Red Fox (28 page)

'We would not wish to take a course of action and afterwards receive a request from Whitehall for a different approach.'

' I repeat, Minister, it is most unlikely that we would ask for the freeing of Tantardini.'

The Minister looked with his jaded blue eyes at the Ambassador, a dab of surprise at his mouth. 'You are a hard p e o p l e . . .

you value principle highly. It does not have much merit in our society.'

'My government does not believe in bowing to the coercion of terrorism.'

'I put another hypothesis to you. If we refuse to negotiate with the Nappisti for the freedom of Tantardini and if as a consequence Harrison dies, would we be much criticized in Britain for the hard line,
la linea dura,
as we would say?'

'Most unlikely.' The Ambassador held the Minister's questioning glance, unswerving and without deviation, the reply clear as a pistol shot.

'We are not a strong country, Ambassador, we prefer to circumvent obstacles that fall across our path. We do not have the mentality of your cavalry, we do not raise our sabres and charge our enemy. We seek to avoid him . . . '

The car came fast to a halt and the driver and bodyguard leaned back to unfasten the locks on the rear doors. Out on the cobbled courtyard of the Palazzo Chigi the Ambassador breathed in the clean, freshened air and dried his hands on his trouser crease.

The Minister had not finished, busily he led the Ambassador into the centre of the yard where the sun was bright and where there was none who could overhear their words.

The Minister held the Ambassador's elbow tightly. 'Without a request from your government, there is no reason for our cabinet even to consider the options over Tantardini. You know what I am saying to you?'

'Of course.'

'You value the point of principle?'

'We value that consideration,' the Ambassador said quietly and with no relish.

The Minister pressed. 'Principle . . . even when the only beneficiary could be the Republic of I t a l y . . . '

'Still it would be important to us.' The Ambassador pulled at his tie, wanting relief from its grip. 'A man came to see me earlier this morning, he is a representative of Harrison's firm, and I told him what I have told you. He called me Pilate, he said I was washing my hands of his man. Perhaps he is right. I can only give my opinion, but I think it will be ratified by London.'

The Minister, still sombre, still clinging to the Ambassador's arm as if unwilling to break away for his cabinet colleagues waiting upstairs, said, 'If we refuse to release Tantardini, I do not think we will see Harrison again.'

The Ambassador accepted his opinion, nodded gravely.

' I will relay your view to Whitehall.'

The two men stood together, the Ambassador disproportion-ately taller. High frescoes in centuries-old paint leered down at them, mocking their transitory plans for history. Both perspired, both were too preoccupied to wash away the moisture beads.

'We understand each other, my friend. I will tell my colleagues that the British ask for no deal, no barter, no negotiation... and whatever happens we win the victory of principle . . . '

The Ambassador interrupted his short choked laugh. ' I am sure that Defence would send the Special Air Service, the close-quarter attack squad, as they did for Moro. They could be here this afternoon, if it were helpful.'

The Minister seemed to snort, give his judgement on an irrelevance, and walked away towards the wide staircase of the Palazzo.

Those who came late that morning to their desks in the Viminale on the second floor found that already the corridors and offices were nests of harsh and total activity. Vellosi paced among rooms, querying the necessity of bureaucrats and policemen alike to occupy their premises and their precious telephones, and where he found no satisfaction he commandeered and installed in their place his own subordinates. By ten he had secured an additional five rooms, all within shouting distance of his own. Technicians from the basements were kept busy hoisting the mess of cables and wires, attaching the transmitters and receivers that would secure him instant access to the control centre of the Questura and the office of Carboni. Some of the dispossessed hung about in the corridors, sleek in their suits and clean shirts, and smiled sweetly at the pace and moment of the working men around them and vowed they would have Vellosi's head served up on a charger were he not to deliver Geoffrey Harrison, free and unharmed, by the next morning. It was not the way that things were done in the Viminale. Noise, rising voices, the ringing of telephone bells, the pleas of radio static all mingled and coalesced in the corridor. Vellosi bounced between the sources of the confusion. He had told an examining magistrate that he was a hindrance and an obstruction, a carabinieri general that if he didn't push reinforcements into the Cosoleto area he would face speedy retirement, the persistent editor of the largest Socialist newspaper in the city that his head should be down the lavatory pan and would he clear the line, and sent out for more cigarettes, more coffee, more sandwiches.

At a hectic pace, bewildering to all those who were not central to the knot of the enquiry, the operation and investigation was launched. Those who participated and those who were idle and smirking behind their hands could agree on the one common point. The mood on the second floor of the Viminale was unique.

Very few, though, were privy to the telephone conversation between Vellosi and the Minister, who spoke from an anteroom outside the cabinet deliberations at the Palazzo Chigi; only the inner court, the hard men on whom Vellosi leaned for succour and advice.

He had slammed the telephone down, barely a grunt of thanks to the Minister and confided to those in the room near him.

'They're standing firm, our masters. The men of deviation and compromise are holding a line. The bitch stays with us. Tantardini stays in her cell and rots there.'

The four who heard him understood the importance of the political decision, and they smiled to each other in a grim satisfaction and dropped their shoulders and raised their eyebrows and returned to their notepads and their internal telephone directories.

The information began to flow as the team hustled, begged and screamed into the telephones; shapes and patterns emerging from the kaleidoscope of mystery and dead alleys with which the day had started. Photographs of the known Nappisti at liberty had been spread out on a table for the portiere of the pensione where Claudio's body had been found. He had not wished to be involved, this elderly man whose job required a short tongue and shorter memory. He had turned over many pictures, showing little interest, muttering repeatedly of the failure of his recollection. One flicker of curiosity nullified his reluctance and a detective had seen the betrayal of recognition that the portiere had tried to hide. It was the work of a police photographer, and the typed message on the back of the picture gave the name of Giancarlo Battestini.

What name had he used? What identity card had he shown?

What had he been wearing? What time had he arrived? What time had he left? The questions battered at the old man in his fading uniform till he had broken the reticence born of the sense of survival and told the story the police wanted to hear. The information breathed a new activity into the squad of men around Vellosi, whipped up their flagging morale and drove them on.

' It's beside the station,' Vellosi stormed down his telephone to a maggiore of the Pubblica Sicurezza. 'Right beside the station, this pensione, so get the photograph of Battestini down to the ticket counters, get it among the platform workers. Check him through all the trains to Reggio yesterday morning. Find the ticket inspectors on those trains, find their names, where they are now, and get that picture under their noses.'

There was so much commitment, so much cajoling and abuse that for a full minute Giuseppe Carboni stood ignored in the doorway of Vellosi's office. He bided his time; he would have his moment. And it would be choice, he thought, choice enough for it to have been worth his while to abandon his desk at the Questura and come unannounced to the Viminale. Vellosi was on his way for another prowl along the corridor to chase and jockey his men when he careered into the solid flesh wall of the policeman.

'Carboni, my apologies.' Vellosi laughed. 'We have been very busy here, we have been going hard . . . '

'Excellent, Vellosi, excellent.' A measured reply, tolerant and calm.

' . . . you will forgive my hurry, but we have discovered an important connection..

'Excellent.'

'The boy of the NAP, Battestini... the one we missed when we took Tantardini, this is the kernel of this matter, it was he who killed the gorilla in the hotel. We have established that, and this Claudio was from those who took your H a r r i s o n . . . we have not been idle.'

'Excellent.'

Vellosi saw the smile on Carboni's face, as though the man had picked up a book and found it already familiar. His revelation won no recognition of achievement.

'And are you prospering too, Carboni?' Subdued already, Vellosi braced himself. 'Tell me.'

Carboni led the head of the anti-terrorist squad back to his desk. With his heavy rounded fingers he produced from a neat briefcase two facsimile documents. He laid them on the desk, carelessly pushing aside the piles of handwritten notes that had accumulated there through the morning. With his forefinger, Carboni stabbed at the upper sheet.

"This is the statement taken from Battestini by the polizia more than eighteen months ago . . . after his arrest for some student fracas. It carried his handwriting at the bottom.'

' I have seen it,' Vellosi said curtly.

Carboni pulled clear the under sheet. "This is the statement from the Nappisti found at Seminara along with Harrison's card.

Observe the writing, Vellosi, observe it closely.'

Vellosi's nose was a few inches from the papers as he held them to the light.

'It has been checked. At Criminalpol they ran it through the machines for me. The scientists have no doubt that they match.'

Carboni savoured the moment. It was perhaps the finest of his professional life. He stood among the gods, the princes of the elite force, the cream of the anti-subversion fighters, and he told them something they had not seen for themselves. 'Giancarlo Battestini, nineteen years old, born in Pescara, university drop-out, probationer of the NAP, he is the one who has taken Geoffrey Harrison. Harrison is in Battestini's hands, and I venture to suggest that is the limit and extent of the conspiracy.'

Vellosi dropped back to his chair. A hush spread across the room and on into the corridor and further offices. Men in shirtsleeves holding cigarettes and plastic coffee beakers crowded to the doorway. 'Is it possible for one man - a mere boy - to have achieved all this?'

'Vellosi, it has happened.' The pleasure shone on Carboni's face. ' I won't detain you, but you should know we are sifting the reports of stolen vehicles from the area of the city of Reggio -

there are not many, not at the times that fit. Two cinquencentos, but they would be too small for the purpose. There was a BMW

but that is a conspicuous car. Close to the main station at Reggio, a few minutes' walk away, there is reported missing within ninety minutes of the arrival of the rapido from Roma a one-two-seven. It is red, and the registration is going out now.

There is the same problem as always with the road blocks because we do not know where to set them, but if it is on the radio and the lunchtime television, then perhaps...'

'Shut up, Carboni.' Vellosi spoke quietly. He reached up with both arms, put them round Carboni's neck and pulled the ill-shaven face towards him. Their cheeks met, the kiss of friends and equals. 'You're a genius, Carboni, nothing but a genius.'

Carboni blushed, swung on his heel and left with a little wave of his fingers for farewell. He had stirred Vellosi's ant hole, changed its direction, shifted the whole basis of the enquiry.

'Well, don't stand about,' Vellosi snapped at his audience.

'We've let an amateur show us what's happening, point to what's been staring at us for hours. We have more in a day than we had in a month with Moro. Use it.'

But for Moro he had had time. For Harrison he had less than twenty-four hours till the expiry of the ultimatum.

Vellosi scuffed among his papers till he found the photograph of Battestini. He searched the mouth and the jaw line and the set of the eyes for information, scrabbling to catch up, scratching to make do with diminishing hours, the tools of a policeman's trade.

"The little bastard could be anywhere.' And Vellosi swore and reached for his coffee that was cold.

He must go back to the basics, back to deep and quiet thought in the midst of the noise surrounding him, back to analysis of the minimal factual evidence available.

Start again, start from the beginning. Return to the face of Battestini, drag from those features the response that should be made.

Giancarlo Battestini, imprisoned in Rome after studying in the capital's university, and a member of an NAP cell in that city.

Could the boy have links with the far countryside? Likely or unlikely ? Vellosi flexed his fingers. The answer was obvious. The boy would know nothing of Calabria. A city boy, a town boy, a foreigner in the Mezzo Giorno.

He turned and called to a colleague, who stubbed his cigarette, drained his coffee and came to him.

'Battestini would not believe he could survive in the countryside, it is beyond his experience. Correct?'

'Correct.'

'He would try to return to the city?*

'Possible.'

'In the files he is linked only with Rome: would he try to get back here?'

'Perhaps.'

'He is divorced from Pescara. He has nothing there. And if he comes back towards Rome he must come by car because he cannot take a prisoner by train.'

'Probable.'

The momentum carried Vellosi on. 'If he comes by road he must decide for himself whether he will attempt speed on the autostrada, or whether he will go for the safer and slower old roads.'