This was just another example of the vulnerability of the Container Security Initiative program. Once a U.S. Customs officer had cleared a container into the Green Channel, its cargo was effectively already in the United States because the vast majority of those containers landed stateside without further inspection. American officers posted overseas were relying on the integrity of the local Customs personnel, but in many countries, these were low-paid officials who were susceptible to bribery.
In Italy, as Sarah had learned from office talk, and during one evening’s long discussion with Marco, there were certain conditions that made corruption more likely among Customs officers than within the Guardia. Customs was not a police force in the strict sense, so its officers did not earn certain police benefits, and therefore effectively earned less than their counterparts in the Guardia or the Polizia di Stato, the State Police. Customs often worked on joint operations with the Guardia, causing many Customs officers to resent the pay differential when they realized they were doing the same work for less pay. On top of that, career advancement within Customs was slower than the other agencies.
Whatever the background, and whatever Terenzi’s reasons for what she had just witnessed, the time had come for her to act. When he returned from the men’s room, she told him she had an errand to run, and left the port to track down Marco.
She found him in his office, across the piazza from where Nelthorp had collected the woman with the baby.
15
Major Marco Sinatra was wearing overalls and wielding a heavy-duty bolt cutter when Terenzi appeared at his side. There was an edge in the Customs officer’s voice as he asked Sinatra what he was doing.
“Ask our American friend.”
Sarah stepped into view from behind the container, where she’d been waiting since Marco had sent a trusted port worker to tip off Customs that the Guardia was conducting an investigation in the Green Channel.
“You sealed this one yourself!” Terenzi told her, just as Deputy Director Zago and Customs Officer Morelli arrived on the scene.
Marco handed her both ends of the severed bolt. She examined them closely.
“That’s really strange,” Sarah said, replying to Terenzi.
“What is?”
“I did seal this container. So imagine my surprise when I watched you seal it again this morning”—she held up the pieces of metal—“with this counterfeit seal. Would you like to explain that to us?”
Terenzi swallowed.
“Vieni!” Marco called, and a pair of uniformed Guardia NCOs stepped into view. They quickly took Terenzi into custody.
Zago and Morelli stood gaping as their fellow officer was led away.
Marco and Sarah opened the container. The cargo facing them looked the same as Sarah recalled it, but that didn’t mean anything.
Due to the positioning of the container tier, the doors couldn’t be opened wide enough for a forklift, but it didn’t take long for a team of port workers to empty the first three rows of crates. What they discovered was that the last five feet of the container—350 cubic feet of space—was filled with a much different cargo than the one listed on the manifest.
Over a hundred boxes of auto parts.
Durasteel auto parts.
Nelthorp was only pretending to run an investigation for the American corporation that had hired him. Behind his client’s back, he was profiting from the same counterfeit auto parts trade that the company had hired him to stop. But there was no way he could run this operation on his own. Sarah concluded that the intelligence her department had received, indicating that a counterfeit goods ring was operating through Catania and that it had a stateside Mafia connection, was probably correct. Nelthorp must be in the pay of an American mob family.
The whole thing was almost unbelievable, but Sarah couldn’t think of another explanation.
And what about the baby laundering? Infants that had been purchased, or, more likely, stolen from their parents. Infants who were then adopted out, no doubt for a big price, on the pretext that they were legitimate orphans.
Nelthorp was neck-deep in that racket as well.
The time had come to tell Marco everything she knew. When they finished with the container, Sarah took him for a walk on the docks.
“What doesn’t fit is the Mafia itself,” she added, when she’d finished. “Nothing I ever read about the so-called Five Families ever gave me the impression that they would stoop to trafficking in children.”
“I never would have guessed … sei una romantica!”
Sarah almost laughed. “Me? A romantic?”
“Listen to me.” Marco’s tone was grave. “There might have been a time when these crime families had standards. Some lines they would not cross. No more. The Camorra, up in Naples … they’ve been forcing Nigerian women, and even young girls, into the sex trade. They came to Italy to work on the tomato farms, and the farms went broke. The old Mafias all across the south—the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia, the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria, and the Cosa Nostra here—they all conspire with the Egyptians and the Libyans to exploit the migrants. These gangs have no standards at all, Sarah. They are all swine. Their American cousins will be no better.”
Sarah was silent, processing what he had just said.
“I have sent officers to Nelthorp’s hotel to arrest him.”
She grabbed his arm. “No!”
“No?”
“If there’s time to stop them, just get some plainclothes officers to watch the hotel. I have an idea.”
Marco made a call on his cell. He caught the team leader just as they were getting out of their cars. Sarah heard the order to stand down, move the cars, and post a watch on the hotel’s front and rear exits.
When he finished, he disconnected and looked her in the eye. “Tell me.”
16
As highly rated restaurants go, Hosteria del Panda’s premises could not have been more unprepossessing—undersized, hunkered below two floors of shabby apartments, and located in a characterless neighborhood of home furnishing outlets and lottery shops. To add to the charm, it was flanked on one side by a renovation project clad entirely in plastic and corrugated steel.
But that was in the daytime. By night, with soft lighting, and magnificent ceramic urns blocking street-side parking next to exquisitely set sidewalk tables, the entire prospect was transformed into a warm and inviting venue for diners.
At 7:50 P.M., three hours after they had finished documenting two more containers packed with fake Durasteel auto parts, Sarah and Marco were two streets away from Hosteria del Panda, sitting in an unmarked Guardia cruiser. They were monitoring radio traffic. They knew Nelthorp had left his hotel ten minutes ago. The Villa Romeo was not much more than a quarter of a mile from the restaurant, so he was on foot. One of Marco’s men was keeping him in view. Four other officers, male and female pairs who were fluent in English, had already reported in. Posing as diners, one couple was seated inside the restaurant, and the other outside.
It had taken some doing, but Marco had managed to persuade one of his regular prosecutors to authorize a one-party consent intercept. In other words, Sarah was wearing a wire. Even more interesting, the microtransmitters were embedded inside ceramic beads on a pair of tiny stud earrings.
“And if my ears weren’t already pierced?” Sarah had asked when Marco handed them to her.
“We could have fixed that,” he’d replied, grinning, as he held up a hole-punch that was lying on his desk.
“Subject has arrived. He took the last empty table outside—the one closest to the corner. It had a reserved sign on it.”
Sarah reached for the door handle. “That’s my cue.”
“Talk to me while you walk, so we know the signal is clear.”
She did, and it was.
Nelthorp was facing the street corner, his back to the rest of the diners seated along the sidewalk. His table was the only one in partial shadow because the frontage lighting didn’t quite reach to the c
orner. She pretended not to see him as she strode toward the restaurant’s main entrance. He called out to her. Feigning surprise, she altered course.
He rose and offered a cold hand. “I came a bit early so I could argue with the owner if I didn’t like the table he was holding for us. I didn’t.”
“Where was it?”
“Inside, right beside a table set for eight. Thought you’d rather be out here.”
You reserved this table, you jerk. Why lie about something so unimportant?
Sarah sat. They ordered wine. When their glasses arrived, Nelthorp declined the waiter’s antipasti speciali suggestions and set his menu aside.
The warm, firm grip she remembered, the salesman’s tones, the gleaming teeth—all the moving parts of Nelthorp’s normal charm offensive didn’t seem to be meshing.
Something was wrong.
Sarah glanced past his shoulder. The two outside Guardia officers were three tables away, with the female facing her. If something went sideways, the inside pair would be no use at all.
She tried small talk. “So, how was your day?”
“Really?”
She shrugged and tried a questioning smile. “You invited me, Conrad. What did you want to talk about? Or is this supposed to be a date?”
That foray seemed to break through.
He sighed. “Date? Haven’t had one of those for a long time.” The sigh seemed staged. He went on, answering her first question. “My day? The usual. Catching up on paperwork while I waited to meet a source.” He sipped his wine. “Didn’t get much from him … almost a waste of time.”
“Almost?”
“After our meeting, he went on his way. Then I discovered something. He was being followed.”
Damn!
Sarah realized she was on a knife edge.
But she had been here before. She maintained her engaged, faintly warm expression, showing just enough concern to look mildly surprised. Although she was looking straight at Nelthorp, her peripheral vision was watching for body language three tables over that would signal that the conversation was coming in clearly and her two outside minders were alert.
She detected no movement.
“You’re sure he was being followed?”
“We went in separate directions, but after a few seconds, I decided to double back and follow him. Basic countersurveillance—making sure he wasn’t being tailed.” He paused. “He was … by a woman who looked a hell of a lot like you.”
I’m not going to get any more out of this guy, Marco. Take him!
Buying time, Sarah dove straight in with a hastily improvised deflection. “Are you talking about Elias Terenzi?” she asked sharply.
“Yes.”
“Then that was me. So what are you saying? You’re the one who’s been using him? You couldn’t get Homeland’s intel out of me, so you hired Elias to spy on us? Is that what you’re saying?”
The uncertainty on Nelthorp’s face told her she’d scored. He’d been worried she might be closing in on his smuggling racket. Instead of running for it, he’d kept their dinner date to find out how much she knew. And she’d just implied she didn’t know anything.
Which meant he didn’t know Terenzi was in custody.
But Nelthorp’s eyes were telling her there was something more.
He glanced at his watch.
“I’m sorry. You’re an attractive woman. I thought we could be friends.”
“What changed your mind?”
In the background, barely noticeable, the approaching sound of a whining engine.
Nelthorp leaned forward, his hand grasping her wrist. “Not ‘what,’” he hissed. “Who! Dominic Lanza.”
She heard chairs scraping on the pavement behind him.
About time, Marco!
That exasperated thought was lost in the sound of screeching tires and a loud bang. Sarah twisted in her seat. A van had mounted the curb and halted directly behind her, flattening a street sign in the process. Two men dressed in black leaped out of the side door. One man held a machine pistol. He yelled, “A terra!” and sent a rattling burst of gunfire over the heads of the seated diners. Against the resulting backdrop of screams and toppling furniture, the other man snaked a thick arm around Sarah’s neck and yanked her bodily out of her chair. Covered by a second burst of gunfire, he dragged her to the van and shoved her headlong through the open side door. He jumped in after her while his companion unleashed another spray of gunfire.
But they’d misjudged their victim.
In the two seconds it had taken the first thug to launch himself into the interior of the van, Sarah had regained her feet. He rushed at her, arms wide.
Mistake.
Lashing upward with an open palm, she destroyed his nose. With a bellow, he toppled against the back of the passenger seat, spraying blood. When the gunman stepped into the van, he walked straight into a violent kick that launched him back out the door. He landed heavily on the pavement outside. His machine pistol clattered away, sliding to rest in the middle of the street.
The driver twisted in his seat, a pistol in his hand.
Sarah leaped out of the van.
As shocked diners gawped and the Guardia cover team fumbled for their sidearms, the man on the pavement struggled to rise. Sarah took him out of the fight with a violent kick to the jaw.
The van’s engine screamed. Tires spun and poured smoke, the vehicle rocked and twisted, but it remained stationary, its front axle hung up on the stub of the street sign it had just destroyed.
Sarah sprinted for the machine gun.
With a wrench of tearing metal, the van shot forward. The driver swung the wheel, aiming straight for her. She sprang out of the vehicle’s path, but its side mirror clipped her shoulder, sending her sprawling. Tires slithered and squealed as the van spun into Via Torino and disappeared.
Within seconds, all four Guardia officers converged on her, forming an armed shield. As they helped her to her feet, she stared back at her table.
Nelthorp had vanished.
17
“Your shoulder?”
“A bruise. No serious damage. What about Nelthorp?”
“No sign of him on the street. We checked his hotel room. It was still registered in his name, but there was no trace of him. Our people were there within ten minutes of the incident, so it looks like he’d already emptied the room before he came to meet you.”
“Probably right after he spotted me tailing Terenzi. What about the gunman?”
“His name is Alberto Motta.”
“Cosa Nostra?”
“Possibly. Probably.”
“Do you know the name Dominic Lanza?”
“Lanza…” He was thoughtful. “An old name. I think from near Caltanissetta. One of the big landowners near there.”
“Mafia?”
“The landowner? Perhaps, at one time. He is an old man now, and lives quietly. I have heard, or maybe I read, that some of the family moved to America. A long time ago … before the First War.” He looked at her. “Why?”
“Nelthorp said that name a few seconds before the van showed up.”
“I didn’t hear that.”
“It will be on the tape. This Motta guy … is he talking?”
“Not much. You broke his jaw. He’s in surgery.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
“Sorry? I’m not. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. If he is Mafia, their soldati never talk.”
They exited the hospital.
“That gun. It was a MAC 10. That’s an American weapon.”
Her friend wrapped a protective arm around her. “We nearly lost you, young lady.”
There was genuine emotion in the big man’s voice. Sarah stopped.
“I’ve been in worse situations, Marco. I would’ve handled them.”
“No. You don’t understand. You’d have been dead before the van left the city, and we would never have found you. Those people have too many places to hide a body.” He went silent for a second
. “Lago della Morte. Have you heard of it?”
“Lake of Death? Sounds like something from a horror movie.”
“In a way, it is. It’s near Palagonia. It’s not actually water—it’s concentrated sulfuric acid. It’s fed by two subterranean channels. Both are sources of H2 SO4 from volcanic activity.”
“So … not a place for water sports.”
“It’s no joke, Sarah. I’ve read the reports. Standard procedure for the Cosa Nostra … someone gets in their way, make him disappear. Forever. The usual routine is to garrote the victim and then drop the body into the lake. It only takes a few days for a corpse to dissolve completely.”
“And you think that was the plan for me.”
“Think of it this way: Nelthorp didn’t know Terenzi was already locked up, and he didn’t know we’d found his shipments. He wouldn’t have come to the restaurant if he did. No, he saw you following Terenzi, cleaned out his hotel room, and called his contact—probably a local capodecina. They decided it was time to make you disappear before you got too close.”
“Then why not do it quietly, so no one would know what happened? I mean, think about it. A U.S. Customs agent vanishes in Sicily? Snatched off the street in front of a dozen people? The FBI would be all over it, but if I disappeared into thin air, they wouldn’t know where to look, or who to suspect. Why the theatrics? Those gorillas might as well have painted Mafia Hit Squad on the side of that van.”
“That was a message for us. The families have a long tradition of intimidating our judges and police. The big display was to encourage our officers to … how do you say it?… drag feet when your FBI showed up.”
“Okay, I guess you know the landscape. But I don’t think Nelthorp was too happy about it. It was written on his face.”
“He was worried he’d made a big mistake. He was thinking he could be next.”
“You caught that from the audio? I’m impressed.”
“Not me. Bruno Luzi, the agent who followed him from his hotel. He was keeping watch from the Merola showroom across the road. He had binoculars and a live audio feed, and he’s fluent in English. He could see Nelthorp’s face right up to the second the van blocked his view.”
Killing Pace Page 10
