‘What did you plan to do with this wallet, which still has a sum of lire in it, so you are no thief?’
‘I had a vague idea to send it back to Italy, but I confess I had not thought that through.’
‘So you would like me to believe that you were not involved in those deaths?’
‘I was most certainly not.’
‘Then it is such a pity, Mr Jardine, that I do not believe you.’
‘I take it you do not have the bodies?’
‘No.’
‘Then all you have is that wallet, Major d’Agostino, and my assertion, truthful even if you do not believe it, that I found it. You have no evidence I was anywhere near this supposed area where you say these bodies were found. Naturally, if you have lost some of your men, I have sympathy, but what I do not have is guilt, and you do not have the evidence to counter what I insist is the truth, which I trust a court will uphold.’
The intelligence man threw back his head and laughed, his sharp nose pointing to the roof of the tent and his body shaking with mirth. ‘How English that is, the land of fair play and justice, is it not, Spinetti?’
‘It is, sir,’ the clerk replied, tonelessly.
‘Our lad, Arturo here, studied in London, at your School of Economics and he loves your country very much.’ The laughing stopped and the face darkened. ‘Which is why he is a private soldier in the army, instead of a professore in some university, for, pity of pities, Arturo is not a good son of the new Italy. “Evidence” you say, Mr Jardine, as if there is going to be some kind of trial before a judge. But this is an area under military control and I am, unfortunately for you, both judge and jury. Would you care to hear my verdict?’
‘If it will amuse you,’ Jardine replied; there was no doubt what it was going to be.
‘We are about to take Aksum, and when we do, when our general rides in triumph into the old capital of the country, I will give you to him as a gift. As a spy, you should be shot, but I think you are also a murderer; so, Mr Jardine, we will either hang you in front of General De Bono and the citizens of Aksum, or behead you, to tell them what happens to those who kill Italian officers.’
He turned to the clerk, Arturo, and snapped, ‘Make sure you write that clearly. Now call for the guards to take him away.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
There was only one consolation for Jardine as he squatted in his empty tent: there was no sign they had caught Vince or Tyler Alverson, so he had a reasonable hope that they had got clear. He had already peered through the tied-up flap of his tent to see an armed guard there, pacing to and fro, wisely a couple of yards away — too far for him to be suddenly grabbed and subdued. Lifting the groundsheet and the bottom of the rear canvas had shown him the soles of another pair of moving sentinel boots, which meant that the sides of the tent were also covered by their criss-cross movement.
From outside came noise and a great deal of it: shouting, the sounds of lorries revving, reversing and driving off in low gear, of motorbikes popping as they departed, and the odd car as well, which he had to assume was the moving of the headquarters. That was a major operation, this being the central directing brain of an army several hundred thousand strong, which would require a vast amount of staff organisation.
Quite apart from the officers who planned every metre of movement, feeding and supply, there would be aides to the general officers, the heads of the various branches, a mass of clerks, telephonists plus radio operators, quartermasters, batmen, mess servants, military police, cooks and at least a headquarters company of infantrymen to provide perimeter security and guards.
When he was finally fetched out, the scene that greeted him was vastly different: the great marquees were gone, as were the vehicles and bikes from the motor pool, leaving only a few tents for the remainder of the pioneer company responsible for ensuring the site was clear and that nothing had been left behind. The men of that unit were now emptying the sandbags — which had formed the forward perimeter defence — into the dugouts of the latrines, filling the air with the smell of human filth. Wild dogs had started to root around the periphery looking for anything edible.
Of more import to Jardine was the escort of four infantrymen and an NCO designated to accompany him to Aksum. Between the encampment and that city, on a near-windless day, the dust hung in the air, the residue of the massive military movement. As they marched, the same peasants he had seen in the fields the day before were out again now, but instead of tending to their crop they were sadly surveying the ruin brought on by the invading army marching over their once-ploughed fields, the only redress to glare at the military police controlling the continuing stream of traffic.
The appearance of the marquesa on a white horse came as a real surprise. She looked imperious in a white cloak to keep off the dust, her blonde hair tied back, and she acted like that too, as she galloped over the Ethiopian peasants’ land with a total disregard for their presence, hooves kicking up great clods of what had been irrigated earth.
Spotting his party she hauled on her reins and came towards them, stopping before him with the sun at her back, which forced the now-stationary Jardine — his escorting NCO had called a halt and saluted — to narrow his eyes to even see her silhouette, his nose wrinkling, this time at the stable smell of the impatient mount, which was pawing and jagging its head, straining her grip on the reins.
‘They make you march like a common criminal?’ she asked, again with that slight impediment. Recalling the title d’Agostino had used, it suddenly came to Jardine she was possibly not Italian, but Spanish.
‘The major thinks me that.’
‘No,’ she replied, tugging to keep her horse still. ‘He can see you are a soldier, he has told me so.’ Then she reprised that throaty chuckle he had heard previously. ‘And I have observed you are a gentleman. Were you a soldier?’
‘Name, rank and number, Marquesa,’ he joked, ‘is all I am allowed to say.’
‘I am not interrogating you.’
‘Now that is a damn shame.’
‘For a man who is shortly to die you have a surprising lack of anxiety.’
The horse moved with such force she was obliged to let it spin, but she still had the sun at her back.
‘We all die at some time. Tell me, Marquesa, what is the rest of your title?’
‘De Alanatara.’
‘Spanish?’
‘Si.’
‘I am curious about your relationship with Major d’Agostino.’
‘Who is also the Count of Terni. But now you are interrogating me.’
The NCO, who had hitherto stood silently, now coughed, then barked at his men, not surprising given they were staring with a degree of interest at the marquesa, and also not at attention but slouching. Jardine ignored the hint he should shut up and move on.
‘Am I allowed to continue doing so?’
‘No. I think it best you go to your fate.’
‘Does the notion of that fate sadden you, at all?’
‘I am not sure.’
‘That is something; I would be disappointed if it pleased you.’
‘For an Englishman, you are more forward than many I have met.’
‘You obviously have met too few Scotsmen.’
‘You are Scottish?’ Jardine nodded. ‘Do they die with more bravery than Englishmen?’
‘No. When it comes to that we are the same carefree bunch.’
‘I will be interested to see if that is true.’
Her heels moved and she hauled on the reins, the horse breaking into an immediate trot. The NCO, hitherto indifferent, was now obviously cross, because he pushed Jardine to get him moving.
If breaking up an army camp involved much organisation, the relocating of one was just as chaotic. An advance party of staff officers had entered Aksum on the heels of the fighting men to secure the buildings that could be used for what, in the British army, would be called the various GSO branches — the best accommodation, of course, secured for the commanding general, with his chief of staff next, in a pecking order that supposedly designated quality in strict order of rank.