RED FOX Read online

  On that morning, in a flat across two Roman hills, the first of the occupants to wake was the boy Giancarlo.

  Lithe on his bare feet, he padded across the carpet of the living-room, sleep still heavy and confusing to his eyes, blurring the shapes and images of the furnishings. He avoided the low tables and velvet-seated chairs, stumbling on a light flex as he pulled a shirt over his young, undeveloped shoulders. He had shaken Franca gently and with the care and wonderment and awe of a boy who wakes for the first time in a woman's bed and is frightened that the tumult and emotion of the night will be relegated by dawn to a fantasy and dream. He had scratched his fingers across her collar-bone and pulled quietly at the lobe of her ear, and whispered her name, and that it was time. He had looked down on her face, gazed intoxicated on the shoulder skin and the contour of the drawn-up sheet, and left her.

  A small flat they lived in. The one living-room. The bathroom that was a box which crammed in a toilet, a bidet and a shower unit. The kitchen with a sink buried under abandoned plates and a cooker that had not seen a damp cloth round the burners for more than a week. The bedroom where Enrico still slept noisily and where there was the unused bed that till last night had been Giancarlo's. And there was Franca's room with the single narrow divan, her clothes draped as haphazard carpeting across the woodblock floor. A small hallway and a door with three locks and a spyhole, and a metal bar with chain that enabled the door to be opened an inch for additional checking of a visitor. It was a good flat for their needs.

  The requirements of Franca Tantardini, Enrico Panicucci and Giancarlo Battestini were not great, not complex. It was determined that they should live among the borghese, in a middle-class area, where there was wealth, prosperity, where lives were shuttered, self-reliant affairs and closed to the inquisitive. Vigna Clara hill suited them well, left them secure and unnoticed in the heart of enemy territory. They were anonymous in a land of Ferraris and Mercedes and Jaguars, among the servants and the spoiled children and the long holidays through the summer, and the formidable foreign bank accounts. There was a basement garage and a lift that could carry them out of sight to their own door in the attic of the building, affording them the possibility of cloaking their movements, coming and going without observation. Not that they went out much; they did not roam the streets because that was dangerous and put them at risk. Better that they should spend their hours cooped between the walls, profiting from seclusion, reducing the threat of casual recognition by the polizia. Expensive, of course, to live there. Four hundred and seventy-five thousand a month they paid, but there was money in the movement. Enough money was available to meet the basic precautions of survival, and they settled in cash on the first day of the month and did not ask for the contract to be registered and witnessed and the sum to figure on their landlord's tax return. There was no difficulty finding premises that were private and discreet.

  Giancarlo was a boy with two terms of psychology study at the University of Rome behind him, and nine more months in the Regina Coeli gaol locked in a damp cell low down by the Tiber river. Still a boy, little more than a child, but bedded now, bedded by a woman in every way his senior. She was eight years older than he was, so that he had seen in the first creeping light of the bedroom the needle lines at her neck and mouth and the faint trembling of the weight at her buttocks as she had turned in her sleep, resting on his arm, uncovered and uncaring till he had pulled the sheet about her. Eight years of seniority in the movement, and that he knew of too, because her picture was in the mind of every car load of the Squadra Mobile, and her name was on the lips of the capo of the Squadra Anti-Terrorismo when he called his conferences at the Viminale. Eight years of importance to the movement; that too Giancarlo knew of, because the assignment of Enrico and himself was to guard and protect her, to maintain her freedom.

  The bright, expansive heat drove through the slatted shutters, bathing the furniture in zebra shades of colour, illuminating the filled ashtrays and the empty supermarket wine bottles and the uncleared plates with the pasta sauce still clinging to them, and the spreadeagled newspapers. The light flickered on the glass of the pictures with which the room was hung, expensive and modern and rectangular in their motifs, not of their choosing but provided with the premises, and which hurt their sensitivities as they whiled away the cramped hours waiting for instructions and orders of reconnaissance and planning and ultimately of attack. All of it, all of the surroundings grated on the boy, disturbed him, nurturing his distrust for the flat in which they lived.

  They should not have been in a place like this, not with the plumage and trappings of the enemy, and the comforts and ornaments of those they fought against. But Giancarlo was nineteen years old and new to the movement, and he was quick to learn to keep his silence at the contradictions.

  He heard the noise of her feet tripping to the bedroom door, swung round and in haste dragged his shirt tails into the waist of his trousers and fastened the top button and heaved at the zip.

  She stood in the open doorway and there was the look of a cat about her mouth and her slow, distant smile. A towel was draped uselessly around her waist, and above its line were the drooping bronzed breasts where Giancarlo's curls had rested; they hung heavily because she forswore the use of a brassiere under her daily uniform of a straining blouse. Wonderful to the boy, a dream image. His hands were still on the zip-fastener.

  'Pat it away, little boy, before you run dry.' She rippled with her laughter.

  Giancarlo blushed. Tore his eyes from her to the silent, unmoving door to Enrico's room.

  'Don't be jealous, little fox.' She read him, and there was the trace of mocking, the suspicion of scorn. 'Enrico won't take my little fox away, Enrico won't supplant him.'

  She came across the room to Giancarlo, straight and direct, and circled her arms around his neck and nuzzled at his ear, pecked and bit at it, and he stayed motionless because he thought that if he moved the towel would fall, and it was morning and the room was bright.

  'Now we've made a man of you, Giancarlo, don't behave like a man. Don't be tedious and possessive and middle-aged . . . not after just once.'

  He kissed her almost curtly on the forehead where it rested against his mouth, and she giggled.

  'I worship you, Franca.'

  She laughed again. "Then make some coffee, and heat the bread if it's stale, and get that pig Enrico out of his bed, and don't go boasting to him. Those can be the first labours of your worship.'

  She disentangled herself, and he felt a trembling in his legs and the tightness in his arms, and close to his nostrils was the damp, lived-with scent of her hair. He watched her glide to the bathroom, flouncing and swinging her hips, her hair rippling on her shoulder muscles. An officer of the Nuclei Armati Proletaria, organizer and undisputed leader of a cell, a symbol of resistance, her liberty was a hammered nail in the cross of the State. She gave him a little wave with a small and delicate fist as the towel fell from her waist, and there was the flash of whitened skin and the moment of darkened hair and the tinkle of her laugh before the door closed on her. A sweet and gentle little fist that he had known for its softness and persuasion, divorced from the clamped grip of a week ago as it held the Beretta P38 and pumped the shells into the legs of the falling, screaming personnel officer outside the factory gate.

  Giancarlo hammered at Enrico's door. He battered on through the stream of obscenities and protest till he heard the muffled voice cleared of sleep and the tread lumbering for the door.

  Enrico's face appeared, the leer spreading. 'Keep you warm, boy, did she? Ready to go back to your Mama now? Going to sleep all afternoon . . .'

  Giancarlo dragged the door closed, flushed and hurried for the kitchen to fill the kettle, rinse the mugs, and test with his hands the state of the two-day-old bread.

  He went next to Franca's bedroom, walking with care to avoid stepping on her clothes, staring at the indented mattress and the stripped sheets. He slid to his knees and dragged from the hiding-place under
the bed the cheap plastic suitcase that always rested there, unfastened the straps and pulled the lid back. This was the arsenal of the covo - three machine-guns of Czech manufacture, two pistols, magazines, loose cartridges, batteries, wires of red and blue flex, the little plastic bag which held the detonators. He moved aside the metal-cased box with its dials and telescopic aerial that was marketed openly for radio-controlled aeroplanes and boats and which they utilized for the triggering of remote explosions. Buried at the bottom was his own P38. The rallying cry of the young people of anger and dispute - P trent' otto

  - available, reliable, the symbol of the fight with the spreading tentacles of fascism. P38,1 love you. The token of manhood, of the coming of age. P38, we fight together. And when Franca ordered him he would be ready. He squinted his eyes down the gunsight. P38, my friend. Enrico could get his own, bastard. He fastened the straps again and pushed the bag away under the bed, brushing his hand against her pants, clenching them in his fingers, carrying them to his lips. A whole day to wait before he would be back there, lying like a dog on his back in surrender, feeling the pressures on his body.

  Time to get the rosetti out of the oven and find the instant coffee.

  She was standing at the doorway.

  'Impatient, little fox?'

  ' I had been at the case,' Giancarlo floundered. 'If we are to be at the Post when it opens ..

  Her smile faded. 'Right. We should not be late there. Enrico is ready?'

  'He will not be long. We have time for coffee.'

  It was an abomination, an ordeal, to drink the manufactured

  'instant brand' but the bars where they could drink the real, the special, the habitual, were too dangerous. She used to joke that the absence of bar coffee in the mornings was the ultimate sacrifice of her life.

  'Get him moving. He has enough time to sleep in the rest of the day, all the hours of the day.' The kindness, the motherliness, had fled from her, the authority had taken over, the softness and the warmth and the smell washed away with the shower water.

  They must go to the Post to pay the quarterly telephone bill.

  Bills should always be paid promptly, she said. If there are delays there is suspicion, and checks are made and investigations are instituted. If they went early, were there when the Post opened, then they would head the queue at the Conti Correnti counter where the bills must be met in cash, and they would hang around for the least time, minimize the vulnerability. There was no need for her to go with Enrico and Giancarlo but the flat bred its own culture of claustrophobia, wearing and nagging at her patience.

  'Hurry him up,' she snapped, wriggling the jeans up the length of her thighs.

  Stretching herself in the bed, arching her body under the silk of the pink nightgown, irritation and annoyance surfacing on her cream-whitened face, Violet Harrison attempted to identify the source of the noise. She had wanted to sleep another hour at least, a minimum of another hour. She rolled over in the double bed seeking to press her face into the depth of the pillows, looking for an escape from the penetration of the sound that enveloped and cascaded round the room. Geoffrey had gone out quietly enough, put his shoes on in the hall, hadn't disturbed her. She had barely felt the snap of his quick kiss on her cheek before he left for the office, and the sprinkling of toast crumbs from his mouth.

  She did not have to wake yet, not till Maria came and cleared the kitchen and washed up the plates from last night, and the lazy cow didn't appear before nine. God, it was hot! Not eight o'clock and already there was a sweat on her forehead and at her neck and under her arms. Bloody Geoffrey, too mean to fit air-conditioning in the flat. She'd asked for it enough times, and he'd hedged and delayed and said the summer was too short and prattled about the expense and how long would they be there anyway. He didn't spend his day in a Turkish bath, he didn't have to walk around with stain in the armpit and an itch in his pants.

  Air-conditioning at the office, but not at home. No, that wasn't necessary. Bloody Geoffrey . . .

  And the noise was still there.

  . . . She'd go to the beach that morning. At least there was a wind at the beach. Not much of it, precious little. But some sort of cool from off the sea, and the boy might be there. He'd said he would be. Cheeky little devil, little blighter. Old enough to be his . . . Enough problems without the cliches, Violet. All sinews and flat stomach and those ridiculous little curly hairs on his shins and thighs, chattering his compliments, encroaching on her towel.

  Enough to get his face slapped on an English summer beach.

  And going off and buying ice-cream, three bloody flavours, my dear, and licking his own in that way. Dirty little boy. But she was a big girl now. Big enough, Violet Harrison, to take care of herself, and have a dash of amusement too. Needed something to liven things, stuck in this bloody flat. Geoffrey out all day and coming home and moaning how tired he was and what a boring day he'd had, and the Italians didn't know the way to run an office, and why hadn't she learned to cook pasta the way it was in the ristorante at lunchtime, and couldn't she use less electricity and save a bit on the petrol for her car. Why shouldn't she have a little taste of the fun, a little nibble?

  Still that bloody noise down in the road. Couldn't erase it, not without getting out of bed and closing the window.

  It took her a full minute to identify the source of the intrusion that had broken her rest. Sirens baying out their immediacy.

  In response to a woman's emergency call the first police cars were arriving at the scene of the kidnapping of Geoffrey Harrison.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The cars were Enrico's responsibility.

  This week it was a Fiat 128, the fortnight before a 500 that was hardly large enough for the three of them, before that a Mirafiori, before that an Alfasud. Enrico's speciality. He would drift away from the flat, be gone three or four hours, and then open the front door smiling away his success and urging Franca to come to the basement garage to inspect his handiwork. Usually it was night when he made the switches, with no preference between the city centre and the distant southern suburbs. Good and clean and quick, and Franca would nod in appreciation and squeeze his arm and even the gorilla, even Enrico, would weaken and allow a trace of pleasure.

  He was well satisfied with the 128, lucky to have found a car with a painstaking owner and an overhauled engine. Fast in acceleration, lively to the touch of his feet at the controls.

  Coming down off Vigna Clara, heading for the Corso Francia, they seemed like three affluent young people, the right image, the right camouflage, blending mto their surroundings. And if Giancarlo sitting hunched in the back was unshaven, poorly dressed, it was not conspicuous because few of the sons of the borghese who had their flats on the hill would have bothered with a razor in high summer; and if Franca sitting in the front passenger seat had her hair tied with a creased scarf, neither was that of importance because the daughters of the rich did not require their finery so early in the morning. Enrico drove fast and with ease and confidence, understanding the mechanism of the car, rejoicing in the freedom of escape from the confines of the flat Too fast for Franca. She slapped her hand on his wrist, shouted for him to be more careful as he overtook on the inside, weaved among the traffic, hooted his way past the more sedate drivers.

  'Don't be a fool, Enrico. If we touch something..

  'We never have, we won't now.*

  Enrico's familiar uncurbed response to correction. As always, Giancarlo was perplexed that he treated Franca with such small deference. Wouldn't grovel, wouldn't dip his head in apology.

  Always ready with a rejoinder. Brooding and generally un-communicative, as if breeding a private, secret hatred that he would not share. His moments of humanity and humour were rare, fleeting, paced out. Giancarlo wondered what Enrico had thought of the unmade bed, his absence in the night hours, wondered if it stirred the pulse, kicked at the indifference that Enrico presented to all around him. He doubted if it would. Self-sufficient, self-reliant, an emotional eunuc
h with his shoulders rounded over the wheel. Three weeks Giancarlo had been at the covo, three weeks as guard at the safe house of the prize of the movement, but Enrico had been with her many months. There must be a trust and understanding between him and Franca, a tolerance between her and this strange padding animal who left her side only when she slept. It was beyond Giancarlo to unravel it; this was a relationship too complex, too eccentric for his comprehension.

  The three young people in a car that carried a licence plate and a valid tax disc on the windscreen merged without effort into the soft, flatulent society with which they were at war. Two days earlier Franca had exclaimed with triumph, shouted for Giancarlo and Enrico to come to the side of her chair and read to them a statistic from the newspaper. In Italy, she had declaimed, the increase of political violence on the previous year's figures was greater than in any country in the world.

  'Even Argentina we lead, even the people of the Monteneros.

  So we're wounding the pigs, hurting them. And this year we wound them more, we hurt them harder.'

  She had played her part in the compilation of those figures, had not been backward in advancing herself and had earned the accolade bestowed on her by the magazines and tabloids of

  'Public Enemy Number One (Women)', and shrieked with laughter when she read it the first time.

  'Chauvinist bastards. Typical of them that whatever I do I cannot be labelled as the greatest threat, because I am a woman.

  They would choke rather than admit that a woman can do them the greatest damage. My title has to be embroidered with a category.'

  Eight times in the past twelve months she had led the strike squads, the action commandos. Target ambushes. Bullets blasted into the lower limbs because the sentence of maiming was thought more psychologically devastating than death. Eight times, and still no sign that many beyond the hierarchy of the colossus knew of her existence, or cared. Eight times, and still no indication that the uprising of the proletariat forces was imminent. It was as if she was teased, mocked to do her worst, undo herself in the very audacity she was taunted towards. When she thought like that, in the late evening when the flat was subdued, when Enrico was sleeping, then she came for the boys who were Enrico's constant but changing companions. That was when she demanded the pawing, clumsy association with the juvenile, that her mood might be broken, her despair smashed under the weight of a young body.