It was late afternoon before the General had steeled himself to approach the painful subject of the interview and, smiling apologetically, he gave his orders.
"The Wells of Chaldi," repeated the Count, and immediately a change came over him. He leapt to his feet, knocking over the Madeira glass, and strode majestically back and forth, his heels cracking on the tiles, belly sucked in and noble chin on high.
"Death before dishonour," cried Aldo Belli, the Madeira warming his ardour.
"I hope not, caro," murmured the General. "All I want you to do is take up a guard position on an untenanted water-hole." But the Count seemed not to hear him. His eyes were dark and glowing.
"I am greatly indebted to you for this opportunity to distinguish my command. You can count on me to the death." The Count stopped short as a fresh thought occurred to him. "You will support my advance with armour and aircraft? "he asked anxiously.
"I don't really think that will be necessary, caro." The General spoke mildly. All this talk of death and honour troubled him, but he did not want to give offence. "I don't think you will meet any resistance."
"But if I do?" the Count demanded with mounting agitation, so that the General went to stroke his arm placatingly.
"You have a radio, caro. Call on me for any assistance you need The Count thought about that for a moment and clearly found it acceptable. Once more the patriotic fervour returned to the glowing eyes.
"Ours is the victory," he cried, and the General echoed him vigorously.
"I hope so, caro. Indeed I hope so." Suddenly the Count swirled and strode to the door. He flung it open and called.
"Gino!" The little black-shirted sergeant hurried into the room, frantically adjusting the huge camera that hung about his neck.
"The General does not mind?" asked Aldo Belli leading him to the window. "The light is better here." The slanting rays of the dying sun poured in to light the two men theatrically as the Count seized De Bono's hand.
"Closer together, please. Back a trifle, General, you are covering the Count. That's excellent. Chin up a little, my Count.
Ha! Bello!" cried Gino, and recorded faithfully the startled expression above the General's little white goatee.
The senior major of the Blackshirt "Africa" Battalion was a hard professional soldier of thirty years" experience, a veteran of Vittorio Veneto and Caporetto, where he had been commissioned in the field.
He was a fighting man and he reacted with disgust to his posting from his prestigious regiment in the regular army to this rabble of political militia. He had protested at length and with all the power at his command, but the order came from on high, from divisional headquarters itself. The divisional General was a friend of Count Aldo Belli, and He also knew the Count intimately and owed favours decided that he needed a real soldier to guide and counsel him. Major Castelani was probably one of the most real soldiers in the entire army of Italy. Once he realized that his posting was inevitable, he had resigned himself and settled to his new duties whipping and bullying his new command into order.
He was a big man with a close-cropped skull of grey bristle, and a hound-dog, heavily lined face burned and eroded by the weathering of a dozen campaigns. He walked with the rolling gait of a sailor or a horseman, though he was neither, and his voice could carry a mile into a moderate wind.
Almost entirely due to his single-handed efforts, the battalion was drawn up in marching order an hour before dawn. Six hundred and ninety men with their motorized transports strung out down the main street of Asmara. The lorries were crammed with silent men huddling in their greatcoats against the mild morning chill. The motorcycle outriders were sitting astride their machines flanking the newly polished but passenger-less Rolls-Royce command car, with its gay pennants and its driver sitting lugubriously at the wheel. A charged sense of apprehension and uncertainty gripped the entire assembly of warriors.
There had been wild rumours flying about the battalion for the last twelve hours they had been selected for some desperate and dangerous mission. The previous evening the mess sergeant had actually witnessed the Colonel Count Aldo Belli weeping with emotion as he toasted his junior officers with the fighting slogan of the regiment, "Death before dishonour," which might sound fine on a bellyful of chianti, but left a hollow feeling at five in the morning on top of a breakfast of black bread and weak coffee.
The Third Battalion was in a collectively sombre mood as the sun came up in a blaze of hot scarlet, forcing them almost immediately to discard the greatcoats. The sun climbed into a sky of burning blue and the men waited as patiently as oxen in the traces. Someone once observed that war is ninety-nine per cent boredom and one per cent unmitigated terror. The Third Battalion was learning the ninety-nine per cent.
Major Luigi Castelani sent yet another messenger to the Colonel's quarters a little before noon, and this time received a reply that the Count was now actually out of bed and had almost completed his toilet.
He would join the battalion shortly. The Major swore with the practice of an old campaigner and set off with his rolling swagger down the column to quell the mutinous mutterings from the half mile-long column of canvas-covered lorries sweltering in the midday sun.
The Count came like the rising sun itself, glowing and glorious, flanked by two captains and preceded by a trooper carrying the battle standard which the Count had personally designed. It was based on the eagles of a Roman legion, complete with shrieking birds of prey and dangling silken tassels.
The Count floated on a cloud of bonhomie and expensive eau de cologne.
Gino got a few good shots of him embracing his junior officers, and slapping the backs of the senior NCOs. At the common soldiers he smiled like a father and spurred their spleens with a few apt homilies on duty and sacrifice as he strode down the column.
"What a fine body of warriors," he told the Major. "I am moved to song." Luigi Castelani winced. The Colonel was frequently moved to song. He had taken lessons with the most famous teachers in Italy and as a younger man he had seriously considered a career in opera.
Now he halted and spread his arms, threw back his head and let the song flow in a deep ringing baritone. Dutifully, his officers joined in the stirring chorus of "La Giovinezza', the Fascist marching song.
The Colonel moved slowly back along the patient column in the sunlight, pausing to strike a pose as he went for a high note, lifting his right hand with the tip of the second finger lightly touching the thumb, while the other hand grasped the beiewelled dagger at his waist.
The song ended and the Colonel cried, "Enough! It is time to march where are the maps?" and one of his subalterns hurried forward with the map case.
"Colonel, sir," Luigi Castelani intervened tactfully. "The road is well sign-posted, and I have two native guides-" The Count ignored him and watched while the maps were spread on the glistening bonnet of the Rolls.
"Ah!" He studied the maps learnedly, then looked up at his two captains. "One of you on each side of me," he instructed. "Major Vita you here! A stern expression, if you please, and do not look at the camera." He pointed with a lordly gesture at Johannesburg four thousand miles to the south and held the pose long enough for Gino to record it. Next, he climbed into the rear seat of the Rolls and, standing, he pointed imperatively ahead along the road to the Danakil desert.
Mistakenly, Luigi Castelani took this as a command to advance. He let out a series of bull-like bellows and the battalion was galvanized into frantic action. Like one man, they scrambled into the covered lorries and took their seats on the long benches, each in full matching order with a hundred rounds of ammunition in his bandolier and a rifle between his knees.