'And the treasurer of the cartel?'
He had surrendered.
'Were they careless? How is it possible for so many principals to be arrested?'
They had been arrested because they had used telephones, and the DEA had brought in interception technology.
A sad smile of sincere sympathy seemed to spread on Mario Ruggerio's face. He made a gesture with his hands that implied he himself would never have been careless and used a telephone. Peppino translated. He recognized the domination his brother achieved by making the Colombian confess to the weakness of his organization.
'You are disrupted?'
Business continued, with difficulty.
'What weight can you provide?'
They could provide five tonnes.
'Refined?'
It would be five tonnes refined.
'Where is delivery?'
The delivery would be on the European mainland.
'The price, what is the price?'
The price was $6,000 a kilo.
He had taken, as he had asked the question, as Peppino had translated the question and the answer, his Casio calculator from his pocket. His finger, for a brief moment, hovered over the 'on' switch. He listened to Peppino's translated answer. He was laughing. He put the calculator back in his pocket. His rough hand was on the Colombian's arm, squeezing it as he chuckled.
'I hope you have a good journey home. Before you go home I hope you will find someone else to do business with, and I hope you enjoyed our humble hospitality.
There was a dear friend in Agrigento with whom you might have made a deal, but he has disappeared. There is another dear friend in Catania, but I hear he has lost the stomach for such trading. Of course, if you have a vest to deflect the bullets, if you have a tank to travel in, you could go to Moscow. You know that if you do business with me, then it is honest business. There are others in many countries who would like what you have on offer, but you would have to be confident that you would not be cheated. If you do business with me, then there is no possibility of deception.'
What was the price he could offer?
The Casio calculator was back on the table. The screen lit. Mario's thick fingers were off the Colombian's arm and tapping the keys.
'Four thousand per kilo. Do you take it or do you leave it?'
The figure was acceptable.
'Four thousand per kilo, delivery over six months, through Rotterdam and Hamburg docks. You can do that?'
That, too, was acceptable.
'I pay on delivery. You understand that I cannot pay for what is not delivered past Customs at Hamburg and Rotterdam?'
That was understood.
'How do you wish to be paid? I can send you heroin, refined or unrefined, for distribution in the North American market. I can make available aircraft, 707s, a Lear executive, whatever, that you can sell on. I can pay through cash transfers, or in stocks or government bonds, whichever currency. How do you wish it?'
The Colombian, Vasquez, wished it in cash, invested and cleaned in Europe.
'For cash, invested and managed in Europe by ourselves in proxy lor you, we charge commission of 10 per cent of profits. Do you wish to use our facilities?'
The offer was accepted.
Peppino did not need the calculator. His mind made the calcu-lations. For five tonnes of cocaine, refined and delivered through the docks at Hamburg and Rotterdam, the Colombians would be paid the sum of $20 million. Five tonnes of cocaine would be sold on to the dealers and pushers and peddlers for a minimum of $45 million. When the dealers and pushers and peddlers released it on the streets of London and Frankfurt and Barcelona and Paris it would be worth $70 million. Initial profit, for minimum risk, was $25 million, and the little bastard, the Colombian, would have known that the old man beside him was perhaps the one individual boss in Europe in whose word he could place trust. Plus $20 million for investment, a profit margin of perhaps 8 per cent a year for total safety. A further income of $1.6 million… There had been no raised voices, no vulgar bartering. It had been, Peppino thought, a demonstration of mastery and control. The deal was closed with a handshake, the Colombian's small-boned fist wrapped tight in
Mario Ruggerio's broad fingers. The number of a post-office box on the island of Grand Cayman was given for further communication.
The Colombian was led away.
Mario lit his cigar and coughed. Peppino made the equation. His brother's deal would make a profit of $25 million, plus the commission on the investment, and his brother had no requirement for the money. There was no luxury that he sought, no means to spend the money. The money was the symbol of power. As if to tease Peppino, because Peppino wore a good suit and a good shirt and a good tie, his brother spat phlegm onto the floor and laughed.
Then, like it was an afterthought, something that could so easily have slipped his mind, Mario bent towards the floor and lifted a supermarket shopping bag from beside his feet, put it on the table, pushed it towards Peppino and tipped a handbag from it.
Each stitch of the handbag had been sliced, each panel of the handbag had been cut open. With the handbag were a purse and keys and cosmetics and a credit card and a diary, and tied to the strap was a thin cardigan.
'She is what you called her, a simple girl, but it is necessary always to be careful.'
Peppino took the autostrada back to Palermo. When he saw the road sign for Montelepre he slowed and he looked up towards the mountains. He could not see the town that was built against a rock fall because the rain cloud was too low. What always astonished him about his elder brother was his capacity to merge the broad frame of strategy with the minutiae of close detail, the strategy of a deal with a profit margin of $25 million, along with investment commission, and the detail of a hired help's handbag. He had gone that morning to Montelepre, stood in the rain and walked on the cramped streets, to search for lessons. He accelerated when he was past the turning. His brother had learned all the lessons that could be taught.
The journalist from Berlin had to run to keep alongside her, and her small floral-print umbrella covered only her head and shoulders. The rain ran on his head and his neck.
To the journalist it was quite ludicrous that he should have to conduct what he regarded as an important interview on the street and in the rain with the woman who claimed to have founded the first of Palermo's groups for anti-mafia education. He had waited a week for the interview. Three limes it had been postponed. She was a finely built middle-aged woman, dressed well, and she constantly covered with a slipping scarf the jewellery at her throat. While she talked, while she gave him his interview, she was incessantly yelling into a mobile telephone. The journalist from Berlin was a respected correspondent of his newspaper, he was a veteran of the Russian invasion of Chechenia and of the Gulf War and of Beirut. Palermo defeated him. He could not see the mafia, could not touch it, could not feel it. The woman he had waited to interview did not help him to see, touch, feel. A passing car's tyres carved through a rain lake and drenched his trousers.
'… I founded the anti-mafia group in this city at the time of Falcone's maxi-processo in 1986. I believed the trial of four hundred mafia men would make a turning-point. I was a systems manager with Fiat in the north, but I gave up my job, very well paid, to return to Palermo. I have big support in some of the most hard suburbs of deprivation, I am particularly well known in Brancaccio. My car, my Audi, I can leave it in Brancaccio and it will not be destroyed… I accept that the mafia offers more to young people than the state offers, but it is possible to go forward through education, through the school environment… I have to accept also that progress is very slow, and the culture of the mafia is very strong, but a sense of duty drives me to continue… I can take you to Brancaccio next week, and you may sit with me while I meet mothers of young boys who may be exposed to the contamination of the mafia, that would be most interesting for you… I beg your pardon? Do the criminals regard us as a threat to their way of life? Of course we are a threat to them, through the policy of education and group meetings… If I am a threat, why am I not silenced? I think you are impertinent, I think you are not truly interested…'