The Secret War (19 page)

“I wouldn't mind betting they know it already.” Lovelace grinned ruefully. “As likely as not that handsome chauffeur who drove us back from Zarrif's is a Young Turban; if so, he'll have reported his day's work as a matter of routine by now. It's a good thing our rooms are adjoining. We'd better sleep with the connecting doors ajar. In fact, we'll have to sleep with our eyes open and our guns handy every night from now on.”

Valerie mopped the perspiration from her face.

She had given up trying to keep it powdered hours before. It was eight o'clock at night, and they had only arrived at Jibuti at ten o'clock that morning, yet she felt as limp and washed-out as if she had lived for a month under the blazing, fiery sun that burnt up the capital of French Somaliland.

Their journey had not proved too fortunate. With previous records in her mind and a supreme confidence in her abilities as an air-woman, she had attempted the seventeen-hundred-and-fifty-mile flight from Alexandria in one hop, but on the previous afternoon her plane had developed engine trouble over the Red Sea and she had been forced to come down at Massawa.

The Eritrean capital had been literally crawling with Italian troops and all the auxiliaries who infest the principal base of a big military campaign. The harbour, if you could call it that, was packed with transport, hospital ships, cruisers and submarines, which stretched along the coast as far as the eye could see. Thousands of men, looking in the distance like a swarm of ants, worked frantically upon the new mole which would protect the anchorage. Innumerable engines puffed and snorted as they drew their loads over the intricate network of light railways. Legions of blacks were unloading munitions and supplies from countless lighters at every wharf. The town itself was a positive hive of activity. Italian soldiers thronged the pavements of all the principal streets, and every one of them seemed to be hurrying somewhere. Thousands of Askaris, lithe,
smartly turned-out native troops, the coloured tassels in their tarbooshes lending a note of colour to the scene, marched, drilled and manœuvred in every available open space.

Beds were not to be obtained at any price, and they had been compelled to sleep with their clothes on in the plane.

Valerie had located the trouble, and, first thing next morning, they had set off on their last four hundred miles to the south.

After Massawa, Jibuti seemed a quiet backwater yet, as the headquarters of all the neutral hangers-on in the war, it was crowded to capacity.

Christopher's money and Lovelace's method of dealing with cosmopolitan innkeepers secured them two rooms in a small hotel. They at once made inquiries about Abu Ben Ibrim, and found that every guttersnipe in Jibuti knew the house of the powerful Arab. Lovelace wrote a letter mentioning Melchisedek of Alexandria and requesting an interview. It was dispatched by hand, and a reply came back that Ben Ibrim would receive them, in the cool of the evening, at nine o'clock. Through most of the day they had remained sweltering in the hotel while the inhabitants of the town apparently slept.

Owing to the intense heat, Government offices and most business houses opened at five in the morning, closed at nine, and did not open again until eight in the evening, as Lovelace told his friends, but, new to this slice of tropical Africa, Christopher and Valerie had refused to lie down during the broiling hours, and were now feeling the fatigue consequent upon their ill-advised activity.

Lovelace was still upstairs dozing on his bed when, at last, the sun set and they moved out on to the terrace. For a little while they sat there sucking down iced drinks and panting for a breath of air in the close hot darkness.

Behind them the big bar which was also the only lounge of the hotel had just commenced its nightly traffic. As in other French Colonies, no colour bar was exercised, and all who could pay were welcome. The place was of the middle grade, as Lovelace had thought it imprudent to advertise their presence by attempting to secure better accommodation. A wireless had been switched on which drowned the buzz of the big refrigerator behind the bar; some couples had already started dancing; black, brown, yellow, and white men were drifting in. A few coffee-coloured Eurasian girls in European clothes were present, but no white women. The honours of the house were being done by a brigade of black Somalis, who, naked to the waist, displayed fine shoulders and beautiful breasts. They twitched their hips and shook their short silk skirts provocatively as they moved among the tables, but there was nothing sordid about the spectacle. Their shrill chatter in the dialect of the port was like that of a crowd of happy children.

The only other occupant of the terrace was a tall, thin man, seated alone, at a table near by. After glancing at them once or twice he rose, bowed courteously and, introducing himself as Baron Foldvar, asked if they would take pity on his loneliness by allowing him to offer them a drink.

Valerie smiled an acceptance and motioned to a vacant chair beside her. The stranger possessed a delicate aristocratic countenance with sad, grey eyes set deep under heavy brows. A scar, running from the corner of his mouth to the left side of his chin, marked his face but did not mar it.

After the Somali waiter had been summoned and a fresh round of drinks ordered Baron Foldvar inquired suavely, “Do you go to Addis Ababa, or have you just come down the line?”

“We only arrived in Jibuti this morning,” Christopher told him, “and we're hoping to be able to transact our
business here so that it won't be necessary for us to go up into the interior.”

“Indeed!” The older man raised his eyebrows. “Your case is unusual. Nine out of every ten white people in Jibuti are either coming or going from Addis in these days. The tenth only remains here because he cannot beg, borrow, or steal enough money for his ticket.”

“Are you just back or on your way up?” Valerie asked.

“I go up on to-morrow's train. An abominable trip; so I'm informed. Insolent native officials from whose persecution there is no escape except by bribery; the most disgusting food; and even the water offered in the buffets of the wayside stations quite undrinkable so that one must go with a private supply of Vichy if one would escape enteric. I have travelled much but I confess that I find the prospects of this journey particularly unalluring.”

Christopher sipped the orange juice that the waiter had just set down before him. “It sounds beastly. Thank goodness we'll be travelling by plane if we do have to go. Have you heard anything fresh about the war?”

“The vanguard of the Italian columns are reported to have entered Dessye, the Emperor's battle headquarters.”

“Is that so? If it's true, they're moving mighty rapidly. D'you think they can keep it up?”

Baron Foldvar shrugged. “It is impossible to say. Anything might happen in such a crazy war as this. When the Italians opened their campaign I am quite certain they never dreamed of achieving the swift progress they have made in the last fortnight. Now that they have initiated this lightning thrust who shall predict how far it may penetrate?”

“The Italians have changed their policy then.” Valerie leaned forward. “We know practically nothing
about the actual war but you seem very well informed. Do tell us what's been going on.”

“I know very little,” their new friend replied gravely, “but at one time I was an officer on the Imperial Austrian General Staff. Before the Great War I was for some time Assistant Military Attaché to the Austrian Embassy in London. That is why, pardon me if I seem to boast, many people have been kind enough to say that I speak very good English.”

“You do indeed,” Valerie agreed. “But you were saying …”

“That as a Staff Officer it was my duty to study all problems which might give rise to future wars. Particularly with reference to Italy because, in those days, although they were both members of the Triple Alliance, the interests of Austria-Hungary and Italy differed upon so many points.”

“The last twenty years have altered all that,” Christopher remarked.

“Yes, Mussolini has changed the Italian mentality a great deal. Under Fascism the national self-confidence has increased out of all recognition but his influence has not been sufficient to eradicate the Italian army's memory of their defeat at Adowa in 1896. That defeat has been much exaggerated. It was largely due to the parsimonious attitude of the Government in Rome who refused to grant even one tenth of the money for the Italian expedition against Menelik that the British had voted for their General Napier when he marched against the Emperor Theodore and penetrated as far as Magdala in the previous decade.

“In actual fact, they lost less than a thousand white troops and between three and four thousand Askaris; while both performed prodigies of valour during that disastrous retreat fighting against overwhelming odds. Yet they've never been able to get rid of the idea that they were badly beaten. Perhaps that is not altogether surprising as, almost unsuspected by them, Menelik
gathered together over a hundred thousand warriors secretly in the mountains and fell upon them when they were still in the initial stages of their retirement.

“In any case, that memory still dominated De Bono's policy at the opening of the present campaign. He was terrified of pushing his outposts forward even another mile unless he could support them with masses of troops. Yet he could not advance his main forces until roads were made behind them at every step to ensure the delivery to them of adequate ammunition and supplies. Hence the extraordinary slowness of the Italians' initial operations. The war opened on October 3rd; by the 6th they had already avenged Adowa and a few days later they took the sacred city of Aksum, both less than twenty-five miles from the Eritrean frontier. Then they stuck. It took them over a month to advance another sixty miles to Makale because they were proceeding with such extreme caution.

“Even when Marshal Badoglio took over at the end of November he failed at first to draw the best results from his General Staff's appreciation of the situation, and the policy of a creeping advance in mass was continued. But the Abyssinians played into his hands. Instead of waiting, as they should have done, to ambush his columns in the precipitous gorges of the Tigre, they massed to attack him in the open.

“It was child's-play, with his modern armaments, to defeat and scatter them. Once the main bodies of the enemy had been met and routed he had little to fear in the way of hordes of fanatical warriors suddenly appearing from nowhere. Being a first-class soldier he altered his policy completely and began to push his flying columns forward.

“They are still advancing. His aeroplanes spray the heights on either side of his columns, as they thrust their way onward, with mustard gas. Not to kill the miserable natives, but to make the heights untenable. A humane form of warfare if one regards it soberly
since it prevents continued skirmishes which would otherwise entail death and many casualties on both sides.

“The Italians still have a long way to go and every dusty mile they cover carries them farther from their bases. If the Emperor will succeed in checking them with the masses of new troops he is still assembling, or the Italians will achieve their main objective, Addis Ababa, before the rains come, remains to be seen.”

“That's the most interesting résumé of the campaign I've heard so far,” Christopher acknowledged handsomely. “I take it you were through the European war, Baron?”

“Yes. I fought in it, of course,” the older man sighed. “A hideous tragedy which few of my generation can ever forget.”

“Did you fight against the Russians or the Italians?” Valerie asked.

“The Russians, in the early days; then I was taken prisoner. On that account I was also compelled to witness many of the horrors of the Russian Revolution.”

“But how interesting,” Valerie exclaimed, “actually to have lived through history in the making. Won't you tell us what it was really like?”

Baron Foldvar spread out his thin, elegant hands. “It is a long story and a sad one. For many people, the profiteers and so on, the war was a glorious opportunity. Even for some young men who fought it was only a marvellous adventure, but for me, it was the end of everything. If you wish I will tell … but no. The private tragedy of a stranger would only bore you.”

“No, please?” Valerie insisted. “I was only a baby at the time of the Great War but it affected all my generation tremendously and so few of us really know anything about it. Please tell us, unless speaking of your memories pains you too much.”

The Austrian smiled for the first time. “How I envy you both your youth and eagerness to hear even of
terrible things if it may serve to increase your knowledge. Ah well, my own youth, at least, was unimpaired by tragedy. Twenty-two years ago I was a Captain of Huzzars in Vienna.

“What a city it was in those days! It is still beautiful although only the empty shell remains now that it is no longer the capital of an Empire but only of a Province. Then, it was the gayest, the most romantic city in the world; a perfect paradise for lovers. To drive up the hill to Grinzing in the evening and dine there, with a pretty girl, in one of the wine-gardens while the musicians played Strauss beside your table and the fairy lamps twinkled in the trees above. For poor and rich alike what more had life to offer? I suppose I should be grateful that my early years were set in pleasant places and that I lived them during a peaceful well-ordered epoch. How right the British statesman, Sir Edward Grey, was when on the eve of the Great War he said: ‘One by one the lights of Europe are going out.' There is no nation where youth has been privileged to have its fling with the same carefree happiness and security since.

“But I digress. In the autumn of 1913 I met the lady who was afterwards to be my wife. All through the winter I wooed her. Love-affairs did not reach their climaxes so swiftly then because young girls of good family were very carefully chaperoned. It was at first an affair of hesitant greetings and shy confidences when we met at big gatherings in the houses of our mutual friends. Then of smuggled notes; apparently chance but, actually, carefully arranged meetings when we were riding in the Prater and stolen half-hours at dusk when I clambered over the high wall of her garden.