'You haven't been listening to me, David.' Ice cold, the Foreign Secretary, but the temper concealed beneath the frozen smile. 'They sacrificed one of their principal post-war leaders, wrote him off, and on a point of principle.'
'We're going in circles.'
'We are indeed, but I suggest you are leading.'
Sir David gulped at his glass, the impatience winning, half drained it. ' I put it to you, Minister, that there is something you can do that doesn't infringe on the question of "principle"…'
He rolled over the word, gutting it of all feeling. 'You can find out from your friends in Rome the exact importance of this woman. You can find out her importance to the guerrilla movement. And let's not stand on too high a pedestal. I know my recent history. Northern Ireland, right?… We emptied Long Kesh when we were after a political initiative, chucked the Provisionals out on to the streets to get on again with their bombing and maiming. What happened to principle, then? We've given their leaders safe-conduct. We sent the Palestinian girl, Leila Khaled, home from Ealing courtesy of an RAF jet. We're not lily-white. We can bend when it suits us…'
'Who's making speeches, David?'
'Don't be flippant, Minister. My fellow has little more than twenty hours to live.' The gimlet eyes of Sir David Adams offered no concessions. 'Italy can live without this woman in a gaol, Italy can s u r v i v e… '
He broke off in response to a light knock on the door behind him. Irritation at the interruption registered on both men's faces.
The Foreign Secretary glanced at his watch. A young man, shirtsleeves and club tie, glided across the room with a telex flimsy in his hand. He gave it without explanation to the Minister and withdrew as silently as he had come. There was quiet in the room as the message was read, the Minister's forehead lined, his lips pursed.
'It's the Harrison business, that's why they interrupted.* No emotion in the voice, just an ageing and a sadness. 'He's held by a young psychopath responsible for three killings in two days.
The assessment of the Italians is that he will kill your man without hesitation or compassion should the deadline expire. The woman involved is called Franca Tantardini. She is classified in Rome as a major activist and will face charges of murder, attempted murder, armed insurrection, they're putting the book on her. Our Embassy records the observation that several of the senior and most respected officers of the Italian public security forces would resign should she be released. In addition the Italian Communist Party have endorsed in a statement the government's no deal approach.'
The Foreign Secretary looked across the room to the shadowed face of the industrialist.
'It's not in our hands, David. It is beyond the British government to offer intervention. I am very sorry.'
Sir David Adams rose from his chair. A little over six feet in height, a dominating and handsome man, and one unused to failure.
'You won't forget the wreath, Minister?'
And he was gone, leaving his glass half filled on the small table beside the chair.
Michael Charlesworth from his office and Archie Carpenter from his hotel room had spoken by telephone. These two men of differing backgrounds, drawn from divergent social groups, seemed to want to talk to each other because their feeling of helplessness was overpowering. Both were eunuchs with little to do but listen to the radio, as Charlesworth did, and scan the newspapers and gaze at the staring photographs of Battestini plastered in the afternoon editions, as Carpenter did.
'Shouldn't you be with Violet Harrison?' Charlesworth had asked.
' I called her this morning, said I'd call her back – she said not to bother…'
'It's not my job, thank God, holding her hand.'
'Not mine either,' Carpenter had snapped.
'Perhaps.' Charlesworth had let it sink, let the thought drown.
He sensed the desperation of the man who had been sent to take decisions, to move mountains, and who was failing. 'You'd better come up to my place tonight and have a bite with us.'
' I'd like that.'
Charlesworth had returned to his radio, moodily flitting between the three RAI services. They portrayed activity and haste and effort, and nothing of substance.
It had taken Giancarlo fully thirty minutes to find the place that satisfied him. He had prodded Geoffrey Harrison through the deeper recesses of the wood, using him as a plough to clear a way between the whippy saplings that sprang back at the eyes and ears and forearms. But the place that pleased him was close to a slight path, where once a giant oak had grown before the wind had pulled it down, tearing open a great gouge in the earth beneath its raised roots. A shallow pit had been left that would only be found if the searcher stumbled to its very rim.
Giancarlo methodically repeated the drill of earlier in the morning. He bound Harrison's ankles with the flex, and then again tied his wrists behind his back. The spare lengths he used to loop around the stronger roots exposed under the earth roof.
If Harrison lay still he could rest on his side in some attitude of comfort. If he moved, if he struggled, then the wire would bite at his flesh and cut and slash it. The boy had thought of this, introducing knots that dictated that the reward for movement was pain. There was one refinement from the morning, the handkerchief from Harrison's trouser pocket, twisted like a rope, was inserted between his teeth, knotted behind his ears. Giancarlo was careful in tying the handkerchief, as if he had no wish to suffocate his prisoner.
When the work was finished he stepped back and admired it.
He was going to get some food. Harrison should not worry, he would not be away long.
Within moments he was lost among the lines of trees and shadows and the slanting columns of light.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Geoffrey Harrison's field of vision was minimal. It comprised only a slight arc encompassing a score of rising tree-trunks, heavy with lime and flaking bark, that soared above the rim of the small crater in which he lay. Above and around him was the motion of the isolated wood; a pair of woodpeckers in pursuit of a jay, cackling protest at the intrusion of the nest-hunting bird; a tiny pettirosso, its reddened breast thrust forward proudly as it dug and chipped for grubs and insects; a young rabbit that darted in terror among the trees after a brief encounter with a skilful stoat; the wind in the upper branches that collided with one another high up and beyond the limit of his vision. Action and activity.
Those that were free and liberated going about the business of their day while he lay helpless and in fear beneath them.
But his brain was no longer stifled. The very solitude of the wood had roused him, made him aware of each miniature footfall, keened and sharpened his senses. The drug effect of the endless miles of autostrada driving was drifting from his system and with the withdrawal from the approaching headlights and the perpetual traffic lanes came the increasing awareness of his situation. That something was stirring in him, some desire once again to affect his future, was clear from the way he tested the skill with which he had been bound. He tried to move his arms apart, seeing how tightly the knots were tied, whether there was stretch in the plastic-coated flex. The sweat crawled again on his chest. Several minutes the effort lasted before the realization came that the binding had been done well, that it was beyond his capabilities to loosen the wires.
So what are you going to do, Geoffrey? Going to sit there like a bloody turkey in its coop, waiting for Christmas Eve and the oven to heat up? Are you going to lie on your side and wait for it, and hope it's quick and doesn't hurt? Should have done something in the car, or at the petrol stations, or at the toll gates, or when the traffic stopped them on the Cassia. When you had the chance, when you were body to body, close in the seats of the car.