really left, simply been overlooked for a space by people too insensitive to perceive it. With him you could see the colors of the world, hear music simply in the wind over the sand. The smell of dirt and sewage, the flies in the street, the mosquitoes, were only the breathing of life.”
“And Ayesha?” Pitt asked, afraid already of the answer.
“Oh, she loved Alexander Ghali,” Yacoub replied, his mouth twisted a little sideways. “She was young, and honor was dear to her. She loved her country too, and its history, its ideas, but she loved the people and hated the poverty which kept them ignorant when they could have learned to read and write, and kept them sick when they could have been well.”
Pitt waited. He knew from the suppressed emotion in Yacoub’s face, the shadows in his eyes, that the story was only half told, if that.
Yacoub took up the thread again. He had stopped only to regain control of his feelings so they did not show so nakedly in his face.
“He was a man of almost infinite possibilities,” he said quietly. “He would even have given Egypt back her independence and financial integrity. But he was flawed. He indulged his family. He gave his sons and his brothers power, and they were greedy for themselves. He was a man who fed on the beautiful things of the heart and the mind, but he had not the inner courage to deny those around him. Leaders must be prepared to walk alone, if need be, and he was not.”
He drew in a deep breath, turned his glass in his hand as if to sip it again, then ignored it after all. There was a tightness in his face, of old pain still unhealed. “Ayesha loved him, and he betrayed her, and his people. I don’t know if she ever cared wholly for any man after that, unless she does for this Ryerson?” Now he raised his eyes to meet Pitt’s. “Will he betray her also?”
Pitt wondered if that was why she had said nothing to the police. Was she numb inside, waiting for history to repeat itself?
“By betraying her, or betraying his own people?” he asked.
There was a flash of understanding in Yacoub’s eyes. “You are thinking of the cotton? That she went to London to try to persuade him to leave us our raw cotton to weave, instead of shipping it to Manchester, for British workers to create the greater profit from it-to grow rich, instead of us? Perhaps she did. It would be like her.”
“Then she was asking him to choose between Egypt and England,” Pitt pointed out. “If he made a decision at all, then it had to be a betrayal of someone.”
“Yes… of course it was.” Yacoub’s lips tightened. “Whether she could forgive him for that I do not know.” He picked up his glass at last. “There is nothing more I can tell you. Look all you wish, you will find that what I have said is true.”
“What about Lieutenant Lovat?”
Yacoub waved his hand dismissively. “Nothing of importance. He fell in love with her, and perhaps she was bruised enough to find his attention healing. It lasted a while, a few months. He was posted back to England. I think she was quite relieved by then. Perhaps he was also. He had no intention of marrying outside his own class and station.”
“Do you know anything about Lovat?”
“No. But you might find someone among the British soldiers who does. There are enough of them here.”
Pitt said nothing. He was acutely aware of the British presence in all sorts of ways, not just the enormous number of soldiers, but the civilians in administration everywhere. Egypt was not a colony, and yet in many practical ways it might as well have been. If Ayesha Zakhari had wished to rid her country of foreign domination, he could understand it very easily.
Was that why she had gone to London, not out of any desire to make her own future, but to help her people? If that was so, then presumably she had sought out Ryerson specifically, as a man with the power to help her, if she could persuade him to do so.
How had she intended to do that? No matter how deeply he was in love with her, he would hardly alter government policy to please her, would he? And according to Yacoub’s estimate of her character, she would have despised him if he had.
But then unless she cared for him, that would hardly matter to her. Did she? Had she unexpectedly fallen in love with him, and it was suddenly no longer simply a matter of patriotic duty?
Or had she planned to blackmail him, and Lovat’s murder was part of that plan, somehow hideously gone wrong, and she herself had ended up arrested, and by now probably charged as well? What had she meant to have happen? Offer him escape from blame, and increase the pressure upon Ryerson to yield more autonomy to Egypt?
Or was her goal Ryerson’s ruin, and the placement of another, more pliable minister in his place-one who would pay the Egyptian price?
But that made little sense. No minister of trade was going to yield the cotton back to Egypt unless he was forced to by circumstances far more powerful than love, or even ruin. He would simply be replaced in time by another stronger and less vulnerable man.
Pitt finished his wine and thanked Yacoub. The voices and laughter bubbled around them, but he could think of nothing further to ask, and instead they spoke again of the rich, intricate history of Alexandria.
When Pitt was at the breakfast table the following morning, a messenger brought him a note from Trenchard, asking him if all was well and if he would care for any further assistance. It also said that if Pitt cared to join him for luncheon, Trenchard would be happy to show him some of the less-well-known places of interest in the city afterwards.
Pitt requested paper and wrote back accepting, and dispatched the messenger with his reply before continuing with his excellent fresh bread, fruit, and fish. He was very rapidly growing accustomed to the exotic food, and enjoying it greatly.
He spent part of the morning in an English library reading what he could find about the Orabi uprising and looking for any reference to anyone named Ghali involved in politics at the time. The passion and the betrayal were so absorbing he was almost late for his luncheon with Trenchard, and arrived at the consulate barely by noon.
Trenchard made no comment, but rose from his chair with a smile and welcomed him in.
“Delighted you could come,” he said warmly. He regarded Pitt’s pale cotton shirt and trousers, and the already deepening color of his face and lower arms. “You look as if you are well settled in-apart from a few mosquito bites,” he observed.
“Very well,” Pitt agreed. “It is a city one could spend a year exploring, and hardly touch the surface.”
Something in Trenchard’s face eased. The lines of his mouth softened and there was an added reality to the warmth in his eyes. “Egypt has you, hasn’t it?” he said with evident pleasure. “And you haven’t even been anywhere near Cairo yet, never mind up the Nile. I wish your detection took you to Heliopolis, or the tombs of the caliphs or the petrified forest. You could not go that far without riding out to the pyramids at Giza, and of course the Sphinx, and then sat up until you could at least see the pyramids at Aboukir and Sakhara, and the ruins of Memphis.” He shook his head slightly, as if at some pleasant, well-known inner joke. “And then nothing on earth could stop you from continuing on up that greatest and oldest of all ruins till you reached Thebes, and the Temple of Karnak. That defeats even the imagination.” He was watching Pitt’s face as he spoke. “Believe me, no modern Western man can conceive the grandeur of it, the sheer enormity!” He did not wait for comment. He stood still in the middle of the room, oblivious of modern furniture and consulate papers around him. His vision was on the timeless sands.
Pitt did not interrupt; no answer was expected or wanted.
“Then south to Luxor,” Trenchard went on. “You should cross the river at dawn. You have never seen anything in your life like first light over the desert, moving across the water’s face. Then you have only about four miles to the Valley of the Kings.
“If you ride on a fast camel you will see the sunrise on the tombs of the pharaohs whose fathers ruled this land four thousand years before Christ was born. They were ancient before Abraham came out of Ur of the Chaldees. Have you any idea what that means, Inspector Pitt?” There was challenge in his eyes now. “The British Empire that circles the earth now was born in the last five minutes of time compared with them.” He stopped suddenly. He took a deep breath. “But you haven’t time for that… I know. And Narraway certainly won’t pay for it. Forgive me. No doubt you are eager for your accommodation, and you are honest enough to be compelled by duty.”
Pitt smiled. “Duty does not forbid me from learning something about the history of Egypt, or from wishing I needed to pursue Ayesha Zakhari’s history at least as far as Cairo. I haven’t found an excuse, but I haven’t stopped
