The Wolf (2 page)

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Prologue

Florence, Italy

SUMMER, 2012

It was not yet noon but already humid on this mid-August Sunday. Stalls and carts lined the Piazza Santa Croce as the statue of Dante glared down at hundreds of tourists and locals. Visitors wearing cameras like jewels around their necks ordered quarter kilos of prosciutto, salami, and fresh mozzarella, each slice laid evenly across the open face of bread just removed from small portable ovens. Others asked for pizzettas covered with toppings and wrapped in wax paper.

The locals lingered, scanning the goods, preparing to buy enough to get through the early part of the week. Many had been to mass and now anticipated the family meal. Street clowns and mimes provided levity to the congested and boisterous setting.

The young man was in his early twenties, clean-shaven, and dressed in casual Florentine attire: a tan jacket, cream-colored slacks, and white button-down shirt. One hand hid inside the left pocket of his jacket while the other held a chocolate gelato cone, the mound of cream melting in the heat. The man ate in the manner that he walked, slow and leisurely, and he wiped at thin veins of melting chocolate with a folded napkin. He studied the people around him and smiled. If many in the crowd were to die within the next several minutes, they had chosen a glorious day in a splendid setting.

The man’s name was Ali Ben Bashir. He was the youngest son of an Iranian father and an Italian mother. His parents met when both were medical students at the university in Siena, then separated when Ali was six. After, his life was divided between two families, two cultures: summers in Italy with his mother, the rest of the year with Iranian relatives, none of whom had kind words for any Western nation, especially a Catholic one. He was encouraged to absorb the lessons of Islam and not fall prey to the easy temptations of a city like Florence, as his father’s family mocked any mention the boy made of the Renaissance or his excursions to museums and churches designed and built centuries earlier.

Ali became a confused and angry young man, uncertain if the long looks he was given and questions he was asked each time he passed through Italian customs were routine or designed for him alone. His Italian relatives would poke fun at his concerns, dismissing them as paranoia planted by the ramblings of radicals. “They signal you out because you’re from a place where today’s terrorist comes from,” his uncle Aldo told him over coffee one afternoon. “When I was your age, they asked those same questions of us, Northern Italians, because of the Red Brigades and before that of the Germans because of their terrorist problems. It doesn’t mean you’re special and it doesn’t mean they hate you. It just means your time is now, until the next group of madmen come along.”

Ali would listen, smile, nod as if in agreement, but remain unconvinced. He had caught too many looks of disdain, not only on the streets of Italy, but when he traveled to other cities as well—a student trip to New York, a vacation in Paris, a biking trip into northern Spain with friends—the same signal was delivered, the same message implied. He was not to be trusted and would never be welcomed. He was an outsider.

To the fundamentalists among his father’s friends, Ali was a candidate ripe for radicalization. Over three years, they would visit Ali in small groups. During these meetings, hidden under the guise of dutiful prayer and worship, they would talk about all the ills Western society had placed upon Muslims. Ali grew agitated when told of the atrocities committed against women during the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and of how their most religious book was held up to ridicule and in some cases burned, often by people who had never bothered to read even one word.

The journey of Ali from child of divorce to young student to proud Muslim willing to die for a cause culminated with the death of his father in the spring of 2010. Ali had spent three weeks by his father’s bedside, leaving only to attend prayer services. He fed his father what little food he would eat and read to him in the back room of the small apartment. During that time, the two shared many moments and spoke as often as sickness allowed. Ali not only loved the man who had taught him how to read, lace his shoes, and say his prayers, he
respected
him. He knew his father in ways few sons took the time to know their own. But in that three-week period, when he watched the body of the man he most loved in this world surrender to the pain of a disease that could not be conquered, he came to understand why his father hated Western society and all it represented.

“I am sorry to see you this way,” Ali said to his father during one of their final moments. “I hate to see you in such pain.”

“The price one pays for living a long life,” his father said.

Ali smiled and wiped his father’s sweaty forehead with a damp cloth. “So, no regrets?” he asked.

“Just one,” his father said.

“Does it have something to do with Mother?” Ali asked.

His father shook his head. “No,” he said. “If I had not made your mother my wife, I would not have had you as my son. For me, our marriage remains a blessing.”

“Then what is your regret?” Ali said.

His father stared at him, laying still, barely catching breath, in the warm confines of a room filled with only a bed, a prayer mat, a nightstand, a bureau. “I wish I had the courage to do what so many others braver than I have done,” he finally said.

“What is that?”

“To give up my life,” his father said. “To surrender flesh in the name of Allah.”

Fourteen months after his father’s death, Ali Ben Bashir stood facing a crowded piazza in one of the most beautiful and serene places in the world, across from a church where many of the giants of the Renaissance were buried. He unbuttoned the front of his starched white shirt, revealing an intricate series of wires, timers, and small explosives taped across his chest. He spread his arms out, a small black box with a red button in the center clutched in his right hand. “I do this for you, dear father,” Ali said. “I do this in your name.”

Then, head lifted to a cloudless sky, Ali Ben Bashir pressed his thumb on the red button.

Part I.

“There is no crime of which I cannot conceive myself guilty.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Chapter 1

Los Angeles, California

SPRING, 2013

It should have been me.

Not Lisa.

And not my girls, that’s for damn sure.

And not anyone else, not when you take a hard look at it. It was me they targeted. Me they wanted. It’s me they’ve always wanted. But they couldn’t touch me. So they reached for the ones they could get. And I let them walk right into it.

I wanted Lisa and the girls to fly on a private jet with bodyguards sitting in front and back and another team waiting on the ground. That was the way it was meant to happen. That’s the way it would have happened if I had held firm. But I let myself be talked out of it.

Lisa didn’t want our three kids raised in a bubble. She wanted them to grow up as normal kids leading normal lives—or as normal as they could be when you consider who I am and what I do. She had always wanted that—a normal life. We both knew going in that normal was never going to be easy, not with me around. You want safe and secure, move to a small town and marry the local grocer. But when you fall in love with a guy like me, the unthinkable comes with the vows.

I am a cautious man.

I don’t trust strangers, am uneasy in large gatherings—from weddings to concerts to dinner parties of more than ten—and travel with a discreet security detail close enough to take action if the need arises. I have a carry permit and never venture out minus at least one loaded weapon. I don’t adhere to a regular schedule, instead I vary everything—from workouts to the times I eat my meals to the routes I take to work sites and meetings. I am not troubled by any of these habits and, in truth, I derive comfort from knowing I’m in control of my surroundings. It allows me freedom and enables me to focus on the tasks I need to accomplish.

These habits help me excel at what I do. But they do not make me an ideal husband or father. I imposed these restrictions on my family, and while
I
see them as a necessary precaution,
they
chafed at their existence. My wife detested any security outside of a home alarm. The kids wanted to be able to have sleepovers minus background checks, go to parks and outdoor events without being in the company of armed men who made their presence known. The resentment was a cause for friction.

“Why can’t we, just this one time, go on vacation like everyone else?” Lisa had asked me.

“We
are
going on a vacation like everyone else,” I said. “Does it really matter how we get there?”

“The kids are not going to live your life when they grow up, Vincent,” Lisa said. “They’ll be out there on their own. The sooner they see what that’s like, the better it will be for them. And as I recall, you went to Italy when you were a teenager and you went alone.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “But I get your point.”

“We’ve never traveled as a family,” Lisa said. “I don’t think our kids have even seen the inside of an airport.”

“They’re not missing much,” I said. “Long lines, bad food, lost luggage. Am I leaving anything out?”

“I’m serious, Vincent,” Lisa said, reaching for my hand and holding it gently against her side. “Let them be kids, just this once. They’re so excited about this trip. I am, too.”

“If I get on that plane,” I said, “it might as well be a private jet. First class will be me, you, the kids, and our bodyguards.”

“Then don’t get on the plane,” Lisa said. “I’ll go with the girls and you follow us later with Jack. You still have that real estate deal to close, right?”

I felt the argument sliding away. “That’s right,” I said.

“Get that off your plate and then you and Jack can meet us in New York,” Lisa said. “Give the two of you some time together.”

“It doesn’t feel right to me, Lisa,” I said. “At least not now. In a few years, maybe then might be a better time.”

“You said you wanted a normal life for them,” Lisa said. “Did you really mean that or were they just words?”

“I meant it,” I said. “I don’t want them to be like me in any way.”

“Then normal needs to start right now,” Lisa said. “With this trip.”

I pulled Lisa close to me and held her in my arms. “I love you,” I said. “And I’ll do anything not to lose you or the kids.”

“I love you even more,” she whispered in my ear. “And always will.”

So, going against my nature and judgment, I agreed to allow some air into my hermetically sealed world. For my kids and for Lisa. They wanted a taste of what passes for normal life, to move about freely, not be confined by my rules. And I went along with it, deluding myself into thinking that they would still be safe, they would still be there for me to hold them close.

That no harm would come to them.

That I was the only target of interest.

It was a move that should never have been made. I allowed my love for family to obscure my distrust of the world. I put them out there without the protection they needed, the safeguards required. I let them go. And I will never forgive myself for that.

My name is Vincent Marelli and I own your life.

I know you’ve never met me, and if you are lucky you never will. The chances are better than even you’ve never heard of me, but in more ways than you could think of, I own a piece of you. Of everything you do. I don’t care where you live or what you do, a percentage of your money finds its way into the pockets of the men I lead. We are everywhere, touch everything and everyone, and always turn a profit. And once we’ve squeezed every nickel we can out of you, we toss you aside and never bother giving you a second thought.

You lay down a bet at a local casino or with the bookie in the next cubicle, we get a cut. You take the family on that long-planned vacation, a large chunk of the cash you spend—highway tolls, hotel meals, the rides you put your kids on—finds its way into our pockets. You smoke, we earn. You drink, we earn more. Buy a house, fly to Europe, lease a car, mail your mother a birthday present, we make money on it. Hell, the day you’re born and the day you’re buried are both days we cash out on you.

And you’ll never know how we do it.

That’s
our
secret.

We’re never in the headlines. Oh, you’ll read about some busts and see a bunch of overweight guys in torn sweatshirts with tabloids folded over their heads do a perp walk for the nightly news, but that’s not us. Those rodeo clowns are the ones we want you to
think
we are. Those are the faces that get Page One attention, headline trials and triple-decade prison sentences. We have thousands of guys like that and we toss them into the water any time federal or local badges need to make a splash, make the public think they’re out there serving and protecting.

We remain untouched.

At least, we did. Until this happened.

We are the most powerful organization in the world.

In the last twenty years nearly every top-tier branch of organized crime has joined our union: from the three Italian factions to the Yakuza in Japan, the Triads of China, the French working out of Marseilles, the Algerians, the Israelis, the Greeks, the Irish and the British. We are now one. A powerful and ruling body so strong, we are beyond the reach of any government, let alone an ambitious local district attorney out to make a name. We have become what the old-timers like Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello, and Meyer Lansky dreamed about.