who stood beside the driver's door, and wish to examine the occupant? Why should it? Why should he care who drives a car? This has to be the moment, Geoffrey. Now, right now, not next time, not next week.
How?
Fling the door open, crash it into Giancarlo's body. You'd knock him back with it, he'd fall, he'd slip. For how long?
Long enough to run. Sure? Well, not sure… but it's a chance.
And how far do you run before he's on his feet, five metres… ?
It's the opportunity. Then he shoots, and he doesn't miss, not this kid, and who else is here other than a half-asleep idiot with his eyes closed, who'll have to play the hero?
Giancarlo passed the man the notes and waited as he walked away, then hissed through the window, 'I am going to walk round the car. If you move I will shoot, it is no problem through the glass. Do not move, 'Arrison.'
Only if it presents itself. Geoffrey Harrison felt the great weakness creeping into his knees and shins, lapping in his stomach.
His tongue smeared a dampness across his lips. You'd have been dead, Geoffrey, if you'd tried anything, you know that, don't you? He supposed he did, supposed he had been sensible, behaved in the intelligent, responsible way that came from education and experience. Wouldn't have lasted long on that mountain-side in 1944, Geoffrey; wouldn't have lasted five bloody minutes.
Beneath the triumphant monastery on Monte Cassino, Giancarlo ordered Harrison to turn off the autostrada.
He held the pistol hidden between his legs as Harrison paid the sleepy toll attendant at the barrier with the money the boy had given him. They drove sharply through the small town, re-built from the ravages of bombardment into a characterless warren of flat blocks and factories, and headed north on a narrow road among the rock defiles, ever watched by the great whitestone eye on the mountain top. They bypassed the sombre war cemetery for the German dead of a battle fought before the birth of Giancarlo and Harrison, and then the road's turns became more vicious, and the high banks more intrusive.
Three kilometres beyond the rugged message of the grave-yard cross, Giancarlo indicated an open field gate through which they should turn. The car lurched over the bare grass covering the hardened ground and was lost to sight behind a gorse hedge of brilliant yellow flowers. Shepherds might come here, or the men who watched the goat flocks, but the chance was reasonable in Giancarlo's mind. Among the grass and weed and climbing thistle and the bushes of the hillside they would rest. Rome lay just one hundred and twenty-five kilometres away. They had done well, they had made good time.
With the car stationary, Giancarlo moved briskly. The flex that he had found in the glove compartment in one hand, the pistol in the other, he followed Harrison between the gorse clumps. He ordered him down, pushed him without unkindness on to his stomach, and then, kneeling with the gun between his thighs, bound Harrison's hands across the small of his back.
The legs next, working at the ankles, wrapping the flex around them, weaving it tight, binding the knot. He walked a few paces away and urinated noisily in the grass and was watching the rivulets when he realized he had not offered the Englishman the same chance. He shrugged and put it from his mind. He had no feelings for his prisoner; the man was just a vehicle, just a machine for bringing him closer to his Franca.
Harrison's eyes were already closed, the breathing deep and regular as the sleep sped to him. Giancarlo watched the slow rise and fall of his shoulders and the gaping mouth that was not irritated by the nibbling attendance of a fly. He put the gun on the grass and scrabbled with his fingers at the buckle of his belt and at the elastic waist of his underpants.
Franca. Darling, sweet, lovely Franca. I am coming, Franca.
And we will be together, always together, Franca, and you will love me for what I have done for you. Love me, too, my beautiful.
Love me.
Giancarlo subsided on the grass and the sun played on his face and there was a light wind and the sound of the flying creatures.
The P38 was close to his hand, and the boy lay still.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Giancarlo asleep seemed little more than a child, hurt by exhaustion and dragged nerves, coiled gently. His real age was betrayed by the premature haggardness of his face, the witness to his participation in the affairs of men. His left forearm acted as a shield to the climbing sun, and his right hand was buried in the grass, fingers among the leaves and stalks and across the handle of the P38.
He was dreaming.
The fantasy was of success, the images were of achievement.
Tossed and tumbling through his febrile mind were the pictures of the moment of triumph he would win. An indulgent masturbation of excitement. Sharp pictures, and vivid. Men in blue Fiat saloons hurrying with escorts of outriders to the public buildings of the capital, men who pushed their way past avalanches of cameras and microphones with anger at their mouths. Rooms that were heavy in smoke and argument where the talk was of Giancarlo Battestini and Franca Tantardini and the NAP. Crisis in the air. Crisis that was the embryo of chaos. Crisis that was spawned and conceived from the sperm of the little fox.
Papers would be set in front of the men and pens made ready by the acolytes at their shoulders. Official stamps, weighty and em-bossed with eagles, would clamp down on the scrawl of the signatures. The order would be made, Franca would be freed, plucked clear from the enemy by the hand of her boy and her lover. The order would be made, in Giancarlo's dreaming and restless mind there was no doubt. Because he had done so much
… he had come so far.
He had done so much, and they could not deny him the pleasure of his prize. There was one 'more element among the images of the boy sleeping in the field. There was a prison gate, dominating the skyline and shadowing the street beneath, and doors that would swing slowly open, dragged apart against their will by the hands of Giancarlo. There was a column of police cars, sirens and lights bright on a July morning, bringing his Franca free; she sat like a queen among them, contempt in her eyes for the truncheons and Beretta pistols and machine- guns.
Franca coming to freedom.
It would be the greatest victory ever achieved by the NAP.
Loving himself, loving his dream, Giancarlo groped downwards with his right hand, urging his thoughts to the diminishing memory of his Franca, conjuring again her body and the sunswept skin.
And the spell was broken. The mirror cracked. The dream was gone with the speed of a disturbed tiger at a waterhole; a blur of light, a memory and a ripple. Lost and wrecked, vanished and destroyed. Trembling in his anger, Giancarlo sat up.
'Giancarlo, Giancarlo,' Geoffrey Harrison had called. ' I want to pee, and I can't the way I'm tied.'
Harrison saw the fury in the boy's face, the neck veins in relief.
The intensity of the little swine frightened him, the loathing that was communicated across the few metres of stone and burned field flowers.
He wormed back from confrontation. ' I have to pee, Giancarlo.
It's not much to ask.'
The boy stood up, uncertain for a moment on his feet, then collected himself. He scanned all the surroundings as if they were unfamiliar to him and in need of further checks to establish his security. He examined the long depth to the horizon, breaking the fields and low stone walls and distant farm buildings into sectors to vet them more thoroughly. Harrison could see that the boy was rested, that sleep had alerted and revived him. He used a bush of gorse with yellow-petalled flowers to screen himself from the road as he looked around. There was something slow and workmanlike and hugely sinister about his calm. Better to have tied a knot in it or soaked his trousers, Harrison thought, than to have woken him.
