MOB SISTERS - Charles Cestari - Corsica and Marseilles

Victoria knew the instant she set foot on its soil that exploring "the scented isle" would be pure ecstasy. Corsica, "a mountain surrounded by sea," was a 600 mile long coastline 50 miles from the Italian mainland and 100 miles from the French Riviera, where spectacular crimson granite peaks rose nearly two miles into a seacoast fringed with pine. Napoleon said he would recognize his native island blindfolded by its scent alone — the aroma of terraced gardens and olive groves, orchards, vineyards and wildflowers — maquis, buckthorn, myrtle, rosemary, lavender and so many more. While the rest of the world was plunged in dreary winter, Corsica was wrapped in "the white spring," with flowered heath forming a dramatic rolling carpet that tumbled to the sea.

Cestari's Ajaccio home was magnificent. Nights, the villa was lit by flaming torches outside. Inside, above the entrance hall's gilded circular staircase, was a baccarat crystal chandelier thirty feet high. Thousands of soft lights glittered from its giant frame, creating interesting patterns on the floor's Chinese rugs. In back of the house, a free form swimming pool had been built around a grotto, its cascading waterfalls surrounded by large rocks and tropical plants. In the library was a glass-encased display of Chinese snuff bottles — hornbill, tourmaline, lapis lazuli; he also collected Portuguese wood carvings, Indian sculpture, Indonesian and New Guinea totem poles.

He worked out in his private gym daily for two hour stretches. But Cestari was more than just a phenomenally well-preserved hunk and more than an astute businessman, he could be a surprisingly good listener and advisor, she discovered. Despite not trusting him, she was nevertheless comfortable with him and valued his opinions. His point of view, in contrast to Harry's, was sophisticated and worldly.

It was a load off her mind to have the heroin business arranged, since she'd been thinking about it for the better part of the past year. Her life was really on track now. The first 100 kilo load would be shipped from Germany to Puerto Rico next week; she'd given Charles the initial payment. Still she was on her guard, given his strange performance in New York.

His explanation was he was being watched and didn't want to draw suspicion to her, it was for her own safety he'd treated her like a stranger. He swore there never was a problem. Vic remained wary. They were dining at a local hangout on delicious blackbird pate with ham and sausage made from chestnut fed pork, smoked over the fires of aromatic Corsican shrubs.

"You mean you couldn't even say a decent hello in that restaurant?"

"It was my poor eyesight. I apologize. I didn't know it was you."

"Some excuse, fucking and forgetting," Vic grumbled.

Still, she must have been doing something right, because after Corsica he invited her to his villa in the Aubagne section of Marseilles, where they spent several days together. Or maybe it was because he wanted the second cashier's check in the worst way and she was still withholding it, pending clearance of the first shipment. He knew better than to push, so he was treating her very carefully now, catering to her every need.

Like Ajaccio, his Marseilles spread was unbelievable. The heart of the house was not on floors visible from the street, but in a concrete bunker below. The living room was an exotic jungle paradise lit by special simulated sunlight, with an aviary of rare birds and one entire wall of tropical fish. An electronically controlled waterfall rising 20 feet into the air cascaded down on one side of the room into an indoor swimming pool flanked by huge jungle ferns and exotic flora. If you pressed a button, a wall under the falls swung out to reveal an amply stocked bar. There was a sauna and exercise room where Charles maintained his incredible fitness.

Victoria dallied several days in the baronial splendor of Cestari's villa with its mosaics, pools, waterfalls, and marble Grecian statues, secure in the knowledge that her precious white powder would be arriving Stateside in a matter of two weeks. She was euphoric.

Cestari took her to his hangouts in Marseilles where le milieu congregated — le Pussy Cat, the Artistic Bar, Chez Toto, and the Bar de la Rotonde, where his network convened at four and held court for hours.

She was learning more about him and his organization. The Corsican underworld controlled the city of Marseilles via its own nucleus of 30,000 accomplices who were prepared to carry out services and maintain silence on the part of the caid, the criminal elite. This larger body, known as the phenomenon of La Gâche, was said to be the best insulated criminal organization in the world. In fact, a form of solidarity existed between all Corsicans everywhere. Under penalty of death, one was loyal to le milieu. No Corsican would dream of betraying a compatriot, thus one would never read about Charles in the newspapers, and law enforcement and politicians would bend over backwards to accommodate him. One of his closest cronies was the operational boss of all French police. Cestari himself was immensely respected. He had even served in the French Chamber of Deputies as a representative from Ajaccio.

Nights they returned to his complex for hours of incredible sex. Every time they made love she knew she was his slave, willing to do anything he asked. Up until Charles, cunnilingus and/or clitoral stimulation had been Victoria's chief methods of sexual satisfaction, vaginal orgasms being rare. Perhaps the problem was that her vagina was so large that the average penis was just too small to do the job, but Charles' bide was truly elephantine, in addition to which he was an insatiable satyr. Thus, she was now having regular vaginal orgasms; Charles was easily the highlight of her entire sexual existence, and she could never get enough, never.

Dolce far niente, as the saying went, no sweeter than as a guest on his 90 foot yacht, cruising the Mediterranean, lolling, lazing, basking in the sun, fucking and sucking their lives away. Drinking pastis, Charles waxed philosophical. He told her he saw himself as a mort-vivant, a man walking to his own self-inflicted death. He sighed, "Perhaps you see me as a salaud. But we are living in a sea of sharks."

She was drawn to the inbuilt icy-still menace of this man, to his magnificent physique and nervous energy and the everpresent surface tension that made him appear to be on the verge of springing. Ah, that relentless, frigid amorality, the alluring coldness that gave him the aura of Satan encased in a block of ice — irresistible!

"Friendship," he said, "is the pivotal point of life."

Victoria dragged on her cigarette, exhaling the fumes in gulps.

"More than anything in this world I prize friendship," he continued. "On peut toujours baiser, mais l'amitié c'est vraiment quelque chose. I do not believe in love or in transient passion, only in friendship and the given word, and in a sense of honor. I am Corsican. Honor above all is important to me."

They lay naked together, their bodies' reflections glittering on the yacht's mirrored ceiling. He stared at her with eyes like black diamonds until she could bear his gaze no longer. His dark body enveloped her as he murmured stimulations and stroked her with feathery light fingers, bringing her again and again to newer, greater arousal. Savage, sensual tremors shook her as his body continued its crescendo of thrilling bursts and low sounds escaped his lips.

"Tu me fascines," he said, squeezing her hand. "Tu m'interesses beaucoup. Tu es ravissante, ma chère. I want to know all about you." It sounded great in French, devastatingly romantic and exhilarating. That throaty velvet voice -- merde! And being on the yacht, being rocked by the sea made it all the more so. Charles was her major vice. She wanted to penetrate that wall and reach the soul underneath.

"Life must be lived dangerously in order not to be banal," he said. "You and I, ma Victoire, we have chosen to gamble with life."

Victoria had never met a man more detached yet more seductive. It excited him to have her on top. He loved her long legs wrapped around his neck.

However, the sex wasn't always 100% the way she wanted it. Slowly, Cestari began showing another facet, a kinky aspect she found humiliating yet was powerless to resist. For instance, he again wanted her to lick his bung hole (she'd gone along with the request in Beirut, but enough was enough). He also wanted sodomy, another turnoff. Feeling her back to the wall, she let him do it once and hated it, swore she'd never get sucked in again, but somehow he had the ability to force her to submit. It was a constant power struggle between them, and Vic swore she was going to get the better of him if it was the last thing she did.

At the back of her mind, she was gathering pieces of a puzzle, in anticipation that some day they'd all fit together, that the mystery that was Charles and the strange way he affected her meant something beyond what she could now understand. She was curious about his life and wanted to know everything about him. When he was in the shower she snooped through his drawers and closets. A woman in love couldn't be too careful or calculating. This guy was not to be trusted. Her greater power would derive from having something on him.

She found his keys, including one to his desk drawer, and using techniques Harry taught her, made impressions. She microfilmed documents and photos that looked interesting, got the combination of the lock to his safe.

From her knowledge of locksmithing, she knew one of his keys, a special "government clearance" type, was uncopyable. A Cuban CIA spook ex-lover had once given her such a key and she'd tried copying it, but neither she nor any professional locksmith in town could duplicate it. Knowing Cestari had two copies, she took one.

In his desk she found a series of pornographic photographs of him with a woman who looked familiar — yet Vic couldn't place her. There was Charles, his huge penis in full erection — it was almost obscene for a man to be that well endowed — and this woman, a brunette with a very dark, hairy cunt, her teeth clenched in erotic ecstasy, both staring transfixed at their respective genitalia. Vic took one of the originals and rephotographed all the others in the collection.

They were watching the news on tv that night, sharing a split of Blanc de Blanc, when it hit her who the woman was — none other than Madame Pompier, wife of the President of France! Very interesting. Whereas the woman in the photos had a jet black bush, Madame Georgette Pompier had been known in public for years now as a blonde. The pictures must have been taken at least a quarter of a century ago, but it was unmistakably Madame P — same snotty, vicious face, pouty, cruel slash of a red mouth, the horny poseuse aristocrat, game for anything, ruled by her cunt and flaunting it. The pictures were a goldmine, and she knew where the negatives were in case they were ever needed.

Pointedly, Victoria alluded to Madame Pompier. "The French President's wife is attractive, isn't she? What are they saying about her on the news?"

"Nothing. They are talking about him only."

"Oh, The wife seems more astute than he. She must be very clever. Do you think she's attractive?"

"For a woman of a certain age, she is still goodlooking."

"Do you find her sexy? Would you like to fuck her?"

He laughed, uncomfortable, and shifted his weight. "Frankly, I don't think that much about fucking the President's wife," he said. "I doubt there would be an opportunity, given the restrictions protocol imposes."

"Well, would you have liked to when you were younger, before she became first lady?"

"That might have been different," he admitted.

"Have you ever met her?"

"Yes, in fact, I have. But why are you asking these questions, why — "

"Have you ever fucked her?"

"What gives you such an idea?" he asked, with exaggerated affront.

"Intuition. I just think you have."

He snickered, "So now you are psychic."

"Aha! So you have fucked her then?"

"I didn't say that. What do you think I am, a human fucking machine?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I do think. I think you'd screw anything that walked and plenty that can't."

"Come on," he rose with impatience, "let's take a drink together in town."


She'd made him uncomfortable with her manipulation of the Georgette Pompier affair, and right after that, it was as though he wanted to teach her a lesson. That night he humiliated her sexually by making her lick his bung hole again, knowing full well she disliked it; then once again, he forced sodomy on her, the ultimate perverted insult. And after that came bondage — like it was his payoff, like she owed it to him.

He donned a mask. He looked satanic, a devil with a long skinny rat's tail, in a red and black costume, red and black spangles on his cock. In a not so subtle gesture, he even put Boito's Mefistofele on the stereo. He said she couldn't have his cock unless she begged for it. She begged. Begged and begged to no avail. He kept refusing to give his cock to her, tormenting her until she was crazy. It was his idea of a joke and she was mortified.

But she still had the second certified check, and she was using it as a wedge. Finally, he agreed to take her to one of his heroin manufacturing labs, because he knew that was the only way he was going to pry loose the second check. She basked in the satisfaction that she could force him to comply.

"It's a dangerous process," he warned. "You can burn your lungs out."

"That's ok, we can use gas masks. I'm sure your chemist does."

They drove about 45 minutes into the winding hills. The odor of vinegar was overpowering as they approached a secluded spot behind high stone walls. Charles said, "You realize I've never shown this to any woman before."

"Not even to your wife?" Vic asked with feigned innocence.

"Certainly not," he replied, indignant, as if his wife were the last person he'd bring here.

"Tell me about your wife. You never talk about her."

He didn't want to go into that subject. All she could glean was that the wife lived in Paris, saw friends for lunch, shopped and had her hair done at Alexandre. His only child, a daughter, sold Haitian art in Paris. He was obviously more attached to the daughter than to the wife, who seemed like a non-person.

Cestari shut off the ignition and looked around, on guard. Unlike most labs, this one was not mobile, but a permanent structure. She followed him around a winding path to an outbuilding in back.

Refining heroin was, as Cestari had said, a highly perilous procedure. Used in the wrong proportions, the chemicals could be deadly, improper heating could cause an explosion, the process took days, and apart from the smell that aroused suspicion, you could ruin potential profits in the millions by mixing to cheaper grade # 3 or # 2 when you intended to make the more lucrative # 4 heroin. The difficulties involved in refining were one reason the American market was so dependent on foreigners.

"Using one part acetic acid to one part heroin produces the high quality # 4, whereas for # 3 you are using 6 parts acetic acid. If you goof on the manufacture then you must give up trying to produce # 4 and go to # 3, which will mean an inferior product and far less money," Cestari explained.

100 tons of opium was needed to make 10 tons of # 3 heroin, the smoking stuff, called purple heroin, whereas six times this amount was necessary to make an equal amount of the coveted # 4.

Vic watched the poudre blanche being manufactured, watched Cestari's stocky, efficient chemist, Andre Comine, surrounded by microscopes, bunsen burners, beakers and chloroform, mixing sodium carbonate and acetone, tartaric acid and acetic anhydride.

Pouring in water in a series of carefully controlled steps, he heated the mixture to 1000 degrees centigrade, boiled and filtered it. The process was repeated several times, after which the resulting solution was dehydrated via evaporation. The resulting powder obtained would contain 95% heroin, which would then be raised even higher by a continuing process with alcohol, ether and hydrochloric acid. It was in these final steps that Comine outdid himself, achieving what other chemists could not.

The transformation process was long, requiring 17 steps and over one day to do it. Morphine base was treated with acetone, heated to 212 degrees, acetone pumped off, the base treated with carbon black to whiten it, neutralized with caloric acid, baked in sludge, dried, sifted. The process had to be repeated several times until the desired purity was attained.

Afterwards, she finally broke down and gave Cestari the money. He took it casually, an almost disdainful look on his face.

When he found the key missing from his trousers, Vic made light of it. "Probably fell out of your pants, maybe last night when you took your cock out. Anyway, why do you need that one? You have others, don't you?"

"Yes, you're right. It will probably turn up."

The next evening, they were enjoying a leisurely supper together at the Artistic Bar, when four ski-masked gunmen armed with MAT 49 submachine guns barged in. Vic looked up from her bouillabaisse and screamed. She only escaped by running for cover into a pipe barrel. Charles got lucky too, but three of his bodyguards were killed.

Cestari was so shaken that after that he forgot all about the key.