ITALY: In Search of the Red Brigades

ďďITALY

The Moro kidnaping triggers a duel of nerves

At the corner of Via Stresa and Via Fani, obscure street names that everyone in Italy knows today, a small, squat school bus braked slowly to a stop, and a flock of teen-age schoolgirls solemnly disembarked. They were 14 pupils of the school of the Little Servants of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, all in dark sweaters over blue smocks and white collars. Two of them walked over to a flower vendor's panel truck near by, bought a bouquet of pink carnations and rejoined the group, now standing'all in a row. They laid down their flowers, crossed themselves and paused for a moment of silence.

Before them, on the pavement under a budding willow tree, was an impromptu folk memorial to the five bodyguards who had been murdered during the kidnaping of Aldo Moro, leader of the ruling Christian Democratic Party and a former Premier. The memorial is now a symbol of what the Italian press has come to call, among many other things, the "Strage di Gioveìi Nero"— the Massacre of Black Thursday. Several hundred bouquets of flowers were piled neatly in front of a low cross. Pinned to the cross in a cellophane shield were five newspaper photos of the dead. Below them was a brief inscription: ''The neighborhood draws close around the families of the five assassinated policemen and the family of The Honorable Aldo Moro, in a commitment of human and civil solidarity." Tacked to a tree near by was a lurid, half-torn Sunday magazine cover showing the bloodied, sheet-covered body of one of the victims. Those scenes of tribute were enacted last week as Rome was virtually turned inside out in the hunt for Moro and the Red Brigades terrorists who had abducted him. Rome Bureau Chief Jordan Bonfante reports:

That baroque pavement memorial in the residential Trionfale district on the northwest side of Rome is all that marks the site of the terrorist kidnaping that has traumatized the country. The only real sign of normality was the flower vendor at his usual corner. Having been kept away from the scene by the kidnapers, who slashed the tires of his truck beforehand, he was back selling flowers.

Around the corner from the ambush site, the occupants of three blue-and-white police cars surveyed the passing traffic. Two blocks away, in the opposite direction, uniformed border police, pressed into special service, manned a roadblock and checked every tenth car or so. They concentrated on large vehicles, whose drivers were made to show identification while the trunk was searched. Every few hundred yards more police, more roadblocks, more searches extended the tight security blanket over the entire Trionfale district.

"There is nothing more we can search around here," said a young mustachioed lieutenant, putting his drawn automatic pistol on safety to gesticulate more freely. "It is an endurance test now—the winner will be the one who lasts the longest. If they are hidden anywhere around here, they are going to have to come out sooner or later." Then, like any soldier, he griped that the squad scheduled to relieve his men for the next eight hours was late.