Red Fox (33 page)

'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.'

They are dragging us down, Vellosi.'

'That is the ground where we meet them, where we fight them, and where we win.'

' If in such times victory is available . . . I am less certain.'

'Concern yourself with the present, Carboni. Find me the boy Battestini.' Vellosi squeezed his arm and walked on out through the door.

In the front parking area of a small trattoria Violet Harrison parked her car. Not tidily, not quietly, but with a splash of movement and rising dust and the protest of an over-extended engine.

The parking area was for patrons, but she would take a cup of coffee and perhaps half a carafe of white wine, and that would satisfy the white-shirted waiters of her right to a table. The verandah of the trattoria was at the back, and she walked through the small construction of timber and corrugated iron roofing and past the kitchen where the fires were being stoked for the lamb and the veal. She would sit beneath a screen of interlaced bam-boo, and from there she could watch, across some scrub grass and shallow shifting hills of sand, the boys who walked on the beach.

She seemed relaxed, at peace, but the Polaroids on her face hid reddened eyes. She showed a calm pose to the world, obliterated her inner self, sat at the table and waited. Occasionally she swung her head and gazed away down the beach, a searchlight roving, hunting all the time, haunting and punishing.

CHAPTER S I X T E E N

Early afternoon in the great slumbering capital.

A wicked heat, clamping on the bodies of the few Romans who moved listlessly on the steaming, paper-strewn streets. Little protection for walkers, even from the high buildings of nine-teenth-century finery on the Corso. The pavements, abandoned by their own citizens, were given over to the perspiring, grumbling tourists. The map-clutchers, guide-book-scanners, ice-cream-suckers, groped from ruin to ruin expressing their admiration for what they saw in shrill Japanese, blaring American, dominant German.

Like a stranger in his own community, Giuseppe Carboni threaded an impatient way between the loiterers. He crossed the small square in front of the colonnaded church and hurried up the six shallow steps to the central entrance of the church of San Pietro in Vincoli. The visitors were thick, shoulder to shoulder, huddled close to their guides, serious and solemn-faced as they mopped up the culture and the dampness of their armpits. Here Carboni had been told he would find Francesco Vellosi. The church of Saint Peter in Chains is where the bonds of the saint are reverently kept, shining and coated in dark paint inside a gold and glass-faced cabinet. The central nave was occupied by the groups, soaking up the required information: the age of the construction, the dates of renovation, the history of the tomb of Julius II, the smooth sculpture of the bearded and muscled Moses that was the work of Michelangelo. But in the aisles, in the narrower naves, where the tourists gave ground to the wor-shippers, Carboni would find his man. Where the shadows were thicker, where the tall candles burned in flickering insecurity, where the women in black came in from the streets to pray.

In the right-hand nave he saw Vellosi, three rows from the front, kneeling hunched on a red hassock. The hard man of the anti-terrorist squad was now bent in prayer because his driver was slain and would be buried in the morning. It was no surprise that Vellosi chose this church. On the same steps that Carboni had climbed the carabinieri had shot to death Antonio La Muscio and captured the girls La Vianale and Salerno. The place acted as a symbol to those who fought the underground of subversion and anarchy, it was their place of triumph and riposte.

Carboni did not intrude. He crossed to the small side altar and waited with hands joined across his stomach. The voices of the guides seemed distant, the brush of scores of feet was near eliminated. A place of tranquil value. A place to shed, for precious moments, the fearsome and desperate load that the two men carried. Watching and waiting, curling his toes, ignoring the passage of time that could not be recouped, Carboni curbed himself. He could be thankful that, if nothing else, he had escaped from his desk, his aides, his telephone and the endless computer print-outs.

Abruptly, Vellosi jack-knifed himself from his knees and back on to his chair. Carboni darted forward and eased himself down beside him. When their eyes met Carboni could see that the man was rested, that the purgative of prayer had refreshed him.

'You forgive me, capo, for coming here to find you?'

'Nothing, Carboni. I came to say some words for my M a u r o . .

'A good place to come to.' Carboni spoke softly, with approval.

'Here we killed the rat, exterminated La Muscio . . . It is a good place to come to speak with my friend.'

' It is right to remember the success. Catastrophe is burdening, deadening.'

There was a wry smile at Vellosi's lips. 'Catastrophe we are familiar with, success is the star we seek.'

'And too often the cloud obscures the star . . . it is seldom visible.'

The two men spoke in church whispers, Vellosi content to idle till Carboni was ready to unveil the purpose of his visit.

A deep sigh from Carboni. The man who will jump into a winter sea from a breakwater, and must strip off his robe and discard his towel.

'We talked long enough at the meeting,' Carboni plunged.

'Long enough to have settled every matter that was outstanding, but at the end we had decided nothing, nothing beyond the fact that Giuseppe Carboni should take responsibility . . . '

'You had expected something different?'

'Perhaps yes, perhaps no.' Carboni stared in front of him as he spoke, over the shoulder of the wizened sparrow woman with her bones angular under the black blouse who mouthed quiet words to the altar. 'A gathering like that is a farce, a babble of men seeking with one voice to disclaim ultimate responsibility, prepared only to pile it on my shoulders.'

'They are broad enough,' chuckled Vellosi. 'You should work at the Viminale, you would quickly learn then what is normal, what is acceptable.'

'Do we let the woman Tantardini speak to the boy?' Carboni sharper now, play-acting completed.

Vellosi too responded, the smile draining, a savagery in his voice. ' I hate that bitch. Believe me, dear friend, I hate her. I wish to dear Jesus that we had slaughtered her in the street'

'Understandable and unhelpful.'

Vellosi snatched back at him. 'What do you need most?'

'Now I have nothing. I know only that Battestini was early this morning in the area of Rome. I know that he has travelled on. I have a car number, but that could have been changed. I have no hope of intervention before tomorrow morning.' The ebbing of the bravura.

'So you must have a trace, you must have a location. If the bitch is there and talks to him, then you give your engineers the possibility . . . '

'She has to speak to him?"

'You have to make her.' There Was a snarl in Vellosi's voice, as if the discussion had reached obscenity. 'If I were to ask her she would spit in my face.'

Carboni looked around him in response to the protest coughs of those who objected to the interference of raised voices in their worship. He stood up, Vellosi following, and together they walked down the aisle between the colonnade and the chairs. 'What would you tell her?'

'That you have to decide for yourself.'

' I came for help, Vellosi.'

' I cannot aid you. You must read her when you see her. When you meet her you will know why I cannot help you.' The inhibitions of the church quiet were lost on Vellosi. 'She is poison, and you must think of the consequences for yourself if you involve her.'

Carboni stared back at Vellosi as they stopped at the great opened doors. A small and pudgy figure dwarfed by his colleague of the open and strong face. He weighed his words for a moment.

'You are nervous of her. Even from her cell in the Rebibbia she frightens you.'

No denials, no stuttered protests. Vellosi said simply, 'Be careful, Carboni, remember what I say. Be careful of the bitch.'

Through the afternoon little had passed between Geoffrey Harrison and Giancarlo Battestini. Harrison's arms had not been tied again since the food and he lay on his side on the earth of the bunker, his only movements to swat the flies from his face and brush the ants and insects from his body and legs. He might have slept, had certainly dozed in the twilight area. All the while Giancarlo watched him with a casual and intermittent observation and with the gun resting on the leaves close to his hand.

The summer sun was high, burning even now through the ceiling of foliage, sufficient to shrivel any wind that might have infiltrated earlier. Sticky, hot and defeated, Harrison slipped into a vegetable sloth, his mind devoid of ideas and expectations. No longer did the presence of the check shirt in the undergrowth a few yards beyond and behind Giancarlo offer any hope of salvation. Just another witness to his helplessness, another voyeur.

The body functions drove Harrison to speak again.

' It's the call of nature, Giancarlo.' Ridiculous that he was embarrassed. Couldn't use the language of the dressing-room, of the men's club. Couldn't say . . . I want to have a crap, Giancarlo . . . I want to have a shit, Giancarlo. Didn't want to say it any other way and feared to foul his trousers. ' It's been a long time.'

Giancarlo looked at him curiously as if experiencing some new buttress of his power. The great man of the multinational must ask Giancarlo's permission again, because otherwise he would smell and lose his dignity, and no more be a person of stature and importance. The cat with the mouse. The boy and the butterfly with the broken wing. Giancarlo teased in mock disbelief. 'Perhaps you are trying to trick me, 'Arrison.'

'Really, Giancarlo, I have to go. I'm not tricking you.'

The boy warmed to the hint of desperation. 'Perhaps you would try to escape from me.'

' I promise there is no trick . .. but quickly.'

'What do you say then, 'Arrison? What were you taught to say when you wanted something?'

'Please, Giancarlo . . . '

The boy grinned, a sneer playing over his lips. 'And you want to go in the trees where you cannot be seen. You think many are watching you?'

'Please, Giancarlo.'

The boy was satisfied. Another victory, another demonstration of strength. Enough, and the pleasure was satiated. He left the P38 on the ground and slowly, taking his time, manoeuvred himself behind Harrison. It was the work of a few seconds to detach the flex that fastened the ankles to the tree roots. 'Four or five metres only, 'Arrison, no more.'

'Aren't you going to loosen my legs?'

Giancarlo was further amused. 'Crawl, 'Arrison, and watch where your hands move, that they do not go close to my knots.'

Once more Harrison gazed away past Giancarlo and towards the hiding-place of the child. Still visible were the flecks of the shirt between leaves and branches. Anger was rising out of the frustration. The little bastard. Like a bloody puppy that's too young to have been trained, that stays and mocks and will not come. On his hands and knees, Harrison crawled, the performing pet, towards a cluster of birch trunks.