Harkaway's Sixth Column (12 page)

Tully looked at him indignantly. ‘That’s been your bloody idea all the time!’ he accused.

Harkaway rounded on him. ‘Of course it has, you stupid clot,’ he said. ‘I’m a soldier. You don’t think I’ve been sitting here on my bum all this time like you, thinking of nothing but beer and women, do you?’

‘You said we’d go to Kenya! Or Portuguese East!’

‘Well, now we’re going to hammer the Eyeties instead.’ Harkaway paused. ‘But, if we’re going to recruit the locals we’ll need someone who can speak their language.’

‘We’ve got Yussuf,’ Grobelaar pointed out.

‘I can just imagine a battle with all the orders going through him. “Muchee shootee this side. Very quick run.” ‘

‘We can do better than that,’ Danny said quietly. ‘We
have
someone who can speak their language very well.’

‘Who?’

‘Me.’

The news from the Western Desert had also been heard in Bidiyu.

Rumours had reached them of a disaster in North Africa, and as usual nobody knew where it had come from. Africa was immense but somehow news could travel across its breadth or along its length, passing from one country to another, overcoming frontiers, language barriers, tribal ill-will, and still be the truth. Rome Radio insisted there had been
no
disaster but Guidotti was suspicious and insisted on hearing the news from the BBC.

‘They claim Graziani’s army’s been wiped out,’ Piccio said.

‘Try to get Switzerland,’ Guidotti suggested. ‘They’re neutral. It’ll be the truth from there.’

But Radio Geneva produced exactly the same story: acres of Italian prisoners, and more being rounded up every day.

‘Rome still insists there’s been no disaster,’ Piccio pointed out.

‘Propaganda,’ Guidotti muttered.
‘Troppo propaganda.’
After all, he thought, when they’d taken Sidi Barrani in 1940, Rome had said they’d got the town back on its feet, even to the extent of opening the night clubs and starting the trams running, when, as Guidotti well knew, there were no night clubs and no trams and Sidi Barrani was only a dusty little Arab town.

And hadn’t Rome trumpeted the triumph in British Somaliland as imperishable laurels to be added to Italian arms, when everybody knew it had been a very minor sort of affair. You could hardly call a campaign which had produced less than three hundred enemy casualties a major victory. No matter how much the Duce might offer it as another Polish campaign and compare it with the German triumph in France, Guidotti knew very well it was nothing of the sort.

Piccio, his mind still on the Western Desert, was speaking slowly. ‘Marshal Graziani was always a bit of a snail,’ he was saying. ‘It’s a pity Marshal Balbo was killed in that air raid on Tobruk.’

‘They say it wasn’t the air raid that killed him,’ Di Sanctis pointed out. ‘They say he was removed because the Duce was jealous of his popularity.’

Guidotti looked at Di Sanctis.
‘Who
says?’ he asked.

‘I’ve heard it said, Excellency.’

‘Then you’d better not listen, my friend.’ Guidotti tapped the map. ‘Let’s think instead of this and its implications for us. How did it happen? Graziani had two hundred and fifty thousand men in Libya. Rome said so. And the Italian navy was well placed to control both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.’

‘Unfortunately, Excellency,’ Di Sanctis put in, ‘since then there has been Taranto.’

‘But the British had no more than seventy-five thousand men for the whole of North and East Africa.’ Guidotti frowned. ‘Perhaps they just made them seem more. Perhaps too many of our people listened to the Duce’s promise that the war would soon be over without fighting and decided it wasn’t worth taking risks. Perhaps they hoped that if they did nothing the British would do nothing too.’

‘Though we call the Mediterranean
our
sea,’ Di Sanctis said slowly, as if he couldn’t believe his own words, ‘a large part of it has always remained
their
sea.’

Guidotti gestured. ‘My brother writes to me from Bardia -’ he paused, remembering that Bardia had been swept with Derna and Tobruk and a few other places into the British net and that there would not be very many more letters from there, ‘- he wrote that they managed to make one man look like a dozen, one tank look like a squadron, one raid look like an advance. In war, you have as many men as you can persuade your enemy you have. I think our country was psychologically unprepared for war.’

‘But
Tobruk!’
Piccio’s arms flapped in a helpless gesture. ‘And now Bardia and Dernia! Excellency, it’s not possible. We were a hundred miles into Egypt. Now we’re fighting two hundred miles back in Libya.’

Guidotti frowned. Like Harkaway, he had a suspicion that the East African Empire Mussolini had so proudly proclaimed was before long going to be assailed from three sides. Weapons, men, munitions, petrol, transport and aircraft had been stockpiled because of what Mussolini had called a ‘total blockade’ of British possessions in Africa and the Mediterranean, and the idea was merely to await the relief that would be provided by a breakthrough via Egypt. The idea of cutting the British lines of communication with Egypt now seemed to have sunk with the ships at Taranto, however, and it seemed that the blockade was about to start working the other way. Moreover, never once since they’d crossed the frontier into British territory had the Italian forces been free of air raids. They had never been big but they’d nagged, and the number of Italian aircraft had dwindled with every day they’d appeared overhead. To Guidotti the air raids seemed to point to only one thing: the British intended to return and, now that they’d been relieved of the pressure in the Western Desert, their arrival seemed suddenly imminent.

The idea also seemed to have occurred to the natives. He’d heard revolt was stirring in southern Abyssinia. Circumstances there had always forced the maintenance of garrisons in the centres of populations and, since soldiers couldn’t be everywhere at once, the Duce’s writ ran only where his troops were massed and there had always been sniping and ambushes. It seemed there were bitter days ahead.

The bitter days Guidotti was expecting were already taking shape.

On the Kenya border, the British general in command was just winding up a staff conference. He’d not long returned from Cairo where he’d been meeting the C-in-C, Middle East, and the commander of the British forces in the Sudan. His men were still struggling to keep his aeroplanes flying against odds that Guidotti never realized. Working in the appalling heat, they were building new landing grounds, tearing down trees, filling up the holes of ant bears, burning the undergrowth, digging away the giant anthills, never with anything more than the miserable huddle of a native town as a headquarters.

As he pushed his papers aside, the general looked up at Colonel Charlton. ‘That’s it then, Charlie,’ he said. ‘They stir up rebellion in Abyssinia and retake Massala in February. They’ve got the 4th and 5th Indian Divisions. It isn’t much but the Italians can’t be feeling very happy now they’ve heard what’s happening in Libya. Their morale was never the best, anyway. We’re going to maintain pressure on Moyale and as soon as the rains are over, we advance on Kismayu and up the River Juba. We have the 1st South African Division and the 11th and 12th African Divisions. That also isn’t much, but it’s up to us to do the best we can.’

Colonel Charlton nodded, taking it all in quietly. ‘I think we shall manage, sir,’ he said.

‘Yes, I think we shall,’ the general agreed. ‘All the same, let’s not be unprepared. We shall need bearers, mules, and horses, together with drivers. I know it’s a mechanized war but you’d better put out feelers just in case. And if we can manage to start a local revolt, so much the better.’

The local revolt the general was hoping for was nearer than he realized.

Because, by a miracle, to the east of Bidiyu, Habr Odessi and Harari tribesmen were standing in lines, mixed together yet not attempting to knock each other’s heads in.

It had taken a lot of doing but they’d done it. It had required hours of talking by Danny Ortton-Daniells before Yussuf had been prepared even to put it to Abduruman, his chief. More hours of talking had followed with the promise of much loot before the chief had agreed to meet Chief Daoud of the Harari.

‘So far, so good,’ Harkaway had said. ‘Now we have to persuade Chief Daoud of the advantages of killing Italians instead of Habr Odessi. Can you do it, Danny?’

She studied him, her eyes gentle. ‘I can do it,’ she said. ‘I usually manage what I set out to do.’

He looked questioningly at her and she smiled. ‘I was brought up on a regime of porridge, bread and dripping and the sincere milk of the Word. The house was frugal both in food and affection, and I read the Bible under the superintendence of my father. But there were always fierce shafts of revelation from it to keep us warm and teach us that when we chose a goal we should set out to attain it.’

Harkaway studied her. She tried to meet his eyes but failed.

‘Bronwen isn’t a name that suits you,’ he said. ‘Know what it means?’

‘No.’

‘I had a Welsh aunt who was also called Bronwen. It means “white-breasted”.’

He smiled at her and rose, leaving her pink with embarrassment.

‘You shouldn’t say things like that,’ she said.

‘Why not? Would your milk-and-water preachers complain that it was lecherous?’ He looked at her, smiling. ‘Take your glasses off.’

She stared at him for a moment then, as her hand lifted to remove the spectacles, his smile widened.

‘I’ve seen all the films, you know. They always turn out to be beautiful. In fact, it usually makes no difference, but fiction’s nice and cosy, isn’t it?’

‘What about me? What category do I fall into?’

He smiled. ‘You look much better.’

‘I might look better,’ she said. ‘But I don’t see better.’

Nevertheless, she didn’t replace the spectacles. Suddenly, they seemed less important than they had and the extra effort to see things properly more than made up for the fact that Harkaway approved.

They started on Chief Daoud as soon as they could get him pinned down.

‘There will be loot,’ they explained. ‘Plenty of loot. There will be gold and silver. The Habr Odessi are not wealthy. They have no gold and silver and not many camels. The Italians are from Europe. They are different and when the Italians are all dead or defeated, the Habr Odessi will be powerful.’

‘Why must we fight the Italians?’ Daoud asked. ‘We have no quarrel with them.’

‘One day -’ Danny leaned forward ‘- this country will be yours. There will be nobody here. Neither Italians nor British.’ She wasn’t sure she was right in offering independence to an obscure chief with little influence outside his own area, but independence and freedom were heady words in anybody’s language and, even if the old man were indifferent, the young men who stood around were listening.

The talking went on all day and halfway into the night. It seemed impossible to the Harari that they could stand alongside the Habr Odessi in battle against a common enemy.

‘May we not perhaps kill just
a few
Odessi?’ Daoud asked.

‘Not one! The Italians and their soldiers are your enemies. Chief Abduruman of the Odessi has decided this.’

‘Then perhaps we should decide the opposite.’

‘Chief Abduruman sees wealth in the future. He sees Italian land becoming Odessi land.’

Daoud looked at his young men and tribal advisers. Someone whispered to him that if Abduruman were allowed to obtain too much of this Italian land it could be dangerous for the Harari.

‘Where do we get our guns?’ someone asked.

‘From the Italians. We have
some
guns already. But not enough. Just enough to kill Italians and take
their
guns. If we use our guns and our machine guns, we could kill fifty, a hundred, Italians. Then we shall have twice as many guns. These can then be turned on other Italians. Until we have many hundred guns.’

Daoud looked at Danny. ‘I am an old man,’ he said. ‘And I have seen many ramazans. I’m not sure I like this idea. But my young men see wealth in it for their sons. They see grazing land and Somalis in Berbera running their own .country. I will meet Abduruman.’

The meeting was difficult. The two old chiefs appeared, the elders of their tribes behind them, tall men wearing robes of every shade and variety knotted at their waists, on their heads loose turbans of pink, white and blue. Behind them were their young men, and behind them in their turn their young women, lighter-skinned, soft-featured, enormous-eyed. At first the two chiefs behaved like dogs about to have a fight, bridling and sidling and dodging, their back hair on end. But their vanity and their greed finally told. Neither could bear the thought of the other being stronger or richer, neither could bear the thought of missing the spoils that were promised. Even stronger was their wish not to end up as a secondary tribe to the other. Each was determined that if anybody was going to benefit, it was not going to be their old enemies.

‘Comes back to what Churchill always used to say,’ Harkaway said as they sat back in a break in the talks and drank native tea spiced with herbs. ‘Balance of power. It works even here.’

The outcome of the talks was the line of Harari and Odessi. They no longer wore their tobes like togas, but had wrapped them several times round their waists as loincloths, as they always did when they wanted their arms and chests free for work or fighting. Lean black bodies shone in the sun. A few tried to hold spears or the heavy-headed clubs they used for beating their enemies senseless, but with Danny’s assistance, Harkaway persuaded then to lay them aside and concentrate on the old Martini rifles.

They mixed them up well, first a Harari, then a Habr Odessi, then a Harari, then a Habr Odessi, on the understanding that any quarrel would be settled at once between two men and not be allowed to grow until the whole group joined in. With the rifles from the dump they managed to arm over two hundred.