The Danger

THREE

I drove Cenci to his office and left him there to his telephone and his grim task with the banks. Then, changing from chauffeur's uniform into nondescript trousers and sweater, I went by bus and foot to the street where the siege might still be taking place.

Nothing, it seemed, had changed there. The dark-windowed ambulance still stood against the kerb on the far side of the road from the flats, the carabinieri's cars were still parked helter-skelter in the same positions with fawn uniforms crouching around them, the television van still sprouted wires and aerials, and a commentator was still talking into camera.

Daylight had subtracted drama. Familiarity had done the same to urgency. The scene now looked not frightening but peaceful, with figures moving at walking pace, not in scurrying little runs. A watching crowd stood and stared bovinely, growing bored.

The windows on the third floor were shut.

I hovered at the edge of things, hands in pockets, hair tousled, local paper under arm, looking, I hoped, not too English. Some of the partners in Liberty Market were stunning at disguises, but I'd always found a slouch and vacant expression my best bet for not being noticed.

After a while during which nothing much happened I wandered off in search of a telephone, and rang the number of the switchboard inside the ambulance.

'Is Enrico Pucinelli there?' I asked.

'Wait.' Some mumbling went on in the background, and then Pucinelli himself spoke, sounding exhausted.

'Andrew? Is it you?'

'Yes. How's it going?'

'Nothing has altered. I am off duty at ten o'clock for an hour.'

I looked at my watch. Nine thirty-eight. 'Where are you eating?' I said.

'Gino's.'

'OK,' I said, and disconnected.

I waited for him in the brightly-lit glass-and-tile-lined restaurant that to my knowledge served fresh pasta at three in the morning with good grace. At eleven it was already busy with early lunchers, and I held a table for two by ordering loads of fettucine that I didn't want. Pucinelli, when he arrived, pushed away his cooling plateful with horror and ordered eggs.

He had come, as I knew he would, in civilian clothes, and the tiredness showed in black smudges under his eyes and in the droop of his shoulders.

'I hope you slept well,' he said sarcastically.

I moved my head slightly, meaning neither yes nor no.

'I have had two of the top brass on my neck in the van all night,' he said. 'They can't make up their fat minds about the aeroplane. They are talking to Rome. Someone in the government must decide, they say, and no one in the government wanted to disturb his sleep to think about it. You would have gone quite crazy, my friend. Talk, talk, talk, and not enough action to shit.'

I put on a sympathetic face and thought that the longer the siege lasted, the safer now for Alessia. Let it last, I thought, until she was free. Let HIM be a realist to the end.

'What are the kidnappers saying?' I asked.

'The same threats. The girl will die if they and the ransom money don't get away safely.'

'Nothing new?'

He shook his head. His eggs came with rolls and coffee, and he ate without hurry. "The baby cried half the night,' he said with his mouth full. 'The deep-voiced kidnapper keeps telling the mother he'll strangle it if it doesn't shut up. It gets on his nerves.' He lifted his eyes to my face. 'You always tell me they threaten more than they do. I hope you're right.'

I hoped so to. A crying baby could drive even a temperate man to fury. 'Can't they feed it?' I said.

'It has colic.'

He spoke with familiarity of experience, and I wondered vaguely about his private life. All our dealings had been essentially impersonal, and it was only in flashes, as now, that I heard the man behind the policeman.

'You have children?' I asked.

He smiled briefly, a glimmer in the eyes. 'Three sons, two daughters, one… expected.' He paused. 'And you?'

I shook my head. 'Not yet. Not married.'

'Your loss. Your gain.'

I laughed. He breathed deprecatingly down his nose as if to disclaim the disparagement of his lady. 'Girls grow into mamas,' he said. He shrugged. 'It happens.'

Wisdom, I thought, showed up in the most unexpected places. He finished his eggs as one at peace with himself, and drank his coffee. 'Cigarette?' he asked, edging a packet out of his shin pocket. 'No. I forgot. You don't.' He flicked his lighter and inhaled the first lungful with the deep relief of a dedicated smoker. Each to his own release: Cenci and I had found the same thing in brandy.

'During the night,' I said, 'did the kidnappers talk to anyone else?'

'How do you mean?'

'By radio.'

He lifted his thin face sharply, the family man retreating. 'No. They spoke only to each other, to the hostage family, and to us. Do you think they have a radio? Why do you think that?'

'I wondered if they were in touch with their colleagues guarding Alessia.'

He considered it with concentration and indecisively shook his head. 'The two kidnappers spoke of what was happening, from time to time, but only as if they were talking to each other. If they were also transmitting on a radio and didn't want us to know, they are very clever. They would have to guess we are already listening to every word they say.' He thought it over a bit longer and finally shook his head with more certainty. "They are not clever. I've listened to them all night. They are violent, frightened, and…' he searched for a word I would understand '… ordinary.'

'Average intelligence?'

'Yes. Average.'

'All the same, when you finally get them out, will you look around for a radio?'

'You personally want to know?'

'Yes.'

He looked at me assessingly with a good deal of professional dispassion. 'What are you not telling me?' he said.

I was not telling him what Cenci passionately wished to keep private, and it was Cenci who was paying me. I might advise full consultation with the local law, but only that. Going expressly against the customer's wishes was at the very least bad for future business.

'I simply wonder,' I said mildly, 'if the people guarding Alessia know exactly what's going on.'

He looked as if some sixth sense was busy doubting me, so to take his mind off it I said, 'I dare say you've thought of stun grenades as a last resort?'

'Stun?' He didn't know the word. "What's stun?'

'Grenades which more or less knock people out for a short while. They produce noise and shock waves, but do no permanent damage. While everyone is semi-conscious, you walk into the flat and apply handcuffs where they're needed.'

'The army has them, I think.'

I nodded. 'You are part of the army.'

'Special units have them. We don't.' He considered. 'Would they hurt the children?'

I didn't know. I could see him discarding stun grenades rapidly. 'We'll wait,' he said. 'The kidnappers cannot live there for ever. In the end, they must come out.

Cenci stared morosely at a large cardboard carton standing on the desk in his office. The carton bore stick-on labels saying FRAGILE in white letters on red, but the contents would have survived any drop. Any drop, that is, except one to kidnappers.

'Fifteen hundred million lire,' he said. 'The banks arranged for it to come from Milan. They brought it straight to this office, with security guards.'

'In that box?' I asked, surprised.

'No. They wanted their cases back… and this box was here.' His voice sounded deathly tired. 'The rest comes tomorrow. They've been understanding and quick, but the interest they're demanding will cripple me.'

I made a mute gesture of sympathy, as no words seemed appropriate. Then I changed into my chauffeur's uniform, carried the heavy carton to the car, stowed it in the boot, and presently drove Cenci home.

We ate dinner late at the villa, though meals were often left unfinished according to the anxiety level of the day. Cenci would push his plate away in revulsion, and I sometimes thought my thinness resulted from never being able to eat heartily in the face of grief. My suggestions that Cenci might prefer my not living as family had been met with emphatic negatives. He needed company, he said, if he were to stay sane. I would please be with him as much as possible.

On that evening, however, he understood that I couldn't be. I carried the FRAGILE box upstairs to my room, closed the curtains, and started the lengthy task of photographing every note, flattening them in a frame of non-reflecting glass, four at a time of the same denomination. Even with the camera on a tripod, with bulk film, cable release and motor drive, the job always took ages. It was one that I did actually prefer not to leave to banks or the police, but even after all the practice I'd had I could shift only about fifteen hundred notes an hour. Large ransoms had me shuffling banknotes in my dreams.

It was Liberty Market routine to send the undeveloped films by express courier to the London office, where we had simple developing and printing equipment in the basement. The numbers of the notes were then typed into a computer, which soned them into numerical order for each denomination and then printed out the lists. The lists returned, again by courier, to the advisor in the field, who, after the victim had been freed, gave them to the police to circulate to all the country's banks, with a promise that any teller spotting one of the ransom notes would be rewarded.

It was a system which seemed to us best, principally because photography left no trace on the notes. The problem with physically marking them was that anything the banks could detect, so could the kidnappers. Banks had no monopoly, for instance, in scans to reveal fluorescence. Geiger counters for radioactive pin dots weren't hard to come by. Minute perforations could be seen as easily by any eyes against a bright light, and extra lines and marks could be spotted by anyone's magnification. The banks, through simple pressure of time, had to be able to spot tracers easily, which put chemical invisible inks out of court. Kidnappers, far more thorough and with fear always at their elbows, could test obsessively for everything.

Kidnappers who found tracers on the ransom had to be considered lethal. In Liberty Market, therefore, the markings we put on notes were so difficult to find that we sometimes lost them ourselves, and they were certainly unspottable by banks. They consisted of transparent microdots (the size of the full stops to which we applied them) which when separated and put under a microscope revealed a shadowy black logo of L and M, but through ordinary magnifying glasses appeared simply black. We used them only on larger denomination notes, and then only as a back-up in case there should be any argument about the photographed numbers. To date we had never had to reveal their existence, a state of affairs we hoped to maintain.

By morning, fairly dropping from fatigue, I'd photographed barely half, the banks having taken the 'small denomination' instruction all too literally. Locking all the money into a wardrobe cupboard I showered and thought of bed, but after breakfast drove Cenci to the office as usual. Three nights I could go without sleep. After that, zonk.

'If the kidnappers get in touch with you,' I said, on the way, 'you might tell them you can't drive. Say you need your chauffeur. Say… um… you've a bad heart, something like that. Then at least you'd have help, if you needed it.'

There was such an intense silence from the back seat that at first I thought he hadn't heard, but eventually he said, 'I suppose you don't know, then.'

'Know what?'

'Why I have a chauffeur.'

'General wealth, and all that,' I said.

'No. I have no licence.'

I had seen him driving round the private roads on his estate in a jeep on one or two occasions, though not, I recalled, with much fervour. After a while he said, 'I choose not to have a licence, because I have epilepsy. I've had it most of my life. It is of course kept completely under control with pills, but I prefer not to drive on public roads.'

'I'm sorry,' I said.

'Forget it. I do. It's an inconvenience merely.' He sounded as if the subject bored him, and I thought that regarding irregular brain patterns as no more than a nuisance was typical of what I'd gleaned of his normal business methods: routine fast and first, planning slow and thorough. I'd gathered from things his secretary had said in my hearing that he'd made few decisions lately, and trade was beginning to suffer.

When we reached the outskirts of Bologna he said, 'I have to go back to those telephones at the motorway restaurant tomorrow morning at eight. I have to take the money in my car. I have to wait for him… for his instructions. He'll be angry if I have a chauffeur.'

'Explain. He'll know you always have a chauffeur. Tell him why.'

'I can't risk it.' His voice shook.

'Signor Cenci, he wants the money. Make him believe you can't drive safely. The last thing he wants is you crashing the ransom into a lamppost.'

'Well… I'll try.'

'And remember to ask for proof that Alessia is alive and unharmed.'

'Yes.'

I dropped him at the office and drove back to the Villa Francese, and because it was what the Cenci chauffeur always did when he wasn't needed during the morning, I washed the car. I'd washed the damn car so often I knew every inch intimately, but one couldn't trust kidnappers not to be watching; and the villa and its hillside, with its glorious views, could be observed closely by telescope from a mile away in most directions. Changes of routine from before to after a kidnap were of powerful significance to kidnappers, who were often better detectives than detectives, and better spies than spies. The people who'd taught me my job had been detectives and spies and more besides, so when I was a chauffeur, I washed cars.

That done I went upstairs and slept for a couple of hours and then set to again on the photography, stopping only to go and fetch Cenci at the usual hour. Reporting to his office I found another box on the desk, this time announcing it had been passed by customs at Genoa.

'Shall I carry it out?' I asked.

He nodded dully. 'It is all there. Five hundred million lire.'

We drove home more or less in silence, and I spent the evening and night as before, methodically clicking until I felt like a zombie. By morning it was done, with the microdots applied to a few of the fifty-thousand lire notes, but not many, through lack of time. I packed all the rubber-banded bundles into the FRAGILE box and humped it down to the hall to find Cenci already pacing up and down in the dining-room, white with strain.

'There you are!' he exclaimed. 'I was just coming to wake you. It's getting late. Seven o'clock.'

'Have you had breakfast?' I asked.

'I can't eat.' He looked at his watch compulsively, something I guessed he'd been doing for hours. 'We'd better go. Suppose we were held up on the way? Suppose there was an accident blocking the road?'

His breathing was shallow and agitated, and I said diffidently, 'Signor Cenci, forgive me for asking, but in the anxiety of this morning… have you remembered your pills?'

He looked at me blankly. 'Yes. Yes, of course. Always with me.'

'I'm sorry…'

He brushed it away. 'Let's go. We must go.'

The traffic on the road was normal: no accidents. We reached the rendezvous half an hour early, but Cenci sprang out of the car as soon as I switched off the engine. From where I'd parked I had a view of the entrance across a double row of cars, the doorway like the mouth of a beehive with people going in and out continually.

Cenci walked with stiff legs to be lost among them, and in the way of chauffeurs I slouched down in my seat and tipped my cap forward over my nose. If I wasn't careful, I thought, I'd go to sleep…

Someone rapped on the window beside me. I opened my eyes, squinted sideways, and saw a youngish man in a white open-necked shirt with a gold chain round his neck making gestures for me to open the window.

The car, rather irritatingly, had electric windows: I switched on the ignition and pressed the relevant button, sitting up slightly while I did it.

'Who are you waiting for?' he said.

'Signor Cenci.'

'Not Count Rieti?'

'No. Sorry.'

'Have you seen another chauffeur here?'

'Sorry, no.'

He was carrying a magazine rolled into a cylinder and fastened by a rubber band. I thought fleetingly of one of the partners in Liberty Market who believed one should never trust a stranger carrying a paper cylinder because it was such a handy place to stow a knife… and I wondered, but not much.

'You're not Italian?' the man said.

'No. From Spain.'

'Oh.' His gaze wandered, as if seeking Count Rieti's chauffeur. Then he said absently in Spanish, 'You're a long way from home.'

'Yes,' I said.

'Where do you come from?'

'Andalucia.'

'Very hot, at this time of year,'

'Yes.'

I had spent countless school holidays in Andalucia, staying with my divorced half-Spanish father who ran a hotel there. Spanish was my second tongue, learned on all levels from kitchen to penthouse: any time I didn't want to appear English, I became a Spaniard.

'Is your employer having breakfast?' he asked.

'I don't know.' I shrugged. 'He said to wait, so I wait.'

His Spanish had a clumsy accent and his sentences were grammatically simple, as careful as mine in Italian.

I yawned.

He could be a coincidence, I thought. Kidnappers were normally much too shy for such a direct approach, keeping their faces hidden at all costs. This man could be just what he seemed, a well-meaning citizen carrying a magazine, looking for Count Rieti's chauffeur and with time to spare for talking.

Could be. If not, I would tell him what he wanted to know: if he asked.

'Do you drive always for Signor… Cenci?' he said casually.

'Sure,' I said. 'It's a good job. Good pay. He's considerate. Never drives himself, of course.'

'Why not?'

I shrugged. 'Don't know. He hasn't a licence. He has to have someone to drive him always.'

I wasn't quite sure he had followed that, though I'd spoken pretty slowly and with a hint of drowsiness. I yawned again and thought that one way or another he'd had his ration of chat. I would memorise his face, just in case, but it was unlikely…

He turned away as if he too had found the conversation finished, and I looked at the shape of his round smooth head from the side, and felt most unwelcome tingles ripple all down my spine. I'd seen him before… I'd seen him outside the ambulance, through the tinted glass, with cameras slung from his neck and gold buckles on the cuffs of his jacket. I could remember him clearly. He'd appeared at the siege… and he was here at the drop, asking questions.

No coincidence.

It was the first time I'd ever knowingly been physically near one of the shadowy brotherhood, those foes I opposed by proxy, whose trials I never attended, whose ears never heard of my existence. I slouched down again in my seat and tipped my cap over my nose and thought that my partners in London would emphatically disapprove of my being in that place at that time. The low profile was down the drain.

If I'd seen him, he'd seen me.

It might not matter: not if he believed in the Spanish chauffeur who was bored with waiting. If he believed in the bored Spanish chauffeur, he'd forget me. If he hadn't believed in the bored Spanish chauffeur I would quite likely be sitting there now with a knife through my ribs, growing cold.

In retrospect I felt distinctly shivery. I had not remotely expected such an encounter, and at first it had only been habit and instinct, reinforced by true tiredness, that had made me answer him as I had. I found it definitely scary to think that Alessia's life might have hung on a yawn.

Time passed. Eight o'clock came and went. I waited as if asleep. No one else came to my still open window to ask me anything at all.

It was after nine before Cenci came back, half-running, stumbling, sweating. I was out of the car as soon as I saw him, politely opening a rear door and helping him in as a chauffeur should.

'Oh my God,' he said. 'I thought he wouldn't telephone… It's been so long.'

'Is Alessia all right?'

'Yes… yes… '

'Where to, then?'

'Oh…' He drew in some canning breaths while I got back behind the wheel and started the engine. 'We have to go to Mazara, about twenty kilometres south. Another restaurant… another telephone. In twenty minutes.'

'Um…" I said. 'Which way from here?'

He said vaguely, 'Umberto knows,' which wasn't especially helpful, as Umberto was his real chauffeurs away on holiday. I grabbed the road map from the glove compartment and spread it on the passenger seat beside me, trying unsuccessfully to find Mazara while pulling in a normal fashion out of the car park.

The road we were on ran west to east. I took the first major-looking turn towards the south, and as soon as we were out of sight of the motorway drew into the side and paused for an update on geography. One more turn, I thought, and there would be signposts: and in fact we made it to Mazara, which proved to be little more than a crossroads, with breathing time to spare.

On the way Cenci said, 'Alessia was reading from today's paper… on tape, it must have been, because she just went on reading when I spoke to her… but to hear her voice…'

'You're sure it was her?'

'Oh yes. She started as usual with one of those memories of her childhood that you suggested. It was Alessia herself, my darling, darling daughter.'

Well, I thought. So far, so good.

'He said…' Cenci gulped audibly. 'He said if there are homers this time in the ransom he'll kill her. He says If there are marks on the notes, he'll kill her. He says if we are followed… if we don't do exactly as he says… if anything… anything goes wrong, he'll kill her.'

I nodded. I believed it. A second chance was a partial miracle. We'd never get a third.

'You promise,' he said, 'that he'll find nothing on the notes?'

'I promise,' I said.

At Mazara Cenci ran to the telephone, but again he was agonisingly kept waiting. I sat as before in the car, stolidly patient, as if the antics of my employer were of little interest, and surreptitiously read the map.

The restaurant at this place was simply a cafe next to a garage, a stop for coffee and petrol. People came and went, but not many. The day warmed up under the summer sun, and as a good chauffeur should I started the purring engine and switched on the air-conditioning.

He returned with his jacket over his arm and flopped gratefully into the cool.

'Casteloro,' he said. 'Why is he doing this?'

'Standard procedure, to make sure we're not followed. He'll be doubly careful because of last time. We might be chasing about all morning.'

'I can't stand it,' he said; but he could, of course, after the last six weeks,

I found the way to Casteloro and drove there: thirty-two kilometres, mostly of narrow, straight, exposed country roads. Open fields on both sides. Any car following us would have shown up like a rash.

'He made no trouble about you,' Cenci said. 'I said straight away that I'd brought my chauffeur because I have epilepsy, that it was impossible for me to drive, to come alone. He just said to give you instructions and not explain anything.'

'Good,' I said, and thought that if HE were me he'd check up with Alessia about the epilepsy, and be reassured.

At Casteloro, a small old town with a cobbled central square full of pigeons, the telephone Cenci sought was in a cafe, and this time there was no delay.

'Return to Mazara,' Cenci said with exhaustion.

I reversed the car and headed back the way we had come, and Cenci said, 'He asked me what I had brought the money in. I described the box.'

'What did he say?'

'Nothing. Just to follow instructions or Alessia would be killed. He said they would kill her… horribly.' His voice choked and came out as a sob.

'Listen,' I said, 'they don't want to kill her. Not now, not when they're so close. And did they say what "horribly" meant? Were they… specific?'

On another sob he said, 'No.'

'They're frightening you,' I said. 'Using threats to make sure you'd elude the carabinieri, even if up to now you'd been letting them follow you.'

'But I haven't!' he protested.

'They have to be convinced. Kidnappers are very nervous.'

It was reassuring though, I thought, that they were still making threats, because it indicated they were serious about dealing. This was no cruel dummy run: this was the actual drop.

Back at the Mazara crossroads there was another lengthy wait. Cenci sat in the caf6, visible through the window, trembling over an undrunk cup of coffee. I got out of the car, stretched, ambled up and down a bit, got back in, and yawned. Three unexceptional cars filled with petrol and the garage attendant scratched his armpits.

The sun was high, blazing out of the blue sky. An old woman in black cycled up to the crossroads, turned left, cycled away. Summer dust stirred and settled in the wake of passing vans, and I thought of Lorenzo Traventi, who had driven the last lot of ransom and now clung to life on machines.

Inside the cafe Cenci sprang to his feet, and after a while came back to the car in no better state than before. I opened the rear door for him as usual and helped him inside.

'He says…" He took a deep breath. 'He says there is a sort of shrine by the roadside between here and Casteloro. He says we've passed it twice already… but I didn't notice…'

I nodded. 'I saw it.' I closed his door and resumed my own seat.

'Well, there,' Cenci said. 'He says to put the box behind the shrine, and drive away.'

'Good,' I said with relief. 'That's it, then.'

'But Alessia…' he wailed. 'I asked him, when will Alessia be free, and he didn't answer, he just put the telephone down

I started the car and drove again towards Casteloro.

'Be patient,' I said gently. 'They'll have to count the money. To examine it for tracers. Maybe, after last time, to leave it for a while in a place they can observe, to make sure no one is tracking it by homer. They won't free Alessia until they're certain they're safe, so I'm afraid it means waiting. It means patience.'

He groaned on a long breath. 'But they'll let her go… when I've paid… they'll let her go, won't they?'

He was asking desperately for reassurance, and I said, 'Yes,' robustly: and they would let her go, I thought, if they were satisfied, if they were sane, if something unforeseen didn't happen and if Alessia hadn't seen their faces.

About ten miles from the crossroads, by a cornfield, stood a simple stone wayside shrine, a single piece of wall about five feet high by three across, with a weatherbeaten foot-high stone madonna offering blessings from a niche in front. Rain had washed away most of the blue paint of her mantle, and time or vandals had relieved her of the tip of her nose, but posies of wilting flowers lay on the ground before her. and someone had left some sweets beside her feet.

The road we were on seemed deserted, running straight in each direction. There were no woods, no cover, no obstructions. We could probably be seen for miles.

Cenci stood watching while I opened the boot, lugged out the box, and carried it to the back of the shrine. The box had just about been big enough to contain the whole ransom, and there it stood on the dusty earth, four-square, brown and ordinary, tied about with thick string to make carrying easier and cheerfully labelled with red. Almost a million pounds. The house on Mikonos, the snuff box collection, his dead wife's jewellery, the revenue forever from the olives.

Cenci stared at it blindly for a few moments, then we both returned to the car and I reversed and drove away.