Red Fox (12 page)

'To get him back, what sort of figure might we be talking about?'

'The asking price might be anything up to four or five million dollars.' That'll set him swinging in his black leather chair, that'll start him gawping out over the City skyline. 'There might be a possibility of negotiation, but it won't be easy for a company like yours to plead poverty.'

'And if we don't pay?'

'Then you are in for a long widow's pension. Mrs Harrison is a young woman.'

'Well, that's a Board decision. And in the meantime, what action should we take?'

'The only thing you have to do is to get that decision taken, and fast. It could go very hard for Mr Harrison if the group that hold him thought you were prevaricating. As you probably realize, in this country there is a tradition of paying up, they would not respond well to the breaking of that custom.'

Don't ever say I didn't root for you, Geoffrey Harrison. Don't ever say I didn't go in there with two feet kicking. A silence on the line, the big man chewing on it, deliberating. A slow smile winning across Michael Charlesworth's face.

When Sir David Adams spoke again, the chisel had blunted in his voice. 'It's a great deal of money, Mr Charlesworth. My Board would have be very certain that it's totally necessary to pay the sort of sum you mention. They won't like it. And there's a question of principle too; there's a tradition in this country that we don't crumble to blackmail.'

'Then you would have to make the decision that on a point of principle you were prepared to sacrifice the life of Mr Harrison.

Of course, it might not come to that, but the possibility, perhaps the probability, exists.'

'You are very frank, Mr Charlesworth.' There was the trace of disapproval in the scraped gravel tones. 'If we suppose, and only suppose, that we were to pay a very considerable sum, then who would control the arrangements?'

' It would be best done by your office in Rome. The Embassy couldn't get involved.'

Charlesworth heard the low laugh in response. Ten minutes they'd been talking, ten minutes in querying the profit and loss columns, and whether a ransom should be paid. Principle or expediency. A martyr for the greater good of the majority or a shame-laden deal for the return of one man. Perhaps, Charles-

worth thought, he'd minimized the issues at stake. Perhaps a line had to be drawn. No deals, no bargains, no compromise, there would be many willing to shout that clarion call. If you gave in once, if you slipped one time into the shadows with a suitcase of used banknotes and a string of Zurich bank account numbers, then how many other poor bastards were going to follow the road of Geoffrey Harrison? Not his business, though, not his concern, because as he'd said most clearly, the Embassy wouldn't be involved, would stand detached within its glass walls and watch and murmur occasional interest. That was why Sir David Adams, Managing Director of International Chemical Holdings in the City of London, could laugh lightly at him, without humour, without rancour, at the moment of dismissal.

'You've been very kind, Mr Charlesworth. I'll get one of my people on the plane this evening. I'd like him to be in touch with you.'

The call was terminated.

Michael Charlesworth flopped back into the small comforts offered by the plastic padding of his chair. A time for reflection.

He must call Miss Foreman, he must apologize, and there would be some flowers for her basement bunker tomorrow in the morning. And then the bell again, the bloody telephone.

The Questura had been informed from the offices of ICH in Viale Pasteur that a demand of two million dollars for the return of Geoffrey Harrison had been received. There should be no contact with the police, further details of arrangement for payment would follow through intermediaries. Dottore Carboni was not in his office at present but he had requested that the information be passed to Signor Charlesworth. There were mutual thanks and politeness.

Two million dollars. More than a million in sterling at whatever the fluctuating rate. Four million Swiss francs. Cascades of figures. And less than he'd thought it would be, as if those who had taken Harrison had settled for a bargain basement price and would not haggle and barter, but expect settlement without delay.

Michael Charlesworth changed his mind. He would apologize in person to Gladys Foreman. He fastened his shirt buttons, straightened his tie, slipped on his jacket and walked slowly out of his office. He wondered what the man looked like, Geoffrey Harrison, how his voice sounded, whether he'd be good company for dinner, if he told a good joke. He felt himself inextricably involved with a man he did not know, could not picture and might never meet unless a company on the other side of the continent jettisoned an issue of principle and made available more money than he could decently imagine.

C H A P T E R SIX

The Termini was a good place for Giancarlo to come to.

A great extended white stone frontage before which the buses parked, the taxis queued, the traders hawked gaudy toys and shiny shoes and polished belts, and where thousands streamed each morning and afternoon on their way to and from the business of the city. Shops and bars and restaurants and even a subterranean aquarium catered for those who had time to pass.

Vast, sprawling, a dinosaur dedicated to the days before the private car and the growth of the autostrada. Businessmen were there, neat and watching the departure board for the evening expresses for Torino and Milano and Napoli. Families of impatient mothers and fretful children waited for connections to the resorts of Rimini and Ricci and the towns south of Bari. Soldiers and sailors and airmen looked for the trains that would carry them to far distant barracks or back to their homes, the routine of conscription broken for a few short days. Gypsy girls in ankle-length wraparound skirts and painful faces of destitution held out paper cups for money. Noise and movement and blurred features, and the mingling of accents of Lombardia, Piemonte, Umbria and Lazio and Toscana.

Tired, famished, with a throat desert dried, he stalked slowly and still with care and watchfulness on to the main concourse.

It was a good place for Giancarlo because there were many here.

Too many people, too many scuffling feet for the polizia to notice one small boy. The training of the NAP was well etched in the youth so that the places of concealment were second nature as he sought camouflage to his presence. With his weariness had come no sense of defeat, no will to cringe and concede, only a con-

fusion as to how he might best strike back at those who had taken Franca Tantardini. A white scabbed face, bristle on his cheeks, hair hanging, eyes sunken. Past the stalls for the children's toys, past the stands of newspapers and magazines and books, oblivious of the broadcast news of platform changes and delays, he walked the wide length of the concourse.

The second time he passed the big bar, the one that faced the platforms, he saw the man and stirred the response of recognition.

It took Giancarlo many more dragging steps as he racked his memory to identify the fatted face, threatening body, dropped shoulders of the man who leaned on his elbows with a glass in his hand and gazed out of the bar. The boy had to examine a host of recent experiences, sift through them and reject the failures before there was satisfaction and confirmation.

The one they called gigante - the huge one, that was the man in the bar. He saw him on the iron steps that led between the landings, his great strides that echoed down the yawning corridors, men stepping back from his path and skirting his strength.

All had conceded precedence to the gigante, all except the NAP

men on 'B' Wing. Claudio - he could even place his name. Not his other name, only the first one, the given one. Claudio -

treated with respect in the Regina Coeli because his fist was the width of a pizza portion and his temper short and his sensitivity slight. To the boy he seemed gross in his stomach, looked to have taken his food, and from the tilt of the glass his beer was not the early one of the day.

Giancarlo turned on his heel, retraced his way till he came and stood at the doorway of the bar that was open to lure the faint breeze into the heated interior. Stood stationary waiting for the head to rise and the gaze to fasten. The boy stood statue still until the sleep-lost, narrow eyes of the big man rolled across the doorway and past him, and then swept backwards as if awakened.

Giancarlo smiled and slipped forward.

'Ciao, Claudio,' the boy said quietly, close to him.

The big man stiffened, the prodded bullock, as if recognition ruffled and unsettled him.

'It's a long time, Claudio, but I think you remember me.'

He read the uncertainty in the other's face, watched the war going on between the frown lines of his shallow forehead, the fight to put a name and a place to the boy who had accosted him.

Giancarlo prompted.

'At the Queen of Heaven, Claudio. Do you not remember me, do you not remember my friends? My friends were in the political wing, and I was under their protection.'

'I've not seen you before.' Something in the denial that was weak and furtive, and the big man looked round, peering about him.

'But I know your name. And I could tell you the number on the cell door, perhaps even I could tell you the names of those that slept there with you.' A half smile played on Giancarlo's lips, and an ebb tide of relaxation was running in him. It was the first time in the day, through the long hours since the Post, that he felt an intuition of advantage. 'If we had coffee and we talked then you might remember more of me and of my friends. My friends were in the political wing, they were people of influence in the Queen of Heaven, they still hold that influence.' His voice died away, the message of menace inherent in the boast of his pedigree.

Claudio laughed with a ripple of nervousness and looked past the boy as if to be certain that he was alone, that a trap was not set for him. He walked away without explanation to the girl at the cash desk, shouldered his way past others. Giancarlo saw a thickened wad of notes emerge from the hip pocket, saw the hands that trembled and scuffed at the notes before the 1000-lire note was produced. Money, endless rolls of it, enough to quicken the attention of the boy. As a pilot fish clings to a shark that he may feed from the droppings at its jaws, so Giancarlo stayed close to the reluctant Claudio.

'You will have a beer with me,' said Claudio when he was back from the bar.

Slowly and stilted, the man and the boy circled each other in sporadic conversation over the first beer. Claudio seeking to determine what the other wanted of him, Giancarlo working at the crannies of information and looking for advantage and the area of profit. A second beer, and a third, and Claudio's head was rolling from the intake, his words sluggish and with a creeping edge of confidence leading him forward. By the fourth bottle of tight, gassed Perroni, Claudio's arm was across Giancarlo's bent shoulder, and together they scanned the front page of the afternoon paper. A pudgy, scarred finger, grime to the quick of the nail, stabbed at the report on the front page of the kidnapping of a British businessman as he had left his home that morning.

When Giancarlo looked sharply into the big man's face there was a dissolve of giggles.

The boy struggled to stay alert, to hose out the beer that flowed in him, seeking the information that might lead to power over his drinking companion. Claudio was from the south, Giancarlo's memory told him, the fact confirmed by the thickened accent of Calabria, and he was waiting for a train from Rome and there was the music of his laughter and his attention to a kidnapping. Here was a source of money, a source of protection, because the big man was running too, was also a fugitive and had betrayed himself.

'But we are not the most important news today,' muttered Claudio with a tinge of disappointment, an actor denied lime-light. 'Because they have taken one of yours. They have taken a whore of the NAP. They took her this morning and that is what excites the polizia.' Giancarlo kept his peace, and the finger was moving again, dabbing down and smudging with dirt the picture of Franca Tantardini. 'A leader of the NAP they call her, and the one that guarded her dead. Silly bitch, to have been out in the open. Silly cow. Did you know her, boy? She looks worth knowing.'

'I had met her.' Giancarlo kept the casualness in his words.

'But there are many like her and she will be avenged. They will not hold her in prison, her friends will release her. They cannot hold our people.' In the picture Franca's head was high and her blouse tight, and the camera had caught the sting of the nipple and the clasp of the manacles at her wrists.

'That's shit, boy. When they have her, they hold her. Good-looking bitch,' mouthed Claudio. And then it was as if a clarity had come to him and the beer vapour was dispersed and the interest crawled like a spider's path across his face. 'That is why you are running. Why you are here without food, without money, sponging from an old peasant. It is because they have taken her.'

Giancarlo looked back at him, unwavering, deep into the bloodstreams of his eyes. 'It is why I seek the help of a friend.'

'You were with the girl?'

' I need the help of a friend.'

'Because they have taken her you have no place?'

' I have no place to go.'

' In a city, in Rome, you have nowhere to cover yourself?'

' I am alone,' said Giancarlo.

'But there are friends, there are others.'

'We do not have that structure. We have the cell grouping. We are separated because that is the rule of the NAP.'

Around their ears the noise and chaos of the bar was rampant.

Arms pressing against them, orders shouted to the white-shirted men behind the bar. Humour, rancour, impatience buffeting at their ears. But they had created their island, were immune to disturbance.

'Perhaps you should go home.' Something softer from the big man. 'You should go back to your family. Bury yourself away, let the thing pass.'

'I am hunted. I was with her when she was taken, and the other who was with her was killed by the pigs. They are searching for me.' The supremacy over Claudio was lost, frittered away. Giancarlo was searching for comfort, and turning for it to a hardened, brute-fashioned animal. 'I have walked all day. I have nowhere to go.'