Gerald Seymour - Red Fox

Geoffrey Harrison had never in his life met the dedicated activist, the political attack weapon. It was something new to him, of which he had only limited understanding. Newspaper photographs, yes, plenty of those. Wanted men, captured and chained men, dead men on the pavement. But all inadequate and failing, those images, when it came to this boy.

They're not stupid, not this one anyway. He worked out a plan and he executed it. Found you when half the police in the country were on the same job and late at the post. This isn't a gutter kid from the shanties down on the Tevere banks. A gutter kid wouldn't argue, he'd have killed for the stopping of the car.

'Giancarlo, I'm very tired. We have to talk about something.

If I don't talk we'll go off the road.'

There was no sudden start, no stirring at the breaking of the quiet. The boy had not been asleep. The possibility of action had not been there. Harrison felt better for that.

'You are driving very well, we have covered more than half the distance now. Much more than half.' The boy sounded alert, and prepared for conversation.

Harrison blundered in. 'Are you a student, Giancarlo?'

' I was. Some years ago I was a student.' Sufficient as a reply, giving nothing.

'What did you study?' Humour the little pig, humour and amuse him.

' I studied psychology at the University of Rome. I did not complete my first year. When the students of my class were taking their first year examinations I was held a political prisoner in the Regina Coeli gaol. I was a part of a struggle group. I was fighting against the borghese administration when the fascist police imprisoned me.'

Can't they speak another language, Harrison thought. Are they reduced only to the compilation of slogans and manifestos?

'Where do you come from, Giancarlo? Where is your home?'

'My home was in the covo with Franca. Before that my home was in the "B" Wing of the Regina Coeli, where my friends were.'

Harrison spoke without thought. He was too tired to pick his words, and his throat was hoarse and sore even from this slight effort. 'Where your parents were, where you spent your childhood, that was what I meant by home.'

'We use different words, 'Arrison. I do not call that my home.

I was in chains… ' Again the warm spittle spread on Harrison's face.

'I'm very tired, Giancarlo. I want to talk so that we don't crash, and I want to understand you. But you don't have to give me that jargon.' Harrison yawned, not for effect, not as a gesture.

Giancarlo laughed out loud, the first time Harrison had heard the rich little treble chime. 'You pretend to be a fool, 'Arrison. I ask you a question. Answer me the truth and I will know you.

Answer me, if you were a boy who lived in Italy – if you were from privilege of the DC, if you had seen the children in the

''popular'' quarter in their rags, if you had seen the hospitals, if you had seen the rich playing at the villas and with their yachts, if you had seen those things, would you not fight? That is my question, 'Arrison, would you not fight?'

The dawn came faster now, the probes of sunlight spearing across the road, and there were other cars on the autostrada, passing or being passed.

' I would not fight, Giancarlo,' Harrison said slowly with the crushing weariness surging again and his eyes cluttered with headlights. ' I would not have the courage to say that I am right, that my word is law. I would need greater authority than a bloody pistol.'

'Drive on, and be careful on the road.' The attack of the angered wasp. As if a stick had penetrated the nest and thrashed about and roused the ferocity of the swarm. 'You will learn my courage, 'Arrison. You will learn it at nine o'clock if the pigs that you slave for have not met – '

'Nine tomorrow morning.' Harrison spoke distantly, his attention on the tail lights in front and the dazzled centre mirror above him. 'You give them little time.'

'Time only for them to express your value.'

Away to the left were the lights daubed on the Bay of Naples.

Harrison veered to the right and followed the white arrows on the road to the north and Rome.

Another dawn, another bright fresh morning and Giuseppe Carboni, alive with the lemon juice in his mouth, arrived at the Viminale by taxi.

It was a long time since he had been to the Ministry. For many months there had been no reason for him to desert the un-prepossessing Questura for the eminence of the 'top table', the building that housed the Minister of the Interior and his attendant apparatus. His chin was down on his tie, his eyes on his shoes as he paid off the driver. This was a place where only the idiot felt safe, where the knives were sharp and the criticism cutting. Here the sociologists and the criminologists and the penologists held court and rule was by university diploma and qualification by breeding and connection, because this was close to power, the real power that the Questura did not know.

Carboni was led up the stairs, a debutante introduced at a dance. His humour was poor, his mind only slightly receptive when he reached the door of Francesco Vellosi who had summoned him.

He knew of Vellosi by title and reputation. A well-known name in the Pubblica Sicurezza with a history of clean firmness to embellish it, the one who had made a start at cleaning the drains of crime in Reggio Calabria, ordered significant arrests, and not bowed to intimidation. But the corridor gossip had it that he delighted in public acclamation and sought out the cameras and microphones and the journalists' notebooks. Carboni himself shunned publicity and was suspicious of fast won plaudits.

But the man across the desk appealed to him.

Vellosi was in his shirtsleeves, glasses down on his nose, cigarette limp between his lips in the gesture of the tired lover, tie loosened, and his jacket away on a chair across the room. No reek of after-shave, no scent of armpit lotion, and already a well-filled ashtray in front of him. Vellosi was studying the papers that piled up on the desk. Carboni waited, then coughed, the obliga-tory indication of his presence.

Vellosi's eyes fixed on him. 'Dottore Carboni, thank you for coming, and so soon. I had not expected you for another hour.'

' I came immediately I had dressed.'

'As you know, Carboni, from this office I manage the affairs of the anti-terrorist unit.' The rapid patter had begun. 'If one can make such a distinction, I am concerned with affairs political rather than criminal.'

It was to be expected that time would be consumed before they arrived at the reason for the meeting. Carboni was not disturbed. 'Obviously, I know the work that is done from this office.'

'And now it seems that our paths cross, which is rare. Seldom do criminal activities link with those of terrorism.'

' It has happened,' Carboni replied. Non-committal, watchful, the bird high on its perch.

'An Englishman has been kidnapped. It happened two mornings ago. I am correct?' Vellosi's chin was buried in his hands as he gazed hard across the desk. 'An Englishman from one of the big multinational companies that have an operation in Italy. Tell me, please, Carboni, what was your opinion of that case?'

There was something to be wary of. Carboni paused before speaking. ' I have no reason to believe that the kidnapping was not the work of criminals. The style of the attack was similar to that previously used. The limited descriptions of the men who took part indicated an age that is not usually common among the political people; they were in their thirties or more. A ransom demand was made that we have linked with a previous abduction, a further connection has been found with the office of a speculator in Calabria. There is nothing to make me doubt that it was a criminal affair.'

'You have been fortunate, you have come far.'