The Quest of Julian Day (20 page)

The moment the door opened my fears were set at rest; he had only gone to get the dope and he threw a large brown paper packet, which evidently contained it, on to the desk.

‘There's the stuff,' he said sitting down again. ‘You'll be paid tomorrow. Where d'you want the money sent?'

‘Send it to Fakri, Mr. Gamal. He told me he was putting me on to a good thing and naturally he wants his split. All I'd like to know is the total you're paying for the evening's work.'

‘Two hundred piastres. Split it how you like. Now about delivery. You're to take the stuff to the City of the Dead. Do you know the building they call the House of El Said?'

I shook my head.

‘Well, you know the police-post. That's more or less in the centre of the city.'

‘Yes,' I said, and he leaned forward to draw a little diagram on a sheet of paper.

‘Here's the police-post. You don't have to walk right into it as it's the only place in the whole area where there will be any lights. Directly you've located it, take the main road back to modern Cairo and go down the sixth turning on your right coming from the police-post. Two hundred yards down it you turn right again; there are roofless buildings on both corners. Next to the one on the left is the burial house of El Said. The family keep it in some sort of repair and the shutters are painted green; you can't possibly miss it because it's the only house thereabouts that has any shutters to its windows at all. Just beyond it you'll find what used to be the side entrance, which is recessed into the wall. Sit down in there and nobody'll see you even if they pass within a foot of you. Your opposite number will come straight up to you and say, “I'm a stranger from Assiut and I've lost my way. Can you direct me back to the city?” upon which you will reply, “I'm a stranger too, but I come from Suez.” By which each will know that the other is all right. You then hand him the package and make your way home. Is that clear?'

‘Perfectly,' I nodded. ‘He says he's from Assiut and I say I'm from Suez. What time am I to be there?'

Gamal glanced at his watch. ‘It's barely nine yet and you're not due at your post till twelve-fifteen. Why the devil did you come so early?'

‘Yusuf said it would be best for me to do so in case you didn't care to take me on, as then you would have plenty of time to find somebody else.'

‘I see. That's all right, then. What are you going to do in the meantime?'

‘Oh, hang around. Have coffee somewhere.'

‘Oh no, you're not,' he said promptly. ‘Not with that packet of stuff in your possession. It might be pinched off you or you might get mixed up in some shindy. You had best stay here. I can't have you in this office but you can sit downstairs in the shop and if you leave at half-past eleven that will be quite time enough.'

‘Just as you say, Mr. Gamal,' I agreed submissively.

‘Another thing, young man,' he went on. ‘Once you've done your job, forget it. If one of my people drops out I might be able to use you and you can make some easy cash on trips like this. But you're not to come near this place again unless you're sent for. You're not to speak to your opposite number, either, except just the words I've told you; and I wouldn't advise you to have any bright ideas about following him through innocent curiosity when he goes off because if you do you'll get a knife in your back.'

‘You don't have to worry, Mr. Gamal. I'm grateful for the job and want to work for you again, so I won't do anything but just what you've told me.'

‘That's the way,' he nodded. ‘Now you'd best go downstairs. Turn to the left at the bottom.'

As he opened the office door for me Gamal shouted to his servant and told the man to provide me with a paper to read while I was waiting. I thanked him and, descending, settled myself on a pile of carpets in the musty shop, soon after which I was given a copy of
El Mokattam
, the leading Cairo paper.

The light was dim and the print bad but I made a pretence of
studying it while I thought matters over. Although I bad failed to think up a way of penetrating to the inner portion of the dope-den where the hashish-addicts congregated I felt I had done far better. Having made Gamal's acquaintance I should know him again anywhere and as he had swallowed my story was, temporarily at least, a member of his organisation entrusted with a consignment of the drug. That would enable me to contact my opposite number and, I hoped, trace him, when I had handed it over, to some other depot in the chain. Moreover, although I had not been given the run of the place, quite fortuitously I had actually been ordered to remain within sight of its door for two and a half hours and so would have the opportunity of observing everybody who came in and out of it without arousing the least suspicion.

However, there was one most unpleasant snag. Yusuf's illness was pure invention in my part and it was a hundred-to-one that he would turn up in the normal course of his duties to collect the packet of dope that I was holding. Immediately he appeared the cat would be out of the bag and I would find myself up to my neck in trouble. For a moment I was tempted to try to make my get-away as soon as I could but I saw that if I did that Gamal would be certain to suspect me and, having ample time in hand, send some of his people to beat me up when I appeared at the rendezvous in the City of the Dead at twelve-fifteen. Obviously I had to hang on where I was as long as I could do so with reasonable safety. As Yusuf did the job regularly it would be bad luck if he put in an appearance before eleven at the earliest, so I determined to stick it out till then.

It soon became obvious to me that the carpet shop was used only as a business entrance to the premises and that there must be some other, probably through a court at the rear of the buildings, to which the hashish-addicts came to indulge in their dope-dreams.

The results of my vigil were most disappointing. Only two people knocked on the street-door and were admitted by the Arab servant. One was a short, thick-set, bespectacled Jew, evidently a regular visitor as he nodded to the Arab and hurried upstairs in a most business-like manner without even asking if Gamal could see him. The other was a heavily-painted
woman of about thirty who had the appearance of a French prostitute. She too hurried up to Gamal's office as though she had urgent business to transact and both left again within a few minutes of their arrival.

It occurred to me that the place probably consisted of two houses backing on to each other and connected only by a secret entrance through the partition wall; so that if one of the patrons gave the place away to the police and it was raided Gamal would remain quite unmolested in his room above the carpet-shop, which was the real nerve centre of the business. Actually I should have learnt little if I had been in the addicts' side of the house and I congratulated myself on having got into this quieter but infinitely more important section of it.

It was a weary business sitting there pretending to read the Arabic newspaper, but my boredom never lasted for more than a few moments as it was constantly punctuated by the thought that Yusuf might arrive on the scene or, having arrived by some other entrance, be actually closeted with Gamal plotting my destruction.

At last I saw by my wrist-watch that it was eleven o'clock. As far as I knew Gamal had not given any instructions to his man to prevent my leaving before half-past so I stood up and, walking to the door, began to unbolt it.

At that moment there was a loud knock and I opened the door to find a young man standing on its step. He was about my own age and I almost laughed as I noticed the striking resemblance of his clothes to those I was wearing. They were, of course, of much more shoddy material than Harry's but he also had on a check jacket, grey flannel trousers and a pullover with a flamboyant tie. I was just patting myself on the back for the excellent choice of garments I had made for the part I was playing when the Arab servant came up behind me and said to the young man:

‘Good evening, Mr. Fakri.'

Either the servant was extraordinarily slow-witted or, more probably, Gamal had not told him that I was supposed to be taking Fakri's place; otherwise that fat would have been in the fire there and then. As it was I saw that Yusuf, after one glance at the parcel I was carrying, had begun to eye me curiously. It was obviously no time to linger. I smiled broadly at Yusuf,
thrust my way past him with a cordial ‘good evening' and nodding good night to the servant, stepped out into the street.

I did not dare to look back but I had the impression that they were staring after me and talking together excitedly on the doorstep. The moment I had turned the corner into Mohammed Ali Street I took to my heels and ran.

It was an unpleasantly close shave but there were still plenty of people about so I had no difficulty in losing myself and a few minutes later I was back in the Opera Square considering what my next move should be.

Undoubtedly by now Gamal and Yusuf would be entering into angry explanations and aware of the trick that had been played on them. What would they do? Most probably they would believe me to be either a dope-thief or a police spy. I was carrying a package which, judging by its weight, probably contained £500 worth of hashish—a fine haul for any thief—and I knew that there were a number of these operating in the drug market, their line being to sell the precious dope back to the organisation by devious channels.

If Gamal and Co. put me down as a thief they would be sick as mud but there was nothing very much they could do about it. On the other hand they might believe me to be a police spy, in which case they would be burning papers as hard as they could go in anticipation of a raid; but they would also know that the police have a habit of following up any information they are lucky enough to get hold of and would naturally endeavour to rope in the man who was due to collect the dope in the City of the Dead that night. If it was too late to warn him, Gamal might try heading him off in which case there was a chance of my coming into collision with his people at the rendezvous; but I decided that I must risk that. If luck was with me they would be too scared to do anything and I should have a clear field to meet and follow my opposite number.

I put in half an hour over a couple of drinks at a small café; then I took an
arabieh
to the mosque of el Hakim which lies on the north-western outskirts of the present Cairo.

The Egyptian capital has been shifted several times since its foundation. The original town, now called Old Cairo, that Clarissa had visited that afternoon, lies to the south-west on the Nile bank near the Island of Rodah and was founded by
General Amr, the commander of the Caliph Omar, about the middle of the seventh century; but the old city was later abandoned for new and more beautiful suburbs to the east which rose on the slope of the Mokattam Hills where the magnificent Citadel now stands. Later again the fashionable quarter moved north; but at one period in the Middle Ages a terrible plague afflicted Cairo so that its inhabitants died by the thousand, and as the corpses were too numerous to be carted to the cemeteries, people were buried where they died in their own houses. The ravages of the plague were so severe in this northern city that it was entirely deserted by the living and henceforth became known as the City of the Dead. Afterwards a new city rose between the Citadel on the east and the Nile where it flows past the Island of Gezira on the west; and this now is the heart of modern Cairo.

After the plague had passed, the richest citizens who had survived found that they had two houses, one in the new city and one in the City of the Dead; so the practice arose of using the City of the Dead as a cemetery. Further bodies were buried beside the victims of the plague in the old family mansions there until the custom became such a well-established one that the Government decreed that every Mohammedan family in Cairo must own a burial house in that quarter.

This has led to the strange phenomenon of the dead city now having suburbs, which stretch away into the desert and towards Abbassia in the extreme north. They are the queerest suburbs imaginable since so many of the original houses have fallen in that the Government does not insist on proper houses being built; the present-day purchaser of a site need do no more than lay the foundations of a house and build an outer wall about three feet high. The result is acres and acres of land covered by long, straight streets intersecting each other every few hundred yards and composed of thousands of partially-built houses differing only in their state of completeness and design.

The City of the Dead is a most grim and desolate place even by day as no one ever goes there except funeral processions and an occasional sight-seer. By night it is the haunt of thieves and vagabonds and no place for any honest man to enter, unless he wants his throat cut; apart from one night in the year when the
surviving members of each family occupy their house and spend their night in prayer for the departed.

Unlike its new suburbs, the streets of the original city are narrow and twisting. Its buildings are sinister beyond description; gaunt, roofless and falling into ruin so that through the gaps in the fallen walls and the squares that once held windows can be seen innumerable Arab tombs crowded together on the floor of each empty room.

I had never visited it by night and, frankly, I dreaded the ordeal, knowing that its police patrols could do no more than keep a watch on its main thoroughfares. It would take a full brigade of troops to police that network of lanes and alleys which spreads over so many acres.

It was five minutes before midnight as I paid off the driver of my ramshackle carriage near the mosque of el Hakim; a quiet neighbourhood where few people were moving at this hour.

I lit a cigarette and stood puffing at it until the
arabieh
had driven off, then I turned north-east and walked a few hundred yards between two rows of dilapidated houses, inhabited by poor Arabs, until they gave way to mounds of rubble and blank, crumbling walls which cut the skyline in a jagged silhouette. The road sloped upwards and it was here that the city of the living gave place to the City of the Dead.