Gerald Seymour - Red Fox

I was too far from her. I could not help…'

'I understand.' Harrison spoke softly, tuned to the failure of the boy. He should not humiliate him.

' I could not help, I could do nothing.'

And soon the little bastard will be crying, thought Harrison.

If the gun wasn't at his ribcage, Geoffrey Harrison would have been laughing fit to bust. Saga of bloody heroism. Away across the road buying newspapers, what sort of medal do you get for that one? Driving hard past the road to Vibo Valentia, hammering over the bridge and the low reflected waters of the drought-starved Mesima river.

'The one you call the leader, tell me about her.'

'She is Franca. She is a lovely woman, 'Arrison. She is a lady.

Franca Tantardini. She is our leader. She hates them and she fights them. They will torture her in the name of their shitty democratic state. They are bastards and they will hurt her.'

'And you love this girl, Giancarlo?'

That deflated the boy, seemed to prick him where the gas was densest.

' I love her,' Giancarlo whispered. ' I love her, and she loves me too. We have been together in the bed.'

' I know how you feel, Giancarlo. I understand you.'

Bloody liar, Geoffrey. When did you last love a woman? How long? Not that recently, not last week. Bloody liar. In the early days with Violet, that was something like love, wasn't it? Something like i t. ..

'She is beautiful. She is a real woman. Very beautiful, very strong.'

' I understand, Giancarlo.'

' I will liberate her from them.'

The car swerved on the road, swung out into the fast lane to wards the crash barriers. Harrison's hands had tightened on the wheel, his arms had stiffened and were unresponsive, clumsy.

'You are going to liberate her?'

'Together we are going to liberate her, 'Arrison.'

Harrison stared, eyes gimlet clear, out on to the ever diminishing road in his lights. Pinch yourself, kick your arse. Push the bedclothes off and get dressed. Just a bloody nightmare. It has to be.

He knew the answer, but he asked the question.

'How are we going to do it, Giancarlo?'

'You sit with me, 'Arrison. We sit together. They will give me back my Franca and I will give you back to them.'

' It doesn't work like that. Not any m o r e… not after Moro

… '

'You have to hope it is like that.' The cold back in his voice, the ice chill that the boy could summon from the high ground.

'Not after the Moro business. They showed it t h e n… they don't bend. No negotiation.'

'Then it is bad for you, 'Arrison.'

'Where were you when Moro was done?'

'At the University of Rome.'

'… and weren't there any bloody newspapers there?'

' I know what happened.'

Harrison felt his control sliding, and fought it. His eyes were no longer on the road, his head was swung towards the boy.

Noses, faces, unshaven cheeks, mouth breath, all barely separated.

' If that's your plan it's lunatic.'

'That is my plan.'

'They won't give in, a child can see that.'

'They will surrender because they are weak and soft, fattened by their excesses. They cannot win against the might of the proletariat. They cannot resist the revolution of the workers.

When we have destroyed the system they will talk of this day.'

God, how do you tell him? Harrison said quietly, chopping his words with emphasis. 'They won't give in…'

The boy screamed, 'If they do not return her to me than I kill you.' The wail of the cornered mountain cat, and the spittle flecked Giancarlo's chin.

'Please yourself then.'

Wasn't true, wasn't real, not happening to Geoffrey Harrison.

He had to escape from it, had to find a freedom from the snarling hatred.

Harrison swung the car hard to the right, stamped his foot on the brake, whistled to himself in tune with the tyre screech, and wrenched the car to a halt. The pistol was at his neck, nestled against the vein that ran behind his ear lobe.

'Start again,' Giancarlo hissed.

'Drive yourself,' Harrison muttered, sliding back in his seat, folding his arms across his chest.

'Drive or I will shoot you..

'That's your choice.'

'Listen, 'Arrison. Listen to what I say.' The mouth was close to his ear, competing for proximity with the gun barrel, and the breath was hot and gusting in the boy's anger. 'At Seminara, at the town hall, I left a message. It was a communique in the name of the Nuclei Armati Proletaria. It will be read with care when it is found, when the first people come in the morning. With the message is your card. They will know that I have you, and later in the morning the barn will be found. It will confirm also that I have taken you when they find the bodies. I have no more need of you, 'Arrison. I have no more need of you while they think that I hold you. Am I clear?'

So why doesn't he do it, Harrison wondered. Not scruple, not compassion. Didn't know and didn't ask. The gun was harder against his skin and the defiance sagged. Not going to call the bluff, are you, Geoffrey? Harrison engaged the gears, flicked the ignition key, and coasted away.

They would talk again later, but not now, not for many minutes. Giancarlo lit another cigarette and did not share it.

Where the carabinieri lay close to the two-storey villa of Antonio Mazzotti they could hear without difficulty the stumbling account of the woman close to hysteria at the front door of the house. She wore a cotton shift dress and a cardigan round her shoulders and rubber boots on her feet as if she had dressed in haste, and the man she spoke with displayed his pyjama trousers beneath his dressing-gown. There had been a brief pause when Mazzotti disappeared inside leaving the woman alone with her face bathed in light, so that the carabinieri who knew the district and its people could recognize her. When Mazzotti came again to the door he was dressed and carried a double-barrelled shotgun.

As they hurried down the road and on to the wood path the woman had clung to Mazzotti's arm and the volume of her tale in his ear had covered the following footsteps of the men in camouflage uniforms. She had heard shots from the barn and knew her husband had work there that night, she knew he stayed at the barn for Signor Mazzotti. Of what she had seen there she could not speak and her wailing roused the village dogs.

Mazzotti made no attempt to silence her, as if the enormity of what she described had stunned and shaken him.

When the carabinieri entered the barn the woman was prostrate on the body of her husband, her arms cradling the viciously wounded head, her face pressed to the coin-sized exit wound in his temple. Mazzotti, isolated by the flashlights, had dropped his shotgun to the earth floor. More light poured into the musty room and searched out the second body owning a face contorted by surprise and terror. Men had been left to guard the building till dawn while the capitano hurried with his prisoners to their jeeps.

Within minutes of arriving at the Palmi barracks, the officer had telephoned to Rome, prised the home number of Giuseppe Carboni from an argumentative night clerk, and was speaking to the policeman in his suburban flat.

Twice Carboni asked the same question, twice he received the same deadening answer.

'There was a chain from a roof beam with part of a handcuff attached. That is the place the Englishman could have been held, but he was not there when we came.'

A solitary car, lonely on the road, fast and free on the Auto del Sol. Closing on the ankle of Italy, the heel and toe left in its wake. Coming at speed. Geoffrey Harrison and Giancarlo Battestini headed towards Rome. Geoffrey and Giancarlo and a P38.

Archie Carpenter was at last asleep. His hotel room was cruelly hot but he had lost the spirit to complain to the management about his reverberating air-conditioner. He'd drunk more than he'd intended in the restaurant.