible to unfold his legs and keep the agony of cramped limbs out of his face as pain shot through him. He gasped, and turned it into a cough. “He is not so important in himself, but his death threatens to create a scandal because of who is accused of having shot him,” he continued, and saw some understanding replace the bewilderment in Ishaq’s face. After all, if an Egyptian is killed in London, what does that matter in Alexandria? He nodded politely.

“He served in the army here about twelve years ago,” Pitt added. “In England it is harder to learn much about him. I want to know his reputation, and if he earned any enemies among his fellows.” Better at this time not to mention Ayesha. He could always add that later, if it seemed a good idea. “His name was Edwin Lovat.”

Ishaq waited, his eyes on Pitt’s face.

Pitt named Lovat’s regiment and his rank, then gave a brief description of his physical appearance, trying not to sound desperate as he saw no reaction in Ishaq’s face.

Ishaq nodded. “I remember them,” he said without any emotion at all.

“Them?” Pitt asked, without hope. Perhaps to Ishaq English soldiers were all much the same. He could not blame him. Pitt was trained to observe and identify, and if anyone had asked him to swear to one Egyptian in the street over another, he could not have done so.

“Those four,” Ishaq replied. “Always together. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, walked like…” He gave up and looked at Avram. He said something in Arabic.

“Swagger,” Avram supplied.

“Do you know the names of the others?” Pitt asked. If not, he could ask the present military officials. They would tell him at least that much. It was no secret which of his colleagues a man sought out in his off-duty hours.

“Yeats,” Ishaq said thoughtfully. “And Garrick,” he added. “I cannot think of the last one.”

“That is very good. Thank you,” Pitt said eagerly. “Were they good soldiers-Lovat in particular?” The moment he had said it, he thought it stupid. How could any British soldier be good in the eyes of an Egyptian?

Avram said something in Arabic and Ishaq nodded. He answered Pitt as if it were he who had asked. “He had courage and he obeyed the rules that mattered.”

Suddenly, Pitt was interested. “And the other rules?” he said softly.

Ishaq grinned, white teeth in the firelight, then suddenly he was totally serious. “The others he was careful to break only when he would not be seen,” he replied.

Pitt drew in his breath to ask the obvious question.

Avram interrupted. “He was brave. That is good. A coward is of use to no one. And he was obedient, yes? A soldier who cannot obey orders is a danger to his fellows, is that not true?” This time he looked at Pitt.

“Certainly,” Pitt agreed, not sure why he had been cut off. Had he been too direct, or was it a question whose answer might embarrass Ishaq? Why? Illegal dealings of some sort? Immoral? “Did the soldiers spend their time off duty in the village or go into Alexandria?” he asked.

Ishaq spread his hands. “Depends how long,” he replied. “There is little to do here, but the city needs money for pleasure.”

“It is a beautiful city simply to walk around,” Pitt said, quite sincerely. “There is much to learn of history, the cultures of many other people; not only Egypt, but Greece, Rome, Turkey, Armenia, Jerusalem-” He stopped, seeing the look in Ishaq’s face. “I did not know Lovat,” he finished.

“So much I see,” Ishaq said dryly. “Soldiers off duty like to eat and drink, to find women, and sometimes to explore a little, look for treasures, have fun.”

It sounded time-wasting if indulged to the exclusion of all else, but harmless. He had not reached the subject of broken rules, even obliquely. It looked like it was going to be a long evening, but at least Pitt was not cross-legged anymore, although the ground was hard. He had become so used to the mosquitoes that he swatted at them without thought.

“What sort of fun?” Avram asked, but with an expression of boredom, as if he was merely filling the silence.

Ishaq shrugged. “Hunting in the marshes,” he replied casually. “Birds, looked for crocodiles occasionally. I think they went upriver once or twice. I arranged it for them.”

“To look at the temples and ruins?” Pitt asked, trying to keep the same tone of voice as Avram.

“Think so,” Ishaq agreed. “Went all the way up to Cairo once. See the pyramids at Giza, and so on.” He grinned. “Got caught in a sandstorm, so they said. Mostly, though, they stayed closer.”

It was not worth pursuing, but there was little else to say to keep the conversation alive. Pitt was beginning to lose hope of learning anything about Lovat that would even show his character, let alone any idea why he had been murdered. Perhaps all he would learn in Egypt was that Ayesha Zakhari was a highly educated and passionate patriot rather than a woman seeking to make use of her beauty to buy the luxuries of life.

“They usually went together, all four of them?” he asked. Perhaps he would be able to find at least one or two of these other men and learn more details of Lovat from their recollections.

“Mostly,” Ishaq agreed. “Not so safe to wander around alone.” He regarded Pitt closely, to see if he understood without having it spelled out to him, word for word, that the English were occupiers, an armed force in a foreign land, and as such, very naturally subjects of many emotions, some of them violent.

Pitt understood it very well. He could feel it in the air, see it in the covert glances of people when they thought themselves unobserved, both men and women. There might be gratitude for financial rescue, but no one liked to be obliged, or dependent. There would be individual affections and hatreds, like Trenchard’s love for his Egyptian mistress. There would be a certain respect, possibly curiosity, and even at times a growing understanding. But always the anger was close under the surface. The memory of the bombardment of Alexandria would make it sharper now, but the same feelings would have been there then, only more deeply buried.

They sat in silence a few minutes. The sound of the oxen moving in the water was relaxing, a steady, natural noise. The night wind carried a breath of coolness, refreshing after the long, hot day.