For a second they stopped dead, facing each other, the light playing on their faces. Schwartzheiss grinned.
‘Guten Abend, tenente,’ he said, his teeth gleaming in the glow of the flames.
‘Buona sera, sergente,’ Morton replied.
‘On business, tenente?’
‘You, too, I see.’
Schwartzheiss nodded at the case Morton was carrying. ‘Two of mine for two of yours,’ he said.
They switched bottles quickly and Schwartzheiss’s teeth gleamed.
‘Gute Nacht, tenente.’
‘Buona notte, sergente. E buona fortuna.’
‘Das Glück. Good luck to you, too, tenente. Funny how you can get involved in this sort of thing and see so many people without recognizing a soul.’
Morton laughed. ‘Not a soul, sergeant. Not a soul.’
As Morton returned to the lorry, people were tossing blankets, bedding, tents, flags, anything they could get hold of into it from any salvaged pile that was handy. Coats, shirts, shorts, military plus-fours, socks, jerseys, scarves, caps, overcoats, boots – most of them originally British and, like the whisky, the beer and the cigarettes, the spoils of the disaster at Mechili. Belts, packs, ammunition pouches, bayonet scabbards, rifles laid down by their owners to make the fetching and carrying easier. Tins of food. Bottles of wine. Looted British rum.
The first lorryload had already disappeared, driven off by Caccia, when the panic began to subside. As some sort of order began to be brought into the affair, Rafferty decided to leave while it was safe. A squad of military police brought up by Bianchi’s successor were starting to search the Arabs but, with Morton standing on the running board shouting, ‘Aprire la strada! Make way, make way,’ nobody stopped them and they arrived back at their camp undetected and elated by their success.
Twisted by his lumbago, Dampier could only grind his teeth with frustration that he hadn’t had the pleasure of being there too, and tried to console himself with the thought that at least it had been his command which had done the work. When he saw what they’d acquired, however, he was aghast, thinking of investigations, enquiries, even courts martial – all conducted in Italian.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ he said. ‘We’re beginning to look like a heavy duty unit!’
Aware that, after British army parsimony, even he had been overcome by the excitement and the joy of robbing the enemy, Rafferty managed to look sheepish. ‘It was there,’ he explained.
‘So we had to steal it!’ Dampier was shocked. ‘Because it was up for grabs.’
‘You couldn’t just leave it,’ Morton said.
‘And we can’t give it back,’ Clegg pointed out. ‘We could mebbe bury some of it—’
‘Or flog it in Derna,’ Caccia suggested.
‘Or even,’ Rafferty suggested, ‘make it official. Properly issued, accounted and signed for.’
‘Italian army forms D3801 and C2947!’ Morton grinned.
Despite Dampier’s alarm, there was no point in not putting what they’d acquired to good use, so they started work at once. Working all night, they changed the signs and the paintwork on the lorry they’d acquired, filed off the engine number and stamped on a new one, unloaded tents, bedding, clothing, the generator and the oxyacetylene welding apparatus, and filled in – from Rafferty’s experience of stores and Morton’s knowledge of Italian procedure – the blank inventory forms they’d picked up from the bombed convoy the first night in Zuq. To complete the picture, all that was necessary was for Clutterbuck to add his version of Brigadier Olivaro’s signature, which, until they felt safe to move east, would make them officially part of the Italian North African army.
It was a satisfying feeling as they breakfasted off looted and re-looted British bacon, sausages and tea. As he pushed away his dixie, Clinch held out a packet of cigarettes to Jones the Song.
‘After all,’ he said, ‘what is loot? Anything that’s left lying around. Have a smoke. These are better than them bird shit and camel dung Indian Vs they issue us with. We got enough tents now to start a circus. Old Clutterbuck knew what he was doing.’ He stopped abruptly and sat up slowly. ‘Incidentally,’ he said slowly, ‘where is Clutterbuck?’
In the excitement nobody had noticed Clutterbuck was missing and, as the news flew round the camp, they stared at each other, edgy and concerned again.
‘He doesn’t speak much Italian,’ Morton pointed out. ‘Suppose they’ve arrested him.’
‘More likely hanged him,’ Dampier growled.
All the same, when Clutterbuck hadn’t turned up by lunchtime they began to grow nervous. But nobody else turned up either – neither the Italian service carabinieri nor the German feldpolizei – so that, while they made preparations for a quick departure just in case, they decided to risk it and wait a little longer.
During the afternoon, Clegg, boiling his spare socks in a dixie as he sat on a hump of sand on lookout, became aware of a truck heading towards him. It was an Italian Lancia and he recognized the driver at once.
‘It’s old Buttercluck,’ he grinned. ‘He made it after all.’
As Clutterbuck jumped down, he looked indignant. ‘Got copped,’ he explained. ‘Got arrested, din’t I? That bloody Sub-lieutenant Fanny. Caught me with a bottle in me fist.’
‘Did he ask who you were?’
‘Asked all sorts of things. I just acted daft.’
‘Did he recognize you?’
‘Naw, it was dark. But he got a couple of Libyan conscripts to guard me. Shoved me in a shed, the bastards did, and locked the door. Thought I’d had it. Only they forgot about the window. It opened from inside, and I nipped out at the back. I expect they’re still guardin’ the door.’ Clutterbuck’s grin reappeared. ‘’Alf the bloody dump’s disappeared.’
‘Old Scarlatti’ll cop it in the neck.’
‘Not ’im.’ Clutterbuck was full of contempt for Clegg’s naivety. ‘’E was at it as ’ard as the rest, shiftin’ what ’e could for ’is private use every time that Fanny feller turned his back. It’ll all be locked up now and he’ll probably even ’ave a sergeant o’ police ’e can trust to guard it. ’E’ll ’ave written it all off as “lost due to enemy action” by now, and what ’e can’t sell in town’ll go to civvies
