blouse. His touch, like the wind, was softly caressing.
Through their thin clothing she could feel the warmth and resilience of
his flesh pressed against her, feel his chest surge and subside to the
urgency of his breathing.
She turned slowly within the circle of his arms and lifted her face to
his as he stooped, meeting his body with a forward thrust of her hips.
The taste of his mouth and the musky male smell of his body hastened
her own arousal.
It took all her determination to tear her lips loose from his, and to
draw away from his embrace. She crossed quickly to where her blankets
lay and picked them up with hands that shook.
She spread them again between the dark supine forms of Jake and
Gregorius, and only when she rolled herself into their coarse folds and
lay upon her back trying to control her ragged breathing was she aware
that Jake Barton was awake.
His eyes were closed and his breathing was deep and even, but she knew
with complete certainty that he was awake.
eneral Emilio De Bono stood at the window of his office and looked
across the squalid roofs of the town of Asmara towards the great
brooding massif of the Ethiopian highlands. It looked like the
backbone of a dragon, he thought, and suppressed a shudder.
The General was seventy years of age, so he recalled vividly the last
Italian army that had ventured into that mountain fastness. The name
Adowa was a dark blot on the history of Italian arms, and after forty
years, that terrible bloody defeat of a modern European army was still
unavenged.
Now destiny had chosen him as the avenger and Emilio De Bono was not
certain that the role suited him. It would be much more to his liking
if wars could be fought without anybody getting hurt. The
General would go to great lengths to avoid inflicting pain or even
discomfort. Orders that might be distasteful. to the recipient were
avoided. Operations that might place anybody in jeopardy were frowned
upon severely by the commanding General and his officers had learned
not to suggest such extravagances.
The General was at heart a diplomat and a politician not a warrior. He
liked to see smiling faces, so he smiled a great deal himself. He
resembled a sprightly, wizened little goat, with the pointed white
beard that gave him the nickname of "Little Beard'. And he addressed
his officers as
"Caro', and his men as "Bambino'. He just wanted to be loved. So he
smiled and smiled.
However, the General was not smiling now. This morning he had received
from Rome another one of those importunate coded telegrams signed
Benito Mussolini. The wording had been even more peremptory than
usual. "The King of Italy wishes, and I, Benito Mussolini,
Minister of the armed forces, order that-" Suddenly he struck himself a
blow on his medal-bedecked chest which startled Captain Crespi, his
aide-decamp.
"They do not understand," cried De Bono bitterly. "It is all very
beautiful to sit in Rome and urge haste. To cry "Strike!" But they do
not see the picture as we do, who stand here looking across the Mareb
River at the swarming multitudes of the enemy." The Captain came to
the
General's side and he also stared out of the window. The building that
housed the expeditionary army headquarters in Asmara was double
storied
and the General's office on the top floor commanded a sweeping view to
the foot of the mountains. The Captain observed wryly that the
swarming multitudes were not readily apparent. The land was a vast
emptiness slumbering in the brilliant sunlight. Air reconnaissance in
depth had descried no concentrations of Ethiopian troops, and reliable
intelligence reported that the Emperor Baile Selassie had ordered that
none of his rudimentary military units approach the border as close as
fifty kilometres, to avoid giving the Italians an excuse to march.
"They do not understand that I must consolidate my position here in
Eritrea. That I must have a firm base and supply train," cried De
Bono pitifully. For over a year he had been consolidating his position
The crude little harbour of Massawa, which once had lazily served the
needs of an occasional tramp steamer or one of the little Japanese
salt-traders, had been reconstructed completely. Magnificent stone
piers ran out into the sea, great wharves bustled with steam cranes,
and busy locomotives shuttled the incredible array of warlike stores
that poured ashore by the thousands of tons a day for month after
month. The Suez Canal remained open to the transports of the Italian
adventure, and a constant stream of them poured southwards, unaffected
by the embargo that the League of Nations had declared on the
importation of military materials into Eastern Africa.
Up to the present time, over three million tons of stores had been
landed, and this did not include the five thousand vehicles of war
troop transports, armoured cars, tanks and aircraft that had come
ashore. To distribute this vast assembly of vehicles and stores, a
road system had been constructed fanning into the interior, a system so
magnificent as to recall that of the Caesars of ancient Rome.
General De Bono smote his chest again, startling his aide. "They urge
me to untimely endeavour. They do not seem to realize that my "
force is insufficient." The force which the General lamented was the
greatest and most powerful army ever assembled on the African
continent. He commanded three hundred and sixty thousand men, armed
with the most sophisticated tools of destruction the world had yet
devised from the Caproni CA.133 three-engined monoplane which could
carry two tons of high explosive and poison gas a range of nine hundred
miles, to the most modern armoured cars and heavily armoured CV.3 tanks
with their 50 men. guns, and supporting units of heavy artillery.
This great assembly was encamped about Asmara and upon the cliffs
overlooking the Mareb River. It was made up of distinct elements, the
green-clad regular army formations with their wide-brimmed tropical
helmets, the black shirt r Fascist militia with their high boots and
cross-straps, their deaths head and thunderbolt badges and their
glittering daggers, the regular colonial units of black Somalis and
Eritreans in their tall tasselled red fezes and baggy shirts, their
gaily coloured regimental sashes and put teed legs above bare feet.
Lastly, the irregular volunteers or ban da who were a. group of desert
bandits and cut-throat cattle thieves attracted by the possibility of
war in the way that the taint of blood gathers sharks.
De Bono knew but did not ponder the fact that nearly seventy years
previously, the British General Napier had marched on Magdala with less
than fifty thousand men, meeting and defeating the entire Ethiopian
army on the way, storming the mountain fortress and releasing the
British prisoners held there, before retiring in good order.
Such heroics were outside the realms o
f the General's imagination.
"Caro."
"The General placed an arm about the gold, braided shoulders of his
aide. "We must compose a reply to the Duce. He must be made to
realize my difficulties." He patted the shoulder affectionately and
his face lightened once more into its habitual expression as he began
composing.
"My dear and respected leader, please be assured of my loyalty to you
and to the glorious fatherland of Italy." The Captain hastened to take
up a message pad and scribble industriously. "Be assured also that I
never cease to toil by night and by day towards--" It took almost two
hours of creative effort before the General was satisfied with his
flowery and rambling refusal to carry out his orders.
"Now," he ceased his pacing and smiled tenderly at the Captain,
"although we are not yet ready for an advance in force, it will serve
to placate Il Duce if we initiate the opening phases of the southern
offensive."
The General's plans for the invasion, when it was finally put in hand,
had been laid with as ponderous regard to detail as his earlier
preparations. Historical necessity dictated that the main attack
should be centred on Adowa.
Already a marble monument, brought from Italy and engraved with the
words "The dead of Adowa avenged with the date left open, lay amongst
the huge mountains of his stores.
ndary flanking attack However, the plan called for a secc, farther
south through one of the very few gateways to the central highlands,
This was the Sardi Gorge. A narrow opening that was riven up from the
desert floor, splitting like an axe-stroke the precipitous mountain
ranges, and forming a pass through which an army might reach the
plateau that reared seven thousand feet above the desert.
The first phase of this plan entailed the seizure of the approaches to
the Sardi Gorge and particularly important 1: in this dry and scalded
desert would be the water supplies of the attacking army.
The General crossed the floor to the large-scale map, of Eastern
Africa which covered one wall, and he picked up the ivory pointer to
touch an isolated spot in the emptiness below the mountains.
"The Wells of Chaldi, he read the name aloud. "Whom shall we send?"
The Captain looked up from his pad, and observed how the spot was
surrounded by the forbidding yellow of the desert.
He had been in Africa long enough to know what that meant, and there
was only one person who he would wish were there.
"Belli," he said.
"Ah," said the General. "Count Aldo Belli the fire eater
"The clown, "said the Captain.
"Come, caro," the General admonished his aide mildly.
"You are too harsh. The Count is a distinguished diplomat, he was for
three years ambassador to the court of St. James in London. His
family is old and noble and very very rich."
"He is a blow-hard,"
said the Captain stubbornly, and the General sighed.
"He is a personal friend of Benito Mussolini. II Duce is a constant
guest at his castle. He has great political power-"
"He would be well out of harm's way at this desolate spot," said the
Captain, and the General sighed again.
"Perhaps you are correct, caro. Send for the good Count if you
please." Captain Crespi stood on the steps of the headquarters
building,
beneath the portico with its imitation marble columns and the clumsily
painted fresco depicting a heroic band of heavily muscled Italians
defeating heathens, ploughing the earth, harvesting the corn, and
generally building an empire.
The Captain watched sourly as the huge Rolls-Royce open tourer bumped
down the dusty, pot-holed main street.
Its headlights glared like monstrously startled eyes, and its burnished
sky-blue paintwork was dulled by a light flouring of pale dust. The
purchase price of this vehicle would have consumed five years of his
service pay, which accounted for much of the Captain's sourness.
Count Aldo Belli, as one of the nation's great landowners and amongst
the five most wealthy men in Italy, did not rely on the army for his
transportation. The Rolls had been adapted and designed to his
personal specifications by the makers.
As it slid to a graceful halt beneath the portico, the k Captain
noticed the Count's personal arms blazoned on the front door. - a
rampant golden wolf supporting a shield with a quartered device of
scarlet and silver. The legend unfurled beneath it read, "Courage arms
me." As the car stopped, a small wiry sun-blackened little man in the
uniform of a black shirt sergeant leaped from the seat be-side the
driver and dropped on one knee in the roadway with a bulky camera at
the ready to capture the moment when the figure in the wide rear seat
of the Rolls should descend.
Count Aldo Belli adjusted his black beret carefully, sucked in his
belly and rose to his feet as the driver scurried around to hold open
the door. The Count smiled. It was a smile of flashing white teeth
and powerful charisma. His eyes were dark and romantic with the
sweeping lashes of a lady of fashion, his skin was lightly tanned to a
golden olive and the lustrous curls of his hair that escaped from under
the black beret shone in the sunlight. Although he was almost
thirty-five years of age, not a single grey strand adulterated that
splendid mane.
From his commanding position his height was exaggerated, so he seemed
to tower god-like above the men who scampered about him. The highly
polished cross-straps glittered across his chest as did the silver
deaths head cap badges. The short regimental dagger on his hip set
with small diamonds and seed pearls was to the Count's own design,
and the ivory-handled revolver had been hand-made for him by Beretta;
the holster was belted in tightly to subdue a waistline that was
showing signs of rebellion.
The Count paused and glanced down at the little sergeant.
"Yes, Gino?"he asked.
"Good, my Count. just a little up with the chin." The Count's chin
caused them both much concern. At certain angles, it showed an
alarming tendency to duplicate itself like the ripples on a pond. The
Count threw up his chin sternly, rather like 11 Duce, and the gesture
ironed out the jowls below.
"Bellissimo," cried Gino, and tripped the shutter. The Count stepped
down from the Rolls, enjoying the way the soft sparkling leather of his
high boots gave like the bellows of a concertina above his instep as he
moved, and he hooked the thumb of his gloved left hand into the belt
above his dagger as he flung his right arm up and outwards in the
Fascist salute.
"The General awaits you, Colonel,"Crespi greeted him.
"I came the moment I received the summons." The Captain made a move.
He knew the summons had been delivered at ten o'clock that morning and
it was now almost three in the afternoon. The Count's primping had
taken most of the day, and now he glowed from bathing and shaving and
massaging and smelled like a rose garden in ful
l bloom.
"Clown," thought the Captain again. It had taken Crespi ten years of
unswerving service and dedication to reach his rank, while this man had
opened his purse, invited Mussolini for a week of hunting and carousal
to his estates at the foot of the Apennines, and had in return been
given the colonelcy of a full battalion. The man had never fired a
shot at anything larger than a boar, and until six months ago had
commanded nothing more formidable than a squad of accountants, a troop
of gardeners or a platoon of strumpets to his bed.
"Clown," thought the Captain bitterly, bowing over the hand and
grinning ingratiatingly. "Have your photograph taken swatting flies in
the Danakil desert, or sniffing camel dung beside the Wells of
Chaldi,"
he thought, and backed away through the wide doors into the relative
cool of the administrative building. "This way, Colonel, if you would
be so kind." A General De Bono lowered the binoculars through which
with brooding disquiet he had been studying the Ethiopian massif, and
almost with relief turned to greet the Colonel.
"Caro," smiled the General, extending both hands as he crossed the
uncarpeted hand-painted tiles. "My dear Count, it is so good of you to
come." The Count drew himself up at the threshold and flung the
Fascist salute at the advancing General, stopping him in confusion.
"In the services of my country and my king, I would count no sacrifice
too dear." Aldo Belli was stirred by his own words. He must remember
them. They could be used again.
"Yes, of course," De Bono agreed hurriedly. "I'm sure we all feel that
way."
"General De Bono, you have only to command me."
"Thank you, caro mio. But a glass of Madeira and a biscuit first?"
suggested the
General. A little sweetmeat to take away the taste of the medicine.
The General felt very bad about sending anyone down into the Danakil
country it was hot here in Asmara, God alone knew what it would be like
down there, and the General felt a pang of dismay that he had allowed
Crespi to select anyone with such political influence as the Count. He
would not further insult the good Count by too hurriedly coming to the
business in hand.
"I hoped that you might have had an opportunity to hear the new
production of La Traviata before leaving Rome?"
"Indeed, General. I