GORDON STEVENS

Kennedy’s Ghost

COPYRIGHT

Kennedy’s Ghost is a work of fiction. All of the events, characters, names and places depicted in this novel are entirely fictitious or are used fictitiously.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1994

Copyright © Gordon Stevens 1994

Gordon Stevens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780006490029

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008219352

Version: 2016-09-21

DEDICATION

To Art Kosatka,

for introducing me to Washington DC

through the back door

and without whom this book

would not have been possible

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Keep Reading

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

It was the sort of day you remembered. Where you were when you heard and what you were doing; who you turned to and who you telephoned.

The assassin was in position at eleven, the cars which would steer the Lincoln into the killing zone at eleven-five. The truck which would break down in the left lane of the traffic lights, ensuring that the Lincoln would move to the right-hand lane, at eleven-six. The yellow sedan which would stall in front of the Lincoln by eleven-seven.

The senator’s flight from Boston was on schedule; his Lincoln, plus the man who would accompany him, already waiting. Twenty-five years before, Donaghue and Brettlaw had been undergraduates together at Harvard.

At eleven-fifty Donaghue would join his wife and daughters in his room on the third floor of the Senate Russell Building on Washington’s Capitol Hill. At one minute to twelve he would walk with them along the marble corridor to the historic setting of the Caucus Room. And at midday exactly, with his wife at his side and Brettlaw in the wings, Senator Jack Donaghue would formally announce his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States of America.

It was eleven-fifteen. In the Caucus Room the television cameras were in place and the lights ready, the cables running to the scanners outside. The walls of the room were marble, the slim Corinthian-style columns rising to the ceiling, and the ceiling itself was exquisitely decorated with four large chandeliers hanging from it. The windows on the side of the room facing the dome of Capitol Hill were wall-height, arched at the top and draped in purple. On the wall opposite them, on either side of the door leading into the hallway beyond, two plaques listed some of the events to which the Caucus Room had born witness: the 1912 enquiry into the sinking of the Titanic, the 1941–42 commission into the World War Two National Defense programme, the 1966 Fulbright hearings on the Vietnam War, the 1973 Watergate enquiry and the 1987 commission on Iran-Contra.

The platform from which Donaghue would declare was against the right-hand wall, flanked on the right by the Stars and Stripes of the Union and on the left by the flag of his home state of Massachusetts, two massive black and white photographs hanging on the wall behind and dominating the room.

‘Why the Kennedy photos as backdrop?’ the NBC reporter asked the Donaghue press secretary. ‘Why John and Robert?’

‘Because they also declared in this room,’ she told him.

The floor was packed with supporters, already excited and some singing. Most such crowds were the same, the CBS reporter knew: young and preppy, a blaze of hats and banners. Not this one, though; this one was different. Young and old, a range of ages, creeds and colours. As if they not only stood for what the country had struggled for in the past, but also represented the dream it still clung to for the future. Blue-collar and white-collar, men and women, youthful students and gnarled veterans. Three of them in the second row talking about a Swift boat in ’Nam and laughing about the way The Old Man had bellowed into a bullhorn for the boats they knew didn’t exist to follow him in.

The woman in the front row was young, the radiance of youth on her face, her blond hair falling on to her shoulders and her child in her arms. The man next to her was in the dress blues of the Marine Corps, the eagle, globe and anchor on the collar, the sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeves, and the medal ribbons across his left breast, the top row the most important and the ribbon on the wearer’s right of the top row the most important of all. The ribbon next to it was the Silver Star, after that the Bronze Star, three stars on it indicating it had been won three more times and the ‘V’ indicating they had been won for heroism in battle. The service ribbons at the bottom, the Vietnam service ribbon in the middle.

‘Mind if I take a close-up of the decorations?’ one of the cameramen asked.

‘No problem,’ the marine told him.

‘What was that all about?’ the reporter asked as he and the cameraman moved on.

‘You see what he was wearing?’ The response was tight, almost angry. ‘Top right, next to the Silver Star. The Congressional Medal of Honor.’

The highest award for valour the nation could bestow.

‘Mommy,’ the reporter heard the voice of the girl in the arms of the young woman next to the marine. ‘Why has that man only got one arm?’

It was eleven-twenty, the morning bright and the silver of the 737 gleaming against the faultless blue of the sky. Ten minutes to landing, the pilot informed his passengers. In the second row from the front Donaghue checked the speech for the last time and whispered the words of the first quote. Perhaps to Pearson, perhaps to himself.

Some men see things as they are and say why;

I dream things that never were and say why not.

The boy was ten years old, seated with his mother towards the rear.

‘You think he’ll mind?’

Of course he’ll mind, the woman knew she should say. He’s busy, too many things on his mind, especially today. ‘Ask him,’ she said instead.

‘Come with me.’

‘Go by yourself.’

The boy gripped the Polaroid camera and made his way down the aisle, the nerves consuming him. Halfway along he hesitated and looked back, saw the way his mother nodded for him to go on.

‘Excuse me.’ He stopped by the two men seated on the left and realized he had forgotten to say sir. ‘Would you mind if I took your photograph?’

Donaghue smiled at the boy and turned to Pearson.

‘I think we can go better than that, don’t you, Ed?’

‘Sure we can.’

Fifteen rows back the woman watched as Pearson stood, took the camera from her son, sat him by Donaghue, and took a photograph of the two of them together. The boy watched as the print rolled out and the image rose on the slippery grey of the plastic.

‘What’s your name?’ Donaghue asked him.

‘Dan.’

‘Dan who?’

‘Dan Zupolski.’

The print was dry. Donaghue took a pen from his pocket and signed it.

To Dan Zupolski, from his friend, Senator Jack Donaghue.

It was eleven twenty-five.

In the Caucus Room the doors opened and the supporters turned, suddenly expectant, the television crews cursing that they had not been forewarned. Catherine Donaghue walked in and stood on the platform. Mid-forties and slim; the blond of her hair and the steel and the sun in her eyes.

‘Sorry to give you a heart attack, boys.’ She knew what the crews had thought and smiled at them, acknowledged the way they laughed back.

He’d seen it all before, the NBC correspondent thought. Except not like this, not like today. He wouldn’t admit it, of course, but one hell of a day to be the front man, one hell of a thing to tell the grandkids.

One hell of a smile, the CBS man whispered to no one in particular. One hell of a First Lady.

Cath Donaghue looked round the crowd. ‘I thought you’d like to know. We’ve just heard from the airport. Jack’s plane is five minutes out; he’ll be landing on time at eleven-thirty, be here at twelve.’

There was a roar. She held up her hands to still it.

If this was the prelim, Christ knows what the main event is going to be like, the CNN reporter thought. Give me some cut-aways now, he told his cameraman. Couple of veterans, couple of kids.

‘How’s it looking?’ He heard the voice of his producer down the line.

‘Looking good.’

Looking fantastic, he meant.

‘What time’s he due?’

‘Twelve noon, everything on schedule. Why?’

‘We’re going live on it.’ CNN network, CNN global. ‘Coming to you at eleven fifty-five.’

The applause quietened, the supporters waiting. Cath Donaghue looked up and smiled again.

‘Before Jack arrives, I just wanted to thank you all for coming today.’ As if the honour was hers and Jack’s; as if, by being present at that place on that day, it was those in front of her who were doing the Donaghues a favour.

She looked around them again and smiled again. Take care of him, Dave, she prayed; make sure he gets here, please God don’t let me down.

‘It’s a great place to be, a great day to be here. Thank you all.’

Even after she had left, even after she was back in Room 394, the cheers were echoing round the Caucus Room and the applause was ringing down the white marble of the corridors.

It was eleven twenty-eight.

The 737 banked over the Potomac and began its run-in, the wing lights blinking against the silver and the silver brilliant against the morning sky.

Jordan glanced at Donaghue and realized he was looking at the White House.

‘Ready, Jack?’

What are you thinking? he almost asked.

I’m thinking about something Haslam said, Donaghue would not have told him. I’m thinking about a conversation Haslam and I agreed never took place.

‘As I’ll ever be.’

The 737 bumped gently on the runway, the reverse thrust thundering, then taxied to the terminal. The flight-deck door opened and the pilot and copilot stepped out and stood with the cabin crew at the front of the plane. The fuselage door to the terminal opened. In the passenger bridge on the other side Jordan saw the line of officials.

‘Okay, Jack. Let’s do it.’

Donaghue stood and straightened his suit, Pearson slightly behind him and Jordan at his shoulder. The rest of the passengers were still seated, all watching. He passed along the line of crew members and shook each of their hands.

‘Give it to ’em today, Jack.’ The voice was from the back of the plane.

‘Good luck, Mr President.’ Another.

Abruptly the passengers rose and began to clap. Donaghue turned and waved his thanks at them, then left the plane and stepped through the jet bridge and into the terminal, everyone wanting to shake his hand this morning, everyone wanting to wish him luck. Some addressing him as Jack, others as Senator. More than the occasional person calling him Mr President.

The doors of the Lincoln were open. Brettlaw stepped forward and Donaghue shook hands with him, embraced him.

‘Good to see you.’

‘You too, old friend.’

Eleven thirty-three.

The Lincoln left National.

Hendricks checked his watch. Not much traffic today, therefore the target on time.

Even though the road out of the underpass was in front of him and the glistening white of Capitol Hill was behind and to his left, he saw it differently, as if he was the driver of the Lincoln, as if he was the man delivering the target to the killing zone.

Right out of National and on to George Washington Parkway – he ran through the route again. Off the Parkway and across 14th Street Bridge. Fork right at the end into the series of underpasses dissecting DC, the cars which would funnel the Lincoln into the correct lane, and into the correct position in the killing zone, already closing. First underpass then second, right at the first exit but still underground, then right again at the second exit, the carriageway of this section single-lane, still climbing and curving left, then straightening into the sunlight. Sixty yards from the underpass to the traffic lights at First. White multistorey housing the National Association of Letter Carriers on the right, and side road joining the underpass road from behind the multistorey, so that at the junction with First the road was two-lane. Six-foot-wide central reservation of grass and trees to the left and wire fence down the middle, and the road on the other side leading only to an underground car park. Grey multistorey of the Federal Home Loan Bank beyond the road. Grass and more traffic lights in front and leading to the Hill.

Everything quiet, little traffic and hardly any pedestrians. Everything perfect.

Eleven thirty-four.

The Lincoln eased on to George Washington Memorial Parkway.

Thirty-five.

The Lincoln pulled right, off the Parkway and across 14th Street Bridge, the grey-blue of the Potomac below them and the white of DC suddenly in front. The white always dazzling, but this morning almost blinding. Fork at end of bridge, Route N1 goes left and Route 395 right.

The Lincoln swung right on to 395.

Eleven thirty-seven.

First exit, to Maine Avenue. First underpass coming up. The dark blue Chevrolet fell in behind them then drew to the outside lane, but not overtaking.

Thirty-eight.

First underpass. Two-lane. Short. Out of the underpass in fifteen seconds.

The pale Chrysler sedan eased in front of them, the Chevrolet behind them still in the outer lane and preventing them from overtaking.

Thirty-nine.

Hendricks saw the truck edge from the feeder road at the side of the Letter Carriers building, the engine clattering and the smoke billowing from its exhaust. The lights at First were on green. The truck crossed to the left lane, jerked apparently haphazardly towards the lights, and shuddered to a halt at them.

Eleven-forty.

Ford replacing the Chrysler and Oldsmobile replacing the Chevrolet. Yellow sedan three hundred yards in front.

Donaghue reached into his jacket pocket and glanced again at the speech, read again the quote he had included at the request of his wife. The quote after which he would pause, after which he would look down reflectively then look up again, after which he would declare he was running for the White House.

In the long history of the world

few generations have been granted

the role of defending freedom

in its hour of maximum danger.

I do not shirk from this responsibility

I welcome it.

Except that in his mind he had rewritten it slightly:

In the long history of the world

few generations have been granted

the role of defending freedom.

In the hour of maximum danger

I do not shirk from this responsibility.

I welcome it.

Two hundred yards in front the yellow sedan drew them in as if they were on a piece of string.

Eleven forty-one.

The Lincoln closed on the second underpass and entered its darkness. The underpass was long and curving, pale in the overhead lights. The underpass was climbing slightly, the first exit – D Street NW and US Capitol – coming up fast. The climb was steeper, they turned right, the yellow sedan in front and the Lincoln behind, the Oldsmobile behind it, the Ford keeping to the main carriageway and accelerating away.

The light of the exit was in front of them, the carriageway still climbing out of the underpass. Second exit, D Street straight on, Capitol right. Yellow sedan going right, the Lincoln following it, Oldsmobile straight on. The underpass still single-lane, still curving and climbing.

Eleven forty-two.

They left the underpass and drove into the brilliant sunlight of the killing zone. The white building of the Letter Carriers Association towering over them to the right and the grey of the Home Loan Bank to the left. The side road joining from the right, so that the single-lane became two lanes and the lights sixty yards in front. The truck broken down in the left lane and the yellow sedan suddenly stalling beside it in the right. The Lincoln immediately behind the sedan, more traffic behind it so it was unable to move, and the man called Hendricks waiting.

Twenty-eight years before, on 22 November 1963, President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

Four months earlier …

1

They should have waited for the back-up, Cipriani knew.

Of course they sometimes got separated, of course they sometimes ran in to problems, but the back-up car should have caught them up by now.

The evening was warm, early June and still two hours of daylight left, the dual carriageway curving slightly in front of them and the pines rising up the mountainside to their left and falling to the valley to their right. Perhaps that was why Moretti hadn’t noticed. Because they were from the city and therefore expected trouble in the city; because this was Switzerland and nothing happened in Switzerland except they made cuckoo clocks and lots of money.

South, across the border into Italy, and Cipriani would have begun to worry, would have whispered to Moretti to slow it. Except that Mr Benini liked to be driven fast. If they slowed the banker would glance up from the rear seat and ask what the hell was happening without uttering a single word.

And nobody knew they were here.

He and Benini had flown out of Milan the previous afternoon, stayed last night at London’s Grosvenor House Hotel, Mr Benini attending a meeting at the bank’s office on Old Broad Street this morning, then the flight back. But not to Italy. To Switzerland. Moretti, Gino and Enzio driving up to meet them. The afternoon in the bank’s Zurich office, then the overnight in the slightly old-fashioned hotel in the mountains which Mr Benini preferred to the more modern establishments in the city. More meetings tomorrow, then the flight back to Milan. Depending, of course, on the twists and turns of Mr Benini’s timetable.

If it had been Milan – on the way to or from the family villa in Emilia at weekends, from the apartment on Via Ventura in the morning or the office behind La Scala in the evening – they would have been on edge, would have worked one of the dozen variations of route. But this wasn’t Italy.

The police car was on the hard shoulder a hundred metres in front of them; as they passed it rocked in their tailstream. Still no back-up Merc – Cipriani adjusted the second of the two rearview mirrors – still no Gino and Enzio sitting like guardian angels behind them. The movement was enough to warn Moretti; the driver glanced up then the rev counter dropped slightly as he eased back. Not enough to disturb the man in the rear seat, but enough to slow them by ten kilometres an hour.

The road was still curving, still climbing gently, no other traffic.

The police car passed them, suddenly and unexpectedly, then slowed in front of them, the observer waving them down.

The layby was gravel, forty metres long and a car’s width wide. They pulled in behind the police car and waited. In the back seat the banker glanced up. The police driver left the Audi and walked towards them, the observer remaining seated and facing forward. Cipriani got out and shut the door behind him, heard the dull click as Moretti locked the doors.

Standard procedure. The driver never leaving the car. Doors and windows locked, vehicle in gear and held on the clutch, handbrake off. Enough space to pull away even if it meant driving over whatever or whoever was in front, even a policeman. More correctly, even someone wearing a police uniform. For this reason Cipriani did nothing to obstruct Moretti’s get-away route or his line of vision.

The 450 was armour-plated – up to a point. Ten-millimetre glazing on the windows; Spectra plating for doors, sides, roof-liner and floor boards; plus cell fuel tank. Not the protection some of the Saudis carried, but Benini was still Benini.

‘One of your tyres is going down.’ The policeman spoke with what Cipriani assumed was the regional accent.

‘Which one?’

The wheels were reinforced, a steel rim between the hub and tyre, so the car could run even if the tyres had been ripped by bullets. Except that the opposition would know that.

Cipriani confirmed the observer was still seated and his door was still closed, confirmed that the driver’s gun was still strapped in its holster.

‘Rear left.’

Coincidence that the police car had happened to be parked up on their route out of the city – Cipriani was tight with adrenalin. Coincidence that the tyre was on the driver’s side so that he had to walk round the car to see it? Coincidence that if he walked round the front of the car he would obstruct Moretti’s vision and exit path, but if he walked round the back he would lose sight of the policeman’s hand and gun.

Moretti rolled the Merc back slightly and turned the front wheels so they were pointing out.

Giuseppi Vitali had made the call to the Grosvenor House Hotel shortly after Benini and Cipriani had left. Ask for Benini and he’d never get through; ask for the bodyguard, however, and he’d know everything he needed to about the banker.

‘I’m sorry,’ he had been told, ‘Mr Cipriani checked out fifteen minutes ago.’

Benini running to schedule, probably on his way to BCI’s offices on Old Broad Street, then to Heathrow. And from there he would fly either to Milan or Zurich. Except that yesterday afternoon, after they’d dropped Benini and his bodyguard off, his driver and the two gorillas who constituted his back-up protection had left Italy for Switzerland. So after his meeting in London, Benini would fly to Zurich. And that evening Moretti would drive him to the hotel in the mountains which Benini used when his meetings required him to stay in Switzerland. Unless Benini was intending to drive back, which he had never done in the past.

Giuseppi Vitali knew everything about Paolo Benini. His family details, his education and banking career. His business and personal movements, the fact that at that moment in time he did not have a regular mistress. The houses he owned and the hotels and apartments in which he stayed.

The details of his personal protection. The various routes Moretti used to drive him to work and the patterns into which even Cipriani had allowed them to slip when he thought they were safe.

The fact that the bank for which Benini worked carried kidnap insurance.

Cipriani turned slightly and walked behind the Mercedes, eyes flicking between the man in front and the second in the Audi. So where was the back-up, where the hell were Gino and Enzio? The police driver stepped forward, the top of his body above the Merc but the lower half now hidden. Was beside Moretti’s window. The door of the police car opened and the second man got out.

Moretti’s going, Cipriani sensed; half a second more and Moretti’s going to smash his foot on the accelerator and pull Mr Benini out. His left hand moved inside his coat to the submachine gun hanging on the pull strap from his shoulder.

‘Which tyre?’ he asked again.

Clear the car then he would have to bend down and look at the tyre, would have to take his eyes off the driver. Then they would take him.

‘Left rear.’

He heard the slight rev of the engine. Moretti telling him he had everything under control, that if either of the supposed policemen moved out of turn Moretti would run them down.

The strap was still across the gun in the policeman’s holster but the police observer was further out of the door. Cipriani glanced at the tyre. Perhaps it was down slightly, perhaps it wasn’t.

‘Thanks. I’ll take care of it.’

Therefore no need for you to hang around. If you are who you say you are.

And your move if you’re not.

There was a burst on the radio of the police car. The observer confirmed their position then called to the driver. ‘Accident, let’s go.’

‘Thanks again,’ Cipriani said.

The driver ran to the car and the Audi pulled away.

There was a screech of brakes and the back-up pulled in behind them.

That evening Paolo Benini ate alone, Cipriani three tables away and also alone, and the others only entering the dining-room after Benini had left. Perhaps by instinct, but more probably by habit, Benini avoided giving the impression that he was surrounded by bodyguards. When he had finished Cipriani escorted him to the third-floor suite, then returned to the others. Benini poured himself a malt and settled to the paperwork he had brought with him from the Zurich office. Nothing confidential – he was always careful with material he took outside the bank.

Paolo Benini was forty-four years old, six feet tall, with dark, neatly cut hair, and the first signs of good living showing on what had once been an athletic frame. His wife Francesca was six years younger. The couple had two daughters, both in their early teens, a town apartment in Via Ventura, in one of Milan’s discreetly fashionable (as opposed to ostentatiously expensive) areas, and a villa in the family village in Emilia.

Paolo Benini also enjoyed a succession of mistresses, a fact which he considered the natural right of someone of his background and profession, but which he also considered he had successfully kept secret from his wife.

Secrets within secrets, he had once thought. It was a principle he also applied to his work, though he would have used a different word. Security. Not merely the separation of one project from another, even the separation of parts of the same project. The creation of a structure in which the beginning could not be traced to the middle, nor the middle to the end. A structure in which key people such as the London manager were all personal appointees, yet in which even those he trusted knew only what he allowed them to know, with no way two of them could fit even a part of the whole together.

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 of Calabria. And because the locals there hated any authority, they would provide the eyes and ears if the police or army started snooping.

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.

2

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 United States dollars, in used notes and a mix of denominations, as a sign of the family’s good faith.

The following evening the family had received a call at which the kidnappers threatened the life of Rosita if the family did not pay immediately. Ten minutes earlier the kidnappers had telephoned Ramirez on the second line and agreed to open discussions on a channel concealed from the police in general and Ortega in particular. Then the negotiations had begun.

Three hundred thousand, the kidnappers had demanded. A hundred and fifty, the family had responded. Two-fifty, the kidnappers had come back at them. Two hundred, the family had replied. Two hundred and twenty-five thousand, the two sides had agreed; Ramirez standing by, seven o’clock Thursday evening.

Now it was almost nine; the dusk closing in and Ramirez signalling he was on his way ninety minutes ago. Be careful, Haslam had warned him: they’ll build in switches, cut-outs, might go for a double ransom, might seize you as well.

It was gone nine, almost ten; the dusk giving way to the dark and the mother’s eyes boring into him. Lose me my daughter and I’ll haunt you for ever; bring her back to me and what is mine and my husband’s is yours.

She poured herself a whisky and stared at the glass, her strength almost shattering it. Her husband rose, took it from her, and made her sit again.

Ten-thirty, almost ten forty-five.

The headlights swept across the wall and the Lexus turned in to the courtyard. The parents ran to the window, saw the driver alone in the front and Ramirez in the back. Saw the figure clutched to him, clinging to him. For one moment Haslam feared that he had lost, that the figure was too small, too grey, almost too translucent, to be real. That the figure clinging to Ramirez was Rosita’s ghost. Then Ramirez stepped from the car and he saw the girl look up and wave.

The mother turned and ran for the stairs, the father close behind her. Haslam crossed the room, poured himself a large scotch, only a dash of soda, and downed it in one.

‘So what do we do now?’ The family’s lawyer spoke from the shadows. ‘

‘Square Ortega.’

‘How much?’

In the courtyard below the mother was holding her daughter as if she would never let her go, the girl’s father embracing Ramirez then looking up at the window to thank Haslam, the tears pouring suddenly and unashamedly down his cheeks.

Haslam poured himself a second drink and offered the lawyer one. In a sense the way they dealt with the policeman was the same as dealing with the kidnappers’ offer. Too little and he’d turn it down, too much and he’d want even more.

‘Twenty-five thousand should do it. You don’t want him on your backs for the rest of your lives.’

The call came twenty-nine hours later, at three in the morning. The settlement with Ortega had been agreed and the money delivered, the family lawyer told Haslam.

‘And Ortega’s happy?’ Haslam asked.

‘He appears to be.’

Perhaps it was the lawyer’s natural caution, Haslam thought, perhaps it was as close to a warning as he could get. He thanked the man, slept fitfully till the light was streaming through the hotel curtains, then confirmed his flight to Washington via Miami.

Even though he’d been paid off Ortega might not like it, because in his way Ortega had lost. And if he considered he had lost, Ortega would want his revenge. And if he did he would play it dirty, partly because it was his nature and partly to let his own people see he was top dog, partly to let the family know who was really in charge. And if Ortega decided to play it dirty he would go for him on the way out, because that was when Haslam should be relaxed, when Haslam should be thinking he’d got away with it.

He could leave the country illegally, of course; but then it might be difficult to return. He could leave legally, but with some sort of political or diplomatic protection. But that would mean he’d left under Ortega’s rules, so that when he returned it would be under Ortega’s conditions. Or he could both leave and return under his own terms, his rules of his game.

At seven he took breakfast, at eight he checked out, ignored the cabs waiting outside the hotel, walked to Plaza San Martin, let the first two cabs in the side street behind the Bolivar Hotel go, and took the third.

The city was already hot, and the cardboard slums which covered the foothills outside stretched for miles. No cars following him, he noted, but there wouldn’t be. The cab dropped him, he paid the driver and stepped into the terminal building. The departure lounge was cool, the queues already forming at the check-in counters, and the gorillas were waiting for him.

Sometimes you needed to look for them, other times their presence was deliberately obvious and menacing. Today it was somewhere between. Two of them, plus Ortega himself. The boss man wearing a smartly cut suit and seated at a table in the coffee bar. Dark glasses, though everyone wore dark glasses, plus a copy of La Prensa.

The business class check-in was clear. He lifted his bag on to the weighing belt and gave his passport and ticket to the woman behind the desk. She smiled at him, then saw the two men, saw the way they were looking at him and knew who and what they were.

‘Smoking or non-smoking?’ She fought to control the tremor in her voice.

‘Non.’

She punched the computer and gave him his seat number.

‘Thank you.’ He picked up the passport and ticket.

‘Have a good flight.’ She was mesmerized, like a night animal caught in a beam of light.

His rules, he reminded himself, his game.

The tails were between him and the departure gate, possibly more inside when he was out of view of the most of the public, and Ortega watching, amused. He walked past them, deliberately close, turned into the coffee bar, ignored the other tables and sat at Ortega’s.

‘Two espressos,’ he told the waitress.

Ortega was smiling, arrogant. What are you playing at, mother-fucker, what are you telling me? My country, my patch. So you don’t fuck with me. You know the routine, you know what happens to people who fuck with the likes of me.

Haslam sat back slightly, not speaking. Right hand on the table top, the third finger of his right hand tapping only slightly but enough to draw attention to it.

Why so relaxed, Ortega wondered, why so confident? Why the hand on the table? Why only one hand? Why the right? Gold ring on the third finger, symbol on it, but he couldn’t see what. So what game are you playing, cock-sucker, what are you trying to tell me?

The waitress placed the coffees nervously on the table. Haslam shifted slightly and picked up the cup with his right hand, fingers round it rather than holding the handle, the gold of the ring sparkling and the image on it clear.

Ortega knew who Haslam was and what he was. Where he had come from and what Haslam was telling him.

Three of you and one of me. The third might be interesting, the second no problem, and you’re first. No problems, my friend. I did my job, you did yours, and we both got paid. Next time will be the same. Unless you have problems with that, unless you want to call in your goons. But you’re number one, and you’re sitting next to me.

‘Sorry I missed you at the Abarcas’.’ It was Ortega who spoke first. ‘I thought I’d come to see you off.’

‘It’s appreciated. I’d hoped we wouldn’t miss each other.’

Ortega snapped his fingers at the waitress. ‘Dos cognacs.’ The shake of the head calling off the dogs was barely perceptible, little more than a movement of the eyes. ‘A good job, getting the girl back.’

‘It wouldn’t have been possible without your cooperation.’

* * *

The lights of Washington sparkled to the north and the dark of the forests of Virginia spread to the south. The Boeing banked gently and settled on its approach. Fifty minutes later Haslam cleared immigration and customs and took a cab in to DC.

Coming back from a job had always been strange.

The adrenalin that still consumed you mixing with the relief that you were normally in one piece. Depending on the sort of job, of course. Sometimes there were just a couple of you, sometimes a patrol. Sometimes, as in a terrorist scare, there were so many of you trying to get a piece of the action that you wondered if there was anyone else anywhere else. Sometimes you came back fit, other times slightly battered, occasionally torn to hell. It had happened to him twice, the medics waiting but one of his own always there first, staying with him and slipping him a cigarette or a beer when the doctors were looking the other way. A couple of times he himself had waited for an incoming flight, most recently in the Gulf. Inconspicuous, of course, lost in the crowd just as the lads would wait till everyone else had cleared the plane, which was part of what it was all about. Then the telephone call to the family, but that again was different.

Except that was when you were regiment, and now he was by himself.

Because gradually the years sneaked up on you, so that although you did your ten miles a day and worked out whenever you could, you knew the time was coming when you would no longer be running up mountains, when instead of being out there you were the one doing the briefings and sending other guys out. Which was when you sat down with your wife, knowing that when she was alone she would cry with relief. Which was when you emptied your locker, had your last party in the mess, then went off to look for the rest of your life.

Sometimes you did private work, bodyguard stuff, except who in their right minds wanted to stop a bullet or a bomb meant for someone else? Sometimes, and especially if you had Haslam’s record and reputation, you joined one of the select companies run by ex-regiment people, even tried to set up your own.

The travel helped, of course; occasionally you were still in the thick of it, even though your presence there was coincidental, like the guys doing the jobs in the former Soviet Union. Sometimes you struck lucky, like the bastard whose people were doing some protection work in a certain African state at the time of an attempted coup, the British ambassador caught in the middle and Whitehall sending in the regiment to get him out. Except they needed someone who knew the ground, so while his wife thought he was supervising a job in Scotland he was really running out the back of a Herc into five thousand feet of velvet African night.

Because none of you could ever quite shake it off, none of you wanted to come off the edge, none of you could resist still looking for that last mountain. Even now he could see the words from James Elroy Flecker’s ‘Golden Journey to Samarkand’ on the clock at Hereford:

We are the pilgrims, Master, we shall go

Always a little further; it may be

Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow …

Which was probably slightly literary, and the only words of Flecker’s which he hadn’t found boring, but it was also probably true. Which was why he’d gone his own way. Why he’d come to DC. Why he’d singled out people like Jordan and Mitchell. Why, in his way, he was still on the edge. Why he had still not given up on his own last mountain.

The condominium was on the eighth floor of one of the modern blocks near George Washington University, looking south-west towards the Potomac River. Most of the other people were university or government, there was a security system on the main entrance, a porter on duty twenty-four hours a day, and laundry facilities plus lockups in the basement. The furniture he had installed was comfortable rather than expensive, there was a Persian carpet on the floor, and the desk in the corner of the sitting-room was antique. On the walls were the reminders of his past: a Shepherd print of the battle of Mirbat and a Peter Archer of The Convoy in the sitting-room, plus a cut-glass decanter with the regimental badge – what others called incorrectly a winged dagger – the same as on the gold ring which had warned Ortega in Lima. Two photographs of D Squadron next to the basin in the bathroom and the letter from the White House on the back of the door.

It was almost midnight.

He let himself in, skimmed through the mail he had collected from the box in the foyer, laughing at the joint letter the boys had written him and enjoying his wife’s, then put the rest aside till morning and went to bed, deliberately not setting the alarm. When he woke it was almost ten, the morning warmth already penetrating the flat. He showered, made breakfast, and began the telephone calls.

The first was to the company for whom he had done the Lima job, the next four were to companies for whom he worked in Washington, informing them that he was in town again, and the sixth was to the office in Bethesda. The call was answered by a receptionist. He introduced himself and asked for Jordan.

‘I’m afraid Mr Jordan is at a meeting downtown.’

One of the government bodies for whom the company worked, Haslam supposed.

‘Can you tell him I called and ask him to phone back when convenient.’

Jordan telephoned twelve minutes later, told Haslam he had to get back into his meeting, and suggested lunch. When the calls were finished Haslam booked a table at the Market Inn, unpacked his travel bag, and left the flat. The restaurant was fifteen minutes away by metro rail and a little over an hour if he walked. He ignored the station and turned toward the Mall.

The grass was green and freshly cut, and the late morning was hot. The Vietnam Memorial was sunk into the ground to his left and the Potomac was to his right, the Memorial Bridge spanning it and Arlington cemetery rising on the hill on the far side, the Custis-Lee Mansion in the trees at the top, and the memorial to John Kennedy just below it. Even now he remembered the first time he had come to Washington; the night, pitch black and biting cold, when he had stood alone at the Lincoln Memorial and stared across the river at the tiny flicker of light in the blackness. The eternal flame to the assassinated president.

The following morning he had taken the metro rail to Arlington and walked up the slope of the hill round which the cemetery was formed. The ground had been white with frost, and it had been too early at that time of year for the tourist buses, so he had made his solitary way across the polished granite semicircle of terraces, then up the steps and on to the white marble surrounding the flame itself. And after he had stood staring at the flame he had walked back down the steps and stood – again alone – at the sweep of wall which marked the lower limit of the memorial and read the quotations from Kennedy’s inauguration speech. Seven quotations in total, three either side and the one he remembered in the middle:

In the long history of the world

few generations have been granted

the role of defending freedom

in its hour of maximum danger.

I do not shirk from this responsibility

I welcome it.

He lay on the grass and imagined Kennedy speaking, the voice fading as the sun relaxed him. Two months on any kidnap took their toll, two months on a kidnap in South America took more than they were entitled to. No more jobs for a while, he thought; he would go home, spend some time with Megan and the boys.

He picked up his jacket and walked on.

The morning was hotter, DC shimmering in the heat and the humidity already building. The White House was three hundred yards to his left, the needle of the Washington Memorial to his right, and the brilliant gleaming white stonework and exquisite outline of Capitol Hill half a mile in front of him. There were other parts of DC, there were urban ghettoes and unemployment and homelessness, often violence and murder. But today DC looked good.

By the time he reached the Market Inn it was one o’clock and the restaurant was already filling. The manager escorted him to a table in the room to the left and a waitress poured him iced water.

Most of those present wore suits and almost all were on what Haslam thought of as the computer break. He’d forgotten how many times he’d sat in offices and seen it done: the telephone call, incoming or outgoing, then the swivel of the body to the computer and the telephone hooked on the shoulder, Yeah, let’s do lunch … The diary called up and the name entered for 1.00 PM. Arrive at five past the hour and leave fifty minutes later, the next computerized appointment at two. Washington Man, in which he also included Washington Woman, at work.

Jordan arrived three minutes later. He was dressed in a suit, the jacket over his arm. The pager was on his belt and the shoes were a give-away to anyone who knew: smart but soft-soled. He dumped his briefcase under the table, hung his jacket on the chair, shook hands, and sat down.

‘Good trip?’

‘Eventually,’ Haslam told him.

‘When did you get back?’

‘Last night.’

They ordered salad, blue cheese dressing, swordfish steaks and iced tea, and updated each other. At every table in the restaurant the process was being repeated: not the same words or details, but the same thrust. Nothing confidential: even though the voices were low, it was not the place for security. Occasionally someone would glance at another table and nod at a colleague or an acquaintance.

The two men were seated near the front wall. When Haslam had arrived he had nodded to the one he knew; when Jordan had sat down he had acknowledged them both.

‘Who’s with Mitch?’ Haslam asked.

Mitchell was mid-forties, fit-looking, hair thinning and cut short, his body size deceptive and making him appear shorter than his five-nine. The man seated opposite him was a similar age, slim, dark hair neatly combed, an energy about him, and even in the heat of early summer he wore a three-piece suit.

‘Ed Pearson.’ Jordan did not need to look across.

‘Who’s Ed Pearson?’

‘Donaghue’s AA.’

AA, Administrative Assistant; what some called a Chief Executive Officer.

‘Jack Donaghue?’ Haslam asked.

Donaghue nearing the end of his second term as Senator after two successful terms in the House of Representatives.

Jordan nodded. ‘A lot of people in this room would like to be where Ed Pearson is at the moment.’

‘Why?’

‘Like I said, Ed’s Jack Donaghue’s AA. November next year the country votes for its next man in the White House. Barring accidents, the president will run again for the Republicans. If he enters, Donaghue will get the Democrat nomination. If he does, he’s the next president.’

‘How can you be so sure?’ Haslam glanced at Pearson.

‘You’ve seen Donaghue, heard him, read about him?’ Jordan asked.

‘I know about Camelot if that’s what you mean.’ The words used to describe the thousand days of John Kennedy’s presidency before he was gunned down in Dallas. The mantle many had passed to Robert Kennedy until he had been assassinated in Los Angeles five years later.

Jordan nodded again. ‘Whichever way, a lot of people think Donaghue’s the new Kennedy.’

Funny how even now the name had an aura, Haslam thought. How even now people linked it not just to the past but to the future.

It was as if Jordan understood what he was thinking. ‘Donaghue’s father grew up with John Kennedy, the families are still part of the Boston mafia. Donaghue’s as close as you can get to a Kennedy without actually being one.’

‘But he hasn’t declared.’ Because I’ve been away, therefore I’m out of touch.

‘No, he hasn’t declared yet.’

‘You’d vote for him?’

‘Yes,’ Jordan said firmly.

It was fifteen minutes to two, time for the restaurant to start emptying.

‘If Donaghue made the White House where would that leave Pearson?’ Haslam shook his head at the dessert list and asked the waitress for coffee.

‘As I said, Pearson is Donaghue’s right-hand man. If Donaghue was elected Pearson would be his chief of staff, the alternative president.’

‘So what’s Mitch doing with him?’

Jordan laughed. ‘Not just having lunch.’

‘Who’s that?’ Pearson asked.

Mitchell did not need to look. ‘The one farthest from the door is Quincey Jordan.’

A long journey for the skinny runt who wasn’t tall enough to play basketball and who’d got his ass kicked – as Jordan himself would have put it – because he’d therefore had to spend his evenings hunched over his school-books. Because in America in die sixties and seventies, in America today, sports scholarships were the normal way up if you were poor and black.

‘I know Quince,’ Pearson told him. I know that he used to work the Old Man, as they say in the trade; I know that before he left the Secret Service, Jordan was on the presidential detachment; that now he runs one of the select companies providing specialist services to both government and private organizations, as well as to people like me. ‘Who’s the other?’

‘A Brit. Dave Haslam.’

‘Tell me about him.’ Who he is and what Jordan’s doing with him.

‘Haslam’s a kidnap consultant. Ex British Special Air Service. Worked with our Special Forces people in the Gulf.’

‘What did he do there?’

‘He doesn’t talk about it much.’

‘But?’

‘I gather he’s got a letter from the president stuck up in his bathroom.’

‘Why?’ Pearson asked.

‘Why what?’

‘Why’s he got a letter from the president?’

A waitress cleared their plates and brought them coffee.

‘One of the great fears during the Gulf War was that Israel would become involved. They didn’t because for some reason which no one’s ever explained, Saddam didn’t launch his full range of Scud missiles against them. Saddam didn’t do that because someone took them out. That’s why Haslam’s got a letter from the president stuck on his bathroom door.’

It was ten minutes to two, the restaurant suddenly emptying. On the other table Haslam paid the bill, then he and Jordan rose to leave.

‘Ed, Mitch.’ Jordan crossed and shook their hands. ‘Good to see you both.’

Haslam greeted Mitchell and waited till Jordan introduced him to Pearson.

‘Join us for coffee,’ Pearson suggested.

‘Thanks, but we’ve had our fill,’ Jordan told him.

‘You’re from England.’ Pearson looked up at Haslam.

‘How’d you guess?’ It was said jokingly.

‘Working or visiting?’

‘Working.’

But you know that already, because you’ve already asked Mitch about me.

‘Next time you’re on the Hill, drop in.’

It was Washington-style, part of what the politicians called networking.

‘Which room?’ The reply was casual, no big deal.

‘Russell Building 396,’ Pearson told him. ‘Make it this afternoon if you’re passing by.’

He watched as Haslam and Jordan left, then turned back to Mitchell. ‘You have much on at the moment?’

The first frost touched Mitchell’s spine. ‘Nothing I couldn’t wrap up quickly.’

‘Jack and I would like you on the team.’

‘Anything specific?’

‘Jack might want to announce a special investigation, but before he does he wants a prelim done to make sure it will stand up.’

‘What on?’

‘Something the man and woman in the street can identify with and understand. Something like Savings and Loans, perhaps.’ The financial scandal in the eighties in which many people had lost their money. ‘Banking and the laundering of drug money are also front runners.’ But it could be anything Mitchell chose – it was in Pearson’s eyes, Pearson’s shrug. As long as Mitchell could deliver.

Why? someone else might have asked. ‘When exactly would Jack like to announce the results?’ Mitchell asked instead.

Pearson finished his coffee and reached for his napkin. ‘Possibly next March or April,’ Pearson told him.

The party would choose its candidate at its convention in the August, but the votes at that convention would be governed by each candidate’s share of the vote in the primaries three months before. The right publicity at that time, therefore, and a candidate might leave his rivals standing.

‘If not in the primaries, then when?’ Mitchell asked.

Because if a candidate’s bandwagon was already rolling, his team might hold back certain things till later.

‘October of next year,’ Pearson said simply.

A month before the people of America voted for their next president.

‘When do you want me to start?’

‘As soon as you can.’

‘And when does Jack want to announce he’s setting up an investigation?’

Because then he’d be in the news. Because then he could use it to help launch his campaign. But only if he was guaranteed of delivering.

‘A precise date?’ Pearson asked.

‘Yeah, Ed. A precise date.’

There was an unwritten law among politicians running for their party’s nomination: that in order to win the primaries, there was a date by which a candidate must declare. That day was Labour Day, the first Monday of the first week in the preceding September. This September. Three months off.

Pearson folded the napkin slowly and deliberately, placed it on the table and looked at Mitchell, the first smile appearing on his face and the first laugh in his eyes.

‘Labour Day sounds good.’

The heat of the afternoon was relaxing, which was dangerous, because he might think he had unwound. And if he thought that then he might accept another job before he was ready.

Haslam sat on the steps of Capitol Hill and looked down the Mall.

Thirty-six hours ago he’d been dealing with Ortega, and thirty hours before that he’d been praying to whatever God he believed in for the safe delivery of the little girl called Rosita.

He left the steps and walked to Russell Building.

The buildings housing the offices of members of the US Senate were to the north of Capitol Hill and those housing members of the House of Representatives to the south, the gleaming façades of the US Supreme Court and the Library of Congress between. Two of the Senate offices, Dirksen and Hart, were new and one, Russell, was the original. Five hundred yards to the north stood Union Station.

Haslam entered Russell Building by the entrance on First and Constitution Avenue, passed through the security check, ignored the lifts and walked up the sweep of stairs to the third floor. The corridors were long with high ceilings and the floors were marble, so that his footsteps echoed away from him. He checked the plan of the floor at the top of the stairs and turned right, even numbers on his left, beginning with 398, and odd on his right, a notice on the door of 396 saying that all enquiries should be through 398.

The reception room was pleasantly though functionally furnished, the window at the rear facing on to the courtyard round which Russell was built. There were two secretaries, one female and in her mid-twenties and the other male and younger, probably fresh out of college and working as a volunteer, Haslam thought. He introduced himself, then looked round at the photographs on the walls while the woman telephoned the AA.

Some of the prints were of Donaghue, which he expected, others were of the Senator’s home state, which he also expected, and one was of President John F. Kennedy.

Pearson came from the door behind the secretary’s desk and held out his hand. He had taken off his jacket, but still wore a waistcoat.

‘Glad you could make it. Coffee?’

‘Milk, no sugar.’ Haslam shook his hand and followed him through. The next room was neat, though not as large as Haslam had expected, with two desks, each with telephones and computers, leather swing chairs facing the desks, and more photographs on the walls. The bookcases were lined with political, constitutional and legal texts.

‘So this is where it happens.’ Haslam glanced round.

‘Sometimes.’ The secretary brought them each a mug. ‘Let me show you round.’ Pearson led him back through the reception offices to the one on the far side, then to those on the opposite side of the corridor, identifying rooms and occasionally introducing people. It was the PR tour, albeit executive class. The sort visiting dignitaries from the Senator’s home state might get.

They came to the conference room.

‘Rooms are allocated according to seniority and positions held. Senator Donaghue is on three committees and chairs a subcommittee of Banking, hence he gets this.’

If Donaghue’s nearing the end of his second term and he’s on so many committees, then why doesn’t he get a modern suite in one of the two new buildings, Haslam thought.

They were back in Pearson’s room. The AA opened the door to the left of his desk and showed him through.

The third door from the corner, Haslam calculated, therefore Room 394.

The room was rectangular, the shortest side to their left as they entered, and the windows in it looked on to the central courtyard. The walls were painted a soothing pastel and hung with paintings and photographs. The Senator’s desk was in front of the window, with flags either side. In the centre of the wall opposite the door through which they had just entered, was a large dark green marble fireplace. At the end of the room furthest from the window was a small round conference table, leather chairs round it; in the corner next to it stood a walnut cabinet containing a television set and minibar, a coffee percolator on top.

The desk by the window was antique, the patina of the years giving it a soft appearance. The top was clear except for a telephone and a silver-framed family photograph – Donaghue, a woman presumably his wife, and two girls. On the front of the desk was a length of polished oak, the face angled, on which were carved three lines:

Some men see things as they are and say why;

I dream things that never were and say why not.

ROBERT KENNEDY, 1968

The inner sanctum, Haslam thought. ‘May I?’ he asked.

‘Of course,’ Pearson told him.

Haslam walked round the room, looking at the paintings then at the photographs, and stopped at the two above the fireplace.

The first, in black and white and of World War Two vintage, was of two young men in the uniforms of naval lieutenants; in the background was a PT boat.

‘I recognize Kennedy. Who’s the other man?’

‘A friend of the Senator’s father,’ Pearson explained. ‘He was to be the Senator’s godfather, but was killed in action before Donaghue was born.’

The second photograph, this time in colour, was of a young Donaghue, also dressed in naval uniform, and the citation beside it was for bravery, the date fixing it in the Vietnam War.

To the right of the fireplace were another set, plain and simple: Donaghue as a small boy, Donaghue at school, Donaghue at Harvard, Donaghue with the woman in the family photograph on his desk.

The print next to them was black and white and had been blown up, so that its images were slightly grainy. The photograph was of mourners at a funeral and there was a tall, good-looking woman in the second row. She seemed deeply distressed. Her head was bent slightly, as if she was listening to someone on her right who was obscured by the mourners in the front row, but her eyes were fixed rigid and staring straight ahead.

They left the room and returned to Pearson’s.

‘Interesting photos,’ Haslam suggested. ‘Almost the story of Donaghue’s life, except that I don’t understand some of them.’

‘How’d you mean?’

‘Vietnam, for example. I thought he opposed the war.’

Pearson nodded. ‘There’s something you should understand about Jack Donaghue.’ He settled at his desk, swung his feet up and held the coffee mug in his lap, Haslam opposite him. ‘Some would say Donaghue is an enigma: of the Establishment but against it. The fact that he’s against it makes him a good Senator, the fact that he’s from it makes him an effective one.’

‘How’d you mean?’

‘Jack Donaghue’s background is Boston Irish.’ It was in line with the PR tour – nothing said that wasn’t on a cv or in a file somewhere, nothing controversial or private. ‘Privileged upbringing, Harvard of course, which was where his politics began.’

‘How?’ Haslam asked.

‘It was at Harvard that Donaghue first declared his opposition to the Vietnam War.’

‘So why the photo of him in uniform? Why the awards for bravery?’

‘As some would say, Jack’s an enigma.’ Pearson switched easily between first and second names. ‘He opposed the war yet at the same time felt a duty to his country. Others dodged the draft or used their connections to get safe postings, but when Jack’s number came up he did neither. Ended up commanding a Swift boat, doing runs up the deltas. He was awarded a couple of Bronze Stars, plus a Silver Star. Apparently he might have been up for a Navy Medal, even a Medal of Honor, but hinted that he would turn it down. Said he was being considered because of his connections, and that everyone on his boat deserved an award and not just him.’

‘What was that for?’

Pearson looked down at the coffee mug. ‘He doesn’t talk about it much. Seems some recon guys were holed up on a river bank, heavy casualties and surrounded by NVA. The choppers couldn’t reach them and they were finished. Donaghue got them out, though he himself was wounded.’

Except if Donaghue got a Silver Star and was up for a Navy Medal or a Medal of Honor, there was more to it than that, Haslam thought. ‘After Vietnam?’ he asked.

‘Law school. Legal practice, then assistant District Attorney. All this time arguing that we should pull out of Vietnam, but at the same time fighting for veterans’ rights.’

‘Then?’

‘Two terms in the House of Representatives.’ Which was when Pearson had met him, when Pearson had become his alter ego. ‘Now in his second term in the Senate. Outstanding record since his first day in DC.’ Pearson smiled. ‘Which I’m bound to say, of course. Supports industrial development but not at the expense of the environment. Believes in budget control but not at the expense of things like health care. Sees the need for a strong national economy but not at the expense of the Third World.’

Haslam remembered the photograph on the desk. ‘Family?’

‘Jack met Cath at Harvard. She’s a lawyer, specializes in human rights. They have two girls, both at Sidwell Friends.’

So now you know Jack Donaghue – it was in the way Pearson stopped talking, the way he put the coffee mug on the desk.

‘And from here?’

Pearson laughed and stood up, looked out the window. The door from reception opened and Donaghue came in, followed by an aide. He was taller than Haslam had expected, leaner face and steel-grey hair.

‘Senator, may I introduce Dave Haslam from England. Dave’s a friend of Quince Jordan and Mitch Mitchell.’

‘Good to meet you.’ The handshake was firm. Behind Donaghue the secretary and aide were reminding both him and Pearson that they were due somewhere else ten minutes ago.

Sorry – Donaghue’s shrug said it – have to go. He held out his hand again. ‘As I said, good to meet you.’ The eyes were unwavering. If Donaghue runs for the Democrat nomination he’ll get it, Jordan had said over lunch. And if Donaghue gets the nomination, he’s the next president. Donaghue turned and left the room, the aide trying to keep up.

Pearson held out his hand. ‘Stay in touch.’

By the time Haslam reached the corridor it was already empty. He walked to the ground floor, found a set of pay phones, called the apartment and activated the answer phone. There were three messages on it, two asking him to call about security consultations and the third from Mitchell inviting him to beer and barbecue at the Gangplank.

Donaghue’s last formal meeting on the Hill that evening ended at six. At six-fifteen, and accompanied by an aide, he attended a cocktail party thrown by one of the lobby groups, at seven a second. It was the standard ending to a standard day. At seven-thirty he drove to the University Club on 16th, between L and M. The building was six-storey red brick, with a small drive-in in front. In the daytime the street would have been lined with cars bearing diplomatic plates from the Russian Federation building next door, the parking tickets plastered over their windscreens always ignored. In early evening, however, the only vehicle was a patrol car of the uniformed division of the Secret Service, the White House emblem on the side and the driver slouched in his seat and reading a Tony Hillerman.

Donaghue parked the Lincoln in one of the bays and went inside.

The atmosphere was refined yet relaxed – the University Club had long enjoyed a more liberal reputation than others in town. The main dining-room was on the left, and the library and reading-room on the right, behind the reception desk. On the first floor was another set of rooms, one of which he had hired for his fortieth birthday party, plus a more informal restaurant, and the bedrooms were on the floors above.

He smiled at the receptionist, spent three minutes talking to a group of other members, then went to the fitness rooms in the basement. Even here the upholstery was leather. He collected a towel, stripped, hung his clothes in a locker, took a plunge in the pool, and went into the sauna.

Tom Brettlaw arrived two minutes later.

Brettlaw’s day had begun at seven. At seven-thirty the inconspicuous Chevrolet had collected him from the family home in South Arlington and driven him the fifteen minutes to Langley. The only clue to its passenger was the greenish tinge of the armoured windows and the slight roll of the chassis. The guard on the main gate was expecting him. The driver turned the car past the front of the greyish-white concrete building, down a drive beneath it, and into the inner carpark. Brettlaw collected his briefcase and took the executive lift to his office on the top floor.

The head of the CIA – the Director of Central Intelligence – is a presidential appointment, as is his deputy, normally a serving military officer. Beneath the deputy are five Deputy Directors, all career intelligence officers. Of these the most powerful is the DDO, the Deputy Director of Operations, the man in effective control of all CIA overt and covert operations throughout the world. For the past four years Tom Brettlaw had been DDO.

His office was spacious: two windows, both curtained, a large desk of his own choosing with a row of telephones to his left and a bank of television screens in front. The leather executive chair behind the desk was flanked by the Stars and Stripes and the Agency flag, and the walls were hung with photographs of Brettlaw meeting prominent politicians, most of them heads of state. The mantelpiece of the marble fireplace was filled with the mementos given by the heads of those foreign intelligence services with whom he had liaised over the years, and the floor was covered by a large and expensive Persian rug. To the left of the main room was a private bathroom. In the area of the room to the right of his desk was a conference table, chairs placed neatly round it, and in the bookcase along on the wall to the left of the door was concealed a minibar. During his street days Brettlaw had done his time in the jewel of the CIA crown, the Soviet division, heading it before his promotion to DDO. It was a background he did not allow to pass unnoticed. Even before the collapse of the Soviet empire, those in the division noted with satisfaction, Brettlaw had always made a point of offering visitors a beer, and suggesting they tried a Bud. Not the Budweiser from the US corporation bearing the name, but a Budvar from the Czech Republic. Failing that a Zhiguli from the Ukraine.

The report from Zev Bartolski had come in overnight, for his eyes only and requiring him to decrypt it personally.

Brettlaw and Bartolski had joined the Outfit at more or less the same time, done their field training together at The Farm, their explosives and detonation training together. Worked together in the Soviet division when the going was rough and the shit was hitting the fan. Shared everything, the risks on the way in and the rewards on the way out. Which was why Zev Bartolski was now Chief of Station in Bonn.

By eight Brettlaw had finished the decrypt and locked the report in the security safe; at eight-fifteen he was briefed on global developments in the past twelve hours. At eight-thirty he held his first meeting with his divisional heads, at nine-thirty his regular conference – when both men were available – with the Director of Central Intelligence, the DCI. From ten to eleven-thirty he conducted a further series of meetings with his divisional heads, plus section heads where appropriate, the topics covering the responsibilities entrusted to his stewardship.

Satellite intelligence; liaison with intelligence bodies in the new republics of what had once been the Soviet empire; economic intelligence and industrial counter-espionage. The significance of the Balkan conflict on Islam fundamentalism, and the march of Islam north and west. The surfeit of weapons on the world market, the possibility and cost of buying up part of the former Soviet stockpile, and the latest reports on the availability of weapons-grade plutonium on the black market.

Brettlaw’s personal system of operating reflected the Agency’s: each operation, each transaction, was placed in its separate box. Within each box were further boxes, boxes within them. Finance separated from analysis and analysis separated from operations, covert separated from overt. Of course there were overlaps and of course there were areas of shared knowledge, but only where appropriate and only where it would not endanger security. Only the Director of Central Intelligence fully cognisant of all that was happening. And below the DCI only one man knowing and planning where everything came together, where the jigsaw of pieces became one game. The Deputy Director of Operations, the DDO.

The discussions continued: a possible coup in a Central African state, the implications of the success or failure of such a coup and the loyalties of the current head of state and the colonel allegedly seeking to replace him. Developments in Central America, always a delicate issue, and conflict between the former Soviet republics.

All the topics and operations discussed that morning would be reported not only to the White House, but to the politicians on Capitol Hill. Not to all the politicians, of course, but to the select committees on intelligence of the House of Representatives and the Senate, the members of each appointed because of their maturity and sense of responsibility, and their deliberations closed. So that, constitutionally at least, everything the Agency did was accountable.

Except …

That sometimes the politicians who held the Agency’s purse strings would not understand. That sometimes even experienced men and women like those who sat on the select committees might not like what you were required to do. Because in his world you dealt not just with the present but with the future, therefore some of the sides you were required to support and some of the plans you were required to lay might not necessarily be those which the present politicians would like to be identified with. Because the politicians could never see further ahead than the vote that afternoon and how it would affect their chance of re-election.

It was for this reason that Brettlaw had instigated the black projects, for this reason he had constructed the system of switches and cut-outs by which he could conceal from his political masters those projects of which they would not approve, whose funding was hidden in the labyrinth which constituted the modern banking world.

Of course others had done before what he was doing now, and of course he himself did not always like what he was required to do or the people he was required to do it with. Of course he loathed the right-wing fanatics as much as the left-wing lunatics. Understand such movements, however, get the right people in the right places within them, get his people in the key positions, and in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time the US of A would still be safe.

For people like Brettlaw it was not just a dream, not even just a goal. It was the raison d’être, the reason for being, the source and the justification and the whole goddamn rationale for everything. That as the world crept sometimes too boldly into the next millennium, the children of his children – the children of everybody’s children – would be safe. Even though they did not know of him or the role he played in securing that right for them. Even though it was probably best that they did not know.

Of course some would find it strange: the funds to key figures on all sides of the Balkans conflict, be they Serb or Croat, Christian or Muslim; the politicians, military and intelligence people who would decide the future of the Middle East. The same with the black funds being channelled to those who would be the key people in those countries so recently released from Soviet domination and now facing internal and external crisis, even Moscow itself. Plus the plans for the Pacific Basin, the so-called democracies or the self-confessed dictatorships upon which the economic future of the nation depended.

Even things like economic intelligence.

Industrial counter-espionage, that was the buzz word on the Hill nowadays. Stop the opposition spying on America’s industrial secrets. And within the term opposition he included military and political allies. But if even your friends were doing it to you, then what the hell was he doing if he didn’t do it back? Industrial counterespionage was in, however, and industrial espionage was out, so he had to do it through the back door and forget to tell the people on the Hill.

It was eleven-thirty. The man who now sat opposite him, Costaine, was his Deputy Director for Policy, one of the operational people. One of the Inner Circle, therefore part of the black projects. Not the Inner Circle of the Inner Circle, not one of the Wise Men like Zev Bartolski, but there were few men like Zev Bartolski at any time and in any place. Which was why Zev was more than just CoS, Chief of Station in Bonn, why Zev was a cornerstone of Brettlaw’s plans for the future. Why his brief lay far wider than the standard operating orders. Why, in the best tradition of the best in the business, Bonn Chief of Station was little more than a cover.

‘Everything in order?’

‘Yes.’

Costaine was tall, mid-forties, with a crewcut which gave him a fit appearance.

They went into detail. Boxes in boxes, though; Costaine knowing only what he was allowed to know – not even Zev Bartolski was allowed to know everything. And Costaine knowing nothing of the financial arrangements which supported his operational activities.

It was eleven-fifty.

Myerscough was in his early forties and slightly overweight, with light wire-framed spectacles. Myerscough was good, one of the best. It had been Myerscough who had set up the financial network for the black projects, who had chosen the bank through which they would run the funds, then made the contact with the fixer in the bank and got him on side. Established with him the lacework of nominee companies through which the black funds were laundered. But not even Myerscough, especially not Myerscough, knew anything about how the funds were used.

Myerscough was also careful, even had his own little intelligence set-up, people in places like the Federal Bank and Congress who reported on any interest shown in any of his accounts. Not that they realized who they were working for, of course; and not that they looked for specific accounts. More like the old Soviet and East German systems: report on everything. Then Myerscough and his people would pull those in which they were interested. Brettlaw didn’t necessarily like it: Myerscough never had been a field man and never would be, therefore didn’t have the instinct, didn’t know when to shut up shop and get the hell out. But if Myerscough was happy playing in DC then he wasn’t looking elsewhere.

‘Any problems?’ Brettlaw asked.

‘Couple of minor things,’ Myerscough told him. ‘Sorted out within hours.’

‘What about Nebulus?’

One of the switch accounts in London.

‘Nebulus is fine.’

‘Anything else?’

Myerscough shook his head.

Brettlaw concluded the briefing, took his sixth coffee of the morning, lit another Gauloise, and began to prepare for his appearance before die House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that afternoon. Two, sometimes three days of every month were taken up with such appointments. For the DCI it was one day a week. When Brettlaw was a politics major at Harvard he would have called it democracy.

It was twelve-thirty; he took a light lunch in the executive dining-room and was driven to the Hill. The committee began at two, jugs of iced water on the tables and die members in a semicircle facing him.

‘The payment of $50,000 to a Bolivian government minister was in line with Congressional Order 1765 …’

‘At present the Agency is running two operations in Angola …’

Even though the session was closed there were always too many members wanting to score political points, too many wanting to make names for themselves.

‘With respect, Congressman, I have already explained that to the Senate sub-committee on terrorism …’

You ever been a bag man in Moscow, he had wanted to ask one of them once. Your balls frozen and the KGB hoods sitting on you. Yet still you had to make the contact, still you had to bring it home.

The hearing closed at four-thirty; he made a point of shaking hands with each of its members and was driven back to Langley. At six-thirty he held his penultimate meeting of the day, an hour later he arrived at his last.

The Lincoln town car was parked opposite the University Club and the Secret Service car was half a block down, though he assumed there was another in the alleyway behind. It had been more fun in the old days, before the end of the Cold War, when the building next door had been the Soviet embassy. Now it housed merely the Russian Federation, so that even though the game was still running and the place was still staked out, the edge of driving up 16th had gone for ever.

He walked through the reception area, went to the fitness area in the basement, collected a towel, locked his clothes in a locker, took an ice-cold ten seconds in the plunge bath, and went into the sauna. The wall of heat almost stopped him. He took the towel from his waist, laid it on the wood seat, and sat down.

‘How’s Mary and the family?’ Donaghue asked.

‘Fine. Cath and the girls?’

‘Doing well.’

It was twenty-five years since they had been room mates together at Harvard, since they had studied together and worked their butts off to make the football squad together. A quarter of a century, give or take, since the long grim afternoon, still remembered, at the Yale Bowl. The annual game between the universities of Harvard and Yale, the Crimsons and the Elis. The last play of the last quarter. Yale leading, Brettlaw quarterback and Donaghue wide receiver, the ball in the air and the world holding its breath.

A little over twenty years since their numbers had come up and they had gone to Vietnam, Brettlaw into Intelligence and Donaghue into the Navy. Fourteen months less than that since Brettlaw had heard about Donaghue and kicked ass – filing clerk up to four-star general – to get him out and on the first flight home, to get him the best doctor in the best hospital in town.

A little less than twenty years since they had been best man at each other’s weddings, and, a couple of years after that, godfather to one another’s firstborn.

‘We ought to get together sometime. Have a barbecue.’

‘Let’s do it.’

The sweat was forming in beads on their foreheads.

‘Good session with the committee this afternoon?’

‘No problems.’

‘But?’

‘The enemy’s still there, Jack. Others might forget it but we mustn’t.’

The sweat was pouring in tiny rivulets down their bodies.

‘Hope you’re keeping your nose clean, Tom.’

Because if I run for the nomination I’ll need all the help I can get. And if I make the White House and if there’s nothing you’re trying to hide from me, then you’re head of it all, you’re Top Gun, you’re my Director of Central Intelligence.

‘You know me, Jack.’

The Potomac was silver in the evening sun. The six of them sat on the upper deck of the houseboat, sipping Rolling Rock and munching through the steaks, plus the crabs and lobsters Mitchell had bought from the fish market at the top end of the marina.

None of the others present that evening were connected with the security industry: two were actors, one was a lawyer and one a landscape architect, though all lived on the boats. Each of them knew of Mitchell’s Marine background, of course, each had laughed at the upturned helmet now used as a flower pot and the Marine Corps badge next to the family photographs, but few had noticed the scuba mask and parachute wings above the main emblem, and none had asked. Haslam had, of course, but Haslam knew anyway, because after Vietnam some of the boys from Force Recon had served with the Rhodesian SAS and Haslam had met a couple when, years later, they’d passed through London.

The evening was quiet and relaxing, the others at the front end of the sun deck and Haslam and Mitchell by the barbecue at the rear.

‘Make the Hill this afternoon?’ Mitchell checked a steak.

‘Yeah.’ Haslam was tired but relaxed.

‘Meet Donaghue?’

‘Briefly.’

‘What you think of him?’

‘Impressive, though all he had time for was a handshake. Quince was suggesting he might run for president.’

‘So I hear.’

Mitchell flipped the steak on to a plate and called for someone to collect it.

‘How’d you know Donaghue?’ Haslam poured them each another beer.

‘How do I know Jack Donaghue?’ Mitchell threw two more steaks on the grill. ‘Long story, Dave, long time ago.’ He hesitated, then continued. ‘You know what Force Recon was about, behind the lines most of the time, never off the edge. I was lucky, came back in one piece. Thought I’d come home the hero.’ He laughed. ‘Like the old newsreels of the guys coming back from World War Two, girls and cheer leaders and ticker-tape welcomes. Instead they treated us like shit.’

Criticize the war, Haslam remembered Mitchell had once said, but don’t criticize the kids who left home to fight in it.

‘No job, no past that anybody wanted to know, so no future.’ Mitchell was no longer tending the barbecue, instead he was staring across the river, eyes and face fixed. ‘Ended up doing the wilderness thing in upper New York state, a lotta guys up there, then joined the Forestry Service.’ He laughed again. ‘Finally I ended up on the coast, Martha’s Vineyard, picking up any jobs I could. One day I bumped into Jack Donaghue.’ When Donaghue and Cath and their first daughter – there was only the one then – were on holiday and he himself was serving take-outs at Pete’s Pizzas in Oak Bluffs. ‘Jack told me about GI loans.’ The following morning, drinking beer in the rocking chairs on the veranda of the wood shingle house on Narangassett Avenue which the Donaghues had rented, the smell of summer round them and the ease of the Vineyard relaxing them. ‘He and Cath talked me into taking one, hassled me in to going to law school.’ He laughed a third time, but a different, more relaxed laugh this time. ‘Didn’t even ask for my vote.’

When Haslam left it was gone eleven. He was asleep by twelve. The telephone rang at four.

Could be West Coast, he thought; three hours’ time difference so it was only just gone midnight in LA. Unlikely though. Or Far East, where it would be mid-afternoon, though he had few contacts there. Most probably Europe. Nine in the morning in London, ten in the rest of the Continent.

‘Yes.’

‘Dave. This is Mike.’

London, he confirmed. You know the time? he began to ask.

‘The two o’clock flight out of Dulles this afternoon. You’re on it. A job in Italy.’

3

The thoughts were like wisps of cloud in the sky. Paolo Benini reached up and tried to pull them down, to bring them into contact with that thing called his brain, his mind, his intellect; so that he would have something to anchor them to, so that his brain would have something to work on.

Something about the fax.

He was not aware of the process of thinking, not even fully aware of the thoughts, was only aware of the images which represented them. He was in his room at the hotel, taking the telephone call about the fax and phoning reception back and checking with them. He was opening the door and feeling in his pocket for a tip, was going backwards into the room, the vice round his throat, the men on top of him and the needle in his arm. Was being bundled along the corridor and down the emergency stairs at the rear of the hotel. Was being pushed into the boot of a car, the lid slamming shut and the car pulling away.

Something about the fax, and if it was about the fax it must be about one of the accounts he’d been working on. His mind still struggled to find a logic in the disorder. If it was about one of the accounts it would almost certainly be one of those he’d just dealt with, probably the last one. And if it was the last one it would be the account code-named Nebulus.

The car was stopping – ten, fifteen minutes later, perhaps longer – the boot opening, the hands holding him and another needle in his arm. He was being lifted from one car to another. Was coming round, the boot suffocating like an oven and the smoothness of the autostrada beneath him.

The road was rougher, probably a country road, the car climbing. The road was no longer a road, was a track, the car bumping along it and the vibrations shuddering through his body. He was being blindfolded and lifted out, was being half-dragged, half-pulled, half-carried across a patch of ground. Illogical, his mind was telling him, you can’t have three halves. He was lying down, the blindfold no longer over his eyes but a pain round his right ankle.

Something more about the fax, something still confusing him. The last account he had checked was Nebulus, but reception had said the fax was from Milan and Nebulus was London. Therefore it wasn’t about Nebulus.

He was waking from the nightmare. The pain was still round his ankle and the hotel room was still dark, only the globe of the morning sun through the lines of the curtains. Perhaps not the sun, perhaps the bedside lamp, except that he hadn’t switched it on. He reached for it but found it difficult to turn, his hand going through the lamp or the lamp further away than he had thought.

He jerked awake.

The hurricane lamp was on the other side of the iron bars and the bars themselves were set in concrete in the roof and floor of the cave. The cave was small and the floor was sandy. Against the bars – his side of the bars – were two buckets, and the mattress on which he lay was made of straw. He was wearing his shirt, trousers and socks, and the pain was caused by the manacle clamped round his right ankle, the chain some four feet long and ending in a piton driven into the wall.

Paolo Benini curled into a ball and began to cry.

* * *

The line of passengers stretched through customs and the ranks of friends and relatives waited outside, the drivers holding the names of their pick-ups on pieces of paper in front of them.

Welcome to Milan, Haslam thought, welcome to any airport in any city in any part of the world. Same noise and bustle inside, same chill of air-conditioning. Different smells once you stepped outside, of course, different degrees of heat or cold, and different levels of affluence or poverty. Different reasons for being there.

Santori was standing by the coffee bar.

Ricardo Santori was the company’s man in this part of Italy. Not full-time but paid a retainer, with a successful legal practice outside his kidnap connections. He was in his mid-forties, wearing a business suit and a somewhat colourful tie, and saw Haslam the moment he emerged through the double doors from Customs.

Santori was good: excellent sources and unrivalled access, but because of this he was known not only to those who lived in fear of kidnap, but also to the police units dealing with it. For these reasons, and in case he had been observed, he did not acknowledge Haslam; instead he turned away, paused momentarily for Haslam to spot any tails he might have picked up, then left the terminal. Only in the relative security of the carpark did they shake hands.

‘Thanks for getting here so quickly.’ Santori’s English was good, only a little accented. ‘You’re booked in at the Marino.’ The hotel was in a side street near Central Station and Haslam had stayed there before. Santori gave him a telephone pager and the case file, and swung the Porsche out of the airport and on to the autostrada.

‘Any problems?’ Haslam asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘Schedule?’

‘You’re seeing the family at twelve. I thought you’d like time to change and shower first.’

‘Thanks.’

He settled in the passenger seat and skimmed the two closely typed sheets of the briefing document: the victim’s name and background, family and friends, approximate details of the kidnapping, going rates and time scales for kidnappings in Italy over the past two years in general and the past six months in particular.

‘Have the family heard from the kidnappers yet?’

‘Not when I spoke with them this morning.’

‘But all telephone calls are being recorded?’

A modified Craig 109 VOX on to the main phone in the wife’s flat. VOX – voice activated switch.

‘Yes. I set it up myself.’

The traffic was heavy; by the time Haslam checked in at the Marino it was gone eleven, when they turned in to the Via Ventura it was almost twelve.

The street was attractive and expensive, the pavements wide and lined with boutiques and cafés, apartments above them. The block in which the Beninis had their town apartment was modern and, unlike many buildings in the city, it looked out rather than being built round a central courtyard. It was some fifty metres from the shops and set back from the road, with parking space for visitors in front. A striped canopy protected those arriving by car at the front door, and a side road swung round to what Haslam assumed was an underground carpark. Security door on the garage, he also correctly assumed.

There were three cars in the parking area opposite the front door: a top-of-the-range Saab 9000, a dark blue BMW soft-top, and a Mercedes with two men lounging near it, the air of driver and minder stamped upon them.

Haslam pulled his briefcase from the rear seat and followed Santori to the entrance. The front door had a security lock and intercom system. Only after the lawyer had announced them and the porter had confirmed they were expected were they allowed inside. The entrance was marble, lined with busts and statuettes, and the lift which took them smoothly and swiftly to the fifth floor smelt of lavender. There was a moment’s delay after Santori had rung the bell on the door to the front right, then it opened and a housekeeper showed them inside.

Even in the hallway, the paintings on the walls – oils, and mainly of flowers – were perfectly positioned and subtly lit. They followed the housekeeper through to the lounge. The room was on a split level and the walls were hung with landscapes, most of them Fattoris or Rosais. The wife, Francesca, was an interior designer, Haslam remembered the brief: if this was their town apartment wonder what the family home in Emilia was like.

The oval mahogany table was in the centre of the lower floor level, three men and one woman seated round it. As Santori and Haslam entered they stood up.

‘Signore Benini, Mr Haslam.’ Santori began the introductions.

Umberto Benini, the victim’s father, Haslam assumed: early sixties, tall and alert, slightly hooked nose and immaculate suit. Businessman with the usual political connections.

The observations were in shorthand, and shorthand inevitably led to value judgements which might or might not be correct, Haslam reminded himself.

Umberto Benini took over from Santori.

‘Signore Rossi, who is representing BCI.’ Early forties, sharp looker though dressed like a banker, and wearing tinted spectacles.

‘Marco, my son.’ Mid-thirties and less conservative suit. The victim’s brother.

‘Signora Benini.’ The victim’s wife. Late thirties, therefore younger than her husband, five feet four tall and holding her figure, despite the two daughters. Eyes red, had been crying shortly before his arrival but had covered the fact with make-up. Clothes expensive and beautifully cut.

Santori confirmed there was nothing more the family wished to ask him, shook their hands – starting with Umberto Benini – and left.

Interesting order of introductions, Haslam thought: banker, son, and only then the victim’s wife. How many times had he sat in this sort of room and looked at these sort of people and these frightened faces?

The positions round the table had already been determined: the father at the head, the banker on his right and the son on his left, the wife two away from him on his left, and the empty chair for Haslam facing him at the other end. Only the father and the banker smoking, and the wife re-positioning the ashtray as if it didn’t belong.

The housekeeper poured them coffee, left the cream and sugar on the silver tray in the centre of the table, and closed the door behind her.

‘Before we continue, perhaps I should introduce myself more fully and outline what my role is. The first thing to say is that everything said in this room, from you to me or me to you, is confidential.’ He waited to confirm they understood. ‘As you know, my name is David Haslam, I’m a crisis consultant, in this case the crisis is a kidnapping.’

It was the way he began every first meeting, partly to establish a structure and partly because there were certain things to arrange in case the kidnappers telephoned while they were talking.

‘Before you begin, perhaps you would allow me to say a few words.’ Umberto Benini made sure his English, and his intonation, were perfect.

Because I’m Paolo’s father, but more important than that I’m head of the family and the person in charge. Therefore I say who says what and when.

‘Paolo worked for the Banca del Commercio Internazionale. He was based in Milan but travelled extensively. Signore Rossi is a colleague.’ The wave of the hand indicated that Rossi should provide the details.

‘Paolo was in Zurich. We have a branch there.’ The banker looked at him through the cigarette smoke. ‘On the day in question he had returned from London, where we also have a branch, with more meetings in Zurich the following morning.’

They were already playing it wrong, Haslam thought. If the kidnappers phoned now they wouldn’t be prepared. And once he’d arrived they should be, because his job was to make sure they were.

‘After work that afternoon he was driven to the hotel where he normally stays. He arrived at about seven, took dinner at eight-thirty and retired to his room at ten. He was last seen at eleven. When he failed to come down for breakfast the next morning his bodyguards opened his room. The bed had not been slept in and nothing had been touched or taken.’

‘How many bodyguards?’ Haslam asked.

‘One with him all the time, plus his own driver and two more he normally has when he is in Italy.’

Except that Benini wasn’t in Italy when he was snatched, but he still had a whole army of minders. ‘How did the kidnappers access his room?’

‘We’re not sure.’

‘You said he was last seen at eleven?’

‘Apparently a fax was sent to the hotel for his attention. Reception informed him and he asked for it to be sent up. The porter remembered it was eleven o’clock, give or take a couple of minutes, when he delivered it.’

Haslam knew what the kidnappers had done and how they had done it. Months of research and planning behind the snatch itself. Which was bad, because their security would be watertight, but good, because they’d know the rules.

‘You’ve checked the fax?’

‘It’s being checked now.’

Haslam nodded. ‘As I began to say earlier, my name is David Haslam. I work regularly for companies like the one to whom the bank is contracted under the kidnap section of its insurance policy. I’m British but based in Washington. Before that I was in the Special Air Service of the British Army.’

Umberto was about to intervene again, he sensed; therefore he should get the next bit out the way and fast, because that way he was covered, that way even Umberto might begin to understand how they all had to play it.

‘Have the kidnappers been in touch yet?’

The father drummed his fingers on the mahogany. ‘No.’

‘In that case the first thing we do is prepare for when they do.’ Why – it was in the way they looked at him. ‘Because they might even phone while we’re talking.’

His briefcase was on the floor; he opened it and took out an A4 pad.

‘Where do we think the call will come?’ The question was directed at Umberto Benini.

‘I assume it will be to here.’

‘So who’s most likely to take it?’

‘I am.’ It was the wife.

Haslam focused on her. ‘The man who calls you will be a negotiator. He won’t know where Paolo is being held or anything else about him. Nor will he have power to make decisions. He’ll report back to a controller. But the negotiator is important, not just because he’s the contact point, but because he’s the man who’ll interpret to the controller how things are going.

‘The key thing in the first call is that you don’t commit yourself to anything. The negotiator will say certain things. We have him. If you want him back you’ll have to pay. How you react will govern the rest of the negotiations. So it’s imperative, imperative …’ he repeated ‘… that you don’t say anything you might regret later. We do this by giving you a script.’

He looked at her. ‘May I call you Francesca?’

She nodded, too numb to do otherwise.

He wrote three brief sections on the paper and passed it across the table. The wife read it and passed it in turn to her father-in-law.

CONCERN OVER PAOLO | Is he alive?Is he being treated well?
MONEY | Can’t even think about money until I know he’s alive.
IF PRESSED | Too much.Don’t have that sort of cash.Prove he’s alive.

Umberto Benini nodded at the wife but kept the paper in front of him.

‘Signore Santori gave you the recording device?’ Haslam asked.

‘Already in position.’

‘Good.’ He turned again to the wife. ‘Tell me about Paolo.’

‘We’ve been married sixteen years; he’s away a lot now, so the girls miss him. We have this apartment in town and a home in Emilia.’

‘What about you?’

‘I run my own interior design company.’

‘I can see.’ He looked at the paintings on the walls and saw that she’d smiled for the first time. ‘Tell me about the girls, where they are now.’

‘They’re with their grandmother,’ Umberto informed him.

‘Have you and Paolo ever discussed the possibility of one of you being kidnapped, made any plans for it?’ Haslam looked at Francesca. ‘Any codes, for example?’

‘No.’ The wife’s face was drawn again, the tension showing through.

‘Have the police been informed. And if not, do you wish them to be?’

Most families suffering a kidnapping preferred to keep that fact secret from the police. Partly because Italian law forbad the payment of money to kidnappers; therefore if a kidnap was reported or suspected the first action of the state was to freeze the family’s funds to prevent payment. And partly because most families rich enough to attract the attention of kidnappers normally wished to conceal the size of their wealth.

‘No to both questions.’ Umberto and Rossi answered simultaneously.

‘Fine, that’s your decision. You should be aware, however, that it’s possible they’ll find out.’ At least they were in Italy, he thought, at least there was no Ortega to worry about.

‘That aspect is already covered.’

Because this is Milan and in Milan we pay to make sure that sort of thing doesn’t happen. Or if it does somebody sits on it and fast.

Umberto Benini lit another cigarette.

Haslam took them to the next stage.

‘In that case the next thing we have to discuss is our own organization, what some people call the CMT, the crisis management team. Who’s on it and who fills which roles.’

They went through the positions.

Chairman.

‘I would be more than happy to fulfil that role.’ Umberto Benini.

Negotiator.

Myself again – it was in the way Umberto sat back, the way he shrugged.

It might be advisable to separate the positions, Haslam told him carefully. The negotiator’s job was communication and the chairman’s was decision-making, and sometimes the two were incompatible.

‘In that case, Signore Rossi,’ Umberto suggested.

‘In some ways a good choice,’ Haslam agreed, ‘but in other ways not. In a way it depends whether we wish to reveal the fact that the bank is involved.’

‘Why shouldn’t we?’

‘If the bank is seen to be involved then the ransom the kidnappers will hold out for will be much higher.’

‘So Francesca.’

‘Yes. But before she decides she should know what it involves.’

Marco, the brother, hadn’t spoken at all, and Francesca only occasionally.

‘What does it involve?’ Umberto gave neither of them the chance to contribute.

The man was on auto-pilot because his son had been kidnapped, Haslam reminded himself. Therefore give him a chance, give them all a chance. Because these people were all in hell, and he was their only way out.

‘The kidnapper’s negotiator will switch tactics, one moment he’ll be reasonable and the next he’ll be swearing and screaming. Then he’ll be the only friend Francesca has in the world. And all the time she’ll not only have to control herself, but try to manipulate the other side.’

‘I understand,’ the wife said simply.

Courier.

‘Tell us what the courier does.’ Umberto Benini peered down the hawk nose. To avoid confusion Haslam already mentally referred to the father as Umberto and the kidnap victim as Paolo.

‘The courier collects messages and packages the kidnappers leave for us. The courier will also be responsible for dropping the ransom money when that moment comes.’

Therefore Rossi the bank representative or Marco the brother. But Marco was only in the room because he was family, Haslam suspected. Umberto hadn’t even decided whether or not Marco should even be involved.

He turned to Rossi. ‘It might be that you feel you should play this role. You might also feel, however, that the same problems about the bank’s involvement arise.’

‘We’ll discuss it.’ Umberto broke the meeting and called for fresh coffee.

Haslam waited till the housekeeper had served them, then continued.

‘In kidnap negotiations there are guidelines, almost procedures. All the signs are that the kidnappers are professionals, which means they’ll know them and stick by them. They’ll also try to control the situation through them, but those procedures give us the chance to do the same thing back.’

‘For example?’ Umberto Benini asked.

‘The negotiator will tell you to get a clean phone. That’s a number somewhere else in case the police find out about the kidnapping and start tapping this one. We can begin to control the situation by telling the kidnappers we want to use a clean phone before they tell us.’

They went through the alternatives: the properties or offices owned or controlled by Umberto, and the facilities which the bank could provide.

‘We have another apartment, an investment.’ It was Francesca.

‘Whose name is it in, because if it’s in your name it’s no good.’

‘A company name.’

‘Empty?’

‘At the moment.’

‘Fine.’

He wrote the number on the sheet of paper in front of him.

‘One more thing our negotiator has to get across.’ There were several more things, but at a first meeting he preferred to keep instructions to a minimum. ‘The time Francesca, assuming it will be Francesca, will be waiting at the clean phone. The kidnappers will try to leave it open, so that she’d be waiting at the phone twenty-four hours a day. You can imagine the effect that would have. So we specify a time, but that time must be in keeping with Francesca’s normal schedule, therefore it should probably be in the evening.’

‘Why?’ Umberto asked.

‘Because however difficult it will be at first, you must continue to lead your normal lives – business appointments, personal matters. One reason, as I’ve already suggested, is that it maintains a structure to your lives.’

Because otherwise you’ll go insane.

But I’m already going insane, he knew the wife was thinking.

So how was she going to stand up to it, he wondered, how was she going to take whatever the kidnappers threw at her. How was she going to take the pressure Umberto would bring to bear on her. Because that was the way it was already going.

‘There’s another reason for not disrupting your normal schedule. If you do there’s a chance the police might spot it, and if they do it wouldn’t be long before they worked out that someone’s been kidnapped.’

And the first thing they’d do after that would be to freeze the family funds and even try to intervene in the affairs of the bank.

‘Agreed,’ Rossi said on behalf of the bank and the family.

Haslam took the holding script and rewrote it.

CONCERN OVER PAOLO | Is he alive?
TELEPHONE NUMBER AND TIME | Keep saying it.
MONEY | Can’t even think about money until I know he’s alive.
IF PRESSED | Just prove he’s alive.
AND CLEAN PHONE AND TIME.

‘You’ll want some time to yourselves, to talk through what I’ve told you today. I suggest we arrange a meeting for tomorrow. There are other things to discuss, but I think Francesca has enough to handle until then.’

Why not deal with them now? It was in the way Umberto turned.

‘Not today.’ Francesca’s voice was suddenly tired. I’ve had enough for one day, more than I can cope with. Just give me twenty-four hours to take on board what he’s already told me, then I’ll be able to face the rest. She called for the housekeeper to telephone for a cab. ‘What time tomorrow?’

‘Remember what I told you,’ Haslam reminded her. ‘That we should build our meetings into your normal routines. Unless, of course, something happens.’ He knew she was having difficulty accepting what he was telling them. ‘If it’s in the evening it shouldn’t be over dinner. It should be a business meeting like any other.’

‘Six-thirty,’ Francesca suggested.

‘If the kidnappers make contact what time will you tell them to ring the clean phone?’

‘Seven in the evening.’

‘Good. I’ll be at the hotel. If I leave it for any reason I’ll be carrying a pager.’ He gave them the details. ‘One last thing. In case the kidnappers call, are you happy to be here by yourself or do you want someone with you?’

‘The housekeeper will stay when I need her. I’m fine.’

The cab was waiting. He shook each of their hands and left.

The evening was warm and the three cars he had seen when he arrived were still there: the Saab, the BMW and the Mercedes, the driver and minder sitting in it like a calling card. Perhaps he should have said something about it at the meeting, except that then he hadn’t been sure that the Mercedes was the banker’s.

By the time he reached the Marino it was dusk.

His room was large and well-furnished and faced on to the inner courtyard, so that the sound of the Milan traffic was deadened. The bathroom was well-equipped, the wallpaper was flowered but relaxing, and an ornate fan was suspended from the ceiling, circling slowly. The two armchairs were low but comfortable, and the escritoire set against one of the windows was large enough to work at. The television was in a walnut cabinet in one corner, the minibar beside it.

After the meeting his clothes smelt of cigarette smoke. He stretched the stiffness from his back, unpacked, and took a shower. Then he dressed – casual clothes and shoes – arranged for a dry cleaning service every day, and began the case log. Kidnap and kidnappers; victim and family, in which he included the banker Rossi; security and other problems, plus the bank itself.

KIDNAP | From hotel room. Bodyguards present at all other times.
| Switzerland overnight after return from London.
| Police not informed.
| Genuine?

Because sometimes people, even bankers, faked their own disappearances. For money or fear or any number of reasons.

KIDNAPPERS | Professionals.
VICTIM | Bodyguard plus back-up.
| Why? Especially when no specific threat.

Paolo Benini had been carrying three bodyguards and one driver, effectively four minders, but at the time he had been out of Italy. So either he was special, or whatever he was working on was.

FAMILY | Father dominant.
| Wife strong.
| Brother would come through.
| Banker calculating.

So what about them; what about Francesca and Umberto and Marco? What about the banker Rossi?

Francesca was quiet and still in shock, but she already showed signs of strength, which was positive. Francesca was fighting back, trying to get into it. Yet there were also signs of friction in her relationship with her father-in-law, which might prove negative. Plus there was something intangible about her and Paolo.

Which wasn’t quite what he meant.

What he really meant was that there had been something about Francesca’s description of Paolo that reminded him of himself. We’ve been married sixteen years. He’s away a lot now, so the girls miss him. Which was what his own wife would say of him. He brushed the uneasiness aside and continued with the case log.

Francesca would be strong, but Francesca had given him nothing about Paolo. So what about Francesca? Did she have a lover or did Paolo have a mistress? Or was Paolo gay? It had happened before on a kidnap.

Marco would get the courier’s job. Umberto would treat him like shit, but Marco would do what was needed.

Which left Umberto and Rossi.

Umberto Benini appeared to be the central figure, yet Umberto wasn’t the power-broker. Umberto would puff and blow, but in the end Umberto would snap his fingers for Francesca to pour them each another cognac and then he would do whatever the bank suggested.

SECURITY | Check cars outside, especially Mercedes.
PROBLEMS | Bank involvement might upset negotiations if kidnappers find out.Family might not accept recommendations.

The bank might be seen to be involved either by the cars outside, or by the way the management team decided to conduct the negotiations. Which led to the second problem, the feeling he’d had the moment he’d introduced himself and Umberto Benini had intervened, the sense, almost a foreboding, that this one was going to be difficult. Of course they were all difficult, of course the families or companies he advised sometimes found it hard to accept what he was telling them. But all through the meeting that afternoon and evening he’d been increasingly aware of the unease growing in him.

It was as if the dawn mist was hanging over them, he had thought at one stage; yet it was late morning, the sun was up, and the mist should have vanished with the day.

It was as if he was dug into an OP, an observation post, he had thought at another point of the meeting; the target in front of him but the eerie feeling that he was facing the wrong way.

He was tired, he told himself now as he had told himself earlier. Kidnap negotiations took it out of you, drained the life and body and soul from you. Because for one or two months, sometimes three, you ate and slept and breathed it; thought of nothing but the kidnapper and his victim and how you could get that victim back safely.

So he was drained, he admitted, especially after the last job. He should have taken that break after Lima, should have gone home and spent time with Meg and the boys. But he hadn’t. So he should stop assigning blame, grab a good night’s sleep, and get on with it.

He moved to the last item of the case log.

BANK
Logical they should be represented.Anything else?

Why should there be anything else?

Now that the others had left the apartment seemed empty. Francesca opened the windows to clear the cigarette smoke, then phoned the girls, showered, went to bed, and tried to remember what had been agreed at the meeting with the Englishman and the discussion after he had left.

Some of the things he had said were reasonable, Umberto had conceded, except that they were logical and precisely what they themselves would have done. Then Umberto had downed the cognac and waved to her to pour him and Rossi another.

The family and the bank were behind her, though. She knew she had the full backing of the bank, Rossi had told her as they left. And that was what mattered. Even though she didn’t always like the way Umberto tried to dominate his sons, her, her children. Even if she didn’t totally trust Rossi.

And what about you Paolo? Why hadn’t she told the Englishman the truth? Okay, she hadn’t told the Englishman about the other properties they owned and the investments in Italy and overseas, most of them hidden from the authorities. But that wasn’t what she meant. Why hadn’t she told the Englishman about what her relationship with Paolo was really like? Not in front of the others, perhaps; especially not in front of Umberto.

So what about the Englishman and the things the Englishman had told her? Her mind was too confused and her body too cold to answer. She pulled the bedclothes tight around her and waited for the phone call in the dark. When she checked the time less than an hour had passed; when she checked again only another thirty minutes. The fear engulfed her, gnawed at her, till she was almost physically sick. When first light came she was unsure whether or not she had slept; when the housekeeper brought her coffee she was still shivering.

She wouldn’t go to the office today, she decided; today she would sit and wait by the telephone, as she had every day since the first terrible news. She changed her mind. Today she would go to the office, because that was what the man called Haslam had told her to do, and all she wanted, in the grey swirling panic that was her brain, was for someone to tell her what to do and when and where to do it.

Ninety minutes later she drove to the building in one of the streets off Piazza Cadorna. It was good to be out of the house, she thought as she parked the car; good to be in the sun and see people. It was good to have something other than the kidnap to think about, good to check with the secretary and the other designers and artists and craftsmen she employed, good to hear from a client about how pleased they were, even good to sort out a problem.

‘How’s Paolo?’ someone asked, and the clouds gathered again as if they had never cleared.

‘Away on business,’ she forced herself to say, forced herself to smile, almost decided to return to the apartment. Instead she took a tram to Porta Ticinese and walked along the canal at Alzaia Naviglio Grande. The sky was blue and the sun was hot, but most of the tourists who came to Milan didn’t come here. At weekends, when the antique dealers and the bric à brac sellers put up their stalls, the streets along the canal were crowded, but today they were quiet. Halfway along a fashion photographer was taking shots of a male model. The photographer was short and energetic, and the model was tall and beautiful, aquiline features and striking eyes. She sat on the stone wall of the canal and watched.

So what about the Englishman?

May I call you Francesca? he had asked.

Paolo’s away a lot now, so the girls miss him, she had said. And for a moment she had sensed that Haslam understood what she meant.

Thank you for allowing me to make decisions for myself, she had thought when Umberto had decreed she should be the negotiator and Haslam had replied that before she decided she should know what the task involved. Thank you for treating me like an individual.

And Haslam had told her what to say on the phone and given her a script to follow, even though Umberto had changed it after the Englishman had left.

So Haslam was her friend. Her guide and her protector. But not always.

Because Haslam had said there was a second reason why she should maintain a normal routine, because if she didn’t the police might spot it and freeze the family funds. So Haslam was not only treating it like a business, he had even used the word itself. The meeting this evening should be a business meeting like any other, he had said.

Therefore tonight he would be hard on her, tonight he would tell her she had to treat Paolo like a business item, because that was how the kidnappers would consider him. Tonight he would even say that she shouldn’t think of Paolo as her husband but as an item in the profit and loss account.

Rossi’s meeting with the chairman was at ten.

‘We’re sure Paolo Benini’s been kidnapped?’ Negretti came to the point immediately.

He hasn’t done a bunk, hasn’t got another woman and run off with some of the bank’s funds?

‘Positive.’

It was a sign of the future that the chairman had personally chosen him to represent BCI in the Benini kidnapping, Rossi was aware. Yet that future would also be determined by a successful outcome. For that reason his brief to Negretti had been carefully prepared; for that reason he had already decided to emphasize the positive elements of the first meeting with the consultant.

‘But the kidnappers haven’t yet been in touch?’ Negretti had a way of staring at you as he spoke.

‘Not yet.’ Perhaps Rossi’s next statement was factual, perhaps he was already covering himself. ‘The consultant says it’s normal. He expects them to be in touch soon.’

How much will the ransom be, he assumed the chairman would ask next.

‘And once they do, how long will the negotiations take?’

Not long … the response was implied in the question, the way it was spoken, the way Negretti rolled the cigar between his fingers. Except that wasn’t what Haslam seemed to be suggesting. They hadn’t covered it yet, but Haslam seemed to be preparing them for a long and bumpy ride.

‘We should be able to wrap it up quickly.’

The chairman stared at him across the desk. ‘You’re confident about that?’

‘Absolutely.’

* * *

Francesca was kissing him, running her tongue against him. On the slopes behind the villa where the vines grew he could hear the girls playing, in the swimming pool in front the water shimmered in the mid-morning sun. Paolo laughed as Francesca nibbled him again and thought about the telephone call he had to make and the fax he had to sort out, the check with the bank that everything was in order.

In an hour they’d call the girls and take lunch – bread and wine and cheese. In the winter, when the cold settled and the fire roared in the stone-walled kitchen, it would be a heavier wine, a casserole simmering on the stove.

Francesca’s kiss was slightly sharper. He’d make the phone call now, he decided, confirm the details on the fax that had been delivered last night, perhaps contact London and Zurich as well as head office in Milan. He reached for the mobile and felt the bite as he did so. Woke and realized.

The rat was on his leg, eyes staring at him and mouth twitching.

He screamed and tried to pull away. Cursed: cursed the rat, cursed the manacle round his ankle which stopped him moving, cursed Francesca.

The sound came from nowhere.

The routine was always the same: the first shuffle of feet in the darkness beyond the circle of the hurricane lamp, perhaps voices, then a second lamp held high and the two men at the iron bars of his cell.

He looked at them without moving.

The men were roughly dressed and wore hoods, holes cut in them for eyes, nose and mouth. One held the lamp and the other the plate. The man with the lamp unlocked the door of the cell and the second came in, placed the plate on the sand of the floor, took the two buckets from the corner, and stepped out. The first locked the door again, then the two disappeared in to the darkness.

Paolo Benini waited. His back was against the wall and his legs and body were pulled into a bundle, his legs up and his arms wrapped round himself. His shirt was stained with food and drink, and his trousers smelt of urine.

The sounds of feet came again from the darkness, the second lamp appeared again and the two men stood outside the bars of the cell. Not once had they spoken to him, or to each other in his immediate presence. The man with the lamp unlocked the door and the second placed the two buckets of fresh water on the floor.

It was the moment Paolo Benini already feared the most.

The doors of the cell clanged shut, the key rasped in the lock, the footsteps faded in the black, and he was alone again.

* * *

The weather had changed slightly, was more humid, more oppressive. Haslam felt the change as he left the hotel.

Maintain a timetable independent of the kidnapping, he had told Francesca, build a routine that will keep you sane. The same for himself. That morning, therefore, he had begun his own schedule: an hour’s run, breakfast, examination of the options, then the first of the museums – one in the morning and another that afternoon. Except he’d been there before, done it before: the last time he’d had a job in Milan and the time before that.

At three he took a cab to Via Ventura, even though the meeting was not till six-thirty.

Via Ventura sloped slightly east to west, the apartment block towards the lower end and set back on the left. At the top of the street, on the right, was a café, the Figaro; the waiters were smartly dressed and there was an awning over the tables and chairs on the pavement. Below it was a line of shops and boutiques, all expensive yet all busy, and all with apartments above them. The pavement was wide and lined with lime trees, an occasional bench beneath them. Down the right side of the road, though not the left, were parking spaces, cut into the pavement rather than on the road itself.

Sixteen bays – he divided the area into units and counted them. The apartment block and the parking area at its front visible from bays eight to thirteen, counting from the top; the line of vision from numbers one to eight obstructed by trees on the left side of the road, and from numbers fourteen to sixteen by trees on the right.

From just below the parking area a side road cut right, again lined with shops and apartments. On the opposite side of the road was a small garden, a fountain in the middle and an apartment block behind. Most of the accommodation seemed private, except for a small hotel overlooking the fountain and a block of service flats near the Beninis’ apartment, both expensive.

The Saab and BMW were parked in front of the apartment, and the same two men were sitting in the Mercedes. He gave his name at the security grille and took the lift to the fifth floor. The family, plus the banker, were already at their places round the table. He shook hands with each of them and accepted a coffee.

‘No contact from the kidnappers?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘What about the crisis management team?’

‘We’ve agreed.’ Umberto Benini told him. ‘Myself as chairman and Francesca as negotiator. I would have liked Signore Rossi to play a more prominent role, but the bank really should keep a low profile, so Marco’s the courier.’

Haslam nodded and took the meeting on.

‘There are certain things to discuss: how we ask the kidnappers to prove that Paolo is alive, the details of the ransom, and the ways of communicating with the kidnappers. Plus something else, something basic.’

It was better to confront them with it and make them confront it now.

‘Kidnapping is a business. They have something you want – Paolo. And you have something they want – money. You have to think of it like that, nothing more. It sounds harsh, but it’s the best way, perhaps the only way, of getting Paolo back.’

She knew what Haslam would tell her, Francesca thought, and now he had.

‘Their first demand will be a starting point; what they expect will be substantially below that. The amount they accept depends on a number of factors, things like how much the research and preparation has already cost, plus their other expenses, past and present. The longer the kidnap lasts the more the man controlling it is paying out. What the kidnappers ask, and what they will accept, also depends on the going rates.’

Francesca could not believe what he was telling her, how he was telling her.

‘The major kidnappings in Italy at the moment are breaking down into two distinct groups, depending on the size of the first demand. Where the first demand is ten miliardi, the amount agreed is averaging 500 million lire.’

Which, at an exchange rate of £400 to a million lire, was a start price of £4 million and a settlement of £200,000.

‘Where the first demand is in the region of five miliardi, the average final payment is 450 million.’

Thus a starting price of £2 million and a final figure of £180,000.

How can you put a price on my husband’s life? Francesca’s eyes bored into him. How can you say on average this, on average that?

‘When the starting demand is ten miliardi, the victim is being released after an average of one hundred days; when it’s five miliardi the victim is released after an average of sixty-six.’

Christ, thought Rossi. The chairman would kill him if it took half, even a quarter, that time.

‘The obvious temptation is to pay as much as you can as quickly as you can. This is wrong. The kidnapper starts high and we start low, so that we encourage him to lower his expectations. When we raise our offer we don’t add too much too quickly.’

‘Why not?’ Francesca heard her own voice.

Because the bank was insured, she thought; therefore the company paying the ransom would want to keep it to a minimum, therefore Haslam was on a bonus if he came in with a low settlement.

‘If we pay too much we run the risk of the kidnappers thinking there might be a lot more. If we pay too quickly he might say thanks for the deposit, now for the real money. He might even demand a second or even a third ransom.’

How do you know? She was still staring at him. How can you say such things?

Because I’ve been here before – he stared back at her. Because long after Paolo’s home I’ll be in a room like this with someone like you staring at me and accusing me the way you are now.

‘I’m not saying it will come to this,’ he told them. ‘All I’m doing is telling you the structure. Which is why I’m here.’

‘What else?’ The question was from both Umberto and Francesca, the disgust in his voice and the fear and the hate in hers.

‘We have to decide the proof question Francesca asks to make sure that Paolo is alive.’

‘Something to do with the bank.’ Rossi’s intervention was short and sharp. ‘That way I can verify it.’

That way I not only control the situation, but prove to the chairman that I do.

‘It’s normally personal.’ Haslam looked at the banker then at the others in turn. ‘Something only Paolo would know, nothing the kidnappers could find out from their research.’

‘We’ll think on it.’ Umberto again.

Haslam focused on Marco. ‘The last point is communication. After the first calls they might tell you to collect a letter or package, and specify the place. It’ll be close to the clean phone, probably two or three minutes away. That gives them time to place it after they’ve given Francesca the message, but it gives you time to get there in case the police are tapping the phone and try to get there before you. It will also be a place where they can keep you under observation.’

The younger son began to speak but Haslam stopped him.

‘There’s something else you should keep in mind. Just as they’ll try to put pressure on Francesca in the phone calls, so they’ll use the dead letter drops to apply a similar pressure on all of you.’

How … no one asked.

‘If it’s a letter, it might simply contain instructions, or it might contain a note from Paolo. What you have to remember is that whatever he writes will have been dictated to him.’

And if it’s a package … Francesca had heard the stories and read the newspaper articles.

‘If it’s a package it might contain an audio or video tape of Paolo. Either way he’ll probably sound or look bad. You don’t worry about that. They’ll have made him sound or look that way.’

‘What about other packages?’ Francesca allowed the fear to grow.

‘The key thing to remember is that packages are also part of the bargaining process,’ Haslam told them all, but talked to her in particular. ‘Packages are one of the ways the kidnappers will put pressure on you. Therefore they might contain something which is blood-stained, they might even contain a part of a body. In ninety-nine per cent of cases the blood is fake and the body part didn’t come from the victim.’

How can you tell me this? Francesca stared at him. How can you do this to me? Yesterday you helped me, protected me, gave me strength. But today you’re taking it all from me, today you’re treating me worse than Umberto treats me.

‘The other part of the communication is you to them.’ Haslam took them to the next stage. ‘You obviously can’t phone them, so you tell them you want to speak with them by placing adverts in newspapers. You put a specified advert in and they then know you’re waiting at the telephone at the appointed time. It’s also a way of you telling them to get in touch with you after a prolonged period of silence from them.’

‘Why silence?’ Umberto.

‘Because silence is another weapon; sometimes kidnaps go for weeks without contact.’

This wasn’t what the chairman would want to hear – Rossi glanced at Umberto then back at Haslam. So begin thinking it through now, begin to plan what he could use and how he could use it. Work out how he could hide behind Haslam and how he could use Haslam when the crunch came with the chairman.

‘Anything else?’ Umberto again.

‘The first is your personal security. Double or triple kidnappings are not common, but not unknown. Marco is an obvious target when he makes the pick-ups, but he also has a certain inbuilt protection as he’s part of their communication system with you.’

‘The next?’ Umberto stared at him, elbows on the table, chin resting on his hands and eyes unblinking.

‘We’ve said that the bank will keep as low a public profile as possible.’

‘So?’

‘If the Mercedes driver and bodyguard outside belong to BCI, it might not be the sort of profile the bank wants.’

‘We’ll sort it out.’ And meeting over. It was in the way Umberto Benini snapped shut the file. ‘If you would leave us so that we might consider what you have just told us.’

The family meeting which followed lasted little more than thirty minutes. As he and the Beninis left, Rossi took Francesca’s hand.

‘I know what Haslam said about not offering too much too quickly, but if it means getting Paolo out, the bank will pay whatever it takes.’

A good man to have by your side, Umberto Benini knew, the right man to rely on.

‘Thank you.’ Francesca tried to smile and went to the window, watched as the cars pulled away.

She had been right about Haslam. The bastard had told them to put a price on Paolo’s life, had almost gone further. Had only just stopped short of telling her to think about how much she was prepared to pay and of suggesting that there might be a moment when she should abandon Paolo to the vultures. At least Umberto was adamant that they wouldn’t give in, at least Rossi had said the bank would pay whatever it took.

The telephone rang.

Oh God no, she thought; please God no, she prayed. She turned and began to call for the housekeeper then remembered she hadn’t asked the woman to stay. Why hadn’t she listened to Haslam when he’d asked if she’d be all right by herself? Why hadn’t he asked her again tonight?

She made herself pick up the phone.

‘Hello, Mama, it’s me.’

She sank into the chair and fought back the tears as her younger daughter asked after her father, heard herself lying.

‘And where’s Gisella?’

‘Riding. Do you want her to phone you when she gets in?’

‘That would be nice.’

The evening was slipping away. She stared out of the window and told herself it was time for bed.

The telephone rang again. Francesca smiled and picked it up. ‘Gisella,’ she began to say. ‘Good to hear you. How was the ride … ?’

* * *

The Benini kidnap was going well, Vitali decided: the banker was safely concealed in the fortress which was Calabria, and the family had been waiting long enough to be feeling the strain.

It was eleven in the morning, the light playing through the window on to the large wooden desk in the centre of his office; the telephones on the left, fax and computer on the right, and the recording equipment and mobile phone in the drawer. The mobile rented and paid for through a false name and bank account to which he could not be linked, in case the carabinieri broke the organization’s security and tried to trace him. Plus the scrambler which he would use because mobiles were notoriously insecure.

He was alone, as he always was at this time of day. He opened the drawer, clipped on the scrambler and dialled the first number.

‘Angelo. This is Toni.’

Angelo Pascale was in his mid-thirties, thinly built so that his suits hung slightly off his shoulders, and lived in a two-room flat up a spiral staircase off a courtyard close to Piazza Napoli, in the west of the city. He had never met the man he knew as Toni, but Toni paid well and on time, and as long as Toni was in the kidnap business then there was always work for people like himself.

He clipped on the scrambler and keyed in the code Toni told him.

‘Tonight, nine o’clock.’ Vitali gave him the address. ‘I’ll phone again at ten.’ He ended the call and sat back in the chair.

So how much?

The going rate was between 450 and 500 million lire and the first demand was around either five or ten miliardi, so that was what they would be expecting. Nobody would pay that much, of course, but after deducting his expenses even 450 million would still show a good profit.

He leaned forward again and dialled the number of the negotiator, again using the scrambler. In the old days it had been anonymous calls to faceless people waiting at public telephones. Some organizations still used the old techniques, he supposed, but a man had to move with the times.

‘Musso, it’s Toni.’ Mussolini was good, not as good as Vitali himself had been, but still one of the best. Mussolini was not his real name, but it was what the man called Toni called him, and what the negotiator called himself when he spoke to the families of Toni’s victims. ‘Tonight, nine o’clock.’ He gave him the telephone number.

So how much? He was still rolling the figures in his head. The fact that the bank carried a kidnap insurance meant that a consultant would already be involved. And if a consultant was involved he would already have told the family about the going rates and the opening demands, so that was what the family would be expecting, would have forgotten that the consultant would have told them the figures were only guidelines.

‘Open at seven.’

Miliardi, Mussolini understood. Interesting figure.

‘The victim is called Paolo Benini, the number is his town apartment. Wife Francesca, who’ll probably take the call. Otherwise father Umberto or younger brother Marco. I’ll call again at nine-thirty.’

Angelo Pascale left the flat at one, collected the Alfa, checked the tuttocittà, the city map which came with the telephone directory, and drove to Via Ventura.

The street was busy and the shops and pavements crowded, mostly with young people and all of them apparently with money. The address was towards the bottom on the left, a number of parking places just visible when he stood outside the address. He drove up and down the street for twenty minutes till one of those he required came vacant, and went for a cappuccino in the Figaro. At five he noted the cars parked outside the block, again an hour later. From six he logged the movements of every car leaving or arriving at the address, paying special attention to those left at the front.

Mussolini was in position by eight-thirty. He would use a public telephone, because if the carabinieri were trying to trace the call it would get them nowhere. And he would switch locations: Central Station tonight, perhaps the airport the night after. Places a businessman would pass unnoticed.

The recording equipment was in his briefcase. At eight fifty-five he went to one of the kiosks in the marble mausoleum which was the ground floor of Central Station, confirmed that the phone was working, placed the suction cup of the cassette recorder on to the mouthpiece, and checked the time. Punctuality was not only a virtue, he had long understood, it was also a tool.

It was nine o’clock.

He inserted the phone card and punched the number.

‘Gisella. Good to hear you.’ It was as if the woman had been expecting someone else, as if she was talking to a child. ‘How was the ride?’

‘Signora Benini.’

Francesca almost froze. ‘Yes.’

‘We have him. If you want to see him again we want seven miliardi.’

Her mind was numb, refusing to function, the thoughts suddenly spinning and the brain struggling to navigate through the shock. Oh Christ what should she say, dear God what should she do? The script – it was as if she could hear Haslam’s voice – just read the script. We’ll re-write the script slightly, Umberto was telling her, just to make it right, just to make it proper; don’t tell Haslam though, just keep it to ourselves. We’ll pay anything to get Paolo home with you and the girls, the banker Rossi was telling her, let’s just make sure we get him back.

‘Seven miliardi, Francesca,’ Mussolini told her again. ‘Otherwise you never get him back.’

Don’t even think, Haslam’s voice was telling her, calming her, just read the script. A clean phone – it was as if she could hear him – make sure you get across the number and the time. She was shouting the number, almost screaming the number. Seven-thirty in the evening, she was telling him. ‘Is Paolo alive, tell me how he is. Let me speak to him.’ She was scrabbling for the script, still saying the number and the time.

‘Seven miliardi, Francesca.’ Mussolini’s voice was calm but assertive. ‘That’s what you pay if you want to see him again.’

Now that she had started saying the number she couldn’t stop. How much, her mind was still asking. Seven miliardi. Oh my God. Not even the bank could pay that, she began to say. She was still saying the number, telling the man on the phone that she’d try but the bank wouldn’t go that high. Realized that the kidnapper had put the phone down.

Her entire body was shaking. She stood for two full minutes, the telephone in her right hand, the fingers of her left holding the cradle down, and her entire body convulsed. Then she told herself to breathe deeply and keyed the number of her father-in-law.

‘They’ve called,’ was all she managed to say.

Haslam was crossing the Piazza Duomo when the pager sounded. He used the telephones on the edge of the square and called the control, then Umberto Benini.

‘Meeting in an hour at Signora Benini’s apartment,’ Benini told him, and rang off.

No explanation, Haslam thought; there was only one reason for Umberto to call him mid-evening, though. Not Francesca’s apartment, not even my son’s or my daughter-in-law’s apartment. The man’s son has been kidnapped, he reminded himself; therefore give him time to come to terms with that fact and with what he has to do. At least Umberto hadn’t given anything away on an open phone.

When he arrived the cars were parked outside and the others were seated round the table. Francesca white-faced and fingers wrapped tight round a cognac; Umberto Benini at the head of the table, Marco saying nothing; Rossi apparently summoned from a function and wearing an immaculate evening suit, the white silk scarf still round his neck.

The cassette recorder was in the centre of the table, and the script which he had written for Francesca was in front of Umberto Benini. He took his place opposite the father.

‘Signora Benini received the call at nine o’clock.’ Benini led the discussion. ‘The kidnappers want seven miliardi.’ Not the five or ten you said – the stare conveyed the message. ‘The signora managed to pass on the number of the clean phone, plus the time.’

‘Good.’ Haslam nodded then looked at Francesca. ‘The first call is always the worst. You were here by yourself?’

She nodded.

‘Then you’ve done better than anyone could expect.’

He turned back to Umberto.

‘You’ve listened to the tape?’

Of course you’ve listened to it, the tape was the first thing you checked after you’d talked to Francesca, though you might not have told me because you’ve rewound it. Because you called the others before you called me, made sure they got here first.

The father pressed the play button.

‘Gisella. Good to hear you. How was the ride?’

‘Signora Benini.’

Haslam heard the change in Francesca’s voice as she realized and saw the tightening of her face as she listened now, saw her age Christ knew how many hundreds of years.

‘Yes.’

They listened in silence. When the conversation was finished they listened again, then Haslam turned to her. ‘You really did do well, much better than we could have expected.’

You really didn’t do that badly, he wanted to tell, but you’d have done better if you hadn’t received conflicting instructions.

‘Francesca managed to get over the number of the clean phone, and the time she’ll be there. The first thing we have to decide now is who goes with her. Marco is the courier, therefore if anything is to be collected at any time it makes sense that he’s there to take the message.’

And …

‘If the kidnappers have done their research properly, which they seem to have, they’ll already know that he’s Paolo’s brother and might even have chosen him to be the go-between.’

Marco, they agreed.

‘When they phone tomorrow, the key thing is that Francesca insists on proof that Paolo is alive. We want this anyway, but it also gives her a way of not replying to the kidnapper’s ransom demand. We’ll work on the script later. In the meantime Francesca needs the question that the kidnappers will put to Paolo.’

‘Anything else?’ Umberto Benini asked.

‘Only one. The cars. I appreciate that tonight was an emergency, but the Mercedes is outside again.’

Vitali’s call to Mussolini was at nine-thirty precisely, the call scrambled and Vitali recording it.

‘How’d it go?’

‘Well. She was expecting another call, possibly from one of her daughters, and was therefore disoriented. You want to hear it?’

Of course he wanted to hear, Vitali thought. ‘Why not.’

The woman was frightened and confused, which was normal, yet she had been controlled enough to pass on the number of a clean phone and the time she would be there. Which suggested that a consultant was already involved.

‘Sounds good. Make the call tomorrow. I’ll phone at eight.’

Thirty minutes later he placed the call to Angelo Pascale, noting the car models and numbers the stake-out read to him.

The Saab belonged to Benini’s father and the BMW to his brother – the details had been part of his research. The Mercedes hadn’t been seen before, but the fact that there was a bodyguard in it, and that the man it had taken away had left the flat with Umberto Benini, suggested that it was someone from BCI. It was interesting that the bank was so open about its involvement.

The dark wrapped round her, suffocating her. Francesca lay still with fear and tried to see the light, saw only the tallow yellow of the lamp and the shadows flickering against the wall of a cave. Thank God I didn’t panic on the phone, she thought; thank God Haslam told me I did all right; thank God I didn’t let Paolo down. Paolo’s face was looking at her, his eyes searching for her and his voice calling out her name. Hold on, she tried to tell him, we haven’t forgotten you, soon you’ll be free again. The cave was cool but the night was hot and oppressive around her. She tried to fight it off, to pull the layer of fear from her face. It was two in the morning, the clock ticking by the bedside. She sat up and reached for a glass of water, sipped it slowly, then lay down again.

The sounds came from the darkness, the glow of the lamp, then the silence of the warders bringing him his food. Paolo Benini waited till they had gone then began to eat, not minding if the liquid of the soup splashed down the front of his shirt or if the remnants of the bread fell on to the floor. When he had finished eating he sniffed at the buckets, tried to remember which he had urinated in, then drank from what he hoped was the other.

Some time it would come to an end, of course. The bank carried kidnap insurance, and the bank would have paid anyway.

Every client wanted an efficient service, every client wished to avoid the red tape which might hinder their activities, and everyone bent over backwards to satisfy them. That was what banking was all about. Arab money, Jewish money, it made no difference. Money from the Middle or Far East, from Russia or America, it didn’t matter. Except sometimes someone wanted a little more, which brought the bank an extra commission. But to get that commission the bank needed someone like Paolo Benini to set everything up, someone like Paolo Benini to make sure it was all in order and to sort out any problems which might arise. And the more clients who were happy the more custom came to the bank and the happier the bank was. Especially with the extras they were able to charge and the clients were prepared to pay.

You’re clutching at clouds in the sky, the voice tried to tell him. You’re thinking of things you did in the past, rather than what you have to do to survive the present.

Part of the groundwork had already been done before, of course, but it had been he, Paolo Benini, who had structured and developed it. Especially in the United States. He who had suggested they look for one of the small regional banks in danger of collapse in the eighties, buy it up but conceal the ownership, then make it profitable and use it as a front for BCI’s black operations. He who had faced up to the conventional thinkers on the board and rejected the various banks which they had suggested, especially those with connections in Florida because those were the sort of places investigators from organizations like the US Federal Bank and the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration automatically looked to, because those were the sort of places already being used to launder money. He who had suggested they go west, look for a nice little bank in a nice little town where no one would suspect. A bank which no one knew was in trouble and with a president who could be persuaded to bend the rules to maintain the financial standing of the bank in general and himself in particular. He, Paolo Benini, who had personally chosen First Commercial of Santa Fe, and he, Paolo Benini, who had made the arrangements.

Forget all that, the voice told him, forget what’s gone before. Just work out where you are and who you are. What you should be thinking about are Francesca and the girls, because they are the ones who will save you, who will provide the anchor which will moor your mind to some kind of sanity.

And just after he had arranged the takeover of First Commercial of Santa Fe, he and Myerscough had met – it was as if his brain was flicking between television channels.

Why was he thinking of Myerscough, the voice asked him.

Because Myerscough ran Nebulus, because Nebulus was the last account he had checked in London, and because he had therefore thought that Nebulus might be the subject of the fax he had received at the hotel. Except, of course, that the fax hadn’t been genuine.

If any of his clients found out, however … If ever it became public knowledge, even within the limited public of that corner of the banking world, even within BCI itself, that he had been kidnapped … Therefore the bank would do everything in its power not just to secure his release, but to achieve it quickly.

You’re still deluding yourself – the voice was fainter now, almost gone. Look at yourself, at the mess you’re in. Food spilled on the floor and down your clothes and urine on your trousers. You don’t even know which bucket you’re urinating and defecating in and which you’re drinking from. No wonder the rat came feeding.

The feet shuffled from the black, the lamp appeared, the guards removed the remnants of his food, and he was alone again.

4

Cath was curled beside him.

It was a long time since they’d met at Harvard, since they’d got to know each other in their final year. Then they’d gone their separate ways, she to law school and he, when his number had been drawn, to Vietnam. And that would have been the end of it. Except that once, during R and R, he’d written her; when he finally came home he’d found her number and called, and she’d visited him in hospital. Halfway through his own spell at law school they’d married; the night he’d got his first job she’d cooked him a candlelit dinner. Two years later she’d stood at his side when he’d run for his first public office.

Donaghue swung out of the bed, switched off the alarm before it woke her, and went to the bathroom. When he returned the bed was empty and the smell of breakfast was drifting up from the kitchen.

It was five-thirty. He started the Lincoln, waved back as she watched him from the front door, and drove to National airport. Twenty minutes later he was on the shuttle to La Guardia.

Pearson woke at six-thirty, showered, shaved and dressed. Evie was still asleep, her legs sticking out from under the duvet and her hair across the pillow.

The house was on 6th SE, half a block from Independence Avenue and ten minutes’ walk from the Hill. They’d bought it for a knock-down price, then sweated God knows how many weekends and holidays to get it as they wanted, had somehow squeezed the renovation between her professorship at Georgetown and his job on the Hill.

When he went upstairs she was still half asleep.

‘See you tonight.’

She rolled over so he could kiss her.

‘Be good.’

The morning was already warm; he left the house, crossed Independence, and turned left on East Capitol Street. In front of him the white dome of the Hill glistened in the early light. By seven thirty-five he had collected a coffee and doughnut from the basement canteen and was at his desk checking his electronic mail. At eight-thirty he briefed the morning meeting.

‘Senator Donaghue’s in New York for a fund-raising breakfast. He’ll be back at ten. Terry to collect him from National. Ten-thirty he meets a business delegation, Jonathan has the details. At eleven he’s in the Senate; Barbara in charge of TV and radio interviews after. Eleven forty-five he’s at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; family paying their respects.’

For years now the families of the MIAs, the servicemen missing in action in Vietnam, had been campaigning in the hope that some of them might still be alive. Donaghue had championed their rights for greater information on reported sightings whilst cautioning against excessive hope. Six months earlier photographic evidence had been produced supposedly showing MIAs in a village in North Vietnam. One week ago they had been proven to be forgeries. Now the family of one of the men was coming to pay their respects at the polished black granite memorial in Constitution Gardens, and had asked Donaghue to join them, even though they were not from Donaghue’s state.

One of the lawyers raised his hand. ‘What chance of some coverage?’

‘ABC, CBS and NBC feeding to local affiliates,’ the press secretary told them. ‘CNN there as well unless something else breaks, plus radio and newspapers.’

Pearson nodded, then continued.

‘Twelve-thirty, Senate vote, Maureen accompanying him. One o’clock lunch at the National Democratic Club.’

There was a similar list of engagements for the afternoon and early evening, the final one at seven and lasting half an hour. And after that the meeting that wasn’t on any schedule. The one they called the war council.

Mitchell woke at seven, the sun streaming through the windows of the houseboat and the sound of a helicopter beating up the Potomac. It was a Gangplank joke that you could always tell when something was up and running by the number of choppers coming up the river and banking left for the Pentagon and right for the White House. Just as you could tell how much communication traffic was going out of the Pentagon – and therefore whether something was going down – by the television interference, and whether the White House was working overtime by the number of late-night pizza deliveries.

The photographs were by the upturned steel helmet next to the Marine Corps badge, more by the television.

Don’t forget, he told himself.

He showered, dressed, had breakfast on the sun deck, then took the metro rail to Union Station and walked to Dirksen Building.

The staff rooms of the Senate Banking Committee were on the fifth floor: three secretaries and a cluster of offices, some staffers having their own rooms and others sharing, computers and telephones on the desks, and the computers linked to the various databases to which the committee had access.

The desk he had been assigned was in a corner of one of the open plan areas, beneath a window. It was slightly cramped, but that was standard on the Hill, despite what people thought, and at least he could look out of the window. It was a pity he didn’t have more privacy, but everyone in the office was on the same side, and if he needed to make any really secure calls he could do them from somewhere else.

He fetched himself a coffee from the cafeteria and settled down.

Money laundering or banking, Pearson had said, as long as it was something with which the ordinary man or woman in the street would identify. And nothing too official yet, by which Pearson had meant nothing too obvious. Just a trawl, see what there was around. More than just a trawl, though; make sure he had enough evidence so that when Donaghue officially launched the enquiry he already knew it would produce results. The announcement of the enquiry timed to give Donaghue extra publicity once he’d thrown his hat into the presidential ring, and the results ready for when he and his advisers decided to use them. Everything planned, nothing left to chance.

Mitchell sat forward in the chair and began the calls.

‘Dick, this is Mitch Mitchell. Doing a job for the Senate Banking Committee and wondered if we should get together …’

To a lawyer at the Fed.

‘Angelina, this is Mitch Mitchell. Assigned to Senate Banking for a while and thought I should give you a call …’

A banker in Detroit.

‘Jay, this is Mitch Mitchell. Yeah, good to talk with you. How’re you doing … ?’

To a journalist on Wall Street.

Look for his own investigation, try to find something that nobody else had, and he’d spend light years on it and get nowhere. Pick up on something somebody else was already working, though, take it beyond where their expertise or resources could go but offer to cut them in on the final play, and he might make it.

‘Andie.’ Drug Enforcement Administration in Tampa, Florida. ‘Mitch Mitchell, long time no see. How’d you mean, you knew I was going to call. Why, what you got going?’

It would have to be good, though, have to be right. And he wouldn’t mention Donaghue unless someone asked, because Donaghue was money in the bank and only to be used when necessary.

By lunchtime he had spoken to ten contacts, by mid-afternoon another three, two more phoning him back. Tomorrow it would be the same, the day after the same again. And after he’d talked to them he’d hit the road, get hunched up over a beer with those who might have a runner. Sometimes it would be coffee, sometimes dinner, sometimes twenty minutes behind closed doors. And not all the contacts male, some of the best would be female.

‘Jim Anderton, please.’ Anderton was an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, smart waistcoats and friendly manner. When it suited. Political ambitions and on the make.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Anderton’s in court. Can he call you back?’

Mitchell gave the receptionist his name and new office number. Anderton would call back even if he didn’t have anything, because assistant DAs with political ambitions always did.

Tampa and Detroit seemed front runners at the moment, he decided, plenty of other options already emerging, though. He switched on the computer, built in a personal security code, and opened the first file of the investigation.

The armoured Chevrolet collected Brettlaw at seven. The family were seated round the breakfast table. Great house, great wife, great kids – he always appreciated being told. Great barbecues in the summer, great hiking trips in the fall, great skiing in the winter. When he’d had the time.

Fifteen minutes later the driver swung through the gates at Langley and turned under the main building. Brettlaw collected his briefcase and took the executive lift to the seventh floor. By nine, shortly before his meeting with the DCI, he was on his third coffee and his fourth Gauloise.

Costaine telephoned at eleven, via Brettlaw’s secretary, asking if the DDO had ten minutes. If Costaine, as his Deputy Director for Policy, asked for ten minutes, it was Costaine’s code for saying something was wrong. Not necessarily something that would change the world, just something which the DDO should know about, perhaps something which it would take the DDO to sort out. Besides, Costaine was Inner Circle; not Inner Circle of Inner Circle, but still part of the black projects.

Brettlaw told him to come up, and asked Maggie to put the remainder of his morning’s engagements back ten minutes.

Costaine arrived three minutes later.

‘There’s a slight problem with Red River.’

He was seated in the leather armchair in front of Brettlaw’s desk.

‘What exactly?’

Red River was a worn-out mining town turned ski resort eight thousand feet up in the Southern Rockies. Apparently run down, apparently redneck. Great people and great snow. Red River was also the code for one of the black projects.

‘Certain funds which should have been in place two days haven’t arrived.’

‘Important?’

Costaine ran his fingers through his crewcut. ‘Delicate rather than important, but we should get it sorted out.’ But he couldn’t, because he was operations, not finance.

‘Leave it with me. If it’s not sorted by tomorrow let me know.’

He waited till Costaine left then telephoned for Myerscough to come up.

‘The Nebulus accounts. Apparently some of the funds which were scheduled for transfer two days ago haven’t made it.’

‘No problem.’

Almost certainly it would be something as obvious as a bank clerk transposing two digits, Myerscough thought. It had happened before and would happen again. It was probably better to start in the middle rather than at the beginning or end of the chain – that way he’d reduce the work. Therefore he’d contact the fixer and get him to check that the funds had passed through the switch account in London. That way they could narrow down the problem area. And if the funds hadn’t reached London he’d go back to First Commercial and ask why the money hadn’t exited the US.

It was eleven Eastern Time, therefore he might just catch Europe before it closed down for the night. He left the seventh floor and returned to his own department on the fourth.

His office was in one corner, the rest of the section open plan, desks and computers, the technological whizz kids bent over them, sometimes fetching a coffee or iced water and leaning over someone else’s shoulder, cross-fertilizing ideas and statistics or just talking. It was a good department with good people. He closed the door, called the first number before he’d even sat down, and looked through the glass.

Bekki Lansbridge was in her late twenties, an economist by training, and had been with the Agency five years and his department for the past eight months. She was five-seven, he guessed, almost five-eight, blond hair and long face. And there his description of her slipped in to the vernacular. Great ass, great chassis, great mover. Probably moving it for someone, except that it wasn’t him. Perhaps one day she would.

The ringing stopped and he heard the voice of the personal assistant. Swiss and efficient.

‘Is he there?’ he asked.

‘I’m afraid not.’

No enquiring who was calling and no suggestion he might like to leave a message. If he wished either then he would say so.

‘When will he be back?’

‘Probably tomorrow.’

He called Milan.

‘Good afternoon. Is he there?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘When could I speak to him?’

‘Possibly tomorrow.’

There was the slightest hesitation, he thought. Certainly the day after … it was implied, but without conviction, as if the secretary was unsure herself.

It was unlike the fixer. The contact was often away setting things up and meeting people like Myerscough. The two of them tried to meet at least twice a year and to talk at least once a month, even when there was nothing much to discuss, because the two of them had set up the system, and set it up good. So it wasn’t unusual for the Italian to be out and about – that was his job. What was unusual was for him to be out of touch – not phoning his office at least twice a day, even if he couldn’t tell his people where he was and who he was with.

‘Thank you.’

There was no problem, though. All he had to do was check with the bank which would have made the wire transfer to BCI in London, and if the problem had come up before London there’d be no reason to worry about Europe. He glanced at Bekki Lansbridge again and punched the number.

‘Good morning,’ the switchboard operator answered immediately. ‘First Commercial Bank of Santa Fe.’

‘Good morning, may I speak to the president?’

The lawyers were waiting. For forty minutes Brettlaw checked with them the testimony he would deliver to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that afternoon, then took a working lunch of coffee and Gauloises. The committee was at two. At one-thirty the Chevrolet pulled out the main gate and turned on to Route 123.

At any other time, perhaps, on any other day, he might have sat back and allowed himself thirty seconds to think about Nebulus, about the money going into and through it. Perhaps he was about to. Perhaps he would have told himself there was no need, that it was Myerscough’s job.

The secure telephone rang. The sky above was crystal blue, he would remember later, and the trees were a peaceful green.

‘Red Man.’ The code – even on the encryptor – for Operations. ‘Bonn’s hit the panic button. Nothing more yet. Will keep you informed.’

Nobody hit the panic button for nothing; Ops didn’t inform the DDO unless it was five-star. His mind was calm and ordered. There were two things he could do: order his driver back to Langley, or tell Ops to keep him informed and continue with his schedule. He had been in crises before, that was his job. Had worked out – in the dark of the night, when a man was alone with himself or his Maker – what he would do in certain scenarios. It was how he had survived Moscow, how he had made himself the man he was.

‘Keep me informed.’

The Chevrolet crossed Theodore Roosevelt Bridge and headed east up Constitution Avenue, the crowds in the parks and the bands playing. So why had Bonn hit the panic button, what was happening?

The secure phone rang again.

‘Bonn Chief of Station down. Repeat. Bonn CoS down. No more details.’

Oh Christ, he thought.

Zev Bartolski was Chief of Station in Bonn, and Zev Bartolski was his friend. More than that. Zev Bartolski was his point man in the black projects. Zev Bartolski was Inner Circle of Inner Circle, Zev Bartolski was Wise Man of Wise Men.

‘The DCI knows?’ He sliced through the disbelief and the shock.

‘Yes.’

‘Keep me informed.’

He raised the partition between himself and the driver, and considered what might be happening. Shut his eyes and tried to work out the connections. Sealed off the image of the man, wiped out every trace of Zev’s wife and children, and focused on what the hell might be going down.

Who? Why? How? What was Bonn working on that connected to anything else? At least the CoS hadn’t been kidnapped, at least they wouldn’t have to worry as they had worried over poor Bill Buckley in Beirut. At least Zev wasn’t going to be tortured for what he knew.

The logic divided, separated Zev Bartolski as Bonn CoS from Zev Bartolski in his role in the black projects. The position of Chief of Station almost a cover. For the other side, even for his own people.

A problem with Red River, Costaine had said that morning, certain monies not through on time. Now Zev taken out. The link screamed at him. Except that the two were separate – in personnel and region, in objectives and functions. No connection at all, different and distinct parts. Except they were both black ops.

He keyed in the DCI’s number and activated the Gold Code.

‘This is Tom. I’ve just heard. I’m on my way to the Hill but will return if necessary.’

There was no panic in his voice, not even an edge of excitement or adrenalin.

‘What do you think?’ The DCI had a Texan drawl.

‘No need at the moment. Perhaps the best thing is an even keel, show everyone we’re not panicking.’

‘Agreed.’

The Chevrolet passed by the Washington Memorial. The phone rang again. In Europe it was early evening.

‘Red Man. Bonn CoS was killed when the car in which he was travelling was blown up.’

‘His car?’ Brettlaw asked. ‘How was it blown up? Where was he going and what was he doing?’

Zev’s car was armoured, but even the best armoured cars were vulnerable to a bomb or land mine exploding beneath them.

‘Unclear. The First Secretary has also been killed.’

Brettlaw was still calm, still almost cold. He could speak to Bonn direct, but everyone would be speaking to Bonn. Bonn would be so jammed with communications that they’d be snowed under. Even so he was tempted to call off the session that afternoon and return to Langley.

‘Check on the vehicle the CoS was travelling in,’ he issued the orders. ‘Check whether the First Secretary was killed in the same incident or a separate one. Find out what they were doing and why. Get some indication why the CoS might have been targeted.’

The Chevrolet passed Senate Russell Building and approached Senate Hart. He keyed his secretary’s number and activated the encryptor. Maggie Dubovski was mid-forties, career Agency like himself. One of the warhorses, one of the reliables. When he made DCI Maggie would go with him, would consider it the pinnacle of her career as he would consider it the pinnacle of his.

‘You’ve heard?’ he asked her.

‘Yes.’

He named those officers to be placed on standby. ‘Meeting in my office at five, unless you hear from me before.’

There was one other thing.

‘Find out where Martha Bartolski and the kids are. Make sure they’re okay.’

The driver showed his pass to the policeman on duty at the entrance to the parking area below Senate Hart and drove down into the half-light. The Director of Security for the Intelligence Committee was already waiting. Brettlaw shook his hand and was escorted to the set of rooms known simply as SH 219.

SH 219 housed the most secure room on Capitol Hill. The lift from the parking area was connected to it by series of other internal lifts, therefore no member of the public was able to see who was entering or leaving. The room itself was on the second floor of Hart Building, the hallway outside overlooking the courtyard round which Hart was built. The reception desk was opposite a set of double doors, but the doors themselves were opaque so that no one could see inside, and there were imitation doors along the rest of the wall on to the walkway. The committee room proper was entered through steel doors, the walls of the isolation area in which the committee held its deliberations were lead-lined, and further protection against electronic surveillance was provided by white noise.

Brettlaw smiled at the receptionist, signed the register, including the time he was entering the isolation area, and went inside.

The members were already waiting in the semicircle of seats on the platform in front of him. Today was the bad one, today the bastards would be after his blood. He took his place, and the doors were closed and locked, sealing off the committee. Then, and only then, did the chairman call the meeting to order and ask Brettlaw for his opening remarks.

‘Before I begin, I have an announcement to make.’ It would soon be public anyway, but there were certain members who would remember that the DDO had seen fit to brief them first. ‘I have just been informed that the CoS Bonn has been assassinated.’ He waited for the room to settle. ‘This information was passed to me on my way here, as yet no other details are available. If any do become available during this session I will, of course, inform you immediately.’

The senior Republican rose. ‘Mr Chairman, may I put on record the committee’s horror at the news, and its appreciation of the Deputy Director’s decision to attend despite it.’

‘Noted.’

Even the liberals were shocked, Brettlaw thought wryly. Zev serving the Agency in death as in life.

The questioning began, slightly less ferocious than on previous occasions, but barbed anyway.

There were tricks, of course, almost tradecraft. Never tell a lie, because one day they might come back at you on it. But never tell the truth. Unless, of course, it suited you. Make what the politicians call lawyer’s answers, play one committee against another, the Senate against the House of Representatives. And if they had you, if you were really up against it, run a dangle, either to them or the press, lay a bait that would make them think they were on to something but which would take them so far off course they were the other side of the globe from what you wanted to protect. But never make enemies, because one day you might be sitting in front of them at a confirmation hearing for the job at the top.

‘Item 12d in budget document 4.’ The committee man was like a buzzard, Brettlaw thought, hungry eyes and hooked nose.

So what the hell was running in Bonn? Why in Christ’s name did Zev have to die? How was it connected to the black projects? Was it connected to them? What about the financial discrepancy on the Red River project?

‘Perhaps we could look at paragraph 10 …’

Don’t patronize me, you bastard. Don’t try your smooth perhaps we could look at … Don’t try to sucker me. Today of all days. With Zev Bartolski splattered across some fucking street in some foreign fucking country.

‘Yes, Senator.’ His voice was calm and controlled.

‘This is a major item of expenditure.’

He checked the relevant document. ‘Yes.’

‘Then could you explain how it relates to item 3, subitem 9, on document 8 …’

The ass-hole was off course and out of sight. If he was anyway near the truth he’d be so far off the wall he’d be in the next room.

‘If you insist, Senator …’

At three-thirty, and at Brettlaw’s request, the committee broke early. By ten minutes past four he was receiving an overview briefing on Bonn in his office at Langley. At four twenty-five he met with the DCI, at five o’clock, according to the log which was kept, he received a fuller briefing on Bonn station, the men he had summoned seated round the conference table of his office.

‘Zev and the First Secretary were travelling together.’ Costaine led the briefing. ‘They were killed when a bomb exploded near or below the car. They were on their way to an aeronautical exhibition. The explosion took place as they were nearing the location. The car was the First Secretary’s, not Zev’s. Detonation of the charge was probably by remote control.’

It was logical that Zev should be with the First Secretary and that he should be doing something public, Brettlaw was aware. Everyone knew who was Station Chief. In places like Bonn it was almost a public appointment.

‘What was Zev doing there?’ he asked.

‘How’d you mean?’

‘Was it in his diary for the day?’

‘I’ll get it checked.’

Brettlaw nodded and allowed him to continue.

‘A team is already airborne in case Bonn needs extra cover. All operations from Bonn have been iced. The analysts are backtracking to see if they can pick up anything.’

‘Any idea yet who’s responsible?’ He chainlit another Gauloise.

‘No.’

‘Where’s Cranlow?’

Cranlow was Zev’s number two.

‘On his way back from Hamburg.’

‘Effective as of now he’s Chief of Station.’ Brettlaw had already cleared it with the DCI; there was no point in showing indecision, every point in acting quickly and decisively, and being seen to do so. ‘Samuelson transfers from Berlin as his point man. Don …’ He turned to the man on his left. ‘You fly to Bonn tonight, oversee things till the shit stops flying.’ Not to get in the new CoS’s way, just to be on hand to cover everyone’s back. Good decision, they knew, the DDO reacting the way they knew he would. ‘Sep, you’re in charge of family arrangements. Fly out with Don; make sure Martha and the boys are properly taken care of.’ Because Zev was family, and family takes care of its own. Thank Christ Brettlaw was the man in the big office, the feeling was already permeating round the table, would seep its inextricable way through the rest of the building. Thank Christ it was Brettlaw who was DDO.

The meeting broke shortly after six Washington time, midnight in Bonn. Brettlaw closed the door, told Maggie he was not to be disturbed, and made two telephone calls. The first was to a house on the outskirts of Bonn. He identified himself and was put through.

‘Martha, it’s Tom. I’m phoning from my office but I don’t know what to say. Sep’s on his way to take care of things, you and the boys, that sort of thing.’ He allowed her to talk: about the barbecues the families had shared, the morning Brettlaw and Bartolski had rolled home drunk and she’d locked them out; about the boys. Sometimes he simply listened to her silence.

The second call, twenty minutes later, was to Milton Cranlow in the secure room at the embassy. For three minutes Cranlow briefed Brettlaw with his account of events, plus the possibilities which spun from them, then waited for the DDO’s reaction.

‘It’s your show now, Milt.’ Brettlaw was hard, factual. ‘You’re Chief of Station. I want the fuckers. I want their balls.’

No matter how long it takes and no matter where you have to go or what you have to do to find them.

He ended the call, tilted back in his chair, swivelled round and peered at the tree tops outside through the slatted blind. It would be another late night; he could sleep in the bedroom attached to his office, or make the usual arrangements for his stays at the University Club. Not tonight, he almost decided, knew what Zev would have said. Big boys’ games, big boys’ rules. So what the fuck, Tom, have one on me.

He swung back to his desk and telephoned home.

‘Mary, it’s me. There’s some bad news.’ He gave her time to prepare herself. ‘Zev’s dead.’ He imagined the images flashing through her mind: the trips, so long ago now, when they had all been young and new to the Agency; the family holidays together; the photographs of the kids growing up together.

‘How?’

‘He was blown up in Bonn this afternoon.’

Therefore we’ve hit the panic button, therefore I have to stay on.

‘What about Martha and the boys?’

‘I’ve spoken to them, they’re being taken care of.’

‘Should I phone?’

‘It would be better in the morning. She’ll appreciate it.’

‘Thanks for letting me know.’ Because I know that tonight you won’t be home.

Costaine called just before eleven. ‘You want some good news?’

‘I could do with some,’ Brettlaw told him.

‘The missing Red River payment.’

Their conversation that morning was already a lifetime ago.

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s turned up. Someone transposed a couple of digits in the account number.’

Therefore no connection with Zev’s death, Brettlaw thought; thank Christ for small mercies. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’ Myerscough would already have begun checking, he remembered. Myerscough would be in early to catch Europe as soon as it opened. Time to tell him tomorrow. He checked his watch and saw that tomorrow had begun more than an hour ago.

When his driver dropped him at the club it was fifteen minutes past midnight.

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