Kennedy’s Ghost. Gordon Stevens
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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,