Red Fox

CHAPTER FOUR

His Excellency the Ambassador of Her Britannic Majesty, who had known the tap of her sword on his right shoulder and had kissed her hand and valued his audience, was a man who admired discipline of action, and protocol of approach. He had not disguised his distaste at what he regarded as the breathy intervention of young Charlesworth when he was only one foot out of his official burnished transport. He had been short with his First Secretary, had permitted only the briefest of resumes and failed to raise his eyebrows in either shock or astonishment. And as he had marched away, smiling at the doorman, with Charlesworth snapping like a lap dog at his heels, he had suggested that something on paper by lunchtime would satisfy his requirements for information.

As he strode down the drive to the security lodge, Charlesworth cursed himself for his flustered account, for his failure to interest his superior, regretting that he had allowed himself to be put down as a bubbling child is by an overburdened parent. He recalled that the Ambassador was hosting a luncheon-party that day; the newly appointed Foreign Minister would be at his right hand, the guest of honour. Present would be the senior members of the diplomatic corps, a smattering of ranking civil servants, the best bone china and the silverware out from the cupboard.

The Ambassador had his priorities, Charlesworth growled to himself. The soup shouldn't be too salted, the plates must be warm, the wine chilled, the conversation clever. He had too much on his mind to worry about the fears of a hysterical woman, and a man trussed and perhaps half dead who was experiencing the greatest degree of terror he had known in his life. He'd be far too busy for such sordidness, and a piece of paper with some aptly chosen words presented before the sherry flowed would be sufficient.

Charlesworth dived out into the road beyond the regimented railings of the Embassy, scanning the traffic that burst through the arches of the ancient reddened brick city wall. Getting a taxi would need the luck of old Jupiter. But luck was with him, the yellow Fiat snaking to the pavement, and he waved frantically and hurried towards its stopping point. He saw the face in the back, equal shades of mauve and pink. 'Buster' Henderson; Military Cross in Korea God knows how many years ago and for doing something nobody sane would have dreamed of; military attache; half-colonel; always took a cab in, and one home in the afternoon. Charlesworth didn't know how he could afford it, not that and the gin as well.

'In a hurry, young man?' Charlesworth detested the way the older staff regarded him as a juvenile. 'Flap on, is there? Eyeties declared war on u s…?' A boom of laughter. Must have been the life and soul of some gory cavalry mess east of the Rhine.

'One of our people has been kidnapped this morning.'

'One of the Embassy chaps?' Henderson was waiting for the change from his 10,000-lire note.

'No, it's not the end of the world, not one of ours. It's a businessman, a fellow who works out here. I've to get up to his wife.'

'Poor bastard,' said Henderson quietly. His wallet was open, the notes being carefully put away in order of value, damn-all of a tip. 'Poor devil, rather him… '

'Could be rather a shambles for us. It's the first time a foreigner has been lifted. Well, only the Getty boy, and that was different, I suppose.'

Henderson held the door open for Charlesworth. 'You'll be handling our end, eh? Well, if you get a bit overwhelmed, give us a shout. Damn-all I have to worry about at the moment, diary's empty as a larder these next three days. Don't hang about if you want a hand, if you want to talk it over.'

'Thank you… thank you very much. It's most kind…

Buster.'

Charlesworth had never called him that before, never really had a conversation with the army officer on any more substantive subject than whether it would rain on QBP day, whether they'd have to retire to the marquee for the annual Queen's Birthday Party celebrations. Silly little thing, the offer of help, but he was grateful, grateful because he was stepping on stones that he did not know.

'Poor devil, rather him.. Charlesworth heard half-colonel

'Buster' Henderson mutter again as he closed the taxi-door on himself.

He walked in what shade he could find, seeking out the places where the sun was denied sight of the pavements by the towering blocks of flats flanking the Regina Margherita. Unable now to control the speed of his legs as they pumped a way along the uneven flagstones, hurrying when he knew he should be calm, because the coolness he had first sought to impose on himself was disappearing, slipping from his grasp. Giancarlo was feeling the stress and lead weight of the fugitive.

Not that the shade offered him solace. The stinking, brutalizing heat of the morning penetrated the air, broke open his white skin and thrust out the carousing sweat rivers that saturated his few clothes, soaking and irritating him. No wind down at street level.

Just the furnace and the car exhausts, nothing to bluster across his face and limbs. He tramped on for the sanctuary of the University, where a face might be familiar, where the environs would be known, where there would be an end to the perpetual swinging of his head for a first glimpse of the coasting police cars.

It was a new experience for Giancarlo. Never before had he known the feeling of being hunted, of being loose and adrift from the companionship of the group, of being cast outside the protective womb of the NAP.

When Giancarlo had walked at the side of Franca Tantardini, the NAP had seemed to him a great and powerful organization.

Limitless authority and potential gushed when he had been close to her, and the words of victory and success and triumph had cascaded from her tongue. Now the sheen of safety was stripped from him and Enrico was dead, washing his face in his owh blood, and Franca taken. He fled towards the reassurance of the nursery, the safety of the creche, to the University.

Tired legs, sore feet, a heaving chest, the classic symptoms of flight. He turned left towards the Piazza Giorgio Fabrizio, then right into the Viale del Policlinico. He stumbled from tiredness as he passed the huge, drawn-out complex of the hospital. The signs of PRONTO SOCCORSO that guided the racing, siren-loud ambulances to where they should bring their emergencies were on his right. Where they brought Franca's victims. Where they deposited the men with the gunshot wounds for the first immediate life-saving operation to counter the work of the P38. The boy saw the men who waited in their short white coats and the nurses in their belted dresses who lounged under the trees alert for the screaming of the ambulance approach that would send them scurrying in preparation to Casualty Reception.

Going past the Policlinico, Giancarlo knew with the sureness of the first lightning flash in a storm why they would hate him, track him, spend a lifetime edging towards his back. No forgiveness, no charity, not while men lay in pain on the metal bed-frames of the Policlinico, and shouted in the night for their wives. A great army they would bring against him, and a mind with a limitless and unbroken memory.

A boy who was as nothing. Devoid of possessions, importance, status. Armed with a P38 and a magazine of eight shells.

Devoid of plan and programme and blueprint.

Armed with a detestation of cruel force against the system that rallied now to crush him.

Bereft of friendship and accomplices and the strength of a leader to guide.

Armed with the love of a girl who had taken him into herself.

Armed with the love of Franca Tantardini. For she must have loved him, she must have wanted him, Giancarlo Battestini, or he would not have known her bed and her warmth and her murmurs and her fingers. If it took a week or a month or a year, he would take her from them. Repossess her freedom, the freedom of the bird to escape the cage. Because she had loved him.

Dwarfing the boy were the great white stone walls and archway of the University. Designed for immortality, designed to stand for a thousand years as proof to a grateful worker class of the power wielded by the black shirt and the leather boot. Giancarlo took in the daubed slogans of the paint spray aerosols, bright colours of graffiti that disfigured the impression of omnipotence, but only as high as a student's arm could rise. Above the reach of the protestor was the clean-cut stone of the rejected regime.

The slogans of the Autonomia were here at shoulder height. The painted outline of the closed fist with the first and second fingers extended – the P trent' otto. Here were daubed the cries of hate against the Ministers of government, the parties of democracy, the polizia, the carabinieri, the borghese. He had arrived at the place where succour might be found.

Stretching away in front of him was the wide avenue between the Science and Medical Faculties and the Administration buildings. Many doors were closed, many windows shuttered, because the academic year and examinations had terminated six weeks earlier. But there would be some students here, those who had taken a cause and rejected the cloying parental hand over the family holiday, they would have stayed. Giancarlo broke into a run. He lifted the weariness from his legs, lengthened his stride, till he was sprinting down the gentle hill.

The taxi, its driver displaying caution rare in his vocation, nudged up the hill at a crawl and rounded the three police cars straddled in front of the Mercedes. Charlesworth saw the driver's side window breached and shattered, frozen glass glittering in the gravel surface of the road.

The polizia, in blue and mauve trousers with the thin maroon cord astride their thighs and open blue shirts and caps pushed back on their foreheads, were working round the smitten vehicle.

They dabbed on fingerprint dust and a tin was beside them in which plaster glistened wetly and which would be used if the impression of a tyre grip needed recording. It was too Warm for the polizia to move with energy and their inertia was augmented by the very familiarity of the scene. There was nothing new, the scene of crime procedures for a kidnap. As the taxi circumvented the blockage, Charlesworth saw two men in civilian suits, and they were the only ones that mattered. Only two. Not the young boys in their crumpled uniforms recruited from the Mezzo Giorno who knew less of crime than a Neapolitan pickpocket or a Milanese burglar and wore the uniform because it was the only escape from the region of unemployment. Just two, the trained ones who took the privilege of wearing their own clothes, enough to make him heave and throw up. Dear old Carboni, with his courtesy and his compromise, who had promised nothing, he knew the limitations of his force. And why should they bust a gut – because the man who'd been lifted had a blue passport with a lion rampant and English scroll inside the front flap? Carboni had marked Charlesworth's card, said there should be a payout, that they should get the misery over, forget the games. So what's in it for a policeman, standing on his big flat feet, when more money will be paid than he'll see in a lifetime, and it won't be missed, won't be noticed, and his own chief says that's the way to do business?

He paid the driver, stepped out of the taxi and looked around him.

A wide street on a sloping hill. Flats which owned areas of neat lawn in front and flower-bushes that had been tended and cropped and watered that morning by the porters. Blocks of five floors with deep terraces and canvas awnings and jungles of foliage. The ladies' cars parked bumper to bumper; the little runabout city motors. Dust floated softly down on to Charlesworth's jacket and the maid in the starched apron stared him out as she shook her mop. Not much poverty here, not much malaise from the economic crisis, not up here on the hill. And there was the reaction to the affluence for him to see, provided by those who crept up the slope under cover of night: paint-sprayed swastikas, the daubed MORTE AL FASCISTI that could never be scrubbed from the marble veneer surfaces.

Didn't do badly for their people, the old multinationals. If International Chemical Holdings had put their man in here, then they were solvent, they had no liquidity problems. And the bastards would have known that, or Geoffrey Harrison would be sitting at his desk right now, clobbering his secretary for the lateness of the post, straightening his tie for his next appointment.

Money here, and plenty of it, and these people knew where to sniff the air for it, where to strike, where the dividend was assured.

Charlesworth walked into the hallway of the block, paused at the porter's nook where a man with a saddened and troubled face sat, mentioned the name and was told which floor. A slow lift creaked and swayed upwards. Two policemen lolled against the wall beside the door of the flat. They straightened when they saw the diplomat, not dramatically but enough to swing the holstered pistols that hung from waistbelts. Charlesworth said nothing, merely nodded, and pressed the bell.

Soft, slippered feet shuffled to the door. An age passed while four sets of locks were unfastened. The door opened an inch and a half, as far as a chain would allow. Like a bloody fortress, he thought. But they all lived like that on the hill and damn-all good it did them when the vultures began to circle. It was dark inside and he could see nothing through the gap.

'Who is it?' A small voice, invisible and inanimate.

'It's Charlesworth, Michael Charlesworth. From the Embassy.'

A pause, and then the door was closed. He heard the button on the end of the chain being withdrawn from its socket. The door opened again, not extravagantly, but sufficient to admit him.

'I'm Violet Harrison. Thank you for coming.'

He turned almost startled, two steps inside the hall, as if he had not expected the voice to materialize from behind – a quick movement that betrayed his unease. She came out of the shadows and her hand took his elbow and manoeuvred him towards the living-room where the blinds were drawn and the low table lights lit. He followed meekly behind the tented swirl of her trailing cotton dressing-gown with the big flowers embroidered across the shapes of her back and her buttocks and legs. He stole a glance at the silhouette against a light and dug his nails into the palm of a hand. You'd have thought she'd have dressed by now, on a morning like this, with a bloody deluge of visitors about to come tripping in. You'd have thought the woman would put some clothes on.

He saw her the first time when she reached her chair and angled her face at him. She might not have dressed but she'd made her face, had worked at it long enough to give the tears scope to smudge and spoil her efforts. She would have been crying from the time he telephoned. The eyelids were puffy and bulging, red above the dark broad painted eye shadow. A small tight-turned nose that had taken the sun and the freckles offset her cheeks that were smooth and bronzed. Attractive but not remarkable. Well shaped but not beautiful. His eyes flickered over her, unwilling but compelled, and she gazed back at him, no hint of embarrassment. Charlesworth looked away, the blush rising in him. Been caught like a schoolboy hadn't he? Been seen peering in the Soho bookshop windows during school holidays. Been noticed ogling a woman who wore a sheer nightdress and a light cotton wrap.

'I'm very sorry for what has happened, Mrs Harrison,' he said.

'Would you like some coffee… there's only instant.'

'You're very kind, but no. Thank you.'

'There's tea, I can make a cup.' A small, far voice.

'No, thanks. Thank you again, but I won't. Would you like me to put the kettle on for you? Can I make you some tea?'

' I don't want any tea. Would you like a cigarette?' Still staring at his eyes, raking and examining them.

' It's very nice of you, but I don't. I don't smoke.' He felt he should apologize because he didn't want Nescafe, didn't want teabags, didn't want a cigarette.

She sat down in an armchair, flanked by the tables that carried last night's glasses and last night's coffee cups, with a flurry of shin and knee glimpsing out. He followed into a chair across the central rug, felt himself going down, slipping away, falling into far-settling cushions, the sort that you drown in and then for ever feel ill at ease with because you're too low and can't dominate the conversation, and your nose is half way to the carpet. She was still looking into him boring and penetrating.

'Mrs Harrison, first I should tell you who I am. I have responsibility for political affairs at the Embassy, but I also double on matters affecting the police, relations between the British community in Rome and the Italian police. Those, that is, that aren't covered by the Consular Department…' Come on, Charlesworth, you're not doing your own testimonial; not applying for a job e i t h e r. '… So I was called this morning by a fellow called Carboni, he's one of the bigger men at the Questura. There wasn't very much known then, it was just a few minutes after your husband had been seized. Doctor Carboni gave me a solemn assurance that everything possible was being done to secure your husband's early release.'

'And that's bugger all,' she said slowly and with deliberation.

Charlesworth rocked back, rode it, but the blow had done damage, confused and deflected what was building in his mind. '1 can only repeat…' He hesitated. They didn't use that sort of language, the Embassy secretaries and his wife's friends. First Secretary at the British Embassy he was, and she should be listening to him, and grateful that he'd taken the time to come out and see her. 'What Doctor Carboni said was that everything would be done…'

'And what's everything? Half of nothing, if that much.'

Charlesworth bridled. 'It's not a very sensible attitude to take in the circumstances, Mrs Harrison. You'd be better… '

' I've had my cry, Mr Charlesworth. I got that over before you came. It won't happen again. You know you don't have to come here with platitudes and a bottle of Librium. I'm pleased you came, grateful to you, but I don't need a shoulder to weep on, and I want to know what's going to happen. What's going to happen, not what a crummy Italian policeman says he's doing.

And I want to know who's going to pay.'

Bit early, wasn't it? Knots hardly settled on the old man's wrists and she was chattering about money. God Almighty. ' I can advise you on procedures,' Charlesworth ploughed on, coldness undisguised, 'I can tell you what has happened in the past, to Italians. I can suggest what I think that you should do, and I can indicate the areas where I think the Embassy can be of service.'

' That's what I want to hear.'

When they write about kidnapping in the Italian papers they call it a successful growth industry. That's a fair enough description. Since 1970 there have been more than three hundred cases. What you'd expect, of course, but the people responsible vary enormously. There are the big gangs, big organizations, well led, well funded, well briefed, probably originating from the real south, probably with what we'd call the Mafia at their roots. I never quite know what's meant by the Mafia, it's an overused word, something simplistic to cover whatever you want it to. In my book the Mafia means skill and ruthlessness and power and patience. If your husband has been taken by these people, then there will be an initial contact followed by a drawn-out haggle over money, and it will end with a business transaction. Very clinical and quite slow because they will want to know that their tracks are well covered.'

'And if it's such a group how will they treat my husband?'

A long time coming, that question, thought Charlesworth.

'Probably quite well. They'd keep him fed and dry and margin-ally comfortable, enough to sustain his health… in a basement, perhaps a farmhouse…'

'That's as long as they think we're going to pay?'

'Yes.'

'And if they aren't sure we're going to pay?'

Charlesworth looked hard at her, slipped behind the swollen eyes, delved beyond the mascara. He wondered how his own wife would react in these circumstances, loved her and knew for all that she'd be a disaster. Helpless as a bloody ship on the rocks and thrashing around for someone to blame. She was different, this woman. Different because she didn't wear her concern and her care on her shoulders. Hadn't even put her knickers on for the great day. Didn't sound as if it meant a damn to her beyond the inconvenience.

'Then they'll kill him.'

She didn't react beyond a flutter of the eyebrows, a slight and fractional quiver at the mouth, but nothing that he would have noticed if he hadn't been watching her, absorbing her face.

'And if we go to the police and throw it all into their lap, give it to your Mr Carboni, what then?'

'If they see through an indiscretion or a clumsiness that we have offered full co-operation with the police, and if they feel that endangers their security, then too they will kill him.' He turned the knife because the realization of how much he disliked the woman, how alien she was to his background, seeped through him. ' I put it to you, Mrs Harrison, that the people who have your husband will not hesitate to murder him if that serves their purpose better than keeping him alive.'

He paused, allowed the message to sink and spread, find its own water level. He found his advantage growing. The signs of fear were shown by the slight pant in her chest, the motion of the fingers.

'And even if we pay, if the company pays, we still have no g u a r a n t e e… '

He anticipated her. "There are never guarantees in these matters.' That was about as strongly as he had the stomach to put it. He couldn't bring himself to tell her of Luisa di Capua whose husband had been dead two months before the body was found, and who had received the last ransom note the day before the discovery. 'No guarantees, we would just have to hope.'

He won a shrill, short laugh from her.

'How much will they ask, Mr Charlesworth? How much is my Geoffrey worth on the Italian market?'

'They'll ask for more than they'll be happy to end up with.

Starters would probably be around five million dollars, and they'll settle for perhaps two. Not less than one million.'

'Which I don't have.' She was faster now, and louder and the control was fracturing. 'I don't have it, do you understand that?

Geoffrey doesn't, his parents don't We don't own that sort of money.'

'It's not really your husband that's being ransomed, it's his company. The group will expect the company to pay.'

'And they're tight bastards,' she spat across at him. 'Tight and mean and penny-pinching.'

He remembered the exterior of the block, allowed himself to glance across the interior fittings of the flat.

' I'm sure they will look favourably when they have had the situation explained to them. I had intended to speak to them after I had seen you. I thought that might be valuable to them.'

'So what happens now? What do I do?'

The questions rolled from her, as if Charlesworth were some all-knowing guru on the subject of kidnap reaction. 'We have to await the first contact, probably by telephone. Then it can take quite a time for them to decide what arrangements they want to make for payment.'

'So what do I do, sit by the bloody telephone all day? And I don't even speak the bloody language, just what I need round the shops in the morning. I don't speak their bloody language. I won't know what they're bloody well saying.' Shouting for the first time, dipping into hysteria. Charlesworth fidgeted in the deep chair, willed the session to end.

'We can have it said in the papers that your husband's office is standing by to receive a message.'

'But they're all bloody I t a l i a n s… what the hell do they know about it?'

'A damn sight more than we do, because they live with it every day of the year. Because every one of your husband's senior colleagues knows this can happen to him any time, and a fair few of them will ring their wives each morning as soon as they've sat down at their desks, just so that the woman will know they've made it safely. They know more about this than you or I do, or your husband's company in London. If your husband is to come out of this alive you'll need the help of all his friends in that office.

All of those "bloody Italians", you'll need all of their help.'

He was out of the chair, backside clear of the cushions, fingers gripping for leverage into the upholstered arm rests. Poor old show, Charlesworth. A stupid, ignorant cow she may be, but not your job to pass judgement. Lost your rag and you shouldn't have done. He sagged back, ashamed that he had battered the remnants of the calm, destroyed the very thing that he had come to maintain. The colour had fled from her face, which had taken a pallid glow in the shock of his counter-attack. Not a whimper from her, not a choke. Only the eyes to give the message, those of someone who has just stepped from a car accident in which driver or passenger has died and who knows dimly of catastrophe but does not have the power to identify and evaluate the debris.

'Mrs Harrison, you mustn't think yourself alone. Many people will now be working for your husband's release. You must believe in that.'

He stood up, shuffled a little, edged towards the door.

She looked up at him from her chair, cheeks very pale below the saucer eyes, knees apart and the gown gaping. 'I hate this bloody place,' she said. 'I've hated it from the day we arrived.

I've hated every hour of it. He'd told me we wouldn't have to stay here, not more than another year, he'd promised me we'd go home. And now you want to go, Mr Charlesworth, well, don't hang about because of me. Thank you again for coming, thank you for your advice, thank you for your help, and thanks to bloody everybody.'

' I'll get a doctor to come round. He'll have something for you.

It's a very great shock, what has happened.'

'Don't bother, don't inconvenience anyone.'

' I'll send a doctor round.'

'Don't bother, I'll be a good girl. I'll sit beside the telephone and wait.'

'Haven't you got a friend who could come and stay with you?'

The old laugh back again, high and clear and tinkling. 'Friends in this bloody hole? You're joking, of course.'

Charlesworth hurried to the door, mumbled over his shoulder,

' I'll be in touch and don't hesitate to call me at the Embassy, the number's in the book.'

Trying to master the different locks delayed his flight sufficiently for him to hear her call from the remoteness of the living room. 'You'll come again, Mr Charlesworth? You'll come again and see me?'

He pulled the door brutally shut behind him, erasing from his ears the trickle of her laughter.

Some five minutes the colonnello spent attempting to marshal the moving waves of photographers and reporters into a straight line. He threatened, pleaded, negotiated the issue of how many paces the prisoner should walk in front of the lenses and microphones before he was finally satisfied with his arrangements in the square internal courtyard of the Questura.

'And remember, no interviews. Interviews are absolutely forbidden.'

He shouted the last exhortation for discipline before the wave of his arm to the polizia who stood shaded in a distant doorway.

When she emerged Franca Tantardini held her head high, jutted her chin, thrust her eyes unwaveringly into the sun. The chains at her wrists dangled against her knees as she walked. Her jeans and blouse were smeared with the street dirt of the pavement outside the Post. To her right the polizia linked arms to hold back the press of cameramen. An officer gripped tightly at each of her elbows; they were not the men who had taken her, not the men who had killed Enrico Panicucci, because those were anonymous and undercover and would not be photographed.

These were men in uniform, spruced, with combed and greased hair and polished shoes, who preened themselves and swelled with importance. She ignored the babble of shouted questions and walked on until she was level with the place where the crowd was densest, the pushing at the police shoulders most acute, the cameras closest. A glance she spared for the scrummaging, then ripped her right arm clear of her escort's hold, swung it aloft into the air, clenched her fist in salute, seemed to hover a smile at the chatter of the camera shutters. The policeman regained his hold, dragged her arm down, she was pulled through a doorway, lost from sight. Show completed. Police taking their kudos, cameramen their pictures. Satisfaction of all parties. A triumphal procession of victor and vanquished, and smoothly done.

From an upper window, unnoticed by the journalists, Francesco Vellosi had watched the courtyard parade. At his side stood an Under-Secretary of the Interior Ministry.

'Still defiant, la leonessa. Magnificent even in defeat,' the Under-Secretary murmured.

'A year in Messina, perhaps two, then she'll be tamed,' responded Vellosi.

'Magnificent, quite magnificent. Such hate, such pride.'

'We should have shot her on the street.' There was a cold and bitter snarl on Vellosi's lips.

The computer trace on the third set of fingerprints found by police in the covo was fast and efficient. But then the equipment was German, modern and expensive, the sort of item on which government, harassed and defensive, was prepared to lavish its money in the fight against the urban activist. The print-out on the teleprinter was clear and concise.

CRIMINALPOL EUR ROMA XXXXXXX 25 7 80 XXXXX REF: A419/B78 BATTESUNI GIANCARLO MARCO BORN 12 3 60 8 2 C VIA PESARO PESCARA RIOTOUS ASSEMBLY SENTENCED 7 MONTHS 11 5 79 PHOTOGRAPHED FINGERPRINTED 9 3 79

More information would follow later, but a name and a picture would be waiting on Francesco Vellosi's desk when he returned from the Questura. Another identity, another set of features, another case history to settle on the top of his mountain of files of wanted persons.