by Mario Puzo
Then there were the anchors, the heavyweights, men and women of intelligence, charisma, and talent who had the exquisite dilemma of wooing stars they wanted for interviews while discouraging those not yet quite important enough.
The star actors were sparkling with hope and desire. They were already successful enough to make the jump from TV to the movie screens, never to return—or so they thought.
Finally Marcantonio was exhausted; the continual grinning with enthusiasm, the cheery voice he must use to losers, the note of exuberance with his winners all wore him out. Matilda whispered to him, “Are you coming to my place tonight, a little later?”
“I’m tired,” Marcantonio said. “Tough day, tough night.”
“That’s OK,” she said with sympathy. They both had tight schedules. “I’ll be in town for a week.”
They were good friends because they didn’t have to take advantage of each other. Matilda was secure. She didn’t need a mentor or a patron. And Marcantonio never took part in negotiations with news talent; that was a job for the chief of Business Affairs. The lives they led could not possibly result in marriage. Matilda traveled extensively; he worked fifteen hours a day. But they were buddies who sometimes spent the night together. They made love, gossiped about the business, and appeared together at some social functions. And it was understood that theirs was a secondary relationship. The few times Matilda fell in love with some new man, their nights were cut out. Marcantonio never fell in love, so this was not a problem for him.
Tonight he suffered a certain fatigue with the world he lived in. So he was almost delighted to find Astorre waiting for him in the lobby of his apartment building.
“Hey, great to see you,” Marcantonio said. “Where have you been?”
“Busy,” Astorre said. “Can I come up and have a drink?”
“Sure,” Marcantonio said. “But why the cloak and dagger? Why didn’t you call? You could have been hanging out in this lobby for hours; I was supposed to go to a party.”
“No problem,” Astorre said. He’d had his cousin under surveillance all evening.
In the apartment Marcantonio fixed them both drinks.
Astorre seemed a little embarrassed. “You can initiate projects at your network, right?”
“I do it all the time,” Marcantonio said.
“I have one for you,” Astorre said. “It has to do with your father being killed.”
“No,” Marcantonio said. It was his famous no in the industry that barred all further discussion. But it didn’t seem to intimidate Astorre.
“Don’t say no to me like that,” Astorre said. “I’m not selling you something. This concerns the safety of your brother and sister. And you.” Then he gave a huge grin. “And me.”
“Tell me,” Marcantonio said. He saw his cousin in an astonishing new light. Could that happy-go-lucky kid have something in him after all?
“I want you to do a documentary on the FBI,” Astorre said. “Specifically how Kurt Cilke managed to destroy most of the Mafia Families. There would be a huge audience for that, right?”
Marcantonio nodded. “What’s your purpose?”
“I just can’t get any data on Cilke,” Astorre told him. “It would be too dangerous to try. But if you’re doing a documentary, no government agency will dare to step on your toes. You can find out where he lives, his history, how he operates, and where he stands in the power structure of the Bureau. I need all that info.”
“The FBI and Cilke would never cooperate,” Marcantonio said. “That would make a show difficult.” He paused. “It’s not like the old days when Hoover was director. These new guys play their cards very close.”
“You can do it,” Astorre said. “I need you to do it. You have an army of producers and investigative reporters. I have to know all about him. Everything. Because I think he may be part of a conspiracy against your father and our family.”
“That’s a really crazy theory,” Marcantonio said.
“Sure,” Astorre said. “Maybe it’s not true. But I know it was no simple gangland killing. And that Cilke does a funny kind of inquiry. Almost like he’s smoothing over tracks, not uncovering them.”
“So I help you get the information. Then what can you do?”
Astorre spread his hands and smiled. “What can I do, Marc? I just want to know. Maybe I can make some kind of a deal. And I just have to look at the documentation. I won’t make a copy of it. You won’t be compromised.”
Marcantonio stared at him. His mind was making the adjustment to the pleasant, charming face of Astorre. He said thoughtfully, “Astorre, I’m curious about you. The old man left you in control. Why? You’re a macaroni importer. I always thought of you as a charming eccentric with your scarlet riding jacket and your little music group. But the old man would never trust the man you seem to be.”
“I don’t sing anymore,” Astorre said, smiling. “I don’t ride much either. The Don always had a good eye; he had faith in me. You should have the same.” He paused for a moment and then said with utmost sincerity, “He picked me so that his children wouldn’t have to take the heat. He chose me and taught me. He loved me but I was expendable. It’s that simple.”
“You have the ability to fight back?” Marcantonio said.
“Oh, yes,” Astorre said, and he leaned back and smiled at his cousin. It was a deliberately sinister smile that a TV actor would give to show that he was evil, but it was done with such mocking high spirits that Marcantonio laughed.
He said, “That’s all I have to do? I won’t be involved further?”
“You’re not qualified to go further,” Astorre said.
“Can I think it over for a few days?”
“No,” Astorre said. “If you say no, it will be me against them.”
Marcantonio nodded. “I like you, Astorre, but I can’t do it. It’s just too much risk.”
The meeting with Kurt Cilke in Nicole’s office proved a surprise for Astorre. Cilke brought Bill Broxton and insisted that Nicole be present. He was also very direct.
“I have information that Timmona Portella is trying to establish a billion-dollar fund in your banks. Is that true?” Cilke asked.
“That’s private information,” Nicole said. “Why should we tell you?”
“I know he made the same offer he made your father,” Cilke said. “And your father refused.”
“Why should all this interest the FBI?” Nicole asked in her “go fuck yourself”voice.
Cilke refused to be irritated. “We think he is laundering drug money,” he said to Astorre. “We want you to cooperate with him so we can monitor his operation. We want you to appoint some of our federal accountants to positions in your bank.” He opened his briefcase. “I have some papers for you to sign, which will protect both of us.”
Nicole took the papers out of his hand and read the two pages very quickly.
“Don’t sign,” she warned Astorre. “The banks customers have a right to privacy. If they want to investigate Portella, they should get a warrant.”
Astorre took the papers and read them. He smiled at Cilke. “I trust you,” he said. He signed the papers and handed them to Cilke.
“What’s the quid pro quo?” Nicole asked. “What do we get for cooperating?”
“Performing your duty as good citizens,” Cilke said. “A letter of commendation from the president, and the stopping of an audit of all your banks that could cause you a lot of trouble if you’re not absolutely clean.”
“How about a little information on my uncle’s murder?” Astorre said.
“Sure,” Cilke said. “Shoot.”
“Why was there no police surveillance at the confirmation service?” Astorre asked.
“That was the decision of the chief of detectives, Paul Di Benedetto,” Cilke said. “And also his right hand. A woman named Aspinella Washington.”
“And how come there were no FBI observers?” Astorre asked.
“I’m afraid that was my decision,” Cilke
said. “I didn’t feel there was any need.”
Astorre shook his head. “I don’t think I can go through with your proposition. I need a few weeks to think it over.”
“You’ve already signed the papers,” Cilke said. “This information is now classified. You can be prosecuted if you reveal this conversation.”
“Why would I do that?” Astorre asked. “I just don’t want to be in the banking business with the FBI or Portella.”
“Think it over,” Cilke said.
When the two FBI men left, Nicole turned on Astorre with fury. “How dare you veto my decision and sign those papers! That was just stupid.”
Astorre was glaring at her; it was the first time she had ever seen any trace of anger in him. “He feels secure with that piece of paper I signed,” Astorre said. “And that’s what I want him to feel.”
CHAPTER 5
MARRIANO RUBIO was a man with a finger in a dozen pies, all of which had fillings of pure gold. He held the post of consul general for Peru, though he spent much of his time in New York. He also was international representative of big-business interests for many South American countries and for Communist China. He was a close personal friend of Inzio Tulippa, the leader of the primary drug cartel in Colombia.
Rubio was as fortunate in his personal life as he was in business. A forty-five-year-old bachelor, he was a respectable womanizer. He kept only one mistress at a time, all suitable and generously supported when they were replaced by a younger beauty. He was handsome, an interesting conversationalist, a marvelous dancer. He had a truly great wine cellar and an excellent three-star chef.
But like many fortunate men, Rubio believed in pushing fate. He enjoyed pitting his wits against dangerous men. He needed risk to flavor the exotic dish that was his life. He was involved in the illegal shipping of technology to China; he established a line of communication on the highest levels for the drug barons; and he was the bagman who paid off American scientists to emigrate to South America. He even had dealings with Timmona Portella, who was as eccentrically dangerous as Inzio Tulippa.
Like all high-risk gamblers, Rubio prided himself on an ace in the hole. He was safe from all legal peril because of his diplomatic immunity, but he knew there were other dangers, and in those areas he was careful.
His income was enormous, and he spent lavishly. There was such power in being able to buy anything he wanted in the world, including the love of women. He enjoyed supporting his ex-mistresses, who remained valued friends. He was a generous employer and intelligently treasured the goodwill of people dependent on him.
Now, in his New York apartment, which was very fortunately part of the Peruvian consulate, Rubio dressed for his dinner date with Nicole Aprile. The engagement was as usual with him, part business and part pleasure. He had met Nicole at a Washington dinner given by one of her prestigious corporate clients. At first sight he had been intrigued by her not-quite-regular beauty, the sharp, determined face with intelligent eyes and mouth, her small, voluptuous body, but also by her being the daughter of the great Mafia chief Don Raymonde Aprile.
Rubio had charmed her, but not out of her senses, and he was proud of her for that. He admired romantic intelligence in a woman. He would have to win her respect with deeds, not words. Which he had immediately set about doing by asking her to represent one of his clients in a particularly rich deal. He had learned that she did a great deal of pro bono work to abolish the death penalty and had even defended some notorious convicted murderers to put off their executions. To him she was the ideal modern woman—beautiful, with a highly professional career, and compassionate in the bargain. Barring some sort of sexual dysfunction, she would make a most agreeable companion for a year or so.
All this was before the death of Don Aprile.
Now the main purpose of his courtship was to learn if Nicole and her two brothers would put their banks at the disposal of Portella and Tulippa. Otherwise there would be no point in killing Astorre Viola.
Inzio Tulippa had waited long enough. More than nine months after the killing of Raymonde Aprile, he still had no arrangement with the inheritors of the Don’s banks. A great deal of money had been spent; he had given millions to Timmona Portella to bribe the FBI and the police in New York, and to procure the services of the Sturzo brothers, and yet he was no further in his plans.
Tulippa was not the vulgar impersonation of a high-powered drug dealer. He came from a reputable and wealthy family and had even played polo for his native land of Argentina. He now lived in Costa Rica, and he had a diplomatic Costa Rican passport, which gave him immunity from prosecution in any foreign land. He handled the relations with the drug cartels in Colombia, with the growers in Turkey, refineries in Italy. He made arrangements for transport, the necessary bribing of officials from the highest rank to the lowest. He planned the smuggling of huge loads into the United States. He was also the man who lured American nuclear scientists to South American countries and supplied the money for their research. In all ways he was a prudent, capable executive, and he had amassed an enormous fortune.
But he was a revolutionary. He furiously defended the selling of drugs. Drugs were the salvation of the human spirit, the refuge of those damned to despair by poverty and mental illness. They were the salve for the lovesick, for the lost souls in our spiritually deprived world. After all, if you no longer believed in God, society, your own worth, what were you supposed to do? Kill yourself? Drugs kept people alive in a realm of dreams and hope. All that was needed was a little moderation. After all, did drugs kill as many people as alcohol and cigarettes, as poverty and despair? No. On moral grounds, Tulippa was secure.
Inzio Tulippa had a nickname all over the world. He was known as “the Vaccinator.” Foreign industrialists and investors with enormous holdings in South America—whether oil fields, car manufacturing plants, or crops, necessarily had to send top executives there. There were many from the United States. Their biggest problem was the kidnapping of their executives on foreign soil, for which they had to pay ransoms in the millions of dollars.
Inzio Tulippa headed a company that insured these executives against kidnapping, and every year he visited the United States to negotiate contracts with these corporations. He did this not only for money but because he needed some of the industrial and scientific resources of these companies. In short, he performed a vaccinating service. This was important to him.
But he had a more dangerous eccentricity. He viewed the international persecution of the illegal drug industry as a holy war against himself, and he was determined to protect his empire. So he had ridiculous ambitions. He wanted to possess nuclear capabilities as a lever in case disaster ever struck. Not that he would use it except as a last resort, but it would be an effective bargaining weapon. It was a desire that would seem ridiculous to everyone except the New York FBI agent in charge, Kurt Cilke.
. . .
At one point in his career, Kurt Cilke had been sent to an FBI antiterrorist school. His selection for the six-month course had been a mark of his high standing with the director. During that time he had access (complete or not, he didn’t know) to the most highly classified memoranda and case scenarios on the possible use of nuclear weapons by terrorists from small countries. The files detailed which countries had weapons. To public knowledge there was Russia, France, and England, possibly India and Pakistan. It was assumed that Israel had nuclear capability. Kurt read with fascination scenarios detailing how Israel would use nuclear weapons if an Arab bloc were at the point of overwhelming it.
For the United States there were two solutions to the problem. The first was that if Israel were so attacked, the United States would side with Israel before it had to use nuclear weapons. Or, at the crucial point, if Israel could not be saved, the United States would have to wipe out Israel’s nuclear capability.
England and France were not seen as problems; they could never risk nuclear war. India had no ambitions, and Pakistan could be wiped out immediately. China would
not dare; it did not have the industrial capacity short-term.
The most immediate danger was from small countries like Iraq, Iran, and Libya, where leaders were reckless, or so the scenarios claimed. The solution here was almost unanimous. Those countries would be bombed to extinction with nuclear weapons.
The greatest short-term danger was that terrorist organizations secretly financed and supported by a foreign power would smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States and explode it in a large city. Probably Washington, D.C., or New York. This was inevitable. The proposed solution was the formation of task forces to use counterintelligence and then the utmost punitive measures against these terrorists and whoever backed them. It would require special laws that would abridge the rights of American citizens. The scenarios acknowledged the impossibility of these laws until somebody finally succeeded at blowing up a good portion of an American metropolis. Then the laws would pass easily. But until then, as one scenario airily remarked, “It was the luck of the draw.”
There were only a few scenarios depicting criminal use of nuclear devices. This was almost absolutely discounted on the grounds that the technical capacity, the procurement of material, and the broad scope of people involved would inevitably lead to informers. One solution to this was that the Supreme Court would condone a death warrant without any judicial process on any such criminal mastermind. But this was fantasy, Kurt Cilke thought. Mere speculation. The country would have to wait until something happened.
But now, years later, Cilke realized it was happening. Inzio Tulippa wanted his own little nuclear bomb. He lured American scientists to South America and built them labs and supplied money for their research. And it was Tulippa who wanted access to Don Aprile’s banks to establish a billion-dollar war chest for the purchase of equipment and material—so Cilke had determined in his own investigation. What was he to do now?
He would discuss it soon with the director on his next trip to FBI headquarters in Washington. But he doubted they would be able to solve the problem. And a man like Inzio Tulippa would never give up.