The Secret War

by Dennis Wheatley

  Everybody abandoned their food and ran out into the street. Six great, silver planes were sailing high above the town. They circled slowly, keeping perfect formation, divided, each turning in its own track, and then flew round again.

  A few anti-aircraft guns opened up and did a little ineffective shooting. The scene was enlivened by a small company of ragged warriors evidently on their way to the front. They had dyed their shamas a pinkish brown in the muddy streams of the mountains through which they had passed, so as not to provide such an easy target for the Italian snipers, and each carried a small sack containing enough grain and dried meat to last him a month. The sight of the planes seemed to drive them into a frenzy. They waved their long sabres round and round their heads, screamed all the things they would do to the Italians when they got them, foamed at the mouth, and those who had guns let off their ancient pieces.

  An officer on a bicycle dashed up to the leader of the rabble and began to expostulate angrily with him. As Yohannes informed his charges, the Emperor had given strict orders that ammunition was not to be wasted in such a senseless manner.

  No bombs fell. The Italians flew off again towards Dessye, evidently content with photographing any new concentration of troops which might be forming in the area of the city.

  “When shall we be able to see the Emperor?” Christopher asked when the meal was resumed. He liked the young Abyssinian; preferred him in many ways to the quick-witted, debonair Italian officers he had met at Assab, because he preferred simple to complex personalities and happened to be completely free of all colour prejudice, but they had not yet discovered where Zarrif was, and time was slipping by. Any excuse to break up this sight-seeing party must be utilised.

  “Ishe naga—ishe naga.” Yohannes shrugged, snapping his strong white teeth into a raw paprika, which flamed red among the dessert. “To-morrow—the day after. What does it matter now that he has returned? He will be very occupied for a little, but he forgets nothing and will send for you in due time. Let us sit for a while in the garden, then I will take you to see the broadcasting station and our beautiful prison.”

  The garden proved to be a stockaded quadrangle boasting a dozen fruit trees, but completely devoid of flowers or grass. It was, in fact, a chicken run with the unusual addition of a family of goats, one of which was tethered to the trunk of each tree.

  With the skinny fowls pecking the bare earth about their feet they lounged there, in faded deck chairs, for an hour. Yohannes kept up a happy monologue about the Emperor’s plans for civilising his people; the others, while appearing to give polite attention, were fretting to get away but quite unable to think of any plausible reason that they could give for their presence being instantly required elsewhere in Addis.

  In due course, still inwardly fuming, they were driven to see the broadcasting station. It was a fine building but quite deserted. Those treacherous Italians had built it, Yohannes explained, with a view to jamming the Abyssinian Government’s own station when the trouble came. Naturally they had to be dispossessed, but they had taken certain vital parts of the mechanism with them, so no one could use it, and the Abyssinians had to remain content with their own less powerful station.

  The prison, like many other hastily begun buildings in Addis, was still unfinished. It would be very fine and beautifully sanitary when it was done, no doubt, the visitors agreed. In the meantime, Yohannes declared angrily, all the workmen who were engaged upon it had had to go off to this wicked war.

  Valerie and Christopher were duly sympathetic, but Lovelace knew that the whole thing was a deliberate deception got up to pander to the sympathies of the League of Nations. Five years before he had managed to get into one of the real prisons, a courtyard surrounded with rows of cages where the wretched malefactors, often only imprisoned for debt, lived in an unbelievable state of filth and horror. Chained in pairs, or sometimes singly, with just enough loose chain to enable them to crawl out into the main courtyard, they were entirely dependent for food on what their relatives chose to bring, and were dying by the score of typhus. That the same thing was still going on he had little doubt, as Yohannes refused his request to take them to see some of the prisoners who would occupy these delightful modern premises when completed.

  At last they got back to the hotel, but still they could not shake off Blatta Ingida Yohannes. He proposed to dine with them and take them to see something of the night life of Addis later.

  While Lovelace and Valerie entertained the pleasant, but unwelcome, guest to drinks, Christopher telephoned to the American Legation.

  On his return he told Lovelace, in an aside, that Connolly had no definite news but that some white guests were believed to be staying in Ras Desoum’s palace. He was having the place watched and would report further late that evening or early the following morning. It seemed that there was nothing more they could do for the moment.

  Christopher engaged Blatta Ingida Yohannes for a few moments during which Lovelace was able to pass on the news to Valerie.

  “All right,” she said. “If we’ve got a respite in this hellish business, let’s enjoy ourselves. Our host’s a terribly nice little man in his way. After we’ve had dinner we’ll go round the town with him and try to forget what we’re here for.”

  Lovelace shook his head. “I don’t think you’ll like it. The films at the cinemas are six-reel melodramas, and the two bars are the sort of places I think you’d find it rather embarrassing to be in. The native quarter’s ruled out, anyway, as quite impossible for you to visit at any time.”

  “Did you see most of these places when you were here before?” she asked.

  “Yes. I went round with a few friends and I’ve rarely spent a more boring evening. The few French jazz dance-bars are more dreary than anything you could find in provincial England, and the native high spots are terrible. There’s nothing to drink except tetch, that sickly kind of honey wine we had for lunch, or talla, which tastes like bad beer; nothing to listen to except tuneless native music; and nothing to look at, as, from some strange prudery, the Abyssinian women remain sedate and clothed up to their necks even in these haunts of vice and squalor.”

  “In that case I’d much rather not go,” Valerie agreed. “We’ll wriggle out of it somehow.”

  Valerie now occupied the attention of Yohannes for a little, while Lovelace held a brief consultation with Christopher.

  “If it’s as you say, she’d best not go,” Christopher said at once. “But I’m worried; worried out of my wits. We’ve lost a day—a whole day—doing nothing. If I stay here all evening I’ll go crazy. Besides if none of us goes the boy-friend will think it funny. Someone’s got to stand by the wire in case a message comes through from the Legation. Will you do that, and keep Valerie company, while I go round the town with him? There’s just a chance I might hear something of Zarrif in one of these places.”

  As they went in to dinner Yohannes suddenly remembered the servants he had engaged for them but these were found to be still squatting patiently upon the steps of the hotel, where they had been waiting for the last twelve hours. The troop consisted of two Gallas, a hunchbacked Shoan, and a gentle-eyed Mohammedan Harari who was to act as their interpreter. Lovelace gave them some money, as an earnest of good faith, and dismissed them all until the following morning.

  For dinner they ate mutton again but the excellent coffee made up somewhat for the poorness of the meal. Afterwards Christopher went off as arranged with Yohannes while Lovelace and Valerie returned to their private sitting-room.

  It was cold now. The temperature had fallen at least forty degrees, as it does each night in the Abyssinian highlands. They were glad of the bottle of fake Chartreuse which stood on the table before them; even if it was poor stuff it at least sent a fresh glow of warmth through their bodies.

  For half an hour they talked of trivialities and he had been speaking of the first journey East of Suez that he had ever made when she said:

  “Tell me more about yourself, Anthony.
You’ve visited so many strange places yet it doesn’t seem to have altered you a little bit.”

  “From what?” he asked curiously.

  “Oh, I don’t know, somehow you seem as though you must always have been lean and brown and tall and very attractive, but rather silent, and a little cynical; as though nothing had ever touched you very deeply.”

  “No,” he smiled. “You were thinking I hadn’t changed much from that time I can’t remember when we met years ago.”

  “Nonsense,” she said airily. “I’ve already told you that was in some previous existence, although you won’t believe me. I want you to tell me what you’ve been doing in this one.”

  He stared at her hard for a moment, shrugged, and began to tell her of his past. Usually he was rather reticent about his adventures but with her he talked easily and well; just as though they had been intimate friends for many years.

  Outside, the Abyssinian night grew blacker. Below, the watchmen, who were there to drive off the hyenas, sang their tuneless chorus. Time drifted on, the clock struck nine, ten, eleven without their noticing it. All thought of the strange and dangerous adventure into which they had been drawn had left them. They were completely happy in each other’s company.

  It was Lovelace who, at last, suggested it was time for her to get to bed because Blatta Ingida Yohannes would probably be calling for them at the same ungodly hour again next morning.

  “I’m not in the least tired,” she said as she stood up reluctantly. “This evening’s been a little oasis of delight, Anthony, in a desert of dread and distress. I suppose we must think of to-morrow though, so I’ll go to bed now, although my brain is much too active for sleep yet. I’ll read for a bit I think.”

  As she spoke she picked up a magazine which someone had left on a side table. It was a nine-months-old copy of Country Life.

  He stood beside her as she flicked carelessly through the pages. For a second she paused at an article on Mazes in famous English gardens; then she made a move to pass on but he exclaimed: “One moment!” and seized her hand.

  His eye had caught a photograph of the maze at his own home, Fronds Court in Yorkshire. In his mind’s eye he saw it again as he had seen it so often—with all its yew hedges trim and orderly—but he saw something else as well. He knew now where he had met Valerie before.

  She glanced up at him and the change in his expression must have given him away, for she said softly: “You’ve guessed at last—haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said slowly, and in a fraction of time he lived again that long past moment of a summer afternoon. The gardens at Fronds had been thrown open for a charity. That was why, wanting to be alone, he had gone into the maze. Lost in its intricate turnings he had found a little girl of fourteen or fifteen, with great, grey eyes and chestnut hair done up in pigtails. She had come racing towards him near tears with distress at not being able to find her way out. He had told her it was a two-hundred-year-old custom that anyone lost in the maze should pay a forfeit if they wished to be led out of it and, upon her agreeing, laughingly demanded a kiss. At first she had refused but, when he had insisted, instead of the childish peck on the cheek he had expected, to his immense surprise the little girl had solemnly reached up her arms, placed them about his neck and kissed him full and hard upon the mouth. As he had led her outward along the green-walled, twisting paths she had told him shyly that she had never kissed anyone like that before and that those sort of kisses were sacred things. He had felt a little bewildered, and a little ashamed, but he had found her parents for her and they had all driven away in a big Rolls-Royce to York, where they were spending the week-end while doing a motoring tour of England.

  The episode of that serious child had troubled him a little for a few days before it had slipped from his memory; to return now as clearly as if it had occurred only the day before.

  His brown eyes met Valerie’s grey ones. She raised her arms and, after a dozen years, he felt them around his neck again. Before he realised what he was doing he had clasped her to him and her soft lips had melted into his.

  Suddenly she threw back her head and sobbed: “Oh, we’re a couple of beastly rotten cads—but we can’t help it, darling—can we?”

  “No,” he said, “no. I’ve never loved anyone before, but I love you, Valerie—and it’s hell that it should happen like this—yet I can’t help it.” With all the pent-up passion of years he pressed his lips on hers again just as Christopher entered the room.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE KING OF KINGS GOES BY

  A heavy banging on her door roused Valerie at half-past five the following morning and she heard the Greek hotel porter call out; “Blatta Ingida Yohannes has telephoned, lady—he will be here at six.” It was the same formula as that with which she had been roused on the previous day.

  After a second she realised that she was in Addis Ababa and the awful scene of the night before came sharply back to her. Christopher’s demoniacal rage when he had returned from his round of the town to find her in Anthony Lovelace’s arms and their long, bitter wrangle afterwards.

  It seemed as if he had kept her up half the night and that for the other half she had tossed a sleepless prey to shame and misery. Her mouth was parched and as she crawled out of bed, she knew that a splitting headache was starting.

  Her mirror was no comfort. It showed her smooth chestnut hair tangled and tumbled from her restless night, dark circles under the big grey eyes which stared back at her, and that the climate was playing the very devil with her complexion. Hastily she began to dab on a coat of soothing oil.

  The thought of another sightseeing expedition appalled her. As if it wasn’t enough that she would have to handle Christopher and Lovelace with extreme diplomacy, that all three of them were engaged on a secret man-hunt which might become an open attempt at assassination within the next twenty-four hours, without having to exhaust herself making polite conversation with the young Abyssinian while they trudged round schools and hospitals.

  She began to brush her hair vigorously while she thought over the wretched business that had occurred the night before. Lovelace ought not to have kissed her. He had known from the moment they had met just a month ago, back in the States that she was engaged to Christopher. But had he kissed her? Yes, afterwards, as though he never meant to stop; but she had kissed him first.

  Valerie was completely honest with herself. She adored the lanky, brown-faced Englishman; always had, ever since that day long ago when he had made her give him a kiss as a forfeit before showing her the way out of the maze at his lovely old home in Yorkshire. How strange that he should have forgotten it until the night before; yet not strange really as he was already a full-grown man whereas she had been only a little girl with pigtails and a short frock. She had been obsessed with the thought of him for months afterwards, made him her dream-hero, and woven a thousand romances round his tall, loosely-knit figure. It had never occurred to her then that she was being disloyal to Christopher because, in those days, she looked on Christopher as a brother. She wondered now if she had ever really thought of him in any other way. She loved him, had done so as long as she could remember, because of his gentleness and his chivalry and his devastatingly good looks. Later, fascinated by his passionate idealism and touched by his pathetically impractical nature, she had begun to mother him as well, until her admiration and affection for him had led her to believe that she was blessed beyond measure in that he had never cared for anyone but her, and that their marriage could not possibly fail to be a happy one.

  Now, that vision of peace and security had been shattered. It had been shaken the very second she came face to face with Lovelace again, for she knew him instantly, and during this month that they had been together his presence had fired in her that positive passion so utterly different from her deep, calm affection for Christopher. Last night her secret feelings had proved too strong for her, the barriers had gone down, and in that wonderful moment of revelation she knew what she had
been suspecting for days past: he loved her with the same fierce, possessive passion as that which she felt for him.

  Yet she felt sick, miserable and utterly ashamed. She did not wonder at Christopher’s white-hot anger when he found them, or that he had abused both her and Lovelace in terms that made them wince. To find the friend whom he admired and trusted and his fiancée, whom he had loved all his life, literally in each other’s arms must have been an appalling shock; and he knew nothing of that fateful episode which had established a bond between them a dozen years before.

  Lovelace had behaved wonderfully, she thought; but only as she would have expected him to. He took all the blame upon himself, made no excuses, and asked her if she would prefer him to remain or go. Frightened that Christopher might actually attack him she had said she would rather he went to bed and that they would talk things over in the morning. After that she had had to face Christopher’s wrath alone.

  For an hour he had raved up and down, white-faced and glowering, lashing her with his tongue in so fierce a way that she would have far preferred a physical beating. She did not resent it, feeling that he had the right to do so, and it at least gave her time to make a decision upon the awful problem which faced her; to tell him the truth, that she really loved Lovelace, which would shatter him utterly, or bear with him until she won him round to the belief that she had only been guilty of one of those absurd, unreasoned impulses which carry away both men and women at times and are thought of afterwards only with shame and regret.

  While his anger lasted the impulse was strong in her to make a break, tell him the truth however much it hurt, and ask him to release her from her engagement; but suddenly his fury abated and he had sunk down beside her clutching at her knees and moaning, “How could you, Valerie!—Oh, how could you?”

  Now, as she bathed her tired eyes, she could feel again on her finger-tips his dark tumbled hair as she had stroked it very gently and begged his forgiveness.