Harkaway's Sixth Column Read Online Free PDF

north-east that were full of British prisoners, and Italian vehicles were now moving freely backwards and forwards along the long straight road with the slow trains of camels while, overhead, aeroplanes droned in safety across the brassy sky.
    The Italians were in control. The war was over in that part of the world.
    Undisturbed except for the wild cackle of a hyena or the scuffle as an occasional dik-dik or gerenuk slipped among the rocks, they were quite unconcerned. Once they smelled leopard and heard its throaty roar in the night but they saw no sign of anything but troops of baboons that sat among the rocks watching them.
    ‘Bloody things,’ Tully said. ‘Once when we were out on an exercise near Sheikh the bastards attacked us.’
    ‘What did you do?’ Gooch leaned back lazily, a cigarette in his mouth.
    ‘We chucked rocks at ‘em.’
    ‘Stop ‘em?’
    ‘No. The bastards chucked ‘em back.’
    During the afternoon, they took the Bedford down to Eil Dif, the back full of empty petrol cans.
    The people occupying Eil Dif were Habr Odessi, a clan of the great northern tribe of Aidegalla, and they found the chief in the coffee house in the marketplace, an emaciated old man with a shock of greying hair and one leg crippled from a sword slash thirty years before when the Mad Mullah was terrorizing the country. He stood leaning on his staff listening politely as Harkaway explained in barrakee hausa what they had to offer for the privilege of using the tribe’s waterhole, then he gestured at one of the waiting Somalis who vanished and returned with a tall smiling villain of a man with a limp. He wore a long robe, an embroidered cap like a tarboosh and an over-large pair of western boots devoid of laces.
    ‘Hello, Chief,’ he said in English. ‘Salaam aleikum. Ma nabad bal Is it peace?’
    ‘Wa aleikum, salaam,’ Harkaway replied. ‘Wa nabad. It is peace. You speak English?’
    ‘Yes, effendi. We have palaver?’
    ‘We wish to replenish our water,’ Harkaway said. ‘We also wish to barter for fresh meat.’
    ‘We have meat to sell, effendi. How much do you offer?’
    Harkaway produced several tins of boot polish. ‘Very good,’ he explained. ‘You polish your sandals. Like this.’
    He pushed forward the toe of his boot, carefully rubbed up for the occasion. ‘Very good,’ he said again. ‘Your women like it.’
    The limping man smiled and shook his head. ‘Effendi, I am Yussuf abu Jibril. But I am known to the English sailors as Shovel Joe. I stoker in ships from Aden. My mother Arab. My father Abyssinian. I speak English good. I go many times Cape Town. Once London. All white people have boots like that. I see it. It is worth nothing.’
    Harkaway studied the Somali silently. It was not uncommon for a Somali to go to sea, returning after several years with a suit, a stiff collar and a valise full of money and trinkets bought in Cape Town or Alexandria, and then to abandon them all for the nomad life of his ancestors, complete with camels and a herd of sheep and goats and wearing the tobe, the traditional dress of the country, which was nothing more than fifteen feet of Manchester cotton cloth worn like a toga.
    ‘We’re up against a business tycoon here,’ he muttered to the others. Turning to the Somali he asked, ‘How much do you want then, Joe?’
    Yussuf shrugged. ‘What have you got, effendi? We are a poor people. All Somalis are poor people. It is the will of Allah, though I sometimes wonder why, if Allah is so merciful, he created Somaliland so empty. I leave the sea because too hard work and I hurt my foot. Perhaps I become chief when Italians come to Eil Dif. Chief Abduruman already much old, and I speak also Italian, you see. Many times into Massawa and Mogadiscio.’
    Harkaway glanced at the others. Yussuf abu Jibril might well be a useful ally. He thrust the tins of boot polish at him. ‘Might as well keep them,’ he said. ‘Give ‘em to your wives. Polish their