Kennedy’s Ghost. Gordon Stevens

it all from me, today you’re treating me worse than Umberto treats me.

      ‘The other part of the communication is you to them.’ Haslam took them to the next stage. ‘You obviously can’t phone them, so you tell them you want to speak with them by placing adverts in newspapers. You put a specified advert in and they then know you’re waiting at the telephone at the appointed time. It’s also a way of you telling them to get in touch with you after a prolonged period of silence from them.’

      ‘Why silence?’ Umberto.

      ‘Because silence is another weapon; sometimes kidnaps go for weeks without contact.’

      This wasn’t what the chairman would want to hear – Rossi glanced at Umberto then back at Haslam. So begin thinking it through now, begin to plan what he could use and how he could use it. Work out how he could hide behind Haslam and how he could use Haslam when the crunch came with the chairman.

      ‘Anything else?’ Umberto again.

      ‘The first is your personal security. Double or triple kidnappings are not common, but not unknown. Marco is an obvious target when he makes the pick-ups, but he also has a certain inbuilt protection as he’s part of their communication system with you.’

      ‘The next?’ Umberto stared at him, elbows on the table, chin resting on his hands and eyes unblinking.

      ‘We’ve said that the bank will keep as low a public profile as possible.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘If the Mercedes driver and bodyguard outside belong to BCI, it might not be the sort of profile the bank wants.’

      ‘We’ll sort it out.’ And meeting over. It was in the way Umberto Benini snapped shut the file. ‘If you would leave us so that we might consider what you have just told us.’

      The family meeting which followed lasted little more than thirty minutes. As he and the Beninis left, Rossi took Francesca’s hand.

      ‘I know what Haslam said about not offering too much too quickly, but if it means getting Paolo out, the bank will pay whatever it takes.’

      A good man to have by your side, Umberto Benini knew, the right man to rely on.

      ‘Thank you.’ Francesca tried to smile and went to the window, watched as the cars pulled away.

      She had been right about Haslam. The bastard had told them to put a price on Paolo’s life, had almost gone further. Had only just stopped short of telling her to think about how much she was prepared to pay and of suggesting that there might be a moment when she should abandon Paolo to the vultures. At least Umberto was adamant that they wouldn’t give in, at least Rossi had said the bank would pay whatever it took.

      The telephone rang.

      Oh God no, she thought; please God no, she prayed. She turned and began to call for the housekeeper then remembered she hadn’t asked the woman to stay. Why hadn’t she listened to Haslam when he’d asked if she’d be all right by herself? Why hadn’t he asked her again tonight?

      She made herself pick up the phone.

      ‘Hello, Mama, it’s me.’

      She sank into the chair and fought back the tears as her younger daughter asked after her father, heard herself lying.

      ‘And where’s Gisella?’

      ‘Riding. Do you want her to phone you when she gets in?’

      ‘That would be nice.’

      The evening was slipping away. She stared out of the window and told herself it was time for bed.

      The telephone rang again. Francesca smiled and picked it up. ‘Gisella,’ she began to say. ‘Good to hear you. How was the ride … ?’

      * * *

      The Benini kidnap was going well, Vitali decided: the banker was safely concealed in the fortress which was Calabria, and the family had been waiting long enough to be feeling the strain.

      It was eleven in the morning, the light playing through the window on to the large wooden desk in the centre of his office; the telephones on the left, fax and computer on the right, and the recording equipment and mobile phone in the drawer. The mobile rented and paid for through a false name and bank account to which he could not be linked, in case the carabinieri broke the organization’s security and tried to trace him. Plus the scrambler which he would use because mobiles were notoriously insecure.

      He was alone, as he always was at this time of day. He opened the drawer, clipped on the scrambler and dialled the first number.

      ‘Angelo. This is Toni.’

      Angelo Pascale was in his mid-thirties, thinly built so that his suits hung slightly off his shoulders, and lived in a two-room flat up a spiral staircase off a courtyard close to Piazza Napoli, in the west of the city. He had never met the man he knew as Toni, but Toni paid well and on time, and as long as Toni was in the kidnap business then there was always work for people like himself.

      He clipped on the scrambler and keyed in the code Toni told him.

      ‘Tonight, nine o’clock.’ Vitali gave him the address. ‘I’ll phone again at ten.’ He ended the call and sat back in the chair.

      So how much?

      The going rate was between 450 and 500 million lire and the first demand was around either five or ten miliardi, so that was what they would be expecting. Nobody would pay that much, of course, but after deducting his expenses even 450 million would still show a good profit.

      He leaned forward again and dialled the number of the negotiator, again using the scrambler. In the old days it had been anonymous calls to faceless people waiting at public telephones. Some organizations still used the old techniques, he supposed, but a man had to move with the times.

      ‘Musso, it’s Toni.’ Mussolini was good, not as good as Vitali himself had been, but still one of the best. Mussolini was not his real name, but it was what the man called Toni called him, and what the negotiator called himself when he spoke to the families of Toni’s victims. ‘Tonight, nine o’clock.’ He gave him the telephone number.

      So how much? He was still rolling the figures in his head. The fact that the bank carried a kidnap insurance meant that a consultant would already be involved. And if a consultant was involved he would already have told the family about the going rates and the opening demands, so that was what the family would be expecting, would have forgotten that the consultant would have told them the figures were only guidelines.

      ‘Open at seven.’

      Miliardi, Mussolini understood. Interesting figure.

      ‘The victim is called Paolo Benini, the number is his town apartment. Wife Francesca, who’ll probably take the call. Otherwise father Umberto or younger brother Marco. I’ll call again at nine-thirty.’

      Angelo Pascale left the flat at one, collected the Alfa, checked the tuttocittà, the city map which came with the telephone directory, and drove to Via Ventura.

      The street was busy and the shops and pavements crowded, mostly with young people and all of them apparently with money. The address was towards the bottom on the left, a number of parking places just visible when he stood outside the address. He drove up and down the street for twenty minutes till one of those he required came vacant, and went for a cappuccino in the Figaro. At five he noted the cars parked outside the block, again an hour later. From six he logged the movements of every car leaving or arriving at the address, paying special attention to those left at the front.

      Mussolini was in position by eight-thirty. He would use a public telephone, because if the carabinieri were trying to trace the call it would get them nowhere. And he would switch locations: Central Station tonight, perhaps the airport the night after. Places a businessman would pass unnoticed.

      The recording equipment was in his briefcase. At eight fifty-five he went to one