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.
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. In the second they had met the first demand, then a second, yet still heard nothing, received nothing, not even a body to bury. In the third the consultant had insisted upon visual contact with the child before the money was handed over, but then the child had been spirited away in the bustle of the street where the kidnappers had insisted the exchange should take place, the boy’s body found three days later.
There were certain similarities, of course – the insistence that a member of the household staff be the courier, for example. And the police had normally been informed. That was one of the things which worried him now: how Ortega would react when he found out what Haslam had done.
Perhaps Ortega had brought some of his techniques with him when he had come over from one of the cocaine units, though more likely they had always been there. Nine months earlier Ortega had agreed with a hostage family not to move on the kidnappers until the victim was safe. Instead he had followed the pick-up to the house where the gang were counting the ransom money prior to releasing the victim. Officially all the gang had been killed; unofficially one had survived, though he had probably wished he had not. It had taken Ortega less than thirty minutes to extract the location at which the kidnap victim was being held and just over two hours to secure the victim’s release, though it had been another twenty-four before he had informed the family that their father was safe. After that the kidnappers had switched to children. After that none of the victims came back alive.
It was five minutes past seven.
Ramirez should have received the call by now. Ramirez’s instructions were to telephone them to confirm that he had heard. No words though, because the telephone at the house was certainly tapped. Therefore three rings, repeated a second time, if the kidnappers had been in contact. Six rings, also repeated, if they had not and he was returning to the house empty-handed. Ramirez was the girl’s uncle, also a lawyer. Good contacts in the presidential palace, though none would do him any good tonight.
It was ten past seven.
Haslam rose and poured himself a mineral water, added a handful of ice and a sliver of lime.
Christ how he hated kidnapping, how he hated Latin America. More specifically, how he hated kidnapping in Latin America. All crimes were against the law, but kidnapping was immoral. Europe, however, was civilized compared to here. In Europe the people holding the victims were still bastards, but both sides played to at least a semblance of rules. In Central and South America you were never sure whose rules you were playing or even whose game. Whether a kidnapping was commercial or political, whether you were being sucked into a feud between political rivals, even between army and police, between the liberals and the death squads.
The mother glanced again at the photograph and he smiled at her, tried to convince her it would work.
Why haven’t we heard, why hasn’t Ramirez called? It was in the father’s eyes now. In the layers of grey the man was seeing the ghosts of the children who had not been returned, was already seeing the ghost of his own daughter.
The phone rang. Instinctively the mother stretched to pick it up then stopped as Haslam’s hand fell on her wrist. She looked up at him, eyes haunted, pleading. Counted the rings. Three. Silence. Three again.
Hope came into her eyes for the first time in two months.
Still a long way to go before we get Rosita home, Haslam told her, told them both. Told himself.
Three previous child kidnappings – he was still analysing, trying to see where he had made the right decision and where he might have made the wrong one. Certain threads common to each, plus the policeman called Ortega. He had pored over it every hour of every day since he had been called in, could see there was no way out, no way round the fact that Ortega was the problem. Then he had begun to see: that perhaps Ortega was not a problem, that – conversely – Ortega might be the key. For that reason, seven nights ago, he had made his suggestion to the family.
That for the sake of Ortega and the telephone taps, they continue to negotiate with the kidnappers in the normal way – Rosita’s father taking the anonymous calls and the maid acting as courier. But that they also open a separate channel of negotiation with the kidnappers – different phone, different courier, in this case the girl’s uncle.
At first the family had been too frightened, then they had agreed. When the kidnappers telephoned the family house the following evening, therefore, Rosita’s father had insisted on proof that his daughter was alive. The next evening the maid was directed by the kidnappers from telephone to telephone, to the point where she would pick up the photograph of Rosita holding that day’s newspapers. At the second location, however, she had given the caller the number of the public phone where Ramirez was waiting.
When the kidnap negotiator had telephoned that number the uncle had told him that the family had a package for the kidnappers and requested details of where it should be dropped. Inside the briefcase was a letter Haslam had dictated, informing the kidnappers of the police involvement and the taps on the family telephones, and suggesting an alternative system of communication, including the number at which Ramirez would be waiting the following evening. Also in the briefcase were fifty thousand