Cry Wolf Read online

was fortunate enough to be included in the Duce's party for the opening

  night." The Count relaxed a little, smiling that flashing smile.

  The General sighed as he poured the wine. "Ha! The civilized life, so

  far a cry from this land of thorns and savages .

  It was late afternoon before the General had steeled himself to

  approach the painful subject of the interview and, smiling

  apologetically, he gave his orders.

  "The Wells of Chaldi," repeated the Count, and immediately a change

  came over him. He leapt to his feet, knocking over the Madeira glass,

  and strode majestically back and forth, his heels cracking on the

  tiles, belly sucked in and noble chin on high.

  "Death before dishonour," cried Aldo Belli, the Madeira warming his

  ardour.

  "I hope not, caro," murmured the General. "All I want you to do is

  take up a guard position on an untenanted water-hole." But the Count

  seemed not to hear him. His eyes were dark and glowing.

  "I am greatly indebted to you for this opportunity to distinguish my

  command. You can count on me to the death." The Count stopped short

  as a fresh thought occurred to him. "You will support my advance with

  armour and aircraft? "he asked anxiously.

  "I don't really think that will be necessary, caro." The General spoke

  mildly. All this talk of death and honour troubled him, but he did not

  want to give offence. "I don't think you will meet any resistance."

  "But if I do?" the Count demanded with mounting agitation,

  so that the General went to stroke his arm placatingly.

  "You have a radio, caro. Call on me for any assistance you need

  The Count thought about that for a moment and clearly found it

  acceptable. Once more the patriotic fervour returned to the glowing

  eyes.

  "Ours is the victory," he cried, and the General echoed him

  vigorously.

  "I hope so, caro. Indeed I hope so." Suddenly the Count swirled and

  strode to the door. He flung it open and called.

  "Gino!" The little black-shirted sergeant hurried into the room,

  frantically adjusting the huge camera that hung about his neck.

  "The General does not mind?" asked Aldo Belli leading him to the

  window. "The light is better here." The slanting rays of the dying

  sun poured in to light the two men theatrically as the Count seized

  De

  Bono's hand.

  "Closer together, please. Back a trifle, General, you are covering the

  Count. That's excellent. Chin up a little, my Count.

  Ha! Bello!" cried Gino, and recorded faithfully the startled

  expression above the General's little white goatee.

  The senior major of the Blackshirt "Africa" Battalion was a hard

  professional soldier of thirty years" experience, a veteran of

  Vittorio

  Veneto and Caporetto, where he had been commissioned in the field.

  He was a fighting man and he reacted with disgust to his posting from

  his prestigious regiment in the regular army to this rabble of

  political militia. He had protested at length and with all the power

  at his command, but the order came from on high, from divisional

  headquarters itself. The divisional General was a friend of Count

  Aldo

  Belli, and He also knew the Count intimately and owed favours decided

  that he needed a real soldier to guide and counsel him. Major

  Castelani was probably one of the most real soldiers in the entire army

  of Italy. Once he realized that his posting was inevitable, he had

  resigned himself and settled to his new duties whipping and bullying

  his new command into order.

  He was a big man with a close-cropped skull of grey bristle, and a

  hound-dog, heavily lined face burned and eroded by the weathering of a

  dozen campaigns. He walked with the rolling gait of a sailor or a

  horseman, though he was neither, and his voice could carry a mile into

  a moderate wind.

  Almost entirely due to his single-handed efforts, the battalion was

  drawn up in marching order an hour before dawn. Six hundred and ninety

  men with their motorized transports strung out down the main street of

  Asmara. The lorries were crammed with silent men huddling in their

  greatcoats against the mild morning chill. The motorcycle outriders

  were sitting astride their machines flanking the newly polished but

  passenger-less Rolls-Royce command car, with its gay pennants and its

  driver sitting lugubriously at the wheel. A charged sense of

  apprehension and uncertainty gripped the entire assembly of warriors.

  There had been wild rumours flying about the battalion for the last

  twelve hours they had been selected for some desperate and dangerous

  mission. The previous evening the mess sergeant had actually witnessed

  the Colonel Count Aldo Belli weeping with emotion as he toasted his

  junior officers with the fighting slogan of the regiment,

  "Death before dishonour," which might sound fine on a bellyful of

  chianti, but left a hollow feeling at five in the morning on top of a

  breakfast of black bread and weak coffee.

  The Third Battalion was in a collectively sombre mood as the sun came

  up in a blaze of hot scarlet, forcing them almost immediately to

  discard the greatcoats. The sun climbed into a sky of burning blue and

  the men waited as patiently as oxen in the traces. Someone once

  observed that war is ninety-nine per cent boredom and one per cent

  unmitigated terror. The Third Battalion was learning the ninety-nine

  per cent.

  Major Luigi Castelani sent yet another messenger to the Colonel's

  quarters a little before noon, and this time received a reply that

  the

  Count was now actually out of bed and had almost completed his toilet.

  He would join the battalion shortly. The Major swore with the practice

  of an old campaigner and set off with his rolling swagger down the

  column to quell the mutinous mutterings from the half mile-long column

  of canvas-covered lorries sweltering in the midday sun.

  The Count came like the rising sun itself, glowing and glorious,

  flanked by two captains and preceded by a trooper carrying the battle

  standard which the Count had personally designed. It was based on the

  eagles of a Roman legion, complete with shrieking birds of prey and

  dangling silken tassels.

  The Count floated on a cloud of bonhomie and expensive eau de cologne.

  Gino got a few good shots of him embracing his junior officers, and

  slapping the backs of the senior NCOs. At the common soldiers he

  smiled like a father and spurred their spleens with a few apt homilies

  on duty and sacrifice as he strode down the column.

  "What a fine body of warriors," he told the Major. "I am moved to

  song." Luigi Castelani winced. The Colonel was frequently moved to

  song. He had taken lessons with the most famous teachers in Italy and

  as a younger man he had seriously considered a career in opera.

  Now he halted and spread his arms, threw back his head and let the song

  flow in a deep ringing baritone. Dutifully, his officers joined in the

  stirring chorus of "La Giovinezza', the Fascist marching song.

  The Colonel moved slowly back along the
patient column in the sunlight,

  pausing to strike a pose as he went for a high note, lifting his right

  hand with the tip of the second finger lightly touching the thumb,

  while the other hand grasped the beiewelled dagger at his waist.

  The song ended and the Colonel cried, "Enough! It is time to march

  where are the maps?" and one of his subalterns hurried forward with

  the map case.

  "Colonel, sir," Luigi Castelani intervened tactfully. "The road is

  well sign-posted, and I have two native guides-" The Count ignored him

  and watched while the maps were spread on the glistening bonnet of the

  Rolls.

  "Ah!" He studied the maps learnedly, then looked up at his two

  captains. "One of you on each side of me," he instructed. "Major Vita

  you here! A stern expression, if you please, and do not look at the

  camera." He pointed with a lordly gesture at Johannesburg four

  thousand miles to the south and held the pose long enough for Gino to

  record it. Next, he climbed into the rear seat of the Rolls and,

  standing, he pointed imperatively ahead along the road to the Danakil

  desert.

  Mistakenly, Luigi Castelani took this as a command to advance. He let

  out a series of bull-like bellows and the battalion was galvanized into

  frantic action. Like one man, they scrambled into the covered lorries

  and took their seats on the long benches, each in full matching order

  with a hundred rounds of ammunition in his bandolier and a rifle

  between his knees.

  However, by the time 690 men were embarked, the Colonel had once more

  descended from the Rolls. It was an unfortunate chance that dictated

  that the Rolls should be parked directly in front of the casino.

  The casino was a government-licensed institution under whose auspices

  young ladies were brought out from Italy on six-month contracts to

  cater to the carnal needs of tens of thousands of lusty young men in a

  woman less environment.

  Very few of these ladies had the stamina to sign a renewal of the

  contract and none of them found it necessary.

  Possessed of a substantial dowry, they returned home to find a

  husband.

  The casino had a silver roof of galvanized corrugated iron Hill and its

  eaves and balconies were decorated with intricate cast-iron work. The

  windows of the girls" rooms opened on to the street.

  The young hostesses, who usually rose in the mid afternoon, had been

  prematurely awakened by the bellowing of orders and the clash of

  weapons. They had traipsed out on to the long second-floor veranda,

  clad in brightly coloured but flimsy nightwear, and now entered into

  the spirit of the occasion, giggling and blowing kisses to the

  officers. One of them had a bottle of iced Lacrima Cristi, which she

  knew from experience was the Colonel's favourite beverage, and she

  beckoned with the cold de wed bottle.

  The Colonel realized suddenly that the singing and excitement had made

  him thirsty and peckish.

  "A cup for the stirrup, as the English say," he suggested jocularly,

  and slapped one of the captains on the shoulder.

  Most of his staff followed him with alacrity into the casino.

  A little after five o'clock, one of the junior subalterns emerged,

  slightly inebriated, from the casino with a message from the Colonel to

  the Major.

  "At dawn tomorrow, we advance without fail." The battalion rumbled out

  of Asmara the following morning at ten o'clock. The Colonel was

  feeling liverish and disgruntled. The previous night's excitement had

  got out of hand, he had sung until his throat was hoarse and had drunk

  great quantities of Lacrima Cristi, before going upstairs with two of

  the young hostesses.

  Gino knelt on the seat of the Rolls beside him, holding an umbrella

  over his head, and the driver tried to avoid potholes and

  irregularities in the road. But the Count was pale and his brow

  sparkled with the sweat of nausea.

  Sergeant Gino wished to cheer him. He hated to see his

  Count in misery and so he attempted to rekindle the warlike spirit of

  yesterday.

  "Think on it, my Count. We of the entire army of Italy will be the

  very first to confront the enemy. The first to meet the blood-thirsty

  barbarian with his cruel heart and red hands." The Count thought on it

  as he was bidden. He thought on it with great concentration and

  increasing nausea.

  Suddenly he became aware that of all the 360,000 men that comprised the

  expeditionary forces of Italy, he, Aldo Belli, was the very first, the

  veritable point of the spear aimed at Ethiopia. He remembered suddenly

  the horror stories he had heard from the disaster of Adowa. One of the

  atrocity stories outweighed all others the

  Ethiopians castrated their prisoners. He felt the contents of that

  noble sac between his thighs retracting forcibly and a fresh sweat

  broke out upon his brow.

  Stop!" he shrieked at the driver. "Stop, this instant."

  A bare two miles from the centre of the town, the column was plunged

  into confusion by the abrupt halt of the lead vehicle, and,

  answering the loud and urgent shouts of the commanding officer, the

  Major hurried forward to learn that the order of march had been

  altered. The command car would take up station in the exact centre of

  the column with six motorcycle outriders brought back to ride as flank

  guards.

  It was another hour before the new arrangement could be put into effect

  and once more the column headed south and west into the great empty

  land with its distant smoky horizons and its vast vaulted blue dome of

  the burning heavens.

  Count Aldo Belli rode easier on the luxurious leather of the

  Rolls, cheered by the knowledge that preceding him were three hundred

  and forty-five fine rubbery sets of peasant testicles upon which the

  barbarian could blunt his blade.

  The column went into bivouac that evening fifty-three kilometres from

  Asmara. Not even the Count could pretend that this was a forced march

  for motorized infantry but the advantage was that a pair of

  motorcyclists could send back with a despatch for General De Bono

  reassuring him of the patriotism, the loyalty and the fighting ardour

  of the Third Battalion and, of course, on their return the cyclists

  could carry blocks of ice from the casino packed in salt and straw and

  stowed in the sidecars.

  The following morning, the Count had recovered much of his good cheer.

  He rose early at nine " O clock and took a hearty alfresco breakfast

  with his officers under the shade of a spread tarpaulin and then, from

  the rear seat of the Rolls, he gave a clenched fist cavalry order to

  advance.

  Still in the centre of the column, pennants fluttering and battle

  standard glittering, the Rolls glided forward and it looked, even to

  the disillusioned Major, as if they might make good going of the day's

  march.

  The undulating grassland fell away almost imperceptibly beneath the

  speeding wheels, and the blue loom of the mountains on their right hand

  merged gradually with the
lighter fiercer blue of the sky. The

  transition to desert country was so gradual as to lull the unobservant

  traveller.

  The intervals between the flat-topped acacia trees became greater and

  the trees themselves were more stunted, more twisted and spiky, as they

  progressed, until at last they ceased and the bushes of spino

  Cristi replaced them grey and low and viciously thor ned The earth was

  parched and crumbled, dotted with clumps of camel grass and the horizon

  was unbroken, enclosing them entirely. The land itself was so flat and

  featureless that it gave the illusion of being saucer-shaped, as though

  the rim of the land rose slightly to meet the sky.

  Through this wilderness, the road was slashed like the claw mark of a

  predator into the fleshy red soil. The tracks were so deeply rutted

  that the middle hump constantly brushed the chassis of the

  Rolls, and a mist of fine red dust stood in the heated air long after

  the column had passed.

  The Colonel was bored and uncomfortable. It was becoming increasingly

  clear, even to the Count, that the wilderness harboured no hostile

  horde, and his courage and impatience returned.

  "Drive to the head of the column," he instructed Giuseppe, and the

  Rolls pulled out and sped past the leading trucks, the Count bestowing

  a cheery salute on Castelani as he left him glowering and muttering

  behind him.

  When Castelani caught up with him again, two hours later, the

  Count was standing on the burnished bonnet of the Rolls staring through

  his binoculars at the horizon and doing an excited little dance while

  he urged Gino to make haste in unpacking the special Mantilicher 9.3

  men sporting rifle from its leather case. The weapon was of seasoned

  walnut, butt and stock, and the blued steel was inlaid with

  twenty-four-carat gold hunting scenes of the chase boar and stag,

  huntsmen on horseback and hounds in full cry. It was a masterpiece of

  the gunsmith's art.

  Without lowering the binoculars, he gave orders to Castelani to erect

  the radio aerial and send a message of good cheer and enthusiasm to

  General De Bono, to report the magnificent progress made by the

  battalion to date and assure him that they would soon command all the

  approaches to the Sardi Gorge. The Major should also put the column

  into laager and set up the ice machine while the Colonel undertook a

  reconnaissance patrol in the direction in which he was now staring so