The Secret War (32 page)

As she watched them drilling Valerie's thoughts were taken, for a moment, from her own gnawing anxieties. Unless the war was stopped these children would be flung into the battle in a few short weeks. How could they hope to stand against the Italians and all those vast stores of modern death-dealing equipment which she had seen at Assab and Massawa. It would be sheer massacre and her heart bled for them.

News travels fast in Addis Ababa and it was now evidently common knowledge that the Emperor was expected at the Military Academy, since a big crowd was collecting. As they eddied round the car, which Blatta Ingida Yohannes had driven on to the parade ground, they cast lowering looks at the Europeans, and some of them began to make hostile murmurs.

A booted officer of the Abyssinian Imperial Guard, with tufts of lion fur in his hat and on his epaulettes, noticed them from some way away, came over, ordered back the crowd, and asked the visitors to descend and take up their position in a cleared space near the College building.

They waited there for what seemed an endless time, making polite conversation with Blatta Ingida Yohannes, yet each harried by their secret thoughts of the reason for their presence there, their private miseries, and the terrible work which was to come. The cadets continued their drill without the least sign of fatigue from heart-strain in the now strong sun.

At last there was a murmur in the distance. It swelled and grew into a roar of salutation. The crowd gesticulated wildly and began to shout, “
Habet! Habet
!
Dshanhoi!
” A Rolls-Royce, surrounded by police and running footmen, who drove back the too enthusiastic mob with their long whips, entered the parade ground. As it drew up a small, erect figure descended from it. The Emperor had arrived.

He wore the undistinguished garb common to the aristocrats of his country; a white
shama
with the ugly black cape of nobility over it, which looked like a bicycling waterproof and was, perhaps, originally designed as a protection from the unceasing rains which stream down on Abyssinia for so considerable a portion of the year. Yet there was no mistaking him for anyone but Haile Selassie, the Lion of Judah.

The band struck up. The cadets presented arms. Lovelace and Christopher removed their topees and Valerie curtsied as he passed within a dozen yards of them on his way to the inspection. He looked full at them for a moment and acknowledged their gestures by a grave inclination of the head.

Valerie thought that she had never seen a sadder face or one more beautiful in sorrow. His big dark eyes held pride and fearlessness; yet something else which she could not quite analyse. Christopher read the deeper meaning of that glance; it was reproach.

Christopher understood the thought behind it as clearly as if the Emperor had spoken and said, “I know that you Europeans despise my people because they eat their meat raw, but a backward race cannot be educated
by merely passing a few Acts of Parliament. It will take three generations to civilise Abyssinia but if the Italians had only left me alone for even one I could have set my people on the road from which there would have been no turning back. As it is they have compelled me to abandon my most cherished projects because every penny that I possess must now be squandered on this war they have forced upon me. And you other white men are no better than the Italians. Your rotten little politicians lied to me about the power of their futile League, urged me to resist the Italian demands, and now they are afraid. Yes, afraid to the depths of their rotten little souls to help me defend my people from massacre by poison gas and high explosives.”

A wave of shame swept over Christopher. For the moment he forgot that only a few days before he had narrowly escaped mutilation and murder at the hands of the Emperor's subjects—forgot the Italians' plans to turn the Ogaden deserts into fertile farmlands and sweep away a thousand barbarous abuses—forgot the greedy Customs officials at the airport and the hyenas that still made the streets of Addis Ababa dangerous by night. He only burned with indignation at those thoughts which he felt the Emperor had transferred to him in that one long glance and understood how profoundly the lonely, cultured ruler must despise the white races for their treachery and weak vacillation. They had stolen the very jewels for his crown when it was made in Europe and had substituted bits of glass thinking he would not know. Apart from the Red Cross and relief people there was hardly a white in Addis Ababa who had come out during the war to give disinterested help. They all scented jobs or easy money and would rob him of the last thalers in his coffers for dud munitions if he did not defend himself with his wits as well as his courage.

Christopher's slender hands clenched and unclenched themselves spasmodically. He could not help the
Emperor, he could not stop the war, but he could prevent it spreading. The
Millers of God
were right beyond quibble or question. Their cause was a sacred one and he, as their instrument, would not fail them. Before another dawn came to gild the zinc roofs of Addis Ababa he would have killed Paxito Zarrif or have given his own life in an attempt to do so.

The inspection was over, the Emperor gone, and the crowds in their dirty white
shamas
were melting away again. Valerie caught a last glimpse of the green, gold and red flag of Abyssinia fluttering so bravely over the Military College, then it was hidden by a group of blue-gum trees as they sped back to the centre of Addis Ababa in Yohannes' car.

Owing to the early hour at which they had started the morning was still only half spent, yet Lovelace was conscious of a growing anxiety as the time slipped away. They had formulated no plan as yet for their attack on Zarrif and had not even had an opportunity to reconnoitre the place where the Armenian was staying. Much thought and careful preparation would be necessary if he and Christopher were to stand any chance of pulling off this horrrible job and getting away safely afterwards. Lovelace was no fanatic and, although he felt that he must go through with the ghastly business now, he was determined to take every possible precaution which would give them the least hope of escaping with their lives. In a casual voice he asked Blatta Ingida Yohannes, “Do you happen to know Ras Desoum?”

“Oh, yes,” the Abyssinian nodded. “He is one of the younger Rases; an able man who sometimes assists the Emperor in financial matters. He was educated in France but perhaps over-educated in some ways for he is not very popular among us.”

“He has a castle on the north side of the town, hasn't he?”

“Yes. It is near my own home.”

“I wonder if you'd mind driving us out there. I should rather like to see it.”

“There is very little to see,” Yohannes replied, glancing at him with some surprise, “but I will do so if you wish.”

Twenty minutes later they pulled up in front of a wide-spread rabbit-warren of low-roofed buildings, encircled by a wall, which abutted on the road. “This is Ras Desoum's castle,” said Yohannes.

“
Castle!
” echoed Christopher in amazement.

The Abyssinian grinned all over his dark, cheerful face. “Yes. Any building which has three courtyards in this country is a castle. As you know the Ras, perhaps you would like me to see if he is at home?”

“No, please don't trouble,” Lovelace interposed quickly. “We don't know him; only a friend of his whom he knew while he was in Paris. We'll write him a line perhaps and ask if we may call in a few days time.”

As he spoke Lovelace was thinking of the grim visit they intended to pay there before the night was out and his lazy, brown eyes were seeking to memorise everything possible about the ragged tangle of courts and structures. The place was rather like a miniature of Gibbi, the Emperor's Palace. Through the open gates he could see natives swarming in the first court and passing in and out of long rows of squalid hutments which lined the walls. Further away a few higher roofs indicated more modern one-story buildings and at one spot there was a small watch-tower.

Yohannes drove on again. “As you do not wish to make a visit here,” he said, “I will take you now to one of the most beautiful of our old churches.”

His companions would have given much to escape this fresh excursion but there was no possible means by which they could do so.

The church proved to be a gloomy, domed building something after the style of a mosque but lacking
minarets. Its interior was dark and smelly. A number of incredibly dirty-looking priests squatted about telling their beads. The whole place reeked with decay and semi-pagan superstition.

There were a few mosaics showing scenes from the life of Christ in which the figures had the big heads, great, staring, almond-shaped eyes, and thin, emaciated bodies seen in very early missals and Byzantine paintings.

Yohannes treated them to a dissertation upon the importance of Abyssinia remaining free to develop her heritage of a distinctive culture, during which Lovelace found it difficult not to laugh.

It might be true that with its warring barons, powerful churchmen, and slave population the real Abyssinia was eight hundred years behind the times but it possessed no chivalrous knighthood, seats of monastic learning, or gay-hearted troubadours as had medieval Europe; and to speak of this debased Coptic art, which had not advanced for centuries, as though it held the growing glory of early Gothic was patently absurd.

Climbing back into the car once more they drove to Madam Idot's café bar, where they drank cocktails of a sort.

Valerie was growing used to the sight of lepers now that she had been in Addis Ababa for two days, they swarmed everywhere; but she was nearly sick when, as they left the bar, one woman tried to paw her with pale stumpy fingers from which the nails had fallen away. Yohannes drove the woman off with a sharp blow from his stick. It seemed that whips and sticks were the only method of enforcing order known to the ruling caste in Abyssinia. Even Christopher had realised now that, much as he liked Yohannes personally, his day and that of the class he represented was done. In common humanity it was high time that white men took over the administration of the hopelessly backward black Empire.

For lunch Yohannes took them to the
Deutsches
Haus
, a
pension
run by an honest German couple, renowned for having the best food in Addis.

Over the meal he began to make plans for the afternoon. A visit to the hospital where the Empress herself supervised the tending of the wounded. It was very modern; a real sign of the progress they were making. Then they should see the new palace which the Emperor had built some years before to accommodate the Crown Prince of Sweden during his visit to Addis. But Valerie complained of a splitting headache and declared she was quite incapable of doing any more sightseeing that day. Her pitifully drawn face touched Lovelace to the heart, yet he was profoundly glad of this genuine excuse to get rid of their charming, but most unwelcome, cicerone.

Blatta Ingida Yohannes expressed the most solicitous regret at Valerie's indisposition, drove them back to their hotel at once and, having received their thanks, declared his intention of calling for them at the same hour the following morning.

Christopher watched him go with some regret. In their short acquaintance he had developed a real liking for the sensitive, well-mannered young man, and he knew that it was the last they would see of him. By the following morning they would either be dead or on their way out of Abyssinia. Slowly, his heart working overtime, he followed Valerie and Lovelace up to their private sitting-room.

“It's an inside job,” Lovelace said immediately they had got rid of the interpreter and servants Yohannes had hired for them, whom they found lounging about the place.

“A what?” asked Christopher wearily, sinking into a chair.

“I mean there's no hope of our breaking in from the outside as we did at Zarrif's house in Athens. There'll be niggers sleeping all over the place and we'd be certain to rouse some of them if we came in over the wall
On the other hand, if we can once get inside we may succeed in remaining unnoticed among that big crowd made up of Ras Desoum's household and hangers-on.”

“How could you?” exclaimed Valerie.

“Oh, not dressed as we are.” Lovelace gave her a reasssuring smile. “We'll have to disguise ourselves as natives. I wish to God I spoke the language but I thought out a way to get over that coming back in the car. I mean to rig myself out as an Arab merchant. I can speak Arabic and I've posed as one before. We'll buy a stock of goods from the bazaars and Christopher can come along as my porter. They're used to Arabs peddling goods, all over Africa, so they'll have no reason to suspect we're not what we appear and Ras Desoum's head servants probably know enough Arabic to barter with me for odds and ends. We must move quickly though. If we're not inside that outer court by sundown we'll be done, because they're certain to close the gates then for the night to keep out beggars, robbers and hyenas.”

“Aren't we going to have an awful job getting this kit together in the time?” Christopher inquired.

“I don't know. I'm banking on the chance that Henrick Heiderstam will help us. I'm going down to the airport to try and get hold of him now—so long!”

As Lovelace left them Valerie and Christopher stared miserably at each other. After a moment he came over and perched himself on the arm of her chair.

“This is rotten for you, Valerie—isn't it,” he said gently, “all your life mucked up because I'm a crazy fellow who must be risking his neck and the safety of his friends because he wants to make a better world; but I'll do my best to see that he gets out.”

“
He,
” she repeated dully.

“Yes, it's my show—not his, and I can't help liking him, although there're moments when I'd gladly see him dead after what he did last night.”