implied he knew a great deal more than he was letting on. At the previous meeting, Caravale, briefly suspicious, had wondered if that was indeed the case with Dante, but he was soon convinced that it was merely Galasso’s everyday, know-it-all expression. He was, after all, a onetime professor, and a Red one at that, so it was hardly surprising. Galasso’s jet-haired wife—Francesca, was it?—stared at the ceiling, manifestly not listening to her husband.
The only person he hadn’t met before was the bearded American, Filiberto—Phil—Boyajian, a cousin of some sort. Improbably enough, Caravale had taken to him almost on sight, probably because he seemed as out of place among the de Grazia clan as Caravale himself. Phil, wearing walking shorts, had sat with his hands in his pockets, saying nothing during the reading, but he was the first to speak up afterward.
“What do we do now, Colonel?”
“That’s up to Signor de Grazia,” Caravale said, looking at Vincenzo, and six other pairs of eyes swung toward the
Vincenzo jerked his head angrily. “It’s more than I thought they’d ask, damn them. Five million.”
“Your insurance company will cover it and then some, so what’s the problem?” Dante Galasso asked. “They can afford it. They make millions every year from bilking the ignorant and the greedy.”
With a brief, lancing look at Dante (“Who asked for your opinion?” he might just as well have said), Vincenzo directed his response to Caravale. Argos, like most kidnap insurers, didn’t actually pay ransom demands directly, he explained; they reimbursed you for what you paid (minus a 250,000m deductible in Argos’s case) from your own resources, and only on proof that the ransom had indeed been paid.
“But if the insurance company guarantees payment,” Phil said, “can’t you just borrow on their guarantee? Argos is a big firm, they have a good reputation.”
Unfortunately no, Vincenzo explained. As with other kidnap insurers, It was strictly against the rules, and possibly against the law, to use the policy itself as collateral. Doing so would invalidate it, so he had to come up with the money on his own. His Aurora stock alone would more than provide the necessary collateral, never fear. He was surprised—angry—that they would demand so much, that was all.
He turned again to Caravale. “What do you propose, Colonel?”
“Well...” Caravale began.
He already knew what Vincenzo had just told them about Argos because he’d looked into it on his own the day after the kidnapping. He also knew that the policy explicitly required that there be cooperation with the police, which meant that Vincenzo’s posturing the other day about how much he trusted him had been so much buttering up. He thought he understood the point of it too. To Vincenzo he was just another version of Comandante Boldini, a petty functionary who was supposed to swell with pride and loyalty at being brought into the confidence of the noble de Grazias. Well, not bloody likely.
In the expectant hush that followed his “well,” he had scribbled two lines at the bottom of the sheet. “Here is the reply that I propose. ‘Prestigious villa, near Oggebbio, mountain view, 1,000,000m;. Contact signor Pinzolo’— that’s me, of course, how do you do?—‘telephone 032358285, fax 032358266.’”
There was a spatter of confusion and surprise.
“One million...!”
“But they said . . .!”
“How can you...!”
Caravale raised his hand, wrist cocked, like the traffic policeman he’d once been. “It’s not a good idea to give in too quickly to their initial demands. If we do, they’re likely to conclude they asked too little and come back with a higher ransom demand. Better to offer less, but to show at the same time that we’re willing to negotiate.”
Vincenzo was shaking his head doubtfully. “They were very explicit, Colonel—no counteroffers would be accepted. How much clearer could they be? I understand what you’re getting at, but this is my son’s life we’re talking about, not some game. We de Grazias—”
“Signore,” Caravale interrupted before Vincenzo could tell him what “we de Grazias” would or wouldn’t do, “I have to tell you that in a case like this, you can never know for sure what they will do, but I think it’s safe to assume that their threats are empty. What would be the point of harming or killing their captive? What would they gain? They’d come away with nothing at all but the
“That makes sense,” said Phil. “Otherwise, why would they have made the amount part of the ad they want us to place? It would have said something else—it could have been anything—and not mentioned money at all. Putting in an amount must have been a way of giving us a chance to respond with a different amount.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s so,” said Vincenzo, obviously impressed.
Caravale was impressed too. This rather subtle point hadn’t occurred to him either. He wondered if the kidnappers realized it themselves.
“If we are in agreement, then,” he said, “I expect matters to proceed about like this: We’ll go ahead and offer the one million. They’ll express outrage but make a counteroffer of, oh, four million. We’ll offer two, they’ll come down to something like three-fifty, and we’ll probably settle for three million or thereabouts. It shouldn’t take too long once the process begins.”
Dante laughed. “If it’s as cut-and-dried as all that, why not offer them the three million now and eliminate all this busy work?”
“I’m sorry you don’t find the discussion more worthwhile, Dante,” Vincenzo said. There was no love lost between those two.
“On the contrary, I’m fascinated. I can’t wait to see it happen. It’s like a lesson in the capitalist ethic. One party has a commodity to sell, another party wishes to buy it. They freely work out a price between themselves, without the interference of regulations or the intrusion of government. Do we not have before us the free market system at its most elemental?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Francesca said, again lifting her eyes to the low, hammer-beamed ceiling, something she seemed to do pretty often with Dante around. She must once have been quite beautiful, Caravale realized. She still was, he supposed, but now she’d weathered into a collection of hard angles and sharp edges.
