Sohlberg and the White Death (40 page)

The three men laughed. They eventually got bored of talking about Imerti and his many sins.

Domenico Pelle felt hungry now that he knew that he would live to see tomorrow. He pulled a compartment lid between the seats and said:

“Anyone want something to drink or eat?”

The three men took the vermouth and roasted almonds and dried apricots that Don Zappia stocked in his limousine. The
Punt e Mes
apéritif was Zappia’s favorite vermouth because its bitter and sweet flavor represented human existence. The apricots and roasted almonds served to remind him and his guests that death always comes along with life because apricot pits and raw bitter almonds contain tiny amounts of deadly cyanide.

As the car sped towards Switzerland the trio of gangsters remembered that whenever Two Kings Zappia partook of the apricots and almonds in the car he would always say:

“Life has the seeds of our own destruction. That’s why a man has to be careful and always consider the consequences of what he is doing and about to do.”

~ ~ ~

De Stefano took a folded page out of his suit’s inside pocket. He handed it to Morabito. “Here’s a list of families that you need to contact. Tell them that Don Zappia is retiring and that they must choose his replacement within eight weeks.”

A look of surprise crossed the face of the newest # 3 Man to Francesco Zappia. “Of course. I’m sorry to hear he wants to step down.”

“Great men like Francesco Zappia don’t step down from nothing. They step
up
to bigger and better things.”

“You’re right,” said the blinking Morabito. “This Ultra deal is going to be beautiful.”

The mobster trio lapsed into the felicitous silence of the wealthy and the accomplished. Each of them thought about the billions of dollars and euros that each of their families would soon be enjoying.

While sipping and munching away at Zappia’s sacramental appetizers the three men sat back to relax and enjoy the final leg of their 123-mile trip on the scenic E-35 Highway to Switzerland.

Chapter 25/Tjuefem

MEGGEN AND ZURICH, SWITZERLAND:

AUGUST 5, OR THREE MONTHS AND

25 DAYS AFTER THE DAY

The Italians left the highway at the Como Monte Olimpino exit in the suburb of Sagnino on the northern city limits of Como. Switzerland lay less than a mile away. They snaked through a maze of roads until they reached a small bridge that crossed the little Breggia River.

On the narrow residential street of Via XXV Aprile they turned left into Via XX Settembre. A couple of customs guards stood next to a yellow building that had an aluminum overhang jutting over the road with the official word DOGANA. That was the only notice that they were about to pass a customs checkpoint into Switzerland.

The Italian guards waved them through.

“Welcome to Switzerland,” said the bribed and efficient Swiss border guard after the briefest of
pro forma
glances at the fake identity documents of the Calabrian gangsters.

The crossing at Sagnino rarely had a border guard on the Swiss side. The guard had been posted there by his superiors to make sure that the Italians were not harassed by any of the local police who occasionally pulled over suspicious Italian cars inside the Swiss border. An honest cop would certainly be interested in taking a closer look at a heavily armored limousine and its convoy of bodyguards.

Domenico Pelle and his co-passengers smiled at each other. They always felt safer and better when they were inside Switzerland. Afer all the country is nothing less than a luxury spa for the soul and the pocketbook of the ultra-wealthy whose ill-gotten fortunes need soothing.

~ ~ ~

Twenty miles inside Switzerland the limousine and convoy abandoned the E-35 Highway. They wended their way into the countryside through a narrow asphalt road that sliced through a verdant valley north of the twin towns of Torricella and Taverne. The vehicles pulled into a lonely overlook that afforded a superb vista of the Swiss Alps. Bodyguards jumped out of the cars and they fanned out to set up a secure perimeter. After receiving the all-clear the three men walked to a bench where they could sit and enjoy the inspiring views of distant snow-capped peaks.

“This is a good place to talk in private,” said Domenico Pelle to Fabrizio Morabito.

Pasquale De Stefano disagreed but he kept his silence. He hated the chill under the shadow of the mountain. The older he got the colder he felt. He wondered if that would change in the bright future that Zappia and Pelle often spoke about in such warm and glowing terms. The old # 2 Man sat on the bench. He appeared to fall asleep with his hands clasped over the dome of his belly—like some cardinal dozing off at some boring church function. De Stefano’s eyes may have been tightly closed but the mobster was wide awake.

The
consigliere
Domenico Pelle sat down with the older man on his left and the younger man on his right. Pelle looked forward to explaining the ins and outs of his side of the business to the newly inducted # 3 Man. Fabrizio Morabito reminded Domenico Pelle of an enthusiastic acolyte receiving his first catechism lesson.

~ ~ ~

“Fabrizio,” said Domenico Pelle, “very few members of the 'Ndrangheta know all of the details about our businesses. Granted that all members know some stuff . . . but all they see is the outline of the shadow. . . . Correct?”

“Correct.”

“The great majority of our people only know the most general and vaguest of information. We need to keep it that way in case any family member feels the need to talk to the police. Understand?”

“Perfectly.”

“You agree with this?” said Domenico Pelle with the solemnity of a confessor priest.

“Absolutely.”

“You swear to never reveal to anyone what we will speak about?”

“I do.”

“Fabrizio . . . I’m going to give you a lot of information to digest. You will hear a lot of details about our operations.”

“That’s okay.”

Domenico Pelle stared straight into the eyes of the young mobster. “Fabrizio . . . I know that you’re going to make an effort to memorize this information because you are not lazy or stupid. You are willing to learn. Lazy and stupid people get bored with details and facts. You don’t. That’s why Don Zappia picked you.”

“I understand.”

“Are you ready to learn?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand that we must make sure that very few members have full knowledge of all the facts as to all of the 'Ndrangheta businesses . . . specially our coca business?”

“I do.”

“Only the bosses and their number two men know everything because every family has agreed to keep the right hand from knowing what the left hand is doing. For example . . . if members of the Pelle family work in buying Columbian product then the Pelle family is not allowed to work in coca distribution or in money laundering. Do you agree to keep it that way?”

“I do.”

“Fabrizio . . . we have a special challenge because we make so much money from the import and distribution business. Every day in our coca business we collect an average of 120 million in cash currency all over Europe . . . Australia . . . and parts of the Americas where we are establishing more branches with family members who need the work.”

“I understand.”

“Most of the cash is in euros. About a third comes in U.S. dollars. Keep in mind that we only deal with local wholesalers and major retailers and that we only take payment in the 500 denomination for the euro and 100 for the U.S. dollar. We never accept bills in smaller denominations.”

“Of course.”

“We take the cash to money brokers . . . we call them
street
brokers . . . they help us change the cash into bank deposits that can then be easily moved around by check or wire transfer. . . . The money brokers are all
legit
businessmen who need easy profit to subsidize their legal business operations.

“The street brokers let us use their facilities and names and bank accounts for a 2% or 3% commission. Some own bakeries or bars or nightclubs or concert venues or restaurants or casinos . . . some are small or medium-sized supermarket chains or retail chains . . . or they own vending machine companies. Depending on the country they might own stores that sell lottery tickets or stores that operate as pawn shops. . . . They are all people who deal in a lot of cash and don’t attract attention. Sometimes we even buy and own the business. Understand?”

“I do,” said Morabito.

~ ~ ~

The
consigliere
recited the names of the families and capos who were in charge of making sure that the street brokers did their job quietly and without stealing a dime from the 'Ndrangheta. Pelle resumed his lesson:

“The street brokers deposit our money in their bank accounts . . . they then pay us that day with many checks and wire transfers because we own companies that pretend to be their vendors or lenders. We own hundreds of companies in all sorts of industries that act as vendors and finance companies to the money brokers.”

“Are these real companies that we own?”

Pelle appreciated the question. Fabrizio Morabito was the right man for the job. Pelle said:

“Oh yes. Our companies have offices and employees and accountants and bookkeepers and the companies pay taxes. The companies help us hide our ownership of the money from the law. These vendors and finance companies have their own vendors and finance companies that they do business with. We also own those companies . . . and that’s where we start to consolidate the amounts into multi-million euro or dollar transactions that flow up through several cycles and companies that we control until the money is parked with the piggy banks.”

“
Piggy banks
?” said Fabrizio Morabito with an arched eyebrow.

“They’re legit companies that we own . . . each company has yearly revenues in the hundreds of millions of euros or dollars.”

At this point Pelle stopped to name the families and capos in charge of the piggy banks.

Fabrizio hoped that he could remember all of the names. Some of the names surprised him because he thought that those families or capos were small bit players of no consequence. Now he knew better.

~ ~ ~

Domenico Pelle observed his initiate and gave him a few seconds to absorb the secret knowledge. “The piggy banks lend money to legitimate commodity brokers and traders who are based all over the world but mostly in New York and London and Geneva Switzerland. . . .”

“Like who?”

“Billion dollar companies with names that you and 99.9% of the world have never heard of . . . Vitol . . . Glencore that used to be owned by the great tax evading criminal Marc Rich of New York . . . Cargill . . . Dreyfus . . . Trafigura . . . Gunvor . . . Mercuria Energy . . . Bunge . . . Wilmar . . . Arcadia . . . and Phibro which is now part of Citibank.

“Some are even subsidiaries of giant corporations like British Petroleum and Exxon and Shell and Conagra and Rio Tinto. The commodity brokers . . . big fat powerful companies . . . buy and sell hundreds of millions of dollars or euros of commodities every day across the world.”

“What commodities?”

“Oil or gold or silver . . . diamonds . . . platinum . . . wheat or cotton . . . pork bellies . . . fertilizer . . . aluminum . . . zinc . . . or copper. Most of the commodity brokers and traders know that we are the owners of the piggy banks that lend them money . . . others don’t ask or care. Or they deal with companies that they trust but that we have secretly bought out and taken over a long time ago.

“Commodities brokers and traders need huge amounts of money and that’s something we can provide them for decent interest rates that are better than what banks offer. Plus we’re much faster in making credit decisions than some stupid bureaucratic banker.”

“But what happens if the price of these commodities goes down?”

“We have liens on every cargo and we buy options and futures and other fancy contracts to protect us if the price or value of the collateral goes down.”

Fabrizio Morabito nodded. He did not understand all the terms that Pelle threw out. But Frabrizio knew enough to know that the 'Ndrangheta families were protected with some kind of contracted insurance. And if that should fail then a good old-fashioned kidnaping and torture session or a quick curb-side execution would work wonders with any cowardly tycoon or corporate lackey who was stiffing them for the amount due.

“Money,” continued Pelle, “in the hundreds of millions of dollars and euros comes in and out of the piggy banks every day. . . . The law does not look at these transactions because governments and politicians are in love with the big corporations that our piggy bank companies do business with. . . . After all . . . governments and politicians are too busy milking taxes and donations out of these giant and very legit companies.”