She made Jardine think ‘film star’ right away, aided by the breeze wafting to his nose a quite distinct but obviously expensive perfume, so delicate was it as a fragrance. He was speedily on his feet as her eyes moved from the major and, with a slightly quizzical expression, fixed on him.
‘Non addesso, cara,’ the intelligence officer said from behind him, in a quite sharp tone.
‘I heard you speaking English, Umberto.’
‘To this gentleman here.’
‘Callum Jardine,’ he said, introducing himself quickly and adding a lopsided, self-deprecating grin. ‘I seem to have upset the apple cart a bit.’
She smiled in response and it was heart-melting; what was it about her accent that was different? It was almost like a slight impediment. ‘And what is an Englishman doing here, I wonder?’
‘Seeking to explain his innocence to the Major here.’
‘Sit down, Mr Jardine, you are a prisoner not a guest.’
His reply was deliberately flippant. ‘In the presence of a lady of such beauty, Major, a lack of courtesy would never serve. If I apologise for my presence, I will not do so for my manners.’
That got, as a response, a delightful, throaty chuckle and parted lips to show the tips of a set of even teeth. She was quite simply stunning and he could not help but let his eyes drop to that crisp white blouse and the very obvious, if not overbearing twin peaks of her bosom. When he looked up again she was still smiling, and that having noted the direction of his gaze.
‘How gallant …’ Jardine had to laugh then, that being the same word Corrie Littleton had said to that oily French bugger, de Billancourt, ‘… for a prisoner.’
Major d’Agostino was beside Jardine now and a sideways glance showed a furious face. But he did not speak, he merely passed by, took the beauty by the arm and led her away from the tent flap, which dropped behind them, insufficient as a screen to cover the exchange which followed: fury from the major, frivolity from the woman, though he understood not one word; it was all in the tone. When d’Agostino came back, still palpably furious, for some reason he felt the need to explain.
‘The Marquesa wished to go riding and wanted to know if it was safe to do so. I told her she had nothing to fear.’
Jardine was so tempted to guy him — the words were in his head: ‘I wish she had gone out riding earlier and I wish I had been captured by her, rather than those askaris.’ But they remained there, given he was in too much trouble to risk being glib.
Back behind his desk, d’Agostino rearranged the items on it in a rather fussy way, which Jardine thought he was using as a means to calm himself, for they had not moved. Then he looked up and said, ‘You were not tempted to snatch up your weapon in my absence, Mr Jardine?’
‘I am not a violent man, Major, I have that gun only for protection. In fact, I dislike firearms.’
‘So, you insist you are not a spy, you say you are an innocent traveller who just happens to be in a bad place at a bad time?’
The man was smiling now, but it was thin-lipped and threatening, not humorous, and that gave Jardine a bad feeling. The hand was under the desk again and when it came up and he saw what d’Agostino was holding, his heart sank. It was the wallet of the late Lieutenant Alberto Soradino, which he had forgotten he had in his kitbag.
‘Then I am curious, if you are a man not of violence, how you came across this?’
Making sure he did not sound feeble, even if he knew the words to be just that, Jardine replied firmly, ‘I found it and, in truth, I had forgotten I had done so.’
‘Found it? Might I ask where?’ Jardine was about to give a near nonsensical reply when the major slammed the table. ‘Please do not treat me as a fool, Mr Jardine.’
‘I had no intention of doing so.’
‘Then it will not surprise you that on finding this I sent a radio signal back to Asmara, and they informed me that a certain Lieutenant Soradino is missing from his post at Assab, and has been for over two weeks. It seems, without orders and without informing his superiors, he took a contingent of askaris off on some wild goose chase into the country south of the Danakil Depression, where I can tell you, there are no monasteries. Given you have his wallet, you are armed and he has not been heard of since departing Assab, I am forced to assume he might no longer be alive.’
‘He must have dropped it.’
The response was larded with sarcasm. ‘And along comes an innocent Englishman, out for a stroll in the desert, who just happens to find it. But he does not find the owner to return it, then forgets he had it in the first place. How strange.’
‘I must compliment you on your command of English, Major,’ Jardine replied, aware that there was not a lot he could say and he needed time to think, because this he had not bargained for. That wallet made his position, precarious to begin with, so much more so.
‘Then perhaps since I have no trouble understanding, you would care to enlighten me as to where the lieutenant is, not to mention the men he commanded?’
‘I have no idea, but I did tell you I slipped across the border illegally by engaging with a camel caravan doing likewise, a most villainous crew who assured me the border crossing was not guarded.’
‘Somalis or Ethiopians?’
‘Neither, but they were Muslims.’
‘No doubt they enlightened you as to the tenets of the Koran.’
‘It was informative to observe them, yes.’
‘And was this caravan carrying anything, Mr Jardine?’
He had to be carefuclass="underline" the Italians must have informants in Ethiopia, but how numerous and active they were was to him a mystery. There was one notion worth a try.
‘I fear they might have been involved in the slave trade and were returning from the coast, having sent on their despicable consignment to the markets of Arabia.’
‘Empty?’
It was like playing poker, seeking in little inflections in the voice and the way his eyes and hands moved to detect if he knew the answer to the question or was just probing.
‘The camels were loaded, but with what I do not know.’
‘Three days after Soradino went missing, his area commander requested to be sent up a reconnaissance aircraft from our Regia Aeronautica to look for him. I take it you know what a vulture is, Mr Jardine? When he saw them in large numbers it was enough to make our pilot curious, so he flew very low over a range of hills and was sure he could see a field of bodies being picked clean by the birds.’
‘Perhaps he was mistaken — from the air they could be animals.’
‘Fortunately the land to the east is flat, and there he put down his light aircraft to go and investigate, to find he was indeed correct: they are human remains, much scattered, chewed at by other animals and bones bleached by the sun. Yet there are scraps of uniform left and they are, when examined, the same as those worn by the askari levies Lieutenant Soradino commanded.’
‘How shocking! What do you think happened?’
The voice became quite terse. ‘Soradino was an idiot, a fellow convinced he was a genius when in truth he was a dolt, sent to Assab to fester in a place he could do no harm. Now he is dead and you have the poor fool’s wallet, so perhaps you can tell me what to think.’
As the major had been speaking, and he had not raised his voice at all, Jardine had become aware of the scratching of the pen at the other table; a glance sideways showed the soldier-clerk was indeed taking notes, so he must speak English too. Then the youngster looked up and stared at him through his round, steel-rimmed spectacles, though that did not last: he went back to his scribbling as d’Agostino continued.