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.'