by Wilbur Smith
There was shouting and more firing in front of them. Beside Ramsey another para was hit and went sprawling.
Ramsey snatched up his machine-pistol and waved the attack forward, just as a heavy machine-gun opened up on them from one of the windows. Ramsey rolled under the blast of shot and came up against the mud wall directly below the window. The machine-gun was firing over his head, and the muzzle-blast drove in his eardrums.
Ramsey snatched a grenade from his webbing pocket, pulled the pin and went up on one knee to post it through the window. He ducked and covered his ears.
There was a wild shout, and the machine-gun fell silent. Moments later the grenade exhaled in a fiery breath above his head.
"Come on,' Ramsey yelled again, and led half a dozen paras through the shattered window. The gun had been knocked off its mounting and the floor was wet and slippery with blood.
It was room-to-room, and hand-to-hand now. The advantage passed to the defenders as they retreated through the maze of rooms and alleys and courtyards, doggedly holding each strongpoint until they were driven from it.
Slowly the attack lost impetus and, although Ramsey threatened and swore and tried to inspire them with his example, they bogged down in the twisting alleys and interconnecting passageways and rooms. He realized that Andom was certainly radioing for reinforcements of loyal troops, and that minutes lost now could mean the defeat and failure of the revolution.
He heard Abebe's voice raised angrily, urging his men on in a fog of smoke and dust, and Ramsey crawled across to him and seized his shoulder. Face to dusty smoke-grimed face, they shouted at each other to make themselves heard above the cacophony of guns.
"Where is that bloody tank?" 'How long since I called?" 'It's over an hour.' Was it that long? It seemed that minutes had passed since the attack began.
"Get back to the radio,' Ramsey yelled. 'Tell them.
At that moment they both heard it, the shrill metallic squeal and the rumble of the tracks.
"Come on!' Ram. en lunged to his feet, and they ran together, doubled over, with bullets fluttering in the air around their heads, back through the blood-smeared rooms with walls pocked by bullets and shrapnel.
As they reached the entrance courtyard the tank butted its way in through the blocked gateway. The turret was reversed, the long 55-millimetre gun-barrel pointed backwards. The carcass of the rocket-shattered jeep was forced forward by the mass of armour and it rolled clear of the gateway.
The T-53 burst into the courtyard with its diesels bellowing. The turret was open, the commander's helmeted head protruded from the hatch.
Ramsey windmilled his right arm in the cavalry signal to advance and pointed into the tangle of alleys and buildings.
The tank pivoted on its churning steel tracks and crashed into the nearest wall. The mud bricks collapsed before it, and the roof tilted and sagged and buried the T-53 beneath it.
The tank shook itself free and roared forward. Ramsey and his paras poured into the breach it had opened. Walls toppled and timbers crackled as the steel monster crawled forward, tilting and rocking over piles of rubble and human bodies.
The screams of the defenders rose higher than the uproar, and their firing died away. They came stumbling out of the rained buildings, throwing down their weapons and raising their arms in surrender.
"Where is Andom? Ramsey's throat was rough and sore with the dust and the shouting. 'We must get him. Don't let him escape." The general was amongst the last to surrender. Only when the T-53 flattened the thick mud walls of the main hall did he come out with four of his senior officers. There was a blood-soaked bandage around his forehead an dover his left eye. His beard was thick with dust and blood, and one of the scarlet tabs was torn from his collar.
His good eye was fierce. Despite his wound, his voice was firm and his bearing dignified. 'Colonel Abebe,' he challenged. 'This is mutiny and treachery. I am the president of Ethiopia - my appointment was confirmed by the Derg this morning." Ramsey nodded to his paratroopers. They seized the general's arms and forced him to his knees. Ramsey opened the flap of his holster and handed his Tokarev pistol to Abebe.
The colonel placed the muzzle between the captive's eyes and said quietly: 'President Aman Andom, in the name of the people's revolution, I call upon you to resign.' And he blew the top off the general's skull.
The corpse fell face-forward, splattering custard-yellow brains on to Abebe's boots.
Abebe clicked the safety on the Tokarev, reversed it and handed it butt-first to Ramsey.
"Thank you, Colonel-General,' he said.
"I am honoured to have been of service.' Ramsey bowed formally as he accepted the weapon back.
"How many members of the Derg voted for Andom? he asked as the column sped back towards Addis Ababa.
"Sixty-three." 'Then we still have much work to do before the revolution is secure." Abebe radioed ahead to Colonel Tafu's squadron of T-53 tanks. They were entering from the eastern side of the city, and he ordered them to surround the building that housed the Derg and to train their guns upon it. Elements of the Army were ordered to seal off all foreign embassies and consulates. No legation staff were allowed to leave the premises, for their own safety.
All foreigners in the country, especially journalists or television personnel, were rounded up and escorted to the airport for immediate evacuation. There were to be no witnesses of what followed.
Small units of Abebe's most loyal troops, backed up by Cuban paratroopers, were rushed to the homes of the members of the military council and the Derg who had declared for Andom. They were stripped of weapons and badges of rank, dragged out and thrown into the waiting trucks and driven back to the Derg, where a revolutionary court awaited them in the main assembly-chamber.
The court consisted of Colonel Abebe and two of his junior officers. ~You are accused of counter-revolutionary criminal acts against the people's democratic government. Have you anything to say before sentence of death is passed upon you?" They were taken out directly from the trial into the courtyard of the building, placed against the north wall of the chamber and executed by firing squad. The executions were carried out in full view of the revolutionary judges and those prisoners still awaiting trial. The volleys of rifle-fire periodically interrupted the proceedings of the court.
The corpses were tied in bunches by the heels and dragged behind a truck through the streets to the main rubbish-dump outside the city limits.
"The populace must witness the course of revolutionary justice and the price of disobedience,' Ramsey explained the necessity of these exhibitions.
The court ruled that the corpses should not be removed from the rubbish-dump, and their families were forbidden to indulge in the ritual of mourning or to exhibit any public signs of grief. The grim work went on until after midnight, 32e and the last batch of criminals was executed in the beams of the headlights of the trucks waiting to drag them to the rubbish-tip.
Although they were both exhausted, neither Ramsey nor the future president could afford to sleep until the revolution was secure. Ramsey had a bottle of vodka in his pack. He and Abebe shared it as they sat beside the radio and listened to the reports coming in.
One after the other, Abebe's loyal officers with Cuban support took over command of the various units of the Army and seized all the important points in the city and its surroundings.
As the sun rose, they had control of the airport and railway station, the radio and television broadcasting studios, and all the military forts and barracks. Only then could they snatch a few hours' sleep. Guarded by Ramsey's paras, they stretched out on mattresses on the chamber floor, but at noon they were in fresh uniforms for the meeting of the purified Derg.
There were armed paras at the door of the chamber and T-53 tanks drawn up in the street outside' As Colonel-General Machado congratulated Abebe, he said quietly: 'If you kill Brutus, then you must kill all the sons of Brutus. In io, Niccolb Machiavelli said that, Mr. President, and it is still the best-pos
sible advice." 'So we must begin at once." "Yes,' agreed Ramsey. 'The Red Terror must be allowed to run its course."
"The Red Terror shall flourish.' The hastily printed posters in four languages were pasted on every street-corner, and the hourly radio and television broadcasts proclaimed the new president and exhorted the populace to denounce an traitors and counter-revolutionaries.
There was so much work to do that Abebe divided the city into forty cells and appointed a separate revolutionary court for each cell. The presidenv; of these courts were loyal junior officers who were given full power to'undertake revolutionary action'. Each had a team of executioners working under him. They began with the members of the nobility, the rases and the chieftains and their families.
"The Red Terror is a proven tool of the revolution,' Ramsey Machado explained. 'We know those who will prove awkward later. We know those who will oppose the pure doctrine of Marxism. It is more expedient to eliminate them now, in the first wild flush of victory, rather than undertake the tedious business of dealing with them piecemeal at a later date.' He lifted his cap and raked his fingers through his thick dark curls. He was tired, his marvelous classical features were strained and drawn. Dark smudges underlined his eyes, but there was no uncertainty in those deadly green eyes. Abebe was at once grateful for this strength and awed by this iron resolution.
"We must root out every rotten apple from the barrel. We must eliminate not only the opposition, but also the thought of opposition. We must break the nation's will to resist. They must be cowed and deprived of any sense of self or self-determination. The board must be swept entirely clean. Only then will we be in a position to rebuild the nation in its new and shining image.' The corpses of the nobles and the petty chieftains and their entire families were piled like garbage on the street-corners. The revolutionary patrols drove through the city and picked up at random the children they found playing in the streets.
"Where do you live? Take us to your parents' home." The parents were dragged out of their houses and forced to watch as their children were shot in the head at pointblank range. The little corpses were left at the front door, swelling and stinking in the heat. The parents were forbidden to remove them or to mourn them.
"The Red Terror will flourish,' decreed the posters, but in the mountains some of the old warriors and their families resisted the death squads.
The tanks surrounded the villages, and the women and children and old men were driven into their huts. The huts were set on fire, and the screams mingled with the crackle of the flames. The men were marched to the fields and forced to lie face-down in rows. The tanks drove over them, locking their tracks to pivot on the piles of bodies and grind them into a paste with the drought-stricken earth.
"Now for the priests,' Ramsey said.
"The priests were instrumental in the overthrow of the monarchy,' Abebe pointed out.
"Yes, the church and the mosque, the bishops and priests and the imams and the ayatollahs are always useful in the beginning. The revolution can be nurtured in the pulpit, for the priests are by their training unworldly and idealistic creatures who respond to a vision of freedom and equality and brotherly love. They can be easily persuaded, but always remember that.
they are also in competition with us for the souls of men. When they witness the revolution in action they will challenge us. We cannot brook that competition. The priests must be disciplined and controlled - just as all other men must be." They entered the great mosque and arrested the imam's fourteen-year-old daughter. They put out her eyes and cut out her tongue, then they placed two ounces of raw chili pepper in her vagina and took her back to her father's house. They locked her in a room of the house with guards at the door. Her parents were forced to squat outside the door and listen to their daughter's death agonies.
The sons of the abuna, the archbishop of the Coptic Church, were taken to one of the revolutionary courts and were tortured. Their hands and feet were crushed in steel vices and their bodies were burnt with electricity.
Their eyes were gouged out and left dangling by the optic nerves on to their cheeks. Their genitalia were cut off and forced into their mouths.
Then they were taken home and placed outside the front door. Once again the parents were forbidden to remove their bodies for Christian burial.
The radio and television broadcasts harangued against the decadence and revisionism of the Church, and the death squads waited at the doors of the mosque when the muezzin began his chant. The faithful stayed at home.
"All the sons of Brutus are dead,' Abebe told Ramsey, as they toured the quiescent city.
"Not all of them,' Ramsey disagreed, and Abebe turned to stare at him. He knew what Ramsey meant.
"It must be done,' Ramsey insisted. 'Then there can be no turning back. The ancient bourgeois taboo will be shattered for ever, as it was on the guillotine in the Place de la Concorde and in the Russian cellar when Tsar Nicholas and his family died. Once it is done, there will be no return and the revolution will be secure." 'Who will do it?' Abebe asked, and Ramsey answered without hesitation.
(I will. P 'It would be best that way,' Abebe agreed, and looked away to conceal the relief he felt. 'Do it as soon as possible." Ramsey drove dowry through the old quarter of the city. He was alone at the wheel of the open jeep. The streets were deserted, except for the revolutionary patrols. The windows of the houses were shuttered and curtained. No face peered out at him, no children romped in the yards, no voices or sounds of laughter came from behind the closed doors of the mud-brick hovels.
The revolutionary posters were pasted to the cracked and chipped plaster of the walls. 'The Red Terror shall flourish." There had been no hygienic services since the Red Terror began. The rubbish clogged the streets, and the sewagebuckets overflowed and puddled in the gutters. The bodies of the victims of the Terror were heaped like cords of firewood at the street-comers. They were so bloated and bullet-riddled that they were no longer recognizable as human. Gas-filled bellies stretched their clothing until it burst at the seams, and their flesh was empurpled and blackened by the sun. The only living things were the crows and kites and vultures that hopped and picked at the piles of the dead, and the fat gorged rats that scuttled away in front of the jeep.
Ramsey wrapped his silk scarf across his mouth and nose to protect them from the stench, but apart from that he was unmoved by what he saw around him, as a victorious general is unaffected by the carnage of the battlefield.
The hut was at the end of a noisome alleyway, and there were two guards at the front door. They recognized Ramsey as he parked the jeep and picked his way through the accumulated filth. They saluted him respectfully.
"You are relieved of your duties. You may go,' Ramsey ordered.
He watched them hurry to the end of the alley before he opened the door and stooped under the lintel.
It was semidark in the room, and he removed his sunglasses. The walls were limed but bare except, for a silver Coptic cross suspended above the bed.
There were rush mats on the stone floor. The room smelt of sickness and old age. An old woman sat on the floor at the foot of the bed. She wailed and pulled the hood of her robe over her head when she saw Ramsey.
"Go.' He gestured to the door, and she crawled across the floor, her head stiff covered, making obeisance and wailing and drooling with terror.
With the heel of his combat boot Ramsey pushed the door closed behind her and studied the figure that lay on the bed.
"Negus Negusti, King of Kings,' he said with a dry irony, and the old man stirred and looked up at him.
He was dressed in a spotless white robe, but his head was bare. He was thin, impossibly thin. Ramsey knew that he suffered from the ailments of great age, his prostate and digestion were diseased, but his mind was clear. His feet and hands protruding from the folds of the white robe were childlike and emaciated. Each tiny bone showed clearly through the waxen amber skin. His beard and hair were untrimmed and entirely bleached to the lustre of plat
inum. The flesh had melted from his face, so the nose was thin and aquiline. His lips had shrunk and drawn back. His teeth were yellow and too large for the delicate bones of his cheeks and brow. His eyes were enormous, black as pools of tar, bright as those of a biblical prophet.
