This was especially the case when the member was affiliated not with a crew in Calabria itself but with one of the satellite operations, such as those in the UK or the United States. The ’Ndràngheta had, in fact, been active in East Coast criminal activity for more than a hundred years. A gang in Pennsylvania mining country had extortion and protection rackets in the early 1900s, and the organization had been involved for years in U.S. drug and money-laundering operations, often working with transplanted members of the Mafia and Camorra, as well as local Anglo and Caribbean gangs. (Senior ’Ndràngheta officials in America were reportedly angered by The Godfather, as they felt the Mafia was far less glamorous and clever and ruthless than they were.)

Big, dark, hairy and intimidating, Luigi Procopio was one such freelance operator. His good language skills, military and trade union contacts, and willingness to do whatever he needed to had let him carve out a specialty as a middleman, putting together deals among interests in southern Italy, North Africa, Europe and the United States.

His instinct let him walk the delicate high-wire between self-interest and the ’Ndràngheta’s, and he’d become successful.

Anywhere there was money to be made, Procopio had a presence: the old standbys, of course, arms, drugs and human trafficking, as well as newer twenty-first-century markets.

Say, terrorism, for instance.

He had just called Ibrahim at the Happy Day coffeehouse in Tripoli to update him on the developments here in Naples, and was now smoking and looking over the massive square.

Glancing up the street he happened to see black vans and marked police cars speeding his way. Lights were flashing but the vehicles’ sirens were silent.

Close, closer…

Then the entourage zipped past him, not a single driver or passenger looking his way.

Instead, the law enforcers sped across the square and skidded to a stop in a semicircle around a trash container. They jumped out, highly armed men and women, and scanned about them for their target.

Which was, of course, him.

Or, to be more accurate, the mobile phone on which he’d just called Ibrahim. Procopio had left the phone live in a paper bag at the foot of the trash bin. A young Police of State officer carefully examined the container—a bomb was a possibility under the circumstances—and then found the phone. He held it up. One officer, apparently the commander, shook his head, undoubtedly in disappointment, if not disgust. Other officers looked at nearby buildings, surely for CCTV cameras. But there were none. Procopio had made sure of that before leaving the bait phone.

He now stubbed out his cigarette. He had learned all he needed to. This, in fact, was the entire point of the call to Tripoli. He needed to see just how far along the police had come in their investigation.

So. They knew about Ibrahim’s existence, if not his name, and that there was an operative here. And they were scanning the landline and mobiles.