The Secret War (22 page)

With a flashing smile from the gold-filled teeth and a low obeisance the servant withdrew.

Lovelace translated what he had said to Valerie, and added, “When the interview is over I shall start scratching my left ear. That's the signal for you to feign illness; but don't faint, otherwise they'll want to carry you into the women's quarters. If you're just ill it'll provide an excuse for us to get you away quickly without your having to go there.”

“But I want to,” Valerie protested. “It'd be terribly interesting to see what those legendary houris, who're said to be kept in rich Orientals' harems, are really like.”

He shook his head. “In the ordinary way it'd be perfectly safe for you to do so, but for all we know Ben Ibrim has been warned to keep a look-out for us. If he has you'd find yourself a prisoner there, and that'd be far from funny. This is a ticklish business, and I don't want you out of my sight, even for a moment.”

The “one moment” the Arab servant had first mentioned expanded itself into an hour and a quarter, but they were not impatient. After the burning streets, and the noisome perfumes which pervaded the hotel bar, the courtyard was a paradise.

A fountain played in it, moistening the overheated air as it splashed into a white-tiled basin. Only a man of immense wealth, as Lovelace remarked, could possibly have afforded such a luxury in Jibuti. Palm trees planted
in vast tubs stood at the four corners of the courtyard, and a black boy worked like an automaton at a punkah which wafted the refreshing air towards them. Above, as from the bottom of a great square well, they saw the myriad stars twinkling in a black velvet sky; alive, near and brilliant, in a way which is unbelievable to those who have seen them only from a northern latitude. The peace and beauty of the place revived Christopher and Valerie from their fatigue as nothing else could have done.

At last the man with the gold-filled teeth appeared again. He led them through an ancient, brass-studded door to an inner courtyard, bowed gravely, and left them.

The inner court was smaller, but even more magnificent. Four fountains played in its corners; their basins and the twisted pillars of the surrounding arcades were made of marble; ancient lamps of beaten silver, burning perfumed oil, swung on chains between the arches. Its sole occupant was a man of vast proportions. Bearded, hook-nosed, eagle-eyed, his massive limbs concealed by a loose silken robe, he sat cross-legged upon a great pile of carpets.

As they went forward Abu Ben Ibrim greeted them in Arabic. Lovelace responded in the same tongue, so the conversation that followed was entirely lost on Valerie and Christopher.

With a wave of a big hand, half-covered with heavy rings, the Arab motioned his guests to take places on the cushions which made a semicircle in front of his divan. Clapping his hands loudly together, he summoned servants who brought in refreshments for them: fresh fruit, candied sweetmeats, sherbets and coffee.

For some moments the formalities were duly observed by a grave exchange of meaningless compliments, after which the huge Arab began to thaw. He was a jovial fellow with an enormous appetite for laughter; as easily amused as a child and delighting in a bawdy jest as the
natural medium for humour in his race. Knowing that Valerie could not understand a word he said, he did not scruple to give full licence to his taste.

Lovelace, who had often dealt with Arabs, knew the type and played up to him accordingly, being well aware that half an hour or more might elapse before they could get down to business. Little by little he turned the conversation towards the local situation, inferred that he knew Ben Ibrim to be a slave trader and illicit armament dealer; was in the latter racket himself, in fact, and inquired courteously how the Arab's affairs prospered.

Ben Ibrim spread out his strong, jewel-laden hands, shrugged his great shoulders, and smiled beatifically. “Was there ever such a time in the history of mankind?” he asked happily. Allah in his wisdom had sown confusion among the ignorant that the more intelligent of his children might profit by it. Blessing upon His Holy Name. The British and Italian gunboats were so busy watching each other that they had no longer time to practise their surveillance upon the ships of honest traders that crossed the Red Sea each night. Those dogs of Abyssinians had been fooled into freeing their slaves to please the stupid League. The slaves were starving and would sell themselves again for halfpence. What easier than to transport them across the Straight of Bab el Mandeb to Arabia? In French Somaliland one had to use a certain care still, of course, but the authorities were busy with other matters. They were very strict about the illegal import of munitions, but risks were worth running, were they not, with dynamite worth nearly its weight in gold-dust. The big man chuckled throatily in his wiry black beard.

Valerie was sipping her third little gilded cup of coffee, and she remarked to Lovelace that never in her life had she tasted better.

He translated what she said, and Ben Ibrim beamed upon her. “That may well be so,” he replied in Arabic. “It comes from the finest plantation in Abyssinia, and it
was there that the berry was first cultivated. I will send Madame a bale of beans if she will leave me her address.”

Valerie smiled her thanks as Lovelace translated. He then turned the conversation to Zarrif. He inferred that he knew him well, spoke casually of having stayed at his house in Athens, and went on to say that Melchisedek of Alexandria had told him that he might run into Zarrif in Jibuti. He had hoped to do so. While he talked his lazy glance took in the Arab's reactions to his story with extreme carefulness.

At one point in his fabrication he feared that he had blundered. Ben Ibrim's eyes suddenly flickered; but he was smiling again so cheerfully next second that Lovelace was reassured and felt that he could only have imagined the change of expression.

“My good friend Zarrif is gone from here,” Ben Ibrim said after a moment. “He flew on to Addis Ababa only this morning.”

Lovelace heaved a mental sigh of relief. Zarrif would arrive in Addis Ababa much earlier than they had expected, but there were still fourteen days before the date fixed for the signing of the concession, and, now that they knew where he was, ample time to prepare a coup in the Abyssinian capital.

For another twenty minutes he talked and laughed with Ben Ibrim, but Valerie suddenly noticed that he had begun to scratch his left ear.

She closed her eyes and swayed from side to side a little, putting her right hand up to her throat.

Christopher asked if she were ill, and the two acted a little pantomime together, in which she pretended that she would be quite all right in a moment, while he expressed grave concern.

Ben Ibrim asked Lovelace in what way she was suffering and placed his household at her disposal. Lovelace replied that it was mainly fatigue and the great heat of Jibuti, to which she was not accustomed. If they left at once she would not be in bed much before midnight,
and she had had a long and tiring day. He begged, therefore, that His Excellency would excuse them and allow her to wait upon his wives the following day.

The Arab stood up and they rose with him as he clapped his hands to summon his servants. “Women and horses are delicate creatures,” he remarked to Lovelace, “but Allah has provided both for the joy of man, and timely care of them enables the two species to give us the maximum of pleasure. It is sad that you should have so soon to go. I still have some lovely stories I would have liked to tell you, but to-morrow is yet a day.”

A few moments later, after bowing their thanks to Ben Ibrim for his hospitality, they were escorted to the outer court.

When they reached the street, Lovelace chuckled. “I've got what we wanted,” he told his friends. “Zarrif was here but he left this morning by plane for Addis.”

He would not have been quite so pleased with himself had he known that the moment they were out of the house Abu Ben Ibrim had picked up a telephone which was concealed behind his pile of rugs, and was even then giving an account of their visit, over it, to Paxito Zarrif, who was actually still in Jibuti.

Next morning, to the surprise and distress of the sergeant's aunt, they were up long before dawn. At four o'clock, in the comparative cool which still lasted with darkness, they drove out to the aerodrome.

Valerie made a particularly careful examination of her engine, as she knew that it might prove extremely awkward if they had to make a forced landing before completing their seven-hundred-mile journey, but by five o'clock they were in the air and heading for Addis Ababa.

They did not notice a great four-engined machine that was run out of a hangar and left the Jibuti airfield ten minutes after them. If they had it would have appeared only as a tiny speck in the distance to their rear.

The rising sun seemed to come up all at once out of the ocean behind them. It shattered the brief twilight and painted the hills beyond Jibuti in unbelievably fantastic colours. The white salt mountains, which they had seen in the distance the day before, turned orange, gold, and rose, like a magnificent sunset spread out below. Then the colours faded and hard, brilliant, clear, every feature of the land lay naked in the glare, exposed to another day of blistering sun.

Valerie followed the railway line, a tiny, string-like track across the surface of the wild, in which French fortunes had been sunk for over thirty years. No trains were visible upon it. The express to Addis Ababa still ran only twice a week, although there was a war on, yet freight and fares at scandalously high rates were
now bringing fine profits to the railway company. The bi-weekly train due out that day which might, or might not, carry Baron Foldvar up into the interior was not scheduled to leave Jibuti until some hours later.

Plantations of cotton and coffee, interspersed with great areas of dense jungle which made the country appear green and fertile, fringed the railway on either side for several miles. At a quarter to six they were over the frontier and above Douelne, the first Abyssinian town, if the little cluster of buildings below them could be dignified by that name.

By seven they were over a place where the railway took a great curve to the south and then swung round to the north again, almost forming a horseshoe bend. The land in the Bight was a greenish-yellow, pockmarked surface looking as though it was pitted with innumerable small craters and, towards its centre, speckled with little dabs of white.

From the map they saw that the place half a mile below them was Diredawa, the most important city on the line between Jibuti and Addis, where it was necessary to leave the train for the great southern metropolis of Harar which lay some twenty-five miles to the southeast.

Valerie circled once, bringing her plane down to a thousand feet so that they could get a better view of the town. The few whitish dabs were brick-walled, tin-roofed buildings; the countless pock-marks
tuculs
—round, thatched native huts. Patches of blue-gum trees were now apparent, tilled fields and, in the middle of the town, some larger buildings; churches and Rases' palaces perhaps. The town had no plan as far as could be seen; no main streets or squares. It just straggled outwards from the denser cluster of hutments grouped round the bigger buildings.

As they flew on again the fertile plain on their left, to the south of the railway, dropped away towards Harar and the fruitful province of Ogaden, while to the
north lay a brown, barren land which soon overlapped the line and filled the horizon on both sides as far as they could see.

It was a nightmare country of almost unbelievable desolation. In the far distance range upon range of fiercely jagged mountains pierced the sky. Out of the trackless deserts below rose steep, flat-topped kopjes like those seen in the waterless South African Karoo. No single sign of life appeared upon the inhospitable, boulder-strewn, volcanic soil. The country might have been created by Satan in a fit of diabolical hate against mankind.

The sun was now making a furnace of the earth and already objects on it were becoming indistinct from the shimmering heat haze that quivered over the sandy wastes. Instinctively, almost, Valerie mounted to a higher altitude.

It was half an hour after passing over Diredawa that Lovelace caught sight of the following plane. At first he hardly took conscious notice of it but it was gaining on them and, as the distance between the planes decreased, something about the lines of the other machine struck him as familiar. Suddenly he realised that it was Zarrif's.

The knowledge worried him as he dismissed at once the idea of coincidence. Abu Ben Ibrim had admitted that Zarrif had been in Jibuti two days before but said that he had left on the previous morning. Ben Ibrim had lied then. But why? Because something had been said which had given away the fact that they were not really Zarrif's friends. Zarrif must still have been in Jibuti the previous night then and, having got rid of them by sending them on to Addis, Ben Ibrim had warned him about them. But why was Zarrif following them now? Lovelace felt a sudden chill of apprehension and he told Christopher that it was Zarrif's plane behind them.

Christopher shrugged. “What's it matter? As long
as Zarrif
is
on his way to Addis Ababa it's immaterial which of us arrives there first.”

Lovelace said no more. No useful purpose could have been served by doing so now and he endeavoured to conceal his anxiety. Having travelled in Zarrif's plane he knew that for each trip it was converted from a luxury air-liner into a fighter carrying four machine-guns. He had a ghastly feeling that those machine guns might be manned at the moment and that Zarrif was following Valerie's plane intent upon its destruction.

They were half-way across the long, desolate stretch between Diredawa and Mojjo when Lovelace's fears were confirmed all too fully. The machine-guns in their rear suddenly began to stutter.

A cold perspiration broke out on his forehead. They were unarmed; they could not fight. Zarrif meant to shoot them down and finish them once and for all, out there in the desert, where there would be no troublesome witnesses. He gripped Valerie by the shoulder.