Dick Francis - The Danger

Alessia leant her arms on the half-door, and watched the unmoving horse.

'The wives tried to make allowances, but a lot of the men were impotent, and would burst into tears in public, and many of them took offence easily… and showed permanent symptoms of mental breakdown. Hamburgers and coke couldn't cure them, nor going to the office nine to five.' I fiddled with the bolt on the door. 'Most of them recovered in time and lead normal lives, but even those will admit they had bad dreams for years and will never forget clear details of their imprisonment.'

After a while she said, 'I wasn't a prisoner of war.'

'Oh yes, just the same. Captured by an enemy through no fault of your own. Not knowing when - or whether - you would be free. Humiliated… deprived of free will… dependent on your enemy for food. All the same, but made worse by isolation… by being the only one.'

She put the curly head down momentarily on the folded arms. 'All they ever gave me, when I asked, were some tissues, and I begged… I begged… for those.' She swallowed. 'One's body doesn't stop counting the days, just because one's in a tent.'

I put my arm silently round her shoulders. There were things no male prisoner ever had to face. She cried quietly, with gulps and small compulsive sniffs, and after a while simply said, 'Thank you,' and I said, 'Any time,' and we moved on down the line of boxes knowing there was a long way still to go.

Manning the office switchboard day and night was essential because kidnappers kept anti-social hours; and it was always a partner on duty, not an employee, for reasons both of reliability and secrecy. The ex-spies feared 'moles' under every secretarial desk and positive-vetted the cleaner.

That particular Sunday night was quiet, with two calls only: one from a partner in Equador saying he'd discovered the local

police were due to share in the ransom he was negotiating and asking for the firm's reactions, and the second from Twinkle-toes, who wasted a copy of the set of precautions we'd drawn up for Luca Oil.

I made a note of it, saying 'Surely Luca Oil have one?'

'The kidnappers stole it,' Twinkletoes said tersely. 'Or bribed a secretary to steal it. Anyway, it's missing, and the manager was abducted at the weakest point of his daily schedule, which I reckon was no coincidence.'

'I'll send it by courier straight away.'

'And see who's free to join me out here. This will be a long one. It was very carefully planned. Send me Derek, if you can. And oh… consider yourself lucky I'm not there to blast you for Bologna.'

'I do,' I said, smiling.

'I'll be back,' he said darkly. 'Goodnight.'

I took one more call, at nine in the morning, this time from the head of a syndicate at Lloyds which insured people and firms against kidnap. Much of our business came direct from him, as he was accustomed to make it a condition of insurance that his clients should call on our help before agreeing to pay a ransom. He reckoned we could bring the price down, which made his own liability less; and we in return recommended him to the firms asking our advice on defences.

'Two English girls have been snatched in Sardinia,' he said. 'The husband of one of them insured her against kidnap for her two weeks holiday as he wasn't going to be with her, and he's been on to us. It seems to have been a fairly unplanned affair - the girls just happened to be in the wrong place, and were ambushed. Anyway, the husband is distraught and wants to pay what they're asking, straight away, so can you send someone immediately?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Er… what was the insurance?'

'I took a thousand pounds against two hundred thousand. For two weeks.' He sighed. 'Win some, lose some.'

I took down names and details and checked on flights to Sardinia, where in many regions bandits took, ransomed and released more or less as they pleased.

'Very hush-hush,' the Lloyds man had said. 'Don't let it get to the papers. The husband has pressing reasons. If all goes well she'll be home in a week, won't she, and no one the wiser?'

'With a bit of luck,' I agreed.

Bandits had nowhere to keep long-term prisoners and had been known to march their victims miles over mountainsides daily, simply abandoning them once they'd been paid. Alessia, I thought, would have preferred that to her tent.

The partners began arriving for the Monday conference and it was easy to find one with itchy feet ready to go instantly to Sardinia, and easy also to persuade Derek to join Twinkletoes at Luca Oil. The Co-ordinator wrote them in on the new week's chart and I gave the request from the partner in Equador to the Chairman.

After about an hour of coffee, gossip and reading reports the meeting began, the bulk of it as usual being a review of work in progress.

'This business in Equador,' the Chairman said. 'The victim's an American national, isn't he?'

A few heads nodded.

The Chairman pursed his lips. 'I think we'll have to advise that corporation to use local men and not send any more from the States. They've had three men captured in the last ten years, all Americans… you'd think they'd learn.'

'It's an American-owned corporation,' someone murmured.

'They've tried paying the police themselves,' another said. 'I was out there myself last time. The police took the money saying they would guard all the managers with their lives, but I reckon they also took a cut of the ransom then, too. And don't forget, the corporation paid a ransom of something like ten million dollars… plenty to spread around.'

There was a small gloomy silence.

'Right,' the Chairman said. 'Future advice, no Americans. Present advice?' He looked around. 'Opinions, anyone?'

'The kidnappers know the corporation will pay in the end,' Tony Vine said. 'The corporation can't afford not to.'

All corporations had to ransom their captured employees if they wanted anyone ever to work overseas for them in future. All corporations also had irate shareholders, whose dividends diminished as ransoms rose. Corporations tended to keep abductions out of the news, and to write the ransoms down as a 'trading loss' in the annual accounts.

'We've got the demand down to ten million again,' Tony Vine said. 'The kidnappers won't take less, they'd be losing face against last time, even if - especially if- they're a different gang.'

The Chairman nodded. 'We'll advise the corporation to settle?'

Everyone agreed, and the meeting moved on.

The Chairman, around sixty, had once been a soldier himself, and like Tony felt comfortable with other men whose lives had been structured, disciplined and official. He had founded the firm because he'd seen the need for it; the action in his case of a practical man, not a visionary. It had been a friend of his, now dead, who had suggested partnerships rather than a hierarchy, advising the sweeping away of all former ranks in favour of one new one: equal.

The Chairman was exceptionally good-looking, a distinctly marketable plus, and had an air of quiet confidence to go with it. He could maintain that manner in the face of total disaster, so that one always felt he would at any moment devise a brilliant victory-snatching solution, even if he didn't. It had taken me a while, when I was new there, to see that it was Gerry Clayton who had that sort of mind.

The Chairman came finally to my report, photocopies of which most people had already read, and asked if any partners would like to ask questions. We gained always from what others had learned during a case, and I usually found question time very fruitful - though better when not doing the answering.

'This carabinieri officer… er… Pucinelli, what sort of a personal relationship could you have with him? What is your estimate of his capabilities?' It was a notoriously pompous partner asking; Tony would have said, 'How did you get on with the sod? What's he like?'