The Namesake

by Conor Fitzgerald

  14

  Resca, G. (2009, July 30). How the Ndrangheta saved the banks: an analysis by Giovanni Resca, Il Manifesto, pp. A1, A6

  OSINT stands for Open Source Intelligence. It refers to the sort of information you can pick up in the public domain just from reading government papers, chamber of commerce records, company balance sheets, newspaper articles, planning permission applications, land rezoning agreements and local news. It is what we journalists used to do all the time, but now we prefer to be spoon-fed, and like fat, coddled toddlers, we accept digestible pap from the corporations and government. But who makes the pap? Someone has to produce it, and make it easily digestible and even tasty for a gullible public. The pap-makers may deserve censure for what they do, but they are today’s true journalists. Often venal, calculating and dishonest, always inventive, they are the great storytellers of our time. First, they plant their memes, their exposés, distractions, half-truths or downright lies, then they build a narrative around them. They are the world’s secret artists.

  The trick in OSINT is self-reference. You create a news story that is completely or partially made up, then you circulate it quietly until it is picked up by someone else. You bide your time until it goes viral or simply becomes part of the background noise. The important thing is it must no longer have a single identifiable source. You let the Chinese-whisper effect distort some of the details of the story, then you pick it up again and bring it to prominence attributing it to others. That’s how most of the Iraq WMD stories were created. This is the storytelling skill. But, and this is the mistake that many of us on the Left often make, not all OSINT is false. On the contrary, most of it is true, for otherwise it would not work. The trick is to weave separate threads into a convincing fable. As in advertising and publishing, two other meretricious pursuits, the hardest part of OSINT is making sure that it’s your story and not someone else’s that gets out there.

  Borrowing from the OSINT experts, then, I should like to propose my own version of recent economic developments. Using open sources, I have looked at the events since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and drawn some inevitable conclusions. Unlike many of my colleagues, particularly those who work for Berlusconi, I want to make full disclosure at the outset, and say that the reason I am telling this story, which is a true one, is that I want the Ndrangheta to become known. I want to publicize the name. I want the organization to become as notorious and ill-famed as Cosa Nostra. I want to put them in the limelight so that that part of the state they do not yet control might wake up and do battle.

  As the readers of this newspaper know, capitalism needs a lot of propping up. It always has. Most of the direct support is through military spending, but capitalism can also rely on the public to provide collateral when things get tough. When billions are being made (but not distributed), the public is told capitalism works; when billions are being lost, the public is told it needs to pay up to rescue capitalism, because only capitalism works.

  Sometimes plutocrats dispense with the effort of intellectual justification. They simply back capital accumulation with military force and the constant threat of violence, and kill those who resist. This is how it works in Russia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and most of Italy. We call it the Mafia, but we could just as easily call it deregulation. The only difference is the veneer of legitimacy.

  But it is an important difference. For capitalism to appear legitimate, people must keep believing that it works. So when it stopped working, when people realized the banks didn’t trust one another enough to lend, capitalism faced an existential threat. The whole money supply – the whole concept of money itself was on the brink of becoming a story in which no one believed.

  In the USA, the Treasury Department introduced quantitative easing. Likewise, in the UK – basically, they printed money, and put off the day of reckoning. In Italy, Berlusconi said the banks were fine, and threw parties in his Sardinian villa. But for a few nights, before the institutions could react, before the trillions were pledged by western governments, there was a risk that ATM machines would stop paying out. Banks needed cash, and they needed it quickly.

  Now what sort of organization has a whole load of cash, serious cash, billions upon billions in banknotes – enough to make a difference for a few vital days? The answer comes spontaneously: organized criminals. Specifically, the Russians and the Ndrangheta. There were others, too, but these two had more cash than anyone else. The Ndrangheta needs to burn through its money. Cosa Nostra, an older organization, has interests, contacts, influence, clout and a certain establishment respectability by now, because it has so many non-cash assets. The Ndrangheta is flush with cash. In fact, it has too much, and needs to convert it into capital investments.

  The symmetry was perfect. The Ndrangheta has too much liquidity, because it has accumulated cash too fast since the late 1980s. The banks had too little liquidity, and the governments had too little time.

  Using open-source intelligence, which means intelligence available to anyone who cares to investigate for himself or herself, I have been able to establish, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the three major British banks and at least two large American banks received enormous deposits in cash during the crucial hours and days of the banking crisis. In exchange, and again, I have listed sources at the end of this article, it was agreed that neither the tax authorities nor anyone else would look too closely at where this money came from. It was the biggest money-laundering operation in history, and it was sanctioned by members of government and the upper echelons of law enforcement. It was a quantum leap for the Ndrangheta. It gave them proper financial power.

  Capitalism was saved by blood and drug money to live another day, but we shall pay the consequences of handing enormous financial power to a Mafia organization so disciplined that even its name is unknown to many people in its own country of origin.

  But check the facts, look at the evidence. The Ndrangheta is already in control, a virus that has taken over the body politic. As long as we are a useful and unwitting host, we will suffer only slight discomfort, but when this virus is ready to infect stronger hosts, it will kill us and move on.

  Magistrate Francesco Fossati powered down his laptop, slid it into his desk drawer, and glanced at his watch. He needed to hurry now if he was to make it home in time for supper with his family.

  15

  Locri, Calabria

  ‘Salvatore, how many times do I need to tell you this? Put the white cap on your head when you are in here.’

  ‘But I’m completely bald, Capo.’

  ‘That is why I am not making you wear a hairnet, too. Put on the cap and carry that bag of sugar over here while you’re at it. Mind your step, the tiles are treacherous with lemon juice.’

  Salvatore, seventy-two years of age, arms as thin as tendrils, his face as dark as a rusty nail, lifted the thirty-pound bag of refined sugar as if it had been filled with feathers, and set it down on the zinc counter beside his boss, Basile. As well as lifting heavy weights for Basile, it was his job to keep the conversation serious and on-topic while Basile feigned disinterest. So, putting the sugar down, he returned to the conversation he had started ten minutes before. ‘It is unthinkable that a sorella d’omertà would spontaneously report to a magistrate like that. Especially her. She has been treated with nothing but the greatest respect, even though she comes from outside.’

  ‘The things we have lived to see, Salvatore. Personally, I’m not inclined to believe it for one moment.’ Basile swiped his hands together, in what looked like a gesture of finality, a closing of the argument for good, but also happened to be the most efficient way of getting the sugar and starch off his hands. Salvatore waited to see which it was.

  Basile turned his back on Salvatore as he washed his hands under the tap. ‘Who is the source of this accusation against Maria Itria?’ he asked.

  ‘One of our people in the Palace of Justice in Rome. It’s part of the swirl of rumours around the dramatic warning issued to the m
agistrate.’

  ‘And we really have no idea who decided to drop a corpse outside the Palace of Justice in Rome?’

  ‘Not yet. Everyone seems to think Agazio ordered it; no one is sure.’

  ‘And this magistrate to whom the message was directed, he has a confession from Maria Itria?’

  ‘So it is rumoured.’

  ‘Rumoured?’

  ‘Reported. Yes, he does.’

  Basile pulled sheets of green paper from the wall dispenser, dried his hands, crumpled up the paper and dropped it into the rubbish bin below. ‘None of this makes much sense. Least of all the intimidation of the magistrate. Excuse the noise, Salvatore. I want to beat these egg whites.’ He threw the switch on a white appliance and dialled up the speed. ‘Come closer to me so you don’t need to shout.’

  Salvatore came closer, but remained silent, as he knew he was supposed to, watching the white foam rise in the copper bowl.

  ‘One of the churning blades in the Vita 30 60 ice-cream maker needs replacing. Apparently it needs to be shipped from China,’ said Basile. ‘So now the Chinese are in the ice-cream business. Nicaso repaired his own machines, re-pumped the refrigerants, and calibrated the compressor so you could hardly hear it even when it was cooling a full batch. He was the real artisan, not me.’

  Salvatore knew Basile was thinking and wanted the conversation to drift towards neutral topics until he had made his decision. ‘Some people find it strange that you should want to ply a trade at all.’

  ‘What, am I supposed to spend my days playing briscola and inspecting my lands? Did you try the last orange sorbet I made?’

  ‘You know I cannot taste sweet things, Capo.’

  ‘I think it was even better than the turruni gelatu I made last winter. I added three grapefruits and reduced the sugar by about one-fifth. It was a bitter sorbet, which I thought you might like because there is no sweetness in you, my old friend. And you say you didn’t even try it?’

  ‘You never told me you had changed the recipe.’

  ‘Pity. It’s the first real experiment I have made since taking this place over. When Nicaso was in charge, he was always experimenting. Licorice in the coffee granita, kiwi and figs together. I never had the courage or the imagination. And I am too old.’

  ‘Nicaso was always breaking with tradition. That is one of the reasons he lost his gelateria.’

  Basile’s laugh was joyless and asthmatic. ‘That is not the reason he lost his gelateria.’ He pointed to a heavy steel cabinet with fat glass jars filled with red and green liquid. ‘My strawberry and mint is commercial concentrate, sent down from Naples. Nicaso never did that.’

  Basile pulled open the door of a refrigerator as large as the backdoor of a truck, and nodded to Salvatore to lift out a deep lozenge of stainless steel brimming with bright green ice cream, which started steaming as it entered the warmer air of the kitchen. Salvatore’s hand stuck briefly to the icy zinc, and he felt momentary pain.

  ‘Leave it to soften, Salvatore.’

  Salvatore discreetly blew on his cold hands, and adjusted his white hat.

  ‘Would Agazio goad the authorities into inquiring into the activities of the Society in Rome?’ asked Basile. ‘Killing in Milan, which itself requires permission, and disposing of the body in Rome and mocking a magistrate as he did so? I am supposed to think that Agazio, who has always been subtle, disrespected the families in Rome and Milan?’

  ‘Perhaps he obtained permission from one or two of the families.’

  ‘And we heard nothing about it? That would be the worst option from our point of view. We can talk at the Feast of the Madonna next week, but I hope that that is as unlikely as it seems. For Curmaci, the assassination of the magistrate’s namesake is doubly destructive. It angers other ’ndrine and will make the authorities determined to get him. It is better to assume this is the act of a hotheaded and rash person. To my mind, that would exclude Agazio.’

  ‘You realize I have great respect for Curmaci,’ said Salvatore.

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘I also have great respect for Maria Itria.’

  ‘Naturally. She is a good woman.’

  ‘The magistrates and police grow more despicable by the day. I believe it is quite possible they used Curmaci’s wife to generate suspicion and dissent. Indeed, we do not even know whether Maria Itria received a phone call from the magistrate or made one of her own volition.’

  ‘Or whether the call took place at all,’ added Basile.

  ‘Indeed. But would you not say that Curmaci, who is above all a man of principle, might have allowed himself to be swayed by his rage at this dishonouring of his wife and delivered an unambiguous message to the magistrate? The fact that he did not kill the magistrate himself and cause an overreaction by the authorities in Rome stands to his credit and would be typical of the man’s admirable combination of severity and subtlety.’

  ‘You make a plausible argument, Salvatore. Even so, where self-interest blinds many, it enlightens some, and I have always considered Agazio an enlightened man . . .’

  ‘Another thing we must bear in mind, Capo, is the unfortunate trend towards independence in Lombardy and Germany. That has already led to the need for punishment expeditions to the north and forceful realignments. We are constantly working to maintain the faith and loyalty of the locali in Milan and Germany.’

  ‘That is a generational problem that affects the younger men in the ’ndrine of Lombardy. These youths speak with Milanese accents and deal with northern separatists who despise the south. But Agazio Curmaci is in some ways the opposite. He reinforces the rituals and maintains the tradition. He is not interested in independence. He was born in Gerace.’

  ‘Typical of the rebels is their willingness to use persons external to the Society. It seems East Europeans were used in this case,’ said Salvatore.

  ‘Why did I not know that?’

  ‘We have only just found out.’

  Basile slowly removed his apron. Although it was splashed and stained, he folded it up as neatly as if freshly washed and ironed. ‘Salvatore, it pains me to say this, but could your suspicions of Curmaci be connected to your kinship with Tony Megale? Your father and Domenico Megale’s father were cousins and blood brothers.’

  ‘They were, and my sister married Domenico’s martyred brother.’

  ‘What happened to him was tragic. Some things are not healed by time.’

  Salvatore bowed his head in memory of a brother-in-law killed thirty years earlier. Then, his posture still prayerful, he said, ‘It makes no sense for Tony Megale to have done this.’

  ‘Who was the fool who says otherwise?’ said Basile.

  ‘Not a fool, Capo. I can see his name in your thoughts.’

  ‘So now you read my thoughts and call me a fool?’ said Basile with a smile.

  ‘I would ask again,’ said Salvatore, ‘what interest could Tony have in doing something such as this?’

  ‘To make good men like you have evil thoughts about the Curmacis,’ said Basile. ‘If he and Agazio have had another falling out, as they did in the early years, Tony might have tried to frame Agazio.’

  ‘I think we must appeal to Domenico,’ said Salvatore.

  ‘Sadly, Domenico cannot make it to Polsi this year. They say he grew old in prison, though I believe he is no older than me. If Agazio and Tony have become enemies, it may well be a battle for succession. I would not wish to put Domenico in a difficult position. He has always expressed full faith in both Tony and Agazio, and, apart from that misunderstanding many years ago when they were immature, they have since expressed full faith in each other. Curmaci’s son Ruggiero has been partly brought up by Tony’s sister-in-law. Domenico cannot be seen to choose the wrong side, and it is inhuman to ask him to. It may be a decision we have to take for him. For now, his very silence is a message.’

  ‘We do nothing?’

  Basile tested the thawing of the ice cream by pressing a small indent with his thumb.
‘Quarrels would not last long if the fault were on one side only. It might be both are to blame, it is more likely neither is.’

  ‘May I speak frankly?’

  Basile sighed. ‘I would prefer to have this argument done with.’

  ‘So would I. But we will achieve greater peace and harmony by promoting the cause of Tony Megale. I say that not because we are related, but because his father . . .’

  ‘Not his natural father,’ interrupted Basile.

  ‘Even so. The Megales are more established. The Curmacis are new. Agazio’s father was the first. They have no roots.’

  ‘The Megales have few people left here. Perhaps they are on the wane.’

  ‘They have a man, Pietro.’

  ‘Pietro is limited.’

  ‘But he is a man. Curmaci left only his woman and her children.’

  ‘I say we do nothing for now.’

  Salvatore nodded. It was time to play his trump card. He pulled out a phone, and placed it on the counter, amid the droplets now falling from the sides of the ice-cream container. ‘As you know, the Finance Police have tapped Agazio’s home number. This conversation took place last night. I had it sent to me as a matter of urgency. A captain of the Finance Police is about to get a new car, thanks to this act of cooperation.’

  He pressed a button, and a woman’s voice could be heard. ‘That’s Maria Itria. The man she is speaking to is Agazio.’

  ‘I recognize their voices, Salvatore. They are talking about his arrival . . . what’s incriminating about that?’