Red Brigades shooting in Milan

The Red Brigades shooting in Milan is a sudden public assassination that turns Creasy’s security work into an immediate test of his ability to protect Rika Balletto. The attack kills a prosecuting attorney; Rika witnesses it at close range, while Creasy gets her out of the line of fire and then deals with the police.

The Attack and Creasy’s Response

Rika had just come out of a hairdresser’s on a dull, overcast day, with Milan traffic heavy, and was walking toward the car parked about thirty meters away. Creasy was standing beside it. Across the street, two men jumped 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, but Creasy reached Rika first: he swept her off her feet and into a shop doorway, covering her as more shots sounded and glass shattered above them. She saw his gun held low by his side, then heard the van door slam, tires squeal, and the engine race away.

Securing Rika and the Scene

Creasy did not linger over the shooting. He told Rika to stay where she was, then carefully backed away so that falling glass would not reach her. From the doorway she watched him cross to the Fiat: the victim lay across its bonnet, blood bright against the white metal, and she instinctively understood that he was dead. Creasy’s gun was no longer visible. He returned to Rika, helped her to her feet, and walked her slowly to the car as people began moving again; a woman was sobbing, and a siren was drawing nearer.

He placed Rika in the back seat and told her to remain there because the police would establish roadblocks and question people nearby. Shivering and very pale, she seemed dazed. Creasy touched the back of his hand to her cheek, lifted her chin, and asked her to look at him. When her eyes focused and she nodded, he said he would speak to the police and that they would leave as soon as possible. He watched her closely before shutting the door and crossing the street, making her safety the immediate priority even as the scene filled with arriving officers and excited voices.

The Killing’s Political Character and Aftermath

The shooting was identified as a Red Brigades killing, and the victim was a prosecuting attorney. The narration notes that such an attack was not unusual in Milan, placing the scene within the city’s recurring political violence rather than presenting it as an isolated crime. For Rika, however, the assassination was not distant news: she had seen the gunmen, heard the shots, and watched the victim fall.

Creasy presented his bodyguard’s license to the police and gave an account limited to what he had actually seen. His description of the two gunmen was so general that it could have fit a hundred thousand young men in the city; the Volkswagen’s number plate was more useful, though the vehicle was certainly stolen. The exchange shows both the limits of what a witness could provide in the confusion and Creasy’s disciplined attention to the practical details that might aid an investigation.

Half an hour later, Creasy drove out of the suburbs toward Como with Rika silent in the back seat. On the way home, her shock broke into anger: “Animals! Shooting people down in the street-Animals!” Her outburst gives the aftermath a different register from Creasy’s controlled response. He had secured her and dealt with the police; she was left to confront the brutality she had witnessed, in a city where the narration marks such violence as familiar.

The Attack Against a Wider Pattern of Risk

The shooting lands against an anxiety already present in Rika’s household: she had warned Ettore that Pinta could be in danger, invoking the Macchetti child’s abduction outside a school in Milan. Ettore answered that the Balletto family was not wealthy enough to attract kidnappers, but Creasy approached protection differently. He treated the person in his charge as an “asset,” assessed the house, school, and journey between them as possible points of attack, and inspected the school’s gates and grounds. The assassination does not involve Pinta, yet it makes the danger Rika feared impossible to dismiss as merely private apprehension: armed violence erupts in the street, in daylight, while she is beside the family’s protector.

The contrast also clarifies what Creasy’s work can and cannot secure. His training lets him move Rika out of the gunfire, keep her away from the shattered glass, and give the police the limited details he can verify; it cannot prevent the killing or make the city’s political violence exceptional. The shooting thus becomes an early public demonstration of the environment in which his protective role operates, where careful attention can reduce immediate exposure but cannot control the violence unfolding around it.