Red Fox

CHAPTER TWELVE

The first spars of light pushed across the inland foothills greying the road in front of Harrison and Giancarlo. A watercolour brush dabbed on the land, softening with pastel the darkness.

The grim hour of the day when men who have not slept dread the hours of withering brightness that will follow. They wound down from the hills, running from the mountains as if the sniff of the sea had excited them, towards the beaches of Salerno.

For more than an hour they had not spoken, each wrapped in his committed hostile silence. A fearful quiet lulled only by the throb of the small engine.

Harrison wondered whether the boy slept, but the breathing was never regular, and there were the sudden movements beside him that meant lack of comfort, lack of calm. Perhaps, he thought, it would be simple to disarm him. Perhaps. A soldier, a man of action, would risk all on a sudden swerve, a quick braking and a fast grapple for the P38. But you're neither of those, Geoffrey. The most violent thing he'd ever accomplished in his adult life was to kick that bucket at the guerrillas in the barn.

And a smack at Violet once. Just once, not hard. That's all, Geoffrey, all your offensive experience. Not the stuff of heroes, but it isn't in your chemistry, and for heroes read bloody idiots.

Geoffrey Harrison had never in his life met the dedicated activist, the political attack weapon. It was something new to him, of which he had only limited understanding. Newspaper photographs, yes, plenty of those. Wanted men, captured and chained men, dead men on the pavement. But all inadequate and failing, those images, when it came to this boy.

They're not stupid, not this one anyway. He worked out a plan and he executed it. Found you when half the police in the country were on the same job and late at the post. This isn't a gutter kid from the shanties down on the Tevere banks. A gutter kid wouldn't argue, he'd have killed for the stopping of the car.

'Giancarlo, I'm very tired. We have to talk about something.

If I don't talk we'll go off the road.'

There was no sudden start, no stirring at the breaking of the quiet. The boy had not been asleep. The possibility of action had not been there. Harrison felt better for that.

'You are driving very well, we have covered more than half the distance now. Much more than half.' The boy sounded alert, and prepared for conversation.

Harrison blundered in. 'Are you a student, Giancarlo?'

' I was. Some years ago I was a student.' Sufficient as a reply, giving nothing.

'What did you study?' Humour the little pig, humour and amuse him.

' I studied psychology at the University of Rome. I did not complete my first year. When the students of my class were taking their first year examinations I was held a political prisoner in the Regina Coeli gaol. I was a part of a struggle group. I was fighting against the borghese administration when the fascist police imprisoned me.'

Can't they speak another language, Harrison thought. Are they reduced only to the compilation of slogans and manifestos?

'Where do you come from, Giancarlo? Where is your home?'

'My home was in the covo with Franca. Before that my home was in the "B" Wing of the Regina Coeli, where my friends were.'

Harrison spoke without thought. He was too tired to pick his words, and his throat was hoarse and sore even from this slight effort. 'Where your parents were, where you spent your childhood, that was what I meant by home.'

'We use different words, 'Arrison. I do not call that my home.

I was in chains… ' Again the warm spittle spread on Harrison's face.

'I'm very tired, Giancarlo. I want to talk so that we don't crash, and I want to understand you. But you don't have to give me that jargon.' Harrison yawned, not for effect, not as a gesture.

Giancarlo laughed out loud, the first time Harrison had heard the rich little treble chime. 'You pretend to be a fool, 'Arrison. I ask you a question. Answer me the truth and I will know you.

Answer me, if you were a boy who lived in Italy – if you were from privilege of the DC, if you had seen the children in the

''popular'' quarter in their rags, if you had seen the hospitals, if you had seen the rich playing at the villas and with their yachts, if you had seen those things, would you not fight? That is my question, 'Arrison, would you not fight?'

The dawn came faster now, the probes of sunlight spearing across the road, and there were other cars on the autostrada, passing or being passed.

' I would not fight, Giancarlo,' Harrison said slowly with the crushing weariness surging again and his eyes cluttered with headlights. ' I would not have the courage to say that I am right, that my word is law. I would need greater authority than a bloody pistol.'

'Drive on, and be careful on the road.' The attack of the angered wasp. As if a stick had penetrated the nest and thrashed about and roused the ferocity of the swarm. 'You will learn my courage, 'Arrison. You will learn it at nine o'clock if the pigs that you slave for have not met – '

'Nine tomorrow morning.' Harrison spoke distantly, his attention on the tail lights in front and the dazzled centre mirror above him. 'You give them little time.'

'Time only for them to express your value.'

Away to the left were the lights daubed on the Bay of Naples.

Harrison veered to the right and followed the white arrows on the road to the north and Rome.

Another dawn, another bright fresh morning and Giuseppe Carboni, alive with the lemon juice in his mouth, arrived at the Viminale by taxi.

It was a long time since he had been to the Ministry. For many months there had been no reason for him to desert the un-prepossessing Questura for the eminence of the 'top table', the building that housed the Minister of the Interior and his attendant apparatus. His chin was down on his tie, his eyes on his shoes as he paid off the driver. This was a place where only the idiot felt safe, where the knives were sharp and the criticism cutting. Here the sociologists and the criminologists and the penologists held court and rule was by university diploma and qualification by breeding and connection, because this was close to power, the real power that the Questura did not know.

Carboni was led up the stairs, a debutante introduced at a dance. His humour was poor, his mind only slightly receptive when he reached the door of Francesco Vellosi who had summoned him.

He knew of Vellosi by title and reputation. A well-known name in the Pubblica Sicurezza with a history of clean firmness to embellish it, the one who had made a start at cleaning the drains of crime in Reggio Calabria, ordered significant arrests, and not bowed to intimidation. But the corridor gossip had it that he delighted in public acclamation and sought out the cameras and microphones and the journalists' notebooks. Carboni himself shunned publicity and was suspicious of fast won plaudits.

But the man across the desk appealed to him.

Vellosi was in his shirtsleeves, glasses down on his nose, cigarette limp between his lips in the gesture of the tired lover, tie loosened, and his jacket away on a chair across the room. No reek of after-shave, no scent of armpit lotion, and already a well-filled ashtray in front of him. Vellosi was studying the papers that piled up on the desk. Carboni waited, then coughed, the obliga-tory indication of his presence.

Vellosi's eyes fixed on him. 'Dottore Carboni, thank you for coming, and so soon. I had not expected you for another hour.'

' I came immediately I had dressed.'

'As you know, Carboni, from this office I manage the affairs of the anti-terrorist unit.' The rapid patter had begun. 'If one can make such a distinction, I am concerned with affairs political rather than criminal.'

It was to be expected that time would be consumed before they arrived at the reason for the meeting. Carboni was not disturbed. 'Obviously, I know the work that is done from this office.'

'And now it seems that our paths cross, which is rare. Seldom do criminal activities link with those of terrorism.'

' It has happened,' Carboni replied. Non-committal, watchful, the bird high on its perch.

'An Englishman has been kidnapped. It happened two mornings ago. I am correct?' Vellosi's chin was buried in his hands as he gazed hard across the desk. 'An Englishman from one of the big multinational companies that have an operation in Italy. Tell me, please, Carboni, what was your opinion of that case?'

There was something to be wary of. Carboni paused before speaking. ' I have no reason to believe that the kidnapping was not the work of criminals. The style of the attack was similar to that previously used. The limited descriptions of the men who took part indicated an age that is not usually common among the political people; they were in their thirties or more. A ransom demand was made that we have linked with a previous abduction, a further connection has been found with the office of a speculator in Calabria. There is nothing to make me doubt that it was a criminal affair.'

'You have been fortunate, you have come far.'

Carboni loosened. The man opposite him talked like a human being, playing down the superiority of his rank. The man from the Questura felt a freedom to express himself. 'Last night I was able to ask the carabinieri of Palmi near Reggio to keep a watch on this speculator. His name is Mazzotti, from the village of Cosoleto, he has connections in local politics. I acted without a warrant from the magistrate but the time would not allow. If I might digress, a man was found yesterday in a Roman pensione battered to death… he had a record for kidnapping, his family is from Cosoleto. I return to the point. The carabinieri behaved faultlessly.' Carboni permitted himself a slow smile, one policeman to another, histories of rivalry with the para-military force, mutual understanding on the scale of the compliment. 'The carabinieri followed Mazzotti to a barn, he was taken there by a woman who had heard sounds in the night. The woman's husband was dead there, shot at close range, another man also had been killed. There were signs of a temporary holding place, flattened down hay bales, and there was a chain with a manacle.

A pistol, Vellosi, had been used to break the lock of the handcuff.

It had been broken by gunshot. We did not find Harrison, nor any trace of him.'

Vellosi nodded his head, the picture unveiled, the drape drawn back. 'What conclusion, Carboni, did you draw from this information?'

'Someone came to the barn and killed the two men that he might have Harrison for himself. It was not a rescue, since there have been no messages from the south of Harrison's arrival at a police station or a carabinieri barracks. I checked before I left my home. I cannot draw an ultimate conclusion.'

The head of the anti-terrorist squad hunched forward, voice lowered and conspiratorial, as if in a room such as his there were listening places. 'Last night I was attacked. Ambushed as I left my home, and my driver killed.' Vellosi understood from the stunned frowns building and edging across Carboni's forehead that he knew nothing of the evening's horror. ' I survived unhurt. We have identified the swine who killed my driver. They are Nappisti, Carboni. They were young, they were inefficient, and they died for it.'

' I congratulate you on your escape,' Carboni whispered.

' I mourn my driver, he was a friend of many years. I believe I was attacked as a reprisal for the capture of the woman Franca Tantardini, taken by my squad in the Corso Francia. She is an evil bitch, Carboni, a poisoned, evil woman.'

Carboni recovered composure. ' It was a fine effort by your people.'

' I have told you nothing yet. Hear me out before you praise me.

There is a town, Seminara, in Calabria. I have no map but we will find, I am sure, that it is close to your Cosoleto. Under the mayor's door an hour ago was found a scribbled statement, not typed, not neat, from the NAP. A credit card of Harrison was with the paper. They will kill him tomorrow morning at nine o'clock if Tantardini has not been freed.'

Carboni whistled, an expiry of wind from his lungs. His pen fumbled between the fingers of his two hands, his notebook was virgin clean.

' I make an assumption, Carboni. The Nappisti reached your man Claudio. They extracted information. They have taken Harrison from the custody of Mazzotti. The danger now confronting the Englishman is infinitely greater.'

With his head bowed, Carboni sat very still in his chair as if a heavy blow had struck him. 'What has been done this morning to prevent an escape… '

'Nothing has been done.' A snarl from Vellosi's mouth, and above it the cauterized cheeks, the whitened skin at the temples.

'Nothing has been done because until we sat together there was no dialogue on this issue. I have no army, I have no authority over the polizia and the carabinieri. I do not have the numbers to stifle an escape. I have given you the Nappisti, and you have given me a location, and now we can begin.'

Carboni spoke sadly, unwilling to stamp on the energy of his superior. 'They have five hours' start on us, and they were close to the autostrada and at night the road is free.' His head shook as he multiplied kilometres and minutes in his mind. "They could travel hundreds of kilometres in a fast car. The whole of the Mezzo Giorno is open to t h e m… ' He tailed away, awed by the hopelessness of what he said.

'Bluster the local carabinieri, the polizia, breathe some fire under their backsides. Get back to your office now and hunt the facts.' Shouting now, consumed by his mission, Vellosi banged on his desk to emphasize each point.

'It is outside my jurisdiction… '

'What do you want? A rule book and Harrison dead in a ditch at five minutes past nine tomorrow? Get yourself on to the fifth floor at the Questura. All the computers, all the Honeywell machines there, get them moving, let them earn their keep.'

Resistance failing, Carboni subsided. 'May I make a telephone call, Dottore?'

'Make it and be on your way. You're not the only one to be busy this morning. The Minister will be here in forty minutes…'

Carboni was on his feet, galvanized into activity. With quick, sweaty fingers he flicked in his diary of telephone numbers for that of Michael Charlesworth of the British Embassy.

The early sun was denied entry to the reception lounge of the Villa Wolkonsky by the drawn drapes. The more fancied of the room's collection of rare porcelain had been put away the night before because there had been a small reception and the Ambassador's wife was ever wary of light fingers among her guests. There remained enough to satisfy the curiosity of Charlesworth and Carpenter as they stood close to each other in the gloom. They had come unannounced to the Ambassador's residence, spurred by Giuseppe Carboni's call to Charlesworth sketching the night's developments. The diplomat had collected Carpenter from his hotel. A servant in a white coat, not hiding his disapproval of the hour, had admitted them. If we broadcast we're on our way, Charlesworth had said in the car, then the barricades go up, he'll stall till office hours.

The irritation of the Ambassador was undisguised as he entered the room. A puckered forehead and a jutting chin sand wiched the hawk eyes of annoyance. He wore his familiar dark striped trousers, but no jacket to drape over the braces that held them firm. His collar was unfastened. The opening was abrupt.

'Good morning, Charlesworth. I understand from the message sent upstairs that you wished to see me on a matter of direct and pressing importance. Let's not waste each other's time.'

In the face of this salvo Charlesworth did not falter. 'I've brought with me Archie Carpenter. He's the Security Officer of International Chemical Holdings in London… '

His Excellency's eyes glinted, a bare greeting. .. I have just been telephoned by Dottore Carboni of the Questura. There have been disturbing and unpleasant developments in the Harrison c a s e… '

Carpenter said quietly, 'We judged that you should know of these – whatever the inconvenience of the hour.'

The Ambassador threw him a glance, then turned back to Charlesworth. 'Let's have it, then.'

'The police have always believed Harrison was kidnapped by a criminal organization. During the night it seems this organization was relieved of Harrison, who is now in the hands of the Nuclei Armati Proletaria.'

'What do you mean – "relieved"?'

'It seems that the NAP have forcibly taken Harrison from his original kidnappers,' said Charlesworth with patience.

'The police are offering this as a theory? We are to believe this ?'

Spoken with the killer chop of sarcasm.

'Yes, sir,' Carpenter again interjected, 'we believe it because there are three men on their backs in the morgue to convince us.

Two have died of gunshot wounds, the third of a dented skull.'

The Ambassador retreated, coughed, wiped his head with a handkerchief and waved his visitors to chairs. 'What's the motive?' he said simply.

Charlesworth took his cue. 'The NAP demand that by nine tomorrow morning, Central European Time, the Italian government shall release the captured terrorist Franca T a n t a r d i n i… '

The Ambassador, sitting far to the front of the intricately carved chair, reeled forward. 'Oh my God… Go on, Charlesworth. Don't spare the rod.'

'… the Italian government shall release Franca Tantardini or Geoffrey Harrison will be killed. In a few minutes the Minister of the Interior will get his first briefing. I imagine that within twenty you will be called to the Viminale.'

Rock still, his head in his tired, aged hands, the Ambassador contemplated. Neither Charlesworth nor Carpenter interrupted.

The buck had been passed. For a full minute the silence bur-geoned, causing Charlesworth to feel for the straightness of his tie knot, Carpenter to look at his unpolished shoes and the lace that was loose.

The Ambassador shook himself as if to dislodge the burden.

' It is a decision for the Italian government to make. Any interference, any pressure on our part, would be quite unwarranted.

Indeed, any suggestion of action would be quite uncalled for.'

'So you wash your hands of Harrison?' Carpenter was flushed as he spoke, temper surging.

' I don't think that's what the Ambassador m e a n t… ' Charlesworth cut in unhappily.

'Thank you, Charlesworth, but I can justify my own statements,' the Ambassador said. 'We don't wash our hands of the fate of Mr Harrison, as you put it, Mr Carpenter. We face the reality of local conditions.'

'When this was a criminal matter, when there was only money at issue, then we were prepared to deal..

'Your company was prepared to negotiate, Mr Carpenter. The British Foreign Office remained uninvolved.'

'What's so bloody different between a couple of million dollars and freedom for one woman?' Thanks to all that bloody brandy that Charlesworth had plied him with, he couldn't marshal his sentences, couldn't hit at the smug little sober bastard opposite him. The frustration welled in his mind.

'Don't shout at me, Mr Carpenter.' The Ambassador was cold, aloof on his pedestal. 'The situation is indeed different. Before, as you rightly say, only money was involved. Now we add principle, and with that the sovereign dignity of the Republic of Italy. It is inconceivable that the government here can bow to so crude a threat and release a public enemy of the stature of the Tantardini woman. It is equally inconceivable that the government of Great Britain should urge such a course.'

' I say again, you wash your hands of Geoffrey Harrison. You're prepared to see him sacrificed for the "dignity of Italy", whatever bloody nonsense that is… ' Carpenter looked across to Charles worth for an ally, but he had been anticipated and the gaze was averted.

'Well, thank you, gentlemen, thank you for your time. I'm sorry you were disturbed, that the day started badly, and early.'

Carpenter stood up, a little pencil of froth at the sides of his mouth. 'You're putting our man down the bloody bog, and you're pulling the bloody chain on him, and I think it's bloody marvellous.'

There was a passionless mask across the Ambassador's features and he stayed far back in his chair. 'We merely face reality, Mr Carpenter, and reality will dictate that if the losers in this matter are to be either Geoffrey Harrison or the Republic of Italy, then it will be Harrison who loses. If that is the conclusion, then the life of one man is of lesser importance than the lasting damage to the social and political fabric of a great and democratic country. That is how I see it, Mr Carpenter.'

'It's a load of b u l l s h i t… '

'Your rudeness neither offends me nor helps Harrison.®

' I think we should be on our way, Archie.' Charlesworth too was standing. 'I'll see you later in the office, sir.'

When they were out in the sunshine and walking towards the car, Charlesworth saw that there were tears streaming down Archie Carpenter's face.

For several minutes Harrison had been watching the jumping needle of the fuel dial that bounced against the left corner of the display arc bringing him the knowledge that the tank was drying, emptying. He wondered how the boy would react to the idea that the car would soon be static and useless, considered whether he should alert him to the impending halt of their progress, or whether he should simply drive on till the engine coughed and died, barren of petrol. It depended what he wanted from it, whether it was a fight, or whether it was the easy way and safety, however temporary. Tell him now that they were about to stop on the hard shoulder and perhaps the boy wouldn't panic, would work at his options. Allow it to happen and the boy might crumble under a crisis, and that was dangerous because of the ready presence of the P38.

Same old question, Geoffrey, same old situation. To confront or to bend, and no middle road.

Same old answer, Geoffrey. Don't shake it, don't rock it.

Don't kick the bucket of muck in his face because that's the short way to pain, and the gun's close and armed.

'We won't be going much further, Giancarlo.'

Harrison's softly spoken words boomed in the quiet of the car.

Beside him the boy straightened from his low-slung sitting posture. The gun barrel dug at Harrison's ribs as if demanding explanation.

'We're almost out of petrol.'

The boy's head in its curled and tangled hair darted across Harrison's chest to study the dial. Harrison eased back in his seat, gave him more room, and heard his breathing speed and rise.

'There's not much more in the old girl, Giancarlo. Perhaps a few more kilometres.'

The boy lifted his head, and the hand that did not hold the gun scraped at his chin as if this were a way to summon inspiration and clarity of decision.

' It's not my fault, Giancarlo.'

'Silence,' the boy snapped back.

Just the breathing to mingle with the steady purr of the little engine, and time too for Harrison to think and consider. Behind their different walls the man and the boy entertained the same thoughts. What would a stoppage mean to the security of the journey? What risk would it offer Giancarlo of identification and subsequent pursuit? What possibility of escape would it present to his prisoner? And it's not only the boy with decisions to make, Geoffrey, it's you as well. He couldn't be as vigilant, could he, if they were stopped on the roadside, pulled into a toll gate, going in search of a petrol station ? Opportunities were going to loom, opportunities for flight, for a struggle.

Then he'll shoot.

Sure?

Can't be sure but likely.

Worth a try, whether he'll shoot or not?

Perhaps, if the opportunity's there.

That's the crawling way out, that's the gutless way.

For Christ's sake, it's not a bloody virility contest. It's my bloody life, it's my bloody stomach with the P38 stuck into it. It's my neck with the axe hanging over it. It's not gesture time. I said perhaps, that should bloody be enough.

You won't do it, you won't take him on, you won't fight.

Perhaps, but only if it presents itself.

'We take the Monte Cassino turn-off.' Giancarlo was out of his dream, breaking Harrison's debate.

High above them to the right of the autostrada perched the triumphant monastery. It loomed on the mountain top, a widow's shrine for women of many far countries whose men had staggered and fallen distant years back under the rain of shrapnel and explosive, and bullet swathes. The car plunged past the signs for the turn-off.

Giancarlo raised himself in his seat and pulled from a hip pocket a wad of notes and the autostrada toll ticket taken hundreds of kilometres back from a machine.

' I had not thought of the petrol,' he laughed with a quick nervousness. A drip of weakness before the tap was turned tighter. "Arrison, you will not be silly. You will pay the ticket.

The gun will be at you all the time. You are not concerned with what will happen to me, you are concerned with what will happen to yourself. If you are silly then you are dead; whether I am too does not help you. You understand, 'Arrison?'

'Yes, Giancarlo.'

Harrison pulled the wheel hard to the right, felt the tyres bite beneath him, heard their squeal, and the pace of the autostrada diminished from his windscreen mirror. He had slowed the car as they wound on the tight bend towards the toll gate. Giancarlo reached back to the seat behind and grabbed at his light anorak, arranged it over his lower arm and his fist and the gun and again pressured the barrel into the softness at Harrison's waist.

'You don't speak.'

'What if he talks to me?' Harrison stammered, the tension exuding from the boy spread contagiously.

' I will talk to him, if it is necessary… If I fire the pistol from here I kill you, 'Arrison.'

' I know, Giancarlo.'

Perhaps, but only if it presents itself. You know the answer, Geoffrey. He pressed the brake as the cabins of the toll gate loomed in front of him. He stopped the car as the bonnet edged against the narrow barrier, carefully wound down the window and without looking passed the ticket and a banknote out into the cool dawn air.

'Grazie.'

The voice startled Harrison. Contact again with the real and the permanent life, contact with the clean and the familiar. His eyes followed his arm but there was no face in his vision, only a hand that was dark and hair-covered with a worn greasy palm that took his money, and was gone before snaking back with a fist full of coins. It had not presented itself. The gun gouged at his flesh, and the man would not even have seen their faces. The voice beside him was shrill.

'Una stazione de servizio, per benzina?'

'Cinquen cento metri..'

'Grazie.'

'Prego.'

The barrier was raised, Harrison edged the car into gear.

Shouldn't he have crashed the gears, stalled the engine, dropped the change in the roadway? Shouldn't he have done something?

But the gun was there, round and penetrating at the skin. All right for those who don't know, all right for those without experience. Let them come and sit here, let them find their own answers to cowardice. Within moments the lights of a petrol station shone at them in the half light, diffused with the growing sun.

'You follow my instructions exactly/

'Yes, Giancarlo.'

'Go to the far pumps.'

Where it was darkest, where the light was masked by the building, Harrison stopped. Giancarlo waited till the handbrake was applied, the gear in neutral, before his hand snaked out at speed to rip the keys from the ignition. He snapped open his door, thrust it shut behind him and jogged around the back of the car till he was at Harrison's door. He held his anorak across his waist, with an innocence that was above suspicion.

Harrison saw a man in the blue overalls of Agip stroll without urgency towards the car.

'Venti mila lire di benzina, per fa vore '

' S i. '

Would he look into the car, would the curiosity bred from the long night hours cause him to turn from the boy who stood beside the driver's door, and wish to examine the occupant? Why should it? Why should he care who drives a car? This has to be the moment, Geoffrey. Now, right now, not next time, not next week.

How?

Fling the door open, crash it into Giancarlo's body. You'd knock him back with it, he'd fall, he'd slip. For how long?

Long enough to run. Sure? Well, not sure… but it's a chance.

And how far do you run before he's on his feet, five metres… ?

It's the opportunity. Then he shoots, and he doesn't miss, not this kid, and who else is here other than a half-asleep idiot with his eyes closed, who'll have to play the hero?

Giancarlo passed the man the notes and waited as he walked away, then hissed through the window, 'I am going to walk round the car. If you move I will shoot, it is no problem through the glass. Do not move, 'Arrison.'

Only if it presents itself. Geoffrey Harrison felt the great weakness creeping into his knees and shins, lapping in his stomach.

His tongue smeared a dampness across his lips. You'd have been dead, Geoffrey, if you'd tried anything, you know that, don't you? He supposed he did, supposed he had been sensible, behaved in the intelligent, responsible way that came from education and experience. Wouldn't have lasted long on that mountain-side in 1944, Geoffrey; wouldn't have lasted five bloody minutes.

Beneath the triumphant monastery on Monte Cassino, Giancarlo ordered Harrison to turn off the autostrada.

He held the pistol hidden between his legs as Harrison paid the sleepy toll attendant at the barrier with the money the boy had given him. They drove sharply through the small town, re-built from the ravages of bombardment into a characterless warren of flat blocks and factories, and headed north on a narrow road among the rock defiles, ever watched by the great whitestone eye on the mountain top. They bypassed the sombre war cemetery for the German dead of a battle fought before the birth of Giancarlo and Harrison, and then the road's turns became more vicious, and the high banks more intrusive.

Three kilometres beyond the rugged message of the grave-yard cross, Giancarlo indicated an open field gate through which they should turn. The car lurched over the bare grass covering the hardened ground and was lost to sight behind a gorse hedge of brilliant yellow flowers. Shepherds might come here, or the men who watched the goat flocks, but the chance was reasonable in Giancarlo's mind. Among the grass and weed and climbing thistle and the bushes of the hillside they would rest. Rome lay just one hundred and twenty-five kilometres away. They had done well, they had made good time.

With the car stationary, Giancarlo moved briskly. The flex that he had found in the glove compartment in one hand, the pistol in the other, he followed Harrison between the gorse clumps. He ordered him down, pushed him without unkindness on to his stomach, and then, kneeling with the gun between his thighs, bound Harrison's hands across the small of his back.

The legs next, working at the ankles, wrapping the flex around them, weaving it tight, binding the knot. He walked a few paces away and urinated noisily in the grass and was watching the rivulets when he realized he had not offered the Englishman the same chance. He shrugged and put it from his mind. He had no feelings for his prisoner; the man was just a vehicle, just a machine for bringing him closer to his Franca.

Harrison's eyes were already closed, the breathing deep and regular as the sleep sped to him. Giancarlo watched the slow rise and fall of his shoulders and the gaping mouth that was not irritated by the nibbling attendance of a fly. He put the gun on the grass and scrabbled with his fingers at the buckle of his belt and at the elastic waist of his underpants.

Franca. Darling, sweet, lovely Franca. I am coming, Franca.

And we will be together, always together, Franca, and you will love me for what I have done for you. Love me, too, my beautiful.

Love me.

Giancarlo subsided on the grass and the sun played on his face and there was a light wind and the sound of the flying creatures.

The P38 was close to his hand, and the boy lay still.