Part 6 (2/2)

Neither of thehed and shuddered voluptuously as she felt his hands, sht cotton blouse His touch, like the wind, was softly caressing

Through their thin clothing she could feel the warainst her, feel his chest surge and subside to the urgency of his breathing

She turned sloithin the circle of his ar his body with a forward thrust of her hips The taste of his mouth and the musky male smell of his body hastened her own arousal

It took all her determination to tear her lips loose from his, and to draay from his embrace She crossed quickly to where her blankets lay and picked theain between the dark supine fororius, and only when she rolled herself into their coarse folds and lay upon her back trying to control her ragged breathing was she aware that Jake Barton ake

His eyes were closed and his breathing was deep and even, but she kneith complete certainty that he ake

eneral Emilio De Bono stood at theof his office and looked across the squalid roofs of the town of Ashlands It looked like the backbone of a dragon, he thought, and suppressed a shudder

The General was seventy years of age, so he recalled vividly the last Italian army that had ventured into that mountain fastness The name Adoas a dark blot on the history of Italian arms, and after forty years, that terrible bloody defeat of a ed

Now destiny had chosen hier and Emilio De Bono was not certain that the role suited hiht without anybody getting hurt The General would go to great lengths to avoid inflicting pain or even discoht be distasteful to the recipient were avoided Operations that ht place anybody in jeopardy were frowned upon severely by the coest such extravagances

The General was at heart a diplo faces, so he shtly, wizened little goat, with the pointed white beard that gave him the nickname of ”Little Beard' And he addressed his officers as ”Caro', and his men as ”Bambino' He just wanted to be loved So he s now Thishe had received froned Benito Mussolini The wording had been evenof Italy wishes, and I, Benito Mussolini, Minister of the armed forces, order that-” Suddenly he struck himself a blow on his medal-bedecked chest which startled Captain Crespi, his aide-decamp

”They do not understand,” cried De Bono bitterly ”It is all very beautiful to sit in Roe haste To cry ”Strike!” But they do not see the picture as we do, who stand here looking across the Mareb River at the swar multitudes of the enemy” The Captain came to the General's side and he also stared out of theThe building that housed the expeditionary army headquarters in Asmara was double storied and the General's office on the top floor co view to the foot of themultitudes were not readily apparent The land was a vast eht Air reconnaissance in depth had descried no concentrations of Ethiopian troops, and reliable intelligence reported that the Emperor Baile Selassie had ordered that none of his rudimentary military units approach the border as close as fifty kilo the Italians an excuse to march

”They do not understand that I must consolidate my position here in Eritrea That I must have a firm base and supply train,” cried De Bono pitifully For over a year he had been consolidating his position and asse his supplies

The crude little harbour of Massahich once had lazily served the needs of an occasional tramp steamer or one of the little japanese salt-traders, had been reconstructed coreat wharves bustled with steam cranes, and busy locomotives shuttled the incredible array of warlike stores that poured ashore by the thousands of tons a day for month after month The Suez Canal remained open to the transports of the Italian adventure, and a constant streao that the League of Nations had declared on the importation of military materials into Eastern Africa

Up to the present time, over three million tons of stores had been landed, and this did not include the five thousand vehicles of war troop transports, armoured cars, tanks and aircraft that had come ashore To distribute this vast assembly of vehicles and stores, a road syste into the interior, a systenificent as to recall that of the Caesars of ancient Ro his aide ”They urge me to untimely endeavour They do not seem to realize that my ”

force is insufficient” The force which the General lareatest and most powerful army ever assembled on the African continent He commanded three hundred and sixty thousand men, armed with the most sophisticated tools of destruction the world had yet devised froined h explosive and poison gas a range of nine hundred miles, to the most modern armoured cars and heavily ar units of heavy artillery

This great asse the Mareb River It was ular army formations with their wide-brimmed tropical helh boots and cross-straps, their deaths head and thunderbolt badges and their glittering daggers, the regular colonial units of black Somalis and Eritreans in their tall tasselled red fezes and baggy shi+rts, their gaily coloured regis above bare feet Lastly, the irregular volunteers or ban da ere a group of desert bandits and cut-throat cattle thieves attracted by the possibility of war in the way that the taint of blood gathers sharks

De Bono knew but did not ponder the fact that nearly seventy years previously, the British General Napier hadand defeating the entire Ethiopian ar the British prisoners held there, before retiring in good order

Such heroics were outside the realination

”Caro”

”The General placed an arold, braided shoulders of his aide ”We must compose a reply to the Duce He must be made to realize my difficulties” He patted the shoulder affectionately and his face lightened once

”My dear and respected leader, please be assured of lorious fatherland of Italy” The Captain hastened to take up a e pad and scribble industriously ”Be assured also that I never cease to toil by night and by day towards--” It took almost two hours of creative effort before the General was satisfied with his flowery and ra refusal to carry out his orders

”Now,” he ceased his pacing and sh we are not yet ready for an advance in force, it will serve to placate Il Duce if we initiate the opening phases of the southern offensive”

The General's plans for the invasion, when it was finally put in hand, had been laid with as ponderous regard to detail as his earlier preparations Historical necessity dictated that the main attack should be centred on Adowa

Already a raved with the words ”The dead of Adowa avenged with the date left open, lay a attack However, the plan called for a secc, farther south through one of the very few gateways to the central highlands, This was the Sardi Gorge A narrow opening that was riven up fro like an axe-stroke the precipitous h which an arht reach the plateau that reared seven thousand feet above the desert

The first phase of this plan entailed the seizure of the approaches to the Sardi Gorge and particularly important 1: in this dry and scalded desert would be the water supplies of the attacking are-scale map, of Eastern Africa which covered one wall, and he picked up the ivory pointer to touch an isolated spot in the emptiness below the mountains

”The Wells of Chaldi, he read the name aloud ”Whom shall we send?” The Captain looked up from his pad, and observed how the spot was surrounded by the forbidding yellow of the desert

He had been in Africa long enough to knohat that meant, and there was only one person who he would ere there

”Belli,” he said

”Ah,” said the General ”Count Aldo Belli the fire eater ”The clown, ”said the Captain

”Come, caro,” the General admonished his aide uished diplomat, he was for three years ambassador to the court of St James in London His family is old and noble and very very rich”

”He is a blow-hard,”

said the Captain stubbornly, and the General sighed

”He is a personal friend of Benito Mussolini II Duce is a constant guest at his castle He has great political power-”

”He would be well out of harm's way at this desolate spot,” said the Captain, and the General sighed again

”Perhaps you are correct, caro Send for the good Count if you please” Captain Crespi stood on the steps of the headquarters building, beneath the portico with its imitationa heroic band of heavilythe earth, harvesting the corn, and generally building an ee Rolls-Royce open tourer buhts glared like monstrously startled eyes, and its burnished sky-blue paintas dulled by a light flouring of pale dust The purchase price of this vehicle would have consumed five years of his service pay, which accounted for much of the Captain's sourness

Count Aldo Belli, as one of the nation's great landowners and ast the five most wealthy men in Italy, did not rely on the army for his transportation The Rolls had been adapted and designed to his personal specifications by the raceful halt beneath the portico, the k Captain noticed the Count's personal arolden wolf supporting a shi+eld with a quartered device of scarlet and silver The legend unfurled beneath it read, ”Courage arms me” As the car stopped, a small wiry sun-blackened little eant leaped from the seat be-side the driver and dropped on one knee in the roadith a bulky caure in the wide rear seat of the Rolls should descend

Count Aldo Belli adjusted his black beret carefully, sucked in his belly and rose to his feet as the driver scurried around to hold open the door The Count s white teeth and powerful charis lashes of a lady of fashi+on, his skin was lightly tanned to a golden olive and the lustrous curls of his hair that escaped froh he was alrey strand adulterated that splendid erated, so he seemed to tower God-like above the hly polished cross-straps glittered across his chest as did the silver deaths head cap badges The short regier on his hip set with sn, and the ivory-handled revolver had been hand-htly to subdue a waistline that was showing signs of rebellion

The Count paused and glanced down at the little sergeant

”Yes, Gino?”he asked

”Good, my Count just a little up with the chin” The Count's chin caused the tendency to duplicate itself like the ripples on a pond The Count threw up his chin sternly, rather like 11 Duce, and the gesture ironed out the jowls below

”Bellissimo,” cried Gino, and tripped the shutter The Count stepped down fro leather of his high boots gave like the bellows of a concertina above his instep as he loved left hand into the belt above his dagger as he flung his right arm up and outwards in the Fascist salute

”The General awaits you, Colonel,”Crespi greeted him