RED FOX
Page 25
He walked on till he reached the ristorante attached to the sailing club at the end of the half-kilometre esplanade. There was a closed telephone booth in the hallway leading from the street door to the inner eating sanctum. He had to wait some minutes for two giggling girls to finish. Neither bothered to glance at the frail built boy as they plunged out, loud in their shared noise.
This near to the capital the telephone booths were equipped with Rome directories. He flicked through the first pages of the scruffed edition of the Yellow Pages, running down the addresses and numbers listed under Commissariati PS with his cleaned fingernail. At the bottom of the page he found the answer.
Questura Centrale - v. di S Vitale 15 (46 86).
This would stir the bastards.
He would carry the fight to them, as Franca would have wished, carry it right to the doors of the Questura where they sat with their files and their minions and their computers. They would hear of Giancarlo, the hacks and lackeys would hear his name.
He was trembling, taut as a whiplash at the moment it cracks on a horse's back. The shaking convulsed his palms and the gettoni rattled dully in his fist.
No nearer, no further from Harrison, the child had sat down. He was cross-legged, his elbows resting on his knees and his hands supporting his chin, the kindergarten pose, listening to a teacher's story.
Like you're a bloody animal, Geoffrey, like he's found a fox half dead in a gin-trap, and he has the patience to wait and see what happens. All the hours in the world the child had to be patient, too young for a watch, for a sense of fleeting time.
Harrison's attempts to draw him closer, to engage those small sharp fingers in the binding knots had failed. All the nodding and gesturing with his head had been ignored except for the few times when his most violent contortions had gathered a flash of fear to his face and the child's slim muscles had stiffened and prepared for escape. Don't get excited, Harrison had learned, and for God's sake, even with the eyes, don't threaten him. The child has to be kept there, his confidence has to be conserved, he has to be wooed.
You want to keep him there, Geoffrey, with Giancarlo coming back? Giancarlo and the P38 coming back with the food, and you're trying to keep the child there?
God, I don't know, and the moments were marching, the hands would be sliding on the watch face on his wrist.
There was almost a sadness on the child's face as Harrison peered into its shallow depths. He would be a kid from a farmhouse, self-sufficient, self-reliant in his entertainment, a creature of the woods, and owing loyalty and softness only to his parents.
A pleasant child. You'd fine one like this on the Yorkshire uplands or the Devon moors, or on the far west shoreline of Ireland's Donegal. God knows how to communicate with the blighter. Can't frighten him, can't please him. If there had been a child of his own, but Violet had said that her figure . . . Can't blame bloody Violet, not her fault you don't know how to talk to a child.
Hope was fleeing from Harrison. His head movements became less frequent, and he noticed that when he subsided into inertia then the start of boredom glazed the child's eyes. That way he would leave, pick himself off the earth and wander on his way.
That's what he should do, lie still, bore the kid out, and hope that he was gone before Giancarlo was back; that was saving the kid.
That was the proper way, that was diving clothed into an icy pool to pluck a baby out.
God, I don't want him to go. The fear came again, the horror of being abandoned by this child mind, and he nodded again with his head and wore the pantomime face of the clown in his urgency.
Hating himself, with the fever in his eyes as he called mutely for the child to come forward, Harrison strained to hear the footfall of the returning Giancarlo.
'Pronto, Questura.'
Giancarlo stabbed with his finger at the button that would release a gettone to fall into the caverns of the machine.
'Questura ..
'Please, the office of Dottore Giuseppe Carboni ?'
'A m o m e n t . . . '
Thank you.'
'For nothing, sir .. .'
A hesitation, the sounds of connection. Perspiration dribbled down Giancarlo's chest.
'Yes . .
'May I speak to Dottore Giuseppe Carboni.'
'He is very busy at the moment. In what connection .. .?'
'In connection with the Englishman, 'Arrison.'
'Can I help myself? I work in Dottore Carboni's office.'
' I must speak with him directly. It is important.'
There would be a taping of all incoming calls for Carboni.
Giancarlo assumed that, but unless suspicions Were aroused the trace procedures would not be automatic. He kept his voice calm, regulated.
'A m o m e n t . . . who is it calling?'
Giancarlo flushed. 'It does not matter .. .'
'A moment.'
More delays and he fed another gettone. He smiled mirthlessly. Not the time to lose the call for lack of coins. His last two rested in his hand. More than sufficient... He started, clenched at the receiver.
'Carboni speaking. What can I do for you?'
The voice seemed to come from a great distance, a whispering on the line as if there were a great tiredness and the resignation was heavy.
'Listen carefully, Carboni. Do not interrupt. This is the spokes-man of the Nuclei Armati Proletaria...'
Don't gabble, Giancarlo. Remember that you are kicking them. Remember that you are hurting them as surely as the P38
in Franca's hand.
'. . . We hold the Englishman, 'Arrison. If Franca Tantardini has not been released and flown out of Italy to the territory of a friendly Socialist nation by nine o'clock tomorrow morning, then the multinationalist 'Arrison will be executed for his crimes against the proletariat. There is more, Carboni. We will telephone again this evening, and when your name is asked for then the call must be put through to you immediately, and in your room must be Franca Tantardini. We will speak to her ourselves.
If the connection is not made, if Comrade Tantardini is not there to talk to us, then 'Arrison will be killed. The call this evening will come at twenty hours . . .'
Forty seconds on the revolving hand of his watch since he had announced the source of the communication. And the trace system would be in operation. Mad, Giancarlo, mad. It's the behaviour of a fool.
. . Is that understood?'
Thank you, Giancarlo.'
The boy's head jolted forward, fingers white and bloodless on the plastic telephone. A breathy whisper. 'How did you know?'
'We know so much, Giancarlo. Giancarlo Battestini. Born Pescara. Father, a clothes shop there. One metre sixty-eight tall.
Weight on release from Regina Coeli, sixty-one kilos. Call again, Giancarlo . . . '
Another twenty seconds departed on his watch, lost. Giancarlo snapped, 'You will have her there. You will have Comrade Tantardini on this telephone?'
'If it pleases you.'
'Do not doubt us. When we say we will kill the man 'Arrison, do not doubt us.'
' I believe you will kill him, Giancarlo. It would not be clever, but I believe that you are capable . . .'
With his forefinger Giancarlo pulled down the hook beside the telephone box, felt the moment of sliding pressure before the sound that told him the call was terminated. Franca had told him they needed two minutes for a trace. He had not exposed himself to their reach. Time in hand. He walked out of the ristorante and into the lively afternoon sun, knees weak, breath summoned fast, his mind a confusion of spattered images. They should have grovelled and they had not. They should have bent and they had held the mast erect. Perhaps in the sinking pit of his stomach there was an alien and unholy presentiment of the imminence of failure.
But the mood was soon discarded. The chin jutted and the eyes glowed and he hurried back on the dust-covered road, retracing his way towards the wood.
It was more than an hour now since the child had come, and the crease lin
es of interest still wrapped his face.
Harrison no longer moved, no longer attempted to wheedle the small boy closer. Tried, you poor bastard, tried all you knew.
The ants were at him. Virile swine, monsters with a swingeing bite, hitting and retreating and returning, calling for their friends because the mountain of food was defenceless and amusing. And the kid hadn't spoken one bloody word.
Go away, you little blighter, get lost, get back to your mama and your tea. You're no bloody use to me. A pretty face the child had, and the frown lines were worn as if by a martyred infant in the colours of a church window. Violet would notice a face like this child's, and she'd enthuse on it and want to tousle his hair and coo to him. Why didn't the child respond? God knows, and he's not caring. He'll be in church, this brat, on Sunday morning, with his hair combed and his face washed with a red cassock down to shined sandals and white socks, probably be singing his bloody heart out in the choir stall, and he won't even remember the strange shape of the man in the woods with the wild gaze and the body twist of fear. He'll be in church . . . if Giancarlo isn't back soon.
The child started up, the rabbit alerted, slid fast to his feet, easily and with the suppleness of youth.
For Harrison there was nothing beyond the lethargic motion of the wood.
The child began to move away and Harrison watched fascinated for there was a silence under the boots that glided over the dry minefield of leaves and sticks. His place, thought Harrison, here among the animals and birds and the familiar; he probably didn't know what the inside of a schoolroom looked like, because this was his playground. He watched the child go, his slight body merging with the pale grey lines of the tree-trunks. When he was at the murky edge of vision, Harrison saw him drop to his knees and ease the fronds of a sapling across his face and shoulders. The child had covered less than twenty yards but when he was settled Harrison had to strain and search with his eyes to find his hiding-place.
Into view, trying to move with caution but failing to find quiet places for his feet, came Giancarlo, source of the disturbance.
He closed quickly, gun in hand, and the brown paper bag held between the crook of his arm and his body. He was alert, hunting between the trees with his eyes, but finding nothing to caution nor alarm him. He dropped to his knee and slipped the pistol into the waist of his trousers. The cleaned face and the bright Tshirt gave him a youth and innocence that Harrison had not seen before.
'Food, and I haven't had mine either. We are both equally starved.' There was a little laugh and Giancarlo leaned forward and put his arms behind Harrison's head and unknotted the handkerchief, pulled it clear and dropped it beside him. 'Better, yes?'
Harrison spat from the side of his mouth, cleared the spittle.
Still bent low, Giancarlo bounced on his toes down into the earth crater and worked quickly and expertly at the wrist flex.
'Still better, yes? Even better?'
Harrison looked deep into his face and struggled to comprehend the volatile changes of atmosphere. After hours of silence in the car, after the kicking of the early morning, the new direction of the wind was too complex for him to comprehend.
'What did you get for us to eat?' he asked lamely, rubbing his wrists and restoring the glow of circulation. And what the hell did it matter? What importance did it hold?
'Not much. Some bread, with cheese and salad. It will fill us.*
'Very good.'
'And I spoke to the man who is trying to find you. A fool at the Questura, I called him by telephone. I told him what would happen if Franca were not freed by tomorrow morning.' Giancarlo took a bulging bread roll from the bag, ignored the cheese spillage, and passed it to Harrison. He spoke proudly. 'He tried to keep me talking to give them time for a trace but that's an old trick, you won't hear sirens tonight, 'Arrison. I told him also that I would talk direct to Franca this evening and that they should bring her to his office.'
A chatty, banal conversation. That of two men who have been buried for too long and for whom the quiet has proved oppressive.
'What did you say would happen if Franca were not freed?'
Harrison's words were mumbled through the sea of bread and salad.
' I told them you would be executed.'
That's what you told them?'
' I said that I would kill you.'
'And what did they say?' Harrison ate on, the words of both of them too unreal to be of value.
'Carboni is the name of the man who is hunting for you. He was the only one that I spoke to. He said nothing.'
'Did he say if Franca would be freed?'
'He did not answer that.' Giancarlo smiled. There was a certain warmth, a certain charm in the scrubbed, shaved features.
'He did not answer any of my questions. You know, he knew my name, he knew who it was that he was speaking to. He was pleased with that, the man Carboni. I mean it, I mean it very deeply, 'Arrison, I would be sorry to kill you. It would not be what I want.'
It was too much for Geoffrey Harrison to assimilate. Once in the yard behind his father's house they had watched the chickens prowling beside the fence and decided which one would make their meal and which should survive, and he had tried to communicate to the chosen fowl that there was nothing personal in the choice, no malice.
'It doesn't help you if you shoot me.' Harrison trying to be calm, trying to soften and mollify through dialogue.
'Only that each time you make a threat you must carry it out if you are to be believed. You understand that, 'Arrison. If I say that I will kill you unless I am given something, then I must do it if I am denied. It is credibility. You understand that, 'Arrison?'
'Why do you tell me this?'
'Because you have the right to know.'
Harrison turned his head, a slow, casual movement, traversed across the tree-front and caught like a flash that was there and then gone the blue and white of the check shirt of the idiot child who had sat where Giancarlo now squatted.
'Will they give you back your Franca, Giancarlo?'
'No . . .' he said simply, and his hand dived again in the bag and he passed another roll across to Harrison. An afterthought:
'Well, I do not think so. But I must try, right, 'Arrison? You would agree that I should try?'
With the arrival of Francesco Vellosi from the Viminale, the summit meeting in Carboni's office could begin. Just preceding the head of the anti-terrorist unit had been the Minister of the Interior and before him the examining magistrate who had successfully jockeyed among his profession for the nominal role of heading the investigation.
Tired men, all of them. Harassed and without small talk. At the outset there was argument over priorities around the bowed figure of the Minister, who knew the penalty for failure to arrest terrorist outrage was resignation and could not find in the bearing of the men about him the stimulus for a new initiative.
There were many points for dispute.
Should any new advice be presented to the Council of Ministers regarding the decision to refuse consideration of the freeing of Franca Tandardini?
Should Franca Tantardini be permitted to speak by telephone to the boy Battestini ?
At least two gettoni had been used on the telephone communication, the call had come from outside the Rome city limits, and in the countryside the principal enforcers of the law were the carabinieri; should they now control any further search operation, or should the overall direction remain with the polizia?
Was it useful to contact the Vatican Secretariat to explore the possibility of His Holiness issuing a similar appeal to the rejected call of Pope Paul VI for Aldo Moro's life?
Should the President of the Council of Ministers broadcast to the nation?
Why had it not been possible to extract greater information from the location of the telephone message?
Much of it was unnecessary, much of it time-wasting, sapping the concentration of the men in the room. But then, many had to clear themselves if there was a chance of failure
to be found in tomorrow's dawn. Reputations could be damaged, perhaps destroyed. Backs must be protected. As one of the most junior men in the hierarchy present, Giuseppe Carboni was finally given what amounted to a free hand. He would be provided with a liaison team to link him with Criminalpol, the carabinieri force, and the armed forces. If he succeeded, then those who had set in motion the search operation would be well to the fore. If he failed, then shoulders would droop, heads turn away, and Carboni would stand alone. When they rose from the meeting the room emptied quickly. It was as if the paint daubs of disaster already swept across the walls. As he stood beside his desk smiling weakly at the Minister's departing back, Carboni reflected that little had been gained, only time frittered and disposed of.
'Look at it another way,' said Vellosi, his arm around Carboni's short shoulder. There is little likelihood of us saving Harrison, and perhaps that is not even the first priority. What matters is that we find this scum . . .'
'You talk as if we have reached a state of war,' Carboni murmured.
'What matters is that we find this scum, whether tomorrow, or in a month, or a year, and we kick the shit out of him . . . He never reaches Asinara.'