Calzado had no need to visit the Galician gangs who had already been reassured by the Don himself, but the other main clients and importers were vital.
Though over a hundred gangs supply and trade cocaine between Ireland and the Russian border, most acquire their stocks from the dozen giants who deal directly with Colombia and sub-franchise once the product has safely arrived on European land.
Calzado made contact with the Russians, Serbians and Lithuanians from the east; the Nigerians and Jamaican "Yardies"; the Turks, who, although originally from the southeast, predominated in Germany; the Albanians, who terrified him; and the three oldest gang groups in Europe-the mafia of Sicily, the camorra of Naples and the biggest and most feared of them all, the Ndrangheta.
If the map of the Republic of Italy looks like a riding boot, Calabria is the toe, south of Naples, facing Sicily across the Strait of Messina. There were once Greek and Phoenician colonies in that harsh and sun-scorched land, and the local language, hardly intelligible to other Italians, derives from Greek. The name Ndrangheta simply means "the Honorable Society." Unlike the highly publicized mafia of Sicily or the more recently famous camorra of Naples, the Calabrese pride themselves on an almost invisible profile.
Yet it is the biggest in number of members and the most internationally far-flung of them all. As the Italian state has discovered, it is also the hardest to penetrate, and the only one in which the oath of utter silence, the omerta, is still unbroken.
Unlike Sicily's mafia, the Ndrangheta has no "Don of All Dons"; it is not pyramid shaped. It is not hierarchic, and membership is almost entirely based on family and blood. Infiltration by a stranger is absolutely impossible, a renegade from inside virtually unheard of and successful prosecutions rare. It is the abiding nightmare of Rome's Anti-Mafia Commission.
In its traditional homeland, inland of the provincial capital of Reggio de Calabria and the main coast highway, is a shuttered land of villages and small towns running into the Aspromonte Range. In its caves, hostages were until recently kept pending ransom or death, and here is the unofficial capital of Plati. Any stranger proceeding here, any car not recognized at once, is detected miles away and made very unwelcome. It is not a tourist magnet.
But it was not here that Calzado had to come to meet the chiefs, for the Honorable Society has taken over the entire underworld of Italy's biggest city, its industrial powerhouse and financial motor, Milan. The real Ndrangheta had migrated north and created in Milan the country's, and perhaps the continent's, cocaine hub.
No Ndrangheta chieftain would dream of bringing even the most important emissary to his home. That is what restaurants and bars are for. Three southern suburbs of Milan are dominated by the Calabrese, and it was at the Lion's Bar in Buccinasco that the meeting took place with the man from Colombia.
Facing Calzado to listen to his excuses and assurances were the capo locale and two officeholders, including the contabile, the accountant, whose profit figures were bleak.
It was because of the Honorable Society's special qualities, its secrecy and unforgiving ruthlessness in imposing order, that Don Diego Esteban had accorded it the honor of being his primary European colleague. Through this relationship, it had become the single biggest importer and distributor continentwide.
Apart from its own wholly run port of Gioia, it acquired a large part of its supplies from the land trains coming up from West Africa to the North African coast opposite Europe's southern shore and from the seafaring Galicians of Spain. Both supplies, it was made plain to Calzado, had been badly disrupted, and the Calabrese expected the Colombians to do something about that.
Jorge Calzado had met the only dons in Europe who dared speak to the head of the Hermandad of Colombia as an equal. He retired to his hotel-like his superior, Largo, looking forward to a return to his native Bogota. COLONEL DOS SANTOS did not often take journalists, even senior editors, out for lunch. It ought to have been the other way around. Editors were the ones with the fat expense accounts. But the lunch bill usually arrives in the lap of the one who wants the favor. This time it was the head of the intelligence division, Policia Judicial. And even he was doing it for a friend.
Colonel Dos Santos had good working relationships with the senior men of both the American DEA and the British SOCA posted in his city. Cooperation, so much easier under President Alvaro Uribe, bought mutual dividends. Even though the Cobra had kept the handover of the Rat List to himself, since it did not concern Colombia, other gems discovered by the cameras of the ever-circling Michelle had proved extremely useful. But this favor was for the British SOCA.
"It's a good story," insisted the policeman, as if the editor of El Espectador could not recognize a story when he saw one. The editor sipped his wine and glanced down at the new item he was being offered. As a journalist, he had his doubts; as an editor, he could foresee a return favor coming his way if he was helpful.
The item concerned a police raid in England on an old warehouse where a newly arrived shipment of cocaine had been discovered. All right, it was a large one, a full ton; but discoveries were being made all the time and were becoming too ordinary to make real news. They were so much the same. The piled-up bales, the beaming customs officers, the glum prisoners paraded in handcuffs. Why was the story from Essex, of which he had never heard, so newsworthy? Colonel Dos Santos knew, but he dared not say.
"There is a certain senator in this city," murmured the politician, "who frequents a very discreet house of pleasure."
The editor had been hoping for something in exchange, but this was ridiculous.
"A senator likes girls?" he protested. "Tell me the sun rises in the east."
"Who mentioned girls?" asked Dos Santos. The editor sniffed the air appreciatively. At last he smelled payback.
"All right, your gringo story goes on page two tomorrow."
"Front page," said the policeman.
"Thanks for lunch. A rare pleasure not to pick up the tab."
Privately, the editor knew his friend was up to something but he could not fathom what. The picture and caption came from a big agency, but based in London. It showed a young hoodlum called Coker standing beside a pile of cocaine bales with one of them ripped open and the paper wrapper visible. So what? But he put it on the front page the next day.
Emilio Sanchez did not take El Espectador, and, anyway, he spent much of his time supervising production in the jungle, refinement in his various laboratories and packing ready for shipment. But two days after publication, he was passing a newsstand on his drive back from Venezuela. The cartel had established major laboratories just inside Venezuela where the poisonous relations between Colombia and the fiefdom of Hugo Chavez protected them from the attentions of Colonel Dos Santos and his police raids.
He had ordered his driver to stop at a small hotel in the border town of Cucuta so that he could use the lavatory and take a coffee. In the lobby was a rack with the two-day-old copy of El Espectador. There was something about the picture that jolted him. He bought the only copy on the stand and worried all the way back to his anonymous house in his native Medellin.
Few men can retain everything in his head, but Emilio Sanchez lived his work and prided himself on this methodical approach and his obsession with keeping good records. Only he knew where he kept them, and for security reasons they took an extra day to visit and consult. He took with him a magnifying glass, and, having pored over the picture in the paper and his own dispatch records, he went white as a sheet.