Harkaway's Sixth Column

by John Harris

  ‘Then you’re a bloody fool, too,’ Harkaway said. He stared at Tully. ‘Get back to your place, you oaf! Hasn’t it occurred to you we need her? She’s the only one among us who speaks the lingo.’

  Head up and angry, Harkaway stood between them and Tully finally shuffled away. Gooch was sitting up in his blankets, watching as Grobelaar lowered the rifle.

  ‘I’ve a good mind to hand you over to the Italians.’ Harkaway’s voice rose. ‘There are only four of us – five with her – and we’re surrounded by the buggers. There’s only one way we can survive and that’s by pulling together. If you’d done what you intended, do you think Gooch wouldn’t think he could, too – and Kom-Kom?’

  ‘It never crossed my mind, man,’ Grobelaar growled.

  ‘Nor mine,’ Gooch said.

  Harkaway knew Gooch at least was lying because he’d seen him eyeing Danny when she took off her shirt to wash. He’d known what he’d been thinking because he’d been thinking it himself.

  The first sign of Forsci’s activities came when Yussuf appeared, grey-haired, limping and evil, on the veranda of the old house.

  ‘The Italians have been asking questions, effendi,’ he said.

  Harkaway sat up. ‘Where?’

  ‘In Guli. And Dorali. They are also searching near Gumra. Effendi, they will soon come here.’

  ‘Right,’ Harkaway said. ‘Then we’d better move. Send every one of your young men who wishes to stay with us into the hills.’

  ‘What about the weapons?’ Gooch asked.

  ‘We take ’em with us. We’ve now got seven lorries and a car and we stuff everything we can in them and disappear. We’ll be all right. With their bloody East African empire attacked on three sides at once, the Eyeties won’t want to wander too far from base.’

  ‘What about the spare petrol?’ Grobelaar asked. ‘We can’t afford to lose it.’

  ‘We take it with us. What we can’t carry we bury in the desert.’

  ‘Suppose the Italians find it?’

  ‘We’ll get Yussuf to park his camels over it. The Italians won’t hang around too long looking for it, in case they’re cut off. If the South Africans are moving up towards Italian Somaliland, they’ll be spending all their time looking over their shoulders.’

  However, Yussuf began to see problems. The young men who were expecting loot now considered themselves warriors and digging was beneath them. He suggested instead that they place the petrol in the cellar of the house they were occupying.

  ‘It was built by an Englishman for his Somali mistress,’ he said. ‘I remember her, effendi. She had hips like a boy and breasts like twin hills. The village women were jealous and stoned her to death when the Englishman went.’

  The cellar was a ruin of crumbling walls and tumbled timber covered with the droppings of bats and rats and birds.

  ‘It will be safe, effendi,’ Yussuf said. ‘And when you have used what you can carry, our old men will bring more on the backs of their camels.’

  ‘I thought we were going to use it to get down to Kenya,’ Gooch complained. ‘With all the silver we were going to get.’

  Harkaway gestured angrily. ‘Why go down to Kenya?’ he said. ‘Let Kenya come to us. They’re on their way, aren’t they?’

  Tully’s eyes were shifty. ‘What about the woman?’ he asked. ‘Do we take her with us?’

  Harkaway looked at him coldly. ‘Were you thinking we should leave her behind?’ he asked.

  One of the young Odessi was sent off at once to Chief Daoud asking for his young Harari to come, and the young men of the Habr Odessi appeared within minutes to load the lorries with weapons, tinned food and bags of maize. What they couldn’t carry with them they placed under the sandy floor of one of the old houses. By the time they’d finished, the young Harari men had begun to arrive from Guli and Dobalar and a steady stream of petrol cans began to move to the old house like the burdens of a lot of black ants. Old men, young men, women and children all helped, all aware that the precious fluid was connected to their future. The cans balanced on straw rings on their heads, they sent off in a long line, grunting camels and asses among them.

  During the afternoon, a youngster came in from Chief Daoud to say the Italians were searching a village near Guli and were expected to move on later to Dobelar, where they were intending to camp the night. There were twelve lorries and many men.

  The threat was growing closer and Chief Abduruman sent his women and young boys out of the town with the sheep and goats. Soon afterwards the young Habr Odessi and Harari men who had thrown in their lot with the Free British set off after them.

  ‘They will be waiting for you,’ Yussuf explained.

  The rest of them left as dusk was falling, followed by groups of children wielding palm branches over the lorry tracks in the dusty road. Seven miles to the north-east a young man with a spear and a rifle and with a panga hanging from his waist, was waiting. As he pointed, the vehicles turned into the hills, one after the other, the car bringing up the rear. The young tribesmen were waiting for them among the rocks while the women and boys had driven the sheep and goats into a narrow valley where coarse grass grew among the acacias and twisted grey thorn trees.

  As the lorries appeared, they were moved one after the other into the hills along narrow tracks known to the Odessi shepherds, human muscle helping the grinding gears and spinning wheels. Then the tribesmen moved back down the road and began to trot up and down so that their large flat feet obliterated the tracks.

  The next afternoon Commandante Ruffo di Peri’s column arrived in Eil Dif. They occupied several of the ruined villas, and a headquarters was set up. The following day, they appeared at the foot of the hills where the Sixth Column was camped. They didn’t explore, but moved on to the waterhole at Ruba, where they sat for four whole days, watched from the peaks by the Sixth Column. It seemed wiser to move and, driving the vehicles further into the gullies in the hills, the Sixth Column stacked stones and fallen thorn trees in the entrances to hide them, and travelled on foot to a fresh encampment.

  They were only just in time. Two days later, one of the watching Harari boys brought the information that the Italians had found the original encampment lower down the slopes and had halted there. The next day lorries appeared on the other side of the range of hills. It was easy to see them from the crests, small matchbox-like vehicles moving about the flat scrubland. A fresh camp was set up and from it patrols began to push into the hills, so that they had to move higher still where it was colder and more difficult. Because there was no grazing, they had to leave the herd of sheep and goats behind. The girls and children who were looking after it were questioned by the Italians. They gave nothing away but they were ordered at rifle point to drive the herd back to Eil Dif. Watching the little trickle of animals descending the mountains, it was clear life was going to become more difficult.

  With the Italians all round them, they were stuck and Harkaway was beginning to grow angry. They even knew now the name of the man who was hunting them.

  ‘The bastard’s beginning to annoy me,’ Harkaway said.

  Two days later they heard that Di Peri had brought in four Germans who had been acting as liaison officers in Berbera. He was clearly determined to catch them and, with half his force on the south side of the Bur Yi range and the other half based on Eil Dif to the north, it was beginning to grow uncomfortable. They could leave no trace of their movements, fires were impossible and they had to leave most of their equipment in the lorries and move constantly from one camp to another.

  Then, as they waited, one of the young Harari boys appeared, his face excited, and started to jabber at them.

  ‘Get Danny,’ Harkaway snapped.

  A moment later, Danny arrived and began to question the boy.

  ‘He says there are four men down the hillside. They are wearing English uniforms and say they are escaped prisoners. They know there are English in the hills and they wish to join them. He didn’t believe them and said h
e knew of the English but would have to find them and told them to wait.’

  The following morning, they were watching the four men sitting round their camp fire. They had a single tent and wore shorts and British topees with the flash of the Black Watch, but there was something about them that suggested they were not what they seemed.

  After dark they were able to approach near enough to hear them speaking and Danny gestured. ‘They’re Germans,’ she said.

  ‘Di Peri’s liaison officers,’ Gooch said. ‘Do we kill ’em?’

  Harkaway smiled. ‘I’ve got a better idea. Tell the boy to go over the hills to the south and fetch the Italians, Danny. Tell him to say he’s found the English.’

  The Italians appeared the next day, a group of twenty under a sergeant, small dark-haired men with baggy trousers, heavy boots and wide topees. They approached the Germans warily, watched by the gleeful men higher up the slopes, then stepped out, their rifles pointed.

  ‘Mani in alto!’ the sergeant yelled.

  The Germans, bent over the fire in front of their tent, swung round. One of them reached for a rifle that lay across a rock and the Italian sergeant fired. The bullet kicked up stones at the German’s feet and he leapt into the air, yelling, and flung down the weapon. The watching group were almost beside themselves.

  They could hear angry shouts now, but none of the Italians seemed to speak German and they lined up the Germans and marched them down the mountainside. The Sixth Column watched them all the way, moving from crest to crest, unwilling to miss the joke. Down on the plain, the Germans were packed into the back of a lorry and a guard set over them.

  ‘Send one of the Boys down to Yussuf,’ Harkaway said. ‘Tell him to find out what happened.’

  The story came back to them the following day. Di Peri’s fury had been spectacular and they hugged themselves with glee at the thought of the Germans being arrested by their own side. It seemed they had had enough of Di Peri’s attempts to pin down the guerrillas and had taken themselves off to Addis Ababa.

  Unfortunately the joke backfired because it made Di Peri twice as determined to find the practical jokers. He moved his headquarters to the town of Gura and from then on his soldiers were always in the hills, so that they had to move even higher for safety. Harkaway was terrified that one of the patrols would stumble on their lorries with their loads of food, arms and ammunition.

  They were high enough now to be half-frozen at night and were cut off from their supplies by the bands of Italian native levies so that they could only move in ones and twos after dark. Muttering among the Somalis started. They had no liking for cold and were not equipped for it, and the absence of fires irked them. Gooch and Tully began to complain.

  ‘We ought to have a go at nobbling this bloody Di Peri,’ Gooch growled.

  Harkaway gave him a cold look. He was more aloof than ever these days, keeping himself to himself, brooding and short in speech and temper. His mind was full of ideas and problems that had never occurred to the others.

  ‘How,’ he asked, ‘do you propose doing it?’

  Gooch had no idea. ‘Couldn’t we send in some of the Somalis?’ he asked feebly.

  ‘The Italians,’ Harkaway snapped, ‘are a military formation, and more than a match for a few half-trained natives.’

  ‘Why not kidnap him?’ Danny suggested.

  Harkaway turned to her. She had thought the idea a good one and waited for him to offer her a small measure of praise. He could have done anything with her and she longed for him to give her orders so that she could carry them out. Even more, she longed for a suggestion that he found her intelligent, brave and attractive. It was against all her nature and training but she was unable to push the knowledge aside.

  ‘What do we do with him when we’ve got him?’ he asked with chilly disinterest.

  ‘He’d be a useful hostage. Up here, surrounded by Habr Odessi and Harari, he’d never escape and if we had him with us, they’d never dare bring guns or aircraft against us.’

  ‘It’d be easier to shoot the sod,’ Gooch grumbled.

  She shook her head. ‘Shooting would bring the whole garrison down on us,’ she said. ‘Kidnapping would be quiet. Especially if we used some of the Italian uniforms we have. We could be miles away before the alarm was raised.’

  Grobelaar grinned. ‘Think what it would do to the Italians’ nervous system, man,’ he said. ‘Every single one of them would start wondering if his turn was next.’

  ‘We couldn’t do it.’ Harkaway spoke brusquely. ‘We can’t hold a prisoner while we’re on the run.’

  But that night they heard news from Mombasa on Tully’s radio that made them feel they might not be on the run for long. There had been a big battle at Agordat a hundred miles inside Eritrea where the Italians had been defeated. They were now retreating into the mountains near Keren, while in the south, the South Africans were across the border and heading at full speed for Mogadiscio in Italian Somaliland.

  They stared at each other. It was suddenly beginning to look as though it was time to take the initiative.

  ‘This business of kidnapping Di Peri–’ Grobelaar murmured tentatively.

  This time Harkaway said nothing and his eyes were suddenly dreamy. Grobelaar looked at Danny and winked, then he turned to Harkaway again.

  ‘How would we go about it?’

  Harkaway came abruptly to life. ‘When they assassinated Caesar,’ he said, ‘they watched his movements for days. We shall have to find out what he does and when he does it.’ He smiled his aloof smile. ‘Let’s give it a whirl.’

  Two

  The idea grew.

  Gura was a dirty whitewashed town among the palms that pushed through the sandy soil round a group of wells in the foothills of the Bur Yi range just off the Strada del Duce. The original Arab buildings crowded together in a region of twisting lanes, with tall overhanging walls and crumbling ruins. The better part of the town had an air of shabby well-being, with the usual broken shutters, peeling paint and crumbling plaster, the roads cracked and potholed with subsidence, and a few characterless nineteenth-century houses where British officials had once lived, alongside the iron-roofed huts and wood-and-wattle rabbit-hutches of the Somalis.

  The place was full of Italians. Ruffo di Peri had set up his headquarters and mess in a house near the marketplace, a large building which had once been the residence of a District Commissioner, while the house where he slept was half a mile away on the slopes in an area of shady gum trees. Yussuf, like Abdillahi completely Harkaway’s man since their victory over Forsci’s convoy, made a splendid spy with his crippled foot, sitting for hours at a time with a begging bowl, watching the Italians come and go.

  Because it was impossible for the Italians to tell which Somalis were actively assisting their enemies and which were not, he was undisturbed and Harkaway was even able to join him. Disguised with a blanket and boot-blacking, he sat watching in the dusk with the old man, and when Yussuf waved Harkaway waved with him.

  It didn’t take long to work out a scheme.

  ‘We’ve got to ambush him,’ Harkaway said. ‘He’s driven by a chauffeur between his living quarters and the mess, in a Lancia with a flag on the bonnet. Unfortunately, there are two other Lancias in Gura and we’ve got to make sure we get the right one. Somebody’s got to watch the mess and signal when he leaves.’

  ‘I’ll watch,’ Danny said. ‘They’ll never suspect a woman.’

  Tully eyed her. ‘Somali women only wear a tobe,’ he said. ‘And nothing else.’

  ‘Then I’ll wear a tobe and nothing else,’ she said spiritedly. ‘I’ll sell dates or maize. There are always women selling things. I’ll join them.’

  ‘It’s too bleddy risky.’ Grobelaar’s voice was concerned.

  She turned on him quickly. ‘I’m the right shape. Tall and skinny.’

  Grobelaar smiled his cobwebby smile. ‘Slim,’ he corrected.

  She shrugged. ‘The same shape as Somali women. With a tobe
and a headdress, they’d never know.’

  Harkaway studied her, his eyes moving up and down her body. She longed for him to say she was brave, even like Grobelaar to admit she was slim. But all he did was nod and say it seemed possible.

  That night they had a fillip to their spirits when the South African bombers appeared and began to knock hell out of Hargeisa. From the hills it was possible to watch the flashes beyond the skyline and hear the distant thuds. If nothing else, it convinced them they were right to move to the offensive.

  By this time the plan had grown. Yussuf’s daughter had been roped in now and was prepared to place her herd of sheep and goats in the way of any attempt to rescue Di Peri after they’d captured him. As Danny, clad in a blanket and darkened with boot-blacking, took up her position with Yussuf near Di Peri’s headquarters, Harkaway and Gooch, with Grobelaar, who was the best driver, headed into Eil Dif to try on the Italian uniforms they had hidden.

  It was quite clear that Commandante di Peri was not expecting trouble. Fetchingly under-clothed in her blanket, Danny reported that he spent the day at a desk that had been set up for him in his house, rested during the afternoon, then drove to the mess for dinner, after which he played bridge for two hours before returning to his quarters, which were guarded not only by askaris but by regular Italian soldiers. He usually sat in the front seat of the car alongside the driver and there was a tight security organization that sprang from his sound suspicion that he was in Sixth Column country. Sentries, it appeared, always checked his car before it was allowed to pass.

  Where the road from the mess joined the road to Di Peri’s house the land began to rise to a steep slope which would slow the car, and Harkaway had worked it out that, because of the trees there, it was always deep in shadow, even if the moon happened to be out. Alongside was a deep drainage ditch. A red lantern had been made by wrapping red cloth round the glass and, dressed as Italian soldiers, Harkaway, Gooch and Grobelaar made their way into the town as darkness fell and took up their positions in the ditch. Among the trees opposite, Tully waited with Abdillahi and the best of their Habr Odessi and Harari warriors to hold back any traffic that turned up unexpectedly, while Yussuf’s daughter squatted near her sheep and goats, ready to drive them across the path of any approaching vehicles that came too close.