by Penny Jordan
CHAPTER THREE
'In,' she ordered Saffron curtly. The muzzle of the machine-gun pressed coldly against her spine, but Saffron refused to give way to the terror threatening to surge over her, sensing that this was exactly what Olivia was waiting for.
Of the two men, the taller watched her impassively as she struggled into the Land Rover, but it was the smaller, swarthier of the two who made Saffron shudder as she saw the way his eyes roamed hotly over her body.
'Remember what Nico said,' Olivia instructed as she swung herself into the Land Rover. 'When we get back to the farm everything must-appear as normal.'
'Nico!' The swarthier of the two men spat noisesomely. 'Dio, who is Nico to give us orders? Always before we have worked on our own.'
The complaint had an air of repetition, confirmed when Saffron heard Olivia respond curtly, 'That was before. We have orders now from Rome. Nico is in charge. Wasn't he the one to suggest this?' she added defensively. 'It will make us more money than ...'
'Money—ah yes, we are always in need of that,' the taller of the men agreed. 'Our cause is not noted for its wealthy supporters.'
They all laughed, then Saffron gasped in pain as Olivia grasped her wrist and ordered, 'Piero, you take the wheel. Guido, help me get the handcuffs on her.'
Guido was the smaller of the two men, the one Saffron disliked the most, and she flinched away from the sourness of his body as he bent towards her. Although not tall, he was well muscled, his fingers easily gripping both her wrists, and she was forced to submit to the final indignity of having her wrists constrained in the handcuffs attached to the side of the Land Rover.
'Just in case you try to do something foolish like jumping out,' Olivia warned her. 'Not that you would. You are not exactly the stuff of martyrs, are you? Does it never worry you that while you live off champagne and caviare, dressed in fine silks and satins, there are people in the world living from hand to mouth, forced always into giving a tithe of their pitiful income to support their oppressors? But soon all that will end. The curse that has held our people in bondage for so long will be removed.'
Her fanaticism terrified Saffron. She didn't begin to understand what the other girl was talking about, but an inner instinct urged her to show interest, as though by listening to her captors she might discover the key to her own freedom.
'You believe in Communism?' she hazarded.
'You are right.' Olivia's dark eyes glittered. 'Each man and woman has the right to be equal, but they are denied that basic human right; wealth which should be evenly spread among them is held by far too few, the Church especially, but soon all that will end.'
Saffron couldn't believe her ears. 'But Italy is a Catholic country,' she protested. 'The people would never abandon their religion.'
'Then we shall have to use force,' Guido cut in. 'In the end they will see the wisdom of what we are doing. The Church is rotten and corrupt; a money-making machine feeding off the people. We will take that wealth and share it among them.'
Surely they couldn't believe such a thing could be accomplished, Saffron thought, appalled, but she saw that they did. Each of them was wearing a rapt, fixed expression, zeal written clearly on their features. Did Nico share their fanatical views?
'The organisation has strong supporters in the universities,' Olivia told her. 'Our young people see how false the Christian religion is. "Blessed are the meek,"' she quoted scornfully. 'That is what they say, but saying and doing are two different things, and in this world the meek get trodden underfoot.'
'And you intend to change that?'
'It is what many people think we intend to do,' Piero told her mirthlessly. 'But there will always be those who hold power and those who yield before it, but before we can rebuild first we have to destroy, and for that we heed money—money we raise by ransoming rich prizes such as you.'
'Of all the so-called terrorist organisations in the world, we are the most feared,' Olivia boasted. 'More so than the P.L.O. or the Red Brigade. Already we have been responsible for the deaths of over a thousand people.'
'But you're killing innocent people,' Saffron expostulated. 'Surely you would gain more support for your cause by using reasoned argument, not mindless terrorism?'
'The way rich dictators do?' Piero scoffed. 'We have discovered that one machine-gun speaks more potently that a million useless words, although the day will come when the world will listen to our words, even if we have to destroy everyone who tries to stand in our way.'
The venom in his voice terrified Saffron. To her their words were those of political extremists, the enormity of what they were suggesting almost impossible for her to grasp.
'Out!'
She had been so engrossed in her thoughts that she hadn't realised the Land Rover had stopped.
'Hurry!' Olivia ordered, almost pushing her out of the Land Rover as she unlocked the handcuffs. 'Don't keep Guido waiting,' she warned Saffron. 'He gets impatient, and when he gets impatient ...'
She didn't finish the threat, but she didn't need to. Saffron could see the man grinning at her coarsely, as he lolled against the side of the Land Rover, picking his teeth.
'Why don't I just give her a sample of what's in store?' he suggested, moving towards her. His fingers had grasped her shirt front and Saffron had stiffened rigidly into her seat, before Olivia responded with an obvious ring of regret,
'Nico said not to touch her.'
Guido grimaced. 'Because he wants her for himself?' he suggested. 'And besides, how would he know? He won't be the first man she's had, by all accounts, and she's a hot little piece.'
'Nico doesn't want her,' Olivia denied heatedly, her eyes flashing venomously over Saffron's slender body. 'He despises her and all she stands for, you've heard him ...
'Get out!' she .ordered Saffron again, and Saffron did so shakily, the thought of Guido touching her making her almost physically sick, blotting out her mental anguish. Thank God they didn't know the truth, she thought half hysterically.
If they did ... She shuddered violently, realising that the destruction of her innocence would be merely amusing to a man like Guido.
The farmhouse was set among a few acres of scrubby olives and neglected vines, half a dozen painfully thin cows in a small paddock attached to the main building.
'Another idea of Nico's,' Olivia told her, watching her. 'If anyone comes up here poking around we're just another poor family trying to get a living out of a run-down smallholding. Guido and Piero are my brothers.'
'And Nico?' Saffron asked unwisely, wishing she hadn't when she saw the triumph glittering in the other girl's eyes, knew that she had wanted her to ask.
'Oh, Nico plays the same role as he does in real life,' she told Saffron softly. 'He is my man, my lover.' She laughed suddenly. 'You stupid, little rich fool! Did you honestly think a man such as Nico would want a woman like you? A woman who has no conception of anything apart from her clothes and her jewellery?' Her mouth twisted mockingly, and Saffron felt a sudden upsurge of reciprocal anger.
'At least that's better than those half-baked ideas you call your "cause",' she taunted, flinching as Olivia grasped a handful of her hair, twisting it until pain lanced through her scalp, her fingers leaving a scarlet imprint on Saffron's face when she hit her.
Saffron wanted to retch with nausea, caused more by the sudden display of violence than pain. Physical violence had always been something she had abhorred, and. this was the woman Nico preferred to her; had they laughed about her together, planning her capture, planning how Nico would make love to her?
'It was his duty,' Olivia told her, reading her mind. 'Do not think he desired you—he hates you and your sort. If it wasn't for the money your father will pay to get you back he would kill you, with no more regret that he would stamp on a snake.'
It was just beginning to dawn on Saffron that she was actually held prisoner by these political fanatics, whose respect for human life was nil, and Nico was one of them. Just for a moment she verged on
the humiliation of completely breaking down, and then with almost superhuman effort managed to restrain herself. She must fix her thoughts of escaping and revenge; she must give herself something to work for.
All too soon she was inside the farmhouse. Downstairs there was merely one large, primitive room with a mud floor, baked hard over the years, and the most basic of kitchen arrangements in one comer, with a large woodburning range and a single tap. They had walked past a small building set on its own, and Saffron shuddered to think of the primitive sanitary arrangements. Would her captors try to indoctrinate her with their beliefs? If they tried she would strongly resist their attempts, but she suspected that their organisation did not make converts of its victims and that they saw her merely in terms of the money she would bring in, just as Nico had seen her. Nico! Why did she still have to feel this senseless pain whenever she thought of him? The man she had thought he was simply hadn't existed. He had been a daydream, a figure of romance and fiction conjured up by her own need.
'Come!'
The curt word and the painful tug on her arm which accompanied it jerked Saffron back to reality. Olivia indicated that she was to walk up the rickety wooden stairs leading to the upper storey. Four doors opened off the small landing and one of them bore a new, shiny padlock. Olivia opened it and pushed back the door, disturbing clouds of dust as she thrust Saffron inside. The room was small with a small window, the air stale. A narrow camp bed occupied one corner, a sleeping bag flung down beside it.
'Your room,' Olivia told her in a parody of politeness. 'I trust the signorina finds everything to her liking?'
The door was closed and locked before Saffron could make any comment.
Left to her own devices, she ran to the window, but she could see nothing other than the barren countryside and the narrow river meandering through one of the meadows. They were professionals, she acknowledged, mentally reviewing her situation; by the time her father learned that she was missing it would be far too late for anyone to find her. She had read about these politically motivated organisations; ruthless fanatics whose vicious treatment of their victims was not something she dared allow herself to dwell on, and yet unbidden, all the horror stories she had ever read came crowding into her mind. There had been the Getty heir; he had lost an ear, hadn't he; and then Patty Hearst, forced to join the 'gang' who had kidnapped her, and there were dozens of others. All at once the self-control which had sustained her from the beginning of her ordeal deserted her. Her whole body started to tremble, and she had to force back a desire to scream and scream until she was hoarse. Panic, once allowed to force its way through her guard, flooded her mind. She flung herself face down on the camp bed, muffling the sound of her crying with the sleeping bag as tears overwhelmed her. And then to compound her misery, hunger pangs gnawed insistently at her stomach. Were they planning to starve her in addition to everything else? Her tears stopped flowing, and as she straightened up she acknowledged that she had probably needed that brief release. Gradually her body stopped trembling. Footsteps on the stair alerted her. Frantically scrubbing at her face, she prayed that in the dimness of the badly lit room no one would be able to tell that she had been crying. Stiff with tension, she listened.
'Guido, come back!' she heard Olivia call. 'Nico's here!'
The footsteps faded away and Saffron breathed a sigh of relief. Something about Guido's small reptilian eyes made her skin crawl with revulsion. Dear God, if she ever managed to escape she would make them pay—all of them; but most of all Nico. Nico, who had tricked her into believing that he cared about her, when in reality all he cared about was her money!
'So, you understand the position?' They were standing in the downstairs room, Nico and Olivia ranged on one side of the bare, scrubbed table, Saffron on the other, while Guido and Piero stood guard.
It was barely dawn, but never had Saffron been so glad to see the end of a night. She hadn't slept. It had been impossible, and now she was down here in this ramshackle building, being told that her first wrong move would mean a bullet in her leg or worse.
'Why don't you simply keep me under lock and key?' she said tonelessly, ignoring the sudden glint of warning in Nico's eyes. How he had changed! How could she had ever thought of him as a kindred spirit? He was the hardest and most unfeeling man she had ever met.
'We are not so foolish,' he told her coolly. 'This place could be searched. If it is you will behave exactly as you have been told. You are Olivia's cousin—a little lacking in the wits, but useful about the house. We have just taken over the farmstead and are working hard to get it back in shape—and we will work,' he told the others, suddenly switching his attention from Saffron to the others. 'It will be excellent practice, comrades, for the days to come when all of us are equal and the world is a perfect Marxist state.'
If she hadn't known better Saffron could have sworn there was a certain element of mockery in his last words. Olivia immediately took exception to his comment. 'We shall never work the land like peasants, Nico,' she told him. 'That is not...'
'I thought the most important tenent of communism was that all must be equal; that there could be no elite,' Saffron interrupted.
Olivia spared her a withering glare. 'There must always be those who take control. Our organisation is already grooming men and women for these positions, but they will not be motivated by greed or the lust for power as present capitalist governments are. We will be there to guide the people for their own benefit...'
'The words of dictators the world over,' Saffron taunted.
'That is enough!' Nico rapped out. 'Now, as I was saying. If the police should come searching for you here, one false move and you and they will be killed…'
'So much bloodshed,' Saffron said bitterly. 'Can any cause be worth it?'
'Ask your capitalist government,' Olivia suggested. 'They have grown fat and lazy on the deaths of others. Ask them if it is not worth it.'
'You will find it a hard task trying to convert her, Olivia,' Nico interrupted. 'You forget her father is one of those capitalists.'
Saffron could have told him that her father had started his working life in a very humble capacity and had built up his present business empire solely through his own efforts, but she chose to say nothing. Dared she take the risk of exposing the gang to the police for what they were, were the former to search the farmstead? With reluctance she admitted that she did not. It wasn't just that she was risking her own life, she was risking theirs as well.
'Very wise,' Nico mocked hatefully, correctly interpreting the look in her eyes. 'And just remember it whenever you are feeling reckless. Guido and Piero have their orders and they will not hesitate to obey them. Oh, and one other thing. Olivia tells me that you have been trying to establish some sort of rapport with Guido. For your own sake I advise that you desist. Guido is completely loyal to the cause, and although he has a weakness for women you would be unwise in the extreme to think of using that weakness to make your escape. Guido is perfectly capable of making love to you with one breath and killing you with the next. You are a body to him, Saffron, not a person, and you would do well to remember that.'
'How could I forget it?' Saffron retorted bitterly. 'It's something you and he share in common. A teaching of your organisation, perhaps,' she suggested sarcastically, and had the satisfaction of seeing him pale slightly beneath his tan. So he did have vulnerable points after all. He hadn't liked being bracketed with Guido. So much for equality, she thought cynically.
What would she do if the police did come? Could she perhaps attract their attention? Or would they recognise her? Hope flared, and as though he saw it in her eyes and recognised the reason for it, Nico announced briefly, 'We'll have to do something about your appearance.' He eyed her for a moment and then said to Olivia, 'As soon as I've taken the photographs to send to her father, you can cut her hair.'
Her hair! Saffron's hands went protectively to it. She had always worn it long. It was like liquid silk, her father had told her just a
few short weeks ago. Too late she saw the triumph in Olivia's eyes and knew how much she would relish her task.
Breakfast had been bread—a coarse brown bread—and goat's cheese, with mugs of strong coffee. Saffron had forced hers down, telling herself that she must keep her strength up. She would accomplish nothing by starving herself.
In order to take the photographs he planned to send to her father Nico made her sit in an upright wooden chair, while Olivia manacled her hands. The Italian girl wrenched Saffron's arms painfully behind her back, causing a small gasp of pain to escape her tightly closed lips. Nico's eyes narrowed as he witnessed the small cruelty. 'That's enough, Olivia,' he warned. 'We don't want to get Daddy in a panic at the sight of his little girl in tears.'
'Why not?' Olivia objected. 'It will encourage him to pay the ransom that much sooner.'
'It could also panic him into doing something foolish,' Nico corrected coolly. 'Remember what happened with John Hunter.'
Saffron's heart thumped as she heard the name of her father's great friend.
'You were responsible for killing John Hunter?' she whispered painfully, her eyes fixed on Nico's face.
'Not personally,' he mocked smoothly.
'Nico doesn't care for bloodshed,' Piero intervened. 'He is too nice.'
'I am too sensible,' Nico corrected calmly. 'Murdering Hunter achieved nothing and in fact cost us money, as the ransom was never paid over. By all means let us dispose of the evidence.' His eyes rested coolly and without emotion on Saffron's strained face. 'But let us first of all make sure we have our money.'
If anything he was worse than the others, Saffron thought bitterly. They at least had the excuse of their belief in their cause, if excuse it could be called, but Nico, she sensed, did not share their commitment. He was too cynical, too aloof. So why had he allied himself to these people? What was he doing with them? She could only think of one reason—money, and her heart thudded erratically. Could she perhaps persuade him to set her free by offering a bribe, by suggesting that her father might pay him to return her to him unharmed?