Cassalis nodded. `It is a country of many nations then; like Austria Hungary before the Great War? Held together only by the strength of its ruler.'
`Exactly. The fact that it might break up at any time, even without pressure from outside, is the worst problem the Emperor has to face, and what makes things even more difficult for him is that he daren't do a thing without the sanction of the Church.'
`They are Christians of a sort is it not so?'
`Yes. The people of the four major kingdoms, Amhara, Shoa, Tigre, and Gojjam, which composes true Abyssinia, are Coptic Christians. The Abuna, their chief priest, is under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Cairo. He's really the most powerful man in
the country because every third Christian in Abyssinia is also a priest and takes his orders from him. The Emperor's big trouble is that the Church is dead against any sort of progress. They put every possible obstacle in the path of his reforms and if he seriously offended the priests they could push him off his throne tomorrow. He'd give anything to get rid of them, I think, but he's not strong enough and, even with a war on his hands, he has to keep in with them by attending service four times a week. Services which start at six in the morning and go on until past midday.'
`He is much handicapped then; more than I had thought.'
'He is,' Lovelace agreed. 'Abyssinia's in the state now that England was in under the Plantagenet’s. The people are lousy, diseased, ridden to death with religion, and only acknowledge allegiance to their own feudal overlords. The great nobles are greedy, fierce and resentful of any central authority. Many of them were independent kings themselves only a few years ago and would revolt again on the most flimsy pretext. The Emperor can only keep them in check by retaining the goodwill of the Church and playing them off one against the other.'
`How do they live the better class I mean?'
`The Emperor lives like a cultured European now, but that's quite an innovation. When he was younger he used habitually to sleep in vermin infested beds. Most of the nobles do still, and their so called palaces are little more than two roomed houses with a collection of squalid huts clustered round them. Their favourite food is raw meat to this day and they eat it with their fingers.'
`Nom de dieu, what a country!' The Frenchman threw up his hands.
Lovelace smiled. `You'll get used to it. They're a lazy, ignorant, verminous lot, and their favourite word is Ishi naga, which means “all right but tomorrow,”
Still, Europeans manage to survive somehow and think how tremendously you'll appreciate civilisation when you do get back to it again.'
'Thank you, Monsieur Green. I have heard enough of this abominable country to which we go. Fortunately we stay there at most a day or two. You will forgive me now please if I work.' Cassalis picked up his satchel again and began to spread his papers out on the dining table.
Having told nothing but the truth Lovelace was mildly amused at its effect on the effeminate Frenchman, but soon he turned his thoughts to more serious things. One point had emerged from the conversation. Zirrif only intended to spend a day or two in Addis Ababa. That meant he had business to transact and would make a prolonged halt on the way out. But where? Lovelace wondered if the production of his hideously dangerous passport would be necessary again on landing and how he would be able to communicate with Valerie and Christopher. These questions, and the danger of his situation, troubled him acutely as they flew on through the golden afternoon, leaving the eastern end of Crete below them on their right and ploughing steadily towards the south eastward.
At five thirty they sighted land again and began to descend in circling spirals. A large town was visible some miles away on their left along a narrow strip of sea coast. Inland, behind it, spread a big lake but they were coming down on a deserted shore. A river, winding away to the inland lake, showed below them. On its bank, a few hundred yards only from the sea, a solitary white building set among gardens was visible. The plane tilted at what seemed a horribly risky angle, dropped in a great curve towards the earth, then straightened, bounced along a stretch of sand, and halted within fifty yards of a white villa surrounded by palm trees.
As they disembarked Lovelace saw that a great khaki hangar waited to house the plane near one wall of the property. A dusty track bordered by ragged palms led towards its gate where a little group of native servants in tarbooshes and white clothing stood ready to welcome Zirrif. Preceded by two of his gunman he trudged through the sand, a small, bent figure, towards them. They salaamed as he approached but he never gave them a word or a glance and walked straight on up to the house.
Lovelace, thanking his gods that Zarrif’s privileges apparently included the right of making an unofficial landing which rendered the production of passports unnecessary, followed with Cassalis and the remainder of the bodyguard.
By pausing for a moment to fiddle with his shoe lace Lovelace managed to drop a few paces behind the others and was able to snatch a quick look round without being observed. The city he had seen from the air was some miles along the coast and no longer visible. A stony track, just wide enough to accommodate a single car, ran from the villa towards it but disappeared among the sand dunes which were partially covered with coarse grass. No other house or building except the hangar, into which Zarrif’s pilot was now taxiing the big plane, broke the scorched monotonous landscape. Far away, in the direction of the city, a tiny speck moved in the cloudless sky.
It was that for which Lovelace had been looking, At so great a distance it was impossible to identify it as Valerie's plane, and he knew that it might well be one of the Royal Air Force machines with which the British were said to be filling Egypt, or a civilian flyer, but the sight of it cheered him. There was a decent possibility of it being Valerie which increased his hope that she had managed to keep on Zarrif’s tail as they crossed the Mediterranean and would have seen them come down at the villa. He broke into a trot and caught up the others just as they were entering the garden.
Inside, the villa proved cool and commodious. A gallery ran round the tiled hall on a level with the fist floor. Cassalis escorted Lovelace to a room opening off it, then left him with the suggestion that he would like to rest until dinner for which he would be galled at eight o'clock.
He had no desire to rest at all but, courteously as the suggestion was made, the tone in which it was given warned him that he was not expected to wander about the house uninvited.
The room contained a large double bed, draped in mosquito netting, and was furnished in the ornate French style of the early nineteen hundreds. A partly open door in one wall disclosed a bathroom. He unpacked his scant belongings, undressed, enjoyed a shower, and then sat down to consider the situation.
He felt certain that the big town he had seen further along the coast, when the plane was landing, must be Alexandria. Christopher and Valerie would just be arriving at the Gordon Pasha Hotel there for, even if they had lost sight of Zarrif’s plane when crossing the Mediterranean that had been agreed upon as their first port of call if he headed towards Egypt.