Kennedy’s Ghost. Gordon Stevens

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and inserting the needle into the blue vein running down the centre of his inner arm.

      The panic button was on the desk, but the desk was twenty feet away and Benini’s mind was already slipping from him, fear taking over everything. He heard the knock on the door. Cipriani, Benini knew. Probably Gino and Enzio as well. The second assailant checked through the security hole, brushed back his hair and opened the door fractionally.

      ‘Mr Benini?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Your fax from reception, sir.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      The kidnapper took the envelope, tipped the porter, and closed the door.

      Vitali made the call at midnight.

      Giuseppi Vitali was from the South. In the kidnap boom beginning in the seventies, three-quarters of which had been controlled directly or indirectly by the Mafia, he had risen in rank from minder to negotiator to controller. Vitali, however, considered himself a businessman. He had therefore bought up an ailing cosmetics machinery factory, turned it into a profitable concern and used it as a front. In the late eighties, when changes in Italian law had made it illegal for a family or firm to deal with kidnappers and had authorized the freezing of funds if they did, profits had dropped and most people had pulled out. Vitali, however, had gone freelance, selecting as his victims those whose families or organizations could pay the money he demanded from outside Italy, and maintaining his association and friendship with his former employers by paying commission on what he termed his transactions.

      ‘This is Toni.’ Perhaps it was superstition that he always used the same code name. ‘I was checking how our shares went today.’

      ‘We sold.’ The code that Benini had been taken.

      ‘Good price?’ Any problems, he meant.

      ‘A very good price.’ No problems at all.

      In Italy people like Benini, as well as those protecting them, were always on guard. Outside the country, however, and especially when they thought no one knew where they were, and most especially when they appeared safe and secure in a hotel, people like Benini relaxed slightly.

      Of course the bodyguards would watch over them in the restaurant, or if they took a swim or a sauna. But the moment they were escorted back to their room the balance changed. The moment the bodyguards had made sure someone like Paolo Benini was locked in his suite, the perceived danger evaporated. Then the only problem was getting someone like Benini to open the door.

      Phone and say you were room service, or the porters’ desk, even reception, and someone like Benini would automatically check, perhaps even call his minders. But send a real fax or telex to the hotel, so that the call from reception was genuine, then you could turn someone’s security measures against them. Because someone like Benini would check, but when he checked he would confirm that all was in order, and then his defences would be down.

      ‘What about the paperwork?’ Vitali asked.

      The transfer to the team who would spirit Benini out of Switzerland and back into Italy.

      ‘Like clockwork.’

      The next call was at two. There was no reply. Plenty of time, he told himself, plenty of reasons why the transport team might not have yet made the next checkpoint.

      Everything separate – he had always been careful – everything and everyone in their own box. The snatch squad in one box and the transport team to whom they would hand the hostage and who would spirit him across the border into Italy in another. The team who would hold him in the cave way to the south in a third, and the negotiator who would communicate with the family in a fourth; the stake-out who would keep watch on the family home in a fifth. None of the units knowing the details of the others and none of them knowing Vitali.

      An hour later he phoned again. The call was answered on the third ring.

      ‘This is Toni. Just wondering how the holiday’s going?’

      ‘Fine. Slowed down by an accident. Nothing to do with us. We’ll be home on time.’

      ‘Good.’

      By this time tomorrow Paolo Benini would be safely locked in a cave in the mountains of Calabria. And because the locals there hated any authority, they would provide the eyes and ears if the police or army started snooping.

      Then Vitali would telephone the family. But not immediately. He’d let them sweat a little, turn the screw on them from the beginning. The family and the bank would know already, of course; within thirty seconds of the bodyguards realizing Benini was missing the shock waves would be reverberating down the telephone lines to Milan.

      Then the next stage would begin.

      Most banks and multinationals had insurance policies covering kidnap. Not that anyone would admit being insured, because the confirmation that an insurance policy existed guaranteed that a ransom would be paid. And most such policies insisted upon the involvement of one of the firms specializing in such situations. Therefore the first thing that agency would do would be to send in a consultant.

      Not that this concerned Vitali. A consultant would know the business, so that even though the two of them would play a game it would be according to the rules. Therefore the game would be safe and the ending predictable.

      As long as there was nothing about Paolo Benini he didn’t know.

2

      The photograph was in a silver frame, and the girl in it wore a white confirmation dress. When the photograph was taken she had been six years old, now she was nine. For the past two months of those years she had been missing.

      Lima, Peru. Seven in the evening.

      The weather outside was hot and humid, the city gasping for breath beneath the cloud which hung over it at this time of year.

      Wonder where the next job will be, Haslam thought. South America again, possibly Europe, and Italy was always a favourite. He’d have a break, of course, needed a break after this one. As long as it went down tonight and as long as he got little Rosita home safely.

      The room was on the first floor, overlooking the courtyard of the house. The furniture was large and comfortable, the pictures on the walls lost in the half-light. The mother and father sat side by side on the sofa opposite him, one of them occasionally standing, then sitting again, not knowing what to do. Behind them, almost lost in the shadows, the family lawyer sat without speaking.

      The mother glanced again at the photograph. You’re sure it will work – it was in her eyes as she realized he had seen her looking, in the nervousness on her face as she turned away.

      Even now they couldn’t be sure – Haslam had been through it with the family the night before, again that morning, yet again that afternoon. But at least they were trying something different, at least they were dictating the rules of the game. Which is what the others hadn’t done in the past, which was why their children never came home.

      The others hadn’t been his cases, thank Christ, but they haunted him nevertheless. In the first the parents had paid the ransom but heard nothing more. СКАЧАТЬ