Jack Ludlow - The Burning Sky

‘There’s no way enough arms can be smuggled in to face that, Peter, at least of the level required. You’re talking about tanks and artillery. Only governments can do that.’

‘True, what we are doing is tokenism, really.’

‘Then why do it?’

The place was filling up with those who had finished their grub; the armchairs would now be occupied by old buffers in need of a postprandial nap, and this forced Lanchester to lower even his previous whisper — his head was now very close to that of his companion.

‘It will help to save our blushes in the future and, who knows, the fuzzy-wuzzies might make the Italians pay a very high price for success, maybe even too high a price. Imagine if the buggers came unstuck … but even holding them up might do. I doubt Mussolini can either take his time or lose too many men, given the people he leads have no greater appetite for conflict than we do in Blighty.’

‘An attitude they share for a very good reason. Their donkeys were far worse generals than even our lot. The Italian army lost more men on the Izonso river front than we did at the Somme. What are their forces like now?’

‘Navy looks good, and I suspect the pilots are dashing johnnies. Ground troops are not the best, but they never were, given their officers are more interested in being well barbered than being well trained. Some good regiments, the Alpine chaps are top class, but there are also Blackshirt units in their bits of the Horn of Africa and I suspect they are rubbish, a bit like your Hun SA.’

‘Then why use them?’

‘Forget all that guff about Italy needing colonies, Cal, this is a political enterprise to bolster the regime, and it is my guess that whoever is in charge has instructions to put Mussolini’s ex-street-fighting cadres at the front of the battle so he can claim it is Fascist willpower which has overcome the fuzzy-wuzzies-’

Jardine interrupted. ‘Can we call them Ethiopians, please?’

Even hissed, that got them attention, so Lanchester rose. ‘What about a walk in Green Park, oh sensitive one?’

He had to sign for his bill and don his new bowler before they exited, crossing Piccadilly to the park, with Lanchester resuming where he had left off, as they sauntered down paths filled with office workers out enjoying the sunshine, with the odd tourist admiring Buckingham Palace or the bas-reliefs on Decimus Burton’s Hyde Park Corner arch.

‘If we can get stuff in to augment the local weaponry, and they can kill enough Blackshirts, it might cause him big trouble at home. Bringing him down is probably asking for the moon, but if we can remind the Eyeties of the cost of conflict that can only be to the good. If it keeps them out of Hitler’s embrace, then-’

‘They will fall out over Austria when Hitler invades, which he will do if they don’t agree to a political union, especially when the Osis become part of the Greater German Reich and demand the Trentino region back.’

Lanchester sighed. ‘They know not what they did at Versailles, do they, slicing up and parcelling out bits of the old German and Austrian empires?’

‘I think they knew, Peter, but I don’t think they had much choice.’

‘If we have to fight the Hun again, I will personally shoot the first bugger to mention an armistice or peace terms. So, how do we feel about the job, which comes, by the way, and I have not mentioned it, with a very healthy stipend?’

With a private income, money was only of concern to Jardine because it was a bad idea to work for nothing; even in Hamburg he had taken a small amount in pay. ‘I’ll look at the salary when I’ve looked at everything else. What paperwork do you have, order of battle and that sort of stuff?’

‘Quite a lot.’

‘Maps too — what about arms?’

‘That’s your bailiwick, old boy. The only thing I will say for certain is they cannot be bought or shipped from these shores.’

‘Then I need to see some people before I commit to anything, here and overseas.’

‘Fair enough. How long?’

‘Couple of weeks, Peter, but be warned, I might turn you down flat.’ The look Lanchester gave him then was discomfiting, being too knowing: he knew his one-time fellow officer could not resist an underdog or a cause. ‘I mean it, Peter.’

‘Of course you do, Cal, old boy. Now where are you staying?’

‘Across the park at The Goring.’

‘Not with the ex-wife?’

‘Hardly.’

‘Still not forgiven you?’

Jardine shook his head fiercely, making it obvious that was not a subject he wanted to reprise and the forgiveness bit was a dig: who was to forgive whom? He had come back from the war to find his wife’s lover in bed with her. Still carrying his service revolver he had immediately shot the fellow dead. It had been quite a cause celebre at the time, especially when, at the subsequent Old Bailey trial, the jury had acquitted him of murder. Lizzie Jardine was one reason to stay out of London. With his wife, it was a case of make up for a bit then fall out again, and with her being a Catholic, even if she was not in the least bit moral, divorce was out of the question.

‘Talk to you anon, then?’ Lanchester said, tipping his bowler as he walked away, his brolly ferrule beating out a tattoo. ‘I’ll put in a decent cheque to cover your expenses.’

Jardine’s first task was to order a new passport — his old one had some too-revealing stamps — and that required a visit to a photographer and an hour in the Victoria offices where they were issued, his excuse for a replacement that he had lost his previous one. Back at The Goring he wrote to ask for an appointment with Geoffrey Amherst, and his next task was to book a train and ferry crossing back to the Continent, his destination Monaco.

Lanchester’s papers, including a cheque for a hundred pounds, arrived before he ate dinner and he did not look at them till afterwards, thankful he had eaten little given his appreciation of the situation was likely to induce indigestion.

The Abyssinian invasion force was reported to consist of nearly seven hundred thousand men, two-thirds of them Italian, the rest made up of Somali and Eritrean levies, as well as units from Libya. But it was the equipment levels more than the numbers of bodies that were sobering. Six hundred tanks, two thousand pieces of artillery and close to four hundred aircraft were either in the region or on the way, and given they were not all yet in theatre, Jardine concluded Lanchester, or someone like him, had very good access to what should have been secret Italian information.

Some of the units could be discounted, like the so-called Arditi , Mussolini’s Blackshirts, who would be made up of ex-street thugs and Fascist arrivistes, more boastful than brave. But as Lanchester had pointed out, there were units like the Alpini ; in a mountainous country like Ethiopia they would be invaluable. Just as deadly would be the local askaris, troops able to fight in the terrain and climate because they were accustomed to both and, if they were anything like the ones the Germans had used in Tanganyika in the Great War, the most dangerous force of all, given they would take casualties in a way he doubted would apply to the regular Italian army. Worst of all for the Abyssinians was Italian air power: three hundred modern bombers and fighters against which the defenders could muster only some twenty-five old biplanes.

Studying the maps, it was clear the Italians would have to come from the lowlands of Eritrea and Somalia and ascend into the high country around Addis Ababa, their capital being the hub of resistance and the place the Ethiopians would be determined to defend. He let some tactics run through his mind but decided to let his notions lie fallow until he had talked to Amherst, who was, as a military strategist, very much his superior. Even then, the ringing of the bedside phone broke his train of thought.