Beretta 84

The Beretta 84 is the agency-issued pistol Creasy carries while hired to protect Pinta Balletto. It is at once practical equipment, a visible warning that the family’s security is no longer an abstraction, and a measure of the distance between Creasy’s disciplined readiness and the compromised arrangement that leaves Pinta exposed. Its appearances move from inspection and preparation to a public shooting, while its meaning shifts from unfamiliar object to restrained instrument of protection.

Identity and Issue

The pistol enters the story through the arrangements for Creasy’s employment. Ettore Balletto asks whether the agency will provide him with a gun; Creasy confirms that it will, explaining that Ettore must supply a letter so the agency can arrange a police permit, with the cost added to his bill. The weapon is therefore not a personal purchase described in isolation: it arrives as part of a professional protection service, complete with licensing and an explicit charge. Creasy says he can begin immediately, and Ettore asks him to come to Como with his belongings.

When Ettore later asks to see the gun, the answer identifies it as a Beretta 84. The brief exchange establishes an imbalance in experience. Ettore handles the pistol gingerly and is fascinated because he has never held one; Creasy, by contrast, says he has used that type before. When Ettore asks whether it is loaded, Creasy glances at him and answers dryly that it is. The detail gives the weapon an immediate practical seriousness: it is not a prop or an unloaded demonstration piece, even though its first effect on Ettore is wonder.

Preparation and Readiness

Creasy treats the pistol as equipment requiring inspection, not as a reassuring token. After dinner, he empties its magazine of short 9 mm bullets, checks the spring, and tests the springs in two spare magazines. He then fills all three from a box of ammunition. That sequence makes his preparation concrete: he checks the feeding mechanism and the reserve magazines before carrying the weapon, rather than assuming that possession alone amounts to readiness.

He also works oil into a new shoulder holster, softening the leather further with a cloth. The pistol and holster are prepared together, one for function and the other for wear. This quiet, methodical work stands apart from the drama of a drawn weapon. Creasy’s attention to the ammunition, springs, and leather presents protection as routine labor, dependent on details that must be checked before danger arrives.

The gun is left hanging in its holster from the bedstead, where Rika Balletto notices it. Until that moment, she had imagined a bodyguard more like a karate expert. She recalls Creasy’s training in unarmed combat, but he distinguishes that skill from the practical advantage of being armed: armed combat is more effective. At the same time, he describes the pistol as a deterrent and says he does not expect to use it. When Rika presses the point, asking whether he will use it if Pinta is in danger, the weapon’s purpose becomes a direct question of responsibility rather than appearance.

Protection, Cost, and Compromise

The pistol belongs to a larger economy of security and insurance. Vico Mansutti explains that Italian law prevents domestic insurers from writing kidnap policies, while wealthy families can obtain coverage abroad, including through Lloyd’s of London. Such policies require premiums to be paid outside Italy and the insured person to keep the coverage secret. Vico further explains that a family’s security arrangements can reduce the premium: guards, watchmen, and even dogs count toward the insurer’s assessment of risk.

His figures expose the incentive behind a seemingly protective hire. For a hypothetical policy covering one billion lire, he contrasts a five-percent premium of fifty million lire with a reduced three-percent rate of thirty million if the industrialist employs a full-time bodyguard. A conventional bodyguard might cost thirty million lire a year, eliminating the saving; Vico’s alternative is a so-called premium bodyguard, who costs about seven million lire but would do little to foil an actual kidnapping. The distinction makes the weapon’s presence especially pointed. A loaded pistol, spare magazines, and a professional holster suggest practical defense, while the financial arrangement can reward the appearance of security without its substance.

That contradiction becomes personal when Rika learns that Creasy was hired for a pittance merely to appease her. She had seen the gun and understood that it made the situation serious; the revelation that the employment itself was a cheap gesture exposes how little the visible signs of protection guarantee. Later, Creasy tells her that Pinta’s kidnapping was an insurance setup: Ettore had taken out a two-billion-lire policy with Lloyd’s of London, and Fossella was to return half the ransom to him. Vico Mansutti had acted as intermediary and received a commission. In that scheme, insurance does not simply transfer risk, and a bodyguard’s presence does not simply prevent harm. The promised safeguards have been folded into the means of profiting from the crime.

Deterrence and Use

The pistol’s most vivid public appearance comes when Rika witnesses a shooting in Milan. Two men leap from a Volkswagen van and run toward a man unlocking a white Fiat, guns in their hands. As shots ring out, Creasy reaches Rika, sweeps her off her feet, and pulls her into a shop doorway, shielding her beneath his body while glass shatters overhead. She sees his own gun held low at his side. After the van escapes and the victim lies across the Fiat’s bonnet, Creasy’s weapon has disappeared; he helps Rika to her feet and gets her to the car as a siren approaches.

The scene gives the object a purpose distinct from spectacle. Creasy acts first to move Rika out of the line of fire, using his body as immediate cover; the pistol is present, but the narration does not depict him firing it. Its disappearance after the shooting leaves the focus on controlled action and the danger Rika has just witnessed, not on a display of gunplay. The earlier description of the weapon as a deterrent therefore does not make it a guarantee against violence. Its place in the scene is part of a practiced response to danger, one that includes shielding, moving, and securing the person he has been hired to protect.

Narrative Significance

Across these appearances, the Beretta 84 accumulates an uneasy double meaning. Its loaded magazine and tested spares attest to Creasy’s competence; its visibility makes the risks of Pinta’s protection tangible to Rika; its actual presence during a shooting marks the difference between professional readiness and invulnerability. Yet the pistol cannot validate the circumstances in which Creasy was hired. The revelations about the low fee, the insurance discount, and the planned division of ransom money show that protection has been compromised by people who benefit from treating its outward signs as sufficient.

The weapon thus connects individual action to an institutional deception. Creasy prepares the gun with care and carries it as a real tool, while Ettore and Vico’s insurance arrangement turns the idea of security into a financial calculation and, ultimately, a cover for collusion. The contrast does not make the pistol useless: during the attack in Milan, Creasy uses the moment to protect Rika from the gunmen. But it does limit what the object can signify. The Beretta can accompany vigilance and help make a deterrent visible; it cannot, by itself, make a corrupt protection scheme honest or guarantee that the person entrusted to Creasy will be safe.