Red Fox (30 page)

Carboni's room had disintegrated into movement, leaving the witness to gaze long and hard at the picture.

Telephones, telexes, radios, all into play now to seal the city of Rome. Close it up, was the order, block the routes to L'Aquila to the east, to Firenze in the north. Tighten a net on the autostradas and damn the queues. Pull off the men beginning the search of the Monte Cassino hills, bring them back to the capital.

Carboni set it all in motion, then came back to the young man.

'And there was a boy, just a ragazzo, with this man?'

'I think so ..

' It is the older man that you are clear on?'

That was the one that gave me the money. It is difficult to see across the interior of a car from where we sit in the cabins.'

A good witness, would not admit to that which he was not certain of. Carboni replaced the photograph of Harrison with that of Giancarlo Battestini. 'Could it be this boy? Could this be the passenger?'

' I am sorry, Dottore, but really I did not see the passenger's face.'

Carboni persisted. 'Anything at all that you can remember of the passenger?'

'He wore jeans . . . and they were tight, that I remember. And his legs were thin. He would have been young . . .' The toll attendant stopped, head low, frowning in concentration. He was tired and his thoughts came slowly. Unseen to him Carboni held up his hand to prevent any interruption from those who were now filtering back into the r o o m . ' . . . He paid, the driver that is, and he paid with a big note and when I gave him the change he passed it to the passenger, but the other's hands were beneath a light coat that was between them, I could see that from my cabin, the driver dropped the change on to the top of the coat. They did not say anything, and then he drove away.'

Pain on Carboni's face. To the general audience he announced,

'That is where the gun was, that is why Harrison drives, because the boy Battestini has the pistol to his body.'

The young man from Roma Sud was sent home.

Fuel for the computer, for the dispersal system of information, and with each piece of typed paper that slipped from his office, Carboni fussed and plotted. 'And tell them to be careful, for God's sake to be careful. Tell them that the boy has killed three times in forty-eight hours and will kill again.'

There was no smirk on the features of Giuseppe Carboni, no expression of euphoria. Geographically they had run their quarry to a ground comprising a trivial number of square kilometres, but the ground, he could consider ruefully, was not favourable. One man and a prisoner to hunt for in a conurbation that housed four million citizens.

Chance had taken the sad, worn-down policeman up a road of promise, and had left him at a great crossroads which boasted no signposts.

He reached for his telephone to ring Francesco Vellosi.

At noon the men held in maximum security on the island of Asinara were unlocked from their cells and permitted under heavy supervision to queue together in the communal canteen for their pasta and meat lunch. Conversation was not forbidden.

The long-term prisoners, those serving from twenty years to the ultimate maximum of ergastolo, the natural end of life, all had radio sets in their cells. Behind the heavy doors and barred windows news had been carried of the kidnapping of Geoffrey Harrison, the ultimatum for the freedom of Franca Tantardini, the failed reprisal against Francesco Vellosi.

Several men sidled close to the leader of the NAP. Who was the boy Battestini, they asked, a name blasted from every news bulletin in the previous hour? How big was the infra-structure organization from which he worked? The capo, the movement's spiritual leader in intellect and violence, had shrugged his shoulders, opened his hands and said quietly that he had never heard of the boy nor sanctioned the action.

A few had felt he was being obsessively secretive, but there were those who waited and shuffled forward with their steel trays who understood the bafflement of the man who claimed absolute domination of the NAP from his island cell.

It was one thing to give orders, another to have them implemented. Many men in the Questura and the Viminale had lent their names and authority to instructions for the sealing of the city. Contingency plans for such measures were to hand, but it was not easy to mount a police and para-military effort of the scale required. Which were the vital routes, which were the areas for the greatest concentration of manpower, where in the streets of the city should the maximum vigilance be observed ? They were questions that demanded time for answers, and time was a lost commodity.

The Fiat had turned off the main Cassia road at the village of La Storta, travelled fifteen more kilometres and then turned again, choosing a narrower route that would skirt the hill town of Bracciano and lead towards the deep, blue-tinted volcanic lake beneath the collection of straggling grey stone houses. The car was forty kilometres now from the heart of the capital and here the country was at peace, and the bombs and killings and kidnappings were matters delivered only by the newspapers and television bulletins. This was a place of small farmers, small shopkeepers, small businessmen, people who valued their tranquility, drank their wine and drew their curtains against the wind of brutality, chaos and graft that blew from across the fields and the main road.

Abruptly Giancarlo pointed to an open field gate that was set in a wall of stone and blackthorn to the left of the road and some four hundred metres short of the water's edge. The field into which they drove, jerking over the thick grass, was skirted on two sides by a wood of heavy-leafed oaks and sycamores. Tall, shade-bearing trees. Giancarlo had taken a great risk, to travel this far in daylight, but he was sufficiently secure in himself, sufficiently buoyant after coming so far, to believe that he had outstripped the apparati of the nation. Far up the side of the field, where it was shielded from the road, he waved for Harrison to stop, glanced around him and then motioned towards a place close by where the grazing of the field merged with the trees, a place where the cattle would come in winter to escape the ferocity of the rain-storms.

There was a darkness and shadow in the interior of the car as Harrison finally pulled at the brake handle and switched off the ignition. The place was well chosen. Hidden from the air, hidden from the road, perfect in its safety and loneliness. Giancarlo grabbed decisively at the keys, smiled with contempt at his driver, and watching him all the time with the gun cocked, climbed out. He stretched himself, flexed his barely developed chest, enjoyed the sun that filtered and dappled between the leaf ceiling.

'Are you going to kill me here?' Harrison asked.

'Only if by nine o'clock tomorrow morning they have not given me Franca.'

It was the first time that Giancarlo had spoken since they had left the autostrada.

International Chemical Holdings with representation in thirty-two countries of the First and Third Worlds maintained close links with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Overseas Development. Its Board members and principal executives were frequent guests at the black tie dinners given by government to visiting delegations, they figured cautiously in the New Year's and Birthday Honours lists, and to some the workings of the company were regarded as an extension of British foreign policy. An aid package to a newly independent member of the Commonwealth often contained the loan necessary to launch an ICH plant.

Sir David Adams was well known to the Minister both as a businessman aloof from party politics and as a social guest to be valued for his ease and humour in difficult company. On the telephone pad of Sir David's desk in the City tower block was the Foreign Secretary's direct number. He had spent a few brief moments pondering Archie Carpenter's call from Rome before scanning the pad for the number. He had been connected with a private secretary, had requested, and been granted, a few minutes of the Foreign Secretary's time before lunch.

A desolate sort of room, the Minister's working office seemed to Sir David. Not the sort of quarters he'd ever have tolerated for himself. Wretched velvet drapes, the furniture out of a museum, and a desk large enough for snooker. He'd have had one of those young interior decorator chaps in with a bucket of white paint and some new pictures and something on the floor that represented the nineteen-eighties, not the days of dropping tigers at Amritsar. He was not kept waiting sufficiently long for the completion of his refurbishment plans for the office.

They sat opposite each other in lush, high-backed armchairs.

There was a Campari soda for the Minister, a gin and French for the Managing Director. No aides, no stenographers.

'Not to beat about the bush, Minister, the message from my chap out there came as a bit of a shock. My chap, and he's no fool, got his feet on the ground, says your Ambassador has just about told the Italians that so far as Whitehall is concerned they should run this new phase in the Harrison business as if our man was any Italian businessman. I find that a bit heavy.' Sir David sipped at his glass, enough to dampen his tongue, little more.

'Bit of an oversimplification, David. Not quite the full story.'

The Foreign Secretary smiled over the bulldog lapping folds of his cheeks. 'The actual situation is that a senior member of the Italian cabinet, and this is of course confidential, asked HMG

via the Ambassador and at a time when the Italians were having to make early but very important decisions of approach in this matter, whether HMG would be requesting the release of a terrorist to safeguard your fellow. That's not quite the same thing, is it?'

'With respect, it's the germ of the same thing. I'll put it another way and ask you what initiative the British government are taking to secure the release, unharmed, of Geoffrey Harrison?' Another sip, another faint trembling of the liquid line in the glass.

'You should know there can only be one answer. There is no initiative that I can take with regard to the internal politics of I t a l y . . . '

'You can suggest that it is desirable to get my man back, whether or not that requires unlocking a door for this woman they're holding.'

'David, I have a full programme of meetings.' There was a sternness in the rebuke. ' I should have been at one now but I've relegated it to a junior. When I make that gesture, please do me the courtesy of hearing me out.'

'Accepted. Apologies, and sincerely meant.' An inclined head acknowledged the ministerial rap.

'Italy isn't a business competitor, David. It's not a rival company. If it collapses, if it goes bankrupt, morally or financially, if it's greatly weakened, the Members of the Commons won't stand up and cheer and wave their Order papers as your shareholders would. It's not just a place of funny foreigners, David, of spaghetti and gigolos and bottom-pinchers. It's a major power in the West, it's a NATO ally, it's the seventh industrial power in the world. You know all that better than I do. When things are difficult there we draw no pleasure from it. We do our damnedest to support them, and a friend needs support when she's on her knees. The Moro affair nearly crippled them. The State was held to ransom, the very system of democracy was threatened, but they held firm, and in doing so they lost - they sacrificed - a leader of great standing.'

' It's a fine speech, Minister, and it will do you credit in the House on the day my company buries Geoffrey Harrison. You'll send a wreath, I trust?' The two men eyed each other. The counter-punches had bloodied the noses and the eyes were puffing and there were many rounds to go.

'Not worthy of you, David, and you know better than to taunt me. When the German was missing in Northern Ireland, the one we never found, the Minister of the day didn't have Bonn snapping at him. When Herrema, the Dutchman, was kidnapped in Eire, The Hague was quick to express support for all the measures that Dublin was taking.'

'You're still hiding, Minister.' Sir David Adams was not one to be easily deflected. He pushed his adversary towards the ropes, leading with his chin, a lifetime's habit. 'You're hiding behind a screen of meaningless protocol. I want a young and innocent man back, I want him back with his wife. I don't give a damn for Italian terrorism, nor do I give a damn for Italian democracy.

I've done business there and I know the place. I know how much of our payments go to the bank in Milan, how much goes to Zurich. I know about the yachts and the bribes and the villas. I understand why they've an urban guerrilla problem on their doorstep. It's a nasty, clannish society that can't look after itself, and it's not for you to abandon an Englishman in the sewer there in order to start giving those people lessons in principle, or whatever.'

'You haven't been listening to me, David.' Ice cold, the Foreign Secretary, but the temper concealed beneath the frozen smile. 'They sacrificed one of their principal post-war leaders, wrote him off, and on a point of principle.'

'We're going in circles.'

'We are indeed, but I suggest you are leading.'

Sir David gulped at his glass, the impatience winning, half drained it. ' I put it to you, Minister, that there is something you can do that doesn't infringe on the question of "principle" . . .'

He rolled over the word, gutting it of all feeling. 'You can find out from your friends in Rome the exact importance of this woman. You can find out her importance to the guerrilla movement. And let's not stand on too high a pedestal. I know my recent history. Northern Ireland, right? . . . We emptied Long Kesh when we were after a political initiative, chucked the Provisionals out on to the streets to get on again with their bombing and maiming. What happened to principle, then? We've given their leaders safe-conduct. We sent the Palestinian girl, Leila Khaled, home from Ealing courtesy of an RAF jet. We're not lily-white. We can bend when it suits us .. .'

'Who's making speeches, David?'

'Don't be flippant, Minister. My fellow has little more than twenty hours to live.' The gimlet eyes of Sir David Adams offered no concessions. 'Italy can live without this woman in a gaol, Italy can s u r v i v e . . . '