Gerald Seymour - Red Fox

Michael Charlesworth had been purging his guilt at the Embassy's stance by maintaining a high level in Carpenter's glass.

Gin first, followed by wine, and after that the acid of the local brandy. The talk had been of strings that could not be tugged, of restrictions on action and initiative. And they had talked late and long on the extraordinary Mrs Harrison. Violet, known to them both, who behaved as no one else would that they could imagine in those captured circumstances.

'She's impossible, quite impossible. I just couldn't talk to her.

All I got for the trouble of going up there was a mouthful of abuse.'

'You didn't do as well as I did,' Carpenter grinned. 'She bloody near raped me.'

'That would have been a diversion. She's off her rocker.'

' I'm not going back there, not till we march old Harrison through the door, shove him at her, and run.'

' I wonder why she didn't fancy me,' Charlesworth had said, and worked again on the brandy bottle.

Violet Harrison, too, was deep in sleep. Still and calm in the bed that she shared with her husband, week after week, month after month. She had gone to bed early, stripping her clothes off after the flight of the man from Head Office. Had dressed in a new nightgown, silky and lace-trimmed, that rode high round her thighs. She wanted to sleep, wanted to rest, so that her face might not be lined with tiredness in the morning, so that the crow's feet would not be at her eyes.

Geoffrey would understand, Geoffrey would not condemn her.

Geoffrey, wherever he was, would not blame her, would not pick up and cast the stone. She would not be late again at the beach.

Her legs wide and sprawled, she slept on a clear, bright star night.

With a small torch to guide them, their bodies heaving, their feet stumbling, Vanni and Mario charged along the trail in the forest towards the rock face above the tree line.

Word of what had happened at the barn and the villa of the capo raced in a community as small as Cosoleto, travelled by a spider's web of gently tapped doors, calls from upper windows across the streets, by telephone among those houses that possessed the instrument. Vanni had flung his clothes on his back, snapped to his wife where he was going and run from the back door to the home of Mario.

It was a path known to them since their childhood, but the pace of the flight ensured bruised shins, torn arms, and guttural obscenities. Beyond the trees the way narrowed to little more than a goat track, necessitating that they use their hands to pull them higher.

'Who could have been there?'

Vanni struggled on, out of condition, seeing no reason to reply.

'Who knew of the barn?' The persistence of shock and surprise consuming Mario. 'It's certain it's not the carabinieri…?'

Vanni drew the air down into his lungs, paused. 'Certain.'

'Who could have been there?' Mario wrung advantage from the rest, spattered his questions. 'No one from the villages here would have dared. They would face the vendetta…'

'No one from these parts, no one who knew the capo…*

'Who could it have been?'

'Cretino, how do I know?'

The climb was resumed, slower and subdued, towards a cave beneath an escarpment, the bolt-hole of Vanni.

Past five in the morning the discreet banging at his door woke Francesco Vellosi. In the attics of the Viminale were the angled ceiling closets where men in haste who coveted the clock could sleep. He had worked late after the attack, calming himself with his papers, and neither he nor his guards were happy that he should drive back to his home. And the death of his driver, the killing of Mauro, had rid him of his desire for the comforts of his flat. At the second persistence of the knocking he had called on the man to enter. Sitting on his bed, naked but for a pale blue vest, his hair ragged, his chin alive with the growth of the small hours, he had focused on the messenger who brought blinding light into the room and a buff folder of papers. The man excused himself, was full of apologies for disturbing the Dottore. The file had been given him by the men in Operations, in the basements of the building. He knew nothing of the contents, had simply been dismissed on an errand. Vellosi reached from his bed, took the folder and waved that the messenger should leave. When the door was closed he began to read.

There was a note of explanation, handwritten and stapled to the long telex screed, signed by the night duty officer, a man known to Vellosi, not one who would waste the capo's time. Workmen had come at four in the morning to the offices of the mayor of the town of Seminara in Calabria. The message reproduced on the telex was the text of what they had found, along with an American Express credit card in the name of Geoffrey Harrison.

It was the work of a few seconds for him to absorb the contents of the communique. God, how many more of these things?

How much longer the agony of these irrelevances in the lifespan of poor, tottering, broken-nosed Italia? After the pain and division of the last one, after the affair of Moro, was all this to be inflicted again? Dressing with one hand, shaving with the battery razor provided thoughtfully beside the washbasin, Vellosi hurried towards the premature day.

The fools must know there could be no concessions. If they had not weakened for the elder statesman of the Republic, how could they crumble now for a businessman, for a foreigner, for a life whose passing would hold no lasting climax? Idiots, fools, lunatics, these people.

Why?

Because they must know there cannot be surrender.

What if they have judged right? What if their analysis of the malaise and sickness of Italia were more perceptive than that of Francesco Vellosi? What if they had discerned that the country could not again endure the strained preoccupation of sitting out ultimatums, deadlines, and photographs of prospective widows?

Was he confident in the sinew of the State?

Over his body they would free Franca Tantardini. Let the bitch out to Fiumicino, bend the constitution for her… not as long as he held his job, not as long as he headed the anti-terrorist squad. Badly shaven, temper rising, he headed for the stairs that would lead him to his office. His aides would be at home in their beds. The dawn meetings with the Minister, with the Procurator, with the carabinieri generals, with the men handling the Harrison affair at the Questura, would have to be scheduled by himself.

The route to a coronary, Vellosi told himself, the sure and steady road. He tripped on the narrow steps and cursed aloud in his frustration.

The first spars of light pushed across the inland foothills greying the road in front of Harrison and Giancarlo. A watercolour brush dabbed on the land, softening with pastel the darkness.

The grim hour of the day when men who have not slept dread the hours of withering brightness that will follow. They wound down from the hills, running from the mountains as if the sniff of the sea had excited them, towards the beaches of Salerno.

For more than an hour they had not spoken, each wrapped in his committed hostile silence. A fearful quiet lulled only by the throb of the small engine.

Harrison wondered whether the boy slept, but the breathing was never regular, and there were the sudden movements beside him that meant lack of comfort, lack of calm. Perhaps, he thought, it would be simple to disarm him. Perhaps. A soldier, a man of action, would risk all on a sudden swerve, a quick braking and a fast grapple for the P38. But you're neither of those, Geoffrey. The most violent thing he'd ever accomplished in his adult life was to kick that bucket at the guerrillas in the barn.

And a smack at Violet once. Just once, not hard. That's all, Geoffrey, all your offensive experience. Not the stuff of heroes, but it isn't in your chemistry, and for heroes read bloody idiots.