He made his decision.
Tony Rizzoli was not a man to go into anything haphazardly. He began by reading everything he could find out about heroin.
Heroin was fast becoming the king of narcotics. Marijuana and cocaine provided a “high,” but heroin created a state of complete euphoria, with no pain, no problems, no cares. Those enslaved by heroin were willing to sell anything they possessed, steal anything within their reach, commit any crime. Heroin became their religion, their reason for being.
Turkey was one of the leading growers of the poppy from which heroin was derived.
The Family had contacts in Turkey, so Rizzoli had a talk with Pete Lucca, one of the capos.
“I’m going to get involved,” Rizzoli said. “But anything I do will be for the Family. I want you to know that.”
“You’re a good boy, Tony.”
“I’d like to go to Turkey to look things over. Can you set it up?”
The old man hesitated. “I’ll send word. But they’re not like us, Tony. They have no morals. They’re animals. If they don’t trust you, they’ll kill you.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“You do that.”
Two weeks later, Tony Rizzoli was on his way to Turkey.
He traveled to Izmir, Afyon, and Eskisehir, the regions where the poppies were grown, and in the beginning, Rizzoli was greeted with deep suspicion. He was a stranger, and strangers were not welcome.
“We’re going to do a lot of business together,” Rizzoli said. “I’d like to take a look at the poppy fields.”
A shrug. “I don’t know nothin’ about no poppy fields. You’re wastin’ your time. Go home.”
But Rizzoli was determined. Half a dozen phone calls were made and coded cables were exchanged. Finally, in Kilis, on the Turkish-Syrian border, he was allowed to watch the opium being harvested at the farm of Carella, one of the large landowners.
“I don’t understand it,” Tony said. “How can you get heroin from a fuckin’ flower?”
A white-coated scientist explained it to him. “There are several steps, Mr. Rizzoli. Heroin is synthesized from opium, which is made by treating morphine with acetic acid. Heroin is derived from a particular strain of poppy plant called Papaver somniferum, the flower of sleep. Opium gets its name from the Greek word opos, meaning juice.”
“Got you.”
At harvesting time, Tony was invited to visit Carella’s main estate. Each member of Carella’s family was equipped with a çizgi biçak, a scalpel-shaped cutting knife, to make a precise incision into the plant. Carella explained, “The poppies have to be harvested within a twenty-four-hour period or the crop is ruined.”
There were nine members in the family and each one worked frantically to make sure the crop was in on time. The air was filled with fumes that induced drowsiness.
Rizzoli felt groggy. “Be careful,” Carella warned. “Stay awake. If you lie down in the field, you will never get up again.”
The farmhouse windows and doors were kept tightly closed during the twenty-four-hour period of harvest.
When the poppies had been picked, Rizzoli watched the sticky white gum transformed from a morphine base into heroin at a “laboratory” in the hills.
“So, that’s it, huh?”
Carella shook his head. “No, my friend. That’s only the beginning. Making the heroin is the easiest part. The trick is to transport it without getting caught.”
Tony Rizzoli felt an excitement building in him. This is where his expertise was going to take over. Up until now, the business had been run by bunglers. Now he was going to show them how a professional operated.
“How do you move this stuff?”
“There are many ways. Truck, bus, train, car, mule, camel…”
“Camel?”
“We used to smuggle heroin in cans in the camel’s belly—until the guards started using metal detectors. So we switched to rubber bags. At the end of the trip we kill the camels. The problem is that sometimes the bags burst inside the camels, and the animals stagger up to the border like drunks. So the guards caught on.”
“What route do you use?”
“Sometimes the heroin is routed from Aleppo, Beirut, and Istanbul, and on to Marseilles. Sometimes the drugs go from Istanbul to Greece, then on to Sicily through Corsica and Morocco and across the Atlantic.”