Couple Charged in Kidnaping of Exxon President : Abduction: The former security guard at the oil company and his wife are arrested after a maze of ransom calls, but the executive is still missing.

FBI agents arrested a former Exxon security guard and his wife and charged the couple Friday with kidnaping the president of the giant oil company’s international division, who is still missing.

A federal complaint charged that Arthur and Irene Jacqueline Seale, both 45, abducted Sidney J. Reso outside his suburban New Jersey home and wrote ransom notes and made telephone calls that threatened him with physical violence. One call allegedly came from a gas station pay phone in Georgia. The calls demanded delivery of millions of dollars for the executive’s safe return.

The complaint portrayed a frantic chase by FBI agents and police through portions of New Jersey on Thursday as the couple tried to collect a ransom.

U.S. Atty. Michael Chertoff, who announced the federal action, stressed that the search for the 57-year-old Reso, who disappeared on his way to work April 29, had entered a critical phase.

“This is the most sensitive time in the investigation,” Chertoff said in Newark, N.J., where the Seales were brought before a U.S. magistrate for arraignment on kidnaping and extortion charges.

Prosecutors said that soon after Reso disappeared from his home in Morris Township, N.J., the FBI recovered a letter demanding millions from Exxon Corp. for Reso’s safe return. The letter asked that a cellular phone number be provided through which the kidnapers could make contact and give further instructions. The FBI went along with the request.

Later, several ransom letters were recovered and a series of calls from pay phones--some containing prerecorded messages--were received by Exxon. FBI agents said the voices were disguised, but appeared to belong to a man and a woman.

On June 8, the cellular phone rang. The call was traced to a pay phone at a gas station in Pooler, Ga. A man’s voice asked why there had been no response to a previous message. Eight days later, a ransom letter was recovered at a mailbox in Morris Township. FBI agents were directed to the box by a prerecorded call from a pay phone in Morristown, N.J.

“The ransom letter gave instructions about the preparations of millions of dollars in used $100 bills and its packaging in a specified type of laundry bags,” the complaint charged. “The letter also made threats against Mr. Reso and other unnamed Exxon employees if the ransom demand was not met as instructed.”

On Thursday, the cellular phone rang with two calls, giving instructions to be ready to make the money drop. Then the chase began.

The alleged kidnapers called from a pay phone at the train station in Gladstone, N.J., directing agents to an envelope. When the envelope was opened, instructions were found to drive to another location five miles away. Another note was found at a general store in Medham, N.J. A series of other calls to the cellular phone followed as police and the FBI scrambled from location to location.

Finally at 10:40 p.m., an FBI surveillance team observed a man with blond hair who wore gloves pick up a pay phone at a mall in Chester, N.J. After using the phone, the man took off his gloves and drove away in a car with another person in the passenger seat.

The car was traced to a rental company in Warren County, N.J., and records showed it was rented by Irene Seale.

Later that evening, the federal complaint said a woman matching Mrs. Seale’s description was seen near pay phones at an Elks Club in Gladstone, N.J. Then, shortly before midnight, a man was seen entering the rental car.

Early Friday morning, FBI agents observed Seale at the rental company. He told law enforcement agents he was returning a rental car and was waiting for his wife. Soon afterward, Mrs. Seale arrived in a white Mercedes-Benz.

FBI agents said when they searched the Mercedes they discovered laundry-like bags, a partial roll of quarters and a briefcase. Inside the briefcase was a 1985 home address directory of Exxon executives, scissors and three .38-caliber bullets.

Government lawyers asked that the couple be held without bail, and the hearing was continued to Monday.

A spokesman for the prosecutor said that Seale was a former Exxon employee who had worked at one point as a guard.

After Reso failed to report to work at the headquarters of Exxon’s international division in Florham Park, N.J., his car was found with its motor running at the end of the 250-foot driveway of his home. The door was open on the driver’s side, and his overcoat was still inside the car.