Red Fox by Gerald Seymour Page B

first contact, probably by telephone. Then it can take quite a time for them to decide what arrangements they want to make for payment.'
    'So what do I do, sit by the bloody telephone all day? And I don't even speak the bloody language, just what I need round the shops in the morning. I don't speak their bloody language. I won't know what they're bloody well saying.' Shouting for the first time, dipping into hysteria. Charlesworth fidgeted in the deep chair, willed the session to end.
    'We can have it said in the papers that your husband's office is standing by to receive a message.'
    'But they're all bloody I t a l i a n s . . . what the hell do they know about it?'
    'A damn sight more than we do, because they live with it every day of the year. Because every one of your husband's senior colleagues knows this can happen to him any time, and a fair few of them will ring their wives each morning as soon as they've sat down at their desks, just so that the woman will know they've made it safely. They know more about this than you or I do, or your husband's company in London. If your husband is to come out of this alive you'll need the help of all his friends in that office.
    All of those "bloody Italians", you'll need all of their help.'

    He was out of the chair, backside clear of the cushions, fingers gripping for leverage into the upholstered arm rests. Poor old show, Charlesworth. A stupid, ignorant cow she may be, but not your job to pass judgement. Lost your rag and you shouldn't have done. He sagged back, ashamed that he had battered the remnants of the calm, destroyed the very thing that he had come to maintain. The colour had fled from her face, which had taken a pallid glow in the shock of his counter-attack. Not a whimper from her, not a choke. Only the eyes to give the message, those of someone who has just stepped from a car accident in which driver or passenger has died and who knows dimly of catastrophe but does not have the power to identify and evaluate the debris.
    'Mrs Harrison, you mustn't think yourself alone. Many people will now be working for your husband's release. You must believe in that.'
    He stood up, shuffled a little, edged towards the door.
    She looked up at him from her chair, cheeks very pale below the saucer eyes, knees apart and the gown gaping. 'I hate this bloody place,' she said. 'I've hated it from the day we arrived.
    I've hated every hour of it. He'd told me we wouldn't have to stay here, not more than another year, he'd promised me we'd go home. And now you want to go, Mr Charlesworth, well, don't hang about because of me. Thank you again for coming, thank you for your advice, thank you for your help, and thanks to bloody everybody.'
    ' I'll get a doctor to come round. He'll have something for you.
    It's a very great shock, what has happened.'
    'Don't bother, don't inconvenience anyone.'
    ' I'll send a doctor round.'
    'Don't bother, I'll be a good girl. I'll sit beside the telephone and wait.'
    'Haven't you got a friend who could come and stay with you?'
    The old laugh back again, high and clear and tinkling. 'Friends in this bloody hole? You're joking, of course.'
    Charlesworth hurried to the door, mumbled over his shoulder,
    ' I'll be in touch and don't hesitate to call me at the Embassy, the number's in the book.'
    Trying to master the different locks delayed his flight sufficiently for him to hear her call from the remoteness of the living-

    room. 'You'll come again, Mr Charlesworth? You'll come again and see me?'
    He pulled the door brutally shut behind him, erasing from his ears the trickle of her laughter.
    Some five minutes the colonnello spent attempting to marshal the moving waves of photographers and reporters into a straight line. He threatened, pleaded, negotiated the issue of how many paces the prisoner should walk in front of the lenses and microphones before he was finally satisfied with his arrangements in the square internal courtyard of the Questura.
    'And remember,