the godfather is caught in a trap but he still hopes that he can get away he’s dripping with sweat coughing and cursing as he signals to his two daughters his wife and his brother-in-law not to breathe not to say a word to stay strong because the cops are outside but they can’t figure out where the hell the boss and his family are hiding they know that they’re somewhere in that villa somewhere in that big warehouse of a villa even though they haven’t found him in thirteen hours of knocking down doors punching through walls and tossing tear gas into the air ducts but they’re hoping that he’ll be flushed out any minute now Sandokan is doing all he can to hold out he has plugged up the air vents with clothing and sheets but the tear gas has been leaking through gradually its effects have been weakened but it’s impossible to breathe in the safe room it’s impossible to turn on the air conditioning it would only spread the gas it’s horrible for the little girls Chiara and Angelica are sobbing Sandokan comforts them lovingly it’s okay it’ll be over in a minute stay still be quiet and then around midday somebody hears a woman’s voice a phrase until they go away we can’t move then nothing but silence until the jackhammer starts to punch through a wall in the direction of the voice
immediately followed by another voice don’t shoot I have my children with me I surrender I surrender the voice is Sandokan’s this marks the end of his flight from justice please stop my daughters are here I give up just don’t hurt my daughters don’t hurt my wife and so Sandokan legal name Francesco Schiavone forty-four years old the scarlet pimpernel of the Neapolitan Camorra the unquestioned boss of the most bloodthirsty organized-crime family in southern Italy the clan from Casale waited for the officers of the DIA the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia stood there waiting for them with his two daughters in his arms when it dawned on him that there was no way out he turned himself in to the chief of the Naples DIA Guido Longo who was Catania-born and like him forty-four years old who had been on his trail for the past seven months or so tracking him the way a hunter does a hare Sandokan surrendered when he heard the wall crumbling and collapsing the wall that separated his hideout from the rest of the house he walked out of his safe room with Chiara and Angelica in his arms shouting to the police that he had his daughters with him and that he would not make any dangerous moves
the lengthy and armor-plated period on the run and in hiding of the elusive Camorra boss finally came to an end yesterday around noon when the men from the DIA knocked down the last partition wall in the bunker where Sandokan had taken refuge in the town he controlled his hometown Casale di Principe the last partition wall came down around midday battered by pickaxes and sledgehammers and the last boss of the Casale gang surrendered half an hour later emerging from the tunnel with his young daughters in his arms as a shield and a guarantee he wouldn’t attack the officers this marked an end to the long nightmare the hunt for the Phantom the man with a thousand tricks and inexhaustible resources Sandokan is finally behind bars the cunning and murderous boss charged with dozens of killings and the target of six arrest warrants has finally been handcuffed and led away right where it had all begun in his hometown he had returned home just five hundred feet away from the family bunker he was running the town and commanding his men from an underground lair an apartment built on the foundations of the old Bourbon-era sewers and communications trenches covered over by the passage of time and by the ruins of the city concealed by the underworld of the anti State
the DIA raid was unleashed during the night now it’s twelve-twenty pm the sound of a jackhammer far too close to the hideout Sandokan the totò riina the capo di tutti capi of the Camorra surrenders his surrender takes the form of a despairing shout I’m here with the children don’t shoot there are children it’s the end of his five year long flight from the law the end of a criminal legend Guido Longo the chief of the DIA in Campania handcuffs Sandokan other police officers take in their arms the two little weeping cherubs Angelica age three and Chiara two years old born during his time on the run another of the boss’s numerous jeers at the state and the authorities at twelve fifteen yesterday the crucial events a voice from behind a wall called out please don’t do anything I have two little girls I surrender it was the voice of Sandokan from the depths of his hideout his bunker he had heard the police getting closer they caught him with his daughters in his arms inside an apartment made up of two bedrooms a bathroom a kitchen and a dining room Sandokan hid out in this citadel the entrance was something out of pulp fiction a slab of granite on a pair of runners it could be slid into place in the wall concealing any trace and concealing the entrance completely
the DIA after an intense week of stakeouts phone taps and listening devices were stunned when they knocked down a twenty-five-foot gate blocking access to the villa they found the residence deserted a car pulls up the automatic gate slides open it’s the driver of the boss’s wife this triggers the raid forty officers mob the car inside the villa inside the boss’s lair they search every room to their immense surprise there’s not a trace of Sandokan the DIA chief won’t give up easily Guido Longo accepts the challenge boys he says to his officers we’re not leaving here without Sandokan it’s eleven pm and a manhunt begins that will last the rest of the night they dig they knock on walls they look everywhere tear gas in the air ducts thirteen hours of hunting yesterday a little after noon at twelve fifteen pm the latter day Phantom is discovered the policemen are forced to demolish a false wall of granite a sliding panel on rollers out of the narrow opening he steps a fugitive from the law since November 1993 accompanied by his two daughters one of the girls had her birthday just a few days ago and his wife Giuseppina Natta
the men involved in the raid had to wait for an automobile to arrive that would allow them to open the electric security gate a genuine fortress twenty feet tall twenty-five feet long before they could enter the grounds of the villa but there were no signs of the wanted man we’re not leaving here without finding him was the order from the officer in charge the instructions imparted by Guido Longo to his agents this was the bunker where Sandokan had had visits with his wife and his daughters three times a week for at least a month now that is since he had returned definitively to Casale di Principe even though never during his time on the run had he left the town for very long evidence of that fact was the birth of the two little girls during the time that the police were hunting for him and that he was present was certain this time the DIA agents had followed Giuseppina Natta and they had countless wiretaps and recordings the last of which offered further confirmation of his presence leading the DIA men to spend an entire night and half of the following day digging and excavating they obtained those last recordings while they were in contact with their colleagues outside the villa who were listening in on the frantic series of phone calls between Sandokan’s relatives speculating feverishly on how things would turn out in that villa
the two little girls are weeping from the tear gas but also from the thirteen hours of terror and forced silence with the enemy just inches away and Daddy upset and nervous in a way they’d never seen before a strong and determined woman leaves the bunker Giuseppina Natta recognizes one of the investigators and launches into a denunciation it’s you again always you I ought to spit in your face they handcuff the boss’s brother in law Mario as well then the cars screech away heading for DIA headquarters with the godfather who barely speaks in the police car you’ve finally won but I regret I’m a victim of injustice you’ve won but you couldn’t find me until the very end you’ve won but I’m not talking in fact before they caught him he had tried to escape from the bunker by digging his way out with a pick through a limestone wall or by following an underground passageway where the police found weapons ammunition and tents access to the passageway was from a manhole inside the bunker perhaps Sandokan was afraid that the police had already found that route
his lair is a villa like many others high walls and invulnerable gates an industrial shed made to look shabby and at ground level on the right the last block of stone that conceals the entrance and slides magically on metal rails you have to get on your hands and knees to get in it took months of hard work to build it and finish it so perfectly hundreds of accomplices and inside it’s a fortress but also a house filled with comforts and conveniences no doors no windows but a de luxe air conditioning system a living room master bedroom bedrooms for the children kitchen and bathroom two refrigerators full of all sorts of food on the wall is the last shopping list we need artichokes closets and dressers filled with clothing the finest and most expensive brands of perfume at least two stereo systems three television sets the kind that cost a fortune a film projector and a professional quality screen on the wall hundreds of movies on subjects ranging from medicine to pornography history books but only about the Bourbon dynasty and a computer with files about his clan the public works contracts the politicians the millions the accounting ledgers of hell and weapons two Bulgarian made submachine guns a pump shotgun and 181 shotgun shells a switchblade
a doorless windowless citadel with tunnels and natural caverns capable of providing emergency escape routes but also an apartment with modern comforts this was Sandokan’s hideout which he shared with his wife and children in Casale di Principe near Caserta a surreal setting illuminated by neon and with white majolica tiles an apartment about a thousand square feet with a hallway a kitchen an entry hall a dining room a bedroom and a bathroom the bunker had two doorways covered by cement blocks on two levels a sophisticated system for blocking access sliding blocks of cement on rails that couldn’t be identified from outside even the DIA after a year and seven months had to give up trying to figure it out and break though the wall with an electric cement saw and it was not until after Sandokan surrendered that it became possible to identify the main entrance in a storehouse in a villa in the Via Salerno
the capture of Sandokan was the result of an investigation that combined high technology and the old and somewhat unfashionable methods of tailing stakeouts shoe leather seven months when all was said and done with a sharp and intense acceleration in the last week the secret component that allowed the culminating raid was in orbiting satellites and the cunning and skill of the agent who managed to place a tiny GPS homing device the latest model superpowerful and invisible under the Range Rover that Giuseppina Natta drove from that moment on they could track the car on a video monitor a tiny dot would blink marking every move the godfather’s wife made a week ago five DIA investigators masquerading as repairmen traveled around Casale di Principe keeping tabs on the Via Salerno on that villa and then on Friday evening the GPS device the patient detective work the stakeouts all came together the police were sure that the boss was back from Val di Fassa in northern Trentino two dark vans pulled up packed with forty DIA agents some of them carrying machineguns others with Beretta pistols they waited for the signal among them were investigators from a special DIA squad Acchiappafantasmi the Ghostbusters the ones who hunt down fugitives
in the end the one who snapped the handcuffs around Sandokan’s wrists was the deputy chief of police Sergio Sellitto the young official who over the past year had commanded the Yanez squad seven determined men following the tracks of the boss and since they were chasing someone who had taken the name Sandokan a figure from fiction chose a name out of the same nineteenth century adventure stories by Emilio Salgari the ferocious organized crime boss was a worried father with only one request commander can I kiss my children goodbye they agree he can give them one last kiss and one to his wife who had spent the past five years misleading the investigators if for instance she had to go up north she would make the trip in two or three different stages stop in two or three different cities change vehicles drivers schedules she was skillful and canny she managed to elude her pursuers but she couldn’t elude the eye of the satellite that recorded the meeting on Friday that captured the boss on the run from the law they found him there where he had been the whole time where he returned unfailingly from a flight that appears to have been largely to the north of Italy he would come back at least twice a week to Casale di Principe in the province of Caserta the blitz by the men of the DIA that was unleashed two days earlier in the Via Salerno just a short distance away from his official address
the man is corpulent and he seems intimidated he wears blue jeans a Rolex and a safari jacket he walks turned to one side ill at ease flanked by two policemen who hold his arms low his wrists handcuffed there is actually no need for that Sandokan doesn’t even try to ward off the television cameras that start humming the instant he appears he looks at the world through a pair of outsized glasses with transparent frames he had lots of them at home one of his hobbies along with painting as if he wanted to impress clearly in his mind a scene or certain faces if you met him walking down the street you’d take him for a farmer a peasant and instead as they say at the DIA he had ambitions to be an intellectual a boss who painted the bunker where he was arrested was filled with signed paintings there was a self portrait a clean face shirt and tie and there was a portrait of Napoleon gazing out at a sunset a sort of foreshadowing there were books about Cézanne van Gogh and Titian an entire course on painting a boss with a passion for the internet in the bunker there were even a couple of computers and hookups for browsing the web
the man who defied the Italian state who fathered two children during his five years on the run from the law the man who met personally with statesmen and captains of industry dictating the rules and demanding bribes for the construction of highways gigantic bridge projects public works the man who murdered his former godfather without a moment’s hesitation the man whose chosen sobriquet was Sandokan for his personal ferocity his savagery like his namesake the Tiger of Mompracem and like the Tiger of Mompracem he had long raven black hair and a black beard the same man though now he is sixty-five pounds heavier and without the beard that evoked the author of Sandokan was afraid when after thirteen hours of patient searching the police finally caught him in his gold plated hideout filled with books and paintings that he had painted his favorite subjects were Mussolini Napoleon and of course himself time can be cruel there is nothing in the man the police handcuffed except for the sheer bulk of the physique to remind us of his former resemblance to the actor Kabir Bedi the resemblance that won him the monicker Sandokan a perfect name with which to construct a legend nothing that suggests he was the head of an empire worth five trillion lire five billion dollars that was the family’s estimated volume of business