The Secret War by Dennis Wheatley, Tony Morris Read Free Book Online

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.
    â€œWhy not?” she lifted her chin. “I’m due for a trip to Europe anyway; and in Paris I can get some frocks.”
    â€œWe’d love to have you along, darling, but …”
    â€œBut 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.
    â€œYou’ll look pretty foolish,” she said thoughtfully, “if the war is over by the time you get to Addis Ababa.”
    â€œChristopher may, but I shan’t,” he answered dryly. “Anyhow, I think it unlikely the war will be over for some time to come.”
    â€œWhy? Look at the victories the Italians have gained recently. They captured those two big mountains, Amba—something, weeks ago.”
    â€œAmba Aradam and Amba Aladji you mean. Yes, that was at the end of February.”
    â€œWell, 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 noorganisation 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