Harkaway's Sixth Column (28 page)

Sick at heart, she turned away as the last vehicle, the last marching man, the last straggling woman disappeared from sight. Grobelaar was sitting on the remains of Guidotti’s triumphal column, playing his harmonica. As he saw the tears in her eyes, he slapped the spittle from it against the palm of his hand and put it in his pocket. Almost without her realizing it, he stood beside her, lean, faded, and battered-looking with his lined tanned face and glass eye.

‘Why did he have to go? she whispered.

Grobelaar shrugged. ‘Because he can’t stop, man,’ he said. ‘He’ll probably
never
stop.’

She sighed and turned away. He remained where he was and she swung round, looking at him questioningly.

‘Tot siens,
Danny,’ he said.

‘What’s that mean?’

‘It’s Afrikaans for “So long.” ‘

‘Are
you
going away, too?’

Her heart sank. She and Grobelaar had always been curiously close to each other, separate from Gooch and Tully, partly because they were civilians and partly because they’d both suffered more from Harkaway’s ambition. When she’d been at her lowest, it had always been Grobelaar with his sad, self-disparaging smile who’d given her the comfort of his own disillusioned self, reassuring because he always seemed in a worse state than she was.

‘What are you going to do, Kom-Kom?’

He shrugged and gave her his sad cobwebby smile. ‘Go home,’ he said. ‘After that’ - he shrugged -
‘Ek weet nie.
I dunno, man.’

‘What’s it like in South Africa?’

‘Like this. Big. But more beautiful. Man, you’ve never seen such flowers as they grow in the Cape.’

‘I’ve never been to South Africa.’

‘You should come.’ Grobelaar put his hand on her arm.
‘Kom, Kerel,’
he said. ‘They’ve opened the cafes again. I’ll buy you a beer.’

The column was several miles outside Bidiyu when they saw the car approaching. It stopped in front of them, blocking the road, and Harkaway rose in his seat to yell over the windscreen.

‘Get out of the bloody way,’ he said. ‘We’re in a hurry!’

‘Hold it, hold it!’ A man in a civilian bush jacket was climbing from the car. ‘Just hang on a minute! Who are you? You from Berbera? This force that was landed there by the navy? We’re trying to contact this outfit that calls itself the Sixth Column.’

Harkaway grinned. ‘You’ve contacted it,’ he said. ‘This is the Sixth Column.’

The war correspondents eyed each other. Colonel Charlton climbed out.

‘You’ve got a lot more transport than we expected,’ he said.

‘We helped ourselves to what the Italians left.’

‘Artillery, too.’

Harkaway smiled. ‘One gun. An Italian 75-millimetre that they forgot to take with them. Three, I suppose, if you count two pack guns. But they only fire toy shells. We’ve got machine guns, though, and mortars. Old British Stokes and now a few Italian ones.’

The three men were walking forward now, eyeing the long string of lorries, cars and armoured vehicles with wonder. Behind the vehicles was a column of men on foot, Somalis for the most part, many of them carrying spears and accompanied by their families and animals. Suspicious black faces peered at them as they halted in front of Harkaway.

‘There are a lot of you,’ Charlton said. ‘Where did you get your chaps?’

‘Recruited ‘em.’

‘You Colonel Harkaway?’

‘Yes.’ Harkaway grinned. ‘But you won’t find me in the army lists. I promoted myself.’

‘Bit naughty,’ Charlton said. ‘The army prefers to do it. Looks better.’

‘Thought it would help,’ Harkaway explained. ‘Knew the Eyeties liked a bit of dignity so we made our own pips and crowns. Up to this morning we even had an ATS captain. Missionary we picked up.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘Left her in Bidiyu. She was a bit sick of living rough.’ Harkaway gestured at Gooch and Tully. ‘Second-lieutenant Gooch and Captain Tully.’

Charlton studied the two figures. ‘Are they really officers?’

‘Not on your life. But they do the job just as well.’

Charlton fished a notebook from his pocket. ‘I’m glad we’ve bumped into you,’ he said. ‘The general would like to make it official. He’s grateful for what you’ve done and he’s quite prepared to offer you real commissions.’

‘I’d rather have medical supplies,’ Harkaway said.

‘I could arrange for both. Better let me have your names.’

Harkaway gestured. ‘That’s Patrick Tully,’ he said. ‘The big chap’s Harvey Gooch.’

‘How did you come to be left behind the Italian lines?’

‘Got cut off when the rush for the coast started,’ Harkaway said casually, giving nothing away.

‘What about you? Who’re you?’

‘George Matthew Tremayne Harkaway’.

Charlton looked up. ‘Any relation of Mac Tremayne?’ he asked. ‘He was my commanding officer in the last bunfight.’

Harkaway frowned. Such a coincidence seemed hardly possible in this godforsaken place. ‘Relative,’ he growled. ‘Distant.’

Charlton wrote everything down carefully. ‘I doubt if you’ll end up a lieutenant-colonel, of course,’ he smiled. ‘But you never know. Where are you off to?’

‘I’m after Guidotti. He’s heading north. I’m going to stop the bastard.’

‘The RAF reports he’s got lorries and guns.’

‘My people report that he’s running out of petrol and that he hasn’t much ammunition for his guns. I’d rather take notice of them than the RAF. They’re closer to the ground.’

Charlton stepped to one side and peered down the long raggle-taggle column of men in multi-coloured robes and turbans.

‘You really going to have a go at Guidotti with that lot?’

Harkaway glanced back. ‘They’re not exactly the Guards,’ he admitted. ‘But they know how to look after themselves.’

As he made to gesture to his driver, Wye stepped forward.

‘Hang on, hang on!’ he said. ‘We’d like a word with you!’

Harkaway stared down his nose at him. ‘And who the hell might you be?’ he snapped.

‘I’m Asa Wye.
Globe.
That’s Russell. APA. We’ve been chasing you all over East Africa. We’d like a photograph.’

Harkaway smiled. He had no wish to have his picture plastered all over the newspapers. That could come when he’d finished and a few people were busy eating their words.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘In a hurry. See them in Bidiyu. They know all about me.’

‘Who do, for God’s sake?’ Having found his story, Wye could see it slipping through his fingers unwritten.

‘Chap called Grobelaar. Known as Kom-Kom. With us until yesterday. Or there’s our own private Bible-thumper. Bronwen Ortton-Daniells. She’ll give you a story. She’s a good one herself, come to that, and she’d make a good picture, too. Not bad-looking.’

While Wye frantically wrote and Russell scrambled about in the back of Charlton’s car for his camera, Harkaway gestured at the Somalis who had climbed down to see better.

‘Mount!’ he yelled.

‘Here, hang on!’ Charlton said. ‘The general would like to know what you’re up to, so he can do a bit of planning. If
you’re
looking after the north, we can go straight on to Addis.’

Harkaway smiled. ‘You go straight on to Addis,’ he urged. ‘I’ll look after Guidotti for you. Now, if someone doesn’t shift that bloody car, I’ll shove it off the road.’

Startled, Charlton scrambled into the car and reversed it hurriedly. As he did so, Harkaway’s vehicle pushed past.

As Charlton stood watching the column pass, Wye swore and looked at Russell. ‘Get a picture?’ he asked.

Russell lowered the camera. ‘Three-quarter back view,’ he said. ‘It’ll show he has nice ears.’

‘He said
what?’
the General asked.

‘He said he hadn’t time to come for a conference,’ Charlton explained. ‘But he said we needn’t worry about Guidotti. He could take care of him.’

The general studied him. ‘And can he?’

Charlton smiled. ‘I’d say he can, sir. He had those Somalis well under control. When he told them to do something, they jumped.’

‘Then,’ the general said dryly. ‘I think we’ll let him get on with it. After all, Guidotti can’t do much harm to us, and our job’s to get to Addis. At least our flank’ll be secure, and if he doesn’t pull it off - and he might not, of course - then we can always sort it out when we’ve established ourselves in Addis. What did you say his name was?’

Charlton looked at his notebook. ‘George Matthew Tremayne Harkaway.’

The general frowned. ‘There was a Tremayne in the Buffs,’ he said. ‘Made general. Probably his grandson or something. Might explain things a bit. They were damn good soldiers.’ His frown deepened. ‘I suppose we ought to make him official but if he doesn’t pull it off it would make us look a bit silly. Perhaps for the time being, until we see what he makes of it, we’d better keep him out of our reports.’

Charlton cleared his throat. ‘I doubt if that will be possible, sir,’ he said. ‘Wye, of the
Globe,
and Russell, of APA, were there, too. It’ll be in every newspaper in England by tomorrow evening.’

The general frowned at his cigarette. ‘The bloody press love oddities, don’t they?’ he murmured. ‘Oh, well, I suppose we’ll have to do something for him after all. Better make him a major. Temporary, of course. It’ll give him the authority to handle those natives of his.’

Charlton frowned. ‘He didn’t seem to me,’ he said, ‘to need much in the way of authority, sir.’

The countryside was grim, red and blistering, and the strips of murram road were often the only colour in the baked landscape.

Where the scrub died away, the surface was sand fine as face powder, and the sun beat down vertically, making mirages in the brown waste of rocks. Lava boulders as big as footballs that lay everywhere, like hundreds and thousands on a birthday cake, shook the lorries to pieces. As they swerved to avoid one, they invariably hit another so that they were all bone-weary with the shaking.

Harkaway was pressing on hard with the wheeled transport, letting the rest - the camels and the mules carrying the water, the food, the ammunition and the petrol, the marching men, the women and the camp followers with their children - keep up as best they could, so that the column was strung out in a long winding coil, separated here and there like a broken string of beads.

Guidotti wasn’t far away, they knew. They’d been following his tracks for some days now, driving in the ruts he’d made, so deep in the surface of the desert it was possible to put the wheels in them then sit back and let the lorry steer itself as if it were on lines. Long-shanked black men, wrapped in blankets and tending their flocks, told them the Italians were just ahead, sheltering in one of the whitewashed Beau Geste forts they had thrown up round their borders.

As they drew closer, they kept coming across abandoned trucks, and the remains of the Italians’ camps - tins of food and chianti bottles. They even found petrol cans hurriedly tossed aside, the petrol brown and dirty so that it had to be filtered through chamois cloths to avoid clogging the carburettors, but petrol nevertheless, and they knew the Italians were in a bad way, because they would never otherwise abandon the precious liquid that enabled them to keep moving.

They were a long way now from the road that ran between Berbera and Harar, the ancient trade route where slaves, ivory, apes and peacocks had passed since the days of Solomon and Sheba. This was grim, hard country that allowed them to take no chances and nerves were beginning to run a little ragged.

‘This isn’t what we came for,’ Gooch said bitterly as they sat round a flickering fire.

‘You didn’t object,’ Harkaway said, harsh and unrelenting. ‘You could have backed out at Bidiyu. But you’ve been given the King’s commission now. You’re a full lieutenant, Goochy. “George, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India, et cetera, to our trusty and well beloved Harvey Gooch, we, reposing especial trust and confidence in your loyalty, courage and good conduct, do by these presents constitute and appoint you to be an officer ...”

Gooch’s eyes lifted. ‘Is that what they say?’ he asked.

‘They not only say it. They write it down. They have it printed on parchment with a bloody great red seal in the corner. Temporary gentlemen have ‘em framed - to prove to the neighbours they were once better than they seem.’

Gooch looked suspiciously at Harkaway. ‘Where’ve
you
seen one?’

Harkaway gestured airily. ‘Oh, I’ve seen ‘em,’ he said.

Gooch was silent for a while. ‘Will I get one?’ he asked.

‘Bound to. Eventually. It was confirmed in the radio message Paddy took down. It was quite clear. Harvey Gooch. Patrick Tully.’

‘And George Matthew Tremayne Harkaway. Is that your name?’

‘Yes.’

‘Some bloody name.’

‘I could say the same about Harvey Gooch.’

‘And they made
you
a bloody major. Paddy and me are only lieutenants.’

Harkaway’s face was close to Gooch’s. ‘Who’s running the show?’ he demanded. ‘Could
you
have done it, Lieutenant Harvey Gooch? Could Paddy?’

Gooch shifted uneasily because he knew he couldn’t. ‘They’ll take it off us again,’ he growled. ‘When they find out who we really are.’

‘No, they won’t,’ Harkaway said. ‘Not now the newspaper boys have got hold of it. They wouldn’t dare.’

If they were aware that Guidotti wasn’t far ahead, Guidotti was equally aware that
they
weren’t very far behind.

He had hoped to escape undetected, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize there was a column following them north. He could only imagine it was the Sixth Column, because he guessed rightly that the British army would be less concerned with him than with reaching the Abyssinian capital. The fall of Addis Ababa could not be far away now. Keren in the north had held out for a month but that had gone at last and, almost at the same time, so had Asmara. With Berbera, Hargeisa and Bidiyu gone, too, and now Jijiga, Harar and Diredawa, Addis Ababa couldn’t hope to hold out for long. Then his troubles would increase, because as soon as the British had pushed Haile Selassie back on his shabby throne, they’d start seeking out all the lost units of the Italian East African army.