Dick Francis - The Danger

I had heard them shouting from the open window, and had hardly needed the repetition.

'In a short time the listening bug will be in position,' Pucinelli said, glancing uneasily at my rigid face. 'And soon we will have a tap on the telephone. We have men on the staircase outside. They are fixing them.'

I said nothing.

'My men say you would have let the kidnappers get away… taking the money with them.'

'Of course.'

We looked at each other unsmilingly, almost foes where recently we'd been allies. He was thin and about forty, give or take. Dark and intense and energetic. A communist in a communist city, disapproving of the capitalist whose daughter was at risk.

'They had shot the boy who drove the car,' he said. 'We could not possibly let them escape.'

'The boy took his chances. The girl must still be saved.'

'You English,' he said. 'So cold.'

The anger inside me would have scorched asbestos. If his men hadn't tried their abortive ambush, the boy would not have been shot. He would have walked away unharmed and left the ransom in the car, as he'd been instructed.

Pucinelli turned his attention to the benchful of bolted-down radio receivers, turning a few knobs and pressing switches. 'I am sending a man in here to receive messages,' he said. 'I will be here also. You can stay, if you wish.'

I nodded. It was too late to do anything else.

It had been absolutely against my instincts and my training to be anywhere near the dropping point of the ransom, yet Pucinelli had demanded my presence there in return for a promise of his force's absence.

'You can go in our van,' he said. 'Our radio van. Like an ambulance. Very discreet. You go. I'll send you a driver. When the kidnappers take the suitcase, you follow it. You can tell us where they're hiding. Then, when the girl is free, we'll arrest them. OK?'

'When the girl is free, I will tell you where they took the money.'

He had narrowed his eyes slightly, but had clapped me on the shoulder and agreed to it, nodding. 'The girl first.'

Not knowing, as one never does, precisely when the kidnappers would set the handing-over procedure rolling, Pucinelli had stationed the van permanently in the garage at the Villa Francese, with the driver living in the house. Four days after we'd signalled to the kidnappers that the agreed money had been collected and was ready for them, they had sent their delivery instructions: and as promised between Pucinelli and myself, I had telephoned his office to tell him the drop was about to start.

Pucinelli had not been there, but we had planned for that contingency.

In basic Italian I had said, 'I am Andrew Douglas. Tell Enrico Pucinelli immediately that the ambulance is moving.'

The voice at the other end had said it understood.

I now wished with all my heart that I had not kept my promise to give Pucinelli that message; but cooperation with the local police was one of the firm's most basic policies.

Pucinelli's own trust in me, it now turned out, had not been so very great. Perhaps he had known I would rather have lost track of the suitcase then give away my presence near the drop. In any case, both the suitcase's homer, and a further homer in the van, had been trackable from Pucinelli's own official car. The colleague-on-duty, receiving my message, had not consulted Pucinelli but had simply set out with a maximum task force, taking Pucinelli's staff car and chasing personal glory. Stupid, swollen-headed, lethal human failing.

How in God's name was I going to tell Paolo Cenci? And who was going to break it to the lawyer that his bright student son had been shot?

'The boy who was driving,' I said to Pucinelli. 'Is the boy alive?'

'He's gone to hospital. He was alive when they took him. Beyond that, I don't know.'

'His father must be told.'

Pucinelli said grimly, 'It's being done. I've sent a man.'

This mess, I thought, was going to do nothing at all for the firm's reputation. It was positively my job to help to resolve a kidnap in the quietest way possible, with the lowest of profiles and minimum action. My job to calm, to plan, to judge how little one could get a kidnapper to accept, to see that negotiations were kept on the coolest, most businesslike footing, to bargain without angering, to get the timing right. My brief, above all, to bring the victim home.

I had by that time been the advisor-on-the-spot in fifteen kidnaps, some lasting days, some weeks, some several months. Chiefly because kidnappers usually do release their victims unharmed once the ransom is in their hands, I hadn't so far been part of a disaster; but Alessia Cenci, reportedly one of the best girl jockeys in the world, looked set to be my first.

'Enrico,' I said, 'don't talk to these kidnappers yourself. Get someone else, who has to refer to you for decisions.'

'Why?' he said.

'It calms things down. Takes time. The longer they go on talking the less likely they are to kill those people in the flat.'

He considered me briefly. 'Very well. Advise me. It's your job.'

We were alone in the van and I guessed he was sorely ashamed of his force's calamity, otherwise he would never have admitted such a tacit loss of face. I had realised from shortly after my first arrival at the villa that as officer-in-charge he had never before had to deal with a real kidnap, though he had carefully informed me that all carabinieri were instructed in the theory of kidnap response, owing to the regrettable frequency of that crime in Italy. Between us, until that night, his theory and my experience had done well enough, and it seemed that he did still want the entente to go on.

I said, 'Telephone that flat direct from here. Tell the kidnappers you are arranging negotiations. Tell them they must wait for a while. Tell them that if they tire of the waiting they may telephone you. Give them a number… you have a line in this van?'

He nodded. 'It's being connected.'

'Once their pulses settle it will be safer, but if they are pressed too hard to start with they may shoot again.'

'And my men would fire…' He blinked rapidly and went outside, and I could hear him speaking to his forces through a megaphone. 'Do not return fire. I repeat, do not shoot. Await orders before firing.'

He returned shortly, accompanied by a man unrolling a wire, and said briefly, 'Engineer.'

The engineer attached the wire to one of the switch boxes and passed Pucinelli an instrument which looked a cross between a microphone and a handset. It appeared to lead a direct line to the flat's telephone because after a pause Pucinelli was clearly conversing with one of the kidnappers. The engineer, as a matter of course, was recording every word.

The Italian was too idiomatic for my ears, but I understood at least the tone. The near-hysterical shouting from the kidnapper slowly abated in response to Pucinelli's determined calmness and ended in a more manageable agitation. To a final forceful question Pucinelli, after a pause, answered slowly and distinctly, 'I don't have the authority. I have to consult my superiors. Please wait for their reply.'

The result was a menacing, grumbling agreement and a disconnecting click.

Pucinelli wiped his hand over his face and gave me the tiniest flicker of a smile. Sieges, as I supposed he knew, could go on for days, but at least he had established communications, taking the first vital step.

He glanced at the engineer and I guessed he was wanting to ask me what next, but couldn't because of the engineer and his recordings.

I said, 'Of course you will be aiming searchlights at those windows soon so that the kidnappers will feel exposed.'

'Of course.'

'And if they don't surrender in an hour or two, naturally you'd bring someone here who's used to bargaining, to talk to them. Someone from a trades union, perhaps. And after that a psychiatrist to judge the kidnappers' state of mind and tell you when he thinks is the best time to apply most pressure, to make them come out.' I shrugged deprecatingly. 'Naturally you know that these methods have produced good results in other hostage situations.'