by Penny Jordan
'Good, you're dressed.' He spoke in clipped accents. 'We're leaving.'
'Because of the helicopter?' she asked, greatly daring.
'So you saw it? Yes. Olivia has just reminded me that it was my idea that we stay here. She isn't feeling very kindly towards you this morning,' Nico added dryly, watching the colour run up under her skin with detached interest. 'So -we're back to being the aloof Miss Wykeham now that you realise that you haven't been completely forgotten by the outside world? Last night was just an aberration, something which is to be forgotten and swept under the carpet, is that it?' His mouth twisted. 'Very well then, so be it.'
Something not unlike regret shafted through her; a sense of having failed him in some way, which was ridiculous in all the circumstances, and yet as she brushed past him in the open doorway, her arm moving lightly against the bare skin of his, sensations not unlike those she had experienced during the night came rushing over her and for one weak moment she wanted to cling to him and beg him to leave, now, while there was still time. She looked up at him, tears blurring her sight, her throat aching with the pain of knowing that her rescue must mean his downfall, but his expression warned her against voicing her feelings, so she went downstairs to face Olivia's bitter hatred and the glowering menace from Guido as he watched by the window.
The plan was that they left immediately after they had eaten. Saffron gathered from what was being said that they had another safe house they had prepared before they kidnapped her, and it was to this that they were going to take her now.
'I told you we had stayed here too long,' Olivia snarled at Nico. 'I warned you that her father was playing with us, but oh no, you knew best, or was it simply that you wanted more time to bed her? I hope you enjoyed it,' she said pithily, 'because when Rome hears ...'
'Rome will hear nothing until I say so,' Nico told her curtly. 'Piero, go outside and help Guido with the Land Rover—something seems to be wrong, he's still trying to start it.'
He was, and for several minutes the sounds continued, until Piero reappeared, grim and angry.
'It won't start,' he announced. 'God knows what's wrong with it. Fuel's getting through all right, but the damn thing peters out almost as soon as it's fired.'
'Well then, start the other one,' Nico commanded him testily—and yet in spite of his outward manner, Saffron had the impression that he was not really concerned whether they got away or not, strange though it seemed.
Piero shrugged, 'Same thing.' He frowned suddenly, then turned and opened the canister used to store sugar. 'How much was in here last night?' he asked Olivia.
Puzzled, Saffron saw the other girl's eyes widen as she stared at the plastic canister.
'Your little girl-friend's put sugar in the petrol!'
Piero informed Nico savagely. 'That's why the damned thing won't start!'
'You mean we're trapped here?' Olivia looked bitter. 'When they come back, we'll be caught like rats in a trap!'
'If they come back,' Nico pointed out. 'We don't know for sure ...'
'Oh no, we don't know for sure, but we can make a pretty educated guess. It's the police all right, and they won't be coming back unarmed. Still, we've still got the girl. Daddy isn't going to like having her pumped full of holes in front of him, which is what we'll do unless he hands over the money and gives us a guaranteed free passage out of the country.'
Cornered rats were dangerous, Saffron thought with a sinking heart. Neither Piero nor Nico had argued with Olivia, and Saffron had no doubt at all that the Italian girl would do exactly what she had said if the need arose. But they were mistaken about the sugar. She hadn't touched it!
'Lock her upstairs for now,' Nico told Olivia tersely. He moved, and for the first time Saffron realised that he was carrying a gun—not like those held by the others, but a snub-nosed, wicked-looking revolver type gun. A fine film of sweat covered her body. Dear God, if this was being rescued she almost preferred imprisonment!
'No. She stays down here, where we can watch her,' Olivia argued. 'We keep her with us—they'll be that much more careful about how they fire their guns. How long do you think it will be before they get here?'
She .was frightened, even Saffron could see that; and she couldn't help noticing how all three of them, even Guido, now turned to Nico for advice and instructions.
'It all depends how far they have to come. Say two hours—that is if they've guessed that we're here.' He glanced at his watch. 'We might as well start getting ready now. Olivia, take Saffron with you and bring in all the food stores—we don't know how long we're likely to be penned up in here. Guido, Piero, bring in the extra rounds of ammunition.'
'Aren't you going to warn Rome?' Olivia wetted dry lips and looked at him.
'What's the point? They couldn't send reinforcements in time. No, we're in this on our own.'
Strangely Nico seemed almost to be enjoying the situation, Saffron noted, while the other three were plainly unnerved by it. They were all bullies at heart, she realised with sudden awareness. Everything was fine while they were doing the bullying, but let someone bigger come along and threaten them and it was a far different story.
In the event Nico was out by half an hour. Almost exactly one and a half hours after Saffron had first seen it, the helicopter returned, circling the farmhouse before dropping down to land out of sight by the river.
'Damn, they're out of range!' Piero snarled, leaving the window he had been guarding. 'What do you think they'll do? Rush us, or wait it out?'
'Depends.' Nico seemed remarkably unaffected.
'On what?' Olivia demanded in a shrill voice.
'On whether it's the Italians, or whether Sir Richard Wykeham has been able to convince the British Government that as a British citizen his daughter has a right to expect the protection of their own troops.'
Olivia went white. 'The S.A.S.?' she demanded huskily. 'But the Italian authorities would never agree!'
'After the bloodbath of Moreau? I should think they'd be grateful to anyone who took the whole potentially embarrassing situation out of their hands. After all, that's one of the organisation's aims, isn't it? To bring down and disgrace the government? Total anarchy?'
Puzzled, Saffron wondered if Nico realised that he was increasing his companions' fears rather than allaying them. It was almost as though he knew how terrified they were at the thought of facing the S.A.S. and was deliberately playing on it, but she must be imagining things, surely?
'Nico, down by the olive grove ... look!'
Guido's tense words banished all thoughts of why Nico had behaved as he had from Saffron's mind, and like the others her total concentration was on the shadowy figures moving through the olive grove. What would they do?' she wondered dry-mouthed. The Italian method seemed to be to rush the building, and everyone inside, but the British were renowned for their use of diplomacy before force.
In the event it proved to be the latter. A man wearing camouflage clothing approached the farmhouse, carrying a loudhailer, flanked on either side by others carrying machine-guns.
He spoke through it in Italian, requesting Saffron's release. Guido's response was to fire off a round of ammunition. Saffron saw the men flatten themselves to the ground and the next moment Nico was pushing her down on to the floor herself.
'Keep down,' he mouthed curtly, ducking his own head as machine-gun fire ricocheted through the building.
The following hours were a time Saffron could never remember clearly afterwards. She was conscious of fear, and almost unbearable heat and tension in the small room. Sporadic bursts of gunfire interspersed with reminders that they could never escape the building alive seemed to be the answer from the soldiers outside to her captor's refusal to let her go.
How long it lasted Saffron wasn't sure. Time seemed to drag by on leaden feet, and fear cramped through her stomach as she thought how close freedom was and yet how far away. Death was as near as the gun in Olivia's hand, the knife at Guido's belt, and neither would hesitate for
one moment, she knew that.
Nico was lying full length on the floor beside her, guarding one of the windows, when she tried to crawl away, hoping somehow to escape upstairs without being seen and perhaps from there draw the attention of her rescuers, his fingers clamped round her wrist. Holding her did not seem to deflect from his aim, and she winced as she saw him level the gun and fire.
'You will never take us alive!' Olivia screamed at one point when they had been subjected to another plea to give themselves up. 'Nor will you get the girl back. We will kill her first!'
After that there seemed to be a lull outside. Guido went upstairs to check on any movement at the back of the farmhouse, but no sooner had he gone than another burst of firing from outside diverted the others' attention to their attackers.
Saffron was facing the stairs, lying on her stomach, her muscles cramped in protest, but too terrified of being hit by a stray bullet to move, and so she was the first to see the four figures emerging from upstairs, guns at the ready, their camouflage distinctively reassuring.
Afterwards she could not have said what prompted her, but instead of keeping quiet, she tugged instinctively on Nico's arm. His head swung round, and at the same moment Olivia screamed, 'Nico—the girl, kill her now!' Saffron saw her raise her gun. Nico sat up, dragging Saffron with him, at the precise moment when the door was forced open.
Saffron heard his muttered, 'The door—run, quickly!' in a daze, and obeyed instinctively, seeing too late, as she stood up, the purpose in Olivia's eyes. Nico moved, thrusting himself between her body and the gun; there was a loud explosion, the force of it seeming to carry her to the door, then camouflaged men caught her as she fell, unaware of the name falling achingly from her lips as they reassured themselves that she was unhurt before advancing into the melee inside the room.
'Nico ... Nico ...' She was still sobbing his name, as familiar arms came round her in unfamiliar clothing, her father's face haggard as he looked down into hers.
'Oh, my poor baby!' He held her to him, strangely unfamiliar in the uniform he was wearing, older and graver than she remembered, and then another man, obviously an officer, was suggesting discreetly that they left the men to get on with the job they had come to do, indicating a waiting Land Rover. As her father helped her into it, Saffron looked back over her shoulder. Gunfire echoed from the farmhouse, now enveloped in dense smoke.
'They've got orders to take them alive,' her father told her grimly, plainly not happy with the orders, 'but fortunately they'll stand trial in Italy, which will mean they'll get much harsher sentences—life imprisonment at the very least.'
Life imprisonment! Saffron thought of Nico confined to a cell and something twisted inside her. He had saved her, she thought numbly, surely that must mean something. She turned to her father, wanting to tell him so, but he silenced her unsteadily and hugging her. 'Oh, my poor darling girl! I can't wait to get you home. We'll go away somewhere together, have a proper holiday, put all this behind us.'
Numbly Saffron agreed, refusing to admit that some aspects of her imprisonment at least would not be easy to forget. She was free and safe, and she must concentrate on that and try to forget ... everything else.
CHAPTER NINE
Naturally enough Saffron's capture and subsequent rescue caused something of a nine-day wonder in the press, when the news became public. Columnists who had dismissed her as gossip column fodder now hounded her for interviews, until it became almost impossible for her to set a foot outside her father's apartment.
Her new relationship with her father was an unexpected bonus she had not anticipated, and his tender care and concern for her touched her deeply. He was planning to take her away on holiday as soon as pressure of business allowed. So far they had not discussed her ordeal—she had expressed a wish not to do so, and he had acquiesced, although warning her that she simply could not bury the whole incident out of sight.
Every day she scoured the press for some mention of her kidnappers; the role of the S.A.S. in her rescue was being kept very low-key; the only reason they had been involved was because her father's company was engaged in the production of a new highly technical weapon, and it had been feared that somehow this had been leaked to her kidnappers, the Government had stepped in, or so her father had told her.
However, no matter how carefully she scrutinised the press Saffron saw nothing about the raid on the farmhouse or its result. She told herself that it was natural that she should be curious about the fate of her kidnappers, but it was only one of them who occupied so many of her thoughts—-Nico. Had he escaped, or had he been taken captive? She told herself that she should feel pleasure in the possibility of his capture, that her own humiliation had been avenged, but all she could feel was a dull aching pain.
A month after her rescue her father took her to the Caribbean, where they spent an idyllic fortnight lying on pale silver sands beneath deeply azure skies—or at least it should have been idyllic. Saffron didn't find it so: She was still tense and on edge, jumping at the lightest footfall, too edgy to appreciate the light-hearted conversation and company of the other young people at the hotel.
'When we get back I'm going to concentrate more on my job,' she told her father firmly one morning. 'What we're doing now is just the tip of the iceberg.'
'Just as long as you don't spend all our profits on these welfare schemes,' her father teased in response. He had been treating her as though she were made of glass and he was terrified she was going to break into a thousand shimmering pieces.
In an effort to reassure him she talked over her plans with him on the flight home. It was a long one, eight hours, and Saffron woke up just before the false dawn cramped and stiff, to hear the pilot announcing over the tannoy that they were having to put down at the nearest airport.
'Slight' engine trouble—nothing serious,' he reassured his passengers.
'Better safe than sorry,' a smiling stewardess commented to Saffron as she came to check that seat-belts were all fastened. 'They've got another plane standing by, so you won't be delayed for too long.' She gave Saffron's father an especially charming smile. Her father was still a very attractive man, Saffron found herself realising with a small start, wondering if he had ever thought of remarrying, having other children. She realised with a stab of shame that she knew little or nothing of her father's hopes and dreams; and worse still, that she hadn't wanted to know, treating him merely as a distant provider whose presence could otherwise be ignored. From now on, though, all that was going to change. She squeezed his hand as they started to descend, listening to him talk to the stewardess.
'Where are we putting down?' she asked the girl incuriously as she headed back to her own seat in the rear of the aircraft.
'Rome,' the other girl told her, 'but there won't be time for any sightseeing, if that's what you're thinking!'
Rome! The pressure of her father's fingers increased slightly, his eyes compassionate and understanding as they met hers. Poor Daddy, in a way it was worse for him than it was for her. So far she had told him nothing about her ordeal; nothing about Nico.
As the stewardess had said, they were not delayed at all at the airport. A fresh plane was standing by, but as they hurried to their departure gate Saffron's attention was caught by the headlines on a newspaper.
'Kidnap gang to be brought to early trial,' they screamed. 'English Lord's daughter to stand as witness.' There was more which she barely had time to see, something about her being the only one of their victims ever to be found alive, but Saffron couldn't read it all because her father was hurrying her past, his face pale and drawn.
'You never told me,' she accused when they were settled in their new plane.
'I didn't want to upset you. You don't have to appear at the trial if you don't want to, in fact I told Dom ...'
'Dom?'
'Dom Hunter,' her father explained. 'His godfather and I were partners ... I don't think you've ever met him. He's several years older than you, thirty odd.'
'No, I haven't,' Saffron agreed shortly. 'But what does he have to do with the trial?'
'Nothing, except he's a brilliant lawyer, and we were discussing the possibility of you having to appear before we came away. He said I should warn you, but rightly or wrongly I wanted you to have this break free from anything like that hanging over you. In fact, as I told Dom, I don't want you to appear…'
'But if I don't they won't be able to convict the gang, will they?' Saffron asked slowly, remembering what she had read.
'I don't believe so,' her father agreed gravely, shaking his head. 'You're the only witness, for want of a better word, but I don't want you exposed to any more danger or upset.'
'Danger? You mean from other members of the gang?'
'I believe most of them are now in custody,' her father told her. 'From what they learned from your kidnappers the police were able to trace the others.'
Her father seemed to know a surprising amount about the whole thing; far more than he had indicated to her.
'I asked to be kept informed,' he told her, guessing her thoughts. 'And of course the Italian authorities had a considerable amount of help from our people, although it's all very much a diplomatic secret.'
'I suppose I'm fortunate in having a father with secrets the Government want to keep secret,' Saffron replied soberly. 'Otherwise ...'
'Don't think about it,' her father suggested softly. 'Perhaps Dom's right and appearing in court will prove a catharsis for you. You've never talked to me about what happened.'
'But you've obviously talked a good deal to Dom,' Saffron said bitterly, biting her lip as she saw his unhappy expression. 'I'm sorry, Daddy,' she apologised instantly, 'that wasn't fair of me.'
'I've been worried about you,' he said simply. 'For all the difference in our age, Dom is a good friend and one whose judgment I value.'
The subject wasn't mentioned again until they reached home, where Saffron found a large official-looking envelope waiting for her.
As she had anticipated, it turned out to be from the Italian authorities. She took it up to her room with her, and wisely her father let her go without speaking. Once there she curled up in. the rocking chair she had had from childhood, now painted a soft peach to tone with the sophistication of her room.