Chapter
TWENTY-SIX

Enveloped in the fug of his favourite Cusano cigar and the syrupy tones of the Ink Spots, Pescaro sat in his study. Comfortably settled in a deep leather arm chair and sipping aged brandy, at 9:00 p.m. he was hard at work.

Pescaro adored luxury and found the solace of his study conducive to clear thinking. For him, success was measured as much by the degree of thought devoted to a task as the final outcome.

He was thinking about Teresa. Her silence on Santini’s security box interested him, he was even beginning to think she might not have inspected the contents. Yet here was a small mystery – a locked strong box for which she had the key. Not inspecting the contents would contradict everything he knew about her. If nothing happened soon, he would have to prod her.

But enough – Teresa was the least of his worries. It was his black waste business that required serious thought. Of itself, this was a major irritation. His empire and interests were extensive, yet this one issue was beginning to seem like his only interest. To an extent, he blamed himself; he might have been too hasty pressuring the Aldrittsons.

He had received Ben’s briefing paper for the Premier, a slick and practical document he had to admit, and understood he couldn’t control the timing for his scheme. He even conceded that trying to win government support for the concept right now was probably close to impossible. It was too close to the election and other ‘vote catchers’ would be occupying the minds of the Premier and his Ministers. His timing was totally awry. But that was only part of the problem. The driver creating his nightmare was the Russian Mafiya.

Russian criminals were arriving in Australia any way they could and were quietly planting themselves in the community. Just like the USA, law enforcement authorities here seemed largely ignorant of their presence. But unlike America, two elements impeded Russian establishment: Australia’s relatively small population overall and, within it, a tiny Russian community. The minuscule Russian populace severely curtailed opportunities for exploitation and extortion and compelled the Mafiya to look elsewhere. And it was this that had become the focus of Pescaro’s concern: intense Russian scrutiny and jealousy of his long held preserves.

The Russians were trouble. Even though they likened themselves to the Mafia, there were many differences. For instance, they had no firm family structure, a matter of significance to the Mafia. The only sense of family Pescaro could see was their predilection for inflicting unfettered violence on other Russians. There was little to suggest a heritage of close familial support and evolution. Their clans were loosely structured and bosses frequently came and went. Even their roots were a matter of conjecture. Some believed they stemmed from Communist Russia’s black market economy while others argued they sprang from the horrific prison camps of Peter the Great. Those barbarous places had spawned violent criminals whose tight, vicious gangs followed an unbreakable creed which demanded they never work legitimately, pay taxes, fight for the army, or, under any circumstance help police unless to trick or harm them. As a fraternity, they called themselves the Vor V Zakononye or just Vors, meaning “thieves in law” or “thieves within the code”.

Pescaro’s North American experience had certainly not endeared the Russian Mafiya to him. To the contrary, after his visit in 2002 he began to study them fearing they would see Australia as a submissive frontier ripe for plunder. Such an assault would diminish his own empire – a most unpalatable prospect. He found that four dominant Vor groups had spread from Moscow across Europe and beyond: the Georgians, Chechens, Dolgoprudanskaya and the Ukrainians. In the wings, like wolves sniffing for carcases, were scores of powerful, but lesser brigades. To make matters worse, one of their intimidating features was that many of their leaders were highly educated – PhDs in maths, engineering, physics and computer technology. Many were also thoroughly schooled in the Russian political system. These strengths were consolidated by an abundance of followers whose military backgrounds bristled with weapons training and other deadly abilities.

This unwholesome blend of skill, violence and brains had resulted in what Boris Yeltsin once termed ‘a super power of crime.’ No more powerful an example could be found than in the Vors’ flagrant co-option of private Russian banking to a level where they controlled eighty per cent of the central banking system. Such immense influence provided unlimited access to sources of western aid and financial support. The benefits had been enormous. Pescaro’s Sicilian colleagues had expressed their envy and apprehension at this extraordinary power. Vors had bled millions of dollars from these sources and entrenched their global criminal economy to a position of virtual impregnability. Indeed, some believed that Vor control of Russian funds exacerbated the 1998 Wall Street crash. Pescaro had no doubt the Mafiya was financially stronger than the Mafia and its collective ambition was to become the undisputed Czars of world crime.

Looking ever more deeply into their practices, Pescaro discovered that Perestroika had enabled thousands of Russian Jews to move into Israel, among them, huge numbers of Mafiya. Their consolidation and asset building was so voracious that some Israeli leaders considered them a serious threat to the country’s political and economic stability.

From experience, Pescaro knew that Vors established links with other criminal groups, like his own, including the Serbian Ravna Gora, Colombians, Triads and, when it suited, savage individual criminals. He also knew they could not be trusted. He had heard one of John Gotti’s associates grumble that the Russians were crazy and would wipe out any man who offended them, including his entire family. On his same visit to the USA, Pescaro read of a Los Angeles cop saying that ‘murder was a blood sport for the Mafiya and they would shoot you just to see if their guns worked.’

These were the factors that fuelled his concern. Reports had been trickling in from various quarters that pressure from Russian criminals was mounting. Pescaro sensed a restlessness and growing impatience among them. They wanted a piece of his action. So far however, no Vor had requested a “sit down” to discuss boundary realignments or any restructuring of criminal activity. Even if they had, he would have pissed them off, he had been Don for too long to give anything away. While he was confident his Mob could match anything the Russians had to offer he was reluctant to become involved in a blood bath, the Vors were clever and cruel adversaries. What was particularly pissing him off now was their increasing forays into waste disposal – his waste disposal business.

Additionally, they were slack-arsed and arrogant about local custom and culture. Out to make a quick buck, they employed standover tactics and disposal practices that were certain to attract attention, attention that could so easily rebound on his and Aldrittson’s long nurtured and well planned activities. I’ve invested too much money, time and effort on our project to have it ruined by a bunch of fuckwits from Russia, he thought. But, at seventy-four, he was feeling too old for heavy conflict and thus far had not taken retaliatory action. Furthermore, no one was certain about how many Vors were in the country which meant that assessing their resources and capability was difficult.

To make matters worse, his successor was awaiting burial. Pescaro had intended for Santini to become the new Don once their waste scheme won government acceptance. But Santini’s death and the growing Russian pressure had wrecked his plans. He worried too as to whether Teresa was strong enough to withstand a Russian onslaught if it all broke loose.

Teaching the Russians a lesson would be hard; they were formidable foes. He had even heard the FBI say the same thing. He smiled inwardly as he thought about that. Coppers were inevitably in a “no win” situation fighting with one hand tied behind them. They were compelled to follow all the rules with few resources while his, and other criminal groups, had unlimited resources and none of the rules. The cops would present little barrier to Russian plans.

Pescaro had no intention of playing second fiddle on a stage he considered his own. Yet, Mafiya boldness was breathtaking. They had taken prostitution to a new level by kidnapping scores of women, girls and boys from Croatia, Bosnia, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. Then, sold as sex slaves with no regard for their wellbeing, they were slipped into different countries, made into sexual or pornographic objects, subjected to appalling depravities, discarded or killed. Heroin and global weapons trade, including atomic bomb ingredients such as Caesium-137, Strontium-90 and uranium, were all part of Vor activity. And, for light relief, they had raped the diamond mines of Sierra Leone to build lavish casinos in Costa Rica. These were hallmark signatures of the Vor code: wealth accretion and social disruption.

Pescaro grinned wryly to himself. He could hardly complain, many of their activities were similar to his own. However, the breadth and scale of their ventures in other countries heralded conflict for his own empire and the more he pondered that dynamic, the less he liked it. Although the Vors and Mafia often teamed up, particularly for fraud and tax scams, such a partnership was unlikely here. Keeping them at bay would be difficult.

It was the sum total of these pressures which had caused him to lean on the Aldrittsons. Their secret waste disposal plan just had to be ready for the election. The advantage of progressing the scheme was relief from an accelerating demand for disposal of black waste. This had grown slowly over time as a consequence of ‘encouragement’ by Santini. It was now approaching boilover as a result of some sneaky enquiries into illegal dumping by the New South Wales Government. If their scheme gained approval their clients would at least be able to store their waste knowing a legitimate solution was underway. This decision, Pescaro believed, would diminish the Russian’s opportunity for exploiting his plans. Yet nothing could be taken for granted – especially when it came to politicians.