Not being understood now was again a problem: he wanted people to interrogate, he needed information on how much was known about the caravan and the weapons he was carrying, but all his commands to halt the killing were ignored. He actually had to stand over one wounded man and protect him from what was a massacre as the Shewan clubbed their enemies to death.
The light was going now, the sun hitting the edge of the earth, but enough was left to show the broken, blood-covered body of an Italian officer, a lieutenant by his rank badges. He had been hit by mortar fire and there would be no questioning him.
And then it was over, the bodies were being stripped, the knives were out to mutilate them, and he was shouting at Ras Kassa to stop the mayhem and not having much effect. The older man’s eyes were afire with as much bloodlust as those he led and he had thrown his head back to start calling out in that high-pitched voice what Jardine could only think was a victory chant.
Between Jardine’s spread legs was a man whimpering in terror, and more than once he was obliged to deflect a Shewan who wanted to kill him.
Alverson brought his camera up to view the field of conflict at dawn, as below the caravan was being loaded, prior to moving on. There were few trees of any height but one bore the body of the Italian officer, though the American only knew what it was because Jardine had told him. Hanging by its feet, the naked cadaver swung above a dark patch of earth, which had been a pool of black blood where it had drained from the myriad cuts inflicted on the dead body.
Overnight, hyenas had torn at the head and torso, turning it to a bloody pulp with bones exposed where their massive jaws had crunched and stripped them of flesh, but they had been given so many bodies to feed on they had not finished the task. Now, with the morning heating up, the site was beginning to attract flies in the hundreds, soon to be thousands. What was left would be picked at by carrion throughout the day and the sun would do its work, so that by the time night came again only bones would be left.
He trained the lens of his Leica on what had been a battlefield. If there had been emotion for such a sight, the man had seen too much to be affected by it now; it was news and his job was to show the world what war really meant.
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Corrie, what the hell are you doing here?’
‘I had to come and look.’
‘Did you?’ She nodded, her hand to her mouth. ‘Happy now?’
‘Is this what this war is going to be like?’
‘Honey, this is what all wars are like.’
‘They should be buried, not just left.’
Tyler Alverson sighed. ‘They don’t care anymore and neither do the ras and his boys.’
‘What do you think happened to that Somali kid after Jardine finished questioning him?’
‘Take it to the limits of your imagination, Corrie, then go a little further.’
‘Why didn’t Jardine intervene?’
‘Why didn’t I? Why didn’t you?’ Alverson asked as he clicked the camera. ‘Because you don’t; you just accept these people have their ways, and if the tables were turned the same would happen, and the best thing to do is pray, when it’s you, you’re already dead.’
‘They’re savages.’
‘Who, when I left, were saying their prayers to a God they have worshipped for two thousand years.’
‘Will they print those at home?’
‘No. These are for the exhibition I will hold one day, photographs at which our fellow Americans will look with deep fascination. That is if I can find somebody to develop the damned things.’ Looking over her shoulder Alverson jerked his head. ‘Caravan’s moving, time to rejoin them.’
‘His name was Alberto Soradino and he commanded the garrison at Assab, which is on the southern border of Italian and French Somaliland. Soradino was a lieutenant in the 3rd Bersaglieri Regiment, stuck in a dead-end spot, and I should think going mad, while up north all his regimental friends were getting ready for a glorious invasion.’
Jardine passed over his wallet, which Corrie Littleton took off him.
‘There’s a photograph in there, I think of his mother.’
‘God!’
‘No good asking for his help, is there? Alberto believed in him and look where it got him.’
‘What will she be told, his mother?’
‘Missing in action, presumed dead.’
‘No body?’ she asked, handing back the wallet, which Jardine put in his kitbag.
‘No, but if I get a chance I will somehow see this gets to Italy. I met too many people after the Great War who still hoped their presumed dead would show up one day. The really important thing is, as far as the man I questioned knew, he acted without telling his superiors, setting off to cross French territory as soon as he got wind of this caravan. Just breaching the border is grounds for a court martial, never mind setting off on a wild goose chase without telling anyone and leaving his mortar and machine gun sections behind. Alberto was searching for glory and he was not the brightest star in the firmament.’
‘You can’t say that about a man you don’t know.’
‘I can about a man I fought, and look what Ras Kassa is riding now.’
‘So he’s riding the poor bastard’s horse, so what?’
The Ethiopian leader was also sporting the Italian lieutenant’s hat, decorated with black capercaillie feathers.
‘Look where we are, in the middle of a waterless wilderness, and he’s on his horse like he’s Caesar! This is not horse terrain, because a horse needs eight gallons of water a day and feed. Do you know how much eight gallons of water weighs?’
‘Do you?’
‘A lot, and some poor bastard has to carry it.’
‘That was the second horse, the pack animal, the one they roasted and we ate last night. It doesn’t make him stupid.’
‘Alberto gets news about a shipment being unloaded at Zeila and information comes in, I am guessing here, of a caravan with unloaded camels seen heading along the old slave route, or maybe he just figured out it was the only way the return could be made. He does not pass this news up the chain of command. Instead Alberto mounts his trusty steed, lines up his askaris and heads out into the wilds. To get here, he crossed a border he should not, dreaming that on the return he would be able to tell his superiors how he magnificently stopped weapons getting into enemy territory; he may even have hoped to have them to show, with prisoners as well. He can feel the medals on his chest, he can imagine old Fatso Mussolini shaking his hand.’
Jardine’s voice had been rising as he spoke, getting more and more irritated, the narrowness of the trail and the closeness of the enclosing hillsides amplifying it.
‘Why are you so upset? You won.’
‘I’m upset because he got thirty men killed, which was probably his entire rifle platoon. That photograph of his mother, who thought her darling son was the best thing on God’s earth, distresses me. I’m upset because there will be Somali widows who will never know what became of their husbands, and children who will never know what happened to their fathers. I’m upset that Alberto was an idiot and even more upset he had to cross our path.’
‘I think you are in the wrong game, buster.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘He’s always like that, miss,’ Vince said. ‘We call it the “black dog”, an’ it was made a lot harder by the way they took out that wounded geezer he was questioning to have a bit of sport.’
‘Folk think soldiers are made of stone, honey,’ Alverson added, ‘and they ain’t.’
‘Is he married, Vince?’
‘Down, girl,’ Alverson barked.
‘It’s only a question.’
‘One you’ll have to ask the guv, miss. I don’t talk about things he don’t want talked about.’
‘So he is married. Any kids?’
‘Honey, you should have been a reporter like me.’
‘Jaundiced, cynical, overweight, drinks too much, smokes cigars and can photograph mutilated bodies without turning a hair.’