Valerie laid her hand on his for a second, 'I'm so glad, Anthony so glad.'
He looked away, concealing under the mask of his tanned face the sudden emotion her touch had roused in him, and asked abruptly: 'How is he Jeremiah, I mean?'
She smiled. 'When you went up to Christopher's room to get your clothes off, and I was booking another for you at the desk, I wanted to get one for him too; but he wouldn't have it. He was inquiring about sailings for the States. When they told him there was nothing for the next two days, he said he'd take a passage anywhere provided he could sleep on board a British or American boat tonight.'
`Poor Jeremiah,' Lovelace laughed. `At least he has the sense to know he'll be safe under the Stars and Stripes or the Union Jack. He's had a filthy trip, and he won't feel really good again until he's back in Gainesville. Still, think what a story he'll have to tell all the coloured girls when he gets home. Can't you see their eyes rolling?'
`Tell me about him and yourself. You must know I'm dying to hear what happened to you; yet you've been making me talk about Abyssinia all this time.'
`Let's order dinner first, shall we. Christopher may be back by the time they bring it up. Then I'll give you a full and true account of how Jeremiah and I very nearly found a watery grave.'
Christopher was back in time to join them at the scratch meal the little cosmopolitan hotel provided, and over it he listened with Valerie to Lovelace's unpleasant experiences while a member of Zarrif’s household.
`What luck did you have with Klinger?' Lovelace asked when he had concluded his narrative.
`I was fortunate to find him in,' Christopher replied promptly, `but he's performing at a concert tomorrow night, so he was practicing in his flat this evening. He's a Heidelberg graduate and has a job in a private German bank here. I found him a nice fellow; about my own age. He's a diehard Nazi, as far as Germany's internal politics are concerned, but he swears that Hitler doesn't want war and that all the younger generation, like himself, are out to stop it at any price.'
`Could he tell you anything about Zirrif?' Lovelace inquired.
`As a Miller he knew him, of course. It's up to each one of us to watch the enemy and find out as much about them as we can. Klinger knew Zirrif had a villa here; he's been out to it in Zarrif’s absence, and actually has a plan of the place. He knew Zirrif had been in residence there for the last couple of days, too, but he had no idea where Zarrif’s gone to now.'
`You're determined to follow him, then?' Lovelace asked. `Even to Addis Ababa if need be?'
Christopher gave a vigorous nod. `Even if I have to walk there.'
`In that case, perhaps, we'd better go straight to Addis Ababa and wait there till he turns up,' suggested Valerie. `He's bound to arrive there some time before the first of May.'
'Tomorrow's only the 16th,' said Christopher, `and he's travelling by plane, remember. It's hardly likely he means to arrive there nearly a fortnight before he's due. He must be stopping off for a day or two somewhere on the way to transact further business. It would mean another chance for us to get him if we could my find out where.'
Lovelace shrugged. `That's all very well, but we haven’t got time to go chasing half over Africa, and we don't know if he means to go down the Nile to Khartoum, then over the mountains, or if he'll take the Red sea route to Jibuti and follow the course of the railway inland from there.'
`I favour the Red Sea route,' said Valerie. `It's inhabited most of the way, and at least there's the railway to guide us when we have to cross Abyssinia. I'm as good a pilot as most people, but frankly I'd rather not attempt flying over those trackless mountains east of the Sudan.'
`I don't think you ought ...' Lovelace began, but she cut him short.
`For goodness sake don't start that argument again remember what I told you in Athens.'
Lovelace remembered clearly enough that Christopher needed them both, and they must not let him down but, more than ever now, he hated the thought that she should be exposed to such very real dangers as hey had already encountered.
Christopher caught the meaning of their quick exchange and looked across at him. `I tried to persuade Valerie to leave us to it again this afternoon, but she won't. She says she is of age and her own mistress, and that having come so far she intends to fly her plane down Addis Ababa anyhow. If she won't listen to me, her fiancé, I don't suppose she'll hear reason from anybody else, so we can only accept the situation and, at least, we'll be able to look after her if we all go together.'
'All right, then,' Lovelace sighed, `and we take the Red Sea route, eh?'
'Yes. I should have suggested that anyhow, because Klinger did give me one piece of information. It seems that Zarrif’s hand in glove with a bird called Abu Ben Ibrim, whose headquarters are in Jibuti. Ben Ibrim is the big noise in every sort of dirty work that goes on along the Red Sea. Slave trading's his special racket, but he deals in smuggled ammunition, hashish, and all sorts of other things as well. It's more than likely Zirrif will go via Jibuti to have a word with him, and I thought that if we did too we might manage to get on Zarrif’s track again.'
`What, visit the Arab and try to pump him? But is it likely he'll have anything to do with us without an introduction?'
`I haven't got that, but Klinger said that if we pretended we were friends of a Jewish oil refiner here in Alexandria, named Melchisedek, Ben Ibrim would be almost certain to receive us.'
Lovelace nodded, 'I see, Melchisedek another of the bunch, and it is up to us to think out a good story for Ben Ibrim. Well, when do we start?'
'The earlier we get off tomorrow morning the better,' said Valerie decisively. 'The thugs who tried to do Christopher in today may find out our new address at any time.'
'I wouldn't mind betting they know it already.' Lovelace grinned ruefully. 'As likely as not that handsome chauffeur who drove us back from Zarrif’s is a Young Turban; if so, he'll have reported his day's work as a matter of routine by now. It's a good thing our rooms are adjoining. We'd better sleep with the connecting doors ajar. In fact, we'll have to sleep with our eyes open and our guns handy every night from now on.'
14
Out of the past
Valerie mopped the perspiration from her face. She had given up trying to keep it powdered hours before. It vas eight o'clock at night, and they had only arrived at Jibuti at ten o'clock that morning, yet she felt as limp and washed out as if she had lived for a month under the blazing, fiery sun that burnt up the capital of French Somaliland.
Their journey had not proved too fortunate. With previous records in her mind and a supreme confidence in her abilities as an air woman, she had attempted the seventeen hundred and fifty mile flight from Alexandria in one hop, but on the previous afternoon her plane had developed engine trouble over the Red Sea and she had been forced to come down at Massawa.
The Eritrean capital had been literally crawling with Italian troops and all the auxiliaries who infest the principal base of a big military campaign. The harbour, if you could call it that, was packed with transport, Hospital ships, cruisers and submarines, which stretched long the coast as far as the eye could see. Thousands of men, looking in the distance like a swarm of ants, corked frantically upon the new mole which would protect the anchorage. Innumerable engines puffed and snorted as they drew their loads over the intricate network of light railways. Legions of blacks were unloading munitions and supplies from countless lighters at every wharf. The town itself was a positive hive of activity. Italian soldiers thronged the pavements of all the principal streets, and every one of them seemed to e hurrying somewhere. Thousands of Askaris, lithe, smartly turned out native troops, the coloured tassels in their tarbooshes lending a note of colour to the scene, marched, drilled and manoeuvred in every available open space.