Читать книгу Kennedy’s Ghost - Gordon Stevens - Страница 8

They should have waited for the back-up, Cipriani knew.

Of course they sometimes got separated, of course they sometimes ran in to problems, but the back-up car should have caught them up by now.

The evening was warm, early June and still two hours of daylight left, the dual carriageway curving slightly in front of them and the pines rising up the mountainside to their left and falling to the valley to their right. Perhaps that was why Moretti hadn’t noticed. Because they were from the city and therefore expected trouble in the city; because this was Switzerland and nothing happened in Switzerland except they made cuckoo clocks and lots of money.

South, across the border into Italy, and Cipriani would have begun to worry, would have whispered to Moretti to slow it. Except that Mr Benini liked to be driven fast. If they slowed the banker would glance up from the rear seat and ask what the hell was happening without uttering a single word.

And nobody knew they were here.

He and Benini had flown out of Milan the previous afternoon, stayed last night at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, Mr Benini attending a meeting at the bank’s office on Old Broad Street this morning, then the flight back. But not to Italy. To Switzerland. Moretti, Gino and Enzio driving up to meet them. The afternoon in the bank’s Zurich office, then the overnight in the slightly old-fashioned hotel in the mountains which Mr Benini preferred to the more modern establishments in the city. More meetings tomorrow, then the flight back to Milan. Depending, of course, on the twists and turns of Mr Benini’s timetable.

If it had been Milan – on the way to or from the family villa in Emilia at weekends, from the apartment on Via Ventura in the morning or the office behind La Scala in the evening – they would have been on edge, would have worked one of the dozen variations of route. But this wasn’t Italy.

The police car was on the hard shoulder a hundred metres in front of them; as they passed it rocked in their tailstream. Still no back-up Merc – Cipriani adjusted the second of the two rearview mirrors – still no Gino and Enzio sitting like guardian angels behind them. The movement was enough to warn Moretti; the driver glanced up then the rev counter dropped slightly as he eased back. Not enough to disturb the man in the rear seat, but enough to slow them by ten kilometres an hour.

The road was still curving, still climbing gently, no other traffic.

The police car passed them, suddenly and unexpectedly, then slowed in front of them, the observer waving them down.

The layby was gravel, forty metres long and a car’s width wide. They pulled in behind the police car and waited. In the back seat the banker glanced up. The police driver left the Audi and walked towards them, the observer remaining seated and facing forward. Cipriani got out and shut the door behind him, heard the dull click as Moretti locked the doors.

Standard procedure. The driver never leaving the car. Doors and windows locked, vehicle in gear and held on the clutch, handbrake off. Enough space to pull away even if it meant driving over whatever or whoever was in front, even a policeman. More correctly, even someone wearing a police uniform. For this reason Cipriani did nothing to obstruct Moretti’s get-away route or his line of vision.

The 450 was armour-plated – up to a point. Ten-millimetre glazing on the windows; Spectra plating for doors, sides, roof-liner and floor boards; plus cell fuel tank. Not the protection some of the Saudis carried, but Benini was still Benini.

‘One of your tyres is going down.’ The policeman spoke with what Cipriani assumed was the regional accent.

‘Which one?’

The wheels were reinforced, a steel rim between the hub and tyre, so the car could run even if the tyres had been ripped by bullets. Except that the opposition would know that.

Cipriani confirmed the observer was still seated and his door was still closed, confirmed that the driver’s gun was still strapped in its holster.

‘Rear left.’

Coincidence that the police car had happened to be parked up on their route out of the city – Cipriani was tight with adrenalin. Coincidence that the tyre was on the driver’s side so that he had to walk round the car to see it? Coincidence that if he walked round the front of the car he would obstruct Moretti’s vision and exit path, but if he walked round the back he would lose sight of the policeman’s hand and gun.

Moretti rolled the Merc back slightly and turned the front wheels so they were pointing out.

Giuseppi Vitali had made the call to the Grosvenor House Hotel shortly after Benini and Cipriani had left. Ask for Benini and he’d never get through; ask for the bodyguard, however, and he’d know everything he needed to about the banker.

‘I’m sorry,’ he had been told, ‘Mr Cipriani checked out fifteen minutes ago.’

Benini running to schedule, probably on his way to BCI’s offices on Old Broad Street, then to Heathrow. And from there he would fly either to Milan or Zurich. Except that yesterday afternoon, after they’d dropped Benini and his bodyguard off, his driver and the two gorillas who constituted his back-up protection had left Italy for Switzerland. So after his meeting in London, Benini would fly to Zurich. And that evening Moretti would drive him to the hotel in the mountains which Benini used when his meetings required him to stay in Switzerland. Unless Benini was intending to drive back, which he had never done in the past.

Giuseppi Vitali knew everything about Paolo Benini. His family details, his education and banking career. His business and personal movements, the fact that at that moment in time he did not have a regular mistress. The houses he owned and the hotels and apartments in which he stayed.

The details of his personal protection. The various routes Moretti used to drive him to work and the patterns into which even Cipriani had allowed them to slip when he thought they were safe.

The fact that the bank for which Benini worked carried kidnap insurance.

Cipriani turned slightly and walked behind the Mercedes, eyes flicking between the man in front and the second in the Audi. So where was the back-up, where the hell were Gino and Enzio? The police driver stepped forward, the top of his body above the Merc but the lower half now hidden. Was beside Moretti’s window. The door of the police car opened and the second man got out.

Moretti’s going, Cipriani sensed; half a second more and Moretti’s going to smash his foot on the accelerator and pull Mr Benini out. His left hand moved inside his coat to the submachine gun hanging on the pull strap from his shoulder.

‘Which tyre?’ he asked again.

Clear the car then he would have to bend down and look at the tyre, would have to take his eyes off the driver. Then they would take him.

‘Left rear.’

He heard the slight rev of the engine. Moretti telling him he had everything under control, that if either of the supposed policemen moved out of turn Moretti would run them down.

The strap was still across the gun in the policeman’s holster but the police observer was further out of the door. Cipriani glanced at the tyre. Perhaps it was down slightly, perhaps it wasn’t.

‘Thanks. I’ll take care of it.’

Therefore no need for you to hang around. If you are who you say you are.

And your move if you’re not.

There was a burst on the radio of the police car. The observer confirmed their position then called to the driver. ‘Accident, let’s go.’

‘Thanks again,’ Cipriani said.

The driver ran to the car and the Audi pulled away.

There was a screech of brakes and the back-up pulled in behind them.

That evening Paolo Benini ate alone, Cipriani three tables away and also alone, and the others only entering the dining-room after Benini had left. Perhaps by instinct, but more probably by habit, Benini avoided giving the impression that he was surrounded by bodyguards. When he had finished Cipriani escorted him to the third-floor suite, then returned to the others. Benini poured himself a malt and settled to the paperwork he had brought with him from the Zurich office. Nothing confidential – he was always careful with material he took outside the bank.

Paolo Benini was forty-four years old, six feet tall, with dark, neatly cut hair, and the first signs of good living showing on what had once been an athletic frame. His wife Francesca was six years younger. The couple had two daughters, both in their early teens, a town apartment in Via Ventura, in one of Milan’s discreetly fashionable (as opposed to ostentatiously expensive) areas, and a villa in the family village in Emilia.

Paolo Benini also enjoyed a succession of mistresses, a fact which he considered the natural right of someone of his background and profession, but which he also considered he had successfully kept secret from his wife.

Secrets within secrets, he had once thought. It was a principle he also applied to his work, though he would have used a different word. Security. Not merely the separation of one project from another, even the separation of parts of the same project. The creation of a structure in which the beginning could not be traced to the middle, nor the middle to the end. A structure in which key people such as the London manager were all personal appointees, yet in which even those he trusted knew only what he allowed them to know, with no way two of them could fit even a part of the whole together.

Especially the special accounts: the funds originating in what he assumed were front companies in North America and Western Europe, then switched via a system of cut-outs to their target accounts. Not simply because the destinations were tax havens, but because in such places banking regulations were loose and rarely monitored. And because, in routing such transfers through a series of tax regimes, each with its own rules and regulations on secrecy, the job of tracing those funds was rendered virtually impossible.

Every bank had its special account customers, of course, but this normally meant only those clients requiring customized attention. So the handful of executives and board members in BCI who knew he was special accounts assumed his dealings were nothing out of the ordinary.

Black accounts in black boxes, he had once thought. Even he himself in one. Knowing the codes for the accounts and speaking occasionally to the account holders, but knowing nothing more and not wishing to.

The telephone rang shortly before eleven.

‘Mr Benini. Reception here. A fax has just come in for you and I thought you’d wish to know immediately.’

Because Mr Benini was a regular, and Mr Benini tipped well.

‘The morning will do. But thanks, for letting me know.’

He waited ten seconds, then lifted the telephone again and called reception.

Cipriani had drummed the routine into him. If he received a call from someone claiming to be hotel reception, porters’ desk, even room service or laundry, he should stall. Then he should phone back unexpectedly on the correct line. If reception or whatever confirmed the call, then everything was fine. If not, he should check the door was locked and hit the panic button.

‘This is Paolo Benini. The fax you just phoned about.’

‘Yes, Mr Benini.’

Confirmation that it had been reception who had called.

‘I just wondered where it was from.’

‘One moment while I check.’ There was a ten-second pause. ‘Milan, sir.’

Confirmation that there was a fax.

‘Perhaps you could send it up after all.’

He had barely settled again when he heard the knock on the outer door. He crossed the room and checked through the security hole. The porter was alone in the corridor, his uniform immaculate, his right hand at his side and the envelope containing the fax in his left.

He opened the door.

‘Mr Benini?’

‘Yes.’

‘Reception asked for this to be delivered, sir.’

‘Thank you.’

He took the envelope and felt in his pocket for a tip, sensed rather than saw the movement. The porter’s right hand coming up for the tip but not stopping, three fingers on one side of Benini’s windpipe and thumb the other, cutting off his air. Left hand locked on Benini’s right upper arm and steering him to his right.

The shock almost paralysed him, the movement so fast and unexpected. The man was still turning him to his right, his back suddenly against the door and the door serving as a fulcrum, so that he was turning with it into the room. He was fighting for breath, screaming for help but no sound coming. He brought his hands up and tried to prise the grip from his throat, tried to stop the movement backwards and pressed forward, succeeded only in pushing his own body weight against the vice round his windpipe.

Another man was suddenly in the room, picking up the fax from the floor and shutting the door, pulling up Benini’s shirtsleeve 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.