Deadly Impact--A Richard Mariner nautical adventure (7 page)

‘
Signor
Lazzaro,' announced maître d' Marco's still-chilly voice.

‘Well, yes,' blustered Tristan, disorientated. ‘But how did you …'

‘Good evening,' said a new, smooth voice. Tristan looked up while Robin looked round. The regal maître d' was standing with a man by his side. A slim, vibrant man perhaps ten years Tristan's senior but less than half his weight. And yet the breadth of the shoulders and the depth of chest were there. Did they play rugby in Italy? She wondered. But, judging from the face,
Murderball
might be this man's preferred sport. Even in profile it was easy to see the sharp line of cheekbone and the way the cheek itself settled into a cavern before the equally sharp line of his jaw. And, above the cheekbone, the deep, secret hollow of his eye socket beneath the crag of brow and the upward sweep of the domed forehead – hollow again at the temple, capped with short-cropped grey hair so thick it looked like a steel helmet. She noticed the aquiline jut of his nose down to the thin-lipped shark's mouth, and the way his chin jutted just where Tristan's receded. How apt, she thought. Here was a man that looked every inch the Italian Macbeth. Or the murderous Scarpia, perhaps, from
Tosca
.

But then
Signor
Lazzaro's profile swung towards Robin and the eyes in those cavernous sockets proved to be a deep, melting brown, fringed with lashes many a woman would die to possess and surrounded by deep laugh-lines. ‘
Capitano
Robin Mariner, is it not?' purred a deep voice with a frisson of nasality and the sweet, heady Italian depth of Amaretto. ‘Permit me. Francisco Alberto Lazzaro at your service.' Robin smiled and nodded, thinking that delicious Amaretto tasted and smelt of almonds. As did deadly cyanide. Straightaway, Robin suspected that Lazzaro was the source of Tristan's nervousness. But why?

The newcomer sat in the seat that Tristan had clearly been saving for him. Lazzaro glanced up at Mario. ‘I would like San Pellegrino to drink, and to see the menu now, please.'

Mario vanished. Lazzaro leaned forward, still without having addressed Tristan directly, even though he was now seated at his right hand. He was careful to keep the sleeve of his beautifully-tailored beige suit jacket – Milan, Robin thought; perhaps Gianni Campagna – clear of the puddle of wine in front of Tristan. ‘Now, I expect that Tristan here has informed you, I have been in the fortunate position of being able to support him and his consortium through some difficult financial times. A
disagreement
…' The rich voice lingered over the word, ‘… between poor Tristan and
Signora
Folgate, has, shall we say, alienated the lady and her father, the
Patrizio
Palmi. And as a result I have gained a certain amount of … shall we call it …
influence
in the syndicate. To the tune of a few million euros … As a friend of the family – of the s
ignora's
family, true, but that should not get in the way of business …'

Robin looked across at Tristan, but he was into his
Brunello di Montalcino 2004
and apparently unaware of this humiliating washing of his embarrassingly dirty laundry in public.

‘And I'm afraid that it was I,' continued the smooth Italian, ‘who suggested that we should test the security of
Sayonara
by sending a team of men aboard her. A little test by which I planned to assure myself of the soundness of my investment. A plan that now, however, may have gone awry.'

‘No, no, Francisco,' huffed Tristan importantly, rejoining the conversation. ‘It's all fine. Robin says the team went aboard in Rat Island Pass yesterday. It's all going like clockwork. Just like I planned.'

‘That's where Richard is,' Robin added, her grey eyes probing the deep brown ones opposite. ‘He's leading the security response team – the A Team – himself. They should have gone aboard about an hour ago if everything's running to time. And with Richard it usually does.'

‘I
see
,' said Lazzaro, leaning back suddenly.

Robin too saw. More than she was supposed to see, perhaps. Something that Tristan did not – and would never have understood if he had done so. She saw a gleam in the depths of those dark Italian eyes, before those long, dark lashes came down like a visor. Tristan Folgate-Lothbury might think everything was going like clockwork, mused Robin as Mario arrived with the menus, but Francisco Alberto Lazzaro clearly thought otherwise. And if he was the new power in the Folgate-Lothbury syndicate now that
Signora
Folgate-Lothbury and her fortune had departed, it looked to her as though Tristan had better start watching his back. For the charming
Signor
Lazzaro looked as though he was up to something …

It was a generally accepted fact that some sections of Heritage Mariner were open and functioning on a twenty-four-hour basis. Crewfinders never closed, for instance. Captains, owners and agents could call their number at any time, night or day, from anywhere in the world – any port or any ocean – certain of a speedy reply and of a crew member of any rank or skill available to them and arriving onboard within twenty-four hours. Another section of the massive company that never slept was London Centre – the commercial intelligence section. It would be working at full stretch even in the early hours.

All the way back east from Mayfair, Robin's mind whirled over what she had said, heard, seen and deduced during the conversation over dinner. Such had been her gathering concern that she had consumed only one glass of the divine Prosecco – with the
Cape Sante
scallops that had formed her Antipasti. Then she had joined Lazzaro with the San Pellegrino to accompany the
Taglio di Vitello
which had formed her main meal. Now, as she digested her heavenly wood-roasted veal chop, she found she had a good deal on her mind – and much of it worrying. Especially, she thought, checking the time on the screen of her doggedly silent cellphone, in the absence of any contact from Richard, who must have been on board
Sayonara
for well over an hour now.

‘No,' said Robin to the taxi driver, therefore, as he slowed at the corner of Cornhill and Bishopsgate. ‘Not here at Heritage House. Can you take me on into Leadenhall and down to the corner of Creechurch?'

Five minutes later, she had paid him off and was walking up towards the glass door that fronted the London Centre. The foyer was bright and an ex-army security man crossed smartly to the main entrance as she keyed in her security code, swinging it open for her and coming to attention as she entered. ‘Thank you, Sergeant Stone,' she said. ‘Is Mr Toomey in?'

Patrick Toomey met Robin at the lift door and ushered her down to the office as though she were visiting royalty. He was a big man, blue-eyed, red-haired and liberally freckled, as broadly Irish as his name. He was noted for his cheery bonhomie, his ready wit and a laugh that could fill a large room to the echo. He should have been the proprietor of one of London's Celtic pubs. He was actually an ex-spy, special forces trained, and perhaps second only to Jim Bourne himself in the world of commercial intelligence. He was as usual in shirtsleeves, though his heather mixture Donegal tweed jacket was hanging over the back of his chair.

‘Francisco Alberto Lazzaro?' he rumbled in answer to Robin's question. ‘Yes. I've heard of him, all right.'

‘I'd like to know all about him, please, Pat.'

‘You want a drink? It'll be a long night and you're going to need one.'

‘I bet you say that to all the girls. What've you got?'

‘Whisky.' He was shocked that she'd even had to ask.

‘Bushmills?' she hazarded, knowing his tastes of old.

‘Black Bush,' he nodded. ‘And as it's yourself, I've the twenty-one-year-old malt.'

‘That'll do nicely. Straight up. No ice. I'll sip.'

‘That's the only way we serve it – and that's the only way to drink it,' pontificated Pat. ‘Now, you'll need to shuffle round to my side of the desk while I pour the drinks. I'll show you what I've got on my laptop.'

Five minutes later, Robin was nursing a quadruple measure of one of the finest liquors in the world, with the chocolate, toffee-rich taste of it chasing bursts of mint along her tongue, paying no attention at all to the heavenly savour as she watched the pictures on Pat's laptop. A camera panned over a bullet-pocked car in which a dead driver slumped spattered with blood, and zoomed in on the first of five other corpses lying on the road partially covered with white sheets. White sheets through which more blood was leaking. ‘This is Germany,' Pat was explaining. ‘Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia. Ten kilometres north of Düsseldorf. Fifteenth of August, 2007. Six dead.'

‘Who are they?' asked Robin, willing to take it as read that this was relevant – something to do with Lazzaro. ‘Neo-Nazis? What?'

‘Italians,' he answered. ‘Calabrians, in fact. Like your Francisco Lazzaro. They were slaughtered as part of a long-running vendetta. The
San Luca
feud.'

‘OK. Robin looked at the shocking pictures and took another sip of Bushmills. ‘What are Italians doing in north Germany?'

‘These Italians were looking to expand the family business,' said Pat weightily. ‘And it seems that this particular family business involved cocaine.'

‘So Lazzaro is really a drug smuggler?'

‘What,' asked Pat by way of an answer, ‘if there was an organization that ran parallel to the Mafia? Only it was more secret? Better organized in some respects? Richer and more powerful, but most people have never heard of it?'

Pat clicked on to Wikipedia, and Robin read: ‘
The 'Ndrangheta is a criminal organization in Italy, centered in Calabria (near Sicily). Despite not being as famous abroad as the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, and having been considered more rural compared to the Neapolitan Camorra and the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita, the 'Ndrangheta managed to become the most-powerful crime syndicate of Italy in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While commonly lumped together with the Sicilian Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta operates independently from the Sicilians, though there is contact between the two, due to the geographical proximity, and shared culture and language of Calabria and Sicily. A US diplomat estimated that the organization's drug trafficking, extortion and money-laundering activities accounted for at least three per cent of Italy's GDP.
'

‘Three per cent,' said Robin. How much is that?

‘Italy's GDP is about two point two trillion dollars. Three per cent of that, off the top of my head, is in the region of sixty-six billion, give or take, if I've got my noughts in the right place …'

‘Sixty-six
billion
dollars! It's no wonder that, as it says here,
Since the 1950s, the organization has spread towards the north of Italy and worldwide.
Yes,' Robin added thoughtfully, ‘'Ndrangheta. I think I've heard of them.'

She sat back, frowning. Savouring, suddenly, the sweet complexity of the whisky on her tongue. ‘Heritage Mariner doesn't do a lot of container work in the Mediterranean as such, but we bring a shedload of stuff in through Suez and out past Gib. So I know a good deal about Gioia Tauro, the big new container port in Calabria – and the fact that it's supposed to be under almost total Mafia control. But clearly it's a mistake just to lump the Mafia and the 'Ndrangheta together. So that makes the 'Ndrangheta look like the biggest net importer of cocaine from the South American drug cartels. Isn't that it?'

‘It is. And you're right to make the distinction: not Mafia –
'Ndrangheta
. And the 'Ndrangheta are coining it in as a result. Especially as – until 2010 – the Italian authorities were more focused on keeping the Mafia under some kind of control in Sicily …'

‘… while the 'Ndrangheta grew like weeds in Calabria, just across the strait of Messina …'

‘That,' said Pat lugubriously, ‘is only the beginning. After the massacre in Germany I showed you, the Italian authorities began to go after 'Ndrangheta godfathers as well as Mafia ones. They started literally digging them out of the mountains. They had whole towns riddled with underground tunnels and hidey-holes. As a result of which, 'Ndrangheta wanted to move its money and influence abroad. It already had powerful cells in places where Italian communities exist. Taking it alphabetically …' he clicked back on to Wikipedia, ‘… that would be Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Germany – as we know – the Netherlands, Mexico, South Africa and, of course, the United States. But, my point is this: they are always on the lookout for ways to expand. New associates. New markets. And they will go in via legitimate enterprises. Look.' He clicked on the link to a particular section of the page and Robin read:
Belgium: 'Ndrangheta clans purchased almost ‘an entire neighbourhood' in Brussels with laundered money originating from drug trafficking. On 5 March 2004, forty-seven people were arrested, accused of drug trafficking and money laundering to purchase real estate in Brussels for some twenty-eight million euros. The activities extended to the Netherlands where large quantities of heroin and cocaine had been purchased …

‘And you're telling me that Lazzaro is a part of this?'

‘No. I'm telling you that Lazzaro is the
capo
of the Gioia Tauro clan. He's among the first of the 'Ndrangheta
capi
to be moving himself outside Italy and running things internationally. He's looking to expand into markets – legitimate and illegitimate – that will glean him the most profit. He's open to suggestions and up for making contacts. With anyone. Anywhere.'

‘And he seems to be the guy who's now elbowing in on the syndicate insuring
Sayonara
. The guy who sent the team aboard that Richard is facing down …' Robin paused and frowned, remembering the flash of irritation in those deep, dark chocolate eyes. ‘Oh, shit, Pat,' she said.