Red Fox by Gerald Seymour Page B

when they would know of him. When, Giancarlo? The moment when he would take Franca Tantardini from them. By yourself, Giancarlo ? There was a pain at the boy's eyes, and agony behind the lids, because this was a public place among the buses and the people who waited and they must not see him weep.
    He climbed on to a bus. Chose it not for its route but because it was one that did not have a conductor to collect money and hand out tickets, and relied instead on a machine and the honesty of passengers.
    Heart pumping, blood coursing fast, the little boy who had lost his protection and was running.
    The girl in faded jeans and a flowing, wrist-buttoned blouse came quickly to the top of the high steps at the entrance to the Faculty of Social Sciences. She paused there, raking the open ground in front of her, then jogged down the steps and across the car park towards the grey Alfasud. It was not remarkable that she could identify the unmarked police car, any student could have done that. As she approached the car she saw the interest of the occupants quicken, the cigarette stubbed, the newspaper dropped, the backs straightened. At the driver's open window she hesitated as the men's eyes soaked into her, for this was a public place for an informant to work.
    'You are looking for a boy?'
    The cool smile from the front passenger in response, the lighting of another cigarette.
    'Dark curly hair - jeans and a shirt - not tall, thin.'
    The man in the back seat flipped casually at a notepad in which were scribbled words.
    'A boy like that came into the library, it was just a few minutes ago. He was nervous, you could see that, in his voice, in his h a n d s . . . '
    The notebook was passed to the front, examined with a secrecy as if the knowledge written there were to be denied to the girl.

    ' . . . he asked a friend if two boys were in the University. The boys are both of the Autonomia, both were arrested after the last fight, more than three months ago.'
    She was answered. The front passenger drew his Beretta pistol from the glove drawer and armed it, the man in the back groped to the floor for a short-barrelled machine-gun. The driver snapped a question: 'Where did he go?'
    ' I don't know. There is the students' lounge, he went in that direction. . .'
    The girl had to step back as the car doors whipped open.
    Hand-guns pocketed, the machine-gun closed to view under a light jacket, the three policemen ran for the Faculty entrance.
    They searched methodically for an hour in the public places of the University, while more men of the anti-terrorist squad arrived to augment their efforts. There were curses of frustration at the failure of the hunt, but satisfaction could be drawn from the knowledge that the identification if it were genuine showed that the kid was short of a covo. It would not be long before the boy was taken, not if he were scouting the University for friends more than twelve weeks in the cells.
    That night the University and its hostels would be watched.
    Men would be detailed to stand in their silence in the shadows and doorways. Pray God, the bastard returns.
    By telephone the message from Pietramelara was relayed to the capo. That the initial moments of the kidnapping of the Englishman had met with success he knew from the radio beside his desk. The communique bearing the fruits of his enterprise had been broadcast with commendable speed by the RAI networks.
    How they help us, he thought, how they facilitate our business.
    And now the cargo was moving beyond the scope of the road checks. Soon he would authorize the initial approaches to the family and the company, and set in motion the financial procedures in the matter laid down by his specialist accountant. A fat, choice haul, and the lifting sharp and surgical.
    It was not for a man of the prominence of the capo to consider and burden himself with the machinery of the extortion of ransom; a team he paid did that; he paid them well so that tracks should be smothered