Gareth relaxed slightly and glanced at Jake.
"I must even accept your condition that payment be made in British sterling." Gareth smiled now. "My dear fellow-" he began, but again the Prince silenced him with a raised hand.
"In turn I impose only one condition. It is vital to my acceptance of your offer. You and your partner, Mr. Barton, will be responsible for the delivery of all these weapons into the territory of Ethiopia. Payment will be made only when you hand over the shipment to me or my agent within the borders of his Imperial Majesty, hail Selassie."
"Good God, man," exploded Gareth. "that involves smuggling them through hundreds of miles of hostile territory. That's ridiculous!"
"Ridiculous, Major Swales? I think not. Your merchandise is of no value to me or to you in Dares Salaam. I am your only customer nobody else in the entire world would be foolish enough to buy it from you. On the other hand, any attempt that I should make to import it into my homeland would certainly be frustrated. I am being watched carefully by agents of all the major powers. I know I shall be searched the moment that I land at Jibuti. Lying here, the merchandise has no value." He" paused and glanced from Gareth to Jake. Jake rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.
"I see your point, Your Excellency."
"You are a reasonable man, Mr.
Barton," said the Prince, and then returned his attention to Gareth, and repeated his last statement. "Lying here it has no value. In Ethiopia, it is worth fifteen thousand British sovereigns to you. The choice is yours. Abandon it or get it into Ethiopia."
"I am appalled," said Gareth solemnly, as he paced back and forth.
"I mean, after all the fellow is an old Etonian.
God, I can hardly believe that he would welsh on our agreement.
It's absolutely frightful. I mean, I trusted him." Jake was sprawled on the couch in Madame Cecile's private room. He had shed his dinner-jacket, and perched on his knee there was a plump young lady with a cap of brassy blonde hair. She was dressed in a flimsy daffodil coloured dress, the skirts of which had pulled up to show bright blue garters around her ripe thighs. Jake was weighing one of her ample breasts in his hand with all the concentration of a housewife choosing tomatoes from a greengrocers tray. The girl giggled and wriggled provocatively into his lap.
"Damn it, Jake, listen to me. "I am listening," said Jake.
"The man was positively insulting," protested Gareth, and then seemed for a moment to lose his concentration as Jake's companion unbuttoned the bodice of her wispy dress.
"By Jove, Jake, they are rather delicious, what?" and they both regarded the display with interest.
"You've got your own, "Jake muttered.
"You're right," agreed Gareth, and turned to the junoesque female who waited patiently for him on the other couch.
Her glossy black hair was piled upon her head in an elaborate nest of curls and plaits, and she had large, intense, toffee-coloured eyes in a face whose paleness was emphasized by the vividly painted crimson lips.
She pouted at Gareth, and draped one arm languidly around his shoulders.
"Are you sure neither of them understands English?" Gareth called, as he entered into the practised embrace of the white arms.
"Portuguese, both of them," Jake assured him. "But you'd better test them."
"Very well." Gareth thought a moment. "Girls, I must warn you that we aren't paying for your company not a penny. This is for love alone."
Neither of their expressions changed, and the enfolding movements of sinuous limbs continued without pause.
"That settles it," Gareth opined. "We can talk."
"At a time like this?"
"We've only got until morning to decide what we are going to do." Jake made a muffled remark and Gareth admonished him, "I can't hear a word."
"That gullible old Ethiop of yours has us over a barrel" repeated Jake with sardonic relish. Before he could reply, vivid lips, pouting and red as ripened fruit, closed over Gareth's. There was silence for a while until Gareth wrested himself loose and his head popped up mustache in disarray and stained with lipstick.
"Jake, what the hell are we going to do?" And Jake told him in nautical language which left no room for misunderstanding precisely what he was about to do.
"don't mean that, I mean what are we going to tell old Toffee tomorrow?
Are we going to deliver the goods?" Gareth's companion reached up, took him in a head lock and drew his mouth down again.
"Jake, for God's sake, concentrate on the problem," he pleaded as he was engulfed.
"I am, I am!" Jake assured him, rolling his eyes sideways to meet Gareth's, but without interrupting his efforts with the plump blonde.
"How the hell do we get four armoured cars ashore on a hostile coast, just for a start then how do we run them two hundred miles to the Ethiopian border?" Gareth lamented, speaking out of the unemployed corner of his mouth, and then something caught his attention. He pulled free and raised himself on one elbow. "I say, your companion isn't a blonde after all. Extraordinary." Jake glanced sideways and grinned.
"And yours seems to be Scottish she's wearing a sporran, by God."
"Jake, we've got to make a decision. Do we go or don't we?"
"Action first, decisions later. Let's engage the targets."
"Right," Gareth agreed, realizing the futility of discussion at this moment. "Driver advance."
"Gunner. Traverse right. Steady. On. Independent rapid fire."
"Shoot!" cried Gareth, and the conversation languished.
It was half an hour before it was resumed, with the two of them in shirt sleeves, braces dangling and black ties discarded, poring over a large-scale map of the East African coast that Madame Cecile had produced.
"There's a thousand miles of unguarded coast line." Gareth traced the great horn of Africa in the light of the Petromax lamp and then ran his finger inland. "And this is marked as semi-desert all the way to the border. We aren't likely to run into a crowd."
"It's a hell of a way to make a living, "said Jake.
"Are we going then?" Gareth looked up.
"You know we are."
"Yes," Gareth laughed. "I know we are.
Fifteen thousand sovereigns say we have to." ij Mikhael received their decision with a curt nod and then asked, "Have you planned yet how you will accomplish this task? Perhaps I can be of assistance, I know the coast well and most of the routes to the interior." He gestured for one of his advisers to spread a map upon the stateroom table. Jake ran his finger across it, as he spoke.
"We thought to hire a shallowdraughted vessel here in Dares Salaam, and make a landing somewhere in this area.
Then to load the cases on the cars, and, carrying our own fuel, run directly inland to some prearranged rendezvous with your people."
"Yes," agreed the Prince. "The basic idea is right. But I should avoid British territory. They maintain a very intensive patrol system to discourage the export of slaves from their territory to the East.
No, keep clear of British Somaliland. The French territory is more suitable." They plunged into the planning of the expedition, both Jake and Gareth realizing swiftly how lightly they had discounted the difficulties that faced them, and how valuable was the Prince's advice.
"Your landing will be one of the critical stages. There is a tidal fall of almost twenty feet on this coast and an unfavorable shelving of the bottom. However, at this point about forty miles north of Jibuti there is an ancient harbour called Month. It's not marked on the chart. It was one of the centres of the slave trade before its abolition, like Zanzibar and Mozambique Island. It was stormed and sacked by a British force in 1842. The port is without fresh water and since then it has been deserted. Yet it has a deep-water channel and a good approach to the shore. This would be a suitable place to land the vehicles an awkward task without good wharfage and overhead cranes."