‘I can’t wait till you get to my bad points.’
‘Oasis,’ cried Vince, pointing ahead to the first hint of greenery, glad to get off the subject.
The Ethiopians were sat in a wide circle, those with rifles cleaning their weapons, while the camels, who had now been let loose to forage, crunched at the tough thorny foliage that surrounded an aquifer-fed waterhole. The ammunition was on the inside of the pile of crates, those around it protecting it from the fires they had lit as much to ward off animals as to keep them warm, for if they needed water, so did the wildlife.
Jardine and Vince, having set the task of cleaning and oiling in motion, had reconnoitred the waterhole, staying well away from the mud-churned area where animals fed: water buffalo, wild asses, antelopes, and sometimes, no doubt, elephants. Some of these being prey, at night there would be lions and hyenas, which worried Vince.
‘These people we are with live here; if they are not frightened we shouldn’t be either.’
‘I’m more used to mice and the occasional rat, guv, and the biggest cat I’ve seen is a neighbour’s moggie.’
‘People pay good money for this. A night on the savannah and big beasts to hunt during the day.’
‘That,’ Vince replied emphatically, ‘do not make them sensible.’
‘Snakes are more of a problem, mind. Sometimes they like to snuggle up to a warm body at night.’
‘Thanks for that, I’ll sleep much easier now.’
‘Then you won’t mind being awake half the night, will you?’
‘Not sentry duty, guv?’
’I’m only joking. Ras Kassa’s men can do the sentinel job and we can sleep undisturbed.’
Tyler Alverson had purchased half a dozen oil lamps — he had given one to Jardine — and the remainder were illuminating his tent and that of Corrie Littleton, where they had set up flimsy metal and canvas beds. The Ethiopians were round the fire saying evening prayers again, they being a pious lot, and all around the sounds of the African night were emerging: deep-throated toads, barking creatures and laughing hyenas — seemingly magnified by the vastness of the landscape. When the first lion roared — there would always be a pride close to a waterhole — the Ethiopians looked engrossed.
‘Have you ever killed a lion, Captain Jardine?’ Ras Kassa enquired. ‘I did as a young man, with nothing but a spear, which elevated me among my tribe. It is the aim of every one of our warriors to do the same.’
Jardine had a vision of the warriors and half his camel drovers rushing about trying to spear a lion. ‘Tell them they will have to put it aside, we have more important things to worry about.’
It was not Jardine’s place to set the pickets but he did look over the arrangements and was satisfied. He and Vince, by the limited light from their lantern, laid out their bedrolls on the weapon crates, wondering if in doing so they were being watched. Not that they had seen or heard anything, but people who were born into this kind of land could move about with an assurance denied to Europeans, and that applied as much to their drovers as anyone out in the bush-like landscape. If there were nomads about they might seek to sneak inside the ring of sentinels, perhaps just to steal what they could, perhaps to see what there was worth stealing.
‘As long as they don’t have knives, guv. It always worried me in Mesopotamia that some Arab would slit my throat in the night.’
‘You still got that sod of a knife you bought in Brussels?’
‘I have.’
‘Well, sleep with it by your side.’
‘What about you?’
Jardine raised his sub-machine gun. ‘For anything that wakes me up.’
‘Christ, I hope you’re not upset by snoring.’
‘Mind if I join you, gentlemen?’
Visually all they could see was a silhouette and the end of a glowing cigar; it was the deep voice and drawl that identified Tyler Alverson.
‘This club is not exclusive,’ Jardine replied. ‘Anyone can join.’
‘Good, I brought us a little nightcap.’ As he moved into the circle of light the proffered square bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch Whisky became visible, the golden liquid picking up the lantern glow. ‘Your national drink, Jardine.’
Drinking whisky in the middle of Africa was not the same as at home — water that had been in a flask all day and warm did nothing for the purity of flavour — but it was welcome nonetheless.
‘I was wondering,’ the American said, after a quick toast, ‘what you guys are planning to do after this little job is completed.’
‘Goin’ home, I hope,’ Vince Castellano said.
‘Not your style, Jardine, from what I recall. Strikes me you are the kinda guy that gets involved in a fracas like this one.’ Met with a non-committal look on Jardine’s face and a ‘here we go again’ look on that of Vince, Alverson continued, ‘I have always found that having along a man who knows his way around a battlefield is a real help when it comes to understanding what is going on.’
‘From what I have gathered you have been round a few yourself.’
‘With nothing but a camera.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Get to where the action is — what else, it’s my job? — and that means a trip to the Eritrean borderlands. I have promised Corrie Littleton that I will help her get to where her mother is doing her stuff, but after that I need to make sense of the campaign. I was wondering if a tour of the probable battle area might interest you?’
‘It’s a thought.’
‘Guv!’ Vince protested.
‘Good,’ the American said, unscrewing the bottle cap again.
Vince Castellano had no idea of how close he came to dying that night: with his well-hit boxer’s nose and full of Alverson’s whisky, he was noisy enough with his snores to frighten off any curious lions, which gave Cal Jardine a disturbed night.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
General Emilio De Bono had procrastinated as much as possible before advancing into Ethiopia: a man his age could remember the Battle of Adowa. Indeed, as he was selfishly inclined to remind people, the news of that defeat and massacre of Italian forces had gone a long way to ruining his thirtieth birthday celebrations; the effect on his fellow countrymen — in essence a sense of deep national mourning — seemed to be of less moment.
Benito Mussolini was on his back, demanding action, seeming to forget his position as a senior member of the Fascist Grand Council, the body that had appointed him to his dictatorship. Bad weather, the lesser period of rains, had provided one excuse, but there had been many others: lack of equipment, the need to train his troops, the preparation of weapons for desert warfare, all designed to put off the moment when he must send his soldiers into a battle in which the outcome was far from certain.
The home front was, as usual, bellicose and full of confidence. It was all very well for those in Rome to insist he had such technical and numerical superiority he could not fail; in 1896 the government of Prime Minister Crespi — indeed the whole of Europe — had assumed something similar, quite putting aside how ferocious and numerous these Abyssinian warriors could be and how determined they were not to become a subject colony like the rest of Africa. It was Italian soldiers who had paid the blood price for the last exercise in imperial hubris; what he feared now was a repeat, with his head on the block as the man responsible for the catastrophe.
His comprehensive plan for a cautious advance, the careful taking of positions followed by lengthy consolidation — the building of good roads and fortification added to husbandry in the area of losses — had been swept aside as too feeble for a Fascist state that believed willpower alone was sufficient to overcome opposition. Mussolini and the Italian people wanted a war of tempo, a swift campaign, which would reflect the glory of a nation descended from the all-conquering Caesars.
In the end it was not the impatient telegrams from Il Duce that moved him but the look in the eyes of his inferior officers and aides, which had started off showing understanding for his problems, then moved to frustration at his reluctance to act decisively. Now he observed an air of pity that challenged the very notion of his being in any sense a proper military commander.