There were many points for dispute.
Should any new advice be presented to the Council of Ministers regarding the decision to refuse consideration of the freeing of Franca Tandardini?
Should Franca Tantardini be permitted to speak by telephone to the boy Battestini?
At least two gettoni had been used on the telephone communication, the call had come from outside the Rome city limits, and in the countryside the principal enforcers of the law were the carabinieri; should they now control any further search operation, or should the overall direction remain with the polizia?
Was it useful to contact the Vatican Secretariat to explore the possibility of His Holiness issuing a similar appeal to the rejected call of Pope Paul VI for Aldo Moro's life?
Should the President of the Council of Ministers broadcast to the nation?
Why had it not been possible to extract greater information from the location of the telephone message?
Much of it was unnecessary, much of it time-wasting, sapping the concentration of the men in the room. But then, many had to clear themselves if there was a chance of failure to be found in tomorrow's dawn. Reputations could be damaged, perhaps destroyed. Backs must be protected. As one of the most junior men in the hierarchy present, Giuseppe Carboni was finally given what amounted to a free hand. He would be provided with a liaison team to link him with Criminalpol, the carabinieri force, and the armed forces. If he succeeded, then those who had set in motion the search operation would be well to the fore. If he failed, then shoulders would droop, heads turn away, and Carboni would stand alone. When they rose from the meeting the room emptied quickly. It was as if the paint daubs of disaster already swept across the walls. As he stood beside his desk smiling weakly at the Minister's departing back, Carboni reflected that little had been gained, only time frittered and disposed of.
'Look at it another way,' said Vellosi, his arm around Carboni's short shoulder. There is little likelihood of us saving Harrison, and perhaps that is not even the first priority. What matters is that we find this scum…'
'You talk as if we have reached a state of war,' Carboni murmured.
'What matters is that we find this scum, whether tomorrow, or in a month, or a year, and we kick the shit out of him… He never reaches Asinara.'
They are dragging us down, Vellosi.'
'That is the ground where we meet them, where we fight them, and where we win.'
' If in such times victory is available… I am less certain.'
'Concern yourself with the present, Carboni. Find me the boy Battestini.' Vellosi squeezed his arm and walked on out through the door.
In the front parking area of a small trattoria Violet Harrison parked her car. Not tidily, not quietly, but with a splash of movement and rising dust and the protest of an over-extended engine.
The parking area was for patrons, but she would take a cup of coffee and perhaps half a carafe of white wine, and that would satisfy the white-shirted waiters of her right to a table. The verandah of the trattoria was at the back, and she walked through the small construction of timber and corrugated iron roofing and past the kitchen where the fires were being stoked for the lamb and the veal. She would sit beneath a screen of interlaced bam-boo, and from there she could watch, across some scrub grass and shallow shifting hills of sand, the boys who walked on the beach.
She seemed relaxed, at peace, but the Polaroids on her face hid reddened eyes. She showed a calm pose to the world, obliterated her inner self, sat at the table and waited. Occasionally she swung her head and gazed away down the beach, a searchlight roving, hunting all the time, haunting and punishing.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Early afternoon in the great slumbering capital.
A wicked heat, clamping on the bodies of the few Romans who moved listlessly on the steaming, paper-strewn streets. Little protection for walkers, even from the high buildings of nine-teenth-century finery on the Corso. The pavements, abandoned by their own citizens, were given over to the perspiring, grumbling tourists. The map-clutchers, guide-book-scanners, ice-cream-suckers, groped from ruin to ruin expressing their admiration for what they saw in shrill Japanese, blaring American, dominant German.
Like a stranger in his own community, Giuseppe Carboni threaded an impatient way between the loiterers. He crossed the small square in front of the colonnaded church and hurried up the six shallow steps to the central entrance of the church of San Pietro in Vincoli. The visitors were thick, shoulder to shoulder, huddled close to their guides, serious and solemn-faced as they mopped up the culture and the dampness of their armpits. Here Carboni had been told he would find Francesco Vellosi. The church of Saint Peter in Chains is where the bonds of the saint are reverently kept, shining and coated in dark paint inside a gold and glass-faced cabinet. The central nave was occupied by the groups, soaking up the required information: the age of the construction, the dates of renovation, the history of the tomb of Julius II, the smooth sculpture of the bearded and muscled Moses that was the work of Michelangelo. But in the aisles, in the narrower naves, where the tourists gave ground to the wor-shippers, Carboni would find his man. Where the shadows were thicker, where the tall candles burned in flickering insecurity, where the women in black came in from the streets to pray.
In the right-hand nave he saw Vellosi, three rows from the front, kneeling hunched on a red hassock. The hard man of the anti-terrorist squad was now bent in prayer because his driver was slain and would be buried in the morning. It was no surprise that Vellosi chose this church. On the same steps that Carboni had climbed the carabinieri had shot to death Antonio La Muscio and captured the girls La Vianale and Salerno. The place acted as a symbol to those who fought the underground of subversion and anarchy, it was their place of triumph and riposte.
Carboni did not intrude. He crossed to the small side altar and waited with hands joined across his stomach. The voices of the guides seemed distant, the brush of scores of feet was near eliminated. A place of tranquil value. A place to shed, for precious moments, the fearsome and desperate load that the two men carried. Watching and waiting, curling his toes, ignoring the passage of time that could not be recouped, Carboni curbed himself. He could be thankful that, if nothing else, he had escaped from his desk, his aides, his telephone and the endless computer print-outs.
Abruptly, Vellosi jack-knifed himself from his knees and back on to his chair. Carboni darted forward and eased himself down beside him. When their eyes met Carboni could see that the man was rested, that the purgative of prayer had refreshed him.
'You forgive me, capo, for coming here to find you?'
'Nothing, Carboni. I came to say some words for my M a u r o..
'A good place to come to.' Carboni spoke softly, with approval.
'Here we killed the rat, exterminated La Muscio… It is a good place to come to speak with my friend.'
' It is right to remember the success. Catastrophe is burdening, deadening.'
There was a wry smile at Vellosi's lips. 'Catastrophe we are familiar with, success is the star we seek.'
'And too often the cloud obscures the star… it is seldom visible.'
The two men spoke in church whispers, Vellosi content to idle till Carboni was ready to unveil the purpose of his visit.
A deep sigh from Carboni. The man who will jump into a winter sea from a breakwater, and must strip off his robe and discard his towel.
'We talked long enough at the meeting,' Carboni plunged.