Milan Red Brigades assassination witnessed by Rika

The Milan Red Brigades assassination witnessed by Rika Balletto is a sudden street killing that turns a routine outing into a test of Creasy’s protection and Rika’s assumptions about violence. Creasy gets her out of the line of fire, but his decision not to shoot and his later recognition that he has grown slow make the episode more than a demonstration of competence: it is also an alarm about the deterioration of the body on which his work depends.

Background and Security

Rika’s fear of kidnapping had already shaped family discussions about where Pinta Balletto should live. She argued that their daughter’s safety was at stake and recalled a child being taken outside a school in Milan in broad daylight. Ettore Balletto answered that the family could not afford the move Rika wanted and that they were not rich enough to make Pinta an obvious target. The argument sets the assassination against a world in which danger is both an immediate possibility and something people try to assess through money, routine, and exposure.

Creasy approached his new work as a bodyguard in military terms. He treated the person under his protection as an asset and considered where an attacker might try to seize her: at home, at another regularly visited place, or on the way between them. He judged the road the likeliest point of attack and planned to vary the route. During the drive to Pinta’s school, he noted bends where a car would have to slow away from buildings. At the school itself, he examined the spiked walls, heavy gates, watchman, and grounds, deciding that the building was reasonably secure. This careful attention to predictable routes makes the later street attack especially revealing: the danger does not arrive at a site he has marked as vulnerable, but during Rika’s ordinary passage through Milan.

The Street Shooting

On an overcast day, Rika left a hairdresser’s and looked for the car, parked about thirty meters away with Creasy standing beside it. Across the street, two men sprang from the side door of a Volkswagen van and ran toward a man unlocking a white Fiat. Rika saw their guns as the first shots rang out. The man turned and reached under his jacket; Creasy reached Rika, swept her off her feet, and pulled her into a shop doorway, covering her as glass shattered above them.

The scene gives protection a physical, immediate form. Rika is on the pavement beneath Creasy’s body while shots continue; she sees his gun held low at his side. The van door slams, its engine races away, and the street falls quiet. Creasy then tells her to stay where she is and carefully backs away so that falling glass will not strike her. Across the street, the victim lies over the Fiat’s bonnet, blood on the white metal. Rika understands instinctively that he is dead. Creasy helps her up, walks her to the car, and puts her in the back seat as people begin moving again, a woman sobs, and a siren approaches.

The attack is identified as a Red Brigades killing, with the victim a prosecuting attorney; the narration presents such a killing as not unusual in Milan. Creasy gives the police his bodyguard’s license and reports what he saw. His description of the gunmen is so broad that it could fit a hundred thousand young men in the city, but he also gives them the Volkswagen’s number plate, which he knows is stolen. He does not claim to have seen more than he did, and his limited identification illustrates the difficulty of turning a fast, chaotic attack into useful information for the police.

Rika’s Witness and Creasy’s Decision

On the drive home, Rika breaks her silence to condemn the gunmen and asks why Creasy did not shoot when she saw the gun in his hand. He explains that firing at the men on foot would have exposed them to another attacker in the van, who had a sawed-off shotgun. The victim had managed to fire once, but the shot passed only a couple of feet over them. Creasy’s restraint is therefore not indifference: he judges that a gun battle could have placed Rika in greater danger. His first task was to get her out of the attackers’ line of fire, not to pursue them.

For Rika, the event breaks the boundary between violence as something seen on television and violence in her own surroundings. She visibly composes herself during the drive and picks a tiny shard of glass from Creasy’s hair. Later, she replays the sudden movement, the breaking glass, the weight of Creasy over her, and her fear. She remembers his stillness as well as the scarred hand he had used to steady her face. She considers him unaffected by the dead man, and the experience confirms for her that the bodyguard has justified his presence. Although she thinks she will tell Ettore about the attack, she postpones the call until morning; the shock continues after the immediate danger has passed.

Consequences for Creasy

Creasy’s private assessment is less reassuring. He decides that if Rika had been the target, she would now be dead. He believes that, in the past, he could have shot the man with the shotgun and the two attackers on foot before they had gone five paces. He judges the gunmen to be determined but inexperienced, and thinks their method was clumsy: the shotgun, used from the van, would have been more certain. Yet his central conclusion is not about their mistakes. He has been slow, and his reactions are dull.

The shooting thus exposes the gap between the protector Creasy intends to be and the one his neglected condition currently allows him to be. He has long treated his body as a weapon, maintaining and rehabilitating it as he would his other weapons. Now it is only barely overweight to the eye, but Guido Arrellio, who remembers his former condition, could detect the slackness and lost muscle tone. Creasy sees a fine machine rusted through neglect, one that cannot be restored with the quick cleaning or lubrication he might give a gun. He expects a long, painful rebuilding: ten minutes of circuit training each morning at first, followed gradually by gym work with weights and bars. The assassination does not cause his decline, but it makes the danger measurable. Rika survives because Creasy moves decisively to shelter her; afterward, he recognizes that survival in this instance is no proof that his protective capacity remains intact.