Roberto Saviano - ZeroZeroZero

The man from the South and the man from the North travel on parallel lines without seemingly ever intersecting in time or space. Locatelli is slightly ahead of Pannunzi, not so much because he started his career closer to Milan, which is still the best cocaine market in Italy. A minor geographical advantage doesn’t matter much when you’re playing on a global chessboard. No, Locatelli’s better sense of timing is more likely due to the fact that he is his own boss, is free to make new investments, is the only one to shoulder the risk. Pannunzi, on the other hand, is more like a top manager for a big holding company. New markets have to be conquered prudently, without letting the old, dependable ones lag behind, without risking a penny of their vast holdings. The idea of applying Calabrian expertise in heroin to cocaine production, thus increasing potential gains, is the typical stroke of inspiration any good manager would come up with to impress his superiors. Pannunzi then puts his idea into practice: in order to find a farmhouse, he contacts Morabito as well as a ’ndrina ensconced in Lombardy, the Sergi of Platì. Then he brings in the best chemists from France, two men of the Marseilles clan who’ve already worked for Cosa Nostra and can guarantee excellent results.

While Pannunzi is laying the groundwork for a joint cocaine venture, Locatelli is on trial for international drug trafficking, and is sentenced to ten years’ prison in Grasse, the world capital of perfume. All he can see from jail is a scrap of that pleasing landscape which extends below the old town; the sea at Cannes is something he can only sense. But he doesn’t need the sea view: Diabolik/Locatelli is swift in thought and deed. He breaks his arm. He needs to be hospitalized, but the French are not so naïve; they suspect that it might not have been an accident. As a safeguard, they send him not to Nice but to Lyon, far — more than three hundred miles — from the coast he knows every inch of. The prisoner gets out of the police van and heads toward the hospital. After only a few steps, three masked and armed men appear, disarm his police escort, and vanish with the prisoner. It’s the end of an era. Locatelli crosses the border into Spain. He becomes Mario, Mario from Madrid: the point man for Colombian traffickers in Europe, the owner of a fleet of ships for international cocaine traffic.

• • •

The entrepreneur and the manager converge in the figure of the broker. They’re pioneers, the men who create out of nothing this figure who hadn’t existed previously in the drug-trafficking economy. They connect all the corners of the world. Istanbul, Athens, Málaga, Madrid, Amsterdam, Zagreb, Cyprus, the United States, Canada, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Australia, Africa, Milan, Rome, Sicily, Puglia, Calabria. They create perpetual motion within a tight, intricate net that reveals the motion of their merchandise only to the attentive eye. They become fabulously rich, and make those who turn to them rich as well. Always on the go, they need to find new channels all the time. Their lives come to resemble ever more closely the game of connect the dots, which we played as kids in those rare moments when our parents put down their crossword puzzles and let us have the pen: You could only appreciate the image at the end, once you’d connected all the dots. The same is true with Pasquale Locatelli and Roberto Pannunzi. The picture of their trafficking only becomes clear when we connect all the dots that they have drawn.

No one deliberately designed an innovation that, had it been proposed in abstract terms, would have been rejected. No criminal organization would have said it was willing to share a significant part of its profits with someone outside the organization. It happens gradually; the qualitative leap is made simply because it happens at a certain point.

Mario from Madrid gains the Colombians’ trust when they are still at the height of their power. He travels with a bodyguard and a personal secretary, has learned from Pablo Escobar never to stay more than two nights in the same place, and changes cell phones as frequently as anyone else changes socks. But he’s not part of the Medellín or Cali cartels. And this turns out to be an advantage not only for himself, but also for the cocaine monopolists in Colombia, who start warring ruthlessly among themselves, a sign of their slow decline.

Bebè Pannunzi is tied to the Siderno and Platì families, linked by blood and lineage, but he never affiliates himself with any clan. He’s not an ’ndranghetista, a camorrista, or a mafioso. He unites different groups into a single investment company: Calabrians, Sicilians, groups based in the Salento, along with others. He creates a joint venture for drugs, capable of increasing contacts and contractual power beyond what any one clan could do: a stratified organization with strong membership bonds and a clear division between commanders and subordinates. Pannunzi is a skillful broker who constructs enormous financial operations with ease and moves quantities of drugs that would prove unmanageable for a single clan. Without this new figure, a broker, cocaine acquisition would have kept on functioning the old way: The mafia family sends a representative to South America, pays for part of the load in advance, leaves its trusted man — who risks getting killed if anything goes wrong or if the final payment is delayed — in the narcos’ hands as a guarantee, and then contacts an intermediary to arrange for shipment.

Pannunzi reshuffles the cards. He moves to Colombia. He’s learned what there is to learn through close contact with the ’ndrine, and knows the time has come to pass on his example and teachings. He brings his son, Alessandro, into the business, who marries the daughter of a Medellín boss. On the telephone he speaks Spanish and calls him “Miguel,” to throw off any unwelcome listeners. His daughter, Simona, gets engaged to Francesco Bumbaca, who becomes his father-in-law’s right-hand man. They nickname Francesco Joe Pesci and Il Finocchietto (“Little Faggot”). In the early 1990s, Pannunzi takes advantage of the power of the Colombian cartels, who have punctuated the jungle with private airports. The ’ndrangheta could use a cargo plane for intercontinental trips, so Bebè gets them one.

He can afford a whole fleet of planes for moving the white merchandise. He collects millions and millions of euros from the various organizations. He acts as his own guarantor with the cartels in order to obtain enormous discounts for bulk purchases. He guarantees the transport and arrival of shipments to the ports. He also knows who will handle the cocaine once it reaches its destination. The more investors he has, the lower the price per kilo. He spreads out the losses caused by raids. He monitors the quality. He travels, creates contacts, meets clients. He seeks out financial backers and capital, but he’s the one to decide where and how to purchase. He looks for good carriers, safe coastlines, storage towns.

Locatelli’s actions mirror Pannunzi’s. He’s closer to his suppliers, so he keeps his base in Europe in order to maintain more dynamic relationship with his clients. He deals with everyone: the Bagheria and Gela families, the San Luca and Platì ’ndrine, the most powerful clans from the area north of Naples. And, true to his entrepreneurial instinct, he deals in everything: cocaine and — increasingly — recycling are his core businesses, but it would be stupid not to take advantage of the nearness of North Africa, transporting hashish across the Strait of Gibraltar, which is one of his naval strongholds. Drawing on old relationships and past experience, he also sets up an international sales network for stolen cars. But events in a country farther from the Iberian Peninsula are what allow Mario to make yet another leap. He is one of the first to grasp the immense potential that the tensions and then the war in the former Yugoslavia present. Drugs, weapons, money — he creates a business triangulation based on these three elements, bouncing them from Spain to America, from America to the Balkans.