Cry Wolf

understand, "said the Count.

"The man governs part of the area which is the direct objective of your

column. As soon as you have seized the Sardi Gorge and entered the

town of Sardi itself, this Chief will join you with his men and,

with appropriate international publicity, be declared King of

Ethiopia."

"The man's name?" asked the Count, but the agent would not be

hurried.

"It will be your duty to meet with this Chief, and to synchronize your

efforts. You will also make the promised payment in gold coin."

"Yes."

"The man is an hereditary Ras by rank. He is presently commanding part

of the army that opposes you at Sardi.

However, that will change-" said the agent, and produced a thick

envelope from the briefcase beside his chair. It was sealed with the

wax tablet and the embossed eagles of the Department of Colonial

Affairs. "Here are your written orders. You will sign for them,

please." He inspected the Count's signature suspiciously, then, at

last satisfied, went on in the same dry disinterested voice.

"One other matter. We have identified one of the white mercenaries

fighting with the Ethiopians those mentioned by you as being reported

by the three of your men captured by the enemy and subsequently

released." The agent paused and drew on his almost dead cigar, puffing

up the tip to a bright healthy glow.

"The woman is a notorious agent provocateur, a Bolshevik with radical

and revolutionary sympathies. She poses as a journalist,

employed by an American newspaper whose sentiments have always been

strongly anti-Empire. Already some of this woman's biased

inflammatory, writings have reached the outside world. They have been

a severe embarrassment to us at the Department-" He drew again on the

cigar, and spoke again through the billowing cloud of smoke.

"If she is taken, and I hope that you will place priority on her

capture, she is to be handed over immediately to the new Ethiopian

Emperor-designate, you understand? You are not to be involved, but you

will not interfere with the Ras's execution of the woman."

"I see." The

Count was becoming bored. This political nitpicking was not the type

of thing which would hold his attention. He wanted to show the young

lady hostesses at the Casino the great cross which now hung around his

neck and thumped on his chest each time he moved.

"As for the white man, the Englishman, the one responsible for the

brutal shooting of an Italian prisoner of war in front of witnesses, he

has been declared a murderer and a Political terrorist. When you

capture him, he is to be shot out of hand. That order goes for all

other foreigners serving under arms with the enemy troops. This type

of thing must be put down sternly."

"You can rely on me," said the Count. "There will be no quarter for

the terrorists."

General Pietro Badoglic, moved forward to Ambo Aradam, there were some

minor brushes. while the Italian General deployed his men for the

major stroke. At Abi Addi and Tembien he received advance warning of

the fighting qualities of his enemy, barefoot and armed with spear and

muzzle-loading gun. As he wrote himself, "They have fought with

courage and determination.

Against our attacks, methodically carried out and covered by heavy

machine-gun fire and artillery barrage, their troops have stood firm,

and then engaged in furious hand-to-hand fighting; or they have moved

boldly to counter-attack, regardless of the avalanche of fire that had

immediately fallen upon them. Against the organized fire of our

defending troops, their soldiers many of them armed only with Cold

steel attacked again and again, pushing right up to our wire

entanglements and trying to beat them down with their great swords."

Brave men, perhaps, but they were brushed aside by the huge Italian war

machine. Then at last Badoglio could come at Ras Muguletu, the war

minister of Ethiopia, with his entire army waiting like an old lion in

the caves and precipitous heights of the natural mountain fortress of

Ambo Aradam.

He loosed his full might against the old chieftain, the big

three-engined Capronis roared in, wave after wave, to drop four hundred

tons of bombs upon the mountain in five days of continuous raids, while

his artillery hurled fifty thousand heavy shells, arcing them up from

the valley into the ravines and deep gorges until the outline of the

mountain was shrouded in the red mist of dust and cordite fumes.

Up to now, the time of waiting had passed pleasantly enough for

Count Aldo Belli at the Wells of Chaldi. The addition to his forces

had altered his entire way of life.

Together with the magnificent enamelled cross around his neck,

they had added immeasurably to his prestige and correct sense of

self-importance.

For the first few weeks he never tired of reviewing and manoeuvring his

armoured forces. The six speedy machines, with their low rakish lines

and Aided turrets, intrigued him. Their speed over the roughest

ground, bouncing along on their spi

made wonderful shooting-brakes, for nothing held them up,

and he conceived the master strategy of using them for game drives.

A squadron of light CV.3 tanks, in extended line abreast, could sweep a

thirty-mile swathe of desert, driving all game before them,

down to where the Count waited with the Ma

greatest sport of his hunting career.

The scope of this activity was such that even in the limitless spaces

of the Danakil desert, it did not pass u

Like their Ras, the Harari warriors were men of short patience.

Long inactivity bored them, and daily small groups of horsemen,

followed by their wives and pack donkeys, drifted away from the big

encampment at the foot of the gorge, and began the steep rocky ascent

to the cooler equable weather of the highlands, and the comforts and

business of home. Each of them assured the Ras before departure of a

speedy return as soon as they were needed but nevertheless it irked

the

Ras to see his army dwindling and dribbling away while his enemy sat

invulnerable and unchallenged upon the sacred soil of Ethiopia.

Tensions in the encampment were ru

of the groundswell of the ocean, when storms are building out beyond

the horizon.

Caught up in the suppressed violence, in the boiling pot of emotion,

were both Gareth and Jake. Each of them had used the lull to set his

own department in order.

Jake had gone out under cover of night behind a screen of

Ethiopian scouts to the deserted battlefield, where he had stripped the

carcass of the Hump. Working by the light of a hooded bull's-eye

lantern, and assisted by Gregorius, he had taken the big Bentley engine

to pieces, small enough for the donkey packs and lugged it all home to

the encampment below the camel-thorn trees. Using the replacements,

he had rebuilt the engine of Tenastefin ruined by the Ras in his first

flush of enthusiasm. Then he had stripped, overhauled and reassembled

the other two cars. The Ethiopian armoured forces were now a squadron

of three, all of them in as fine fettle as they had been for the past

twenty years.

Gareth, in the meantime, had selected and trained Harari crews for the