A Dead Man in Athens by Michael Pearce Read Free Book Online

politics are directed at the person of His Esteemed Highness, Abdul Hamid.’
    ‘Not so esteemed,’ retorted the Greek representative. ‘You threw him out.’
    ‘He stepped aside,’ said the Ottoman representative loftily, ‘in the interests of peace.’
    ‘Peace is in everyone’s interests,’ said the First Secretary. ‘It is what we all want.’
    ‘It’s not what the Greeks want,’ said the Ottoman representative. ‘They want war. And they are prepared to murder the Sultan Abdul Hamid in order to get it.’
    ‘If anyone murders Abdul Hamid,’ responded the Greek representative, ‘it will be the Ottomans. They want to get rid of him, and they want it to look as if we did it!’
    ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ said the First Secretary. ‘I thought we were all agreed that these dark suspicions must be carefully looked into. And that is exactly what Mr Seymour has started to do.’
    ‘He hasn’t got very far yet.’
    ‘He has allowed the wool to be pulled over his eyes.
    ’ ‘Naive!’
    ‘He has made a start,’ said the First Secretary patiently.
    ‘Start, pooh!’ said one of the interested parties. Macedonian, perhaps? ‘He had better get on with it. Anyone can see what is building up. First, the cat, then the Sultan. And then war.’
    ‘It must stop at the cat,’ said the French representative.
    ‘Mr Seymour, I am sure, will see that it does.’
    ‘Maybe,’ said the Greek representative. ‘But, just to be sure, we are putting an extra guard around the Sultan.’
    ‘Of Greeks? That will fill everyone with confidence!’ said the Ottoman representative sarcastically. ‘I am afraid that in that case we will have to put an extra guard around the Sultan, too.’
    The French and the British members looked at each other.
    ‘I am afraid that is not very satisfactory,’ said the First Secretary.
    ‘No,’ said the senior French representative. ‘I am sorry, but we shall have to insist that there be an independent international guard too.’
    ‘Why?’ said the Greek representative. ‘I must protest! This is Greek territory!’
    ‘Temporarily,’ said the Ottoman representative. ‘And I must point out that the Sublime Porte has consistently argued that Greece is still part of the Ottoman Empire!’
    ‘It is for these reasons,’ said the French representative, ‘that an international guard is necessary.’
    The Second Secretary, sitting on Seymour’s right, passed a slip of paper to the First Secretary, on Seymour’s left. As it passed, Seymour read it: ‘Lunch,’ it said.
    The First Secretary began to gather up his papers.
    ‘We are agreed, then? Good! I think I can say that the Sultan’s life is precious to all of us.’
    Seymour had had much to do with politics. He was in the Special Branch of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard and his work in the East End was almost exclusively on the political side. That is to say, it was concerned with the revolutionaries, anarchists, terrorists and political activists who, in the opinion of the newspapers, constituted the bulk of the immigrant population of East London. In Seymour’s experience it wasn’t quite like that but the newspapers persuaded the politicians and the politicians persuaded the police and the police, anyway, it sometimes seemed to Seymour, persuaded themselves and there certainly were lots of nutty, although on the whole pacific, people in the areas he worked in, who kept him happily occupied. He found himself developing quite an affection for the dirty underworld of politics. He found, too, as his duties began to draw him occasionally abroad, that his experience of domestic politics gave him considerable insight into the great world of international politics: although the domestic politics he had in mind was not that of the unfortunate sub-groups of the immigrant East End but that of Whitechapel police station, Special Branch versus the others in Scotland Yard, and Scotland Yard versus the Home Office and