which makes travel most inconvenient I shall send one of my officers.
A Captain of tanks, the uniform is truly splendid.'
'No. 'The agent shook his head.
'I have a Major a man of great presence.'
'The General expressly instructed that you should lead the delegation.
If you doubt this,
your radio operator could establish immediate contact with Asmara.'
The
Count sighed, opened his mouth, closed it again, and then regretfully
abandoned his vow to remain within the perimeter of Chaldi camp for the
duration of the campaign.
'Very well,' he conceded. 'We will leave at sundown.' The Count was
not about to plunge recklessly into danger again. The convoy which
left Chaldi that evening in the fiery afterglow of the sunset was led
by two CV.3 cavalry tanks, then followed four truck-loads of
infantry,
and behind them the remaining two tanks made up a formidable rear
guard.
The Rolls was sandwiched neatly in the centre of this column. The
political agent sat on the seat beside the Count, with his feet firmly
on the heavy wooden case on the floorboards. The guide that the agent
had produced from the fuselage of the Caproni was a thin, very dark
Galla, with one opaque eyeball of blue jelly caused by tropical
ophthalmia which gave him a particularly villainous cast of features.
He was dressed in a once-white sham ma that was now almost black with
filth, and he smelled like a goat that had recently fought a polecat.
The Count took one whiff of him and clapped his perfumed handkerchief
to his nose.
'Tell the man he is to ride in the leading tank with the
Captain,' and a malicious expression gleamed in his dark eyes as he
turned to the Captain of tanks. 'In the tank, do you hear? On the
seat beside you in the turret.' They drove without lights, jolting
slowly across the moon-silver plains under the dark wall of the
mountains.
There was a single horseman waiting for them at the rendezvous, a dark
shape in the darker shadows of a massive camel-thorn. The agent spoke
with him in Amharic and then turned back to the Count.
'The Ras suspects treachery. We are to leave the escort here and go on
alone with this man.'
'No,' cried the Count. 'No! No! I refuse - I simply refuse.' It
took almost ten minutes of coaxing, and the repeated mention of General
Badoglio's name, to change the Count's stance. Miserably, the Count
climbed back into the Rolls, and Gino looked sadly at him from the
front seat as the unescorted, terribly vulnerable car moved out into
the moonlight, following the dark wild horseman on his shaggy pony.
In a rocky valley that cut into the towering bulk of the mountains,
they had to abandon the Rolls and complete the journey on foot. Gino
and Giuseppe carrying the wooden case between them, the
Count with a drawn pistol in his hand, they staggered on up the
treacherous slope of rocks and scree.
