Redcap (14 page)

And then, as Shaw came up to the show-room, a small mob of young Egyptians suddenly gathered. One of the youths, glancing round and eyeing Shaw, stepped smartly backwards. He thrust a leg between Shaw’s feet in a quick movement which must have been entirely unnoticed by any of the passers-by. Shaw, caught off balance and completely by surprise, staggered, slipped, fell flat. There was a howl of high-pitched, gleeful laughter from the group of young men as Shaw jumped up, and one of them danced towards him on his toes, fists raised mockingly as though inviting the Englishman to fight it out.

Shaw noted that the group was closing in around him. There was no time to make an issue of this. He demanded icily, “Do you mind letting me pass?”

There was another laugh and a stream of saliva shot towards him, caught him on the front of his light jacket before he could dodge. He clenched his fists, and then, without thinking, he grabbed the spitter’s arm and at once the youth began to yell. Immediately Shaw was in the middle of a big and growing crowd from which, mysteriously, all Europeans seemed to have been excluded; no one from the liner was near enough to help. The crowd was clearly angry and Shaw was being roughly handled when three armed police materialized from a doorway. It was almost as though they’d been standing there ready for trouble; they shouldered their way through the crowd and as they came up close several young Egyptians began yelling at once, and gesticulating towards Shaw, who sensed that he was being accused of assault and battery on a pretty big scale.

This, he felt, was getting really serious.

He tried to argue, but it was quite useless; and the policemen wasted no time in listening anyway. Two of them seized Shaw by the arms while the third stuck a gun in his back, and they yelled at him in their own language as they dragged him away through the crowd, clearing a gangway by shouldering and pushing and lashing out with short, heavy sticks. As the mob thinned out Shaw found he was being taken to a police patrol car.

When they reached it the door was thrown open by the driver and he was bundled in.

Two policemen got in on either side of him, the third got in the front. One of the men, releasing an arm, frisked Shaw, jerked his gun from its holster and passed it to the man in front. The driver let in his clutch and they drew away. Shaw, breathing heavily, furiously, demanded to know what they intended doing. He snapped, speaking as well as he could in Arabic:

“I don’t propose being held in a police post while you frame a charge. I’m a British subject and I’m sailing in the 
New South Wales
at midnight. I can prove—”

He broke off short with an involuntary gasp of pain as a fist smashed into his mouth. One of the men laughed, said in English: “That will not be necessary, Commander Shaw. We are quite prepared to believe what we already know.”

Shaw’s heart thumped; he scarcely noticed the trickle of blood down his chin. He asked, “What do you mean—and how do you know who I am, anyway?”

“Never mind. It is enough that we do know.”

“But I—”

The man let go Shaw’s arm and his elbow came back viciously, took Shaw in the ribs. He winced, and then doubled up as the elbow was followed by a fist. The man hissed, “Quiet. You are not catching the
New South Wales
or any other liner. And you are not going to a police station.”

“Where am I going then?” Shaw gasped the words out, the pain in his side snatching at his breath.

“That you will see in due course.”

Shaw’s brain whirled. Through the window, he could see the still-busy streets, the lights flowing past. People gaped in at the car as it slowed at corners, but they didn’t appear concerned about the bloody-faced man in the back. This was Egypt, not London, and Shaw was an Englishman . . . He tried to wrench his arms free, a gun-butt came down on his head with a crack and he passed out, slumped forward between the two men.

The car, going fast now, headed out of Port Said, making southward. One of the policemen searched through Shaw’s pockets, but apparently without result.

At eleven forty-five the canal pilot boarded the
New South Wales
and hands mustered on the fo’c’sle, stood by to let go the last lines from the buoy and move through the canal for Suez. And the liner’s Staff Commander climbed up to the Captain’s day-cabin, knocked and went in.

Cap under arm, he reported to Sir Donald Mackinnon.

“Ship ready to proceed, sir, but there’s a passenger adrift.” He added significantly, “It’s Commander Shaw, sir.”

“Shaw?” Sir Donald spoke sharply, jerked upright in his chair. “Dammit, Stanford! Him of all people. Any idea what’s keeping him?”

“No, sir. I didn’t see him before he went ashore. That girl—Miss Dangan, he'd got pretty friendly with her and she was waiting about at the head of the ladder. She said he told her he was going ashore, but he didn’t say where or what for. In fact he told her it was none of her business when she asked.”

“Damn and blast.” The Captain got to his feet, walked up and down the cabin, hands clasped behind his back, white eyebrows drawn together. He was leading the convoy through, should be under way in fifteen minutes. He snapped, “We can’t go through without Shaw. With Gresham gone too, that’s leaves us with no senior man in charge of that ruddy crate.”

“I know, sir.” Stanford hesitated. “Do you think this has anything directly to do with the cargo?”

“How the hell do I know! Anything can happen in Port Said these days.” The Captain looked at his watch. “Stanford, get hold of the agent and tell him I want to see him again at once. Let me know in fifteen minutes whether Shaw’s back or not—if he isn’t, I’ll have to hold the ship and miss the convoy.”

At the end of the fifteen minutes the Staff Commander reported no sign of Shaw. The pilot went ashore again and the liner was re-secured to the buoy. The hands were fallen-out from stations. The rumours began among passengers and crew. Few people had as yet gone to bed, and the atmosphere in the ship seemed to become more tense than ever.

Shaw had recovered consciousness after the police car had left Port Said behind and was still heading south. Opening his eyes, feeling sick and groggy, his hair stiff with caked blood, he looked out at sand and sand and more sand rushing into the headlights. He was evidently on the fringe of the desert. There was scarcely anything to be seen except an apology for a roadway, and the odd palm-tree. Occasionally a nocturnal Arab on a camel. A petrol can abandoned by the roadside among other garbage, and the sand. And the dust.

Shaw’s throat was dry, parched, painful. He would have given his soul for a drink of water to ease away the sandy grit which filled his mouth as the car drove clouds of the muck into the air, sent it swirling up all around so that they were moving along enveloped in a sand-storm of their own. This road had never been meant for anything that went so fast as this car. And despite the night air the car was hot. Even the policemen seemed to be feeling the effects of that drive. Their jacket collars were loosened, they sweated freely. There was a smell of hashish, which was a further irritant to Shaw. But they were still alert enough, and they still held his arms tightly, though they took no apparent notice of him when he stirred. A little later when the throbbing in his head had receded somewhat, he asked, for the second time:

“Where are you taking me?”

The man who spoke English laughed shortly. He said, “What does that matter? You are going to die. What does it matter where it is that you die?”

Shaw said, “Call it curiosity.”

The man shrugged. “Mere morbidity. But I shall tell you, as you wish it. You are going to the oasis of Solli, between Zagazig and Ismailia.”

There was a kind of gloating in his tone. Shaw said simply, “Oh. Thanks very much.”

The man looked at him oddly. He asked, “You have not, perhaps, heard of the oasis of Solli?”

“Never. Should I have done?”

“But yes. . . The man spoke quickly in his own language and then the two policemen exchanged looks over Shaw’s head. They laughed. The driver and the third policeman joined in as well. The four of them laughed loud and long. Then the English-speaker simmered down. Wiping his streaming face with a filthy handkerchief, he gasped: “You have not heard of the oasis of Solli! Ah, my friend, you will find out soon! Meanwhile it is better you do not know, perhaps. It is a fact that to look forward in ignorance is more fun, yes?”

It wasn’t so very long after that when the car drove in its surround of moving dust and sand, past a handful of nomad tents and a curious high tower standing out against the moon, into Solli. The car’s lights showed it as a dirty-looking place, with white-walled, single storey, shack-like buildings fringing a rutted street littered with the refuse from the habitations. There were many camels, and dark-skinned Arabs, men and women who came to their doorways to stare curiously at the police car as it went along the street; and other people, different people, people who seemed to belong to a strange race. To Shaw, they had more the look of India than of Egypt. The car turned off into a small courtyard and, out of sight now from the road, backed up until it was hard alongside a low doorway leading into a pitch-black room with a hint of moonlight in one corner. . . .

“Out!”

The order was barked at Shaw, and a gun was .pushed into his back. He was prodded forward into the room as soon as he was clear of the car.

Suddenly, as he came through the doorway, he was given a violent blow in the back which sent him staggering forwards to land in a heap at the farther wall. The door was banged to behind him, and he heard heavy bolts snick home.

After that, silence; silence and darkness lit by a stray moonbeam coming, coldly silver, through a very tiny barred window set high up in one wall. A window which, even if he could reach it, would be far too small to squeeze through. The moon cast a long, intersected shadow on the opposite wall. Shaw went inch by inch over the rest of the place, but he could find nothing whatever that offered any hope of a way out; he might just as well save his strength for whatever lay ahead. After a time he sat down on a pile of smelly sacks in a corner. Still the brooding oppressive silence and the aloneness . . . until he heard the tiny mutterings and squeakings of rats, rats which ran and scampered about the floor, burrowed into the sacks upon which he sat. He lashed out at them with his fists, felt his knuckles plunge into fur, heard the shrill protests, felt the tear of sharp teeth at his ankles.

He kicked out, got to his feet, horror gripping his heart. What in God’s name did they mean to do with him now— leave him here, food for the rats? But surely some one would take action at the Port Said end. Sir Donald Mackinnon would be wondering, and worrying too. And Judith. Laty-mer would surely get to hear, through the Consulate in Port Said, the Ambassador in Cairo. And yet, even so, what could Latymer or anyone else do? This was Egypt; a fat lot of notice they’d ever taken of British representations in the past. There was no special reason why they should change now. Besides, as an agent, Shaw couldn’t expect this country to pull him out of a hole once he got caught.

And in the meantime REDCAP was without its officer-in-charge and Donovan’s girl was alone too. Andersson would no doubt be back aboard the
New South Wales
, Andersson who had led him so neatly into this trap by his carefully worded cable, Andersson who must have known he would follow him. That alone presupposed the man’s guilt, his real identity. Sick and giddy, in an agony of spirit, Shaw paced up and down that stinking, stuffy room, until he was physically and mentally exhausted; and then he fell on to the pile of sacks, in a huddle, went at last to sleep.

He didn’t know how long he slept; but he awoke to find a very bright light shining into his eyes. As he blinked into it, it moved, and two men appeared suddenly and came forward and threw their weight on him, holding down his arms and chest. Two more men came from behind the light, each took one of his legs and held it fast to the ground. None of them spoke, but he heard their hard breathing, felt it on his face. Then another man appeared with something in his hand, knelt down beside Shaw. His jacket was ripped with a sharp knife, the sleeve was rolled back, ripped again until the whole sleeve hung in tatters from his shoulder. And then Shaw felt a needle drive into his flesh, knew a moment of almost unbearable agony as something was pumped into him. He cried out through clenched teeth, jerked and twisted his limbs, but the men, sweating and panting, held fast. The pain shot through him, seemed to flow into every crevice, every cell in his body. He was racked, tortured with it. As the needle was withdrawn a whisper of blood dripped from its end on to Shaw’s chest. The men still held him down; and then, after centuries of time as it seemed, the pain began to ebb slowly away, draining out of him through toes and finger-tips, leaving him weak but almost happy just because that agony had disappeared.

Soon after his legs and arms were released.

Oddly, he wasn’t conscious of any actual feeling as of men’s weight having lifted from his limbs. He only knew they’d let go of him because he heard them moving about and then, out of the corner of his eye, he could see them outlined in that bright light. And then they went away and the light went out; Shaw felt curiously numb and weak, but he tried to struggle up to a sitting position so as to ease the headache that had gripped him. He felt that if the blood could drain away he would feel less groggy, more able to concentrate his thoughts. But after a while he realized that he couldn’t move. Apart from that tearing headache, there was absolutely no feeling in his body at all. Even his eyes wouldn’t obey his will now, wouldn’t turn. He was inert, corpse-like. A feeling of horror, of utter panic, took hold of him for a moment, and then he forced his mind to remain quiet, composed and ready for whatever must happen next. For a long time nothing happened. The first faint dawn struggled through the barred window and lit on the wall, and he just lay there, absolutely still, not able even to blink, to move his lips. Every muscle seemed paralysed. And then, as the cell lightened a little more, the door opened and the sun came through. A man walked into his fixed line of vision, stood there looking down at him, seemed to be studying him intently. Then, as though far, far away, Shaw heard this man speak and, with his knowledge of the language, was able to follow what was said.