The Secret War (5 page)

“I don't ask you to. I only want you as a friend who knows the ropes if I have to go to Africa. Please come with me. You're going out there anyway. It won't delay you much if we have to put in a day in Paris on the way. Forget what I'm going out there to do if you like. We'll never speak of it again, but I do wish you'd travel with me.”

“I'm sorry.” Lovelace shook his head again. “What you propose to do is murder: the killing of some unsuspecting man. I can't be a party to that.”

Valerie Lorne had been silent for a time. Now she spoke again. “Won't you? I wish you would. Christopher will be like a child in those tropical countries. He needs a friend like you so badly. Even if you can't forget his mission you need take no part in it. Surely you won't refuse to let him travel with you to the Near East if he has to go there.”

Somehow Lovelace found the girl's appeal harder to resist. In some queer way, which he could not explain to himself, he felt as though she had some sort of claim on him. Yet he still stubbornly shook his head.

“I can't. Perhaps that's because I'm not big enough to scrap all the rather foolish prejudices with which most of us have been brought up. If it were a question of giving my own life to stop another war—well, I'd try to screw my courage up to that because I've seen so much of war in its worst aspects. But to aid and abet a murder in cold blood; that's too much. I just can't do it.”

Valerie sighed and turned to Christopher. “When must you sail, darling?”

“I've booked on the
Europa
which sails to-morrow night. It's urgent and they wanted me to leave as soon as possible. I pulled a few strings with the diplomatic people yesterday and they got my passport back for me with all the necessary visas this afternoon. I've made arrangements with my bank to have funds at my disposal in all the larger towns I may have to go to. I only hope the enemy organisation doesn't find out what I'm up to and try to prevent my leaving the country though …”

As the door opened they all started and looked towards it. The elderly butler stood there with his eyes on Christopher. “The telephone, sir,” he said. “The person who called you refused to give his name.”

“Excuse me, won't you.” Christopher went into the next room.

The interruption had broken the tension. Lovelace walked over to Valerie who was leaning with one elbow on the corner of the mantelpiece. He was a good head taller than she was and stood looking down at her.

“We've met somewhere before, you know: where was it?” he asked abruptly.

“Don't you remember?” She turned her face up to his and a smile deepened the dimple in her cheek.

“No,” he confessed. “I've been racking my brains for the last hour to place it; but I can't. Tell me.”

Slowly she shook her head and her grey eyes grew dreamy. “Why should I? It may have been long ago. It may even have been in some previous existence. What's it matter where it was if you have forgotten?”

As she turned away Christopher rejoined them. His beautiful, ascetic face seemed colder and harder than ever, yet there was a faint nervous tremor in his long pointed fingers as he lit a cigarette.

“That call was anonymous,” he said. “The man at the other end of the wire didn't mince matters. He just told me certain people know what I've been put up to do, and that if I stayed in the United States no harm would befall me, but that if I set foot outside the country I'd be dead within a week.”

Valerie laid a hand on his shoulder. “You mean to go on, Christopher?”

“Certainly. This'll make things more difficult—that's all. I'll have to regard every person in the ship as an enemy who is out to get me.”

“You won't,” she said with swift determination. “I mean to fly you over the border into Canada before morning. You'll be on the water then before they even know you've sailed.”

Christopher's face brightened. “Valerie, you're a girl in a million. If you'll do that it will give me a clear start and a safe passage over. Once I'm in Europe I'll go to earth, and they'll have the devil's own job to find me. Bless you, darling.”

“How long will it take you to pack a bag?”

“I'll be ready in an hour. I've got a few papers to see to, that's all, and we can look up to-morrow's Canadian sailings in the news sheets. I'll order the car for you, Lovelace, to take you back to New York.”

“Thanks,” said Lovelace quietly. “I'd be glad if you would. But why are you in such a desperate hurry? Surely if you're over the Canadian border by dawn that will do? Plenty of time for me to collect my bags in New York and return here before you set out.”

“Return here?” echoed Christopher.

“Yes. This is a very different business from what I thought it a few minutes ago. If the enemy are organised and have sent you an ultimatum your job's no longer assassination, but an act of war. I'm game to help you now, so I'm coming too.”

In the bitter cold of early dawn Valerie flew the two men up the coast of Maine, then across the Bay of Fundy to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she landed them safely by half-past ten.

Their passports were all in order. Christopher's had been renewed only two days before, Lovelace had travelled so much in the last ten years that he made a practice of keeping his up to date for most countries he was likely to visit, and Valerie possessed a special
laissez-passer
granted to her by the State Department soon after she began breaking air records.

No question was raised when they landed and from the flying-field they went straight to a Travel Office. There they learned that the s.s.
Pomeranzen
, 10,500 tons, was due to sail for Rotterdam at eight o'clock that evening.

The Dutch vessel carried cargo as well as a hundred-and-twenty cabin-class passengers. She was a nine-day boat but there was plenty of accommodation vacant in her and they would have had to wait three days for the larger C.P.R. liner which was scheduled to dock in Europe half a day later.

Christopher's orders were urgent. He should have sailed in the
Europa
from New York that evening and landed at Cherbourg on April 5th. His change of plans meant that he would not reach Paris until the 11th, six days late, and he felt that he must not delay his arrival by even half a day more for the sake of travelling on the bigger ship. He said at once:

“All right. I'll take the two best cabins you've got on the the Dutchman, with bathrooms, of course, and a private drawing-room, if you can get me one.”

Lovelace smiled to himself. He usually managed to travel in reasonable comfort, but he was not rich, and he felt that it would be fun to voyage
de luxe
for a change in the company of this young multi-millionaire.

Valerie cut in on his thoughts. “We'll need three staterooms, Christopher, and they must make arrangements to ship the plane as well.”

Both men swung round on her at once. “We can't take you with us …” Christopher began.

“Why not?” she lifted her chin. “I'm due for a trip to Europe anyway; and in Paris I can get some frocks.”

“We'd love to have you along, darling, but …”

“But nothing,” she cut him short. The dimple in her cheek deepened as she smiled and squeezed his arm. “You want to get to Paris at the earliest possible moment, don't you? I'll fly you there from Rotterdam and save you the best part of a day in the train.”

Christopher gave way without further argument and Lovelace was soon to find that he always did so when she took charge of a situation. She was far the more practical of the two and mothered her pale-faced, handsome fiancé as though he were some precious, wayward infant.

By the time they were two days out of Halifax Lovelace was thoroughly glad that she had elected to come with them. Without her it would have been a gloomy crossing, for Christopher was silent and moody. Each day he sat staring out across the grey waters of the North Atlantic with dark unseeing eyes, occupied, to the exclusion of all else, with the terrible secret war in which he had pledged himself to take human life.

Lovelace tried to put that out of his thoughts. To him no academic reasoning, however powerful, quite seemed to justify the sinister operations of the
Millers
. He had constantly to remind himself that Christopher's life was threatened too, and that they were engaged in a battle of wits, rather than the planning of a cold-blooded assassination.

Valerie seemed to accept the fact that her fiancé was pledged to his gruesome task and appeared to have no doubts as to its justice. She spoke of it little and it was a great relief to Lovelace that he was able to forget it while in her company. They talked happily enough of the thrills she had had in breaking air records, and of his experiences when travelling in foreign countries, or as a relief worker behind the lines in numerous wars.

He puzzled his wits in vain as to where he had met her before. Her dead-straight eyebrows below the white forehead and chestnut hair, the big, grey, almost magnetic eyes and the deep dimple below the left cheek were strangely familiar to him. For some reason that he could not fathom, she continued to make a mystery of it, insisting that their first meeting must have been in some former life, and refusing to aid his memory with any sort sort of clue.

It was not until late on the last afternoon of the voyage that, settling herself beside him in a steamer chair, she broached the subject of Abyssinia.

“You'll look pretty foolish,” she said thoughtfully, “if the war is over by the time you get to Addis Ababa.”

“Christopher may, but I shan't,” he answered dryly. “Anyhow, I think it unlikely the war will be over for some time to come.”

“Why? Look at the victories the Italians have gained recently. They captured those two big mountains, Amba—something, weeks ago.”

“Amba Aradam and Amba Aladji you mean. Yes, that was at the end of February.”

“Well, ever since the Italians have been smashing up Abyssinian armies right and left. Ras Kassa and Ras Immira have both been defeated and Marshal Badoglio is pressing on now into the interior.”

Lovelace shook his head. “The Abyssinian armies are very different from ours. If a modern army sustains a serious defeat its organisation breaks down and the whole thing may go to pieces, but these people have no
organisation worth talking about. The Rases' troops are just great hosts of fighting men in which every man's his own Army Service Corps. You can launch an attack which will send the whole lot running helter skelter one day but twenty-four hours later ninety-five per cent of them will pop up again ready for another scrap.”

“Yes, I know that, but what's to stop the Italians just keeping them on the run? How can they put up any really serious resistance? Why! The British won a war against the Abyssinians with the old-fashioned sort of guns and rifles they used fifty years ago. The Italians have machine-guns and tanks and aeroplanes; things undreamed of then. With such a tremendous advantage in armaments I can't see why the Italians shouldn't march straight through to Addis Ababa now and mop the whole thing up.”

“Can't you?” Lovelace laughed. “When we defeated the Abyssinians the whole situation was entirely different. The tribes were in revolt against the bad old Emperor Theodore and we only went in to give them a hand pushing him off the throne. The bulk of the population welcomed General Napier with open arms and, anyhow, he only got as far as Magdala. It's another thing altogether to have to fight your way through that devilish country with every hand against you.”

“Is it? Even with tanks?”

“Lord, yes! Ask any of the fellows who've seen fighting on the North-West Frontier of India. It's much the same kind of terrain and the Abyssinian is own twin to the Pathan as far as bravery, cunning and cruelty go. Columns are ambushed and shot to pieces in every gully and you hardly ever see a tribesman. They fade away into the rocks and you can't imagine where they've got to until they start shooting you up again from a new niche at the next turn of the road. What's the good of tanks in that sort of warfare?”

“How about planes? The airman ought to be able to spot their hiding-places and bomb them out.”

They try, of course, but it's mighty expensive on ammunition. No real targets to go for, you see, only handfuls of snipers scattered about the precipitous hillsides. They may kill a man here or there and scare his nearest pals for an hour or two; but planes can't really help much when the fighting is in such mountainous country. The Italians have only penetrated to a depth of about a hundred-and-fifty miles so far. They've still got two-fifty to go and nothing short of a miracle in courage and endurance could enable them to cover that in the month to run before the rains come.”

“Will the rains make further progress quite impossible?”

“Utterly. You've no idea how it rains out there. Every gully becomes a mountain torrent and tiny rivers swell to hundreds of yards in width. It just comes down like a cloud-burst for days on end and it seems as if half the country's going to be washed away. If all the engineers of the finest armies in the world were concentrated there they couldn't transport their troops and stores through that welter of mud and foaming water.”

Valerie sighed. “But supposing the League persuades the Emperor to agree to a peace with Italy after all. That would let Christopher out, wouldn't it?”

“Not necessarily. Abyssinia's only one act in the game as far as the
Millers
are concerned. Their campaign is world-wide. They may not be sending Christopher to Africa at all for all we know.”

“As he was told to get his passport visaed for all countries bordering on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea it looks as if Abyssinia is almost certain to be his destination. What's it like there, Anthony? The people are Christians, aren't they?”