Harkaway's Sixth Column (17 page)

The place was full of Italians. Ruffo di Peri had set up his headquarters and mess in a house near the marketplace, a large building which had once been the residence of a District Commissioner, while the house where he slept was half a mile away on the slopes in an area of shady gum trees. Yussuf, like Abdillahi completely Harkaway’s man since their victory over Forsci’s convoy, made a splendid spy with his crippled foot, sitting for hours at a time with a begging bowl, watching the Italians come and go.

Because it was impossible for the Italians to tell which Somalis were actively assisting their enemies and which were not, he was undisturbed and Harkaway was even able to join him. Disguised with a blanket and boot blacking, he sat watching in the dusk with the old man, and when Yussuf waved Harkaway waved with him.

It didn’t take long to work out a scheme.

‘We’ve got to ambush him,’ Harkaway said. ‘He’s driven by a chauffeur between his living quarters and the mess, in a Lancia with a flag on the bonnet. Unfortunately, there are two other Lancias in Gura and we’ve got to make sure we get the right one. Somebody’s got to watch the mess and signal when he leaves.’

‘I’ll watch,’ Danny said. ‘They’ll never suspect a woman.’

Tully eyed her. ‘Somali women only wear a tobe,’ he said. ‘And nothing else.’

‘Then I’ll wear a tobe and nothing else,’ she said spiritedly. ‘I’ll sell dates or maize. There are always women selling things. I’ll join them.’

‘It’s too bleddy risky.’ Grobelaar’s voice was concerned.

She turned on him quickly. ‘I’m the right shape. Tall and skinny.’

Grobelaar smiled his cobwebby smile. ‘Slim,’ he corrected.

She shrugged. ‘The same shape as Somali women. With a tobe and a headdress, they’d never know.’

Harkaway studied her, his eyes moving up and down her body. She longed for him to say she was brave, even like Grobelaar to admit she was slim. But all he did was nod and say it seemed possible.

That night they had a fillip to their spirits when the South African bombers appeared and began to knock hell out of Hargeisa. From the hills it was possible to watch the flashes beyond the skyline and hear the distant thuds. If nothing else, it convinced them they were right to move to the offensive.

By this time the plan had grown. Yussuf’s daughter had been roped in now and was prepared to place her herd of sheep and goats in the way of any attempt to rescue Di Peri after they’d captured him. As Danny, clad in a blanket and darkened with boot-blacking, took up her position with Yussuf near Di Peri’s headquarters, Harkaway and Gooch, with Grobelaar, who was the best driver, headed into Eil Dif to try on the Italian uniforms they had hidden.

It was quite clear that Commandante di Peri was not expecting trouble. Fetchingly under-clothed in her blanket, Danny reported that he spent the day at a desk that had been set up for him in his house, rested during the afternoon, then drove to the mess for dinner, after which he played bridge for two hours before returning to his quarters, which were guarded not only by askaris but by regular Italian soldiers. He usually sat in the front seat of the car alongside the driver and there was a tight security organization that sprang from his sound suspicion that he was in Sixth Column country. Sentries, it appeared, always checked his car before it was allowed to pass.

Where the road from the mess joined the road to Di Peri’s house the land began to rise to a steep slope which would slow the car, and Harkaway had worked it out that, because of the trees there, it was always deep in shadow, even if the moon happened to be out. Alongside was a deep drainage ditch. A red lantern had been made by wrapping red cloth round the glass and, dressed as Italian soldiers, Harkaway, Gooch and Grobelaar made their way into the town as darkness fell and took up their positions in the ditch. Among the trees opposite, Tully waited with Abdillahi and the best of their Habr Odessi and Harari warriors to hold back any traffic that turned up unexpectedly, while Yussuf s daughter squatted near her sheep and goats, ready to drive them across the path of any approaching vehicles that came too close.

There were a few false alarms. A car, two lorries and a motorcycle and sidecar passed, but there was no indication from Danny waiting higher up the road that any of them contained Di Peri.

‘She’s slipped up,’ Gooch muttered. ‘The bastard’s home and in bed by now.’

‘Wait!’

Gooch continued to grumble but ten minutes later they saw the quick flash of a torch in the darkness and as they scrambled from the ditch, a dark figure appeared alongside them. It was Yussuf.

‘He comes, effendi,’ he whispered.

The lights of Di Peri’s car appeared, moving down the slope, then, as it paused to turn towards his quarters, Harkaway stepped forward, swinging the red lantern.

‘Alto Ià!’

The car slowed to a stop. Harkaway could see two dark figures in the front of the vehicle.

‘E
questa la macchina del Commandante di Peri?’
He had got the correct words from Danny and had practised them half the afternoon.

‘Si.’ The answer came briskly. ‘
E il Commandante di Peri en persona.’

Reaching out, Gooch yanked at the handle of the driver’s door. Suspecting something was wrong, the chauffeur began to reach for a weapon and Gooch hit him hard at the side of the head with the butt of his pistol. While Di Peri’s attention was caught by what was happening at the driver’s side, Harkaway yanked the other door open and, grabbing the Italian brigadier by the collar, yanked him back in his seat and placed the muzzle of his revolver against his temple.

‘In the back, Goochy,’ he snapped.

As Grobelaar dragged the unconscious driver into the ditch, Gooch scrambled into the rear seat to place his pistol at the base of Di Peri’s skull while Harkaway snatched the Italian’s pistol from his belt and fell into the rear of the car beside him.

‘Okay,’ he said as Grobelaar slipped into the driver’s seat. ‘Let’s go!’

As the vehicle began to move forward, they saw Tully’s group quietly melting away into the shadows.

Not far ahead there was a traffic control point. Coming towards them from the barrier where it had just been halted was a lorry, but it passed without stopping and the man who stepped into the road at the control point shone a torch on to the brigadier’s car to pick out the pennant flying on the bonnet. For a second they held their breath as he paused and Gooch jammed the muzzle of the pistol hard against the base of Di Peri’s skull. But the man with the torch seemed satisfied and stepped back to wave them on.

‘There’s another traffic point on the edge of the town,’ Harkaway said. ‘Keep the bastard quiet, Goochy.’

Di Peri wasn’t arguing, however, and sat quietly, his hands in his lap, his mouth tight.

Wondering if the chauffeur would have recovered sufficiently to raise the alarm or whether the control point they’d just passed might have suspected something and telephoned ahead, they approached the second traffic point warily, Harkaway ready to start shooting. But there was no sign of alarm and, after a brief pause, the red lantern which had appeared was whipped away and the car waved on. As they reached the outskirts of the town, Harkaway grinned, his teeth showing in the light from the dashboard.

‘Okay, Kom-Kom,’ he said. ‘Turn up the wick.’

A mile outside the town, Grobelaar swung off the road into the flat scrubland, circling until he reached the road at the other side of the huddle of buildings. Bumping back on to the asphalt, they roared for half an hour towards Eil Dif, seeing nothing but occasional camels or herds of sheep and goats beyond the fringes of the road. Once they saw the glowing eyes of a hyena and once a small dik-dik, green-grey in the light, leaping from a thorn bush to disappear among the scrub.

Eil Dif was silent as they thundered through. They had informed no one there apart from Yussuf and his daughter, not even Chief Abduruman, so they could give nothing away if the Italians appeared. At the turn-off into the hills, a group of young warriors was waiting for them, armed with rifles. As Di Peri was pushed out of the car, they uttered sharp yells of pleasure.

‘Away you go, Goochy,’ Harkaway said briskly. ‘Get him up into the hills. Let him know that if he causes trouble, we’ll set the Boys on him.’

‘He has no need to,’ Di Peri said calmly in English. ‘I understand your language perfectly.’

‘Well done,
Commandante
,’ Harkaway said cheerfully. ‘Right, Goochy. Get going, I’ll watch your rear.’

As Gooch, the Italian brigadier and the young Somalis vanished into the darkness, Grobelaar drove the car on for another mile then, with his jack-knife, punctured the petrol tank. Taking his handkerchief from his pocket, he saturated it in petrol and, setting fire to it, tossed it into the pool soaking into the sand. The blast as it went up almost removed his eyebrows.

Recovering himself, he set off back down the road, trotting slowly, lathered with perspiration. Just before he reached the spot where he’d left Harkaway, he saw headlights approaching. Glancing back he saw the glow where the Lancia burned and, diving for the side of the road, hid among the rocks. A moment later a lorry-load of men hurtled past. He watched the lights disappear into the darkness then turned off into the hills and began to climb.

Tully arrived at daylight, his group carrying the Bren.

Di Peri was sitting gloomily among the rocks, his breeches ending in stockinged feet because Harkaway had taken his boots for his own use. Tully grinned at Harkaway. ‘So we got him,’ he said.

‘We got him,’ Harkaway said. ‘And just be careful what you say because he understands English.’

‘Probably sold ice cream in the Old Kent Road before the war,’ Tully observed. ‘It worked like a dream.’

‘Not yet,’ Harkaway pointed out. ‘Danny isn’t back yet.’

There was a long anxious wait, but as the sun was setting they saw Danny’s angular figure appear on the skyline and they all stood up to wait for her. She had managed to remove some of the blacking from her skin and it showed only in her ears and in the corners of her eyes.

Harkaway grinned and, as she ran down the slope, he flung his arms round her, swung her round, her sandalled feet in the air, and planted a smacking kiss on her lips. She stared at him as he released her and her hand went to her mouth. She was still staring at him as Tully, Gooch and Grobelaar came forward to insist on offering their own salutes.

‘Di Peri?’ Guidotti said. ‘Not Commandante Ruffo di Peri?’ Piccio nodded.

‘Are you telling me he’s been abducted?’

Piccio nodded again. ‘His car was stopped between his headquarters and the house where he lives,’ he said. ‘By men wearing Italian uniforms.’

So much, Guidotti thought, for Forsci’s big talk. Guidotti was a modest man and Forsci’s self-importance was always irritating. It almost made up for the bad news they’d received the previous night. South African troops had defeated the Italians on the Juba River well inside Italian Somaliland and were heading now at full speed towards Mogadiscio. With Libya and half Cyrenaica gone and the British probing forward into Eritrea and Ethiopia, Guidotti couldn’t see much help coming for Somaliland. Mogadiscio would undoubtedly fall and the South Africans would then turn north across the plain towards Jijiga to cut off everybody in British Somaliland who couldn’t slip away into Ethiopia.

Guidotti couldn’t see much future for himself and, without doubt, unless he was dead, his brother must also feature among the countless prisoners of war taken in the north.

The fear that it might all lead to reprisals by the natives against the Italians came again and he was determined not to permit atrocities in his area in retaliation. They would all now reap what had been sown by Graziani in Ethiopia. Following an attempt on his life, all the male members of the leading families had been shot or deported and now, according to the reports that reached Bidiyu, the Italians were beginning to fear Abyssinian vengeance. He had no wish for such a state to exist in his own area but he had a feeling it had already started because Di Peri’s second-in-command, convinced that the people of Eil Dif had been involved, had managed to find six of them, including the chief, with British-made Martinis and had shot the lot.

‘Abduruman?’ Harkaway said. ‘They shot him?’

‘Together,’ Yussuf replied, his voice harsh, ‘with five of our finest young men.’

‘Not your finest,’ Harkaway corrected brusquely.
‘They’re
in the hills with us.’

‘Boys then,’ Yussuf conceded. ‘But fine boys. On the threshold of manhood. Boys who would become shield carriers within months.’

‘What are you trying to tell me,’ Harkaway asked. ‘That you want your young men back? That you’re throwing your hand in?’

Yussuf s old eyes stared milkily at him. ‘We are Habr Odessi,’ he said. ‘We don’t retreat from our enemies at the first setback. When Mohammed bin Abdullah Hassan, whom your soldiers called the Mad Mullah, defied your armies in 1915, the Habr Odessi were among his supporters. But we now have no chief. Abduruman was a good man, but he was old and only carried a rifle because he was a chief. He couldn’t fight. He could barely walk. But we need leadership.’

‘Well, elect yourself a new chief.’

‘We have elected one.’

‘You?’

‘No, effendi.
You!’

Harkaway stared at Yussuf for a moment, then he gave his cold smile. ‘Chiefs have to have a herd of goats and sheep,’ he said. ‘They have to live here and have wives and children.’

‘You have lived here, effendi,’ Yussuf pointed out. ‘For many moons now. And you are a strong young man. A herd could be bought with the money you have taken from the Italians, and there is one who would be your wife. I know this, and Allah would grant you sons.’

The old man’s head inclined slightly towards Danny. Like the others, she had been listening but now she looked, startled, at Harkaway for his reaction. For a long time he was silent then he gave a bark of laughter and turned away.

‘You go and elect yourself somebody else, Yussuf,’ he said. ‘You, for instance. If I remember rightly, you rather fancied the job. But not me. I have things to do.’