Gerald Seymour - Red Fox

The impact was immense, searing in noise and speed, the agony howl of the ripped bodywork metal of the car. A fractional moment of collision, and then the car was tossed away, as if its weight were trifling. The car rose high in the air before crashing down, destroyed and unrecognizable, in the centre of the road.

The face of Geoffrey Harrison, its lines and contours, was frozen to his wife's mind in the final broken seconds of her life.

The sound of herself speaking his name was bolted to her tongue.

There was much traffic returning at that time from the coast.

Many sitting behind their wheels would curse the unseen source of the queues that built on either side of the accident, and then shudder and avert their faces as they witnessed in their lights the reason for their delay.

In front of Carboni's desk, Franca Tantardini sat on a hard, un-prepossessing chair. She was upright, taking little notice of the men who bustled around her, gazing only at the window with its dark abyss and undrawn curtains. The fingers of her hands were entwined on her lap, the chains removed. More like a waiting bride than a prisoner. She had not replied when she had first come into the room and Carboni had taken her to a corner and spoken in his best bedside hush beyond the ears of his subordinates.

Archie Carpenter's eyes never left her. Not the sort of creature that he had handled when he was with Special Branch in London.

His career spanned the years before the Irish watch, before the bombers came in earnest. Not much colour in those days for Carpenter who was concerned with the machinations of the far-out shop stewards, the Marxist militants and that old source of inspiration, the Soviet Trade Delegation from Highgate. His had been the old Branch, the archaeological specimen that withered and died in its ice age before learning the new techniques of the war against urban terrorism. The guerrilla fighter was a new phenomenon for Archie Carpenter, something only experienced through newspapers and television screens. But there seemed to be nothing special about the woman, nothing to put her on the pedestal. Well, what do you expect, Archie? A Che Guevara T-shirt, the hammer and sickle tattooed on her forehead?

The telephone on Carboni's desk rang.

Difficult really to know what to expect. Criminals the world over, all the same. Whether it's political, whether it's material.

Big fat bouncy kids when they've the air of freedom to breathe.

Miserable little bastards when the door closes behind them, when they've twenty years of sitting on a blanket.

Carboni grabbed at the receiver, snatching it from the cradle.

Thought she'd have more fight in her, from the way they cracked her up. Belt it, Archie, for Christ's sake.

'Carboni.'

T h e call that you have been waiting for, Dottore.'

'Connect it.'

The light bulb had been removed from the telephone kiosk. In the half dark Giancarlo watched the second hand of his watch moving slowly on its path. He knew the available time, was aware of the ultimate danger. With one hand he held the telephone pressed hard against his right ear, the noise of the ristorante stifled.

'Pronto, Carboni.' A voice fused in metallic interference.

'Battestini.' He had used his own name, chipped at the pretence.

'Good evening, Giancarlo.'

'I have little time… '

'You have as much time as you want, Giancarlo.'

The sweat rivers ran on the boy's face. 'Will you meet the demands of the Nuclei Armati Proletaria…?'

The voice cut back at him, smothering his words. 'The demands of Giancarlo Battestini, not of the Nappisti.'

'We stand together as a movement, we…' He broke off, absorbed in the motion of his watch ticking on its way, edging towards fiasco.

'You are there, Giancarlo?'

The boy hesitated. Forty seconds gone, forty seconds of the two minutes that was required for a trace.

' I have demanded the freedom of F r a n c a… that is what must happen if 'Arrison is to live…'

It is a very complicated matter, Giancarlo. There are many things to be considered.' There was an awful, deadening calmness in the responses. A sponge that he hit at but could not corner and pinion.

Oose to a minute gone.

There is one question only, Carboni. Yes or no?'

The first hint of anxiety broke in the distorted voice, the noise of breathing mingled with the atmospherics. 'We have Franca here for you to talk to, Giancarlo.'

'Yes or no, that was my question.'

More than a minute gone, the hand on its second arc.

'Franca will talk to you.'

All eyes in the room on the face of Franca Tantardini.

Carboni held the telephone mouthpiece against his shirt, looked deep and far into the woman, saw only the blank, proud, composed eyes, and knew that this was the ultimate moment of risk. Nothing to be read from her mouth and from her hands that did not fidget, showed no impatience. Total silence, and an atmosphere lead-laden that even Carpenter without the Italian language could sense and be fearful of.

' I trust you, Franca.' Barely audible the words as Carboni's hand with the telephone stretched out towards the responding arm of La Tantardini.

There was a carelessness now in her smile. Almost human.

Long slender fingers exchanged for the fatty, stumpy grip of Carboni's fist. When she spoke it was with a clear and educated voice, no roughened edges, no slang of the gutter. The daughter of a well-set family of Bergamo.

' It is Franca, my little f o x… do not interrupt me. Hear me to the finish… and little fox, do as I instruct you, exactly as I instruct you. They have asked me to tell you to surrender. They have asked me to tell you that you should release the Englishman… '

Carboni permitted his eyes, in secrecy, to float to his watch.

One minute and twenty seconds since the call was initiated. He saw the image of activity in the Questura basement. The isolation of the communication, the evaluation of the digital dialling process, the routing of the connection back towards its source.

He strained forward to hear better her words.

'You have asked for my release, little fox. Listen to me. There will be no freedom. So I say this to you, Giancarlo. This is the l a s t – '

It was the action of a moment. Franca Tantardini on her feet.

Right arm high above her head, the fist in clenched salute. A face riven with hatred. Muscles of the neck bulged like sewer pipes.

' – kill him, Giancarlo. Kill the pig. Forza la proletaria. Forza la rivoluzione. Giancarlo, la lotta continua…'

Even as they were rising to their feet, the men about her, struggling to reach her, she had moved whiplash fast towards the receiver on Carboni's desk. As she wrenched at the telephone, tearing its flex from the wall fitting, they pounded her to the ground. The little men of the room kicked and punched at the unresisting body of the woman while Carboni and Carpenter, separated by the mel6e and on their different sides of the office, sat stock still and assessed the scope of the catastrophe.

'Take her back to the Rebibbia, and I want no marks on her

… none that can be seen.' A terrible ice cold in his voice, as if the shock wave of betrayal had broken Giuseppe Carboni.

Another telephone ringing. He picked it up, placed it to his ear and dropped his weight on to an elbow. As he listened he watched Franca Tantardini half carried, half dragged, take her leave of him. Carboni nodded as information was given him, offered no gratitude for the service.

'They say, from the basement, that I had told them they would have a minimum of two minutes to find the trace. They say that I gave them one minute and forty seconds. They say that was not sufficient. I have failed your man, Carpenter. I have failed your man.'