The Mark of Cosa Nostra

Two

The cigarette was half smoked when Tanya hung up. She reached for her bra and put it around her, fastening it in the back.

“I’ll be working with you on this assignment, Nick,” she said as she made some last-minute adjustments to fill the bra cups.

“Oh?” I said. I felt like I had been used. It wasn’t a feeling I had often. And it wasn’t a feeling I particularly cared for.

I said, “I think we have some unfinished business here.”

She blinked at me while she pulled on the blouse and started buttoning it. “Really?”

“What we had started before your little cannon went bang at me.”

“Oh.” She climbed off the bed and started pulling on her stockings. “You’re handsome and all that, Nick. But after all, I am only nineteen. And you’re... well over thirty as I understand, right? You’re really much too old for me. Never trust anyone over thirty and all that. I really prefer younger men.” She smiled a quick smile. “No hard feelings?”

I mashed out the cigarette. “No hard feelings, Tanya. But Hawk had better have one hell of a good reason for teaming me up with anyone as young and inexperienced as you.”

She stiffened and stared at me with fire in her eyes. “I think what just happened shows I’m not too inexperienced.”

I thought for a while — she was right.

I gave her a smile. “O.K., but start having a little respect for your elders.”

At first she just stared at me, not knowing quite how to take it. Then the corners of her mouth worked up into a smile of her own. She gave me a short curtsy.

“Anything you say, sir.”

“Let’s go see Hawk.”

Tanya led me along the path toward the exercise field. The girls I had seen earlier were doing jumping jacks. When we reached the edge of the field we left the path and started across soft grass. I could see Hawk far ahead. He was standing near the exercising girls with his hands shoved into the pockets of a tan overcoat. He turned to watch us coming.

“Here he is, Mr. Hawk,” Tanya said.

“The disguise looks very good, Carter,” Hawk said.

His leathery face looked strangely at home out here in the mountain wilderness. The eyes studied me closely, then glanced at Tanya, and turned back to where the girls were exercising. He pulled one of his black cigars from a shirt pocket, peeled the cellophane and stuck one end between his teeth. He did not light it.

“Sir,” I said. “Why Thomas Acasano? Why a young girl like Tanya?”

Hawk kept looking at the girls. “Heroin, Carter. What do you know about it?”

There had been a brief on it a couple of months ago. Dry facts. Up until then I guess I knew as much, or as little, as anyone else about the stuff. I wondered if Hawk was testing me, trying to find out if I actually read those briefs sent out by headquarters.

I closed my eyes until all the facts and formulas were right there in my mind. “The chemical breakdown of heroin is C₂₁, H₂₃, NO₅,” I said. “It is a crystalline, odorless, bitter powder derived from morphine and used in medicine to relieve bronchitis and coughing. But it’s habit-forming; it can be sniffed as snow or injected directly into the blood stream as a solution. It’s soluble in both water and alcohol. How am I doing?”

“You’ve done your homework, Carter,” Hawk said. He turned just enough to look at me. The black stub of cigar was still clenched between his teeth. The girls had changed to doing pushups.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. If Hawk had been testing me, I evidently passed.

“All right,” he said. “That’s what heroin is. Now I’ll tell you what it can do. As you undoubtedly know, there is a great deal of drug abuse going on among our GIs stationed in Vietnam.”

“Sir?” Tanya interrupted. “Isn’t heroin being sold openly in Saigon?”

Hawk and I both looked at Tanya. She gave us a weak smile.

Hawk went on. “In Saigon, as Tanya pointed out, heroin is easily available. Pure heroin can be purchased for three dollars a vial; that same vial would cost three hundred dollars back here in the States. The result is there has been a spiraling death-rate among GIs due to overdoses. And the sale of the stuff is not just in dark alleys with whispered deals; it can be bought by asking for it in the teeming marketplaces of Cholon, or within blocks of the USO on central Saigon’s Street of Flowers.”

Hawk turned back to where the girls were doing deep knee bends. “A subcommittee on juvenile delinquency has begun an investigation into these GI deaths. In one thirty-day period in Saigon alone the investigators pinpointed thirty-three overdose deaths. And by the time the investigation is completed the death rate is expected to reach fifty a month.”

Hawk pulled the cigar from between his teeth. He studied it carefully while he patted his pockets for matches. He dug a match out, lit it, and touched it to the end of the cigar. The air around us clouded with the rank aroma of Hawk’s cigar smoke. When he had it going he said, “The drug problem in Vietnam has reached an outrageous level. All agencies have been working on the problem: Army and Navy Intelligence, the CIA, the FBI, and Senate subcommittees. All information gathered has been funneled to AXE. It has cost eight agents’ lives but we have backtracked the stuff. We know it’s coming from Turkey. And in tracing it back we’ve learned that it gets to Saigon from Mandalay in Burma. We backtracked further to Calcutta and then New Delhi in India, to Karachi in Pakistan, by ship through the Gulf of Oman, then the Persian Gulf, up the Tigris River to Bagdad in Iraq, then by plane to Istanbul, Turkey.” Hawk suddenly became quiet.

I noticed the girls were on their backs doing bicycle-pedaling exercises. I asked Hawk, “Do you think the source of the heroin is in Istanbul?”

Hawk shook his head. “In Istanbul five of the eight agents were killed, three CIA agents and two Naval Intelligence officers. It’s possible that is where the heroin originates, but the connection comes from somewhere else. All the agents came up with the name of one man. Rozano Nicoli. But whenever an agent started asking questions about the man, the agent was found shortly thereafter floating face down in the Black Sea. Cause of death was always the same, drowning. And an autopsy always revealed an overdose of heroin.”

I turned the name over. Rozano Nicoli. Hawk blew smoke up above him. Tanya stood silently beside me. I said, “So who is Thomas Acasano? He must be connected to all this somewhere.”

Hawk nodded. “You have assumed the role of Acasano because you are going to infiltrate the Mafia. We know the Cosa Nostra is the organization behind the shipments of heroin into Saigon.”

“I see,” I said. “And I guess I’ll go where the shipments really begin.”

“In Sicily,” Hawk said. “You won’t have to worry about discovery from the source of your disguise; Thomas Acasano is quite dead. As to who he is — he is the only man considered a close friend to Rozano Nicoli.”