Free Harkaway's Sixth Column by John Harris Page B

time of night? Not on your bloody life!’
    ‘Well, if it’s not an Eyetie, who is it?’
    ‘A civvy. Trying to get to the coast. You’ve got to stop that bang!’
    ‘How, you bloody fool?’ Harkaway snapped. ‘It’s just about there now. I’m not going near it!’ ‘Well, we’d better warn him.’
    Together, they started to scramble down the slope, yelling. The rider looked up. The face was shadowed in the grey dusk by the brim of the topee but they caught the glint as the last of the light touched the lenses of a pair of round spectacles. Clearly the rider thought their approach was an attack and they saw a hand fish under the blanket then there was a crack and they heard the whine of a bullet sailing over their heads. Automatically, they flung themselves down. The rider spurred the camel into a lope and it began to approach the spot where the pass narrowed.
    ‘Oh, Jesus!’
    As Gooch spoke, there was a tremendous roar and a flash that lit up the pass. They saw the camel smash down, legs asprawl, then the pass was full of clouds of dust and billowing brown smoke.
    For a moment they stared, then they became aware of soft plops and clicks around them and realized that they were being bombarded by falling stones thrown up by the explosion. Flattening themselves against the ground, their arms over their heads, they waited until it had subsided, then they rose, covered with dust, and began to scramble down the slope again.
    The camel was on its side, blood coming from its nostrils. The rider was huddled by its side.
    ‘The bugger’s dead,’ Gooch said.
    But the rider stirred. A shaking hand pushed a pair of steel-rimmed, dust-covered spectacles straight, then the figure was on its feet, its face contorted with rage. Immediately their jaws dropped. The topee and the blanket had been snatched away by the blast and the shirt beneath had been blown open to the waist. And what they could see underneath clearly didn’t belong to a man. It was a woman, tall, slender as a sapling, her skin covered with sandy dust, her dark hair, blown into a mop by the blast, looking as if it had had an electric shock. ‘Who in the name of Christ,’ Harkaway said, ‘are you?’
     

7
     
    The woman was tempestuously angry, unable to get her words out in her fury.
    "Those wretched Italians,’ she managed at last. ‘Catholics every one of them! Slaves to the credo of Rome! Speaking peace even as they make war!’
    Clearly she regarded them not as her attackers but as her saviours and was venting her spleen on the invaders as the sole cause of her disaster and discomfort.
    ‘My camel’s dead,’ she raged on, her hands busy wiping the lenses of her glasses. ‘And everything’s ruined! I hadn’t much, Heaven knows! And look at me! Look what they’ve done to me!’
    She was still dazed and seemed unaware of what had happened to her clothes and they were indeed looking at her, and, now that it was clear she wasn’t much harmed, were thoroughly enjoying the sight.
    ‘Look, ma’am,’ Tully said, ‘what in the name of Christ are you doing here? There’s a war on, didn’t you know?’
    She became aware at last of their stares and that her blouse was flapping open. Hurriedly she drew it together and stood with her hands across her breasts holding it in place. Her hair, covered with dust, still stood out like a mophead round her face.
    She gazed at them for a moment as it suddenly dawned on her that there was something a little odd about meeting three English-speaking men dressed as Arabs in the middle of Italian-occupied territory.
    "Who are -?’
    Harkaway waved her to silence. His mind was still occupied with the reason for their being there. He had been standing with his head cocked as they talked and now he gestured abruptly. ‘Listen!’
    They stopped arguing at once and immediately became aware of the grind of gears as a heavy vehicle slogged slowly up the slope in the dusk towards them. There were only two men in it, an