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
