‘The wine, Bomberg,’ he said quietly.
Bomberg produced a bottle of German hock, which Erwin pushed towards Morton.
‘For the singers, tenente. Convey my thanks to them. An excellent entertainment. And now, if you will forgive us, we must return to the business of war. We have to go into Zuq. A conference with General Bergonza and the Italian staff.’ He laughed. ‘Our barrier to Cairo.’
It seemed to be a gesture of dismissal. Morton clicked his heels, saluted and, clutching the bottle of wine, stalked to the Humber. The self-important bastard, he thought. Treating a bloody Italian like that! As if they were an inferior race! By the time he tossed the bottle on to the seat and climbed behind the wheel, Morton might almost have been an Italian.
Bomberg, who had been removing all the implements of the picnic one by one, was already placing easels and the last of the painting equipment in Erwin’s Mercedes. As the Germans climbed in behind him, Morton watched the car swing round and head north towards Zuq, then he climbed into the Humber and headed towards the desert.
He was so preoccupied with his indignation he didn’t notice that Erwin’s Mercedes had stopped. Erwin was sitting twisted round in his seat, frowning as he stared back at the cloud of dust thrown up by the Humber.
‘I think that young man should be investigated, Stracka,’ he was saying slowly. ‘His singer, too. I suspect they’re not quite all they seem. I thought there was something a little strange when we first met them, you remember.’ He paused, thinking. ‘And that unit of theirs has grown incredibly swiftly, Stracka. Had you noticed?’
‘I had, Herr General,’ Stracka agreed. ‘It puzzled me, too. But, after all, the Italians are re-equipping for their attack.’
‘Indeed. But those songs.’ Erwin was speaking half to himself. ‘My English is not good but that last one contained English words, I think. And I suspect I’ve heard the one before. At Dunkirk, when the British prisoners were filing past us. They were singing it then. Defiantly. A whole group of them. It was very impressive. It has a strong melody – almost Germanic in strength – the Führer would approve of it. It remained in my mind a long time. I think we should look into them.’
‘This is an Italian military district, Herr General.’
‘It’s a German war, Stracka. However, have a word with their parent unit and see if they have also noticed anything.’
Unaware that things were closing in on them, Morton picked up Clegg and Jones the Song at dusk.
Dudgeon was in Clegg’s very bearing. ‘He talked through the whole bloody programme!’ he said in his raspy comedian’s voice. ‘It was worse than when the show died on us in Wigan and they all got up and walked out. It makes an old pro like me feel like the missing piece of a jigsaw.’
They climbed into the car and sat stiffly in the rear seat, Clegg muttering to himself about ingratitude, Jones uttering shrill little cries of indignation. Then Jones giggled. ‘In the Welsh, man,’ he chortled. ‘An’ he never noticed.’
It brought Clegg round a little and Morton listened to their chatter, their delight swamping his anger, and it was only as they reached the end of the wadi that he became aware that a vehicle had appeared in his rear mirror. Almost unconsciously, it registered in his mind as a British three-ton Chevrolet. A Chevrolet, he thought. A Chevrolet? Here? Then, out of the corners of his eyes, he saw Chevrolets on either side of him. They had no windscreens, doors or cabs, and carried spare wheels, camouflage nets and sand channels. They also seemed remarkably dusty and were overfull of dirty, bearded men in shorts, shirts and sandals, bristling with guns. With alarm, he realized that the guns were all pointing at him and stopped the Humber in a hurry. Immediately, the trucks on either side stopped, too. The first truck stopped behind him and a fourth, coming up at full speed from nowhere, swung round and slammed to a stop across his front, barring his path. At once men with long matted hair appeared alongside, gesturing with their weapons.
‘Mani in alto! Stick ’em up, you Italian bastards!’ The speaker was a man with bleached hair and eyebrows and the three stripes of a sergeant.
Clegg glared, still a little tipsy and aggressive. ‘Who’re you calling an Italian bastard?’ he demanded.
‘I said, “Stick ’em up—”’ The sergeant stopped dead. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said, “Who’re you calling an Italian bastard?”’
‘Aren’t you an Italian bastard?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you fucking look like one. Who are you?’
‘Come to that, who’re you?’
‘Who do we look like?’
‘The Long Range Desert Group.’
‘That’s who we are.’
A young officer with a curly yellow beard, eyeballs seared by the sun, wearing a red neckerchief and a peaked hat that looked as if it had been run over by a tank, strolled up. He seemed to be loaded down with weapons but his right hand wielded nothing more dangerous than a blue horsehair fly whisk.
‘What’s the trouble, Tom?’ he asked the sergeant. ‘Why aren’t these chaps being stripped? We want their uniforms – undamaged and unstained by blood – so why haven’t you got on with it?’
The sergeant swung round. ‘Because they’re not fucking Italians, sir.’
The officer stared at Morton and the others. ‘They’re not?’ He sounded as if he’d discovered they’d all got two heads.
‘No, sir.’
‘Then what the hell are they doing in Italian uniform?’ The sergeant looked at Morton. ‘What the hell are you doing in Italian uniform, the officer wants to know.’
‘We’re doing the same as you’re doing,’ Morton said coolly. ‘Operating behind the enemy lines.’
The officer and the sergeant stared at each other, then the officer turned to Morton. ‘Who are you? SAS men? Or one of our patrols we don’t know about?’
‘Neither,’ Morton said. ‘We’re the Desert Ratbags.’
‘The Desert Who?’
‘We’re a concert party. We got cut off. We’ve been