The Bodyguard Man

by Philip Evans

Genres: Thrillers; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

Harry Mann is a loner. He quit the Special Branch and turned freelance. Now he's rated one of the best in the uneasy brotherhood of international bodyguards, but even he has his work cut out for him keeping Gianni Corrente, young Sardinian superstar of Italian football, out of harm's way.

A bodyguard expects trouble. But as the corpses pile up and the intrigue thickens around him, Mann realises he's taken on big trouble - and will be lucky to get out alive...

By an author who has been compared to Dick Francis, THE BODYGUARD MAN is an explosive thriller full of non-stop action and devestating shock twists. It will plunge you headlong into a world of treachery and violence, of mystery and sudden death.

Release date: February 15, 1990

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton General Division

Print pages: 224

Sample

Associazione Calcio Fiorentina s.p.a. was founded in 1926. The club has had many fine players at its disposal in recent years, but none remotely resembling the ‘Gianni Corrente’ of the story, and I have yet to meet a manager or director of the club who can claim similarity to either ‘Dino Tozzi’ or to ‘Giorgio Belmonte’. This is a work of fiction and should be read as such.

In fact the germ of this novel was implanted on 12th October 1969 when I accompanied a former player to the Stadio Communale in Florence to watch a match between the home team and Cagliari. Advance interest in the game was high. Fiorentina had won the 1968/9 scudetto, Cagliari had finished in second place, and after four games in the new season both were again at the top of the league. In addition to seeing several players who would be vying for places in the Italian squad for the World Cup Qualifying match against Wales three weeks later, the capacity crowd of 52,000 spectators was very aware that the team from Sardinia fielded no fewer than four players who in the past had represented the Tuscan side – and supporters of any team usually relish the chance of watching former heroes struggle!

Four days earlier another friend had taken me to watch AC Milan’s 3–0 home leg victory against Estudiantes of Buenos Aires, victors in the World Club Championship of the previous year against Manchester United. There had been much passion in the contest as well as a nerve-tingling amount of tension. This was primarily due to some savage tackling by certain members of the visiting side, prominent for whom had been Carlos Bilardo, who four years ago steered Argentina to victory in the 1986 World Cup. However the match between Fiorentina and Cagliari was the first I saw between teams that were both Italian, and also on the field was Concetto Lo Bello, a much-praised and straight-backed referee who’d officiated during the 1966 World Cup and for whom all players held great respect. Always seen close to the play, he remained one never carried away by events, and strode around the pitch with the bearing of an aristocrat mingling with his vassals.

Referees have certain locales which they always like to visit, but the Stadio Communale could not conceivably have been a favoured ground of Concetto Lo Bello – and decidedly not after this match. He cast away any lingering popularity he might have had with the home crowd by awarding Cagliari a penalty minutes after the game’s start. Although there followed the usual concerto of pleadings and protests, Lo Bello remained inflexible in his decision, and Luigi Riva scored with his fabled left foot.

Never mind, the supporters thought as they settled back in their seats, non importa. Fiorentina could still score the equaliser – and then who knows? They soon realised that Concetto Lo Bello did, for one. When a Fiorentina player was taken down in the Cagliari penalty area, the referee waved play on in an imperious manner; and when another slid the ball past Enrico Albertosi in the Cagliari goal, Lo Bello disallowed the score since a colleague was in an offside position, although the Fiorentina fans must have thought that in no manner could he have been ‘interfering with the play’. 1–0 to Cagliari, then, was the final score, and it came as no great surprise to find Lo Bello requiring a police escort after the final whistle, nor to learn that he was beseiged in his dressing room for more than two hours after the game.

That match, however, struck me as being the most majestic piece of theatre, with much skilful football being served up to the spectators, much of it orchestrated by Giancarlo De Sisti, Fiorentina’s playmaker, who was one of seven players in that game who went on to contribute to Italy’s effort in the World Cup finals in 1970 when the team was beaten in the actual Final by Brazil. As well as having inspiring football, the contest also contained an immense amount of drama, in addition to an authoritative performance as referee by Concetto Lo Bello.

THE BODYGUARD MAN was written during 1972 and first published in 1973, with paperback rights being purchased by Panther. Expectation further mounted as the film rights were purchased by Virgin Films, who in anticipation of making an Anglo-Italian production, found an Italian ‘action’ director in Sergio Corbucci. As Ned Sherrin amusingly relates in his autobiographical memoirfn1 ‘The Bodyguard Man excited him, football excited him, the faint hint that “Giorgio Best” might play the footballer – lots of action, few lines – excited him; but as our meetings became more serious he began to have great doubts about the story. The characters were perfect, the plot was perfect, the action sequences were perfect. The trouble was that they were Italian. No Italian would believe that Italians would behave like our characters. Now, if we were to set our piece in Spain, everybody would believe that Spaniards would behave like that – except possibly some Spaniards: but this was not important.’ This observation was curiously prescient, since in March 1981 a leading Spanish player was kidnapped and held to ransom for several weeks before being released, but plans for the making of the film of THE BODYGUARD MAN, despite trips to Rome, to Madrid and to Los Angeles, eventually foundered through lack of investment.

When my third novel, PLAYING THE WILD CARD, was published in 1988, it came as further testament to my continuing long-distance obsession with Fiorentina. During the intervening fifteen years, however, much had changed inside the Italian game. 1980 proved a crucial year that witnessed a major scandal concerning the betting on League matches during the previous season, when over a score of players were found guilty of ‘fixing’ games, including Paolo Rossi, who found glorious form after two years of suspension to become the leading goalscorer in the Italian team in the 1982 World Cup. 1980 also saw the reopening of its doors to foreign players, which had been closed in 1965. If John Charles of Wales was highly-revered in the late Fifties, then Liam Brady of Eire, Trevor Francis and Ray Wilkins of England along with Graeme Souness of Scotland have been recent participants in Italian football whose skills were much admired – with Brady one of the foreign players who has survived longest in the cauldron which sees football treated with all the passion and intensity of a religion. In the match I saw there were only two imported players on view, but as the number of foreigners permitted to play for any club rose to two in 1982 and to three in 1988, football in Italy has become a veritable Mecca for imported stars – and increasingly so since 1988 when the number of clubs in the Serie A was increased from 16 to 18.

Although I’ve made certain changes, I decided not to update the novel in this regard. The reintroduction of foreign players and the custom of paying many of them enormous wages means that Italian football needs to promote itself more strenuously than before, particularly after that triumph in the World Cup in 1982. The influential sporting press is often swift to criticise and slow to praise, but for many, living and playing in Italy, with all the prestige and glamour involved, can be the most rich and stimulating experience, and many are paid most handsomely.

However, if celebrated imported stars such as Paolo Roberto Falcao, Michel Platini, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Zico in the past and Diego Maradona and Ruud Gullit in the present have been paid salaries that are truly phenomenal, leading home-reared players such as Franco Baresi, Gianluca Vialli and Roberto Baggio who experience similar pressure are looked after almost as generously. Although the playing fortunes of Fiorentina and Cagliari have fallen in the past twenty years, the essentially ‘Italian’ theme of the book remains perfectly plausible; and although the Stadio Communale, with its celebrated cantilever stand, has recently been renovated to host four games in the 1990 World Cup, it still retains the elegant structure it had twenty-one years ago when I first became fascinated by Fiorentina, ‘la squadra del mio cuore’.

Philip Evans, February 1990

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW dated 5th January, 1987.

Timed at 10.36 a.m.

RICKETTS: We can take the hotel incident as read, Sergeant. What did you do once you’d discovered that Sudkovitch was no longer there?

LANGLEY: Well, sir, we decided that he wasn’t likely to return and made our way down to the docks.

RICKETTS: Time, Sergeant?

LANGLEY: Ten to seven, sir. We made for the harbour-master’s office just in case they had any further information on shipping movements.

RICKETTS: And?

LANGLEY: They had, sir. There was this Polish trawler, the Grdzde, that had just come in with engine trouble. It was berthed up to the north of the east point, just south of Harwich navy yard. We went up there fairly quick, if you know what I mean, sir. Just in case Sudkovitch was going to be very silly and make a run for it early before all the staff had packed it in for the evening.

RICKETTS: And you waited till when?

LANGLEY: Eleven twenty-seven by my watch, sir. Sure enough, the customs people went off duty, and the offices began closing down. There were one or two lights on, but no real life.

RICKETTS: And you saw Sudkovitch, first, Sergeant? Or Harry Mann?

LANGLEY: Harry, sir. He was standing in a gap between two low offices, across the concrete walk from me, say fifty yards away. Of course there was some light, not a lot, but enough for us to see each other by. I saw him move his hand and point up the quay, so I poked my head out and took a peek. Sudkovitch was standing close to the customs shed, and I looked back and there was a gun in his hand, Harry’s I mean.

RICKETTS: One moment, Sergeant. The gun Harry was carrying was what?

(Pause)

LANGLEY: A Beretta, sir. Calibred point-three-two.

RICKETTS: Not, then, the regulation firearm.

LANGLEY: Well. (Pause.) You know him, sir, he’s so good with those things perhaps he likes to choose what suits him best.

RICKETTS: Never mind. Go on.

LANGLEY: Well, the Inspector’s out and running before I have time to think. And then all hell breaks loose. A couple of characters come down the gang-plank of the ship and start popping shots off at him, and Sudkovitch is making for the boat as fast as he can, so I decide to join in the fun. I zigzag across the quay until I’m up with Harry and then Sudkovitch goes down. He’s slipped just short of the gang-plank and he’s trying to put himself together again. He’s a plum target so I look at Harry to see why he hasn’t winged him and his gun’s pointing straight at the floor. I get all set to hit Sudkovitch and then Harry’s arm shoots out and knocks the gun from my hand. I open my mouth to yell at him and he just tells me to shut up and now his gun’s pointing at me. (Pause.) Well, we stay like that for a few moments and Sudkovitch is on the boat and we watch a couple of sailors come down and cast off the ropes and that’s that as far as the two of us are concerned.

RICKETTS: Your orders were simple, were they not, Sergeant.

LANGLEY: Yes, sir. To prevent subject from escape, to apprehend him wherever he may be found.

RICKETTS: So Harry Mann was not only carrying a gun that was unregistered. He forcibly prevented you from carrying out your duty?

(Pause)

LANGLEY: Well, sir, if you put it like that.

RICKETTS: Damn and blast him to hell.

BENNETTS: Simon!

RICKETTS: Sorry. All right, Sergeant, I want a written report from you on this episode as quickly as possible. You’ll stay in this room until it’s been completed.

LANGLEY: Yes, sir.

RICKETTS: And no white-washing, Sergeant. Just the facts.

Interview ended at 10.53 a.m.

AS A PIECE of tailing it was a complete nonsense.

I spotted the car the moment I stepped through the single revolving door of the Hotel Excelsior Italie, possibly the most prestigious of Florence’s many hotels. It was a light-coloured Volvo 740GL with a burly chauffeur behind the controls and two greyish shapes nestling above the rear seats. The chauffeur was staring too intently in the direction of the hotel and his was the only car parked in that confine of the Piazza Ognisanti that wasn’t empty.

I edged towards the potted palm to one side of the doorway and wrapped my right hand more tightly around the butt of the gun where it snuggled in my coat pocket. The collar of the coat was turned up in protest against the chilly dampness of the night air, and that only served to make me more suspicious. Working at night had never been anyone’s idea of fun. Working in rain and at night – that was obviously less funny. Too much of an accent on chance. And what bodyguard ever cared to admit that word into his vocabulary.

They weren’t good, the men in the car. Hell, even a child raised on Saturday matinée soap-operas at the local cinema knows the golden rule about tailing work. Of course, there are the fancy ones about staying on the other side of the street and keeping your distances right and never showing your face. But the key to the thing is that of acting at all times in a manner as normal as possible.

Perhaps I’d stood there for a couple of seconds before I became certain. The chauffeur had compounded his original mistake of over-interest by reaching far too quickly for the Volvo’s starter-control. That made them strictly amateur and the muscles in my right hand more relaxed.

I still had no clear idea of their game. But it was their petrol, and I could only string them along. I turned left out of the hotel forecourt, left out of the piazza and set off eastwards along the Lungarno Amerigo Vespucci, part of the northern bank of Florence’s famous river Arno.

Along the Vespucci (where else?) was the Florentine version of Harry’s Bar: ground-floor, a lot of glass, net curtains, quiet that particular evening. I stopped in the doorway of Harry’s, dug round in my pockets until I found cigarettes and lighter and fired one of the former. I stood there, back to the door and turned slowly. The evening traffic was thick, with sudden braking and klaxon noise as some of the city’s worthies made for home and Mamma and the pasta. And there was the Volvo, trying its damnedest to squeeze into a gap in the row of parked cars on my side of the road.

The moment it had come to rest, the chauffeur’s face a mask of anxiety, two pale blobs thrusting forward from the rear of the car to peer out in my direction, then I set out again, leaving behind the sounds of braking tyres, horns and exasperated cries of fellow-drivers as the Volvo rudely attempted to cut back into the traffic.

Bodyguard work involves mental and physical agility, a thorough grounding in the techniques and usages of sundry dangerous weapons, but above all it calls for immediate mastery of detail. Such details have to be assimilated swiftly, remembered accurately. A memory-block, a casual slip, bad information – so often it is these rather than inadequacy that makes life seem mean. And long experience of travelling between, and working within, the larger cities of Western Europe had taught me to teach myself as much as possible about one-way traffic systems and their importance.

Florence has got style and character. But at the moment I was more interested in the fact that it is a neat example of a city whose architectural beauties have been near-sabotaged by the most notorious by-product of the internal combustion engine and now seems determined to exact a mild form of retribution from its torturer. Much of the city-centre is a maze of one-way streets, and the ruling has been made to apply along stretches close to the Arno. Generally speaking, upon the northern bank you are forced to travel eastwards; along the southern bank you travel westwards; and, the pedestrian-bound Ponte Vecchio apart, you cross the river where you can.

The fact gave me the opportunity. . .