Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur (книги онлайн без регистрации полностью .TXT) 📗
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 spinning tracks, delighted him. They
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 Mannlicher. It was the
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 unnoticed.
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 running with the strength and passion
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
