The Snake Catcher's Daughter by Michael Pearce Page B

women by the ordinary means. Nikos handled all that side. Nikos? Women? That wasn’t going to work. He would have to put aside the issue of recruiting women for the moment.
    But what about the Zzarr? He mentioned it tentatively to Zeinab.
    “I’ve no time for that superstitious stuff,” she said dismissively. “Women are never going to get anywhere while they go on believing that sort of rubbish.”
     
    “Gareth,” said his friend, Paul, the ADC, “does the name Philipides mean anything to you?”
    They were at a reception at the Abdin Palace. Owen, splendidly uniformed, had just mounted the grand staircase lined by the Khedival royal guard, even more splendidly uniformed and carrying lances. Owen did not greatly care for such occasions—for one thing, they served only soft drinks—but he was here at the express invitation of His Royal Highness the Khedive and one did not disregard such invitations. The British were punctilious in observing the forms of Khedival rule. Substance was another matter.
    The Khedive, too, was punctilious over observance of the forms. They were all he had left.
    “I think he does it just to provoke,” said Paul. “This evening, for instance: why so splendid an occasion just to mark the arrival of the Turkish ambassador?”
    “Past relationships, I suppose,” said Owen. The Khedive had once been a vassal of the Sublime Porte and Egypt was still, in the view of Constantinople, part of the Ottoman Empire. “Past,” asked Paul, “or future?”
    “No chance,” said Owen. “We wouldn’t let him.”
    “Quite so,” said Paul. “But he
does
love to raise the spectre.”
    He had taken Owen by the arm and led him behind some potted palm trees; and it was then that he asked about I’hilipides, and whether any of it made sense.
    Owen nodded.
    “Good. Because it didn’t to me.”
    “And now it does?”
    “I have been brushing up on past history. At the C-G’s request,” Paul said with emphasis.
    “Why is that?”
    “He thinks it’s going to come up again.”
    “The corruption business?”
    “The Garvin business.”
    “On what grounds?”
    “Miscarriage of justice. They were convicted only on Garvin’s word.”
    “There was a police officer—”
    “One of Garvin’s subordinates. Coerced, so they claim.”
    “Who are ‘they’?”
    “We don’t know. All we know is that the Parquet wants formally to reopen the whole affair.”
    “Philipides is out,” said Owen.
    “Yes. Early. I don’t know if that’s cause or result. Possibly it’s just the pretext. Anyway, someone’s using it to have a go at Garvin. And what we are beginning to think is that it’s not so much Garvin they want to have a go at, it’s us.”
    “Garvin just a pretext, too.”
    “Exactly. So, old chap, the Consul-General would like you to take a look.”
    “Have you tipped off Garvin?”
    “He’ll soon find out. But we can’t ask him to handle this. He’s a material witness. Besides—”
    “Yes?”
    “This really is political. It really is.”
    Paul caught someone’s eye and went across to shake hands. “
Cher ministre
,” Owen heard him begin. Then he, too, began to do his duty, circulating less among politicians and diplomats—that was Paul’s patch—than among senior civil servants and Pashas. They were all, of course, Egyptian, but the language spoken was not Egyptian Arabic. Nor, significantly, was it English. It was French. The Egyptian elite’s cultural allegiance was to France. It went to France for its education, its reading, its clothes and its vacations. It spoke French more naturally than it spoke Arabic.
    When he was with Zeinab they habitually spoke French. Zeinab’s father was here now on the other side of the room with a circle of his cronies. He extended a hand to greet Owen as he arrived.
    “My dear boy,” he said. “So nice to see you! You know everyone, don’t you?”
    They were all Pashas; like him, hereditary rulers of vast estates. Nowadays they were