RED FOX

by Gerald Seymour

  He heard the sudden movement, and the voices of two men that were closer. A creaking from the swing of the barn door that was hidden from him by the bales, and the ladder-top slid into position and shook from a man's weight. A gun first, black and ugly, held in a firm grip, and following it the contortion of a hood with eye slits. Eerie and awful in the half light before it gave way to the recognizable shape of shoulders and a man's trunk. The gesture of the gun was unmistakable. He obeyed the order of the waved barrel and stumbled back as far as the chain would allow. He pointed down to his zip, then across with his free hand to his buttocks. A grotesque mime. And the hooded head shook and was gone, lost below the lip of the hay.

  There were noisy chuckles from below and then a farm bucket arched up, from an unseen hand. Old and rusted and once of galvanized steel. A folded wad of newspaper pages followed. He was left to a slight privacy as he pulled the bucket towards him, turned his back on the ladder and fingered at his belt. Humiliated and hurt, one arm aloft and fastened, he contorted his body over the bucket. He speeded his functions, willing his bladder and bowels to be emptied, before the slitted eyes returned to laugh at his dropped pants and his bared thighs and genitals. How half the world does it, Geoffrey, so get used to it. Don't think I can bloody well take it, not every day, not like this. God, what a bloody stink. The sandwich . . . all stink and wind. Remember the sandwich, back sometime yesterday, that the men in the van gave you, the curse in the guts. He groped down for the paper; damp with the morning dew, must have been outside through the night, and it tore soggily in his hands. He wanted to cry, wanted to weep and be pitied. Harrison cleaned himself as best he could, tears smarting, pulled at his underwear and trousers, zipped himself and fastened the belt.

  ' I've finished. You can come and take it.'

  Movement and repetition. The ladder moved as before and the gun and the hood reappeared. He pointed to the bucket.

  ' I've used it. You can take it away.'

  Just a belly laugh from the covered face and a jumping in merriment of the shoulders, and the hood sinking and going, and the muffled call of fun and entertainment. A bloody great joke, Geoffrey. Do you see it, do you see why he's splitting himself?

  You asked for the bucket, they've given it to you, given it for keeps. They've given you a little present. It's going to sit there, a couple of yards away. Stinking and rotten and foul. Own pee, own shit, own waste. You've given them a bloody good laugh.

  'Come here. Come back.' All the command that he could summon. The tone of an order, unmistakable, and enough to arrest the disappearance of the hood. The laugh was cut.

  'Come here.'

  The head came upwards, revealed again the shoulders.

  Geoffrey Harrison leaned back on his left foot, then swung himself forward as far as the chain permitted. He drove his right instep against the bucket, saw it rise and explode, career against the shoulder of the man, spill its load across his mask and faded cotton shirt. Stained, dripping, and spread.

  'You can have it back,' Harrison giggled. 'You can have it again now.'

  What in God's name did you do that for?

  Don't know. Just sort of happened.

  They'll bloody murder you, Geoffrey Harrison, they'll half tear you apart for that.

  It's what they're for, those bastards, to be crapped and peed on.

  Right, dead right. When you've a bloody army at your back.

  You're an idiot, Geoffrey Harrison.

  I don't know why I did it.

  You won't do it again.

  They came together for him. The other man leading, the one with the smears on his shirt and hood a rung on the ladder behind. No words, no consultation, no verbal reproach. Nothing but the beat of their fists and the drumming of their boots against his face and chest, and the softness of his lower belly and his thighs and shins. They worked on him as if he were a suspended punchbag, hanging from the beam. They spent their strength against him till they panted and gasped from their effort, and he was limp and defenceless and no longer capable of even minimal self-protection. Vicious, angered creatures, because the act of defiance was unfamiliar and the bully had risen in them, sweet and safe. Harrison crumpled down on to the hay floor, feeling the pain that echoed in his body, yearning for release, wishing for death. The worst was at his ribcage, covered now in slow funnels of agony. When did you ever do anything like that in your life before, Geoffrey? Never before, never stood up, not to be counted. And no bastard here this morning with his calculator. No one there to see him, to cheer and applaud. Just some mice under his feet, and the stink of his body, and the knowledge that there was a man close by who loathed him and would cut off his life with as little ceremony as picking the muck from his nostrils.

  He worked a smile over the pain of his jaw and gazed at the emptied bucket. He'd tell Violet about it, tell her it blow by blow.

  Not what they did to him afterwards, but up till then, and his foot still ached.

  He struggled upright, knees shaking, stomach in torment.

  'You're animals,' he shouted. 'Slobbering, miserable swine.

  Fit to shovel shit, you know that.' The scream wobbled under the low cut of the rafters. 'Get down in your shit and wash your-selves, you pigs. Rub your faces in it, because that's what makes pigs happy. Pig shit, pig thick.'

  And then he listened, braced for a new onslaught, and heard the murmur of their voices. They took no notice of him, ignored him. He knew that he could shout till he lifted the roof and that they had no fear of it. He was separated from every civilization that he knew of.

  Without hunger, without thirst, numbed by the annihilation of the big Calabresi, Giancarlo sat on a bench in the Termini, waiting the hours away. Close to exhaustion, near to drifting to fitful sleep, hands masking his face, elbows digging at his legs, he thought of Franca.

  There had been girls in Pescara, the daughters of the friends of Father and Mother. Flowing skirts, starched blouses and knee boots, and the clucking approval of Mother as she brought the cream cakes out. The ones that giggled and knew nothing, existed with emptied minds. Crucifixes of gold at their necks and anger in their mouths if he reached for buttons or zips or eye-fasteners.

  There had been girls at the University. Brighter and more adult stars who regarded him as an adolescent. There he was someone who could make up the numbers for the cinema or the beach, but who was shunned when it was dark, when the clinching began.

  The spots, the acne, and the titter behind the hand. It should have been different with the Autonomia, but the girls would not grovel for a novice, for a recruit, and Giancarlo had to prove himself and win the acclamation. Far out in the front of the crowd, running forward with the fire eating into the rag at the hilt of the milk bottle, arcing the Molotov into the air. The battle for approval, and his ankle had turned. Would they even remember him now, the girls of the Autonomia? Giancarlo Battestini had no experience other than in the arms, between the thighs, wrapped warm by Franca. It was the crucible of his knowledge. A long time he thought of her.

  Franca with the breasts golden and devoid of the rim of sun-tan, Franca with the cherry-pip nipples, with the flattened belly holed by a single crater, Franca with the wild forest that had tangled and caught his fingers. The one who had chosen him.

  Darling, darling, sweet Franca. In his ears was the sound of her breathing, the beat of her movement on the bed, her cry as she had spent herself.

  I am coming, Franca. I am coming to take you from them, he whispered to himself.

  I am coming, Franca. Believe it, know it. Thinking of Franca as the station began to live again, to move and function, participate in a new day. Thinking of Franca as he walked to the ticket counter and paid the single fare on the rapido to Reggio.

  Thinking of Franca as he climbed up to a first-class carriage.

  Away from the herd of Neapolitans and Sicilians with their bundles and salads and children and hallucinating noises of discussion and counter-discussion. No other passengers in the comp
artment. Thinking of Franca as the train pulled away from the low platform, and crawled between the sidings and junctions and high flats draped in the day's first washing. The boy slumped back, slid his heels on to the seat in front and felt the pressure power of the P38 against his back.

  Out across the flatlands to the south of the city, carving through the grass fields and the close-packed vineyards, skirting the small towns of Cisterna di Latina and Sezze away on the hills, and Terracina at the coast, the train quickened its pace. Blurring the telegraph poles, homing and seeking out the dust-dry mountains and the bright skies of the Aspromonte.

  'Believe in me, Franca. Believe in me because I am coming.'

  The boy spoke aloud above the crash of wheels on the welded track. 'Tomorrow they will know of me. Tomorrow they will know my name. Tomorrow you will be proud of your little fox.'

  CHAPTER N I N E

  At the Questura there were barely disguised smiles from the uniformed men who watched Dottore Giuseppe Carboni disgorged from his car. The evidence of the night before was plain and clear-cut. Bulldog bagged eyes, blotched cheeks, a razor-nicked chin, a tie not hoisted. He swept uneasily through the door, searching straight ahead of him as if wary of impediments and took the lift instead of risking the flight of stairs. Carboni had greetings for none of those who saluted and welcomed him along the second-floor passage. Ignoring them all, he was thankful to make the haven of his desk without public humiliation.

  They would think he had been drinking all night, would not I t t

  know as they whispered and clucked in disapproval that he had left the party before two, and back at his flat had collapsed in a chair with a tumbler of whisky that he might better search his memory for patterns and procedures in his latest kidnap burden.

  Never time for thought, for analysis, once he was at work with the telephone ringing and the stream of visitors, humble and distinguished. And a tumbler had become two, and merged into half a bottle as he had picked into the recesses of the problem before him. He had stayed up till his wife, magnificent in her flowing nightdress, had dragged him to her bed, and little enough chance of sleep then.

  He sat heavily in his chair and buzzed the connecting speaker for his aide. A moment and the man was there, sleek and oiled and ready with an armful of files, battered brown folders encasing a hillock of typed paperwork. What did the Dottore intend the priority of the day to be?

  Carboni winced, the stab of pain ringing in his head. 'The Harrison case. There is nothing else.'

  'We have the tapings of the calls to Mrs Harrison and to 1CH. The one to Harrison's wife was futile. She couldn't understand what she was being told and rang off.' There was a sneer at the mouth of Carboni's assistant. 'The first tangible steps towards extortion were made in a message to his company.

  Also from Criminalpol there is voice analysis. They believe there is similarity here with the communication at the Marchetti kidnapping, the child.'

  'Just the one message to the company?'

  'A single message, the establishment of lines of approach.'

  'Leave me with the tapes,' said Carboni, eyes closed, head spinning, wishing deliverance from intelligent and confident young men.

  When he was alone he played the cassette many times. Hands over his face, shutting out the noise through the open windows of the traffic below, concentrating his effort on the brief and staccato message. A callow, rasping voice he heard, and the policeman did not need the help of the memorandum that was attached to the package to know that this voice came from the toe of the country, from Calabria, from the land of the Mafiosi chieftains. Where else? A humble, inarticulate voice, reading a message that had been written for him, which was normal. Then there was the tape of the first call to the Marchetti family to be heard. A match; it didn't take a computer to tell him that.

  Time now for work on the telephone. He mopped at his neck with his handkerchief. Half an hour in his office and his shirt was soaked. Calls to his subordinates drew blank. No further eyewitnesses had been produced since he had left for home the previous evening. There was nothing to feed into the machines beyond the very basics of description supplied by the single woman on Collina Fleming: bulk and height and generality of clothing. No faces, no fingerprints, no escape car yet traced. No information had emerged from the tenuous links with the Under-world maintained by the discreeter elements of the anti-kidnap squad. No word and none expected, because to inform in these matters was the sure and fast way to a wooden box. Not for the first time since he had reached his lofty eminence Giuseppe Carboni pondered the value of his work. The servant of a society which stepped back from commitment and involvement. The servant, neither trusted nor appreciated, and struggling for standards that those who lodged even in the higher places re-nounced. Lockheed, Friuli, Esso Italiana, Belice, even the Quirinale, even the Presidency. Scandals; nasty and deceitful, and the guilty were from the chief echelons of the great Mama Italia. So, who wanted law, who wanted order? The ache was back at his head, the throb of a hungover man, wetted with dis-illusion. He could take his pension. He could go on his way, and the President would hang a medal round his neck, and his parting would be unseen, unimportant.

  Carboni smacked his pudgy hand down on to the desk, felt the shockwaves vibrate back up to his elbow, enjoyed the affliction.

  There was time for a few more of the great ones to go behind bars, time for a few more handcuffs to be wrapped on the wrists of those who at last would show shame as the doors of the Regina Coeli closed on them. Abruptly he pressed the intercom button, and heard the silked voice of his assistant.

  'A man called Antonio Mazzotti, originally from Cosoleto in Calabria.' He had slipped away from the priority of the day because he did not know how to harness the energy he wished to exude for Harrison's freedom. 'He has an office in Rome and deals in property speculation. He has made some development deals in the Golfo di Policastro. I want the telephone number of his office. Just the number and I will call it myself.'

  ' It will be attended to, Dottore.'

  'And not this evening, not this afternoon,' Carboni growled.

  ' I want it this morning.'

  'Of course, Dottore. And the firm of Harrison rang. They would like an Archibald Carpenter to see you. He is the Security Director of ICH head office, from London . . . '

  'Around twelve I could see him.'

  ' I will let the company know.'

  'And the number of this man, Mazzotti, no delay.'

  'Of course not, Dottore.' The voice dripped. Carboni hated him, would have him shifted. 'Dottore, the news is coming of another kidnapping. From Parioli.'

  ' I cannot handle it. Someone else will have to.'

  'They have taken the nephew of a considerable industrialist . . . '

  ' I told you, I have enough to concern me.'

  '. . . an industrialist who is generous to the Democrazia Cristiana with funds.'

  Carboni sighed in annoyance and resignation. 'Get my car to the door, and when I am back I want that number on my desk, and I want this Carpenter here at twelve.'

  'Of course, Dottore.'

  Vengefully Carboni slapped the intercom button to the 'off position, locked his desk and headed for the corridor.

  Far out on the Nomentana Nuova, set among the high-rise flats that the planners had dubbed 'popular', shadowed by them, was a simple row of garages of precast concrete with swinging, warped doors. The garages were skirted by waste ground, stray dogs and discarded rubbish. Few were in use as the occupants of the flats found them too far from their front doors and out of sight of their windows, and therefore unsafe from the work of thieves and vandals. The garages were generally deserted and distant from the motion and life of the flats. One was a chosen burrow of an NAP cell, rented through an intermediary not to house a car but to provide storage and meeting space. There were guns here. Pistols and automatic weapons from the factories of countries with widely disparate political creeds. Quarry explosives stolen by sympathizers. Boxes full of c
ar number plates.

  Sleeping-bags and a camping stove, and the Roneo machine on which the communiques were run off. None of the possessions of the cell would have been visible if the doors had been carelessly opened because time had been lavished on the garage. If the dirt on the floor were brushed away the outline of a trap door became apparent. They had carved through the cement and underneath had dug out a tomb some two metres wide, two and a half metres long and a metre and a half high. A narrow plumbing pipe to the surface brought air to them. This was the hide-away in times of great danger, and this was where three young men sheltered because it was just a day since La Tantardini had been taken and they had abandoned their safe house. Though she was a leader, who could say whether she would talk to her interrogators? Dark and closed, the pit provided a lair for the men who breathed the damp and must-laden air. There was the son of a banker, the son of a landowner, the son of a Professor of Economics at the University of Trento.

  Above them, and muffled through the thickness of the cement, came four sharp raps at the closed wooden doors of the garage.

  It was a sign they recognized, the signal that a courier had visited them. An envelope had been pushed far from sight under the cover of the doorway, the message it held dispatched four hours earlier from the island of Asinara.

  For Tantardini. Reprisal. Number Four.

  In the pit among the cell's papers would be the code sheet that would identify Number Four, the target the young men must reach for. They would wait several minutes in the calm of the darkness before levering aside the entrance and crawling upwards to find and read the communication.

  Through the morning as the sun rose and blazed with its full force on the tin roof above him they left Harrison to himself. No food, no water, and he hadn't the stomach and courage to call for either. Preferring not to risk another beating, he kept his peace, chained in the oven space that they had chosen for him.

  There were pains in many parts of his body, slow and creeping and twisting at the bruised muscle layers. And there was the heat, combining with the welts and bruises to empty his mind, leave his imagination as an unused void.