Cry Wolf Part 17

"Be seated," he said, indicating the camp chair opposite his desk.

"There are cigars in the humidor." He beamed fondly, like a father at his eldest son. "I would like you to read through this report and to place your signature in the s.p.a.ce I have marked." Castelani took the sheaf of papers and began to read, frowning like a bulldog and with his lips forming the words silently. After a few minutes, he looked startled and glanced up at Aldo Belli.

"my Colonel, I doubt if it was forty thousand savages that attacked us."

"A matter of opinion, Castelani. It was dark. No one will ever know for certain how many there were." The Count waved the objection aside with a genial smile. "It is merely an informed estimate read on. You will find I have good things to say of your conduct." And the Major read on and blanched.

"Colonel, the enemy casualties were 126 dead, not 12,600."

"Ah, a slip of the pen, Major, I will correct that before sending it to headquarters."

"Sir, you make no mention of the enemy possessing an armoured vehicle." And the Count frowned for the first time since the beginning of the meeting.

"Armoured vehicle, Castelani, surely you mean an ambulance?" The encounter with the strange machine was best forgotten, he had decided. It reflected no credit on anybody particularly none upon himself It would merely add a jarring note to the splendours of his report.

"It would be quite in the normal course of things for the enemy to have some sort of medical service not worth mentioning. Read on! Read on! Caro mio, you will find that I have recommended you for a decoration." eneral De Bono had summoned his staff to a lunchtime conference to appraise the readiness of the expeditionary force to commence its invasion of the Ethiopian highlands. These conferences were a weekly affair, and the General's staff had not taken long to understand that in exchange for a really superb luncheon, for the reputation of the General's chef was international, they were expected to provide the General with good reasons which he might relay to the Duce for delaying the start of the offensive. The staff had fully entered into the spirit of the game, and some of their offerings had been inspired. However, even their fertile imaginations were now beginning to plough barren land. The Inspector General of the Medical Corps had tentatively diagnosed a straightforward case of gonorrhoca contracted by an infantry man as "suspected smallpox" and had written a very good scare story warning of a possible epidemic but the General was not certain whether it could be used or not. They needed aj something better than that. They were discussing this now over the cigars and liqueurs, when the door of the dining room was thrown open and Captain Crespi hurried to the head of the table. His face was flushed, and his eyes wild, his manner so agitated that an electric silence fell over the roomful of very senior and slightly inebriated officers.

Crespi handed a message to the General, and he was so disturbed that what was intended as a whisper came out as a strangled cry of outrage.

"The clown!" he panted. "The clown has done it!" The General, alarmed by this enigmatic statement, s.n.a.t.c.hed the message and his eyes flew across the sheet before he handed it to the officer beside him and covered his face with both hands.

"The idiot!" he wailed, while the message pa.s.sed swiftly from hand to hand, and a hubbub of raised voices followed it.

"At least, your Excellency, it is a great victory," called an infantry commander, and suddenly the entire mood of the a.s.sembly changed.

"My planes are ready, General. We await the word to follow up this masterly strategy of yours," cried the Commander of the Regia Aeronautica, leaping to his feet and the General uncovered his eyes and looked confused.

"Congratulations, my General," called an artilleryman, and struggled unsteadily upright, spilling port down the front of his jacket. "A mighty victory."

"Oh dear!" murmured De Bono. "Oh dear!" "An unprovoked attack by a horde of savages" - Crespi had retrieved the message and read the memorable words of Count Aldo Belli aloud "firmly resisted by the courage of the flower of Italian manhood." "Oh dear!" said De Bono a little louder, and covered his eyes again.

"Almost fifteen thousand of the enemy dead!" shouted a voice.

"An army of sixty thousand routed by a handful of Fascist sons. It is a sign for the future."

"Forward to the ultimate victory."

"We march! We march!" And the General looked up again. "Yes," he agreed miserably. "I suppose we shall have to now." The Third Battalion of the black s.h.i.+rt "Africa" regiment was paraded in full review order on the sandy plain above the Wells of Chaldi. The ground was neatly demarcated by the meticulous rows of pale canvas tents and neat lines of white stones. In twenty-four hours, under the goading of Major Castelani, the camp had taken on an air of permanence. If they gave him a day or two more, there would be roads and buildings also.

Count Aldo Belli stood in the back of the Rolls, which, despite the loving attentions of Giuseppe the driver, was showing signs of wear and attrition. However, Giuseppe had parked it with the damaged side away from the parade and he had burnished the good side with a mixture of beeswax and methylated spirits until it shone in the sunlight, and had replaced the shattered windscreen and the broken lamp gla.s.s.

"I have here a message received an hour ago which I shall read to you," shouted the Count, and the parade stirred with interest. "The message is personal to me from Benito Mussolini."

"II Duce. 11 Duce. "Duce,"roared the battalion in unison, like a well-trained orchestra, and the Count lifted a hand to restrain them and he began to read.

"My heart swells with pride when I contemplate the feat of arms undertaken by the gallant sons of Italy, children of the Fascist revolution, whom you command'-" the Count's voice choked a little.

When the speech ended, his men cheered him wildly, throwing their helmets in the air. "The Count climbed down from the Rolls and went amongst them, weeping, embracing a man here, kissing another there, shaking hands left and right and then clasping his own hands above his head like a successful prizefighter and crying "Ours is the victory," and "Death before dishonour," until his voice was hoa.r.s.e and he was led away to his tent by two of his officers.

However, a gla.s.s of grappa helped him recover his composure and he was able to pour a warrior's scorn on the radio message from General De Bono which accompanied the paean of praise from 11 Duce.

De Bono was alarmed and deeply chagrined to discover that the officer he had judged to be an ineffectual blowhard had indeed turned out to be a firebrand. In view of the Duce's personal message to the count, he could not, without condemning himself to the political wilderness, order the man back to headquarters and under his protective wing where he could be restrained from any further flamboyant action.

The man had virtually established himself as an independent command. Mussolini had chided De Bono with his failure to go on the offensive, and had held up the good Count's action as an example of duty and dedication. He had directly ordered De Bono to support the Count's drive on the Sardi Gorge and to reinforce him as necessary.

De Bono's response had been to send the Count a long radiogram, urging him to the utmost caution and pleading with him to advance only after reconnaissance in depth and after having secured both flanks and rear.

Had he delivered this advice forty-eight hours earlier, it would have been most enthusiastically received by Aldo Belli. But now, since the victory at the Wells of Chaldi and wou the Duce's congratulatory message, the Count was a changed man. He had tasted the sweets of battle honours and learned how easily they could be won. He knew now that he was opposed by a tribe of primitive black men in long night, dresses armed with museum weapons, who ran and fell with gratifying expedition when his men opened fire.

"Gentlemen," he addressed his officers. "I have today received a code green message from General De Bono. The armies of Italy are on the march. At twelve hundred hours today," he glanced at his wrist-watch, "in just twelve minutes" time, the forward elements of the army will cross the Mareb River and begin the march on the savage capital of Addis Ababa. We stand now at the leading edge of the sword of history. The fields of glory are ripening on the mountains ahead of us and the for one, intend that the Third Battalion shall be there when the harvest is gathered in." His officers made polite, if uncommitted sounds. They were beginning to be alarmed by this change in their Colonel. It was to be hoped that this was rhetoric rather than real intention.

"Our esteemed commander has urged me to exercise the utmost caution in my advance on the Sardi Gorge," and they smiled and nodded vehemently, but the Count scowled dramatically and his voice rang. "I will not sit here quiescent, while glory pa.s.ses me by." A shudder of unease ran through the a.s.sembled officers, like the forest shaken by the first winds of winter, and they joined in only halfheartedly when the Count began to sing' La Giovinezza'.

Lij Mikhael had agreed that one of the cars might be used to carry Sara up the gorge to the town of Sardi where a Catholic mission station was run by an elderly German doctor. The bullet wound in the girl's leg was not healing cleanly, and the heat and swelling of the flesh and the watery yellow discharge from the wound were causing Vicky the greatest concern.

Fuel for the cars had come down from Addis Ababa on the narrow gauge railway as far as Sardi, and had then been packed down the steeper, lower section of the gorge by mule and camel. It waited for them now at the foot of the gorge where the Sardi River debauched through a forest of acacia trees into a triangular valley, which in turn widened to a mouth fifteen miles across before giving way to the open desert. At the head of the valley, the river sank into the dry earth and began its long subterranean journey to where it emerged at last in the scattered water-holes at the Wells of Chaldi.

Lij Mikhael was going up to Sardi with Vicky's car for he had arranged to meet the Ras of the Gallas there in an attempt to co-ordinate the efforts of the two tribes against the Italian aggressors, and then an aircraft was being sent down to Sardi from Addis to fly him to an urgent war conference with the Emperor at Lake Tona.

Before he left, he spoke privately with Jake and Gareth, walking with them a short way along the rugged road that climbed steeply up the gorge following the rocky water course Of the Sardi River.

Now they stood together, staring up the track to where it turned into the first sleep bend and the river came cras.h.i.+ng down beside it in a tall white-plumed waterfall that drifted mist across the surface of the track and induced a growth of dark green moss upon the boulders.

"It's as rough as a crocodile's back here," said Jake. "Will Vicky get the car up?"

"I have had a thousand men at work upon it ever since I knew you were bringing these vehicles," the Lij told him.

"It is rough, yes, but I think it will be pa.s.sable."

"I should jolly well hope so," Gareth murmured. "It's the only way out of this lovely little trap into which we have backed ourselves. Once the Eyeties close the entrance to the valley-" and he turned and swept a hand across the vista of plain and mountain that lay spread below them, and then he smiled at the Prince.

"Just the three of us here now, Toffee old boy. Let's hear from you. What exactly do you want from us? What are the objectives you have set for us? Are we expected to defeat the whole b.l.o.o.d.y army of Italy before you pay us out?"

"No, Major Swales." The Prince shook his head. "I thought I had made myself clear. We are here to cover the rear and flank of the Emperor's army. We must expect that eventually the Italians will force their way up this gorge and reach the plateau and the road to Dessie and Addis we can't stop them, but we must delay them at least until the main engagements in the north are decided. If the Emperor succeeds, the Italians will withdraw here. If he fails, then our task is over."

"How long until the Emperor fights?"

"Who can tell?" And Jake shook his head, while Gareth took the stub of his cigar from his mouth and inspected the tip ruefully.

"I'm beginning to think we are being underpaid," he said.

But the Prince seemed not to hear and he went on speaking quietly but with a f( -)rce that commanded their attention.

"We will use the cars here on the open ground in front of the gorge to the best possible effect, and my father's troops will support you." He paused, and they all looked down at the sprawling encampment of the Ras's army, amongst the acacia trees. Stragglers were still drifting in across the plain from the rout at the wells, lines of camels and knots of goo NEW 40it hors.e.m.e.n surrounded by amorphous formations of foot soldiers. "If the Gallas join us, they can provide another five thousand fighting men that will bring our strength to twelve thousand or thereabouts. I have had my scouts study the Italian encampment, and they report an effective strength of under a thousand. Even with their armaments, we should hold them here for many days "Unless they are reinforced, which they will be, or bring up armour, which they will do, "said Gareth.

"Then we will withdraw into the gorge demolis.h.i.+ng the road as we go, and resisting at each strong place. We won't be able to use the cars again until we reach Sardi but there in the bowl of the mountains there is good open ground and room to manoeuvre. It is also the last point at which we can effectively block the Italian advance." They were silent again and the sound of an engine came up to them. They watched the armoured car reach the foot of the gorge and begin growling and nosing its way upwards, at the pace of a walking man, except where it had to back and lock hard to make one of the sleep hairpin bends in the road. The Lij roused himself and sighed with what seemed a deep weariness of the spirit.

"One thing I must mention to you, gentlemen. My father is a warrior in the old style. He does not know the meaning of fear, and he cannot imagine the effect of modern weapons especially the machine gun on ma.s.sed foot soldiers. I trust you to restrain his exuberance." Jake remembered the bodies hanging like dirty laundry on the barbed wire of France, and felt the cold tickle run up his spine. n.o.body spoke again until the car, still blazoned with its crimson crosses, drew up level with where they stood and they scrambled down the bank to meet it.

Vicky's head appeared in the hatch. She must have found an opportunity to bathe, for her hair was newly washed and s.h.i.+ny and caught behind her head in a silk ribbon. The sun had bleached her hair to a whiter gold, but the peachy velvet of her complexion had been gilded by that same sun to a darker honey colour. Immediately Jake and Gareth moved forward, neither trusting the other to be alone with her for an instant.

But she was brusque, and concerned only with the injured girl who was laid out on the floor of the cab on a hastily improvised bed of blankets and skins. Her leave-taking was off-hand and distracted while the Lij climbed in through the rear doors, and she pulled away again up the steep track followed by a squadron of the Prince's bodyguard looking like a gang of cut-throats on their s.h.a.ggy mountain ponies, festooned with bandoliers of ammunition and hung with rifles and swords. They clattered away after the car, and Jake watched them out of sight. He felt a sense of deep unease that the girl should be up there in the mountains beyond any help that he could give her. He was staring after the car.

"Put your mind back in your pants," Gareth advised him cynically. "You're gain" to need it for the Eyeties, now." from the foot of the gorge to the lip of the bowl of land in which stood the town of Sardi was a few dozen miles across the ground, but the track climbed five thousand feet and it took six hours of hard driving for Vicky to reach it.

The Prince's labour gangs were working upon the track still, groups of dark men in mud-stained shairmias, hacking away at the steep banks and piles of boulders that blocked the narrow places. Twice these men had to rope up the car to drag and shove it over a particularly treacherous stretch with the torrent roaring in its bed a hundred feet below and the wheels of the car inches from the crumbling edge of the precipice.

In the middle of the afternoon the sun pa.s.sed behind the towering ramparts of stone leaving the gut of the gorge in deep shadow, and a clammy chill made Vicky s.h.i.+ver even as she wrestled with the controls of the heavy vehicle. The engine was running very unevenly, and back-firing explosively at the change of atmospheric pressure as they toiled upwards. Also Sara's condition seemed to be worsening rapidly. When Vicky stopped briefly to rest her aching arms and back muscles she found that Sara was running a raging fever, her skin was dry and baking hot and her dark eyes were glittering strangely. She cut short her rest and took the wheel again.

The gorge narrowed dramatically, so the sky was a narrow ribbon of blue high above and the cliffs seemed almost to close jaws of granite upon the labouring car. Although it seemed impossible, the track turned even more steeply upwards so that the big back wheels spun and skidded, throwing out fist-sized stones like cannon b.a.l.l.s and scattering the escort who followed closely.

Then abruptly Vicky drove the car over the crest and came out through rocky portals into a wide, gently inclined bowl of open ground hemmed in completely by the mountain walls. Perhaps twenty miles across, the bowl was cultivated in patches, and scattered with groups of the round tukuL-, the thatch and daub huts of the peasant farmers.

Domestic animals, goats and a few milk cows grazed along the course of the Sardi River where the gra.s.s was green and lush and thick forests of cedar trees found a precarious purchase along the rocky banks.

The town itself was a gathering of brick-built and white, plastered buildings, whose roofs of galvanized corrugated iron caught the last probing rays of the sun as it came through the western pa.s.s.

Here in the west, the mountains fell back, allowing a broad gentle incline to rise the last two thousand feet to the level of the plateau of the highlands. Down this slope, the narrow-gauge railway looped in a tight series of hairpins until it entered the town and ended in a huddle of sheds and stock pens.

The Catholic mission station was situated beyond the town on the slopes of the western rise. It was a sadly dilapidated cl.u.s.ter of tin-roofed daub buildings, grouped around a church built of the same materials. The church was the only building that was freshly whitewashed. As they drove past the open doors, Vicky saw that the rows of rickety pews were empty, but that lighted candles burned upon the altar and there were fresh flowers in the vases.

The church's emptiness and the sorry state of the buildings were a reflection of the ma.s.sive power of the Coptic Church over this land and its people. There was very little encouragement given to the missionaries of any other faith, but this did not prevent the local inhabitants from taking advantage of the medical facilities offered by the mission.

Almost fifty patients squatted along the length of the veranda that ran the full length of the clinic, and they looked up with minimal interest as Vicky parked the armoured car below them.

The doctor was a heavily built man, with short bowed legs and a thick neck. His hair was cropped close to the round skull and was silvery white, and his eyes were a pale blue. He spoke no English, and he acknowledged Vicky with a glance and a grunt, transferring all his attention to Sara. When two of his a.s.sistants rolled her carefully on to a stretcher and carried her up on to the veranda, Vicky would have followed but the Lij restrained her.

"She is in the best hands and we have work to do." The telegraph office at the railway station was closed and locked, but in answer to the Prince's shouts the station master came hurrying anxiously down the track. He recognized Mikhael immediately.

The process of tapping out Vicky's despatch on the telegraph was a long, laborious business, almost beyond the ability of the station master whose previous transmissions had seldom exceeded a dozen words at a time. He frowned and muttered to himself as he worked, and Vicky wondered in what mangled state her masterpiece of the journalistic art would reach her editor's desk in New York. The Prince had left her and gone off with his escort to the official government residence on the outskirts of the village, and it was after nine o'clock before the station master had sent the last of Vicky's despatch a total of almost five thousand words and Vicky found that her legs were unsteady and her brain woolly with fatigue when she went out into the utter darkness of the mountain night. There were no stars, for the night mists had filled the basin and swirled in the headlights as Vicky groped her way through the village and at last found the government residence.

It was a large sprawling complex of buildings with wide verandas, whitewashed and iron-roofed, standing in a grove of dark-foliaged cosa flora trees from which the bats screeched and fluttered to dive upon the insects that swarmed in the light from the windows of the main building.

Vicky halted the car in front of the largest building and found herself surrounded by silent but watchful throngs of dark men, all of them heavily armed like the Harari she knew, but these were a different people. She did not know why, but she was sure of it.

There were many others camped in the grove. She could see their fires and hear the stamp and snort of their tethered horses, the voices of the women and the laughter of the men.

The throng opened for her and she crossed the veranda and entered the large room which was crowded with many men, and lit by the smoky paraffin lamps that hung from the ceiling. The room stank of male sweat, tobacco and the hot spicy aroma of food and tej.

A hostile silence fell as she entered, and Vicky stood uncertainly on the threshold, scrutinized by a hundred dark suspicious eyes, until Lij Mikhael rose from where he sat at the far end of the room.

"Miss Camberwell." He took her hand. "I was beginning to worry about you. Did you send your despatch?" He led her across the room and seated her beside him, before he indicated the man who sat opposite him.

"This is Ras Kullah of the Gallas," he said, and despite her weariness, Vicky studied him with interest.

Her first impression was identical to that she had received from the men amongst the cosa flora trees outside in the darkness. There was a veiled hostility, a coldness of the spirit about the man, almost reptilian aura about the dark unblinking eyes.

He was a young man, still in his twenties, but his face and body were bloated by disease or debauchery so that there was a soft jelly-like look to his flesh. The skin was a pale creamy colour, unhealthy and clammy, as though it had never been exposed to sunlight. His lips were full and petulant, a startling cherry red in colour that ill suited the pale tones of his skin.

He watched Vicky, when the Prince introduced her, with the same dead expression in his eyes, but gave no acknowledgement though the flat snakelike eyes moved slowly over her body, like loathsome hands, dwelling and lingering on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and her legs, before moving back to Lij Mikhael's face.

The pudgy, swollen hands lifted a buck-horn pipe to the dark cherry lips and Ras Kullah drew deeply upon it holding the smoke in his lungs before exhaling slowly.

When Vicky smelled the smoke, she knew the reason for the dead eyes in the Ras's puffy face.

"You have not eaten all day," said Lij Mikhael, and gave instructions for food to be brought to Vicky. "You will excuse me now, Miss Camberwell, the Ras speaks no English and our negotiations are still at an early stage. I have ordered a room made ready where you may rest as soon as you have eaten. We shall be talking all the night," the Lij smiled briefly, "and saying very little, for a blood feud of a hundred years is what we are talking around." He turned back to the Ras.

The hot, spicy food warmed and filled the cold hollow place in the pit of Vicky's stomach, and a mug of fiery tej made her choke and gasp, but then lifted her spirits and revived her journalist's curiosity so that she could look again with interest at what was happening around her.

The interminable discussion went on between the two men, cautious plodding negotiations between implacable luctantly drawn together by a greater danger and enemies, a more powerful adversary.

On either side Ras sat two young women, pale sloe-eyed creatures, with n.o.ble regular features and thick dark hair frizzled out into a stiff round bush that caught the light of the lanterns and glowed along the periphery like a luminous halo. They sat impa.s.sively showing no emotion, even when the Ras fondled one or the other of them with the absent-minded caress that he might have bestowed on a lap dog.

Only once, as he took a fat round breast in one plump soft paw and squeezed it, the girl winced slightly and Vicky seeing the crimson linen of her blouse dampened in a wet dark patch at the nipple realized that the girl's breast was heavy with milk.

Vicky's artificial sense of well-being was fast fading now, sinking once again under the weight of her weariness, and lulled by the food in her belly, the thick smoky atmosphere and the hypnotic cadence of the Amharic language. She was on the point of excusing herself from the Lij and leaving when there was a disturbance outside the room, and the shrill angry cries of a voice creaking with age and indi nation The room was immediately electric with a charged feeling of expectation, and Ras Kullah looked up and called out querulously.

A youth of perhaps nineteen years of age was dragged into the room and held by two armed guards in the centre of the hastily cleared s.p.a.ce before Ras Kullah. His arms were bound with rawhide that cut deeply into the flesh of his wrists, and his face was wet and s.h.i.+ny with the sweat of fear, while his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets.

He was followed by a shrieking crone, a wizened baboon like figure, swathed in a voluminous black sham mastiff with filth and greenish with age. Repeatedly she attempted to attack the captive youth, clawing at his face with bony hooked fingers, her toothless old mouth opened in a dark pink-lined pit as she leaped and cavorted before the terrified youth, trying again and again to reach him, while the two guys pushed her away with c ee gu aw and playful blows, never relinquis.h.i.+ng their grip on their prisoner.

The Ras leaned forward to watch this play with awakening interest, his dark dull eyes taking on a sparkle of antic.i.p.ation as he asked a question, and the crone flew to him and flung herself full-length before him.

She began to bleat out a long high-pitched plea, attempting at the same time to grasp and kiss the Ras's feet. The Ras giggled with antic.i.p.ation, kicking away the old woman's hands and occasionally asking a question that was answered either by the guards or the grovelling crone.

"Miss Camberwell whispered the Prince. "I suggest that you leave now. This will not be pleasant to watch."

"What is it?" Vicky demanded, her professional instincts roused. "What are they doing?" "The woman accuses the youth of murdering her son.

The guards are her witnesses and the Ras is trying the case.

He will give judgement in a moment, and the sentence will be carried out immediately."

Here? "Vicky looked startled.

"Yes, Miss Camberwell. I urge you to leave. The punishment will be biblical, from the Old Testament which is the centre of the Coptic faith. It will be a tooth for a tooth." Vicky hesitated to take the Prince's advice, all human experience was her field no matter how bizarre, and suddenly it was too late.

Laughingly, the Ras thrust the old woman away again with a kick to the chest that sent her sprawling across the beaten earth floor and he called a peremptory command to the guards who held the accused youth. Flapping like a maimed black crow upon the floor, the crone set up a wailing shriek of triumph as she heard the verdict, and she tried to regain her feet. The guards guffawed again and began to strip away the condemned man's clothing, tearing it from his body until he stood completely naked except for his bonds.

The crowded room now buzzed with excitement at the coming entertainment, and the doorway and windows were packed with those who had come in from the encampment amongst the cosa flora trees. Even the two impa.s.sive madonnas who flanked the Ras had become animated, leaning forward to chatter softly to each other, smiling secretly as their dark-moon eyes shone and the full swollen b.r.e.a.s.t.s swung heavily under the thin material of their blouses.

The doomed youth was whimpering softly, his head turning back and forth, as though seeking escape, his naked body slim and finely muscled with dark amber skin that, glowed in the lamplight, and his arms bound tightly behind his back. His legs were long and the muscles looked hard and beautifully sculptured, and the dark bush of curls in his groin was dense and crisp-looking. His thick circ.u.mcised p.e.n.i.s hung limply, seeming to epitomize the man's despair.

Vicky tried to tear her eyes away, ashamed to look upon a human being stripped thus of all dignity, but the spectacle was mesmeric.

The old woman hopped and flapped in front of the captive, her wrinkled brown features contorted in an expression of utter malice and she opened her toothless mouth and spat into his face. The spittle ran down his cheek and dripped on to his chest.

"Please leave now," Lij Mikhael urged Vicky, and she tried to rise, but it seemed that her legs would not respond.