by Dick Francis
It was a system which seemed to us best, principally because photography left no trace on the notes. The problem with physically marking them was that anything the banks could detect, so could the kidnappers. Banks had no monopoly, for instance, in scans to reveal fluorescence. Geiger counters for radioactive pin dots weren’t hard to come by. Minute perforations could be seen as easily by any eyes against a bright light, and extra lines and marks could be spotted by anyone’s magnification. The banks, through simple pressure of time, had to be able to spot tracers easily, which put chemical invisible inks out of court. Kidnappers, far more thorough and with fear always at their elbows, could test obsessively for everything.
Kidnappers who found tracers on the ransom had to be considered lethal. In Liberty Market, therefore, the markings we put on notes were so difficult to find that we sometimes lost them ourselves, and they were certainly unspottable by banks. They consisted of transparent microdots (the size of the full stops to which we applied them) which when separated and put under a microscope revealed a shadowy black logo of L and M, but through ordinary magnifying glasses appeared simply black. We used them only on larger denomination notes, and then only as a back-up in case there should be any argument about the photographed numbers. To date we had never had to reveal their existence, a state of affairs we hoped to maintain.
By morning, fairly dropping from fatigue, I’d photographed barely half, the banks having taken the “small denomination” instruction all too literally. Locking all that money into a wardrobe cupboard I showered and thought of bed, but after breakfast drove Cenci to the office as usual. Three nights I could go without sleep. After that, zonk.
“If the kidnappers get in touch with you,” I said, on the way, “you might tell them you can’t drive. Say you need your chauffeur. Say . . . um . . . you’ve a bad heart, something like that. Then at least you’d have help, if you needed it.”
There was such an intense silence from the back seat that at first I thought he hadn’t heard, but eventually he said, “I suppose you don’t know, then.”
“Know what?”
“Why I have a chauffeur.”
“General wealth, and all that,” I said.
“No. I have no license.”
I had seen him driving round the private roads on his estate in a jeep on one or two occasions, though not, I recalled, with much fervor. After a while he said, “I choose not to have a license, because I have epilepsy. I’ve had it most of my life. It is of course kept completely under control with pills, but I prefer not to drive on public roads.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Forget it. I do. It’s an inconvenience merely.” He sounded as if the subject bored him, and I thought that regarding irregular brain patterns as no more than a nuisance was typical of what I’d gleaned of his normal business methods: routine fast and first, planning slow and thorough. I’d gathered from things his secretary had said in my hearing that he’d made few decisions lately, and trade was beginning to suffer.
When we reached the outskirts of Bologna he said, “I have to go back to those telephones at the highway restaurant tomorrow morning at eight. I have to take the money in my car. I have to wait for him . . . for his instructions. He’ll be angry if I have a chauffeur.”
“Explain. He’ll know you always have a chauffeur. Tell him why.”
“I can’t risk it.” His voice shook.
“Signor Cenci, he wants the money. Make him believe you can’t drive safely. The last thing he wants is you crashing the ransom into a lamppost.”
“Well . . . I’ll try.”
“And remember to ask for proof that Alessia is alive and unharmed.”
“Yes.”
I dropped him at the office and drove back to the Villa Francese, and because it was what the Cenci chauffeur always did when he wasn’t needed during the morning, I washed the car. I’d washed the damn car so often I knew every inch intimately, but one couldn’t trust kidnappers not to be watching; and the villa and its hillside, with its glorious views, could be observed closely by telescope from a mile away in most directions. Changes of routine from before to after a kidnap were of powerful significance to kidnappers, who were often better detectives than detectives, and better spies than spies. The people who’d taught me my job had been detectives and spies and more besides, so when I was a chauffeur, I washed cars.
That done I went upstairs and slept for a couple of hours and then set to again on the photography, stopping only to go and fetch Cenci at the usual hour. Reporting to his office I found another box on the desk, this time announcing it had been passed by customs at Genoa.
“Shall I carry it out?” I asked.
He nodded dully. “It is all there. Five hundred million lire.”
We drove home more or less in silence, and I spent the evening and night as before, methodically clicking until I felt like a zombie. By morning it was done, with the microdots applied to a few of the fifty-thousand-lire notes, but not many, through lack of time. I packed all the rubber-banded bundles into the Fragile box and humped it down to the hall to find Cenci already pacing up and down in the dining room, white with strain.
“There you are!” he exclaimed. “I was just coming to wake you. It’s getting late. Seven o’clock.”
“Have you had breakfast?” I asked.
“I can’t eat.” He looked at his watch compulsively, something I guessed he’d been doing for hours. “We’d better go. Suppose we were held up on the way. Suppose there was an accident blocking the road.” His breathing was shallow and agitated, and I said diffidently, “Signor Cenci, forgive me for asking, but in the anxiety of this morning . . . have you remembered your pills?”
He looked at me blankly. “Yes. Yes of course. Always with me.”
“I’m sorry . . .”
He brushed it away. “Let’s go. We must go.”
The traffic on the road was normal: no accidents. We reached the rendezvous half an hour early, but Cenci sprang out of the car as soon as I switched off the engine. From where I’d parked I had a view of the entrance across a double row of cars, the doorway like the mouth of a beehive with people going in and out continually.
Cenci walked with stiff legs to be lost among them, and in the way of chauffeurs I slouched down in my seat and tipped my cap forward over my nose. If I wasn’t careful, I thought, I’d go to sleep. . . .
Someone rapped on the window beside me. I opened my eyes, squinted sideways, and saw a youngish man in a white open-necked shirt with a gold chain round his neck making gestures for me to open the window.
The car rather irritatingly had electric windows: I switched on the ignition and pressed the relevant button, sitting up slightly while I did it.
“Who are you waiting for?” he said.
“Signor Cenci.”
“Not Count Rieti?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Have you seen another chauffeur here?”
“Sorry, no.”
He was carrying a magazine rolled into a cylinder and fastened by a rubber band. I thought fleetingly of one of the partners in Liberty Market who believed one should never trust a stranger carrying a paper cylinder because it was such a handy place to stow a knife . . . and I wondered, but not much.
“You’re not Italian?” the man said.
“No. From Spain.”
“Oh.” His gaze wandered, as if seeking Count Rieti’s chauffeur. Then he said absently in Spanish, “You’re a long way from home.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Where do you come from?”
“Andalusia.”
“Very hot, at this time of year.”
“Yes.”
I had spent countless school holidays in Andalusia, staying with my divorced half-Spanish father, who ran a hotel there. Spanish was my second tongue, learned on all levels from kitchen to penthouse: any time I didn’t want to appear English, I became a Spaniard.
“Is your employer having breakfast?” he asked
.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “He said wait, so I wait.”
His Spanish had a clumsy accent and his sentences were grammatically simple, as careful as mine in Italian.
I yawned.
He could be a coincidence, I thought. Kidnappers were normally much too shy for such a direct approach, keeping their faces hidden at all costs. This man could be just what he seemed, a well-meaning citizen carrying a magazine, looking for Count Rieti’s chauffeur and with time to spare for talking.
Could be. If not, I would tell him what he wanted to know: if he asked.
“Do you drive always for Signor . . . Cenci?” he said casually.
“Sure,” I said. “It’s a good job. Good pay. He’s considerate. Never drives himself, of course.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. He hasn’t a license. He has to have someone to drive him always.”
I wasn’t quite sure he had followed that, though I’d spoken pretty slowly and with a hint of drowsiness. I yawned again and thought that one way or another he’d had his ration of chat. I would memorize his face, just in case, but it was unlikely . . .
He turned away as if he too had found the conversation finished, and I looked at the shape of his round smooth head from the side, and felt most unwelcome tingles ripple all down my spine. I’d seen him before. . . . I’d seen him outside the ambulance, through the tinted glass, with cameras slung from his neck and gold buckles on the cuffs of his jacket. I could remember him clearly. He’d appeared at the siege . . . and he was here at the drop, asking questions.
No coincidence.
It was the first time I’d ever knowingly been physically near one of the shadowy brotherhood, those foes I opposed by proxy, whose trials I never attended, whose ears never heard of my existence. I slouched down again in my seat and tipped my cap over my nose and thought that my partners in London would emphatically disapprove of my being in that place at that time. The low profile was down the drain.
If I’d seen him, he’d seen me.
It might not matter: not if he believed in the Spanish chauffeur who was bored with waiting. If he believed in the bored Spanish chauffeur, he’d forget me. If he hadn’t believed in the bored Spanish chauffeur I would quite likely be sitting there now with a knife through my ribs, growing cold.
In retrospect I felt distinctly shivery. I had not remotely expected such an encounter, and at first it had only been habit and instinct, reinforced by true tiredness, that had made me answer him as I had. I found it definitely scary to think that Alessia’s life might have hung on a yawn.
Time passed. Eight o’clock came and went. I waited as if asleep. No one else came to my still-open window to ask me anything at all.
It was after nine before Cenci came back, half running, stumbling, sweating. I was out of the car as soon as I saw him, politely opening a rear door and helping him in as a chauffeur should.
“Oh, my God,” he said. “I thought he wouldn’t telephone. . . . It’s been so long.”
“Is Alessia all right?”
“Yes . . . yes . . .”
“Where to, then?”
“Oh . . .” He drew in some calming breaths while I got back behind the wheel and started the engine. “We have to go to Mazara, about twenty kilometers south. Another restaurant . . . another telephone. In twenty minutes.”
“Um . . .” I said. “Which way from here?”
He said vaguely, “Umberto knows,” which wasn’t especially helpful, as Umberto was his real chauffeur, away on holiday. I grabbed the road map from the glove compartment and spread it on the passenger seat beside me, trying unsuccessfully to find Mazara while pulling in a normal fashion out of the car park.
The road we were on ran west to east. I took the first major-looking turn towards the south, and as soon as we were out of sight of the highway drew into the side and paused for an update on geography. One more turn, I thought, and there would be signposts: and in fact we made it to Mazara, which proved to be little more than a crossroads, with breathing time to spare.
On the way Cenci said, “Alessia was reading from today’s paper . . . on tape, it must have been, because she just went on reading when I spoke to her . . . but to hear her voice . . .”
“You’re sure it was her?”
“Oh, yes. She started as usual with one of those memories of her childhood that you suggested . . . it was Alessia herself . . . my darling, darling daughter.”
Well, I thought. So far, so good.
“He said . . .” Cenci gulped audibly. “He said if there are homers this time in the ransom he’ll kill her. He says if there are marks on the notes, he’ll kill her. He says if we are followed . . . if we don’t do exactly as he says . . . if anything . . . anything . . . goes wrong, he’ll kill her.”
I nodded. I believed it. A second chance was a partial miracle. We’d never get a third.
“You promise,” he said, “that he’ll find nothing on the notes.”
“I promise,” I said.
At Mazara Cenci ran to the telephone, but again he was agonizingly kept waiting. I sat as before in the car, stolidly patient, as if the antics of my employer were of little interest, and surreptitiously read the map.
The restaurant at this place was simply a café next to a garage, a stop for coffee and gas. People came and went, but not many. The day warmed up under the summer sun, and as a good chauffeur should I started the purring engine and switched on the air-conditioning.
He returned with his jacket over his arm and flopped gratefully into the cool.
“Casteloro,” he said. “Why is he doing this?”
“Standard procedure, to make sure we’re not followed. He’ll be doubly careful because of last time. We might be chasing about all morning.”
“I can’t stand it,” he said; but he could, of course, after the last six weeks.
I found the way to Casteloro and drove there: thirty-two kilometers, mostly of narrow, straight, exposed country roads. Open fields on both sides. Any car following us would have shown up like a rash.
“He made no trouble about you,” Cenci said. “I said straight away that I’d brought my chauffeur because I have epilepsy, that it was impossible for me to drive, to come alone. He just said to give you instructions and not explain anything.”
“Good,” I said, and thought that if HE were me he’d check up with Alessia about the epilepsy, and be reassured.
At Casteloro, a small old town with a cobbled central square full of pigeons, the telephone Cenci sought was in a café, and this time there was no delay.
“Return to Mazara,” Cenci said with exhaustion.
I reversed the car and headed back the way we had come, and Cenci said, “He asked me what I had brought the money in. I described the box.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. Just to follow instructions or Alessia would be killed. He said they would kill her . . . horribly.” His voice choked and came out as a sob.
“Listen,” I said, “they don’t want to kill her. Not now, not when they’re so close. And did they say what ‘horribly’ meant? Were they . . . specific?”
On another sob he said, “No.”
“They’re frightening you,” I said. “Using threats to make sure you’d elude the carabinieri, even if up to now you’d been letting them follow you.”
“But I haven’t!” he protested.
“They have to be convinced. Kidnappers are very nervous.”
It was reassuring though, I thought, that they were still making threats, because it indicated they were serious about dealing. This was no cruel dummy run: this was the actual drop.
Back at the Mazara crossroads there was another lengthy wait. Cenci sat in the café, visible through the window, trembling over an undrunk cup of coffee. I got out of the car, stretched, ambled up and down a bit, got back in, and yawned. Three unexceptional cars filled with gas and the garage attendant scratched his armpits.
&nbs
p; The sun was high, blazing out of the blue sky. An old woman in black cycled up to the crossroads, turned left, cycled away. Summer dust stirred and settled in the wake of passing vans, and I thought of Lorenzo Traventi, who had driven the last lot of ransom and now clung to life on machines.
Inside the café Cenci sprang to his feet, and after a while came back to the car in no better state than before. I opened the rear door for him as usual and helped him inside.
“He says . . .” He took a deep breath. “He says there is a sort of shrine by the roadside between here and Casteloro. He says we’ve passed it twice already . . . but I didn’t notice . . .”
I nodded. “I saw it.” I closed his door and resumed my own seat.
“Well, there,” Cenci said. “He says to put the box behind the shrine, and drive away.”
“Good,” I said with relief. “That’s it, then.”
“But Alessia . . .” he wailed. “I asked him, when will Alessia be free, and he didn’t answer, he just put the telephone down . . .”
I started the car and drove again towards Casteloro.
“Be patient,” I said gently. “They’ll have to count the money. To examine it for tracers. Maybe, after last time, to leave it for a while in a place they can observe, to make sure no one is tracking it by a homer. They won’t free Alessia until they’re certain they’re safe, so I’m afraid it means waiting. It means patience.”
He groaned on a long breath. “But they’ll let her go . . . when I’ve paid . . . they’ll let her go, won’t they?”
He was asking desperately for reassurance, and I said “Yes,” robustly: and they would let her go, I thought, if they were satisfied, if they were sane, if something unforeseen didn’t happen, and if Alessia hadn’t seen their faces.
About ten miles from the crossroads, by a cornfield, stood a simple stone wayside shrine, a single piece of wall about five feet high by three across, with a weatherbeaten foot-high stone madonna offering blessings from a niche in front. Rain had washed away most of the blue paint of her mantle, and time or vandals had relieved her of the tip of her nose, but posies of wilting flowers lay on the ground before her, and someone had left some sweets beside her feet.