Man on Fire (A Creasy novel Book 1)

by A. J. Quinnell

  In the early hours of the next morning, lying in bed between the crisp, starched, linen sheets, she looked back on a well spent day, shopping at Harrod’s in the morning and on Bond Street in the afternoon. Her hair done at Sassoon’s, followed by tea and ridiculously thin cucumber sandwiches at the hotel. Then Creasy’s phone call of reassurance, the delicious dinner and good company, and the gambling afterward. Even that had gone well, her favourite roulette numbers, 17 and 20, favouring her in turn. Finally Roy Haynes saying good night and, as an afterthought, mentioning to Ettore that at tomorrow afternoon’s meeting he would be greatly increasing his order and would fully promote the new line.

  She stretched languorously. Yes, a day and a night well spent, the only slight cloud being that Ettore had drunk a little too much, and had not been up to the lovemaking that had just ended. Never mind. Before he got up in the morning, that would be remedied. At the thought of the morning, her mind clicked awake. With Creasy’s phone call and everything else, she had forgotten. She turned and shook Ettore, who was almost asleep.

  “Caro — I forgot. A man called you about an appointment tomorrow. He said eleven a.m. in his office.” She snuggled up against him. “What’s it about?”

  “Just a financial matter,” he answered sleepily. “He’s a friend of Vico’s.”

  “Is it important?”

  He mumbled something inaudible and moments later was asleep.

  Pinta hobbled down the front steps to the car and Creasy opened the back door. She hesitated and said, “I think I’ll sit in the front. There’s more room for my foot.”

  As they drove out the gates, he asked, “Did you sleep alright?”

  “Yes. Those pills did make me sleepy. I only woke up once, when I turned over.”

  “Does the ankle hurt? Can you put your weight on it?”

  “It’s not bad,” she answered. “Will it take long before it’s better? — School sports day is in five weeks and I want to run in the hundred metres.”

  “There should be time,” he said. “Don’t favour it too much. Put as much weight on it as you can. In a week or two, you won’t notice it.”

  When they reached the main Milan road he asked, “Are you fast?”

  She nodded. “But I’m no good at starts. By the time I catch up, it’s too late.”

  “You should practice more.”

  She nodded. “I will.”

  Creasy didn’t know much about the technique of sprint starts, but he knew all about coordination and reaction time. He knew that he could teach her, but then he caught himself. Enough was enough.

  “Well, just walk on that foot as much as you can. Even if it hurts a bit.”

  They lapsed into silence.

  The girl’s attitude had changed. It was no longer just a game — trying to get Creasy’s friendship. She desperately wanted it. There was an accumulated effect. With her natural curiosity and awareness, she had caught tiny glimpses of the man inside. She wanted to see more and to give something. She had never seen him smile. Always stern — always remote. She believed that, if he opened up, something wonderful would appear. It was no longer just curiosity. She felt a link with him, tenuous but definite. She desperately wanted to build on that link.

  In fact, the impetus had already shifted. It was Creasy now who would let it happen. Not consciously, but not fighting it. He too felt the link. It disturbed him, because he couldn’t understand it. The idea of him with an eleven-year-old girl as a friend was about as likely as a rabbit getting on with a fox. He couldn’t accept it, so tried not to think about it. But he couldn’t banish her from his mind and found himself not wanting to.

  That afternoon, driving home, she asked him about the discovery of America. They had been learning about it in school and she was fascinated that an Italian had discovered it first.

  “Not necessarily,” he told her. “Some people believe that the Vikings came first, or even an Irish monk.”

  This started a discussion about explorers and he told her of Marco Polo and his journeys to China. She knew a little but was avidly interested to learn more, and this prompted Creasy to do something totally out of character. A couple of days later he brought a package down to dinner and passed it to her across the kitchen table. It was a book describing Marco Polo’s journeys.

  “I noticed it in a shop in Milan,” he said.

  In fact he had searched an hour before finding it.

  “For me? It’s a present?” Her eyes were shining in excitement.

  “Well, it’s for you.” He was uncomfortable, and it showed. “You seemed interested. He’s Italy’s most famous explorer — you should know about him.”

  ‘Thank you, Creasy,” she said softly. She guessed she had broken through.

  But it was not until the following Sunday that she knew for certain.

  “He brought her to lunch.”

  “He did what?”

  “Brought her to lunch. At the house — today. They just left.”

  Guido held the phone away from his ear and looked at Pietro across the kitchen and slowly shook his head.

  “What is it?” asked the boy, smiling at his boss’s startled expression.

  Guido ignored him and said into the phone, “Just like that — just turned up.”

  Elio laughed at the other end.

  “No, he was supposed to come anyway, but he rang up this morning and said that her parents had been delayed getting back from London, so he had to cancel. Felicia suggested he bring her along and he said OK. Felicia almost passed out!”

  “What’s she like?” asked Guido.

  There was a long pause while Elio considered.

  “She’s full of life,” he said. “A beautiful child, polite and intelligent, and she worships that big, ugly friend of yours.”

  “And him — how does he react?”

  There was another pause, and then Elio said, “It’s very strange. He’s sort of stern and gruff with her. He doesn’t show much — you know what he’s like — but it’s more than just toleration. Of course, Felicia, being a woman, thinks that he sees her as the child he never had.”

  “He talks to her?” Guido asked, full of curiosity.

  Elio laughed. “Certainly, he explains things, she’s full of questions about everything. She sees him as a sort of oracle. Wait a minute, here’s Felicia, she’s been putting the kids to bed.”

  Felicia talked to Guido for a long time.

  Creasy had changed, she told him. He was definitely fond of the child. Bemused, perhaps, and not really understanding, but she thought he liked it. Anyway, the girl was adorable. With anyone else it would be natural. They were surprised only because it was Creasy.

  Guido agreed. It was totally unexpected. After all the years they had been together, he found it hard to believe that a child could break through that crust. There had never been an indication. But later, after ringing off, Guido thought about it some more. Perhaps Creasy had finally lowered his guard.

  Guido was happy for his friend. He wondered where it would lead. Whether the mellowing would continue.

  Chapter 7

  “Creasy — what’s a concubine?”

  He took his eyes off the road and glanced at her, no longer surprised by the content of her questions.

  “A sort of wife.”

  She was astonished. “A sort of wife! But the Emperor of China had over one thousand. How can that be?”

  He found that it was not a delicate subject. In spite of her youth, she was mentally mature. The book he had given her on Marco Polo had prompted several similar questions. She did not giggle and act girlish when he explained that many cultures were not monogamous. He told her of the religions of Islam and the Mormons, and was quietly amused that her sympathies lay with the man.

  “It must be difficult, having a lot of wives,” she said thoughtfully. Perhaps she was thinking of her mother. One of Rika was as much as any man could comfortably handle. The thought of her multiplied a thousandfold staggered the mind.
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  Creasy always answered her questions fully and spoke as he would to an adult. He didn’t have the artifice to talk down to her. He often found her responses provocative. It was his first exposure to a fresh and unconditioned mind. He found himself viewing controversial issues through her eyes, and it was stimulating.

  She didn’t like to watch political broadcasts on television because the politicians talked too much and didn’t smile naturally. Religion was good, but the priests were always right and enjoyed it too much. She loved school, but was only good at the subjects when she liked the teachers. She was fond of Maria and Bruno, but they exasperated her because they weren’t interested in things.

  In short, the whole world was a vast, unexplored, and fascinating territory. She had the perception to understand that she was placing her foot on the first step of discovery. Creasy became her guide. Her mother lived in her own limited world and her father treated her very much as a child, and this was reflected in his manner and conversation.

  So Creasy was a revelation and she quickly realized the importance of not just listening to him but of commenting on what he had to say. So she always responded, and after a while a dialogue developed that scanned two opposite backgrounds and several generations.

  The watershed had been the Sunday lunch with Elio and Felicia. She knew that Creasy had opened the door, and she passed gratefully through.

  It was acceptance, and she had been happy but careful, responding slowly at first to Elio and Felicia and constantly looking to Creasy for a lead. But he had been relaxed and unconcerned, not like a parent, but like someone who had brought a friend to meet friends. So she too had relaxed and played with the children and helped Felicia in the kitchen and joined her in teasing the men. It had been a wonderful day, and since then she had been easy with Creasy, understanding him and opening him up with a delicate mental crowbar. He even started answering questions about himself. She first asked about Guido. The two men had talked of him over lunch. She learned of their friendship and the years they had been together. She noticed that when Creasy talked of Guido, the hard lines of his face softened. She decided she would like to know him.

  For Creasy, it was a catharsis. He found talking to Pinta easy. Maybe it was her lack of knowledge and experience. Maybe her uncluttered mind. But he talked and felt better for it. Even the bad things, the pain of war, the brutalizing. She had led the way, consciously, as if it were a test. Driving home from that lunch, she had reached out and touched one of his hands.

  “Creasy, what happened to your hands?”

  He hadn’t jerked away as before but glanced down at the mottled scars, and his mind went back to 1954 and the end at Dien Bien Phu. Surrender, humiliation, and then three weeks of forced marching to a P.O.W. camp. Every day dragging one foot after the other. Little food and much death. When a man fell and couldn’t get up, the guards shot him. Many fell, but Creasy stayed up and survived and carried a young wounded officer on his back. After survival, interrogation. The suave, Sorbonne educated, Viet Minh captain sitting small and immaculate across the wooden table from the huge, gaunt Legionnaire. The questions, the many questions, and the shake of his head to denote refusal to answer. The Vietnamese captain chain-smoking and always the Gauloise cigarettes being stubbed out on the backs of Creasy’s strapped down hands.

  “A man once asked me questions. He smoked a lot. There was no ashtray.”

  She understood immediately and was long silent. Tears filled her eyes.

  He glanced at her.

  “Bad things happen in the world. I told you that, once.”

  She smiled through the tears.

  “Good things happen, too.”

  After that she was free with personal questions, but she learned only sparsely of his youth. His parents, poor and crushed by the Depression. A small holding in Tennessee — barely enough to eat. Joining the Marines at the earliest possible age. Korea — the recognizing of a talent for fighting. Striking an officer who had been stupid and let good men die — disgrace, and nowhere to go back to. So then the Legion and all that followed.

  Apart from Guido, this eleven-year-old child learned more about Creasy than anyone on earth.

  Rika was radiant. Spring had arrived and lightened her life. Creasy was definitely a factor. She talked to her friends about her “gem.” Told them how fond he was of Pinta. The big shambling bear with the puppy gambolling along behind. She didn’t recognize the profound change in him. To her, he was still silent and remote and mysterious. Pinta had tamed him, she said to Ettore, and he had nodded in acquiescence. He didn’t see Creasy as more than an adjunct to his life. Useful in that Pinta and, more importantly, Rika were happy; but still just an employee — poorly paid, and with a secret drinking problem.

  But the drink had ceased to be a big problem. Now, most nights, Creasy would consume less than half a bottle. The need to blot out the mind was eased. He had never been an alcoholic in the clinical sense. It was not an addiction, and although its accumulated effect still conditioned him and slowed him, his mind had sharpened again. Also, he was mentally preparing to get his body back into shape. It had started with Pinta and the forthcoming sports meeting. As soon as her ankle healed, Creasy knocked up a pair of starting blocks and set them into the front lawn. Then, with Pinta in a blue and white track suit, they worked on her starts. Creasy told her about reaction time. “Your ears hear the bang of the starting gun and pass the message to your brain; then your brain sends out a message to the nerves in your legs and arms. This message says GO. The secret is to cut down the time needed for sending those messages.”

  He taught her how to concentrate on the sound itself. Not to consciously listen for it or anticipate it. When the bang came, her reaction must be automatic.

  He simulated the starting gun by clapping his hands, and after an afternoon’s practice she was coming up out of the blocks like a startled deer. Every day, he told her — every day we practise for an hour, and on the big day, you will win.

  That night he lay in bed listening to Johnny Cash and thinking about the girl. She was so alive, so quick, her body tuned and fit. It made him think of himself. He decided that after the three months, when he was confirmed in the job, he would locate a gym in Como or Milan and spend a couple of evenings a week getting fit. If he left it too much longer, it would be too late. He recognized what the girl had done to him. A vacuum was filled. In a way he had changed his course. She had a life in front of her. He would watch her develop. Play a part in her moving mind. There were no deaths, no destruction, no mutilation — it was not futile.

  Johnny Cash finished and he reached out and changed the tape.

  Linda Ronstadt sang “Blue Bayou”; and downstairs Pinta smiled as she heard the music.

  Rika came out of the hairdresser’s and looked around for the car. It was a dull, overcast day and the Milan traffic was heavy. She spotted the car parked about thirty metres away, Creasy standing beside it. As she walked toward him, a flurry of movement across the street caught her eye: two men jumping from the side door of a Volkswagen van. They ran toward a man unlocking the door of a white Fiat. She saw the guns in their hands and as the first shots rang out, she came to a stunned halt. The man had turned, reaching under his jacket, and then Creasy reached her, an arm coming around her waist, sweeping her off her feet into a shop doorway. She found herself on the pavement under his heavy body. More shots, and she screamed as glass shattered above them. She saw the gun in Creasy’s hand, held low down by his side. Sounds — the slamming of the van door and the squeal of tires and a racing engine and finally silence.

  “Wait here, don’t move.” His voice was calm, flat, and positive. The weight eased off her as he stood up, carefully backing away so that glass didn’t fall on her. She lay still, watching, as he walked back to the car. His gun had disappeared. He stood by the car looking across the street. Her eyes followed. A man lay across the bonnet of the Fiat — red blood on the white metal. Instinctively she knew he was dead. He lay
that way. Creasy opened the back door of the car and walked back to her. He put down a hand and helped her up. She was unsteady, but he put an arm round her and walked her slowly to the car. People were moving again. A woman was sobbing in shock. A siren sounded, wailing closer. He put her into the back seat.

  “Stay in there. It will take some time. The police will put up roadblocks and ask questions all around.”

  She was shivering slightly, her face very white against her black hair. He reached forward and put the back of his hand against her cheek. It was cold. He cupped her chin and raised her face, looking into her eyes. They were dull — glazed.

  “Are you alright? Rika, look at me!”

  Her eyes focused, and she nodded slowly. A police car had arrived, its rhythmic light flashing, its siren dying. Excited voices, and more sirens homing in. She nodded again, her mind functioning.

  “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll talk to the police. We’ll leave as soon as possible.” He looked at her closely, then, satisfied, closed the door and walked across the street.

  It had been a Red Brigade killing, the victim a prosecuting attorney. Not an unusual event in Milan. Creasy showed the police his bodyguard’s licence and told them what he had seen, which was not much. He gave them a description of the two gunmen that could have fitted a hundred thousand youths in the city. Also the number plate of the Volkswagen, which was certainly stolen.

  Half an hour later he drove out of the suburbs toward Como with a silent Rika in the back seat. They were halfway home when she suddenly burst out:

  “Animals! Shooting people down in the street — Animals!”

  The shoulders in front of her shrugged.

  “You had the gun in your hand,” she said. “I saw it. Why didn’t you shoot them?”

  “Nothing to do with me — or you,” he answered shortly. “Besides, apart from the driver, there was another one in the front of the van. He had a sawed off shotgun. If I’d started shooting at his friends, he would have blasted us. As it was, we were lucky. The victim got off one shot. It passed only a couple of feet over us.”