The confirmation of the threat did not provoke fear in the Kykuit study; it provoked a cold, predatory focus. Ezra Prentice and Baron von Hauser now possessed the single greatest advantage in any conflict: they knew the enemy was coming, and they knew the intended target. They held the initiative, and they intended to use it to wage a war of terrifying, surgical precision.
"They wish to make an example of you, Baron," Ezra said, a thin, mirthless smile on his lips. "An excellent idea. We shall simply reverse the roles."
Instead of hiding von Hauser away in a secure location, they decided to use him as the bait in a meticulously choreographed trap. The Baron, a man who relished the intricate dance of deception, embraced his role with the enthusiasm of a master thespian taking center stage. He was sent on a "business trip" to New York City.
His movements were a work of art, a perfect balance of routine and feigned carelessness. He stayed at a five-star hotel, dined at expensive restaurants, and took meetings in prestigious office buildings. His schedule was deliberately made just predictable enough for a professional surveillance team to track, a trail of breadcrumbs leading the Commission's hunter into a kill box of their own design. The chosen location was a quiet, little-used industrial service alley in the meatpacking district of lower Manhattan—a place of rusting fire escapes and deep shadows, a perfect, cinematic setting for an ambush.
The hunter was a man known as Luc "Le Serpent" Vescari, a Corsican assassin of near-mythical reputation. He was a master of his trade, a ghost who moved through cities unseen, a patient predator who had eliminated politicians, industrialists, and rival gangsters across three continents. He tracked von Hauser for two days, observing his routines, noting the patterns, dismissing the Baron's bodyguards as competent but conventional. He saw his perfect opportunity when he learned von Hauser was scheduled for a late dinner at a secluded, high-end French restaurant just two blocks from the designated alley.
The Baron would leave the restaurant around eleven. He would walk to his waiting car, which would have to pass through the service alley to avoid the late-night traffic on the main avenue. It was the perfect, isolated moment.
As von Hauser left the restaurant, the cool night air swirling around him, Vescari moved. He was a shadow detaching from a deeper shadow in a darkened doorway across the street. He carried no visible weapon. A thin, stiletto-like blade was concealed in a spring-loaded sheath up his sleeve. He was silent, professional, and utterly confident.
He slipped into the service alley moments before the Baron's car, a dark, gleaming Bentley, turned into it. He flattened himself against a brick wall, ready to strike as the car slowed to navigate the narrow passage. But the alley was a trap.
Just as the Bentley's headlights cut a swath through the darkness, the world exploded. Not with gunfire, but with a sudden, blinding, overwhelming light. High-powered floodlights, pre-rigged on the rooftops, roared to life, turning the dark, grimy alley into a sterile, shadowless stage. Simultaneously, both ends of the alley were blocked by black, unmarked vans that screeched into position.
Vescari was caught, a nocturnal creature pinned in a cage of pure white light. Before he could even react to the sensory assault, figures descended. They dropped from the fire escapes on silent ropes, emerging from hidden doorways. They were not cops. They were not mobsters. They were ghosts, clad in black tactical gear, their faces obscured by balaclavas. They were Sullivan's elite, a team from the newly disciplined Fire Brigade, flown in from their Spanish compound for this single, surgical operation.
They moved with a speed and coordinated precision the Corsican assassin had never before witnessed. He barely had time to register their presence before they were on him, a silent, disciplined wolfpack. He was disarmed, subdued, and hooded in a matter of seconds, his legendary career ending not with a bang, but with a quiet, terrifying efficiency. His mission was a catastrophic failure.
With the Commission's primary weapon captured, Ezra's true counter-attack began. It was a coordinated, simultaneous series of psychological operations launched that very same night, a war fought not with bullets, but with fear.
In New Orleans, a different team from the Fire Brigade, specialists in infiltration, targeted Carlos Marcello's secret, heavily fortified cash-counting house. It was a nondescript building in a quiet suburb, a place Marcello considered as inviolable as Fort Knox. The team bypassed the sophisticated alarms and the armed guards, moving through the building like smoke. They did not steal a single dollar. Instead, they left a message. When Marcello's men arrived the next morning, they found, placed gently on top of a literal mountain of stacked cash, a single, pristine white feather—the traditional calling card of the Lupara Bianca, a Sicilian death omen signifying a man who has been marked. Beside it lay a photograph. It was a clear, close-up shot of the captured Corsican assassin, hooded and bound.
In Tampa, Santo Trafficante Jr., a man who prided himself on his security, returned to his waterfront estate from a late-night meeting. He noticed the silence first. His three prize-winning, and famously vicious, Doberman Pinschers were not barking. His guards led him to the back patio. There, by the placid, moonlit water of his swimming pool, the three dogs lay dead, their bodies arranged in a neat, ceremonial row. There was not a mark on them; they had been killed with a silent, undetectable poison. On the ornate, diamond-studded collar of his favorite dog, a small, waterproof capsule had been attached. Trafficante's trembling fingers opened it. Inside was a single, unique, custom-made 7.65mm bullet, the preferred ammunition of Luc Vescari.
And in New York City, Carlo Gambino, the quiet, cautious Boss of Bosses, a man of rigid routine, began his day as he always did. At precisely 7:00 AM, he went to his favorite neighborhood bakery in Little Italy to pick up a warm loaf of pane di casa. The baker, a man whose family had served the Gambinos for generations, his face pale with a terror that went beyond any fear of the police, handed him the usual paper-wrapped loaf.
Gambino got back into his armored Cadillac and, as was his habit, broke off a piece of the crust. But the bread felt wrong. It was light, hollow. He tore it open. Inside, it was not soft and white, but a hollowed-out shell. And nestled within the crust was a single, reel-to-reel audio tape.
Puzzled and deeply unnerved, he had his driver take him back to his office, where he threaded the tape onto a small, portable player. He pressed play. He expected a threat, a demand. What he heard was far, far worse.
The audio was a crystal-clear, high-fidelity recording. It was the sound of his own voice. It was the sound of Trafficante's voice, of Marcello's voice. It was a recording of their own secret Commission meeting, the one in Apalachin, the meeting where they had issued the contract on Baron von Hauser.
Gambino felt a cold, paralyzing fear grip his heart. This outsider, this Prentice, had not just anticipated their attack. He had not just neutralized their assassin. He had been listening. He had bugged their most secret, most sacred council.
The message, delivered through these three, terrifyingly personal acts, was absolute and unmistakable. I hear everything. I can go anywhere. I can touch anything you value. Call off your dogs, or you and everything you have built are next.
The old, powerful, untouchable bosses of the American Mafia had just been completely and utterly checkmated by a power they could not see, could not understand, and could not possibly fight. They had declared a shadow war, and the shadows had answered with a voice of godlike omniscience.