All that Geoffrey Harrison had seen of his new prison had been from the beam of the torch that one of the masked men had carried as they pushed him along a way between small stones and across sun-dried earth, until they had come after a few metres to the shadowed outline of a farmer's shed. The beam had played vaguely on a small sturdy building, where the mortar was crumbling from between the rough-hewn stones and replaced by dangling grass weed. Windowless and with twin doors at each end and a shallow sloping corrugated tin roof. They had hurried him through the door and the light had discovered a ladder set against piled hay bales. No words from his captors, only the instruction of the jabbed fist that he should climb, and immediately he started to move there was the weight and shudder of another man on the rungs below him, steadying and supporting because his hands were still fastened at his back.
Between the roof and the upper level of the hay bed was a space some four feet in height. The man in the darkness behind shoved Harrison forward with a lurch and he crawled ahead along the noisy shifting floor of bales. Then there was a hand at his shoulder to halt him. His wrist was taken in a vice grip. One ring of the handcuffs was unlocked. He looked upwards as the man worked in haste by torchlight. His hand that was still held was jerked high and the ratchet action of the handcuff closed on a steel chain that hung from a beam to which the roofing iron was nailed. A chain of the width and strength to subdue a farm-yard Alsatian dog.
Geoffrey Harrison had been brought to the safe house. He had been hidden in a distant barn long disused for anything except the storage of winter fodder for cattle. The barn lay a hundred metres off a dirt track that in turn was a tributary of the high-banked tarmac road a kilometre away that linked the town of Palmi with the village of Castellace in the pimpled foothills of the Aspromonte. Through the day and the greater part of the night the van had travelled more than nine hundred kilometres.
To the north-east of the barn was the village of San Martino, to the south-east the village of Castellace. To the north-west were Melicucca and San Procopio, to the south-west the community of Cosoleto. From the rooftop of the barn it would have been possible to identify the separated lights of the villages, bandaged tightly by the darkness, lonely and glowing places of habitation.
This was the country of lightly rolling rockstrewn hills decorated with the cover of olive groves, the territory of shepherds who minded small sheep flocks and herds of goats and who carried shotguns and shunned the company of strangers. These were the wild hill lands of Calabria that claimed a fierce independence, the highest crime rate per capita in the Republic, the lowest incidence of arrest. A primitive, feudal, battened-down society.
The low voices of two men were Harrison's company as he lay on the bales, the talk of men who are well known to each other and who speak merely because they have time on their hands and long hours to pass.
As a formality he ran his left hand over the handcuff, then tested with his fingers the route of the chain over the bar, and groped without hope at the padlock that held it there. No possibility of movement, no prospect of loosening either his wrist or the chain attachment. But it had been a cursory examination, that of a man numbed with exhaustion who had burned deep into the core of his emotion.
On the warm softness of the hay he was soon asleep, curled on his side with his knees pressed up against his chest. His mind closed to all around him, permitting neither dream nor nightmare, he found a peace, stirring hardly at all, his breathing calm and regular.
The clashes spread far through the centro storico of the capital city. Under cover of darkness the gangs of young people, small and co-ordinated, smashed a trail of broken shop windows and burned-out cars. The night air echoed with the crack of Molotovs on the cobbles, the howl of police sirens and the reports of carabinieri rifles that threw gas shells into the narrow streets. A night full of the noise of street battle and the cries of 'Death to the fascists', 'Death to the assassins of Panicucci' and 'Freedom for Tantardini'.
Twenty-nine arrests, five polizia injured, eleven shops damaged and eighteen cars. And the name of Franca Tantardini had been heard and would be seen when morning came to the city written large on the walls in dripping paint.
His guests gone, the dinner table of the executive suite in ICH
House cleared, Sir David Adams retreated to his office. In mid-week he frequently worked late, his justification for prohibiting business interference during weekends at his country retreat.
The principal officers of the company had learned to expect his staccato tones on the telephone at any hour before he cleared his desk and walked across to his Barbican flat for the trifle of sleep that he needed.
His target this evening was his Personnel Director, who took the call on a bedside extension line. The conversation was typically to the point.
'The man we sent to Rome, he got away all right?*
'Yes, Sir David. I checked with Alitalia, he was diverted to Milan, but he managed an onward to Rome.'
'Have you called Harrison's wife?'
'Couldn't get through. I tried before I left the office, but this fellow Carpenter will do that.'
'He'll be in touch with her?'
'First thing in the morning.'
'How's Harrison going to stand up to all this? The man from the Embassy who called me was pretty blunt in his scenario.'
' I've been through Harrison's file, Sir David. Doesn't tell us much. He's a damn good record with the company well, that's obvious for him to have had the posting. He's a figures man… '
' I know all that. What's he going to be like under this sort of pressure, how's he going to take it?'
' He's fine under business pressure… '
The Personnel Director heard a sigh of annoyance whistle at his ear.
' Is he an outdoor type, does he have any outdoor hobbies listed on his file?'
'Not really, Sir David. He listed 'reading'… '
There was a snort on the line. 'You know what that means.
That he comes home, switches on television, drinks three gins and gets to his bed and his sleep. A man who offers reading as a hobby is a recreational eunuch in my book.'
'What are you implying?'
'That the poor blighter is totally unfitted for the hoop he's going to be put through. I'll see you in the morning.' Sir David Adams rang off.
In a restaurant in the northern outskirts of Rome, secure and far from the running street fight, Giuseppe Carboni shuffled his ample wife around the cleared dance floor. The tables and chairs had been pushed back against the walls to make space for the entertainment. A gypsy fiddler, a young man with a bright accordion and his father with a guitar, provided the music for the assortment of guests. It was a gathering of friends, an annual occasion and one valued by Carboni. The kidnapping of Geoffrey Harrison provided no reason for him to stay away from the evening of fancy dress enjoyment.
He had come dressed as a ghost, his wife and her sewing-machine concocting from an old white sheet and a pillowslip with eye slits the costume that had caused loud acclamation on his entry. She was robed in the costume of a Sardinian peasant girl. They had eaten well and drunk deep of the Friuli wine and the night would serve as a brief escape from the dreary piling of reports on his desk at the Questura. And there was advantage for Carboni in such company. An Under-Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior in a mouse's habit with tail hanging from his rump, was dancing close to his shoulder. Across the floor a deputy of the Democrazia Cristiana, and one spoken of as ambitious and well-connected, clutched at the hips of a girl both blonde and beautiful and attired solely in a toga created from the Stars and Stripes. Good company for Carboni to be keeping; and what good would be achieved sitting in his flat with an ear cocked for the telephone? It was too early in the Harrison matter for intervention. Always it was easier to work when the money had been paid, when there were not tearful wives and stone-faced legal men complaining in high places that the life of their dear one and their client was being endangered by police investigation.
He bobbed his head at the Under-Secretary, smirked beneath his pillowcase at the deputy, and propelled his wife forward.
There were few enough of these evenings when he was safe from disturbance and aggravation. He bowed to the man in property who wore the fading theatrical uniform of a Napoleonic dragoon and who was said to be a holiday companion at the villa of the President of the Council of Ministers. Diamonds catching brightly in the guttering candlelight, the crisp cackle of laughter, the sweet ring of the violin chords. Movement and life and pleasure, and the white-coated waiters weaved among the guests dispensing brandy tumblers and glasses of sambucca and amaro.
