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