Authors: Dennis Wheatley,Tony Morris
“This,” he said solemnly, “is the sealed warrant of Ibn' Saud, King of Arabia. The possession of it places myself and my friends above all suspicion. We are people of considerable importance.”
With a far more respectful expression on his face Ato Wolde Rougis took the piece of vellum and pretended to read the characters, although it was obvious that he did not understand them. It was the red ribbon and the fine, tin seal which impressed his native mind and made him feel that it might be dangerous to blackmail such people in case, later, they did him some injury.
After a moment he said: “Why did you not show me this at once? It is all in order. I will not delay you further.” But he did not offer to give back the money he had taken.
A third man now appeared. They did not catch his name but noticed that he did not rejoice in the title of
Ato
, or Mr. He had the plane run into a hangar and had to be given ten thalers for his trouble. Then, it seemed, they were free to leave the aerodrome.
Henrick Heidenstam took them over to a rickety car with a black chauffeur and, while the airport police kept back the sullen-looking mob, they drove off.
Three minutes later the car stopped outside a petrol station. Heidenstam smiled ruefully.
“I'm awfully sorry,” he said. “This fellow's evidently run out of juice and you'll have to buy some if you want to go any further. This is a government car, you see, and one of their methods of getting petrol is to play this game on strangers. I'd buy some myself but I haven't been paid for months so I'm pretty hard up at the moment.”
“Please don't worryâit's not your show.” Christopher assured the Swede; but the man at the petrol station refused to supply him with less than a
tonika
of four-and-a-half gallons which cost another thirteen thalers, roughly one pound, and he was angered by this further imposition.
“What a racket,” he exclaimed as they drove on. “Is all Addis Ababa as full of grafters as that airport?”
Heidenstam shrugged philosophically. “I'm afraid you'll find it so. Abyssinia's a lousy country. With the exception of the Emperor, who is a really wonderful little man, and about a dozen of his Europeanised helpers, there's hardly a native in the place one can respect. They have all the cunning and the greed of orientals but none of the Arabs' love of colour and gaiety and good living. It may be their particular brand of Christianity that gets them down. I don't know; anyhow all they seem to get from it is their morbid killjoy ways. It doesn't prevent them getting drunk or being unbelievably cruel and vicious. They're lazy tooâlazy as hogs. You can never get anything done unless you go to the Emperor. Even the highest government officials constantly put you off with
Ishe-naga
which means, âall right, but to-morrow,' or actually, âcome next week and I'll put you off again.'”
They were driving through well-wooded country with fields, rough gardens, and white, one-storied buildings dotted here and there between the patches of blue-gum trees.
“When shall we reach the city?” Valerie asked.
“We're in it now,” Heidenstam replied. “Addis Ababa is a young town. It was started only fifty years ago because the wife of the old Emperor Menelik came and built a palace here. The Emperor followed her and it has grown until its 130,000 inhabitants have spread out over as big an area as Paris.”
The white-walled, zinc-roofed houses became a little more frequent as they entered the European quarter. They pulled up outside a big building on a hill and Heidestam said: “This is the Hotel Imperial. There are others, but it's supposed to be the best, and you'll not
be uncomfortable here. Also, you will be quite safe, so I shall leave you now. One of the Emperor's people will visit you this afternoon and tell you what you may or may not do during your stay. Haile Selassie is most anxious that all Europeans should be protected from any unpleasantness and, even though he's at the front now, his partisans continue to superintend visitors' arrangements personally in his absence.”
They thanked the Swedish airman, who drove away with a cheerful wave of his hand. Lovelace then interviewed the Greek hotel proprietor. The results were far more satisfactory than they had hoped. Three good bedrooms, each with a private bath, were placed at their disposal, and it was promised that a sitting-room on the first floor should be reserved for their exclusive use.
Having viewed the rooms and parked their few belongings, they came downstairs again. Now that the excitement of their flight was over they felt chilly and depressed. Although it was still only mid-morning, a drink seemed the obvious remedy.
A square-faced, grey-moustached man and a redheaded youth were the only occupants of the bar. After ordering drinks Lovelace got into conversation with them. The elder was a Dutchman representing a firm of coffee merchants; the younger a Belgian adventurer who had come out hoping to secure a command in the Abyssinian Army when the regular officers loaned by his Government were officially recalled on the outbreak of war. As he possessed exceptional linguistic attainments, he had managed to get a job as interpreter at the Consular Court where justice was dispensed among alien nationals.
They soon informed the newcomers why it had been so easy to secure accommodation. From September to Christmas the hotel had been crammed from basement to attic with foreign correspondents, armament men, and every sort of shady white who hoped for good fishing in
the troubled waters. But the armament people could not find anyone with the cash to buy their goods; the Press-men discovered that even the Abyssinian War Office knew nothing of what was going on at the front, and the job-seekers had found the inborn suspicion of the Abyssinians concerning the honesty of all whites too deeply rooted to be overcome. After three or four months of wasted time and money the editors had recalled their journalists, the munition pedlars had packed their samples, and the funds of most of the others had run out. The place was now two-thirds empty.
When Valerie remarked how surprising it was to find that every room in the hotel had a bath, they both laughed.
“It happens to be built next to a hot spring,” the Belgian said. “It's the only place in Addis of its kind. Even the people in the legations come here for a bath once or twice a week. But the food is filthy and the prices extortionate. You would do better at the
Deutches Haus
.”
Christopher asked if they had run across an elderly Armenian named Paxito Zarrif, during the last fortnight, but they shook their heads. Neither of them had even heard of him.
Lovelace inquired their opinion of the outcome of the war. They both began to talk at once, but the Belgian was more fluent and won the day. “In less than a week the rains will come. The Italians will be bogged; their communications will be cut, their leading troops will be massacred piecemeal and there will be a stalemate for six months. After that they will advance again, but the Emperor will have had time to reorganise his forces and secure fresh supplies of munitions. The Abyssinians all believe that the League will intervene before then, though, and that Britain will come in on their side. Anyhow, my job's safe for another year, at least.”
“How about air-raids? Aren't the Italians making things pretty unpleasant here?”
The young man shook his fiery red head. “There was a great scare at first, but the Italian planes never seem to do much except reconnoitre. They bombed Harar and Dessye some time back, but only as a sort of demonstration, I imagine. They killed a few civilians, but they didn't do much damage. All sorts of nonsense has been written in the Press about their deliberate destruction of hospitals, and so on. That has occurred in isolated cases, but it's not deliberate. The red cross used to be the sign of a brothel in Abyssinia. It still is outside the principal towns. Directly the blacks learned that Europeans regarded it as immune from attack, they painted it on everything. You'll see thousands of red crosses plastered all over Addis.”
Valerie shivered in her light, tropical clothes. Lovelace noticed it and said: “We need some more suitable kit. There's plenty of time before lunch. We'd better go out and buy it.”
“Mohamedally,” said the Dutchman. “That is the place for you to go. Anyone will tell you where to find it. Their store is the only one worth while in Addis, and they have branches all over the country.”
Leaving their new friends lolling in the bar, as though time had no significance, they set off on foot to do their shopping.
It was a bright, sunny day, but the temperature seemed almost arctic after the stifling heat of Assab and Jibuti. As they trudged up the steep gradients they found themselves not only cold but oppressed and breathless.
“We should have taken a taxi,” Lovelace said. “I'd forgotten that Europeans never walk more than a few hundred yards here. This place is 8,000 feet above sea-level, and that means a big strain on the heart.”
They found Addis Ababa, or rather the small scattered European quarter, to be a place of staggering contrasts. Three-story, stone blocks rose, here and there, among a jumble of tin-roofed, brick bungalows and mud-walled huts thatched with straw. In the irregular open space
that formed its centre delicatessen shops were selling luxury tinned foods, such as caviare and asparagus, imported from Europe, while before their doorsteps native women squatted, displaying for sale mouldy-looking fruit and vegetables, miserable little heaps of parched corn, and handfuls of red peppers.
There were two cinemas, two indifferent-looking cafés, the
Perroquet
and the
La Secret
. Khaki-clad, white-topee'd policemen at the junctions of the roads were laying about them with heavy, hippopotamus-hide whipsâthe only method, apparently, of driving the pedestrian population out of the way of the traffic, which was mostly composed of smart taxis driven with reckless speed by fuzzy-headed Abyssinians.
Mohamedally's store provided them with most of their requirements, all at fantastically expensive prices, but Christopher paid without a murmur. He was too cold and too worried about the necessity of finding Zarrif, now that they were at last in Addis, to argue.
He questioned the turbaned Indian who attended to them, and the policemen in the streets, without result. Lovelace took him by the elbow.
“Look here,” he said, “you lost the ether pistol with which you meant to kill him when we were taken by the Danakils. We'll have to use ordinary automatics, and we must get another brace of those before we can do anything; even if we can find out where he's got to.”
Christopher agreed, and they walked over to an oil-shop which displayed for sale a most extraordinary collection of weapons: scimitars that had possibly been used to lop off the limbs of Crusaders; poisoned spears such as the Mahdi carried when they surrounded General Gordon in Khartoum; ancient arquebuses which had been new when Cardinal Richelieu was beseiging La Rochelle; long-barrelled, beautifully-inlaid pieces from Arabia; wide-mouthed blunderbusses for firing handfuls of old nails; tenth-hand rifles made for a dozen wars of
the last century, and, quite incongruously among these museum exhibits, a few modern automatics.
For a quarter of an hour they stood examining the goods among drums of paint and turpentine. Lovelace came away with a heavy, blue-barrelled Mauser, Christopher with an ultra-modern, snub-nosed, American automatic, Valerie with a small but handy Browning, and each had acquired as much ammunition for their weapons as they could carry without inconvenience.
Heavy fatigue still upon them, they carried their numerous parcels to a taxi and drove back to the hotel, where they changed into their new, ill-fitting, but warmer clothes.
At lunch they were given mutton, and Valerie commented upon it, as she had hardly tasted meat since they left Alexandria.
“I am glad that Madam is pleased,” said the Eurasian head waiter brightly. “We have mutton every day.”
“And nothing else,” added Lovelace bitterly. “I remember that when I stayed in Addis for the Emperor's coronation.”
They had coffee upstairs in their private sitting-room. Christopher returned at once to the necessity for finding Zarrif.
“Well, we're here at last,” he said. “But d'you realise it's the 28th? We've only got two clear days left to work in. We've got to act quickly now or it'll be too late. Somehow we've got to run Zarrif to earth and fix him once for all. If we don't, the concession will go through, and you both know what that means.”
“How about trying the United States Legation?” Lovelace suggested thoughtfully. “They must have a big staff here, and somebody there may be able to put us on to him.”
“Splendid!” Christopher's dark eyes lit up with their old fanatic gleam. He turned to the door. “I'll go down and call them up now.”
It was a long time before Christopher returned. He
was breathless and paler than ever from having run upstairs, but his handsome young face was alight with excitement.
“We're in luck,” he panted. “Rudy Connolly is one of the secretaries at the Legation. He's a friend of mine. He's asked us out there to dine this evening. In the meantime he'll pump all his colleagues for us. One of them is certain to know where Zarrif's staying. Men like that can't hide themselves in a small place like this.”
Sitting down, he put his hand up to his heavily pounding heart, and went on jerkily: “God! the telephone service hereâyou'd never believe it. They call the operator by name and have to ask after the health of his wife and family before he'll even consent to give you the first wrong number.”
Lovelace grinned. “I know. It's a ragtime country, isn't it? If I were you, though, I'd take it easy. The height here plays the very devil with Europeans. Don't exert yourself more than you absolutely have to, and do everything you've got to do as slowly as you can. If you're feeling dicky, why not have a lie-down on your bed?”