Rolling thunder, A CYCLING TALE, part huit
Following is Part 8 of “rolling thunder.”
Blah, blah, blah, this story is copyrighted. Comprend? By the way, thank you for leaving your thoughtful comments along the way…we live on that stuff!
ROLLING THUNDER (cont’d)
Chapter 15
“Go ahead and tell me then.”
He’d been lying in bed when she’d called, so there was no need to sit down. He thought there wasn’t much need for Eve to say what she had to say either, because he already knew what it would be.
“She’s dead, I’m sorry to say. It does not appear to be a crime; there were no signs of a struggle or that another person had been with her. Her automobile was located by a Gendarme at a parking area next to the beach near Brest, in Brittany. Her car was parked overnight, and when the officer approached it, he saw her in the front seat. She was unresponsive, so he broke a window and entered the automobile. She had a liter of alcohol and a bottle of sleeping medicine that was mostly empty, and appeared to have died earlier that morning of an overdose. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but when I read the note last night, it did seem to suggest she was not planning to return.”
Shamus, stunned by the news, sat wordlessly. He knew little about Brittany except that it was a finger of rocky land that jutted out into the Atlantic, and the locals referred to it as Finistère, which meant land’s end. He didn’t know what compelled Daniela there, but the name seemed eerily appropriate.
“I had thought the same thing,” Shamus finally said. “I think perhaps she felt very guilty about what she was involved in, and couldn’t face the news coming out that she was in some way related to Gerard’s death.”
“Clearly you are right, Shamus. But I think you should remember that the work you are doing is leading to answers, which is what we’ve wanted from the start. Certainly, nobody hopes that more harm would come from finding out the truth, but often it does.”
“Right,” he said.
“My point is not about Daniela,” Shamus. “It is about you. Two people have died and you and others have been seriously injured by people involved in this business. You must be especially careful now. If this system has been disrupted by Daniela’s death, some people will be angry, and they may try to send you a message to stop meddling. “
“I suppose they might, but Daniela’s needless death makes me all the more intent on exposing this to the light of day.”
“Of course, Shamus, but please be especially careful. Do not trust anybody until this is over.”
“Okay, so what do we do next?” He asked, shifting away from her fears and back to the tasks at hand.
“We are evaluating Daniela’s letter for further information. We will assign investigators to the men she named in it. This is being done as we speak. Within hours, we will know every movement they have made for the past year or two; every telephone call made or received, every text message, every time they have stayed in a hotel or used a credit card to pay for a meal. We will also see their bank records and find out how much money they live on, and whether their legitimate income supports them. This is the easy part.”
“The hard part will be to tie them to crimes, am I right?”
“Precisely, and that is where we continue to rely upon you.”
“The question is how, dear. We’ve been at this for a couple of months and we all we have is a letter from a dead girl.”
“It’s not like on the TV, non? We don’t solve the crimes in one hour. Sometimes the months turn into years, and sometimes we still don’t make a case the prosecutor will accept,” she said honestly.
“What are the chances that’s where we end up?”
“Honestly, it is difficult to tell at this point. As you say, we have little in our hands at this moment. But we are not empty handed, either. Daniela has provided us with names, which enables us to dig much deeper. This is usually the activity that starts to generate important information. If we can get enough, then maybe we can bring in these men and pressure them, and see if more names can be added to the list. We also have the laboratory tests on the drug samples you have sent us, and we are tracing those back to the labs that made these drugs, and possibly to the salespeople who handled them. We are maybe a week or two from getting some of this information. Let’s just keep working a few more weeks, and then we can see how much progress has been made, okay?”
“No use turning back now, I suppose.”
The next morning, France’s leading newspaper, Le Monde had Daniela’s picture prominently on page one, seemingly out of context with the importance of a single suicide in the country of France. The story below the picture discussed Daniela’s relationship to the French cycling team and, hardly wasting a comma to hang it all together, threw in the dark prospect of drugs in the sport and the possibility that this was all one entangled story resulting in Daniela’s death. Shamus was saddest that the shameless muckraking, at least in this case, might happen to be more or less accurate.
They were departing this morning on the bus for the trip back to Girona. He dropped his duffel at the team’s growing luggage pile that was tended by Philip down in the lobby. Shamus could see that Philip didn’t look right, and when he approached Philip asked, “have you heard?” holding out a copy of Le Monde.
Shamus glanced at the paper and said, “I read it already this morning. It’s absolutely horrible.”
“Oui. Shamus, Monsieur Trusseau is concerned about you, because he knows that you and Daniela were close at one point. He wants to make sure you will be okay.”
“I appreciate that. I’ll be fine, really. I’m sure others knew her even better that I did, but it’s a loss for us all.”
“Yes, the boys are very quiet this morning.”
Shamus entered the team’s dining room where a half dozen riders were in fact eating very little and very quietly, their heads lowered. It was somber. A few eyes raised when he entered the room. Some did little more than acknowledge his presence. Others looked more nervous than sorrowful, Shamus thought. With good reason, perhaps.
He gathered a tray of food and chose a table specifically to be with some of the boys he thought seemed more apprehensive than they should be. He dropped the copy of Le Monde he’d gotten from Philip on the table, letting the cat out of the bag.
“You heard, I suppose?”
Heads nodded. Nobody spoke.
“Such garbage, Le Monde. A person dies and they make a conspiracy out of it, as if cycling consists of little more than pedaling around and taking drugs, eh?”
Obligatory nods and grunts followed.
“I knew Daniela, but not as well as I’d have liked. She lost interest in me fairly quickly, I’m afraid. Great young lady though. Makes me terribly sad that she’s gone, and I honestly can’t explain what must have been eating at her to make her do this, can you?”
“Never,” responded Marcel Clerc. “It is unimaginable.” Others sat unresponsively.
“And this article isn’t going to help things. They publish this kind of rubbish and you’ve got to know that we’ll be visited by the police asking their questions and wanting to ask about all this stuff they read in Le Monde, and maybe wanting to come to our rooms and see all the drugs we’ve got, Shamus said cynically, intending to tug at any strings that might have been made bare by Daniela’s death and the damning news story lying on the table in front of them.”
“That’s enough, Shamus,” said Clerc. “It is not respectful to say such things today.”
“Maybe not, but tell me I’m wrong.”
“I won’t tell you anything, my friend. This conversation is not appropriate, Clerc responded. I’ll take my coffee in my room – I still have to pack.”
Clerk took his cup and saucer and headed for the elevators. Shamus couldn’t tell if Clerc’s reaction meant the man was concerned, or was evidence that he wasn’t. The other blokes at the table appeared like scared sheep. He suspected they had skeletons in the closet, but doubted they were involved in anything beyond their own personal vices.
Ironically, the names Daniela had put in her letter, the ones she thought were behind Gerard’s death, weren’t familiar ones. Shamus had to Google them. No surprise that they were former racers, and little surprise that neither had ridden any important races, let alone won them. There was a Spaniard, Jose Maria Aguillar, and a Czech named Peter Patrovski. Sadly for both of them, even Google came up with sparse listings. The Spaniard had been a mediocre climber who’d found a spot on a now-defunct team. The team folded after his second season, and nobody cared to renew Aguillar’s contract. End of story. Patrovski was a single-day specialist, if one could be called a specialist in anything they didn’t succeed at. Shamus deduced that Patrovski had shown no acuity for any other races, so he’d become a one-day-wonder by default. Patrovski was listed as a big man, two metres high and eighty five kilos. That was just a shade under a hundred and ninety pounds, and few riders that size had the muscle to push all that weight at competitive speeds. Patrovski became a bidon-carrier for a glorified club team, and raced low-prize events regionally. Shamus doubted he’d made enough money to feed himself, and eventually was forced to find a regular job. Unfortunately, Google couldn’t produce a photo of either man, so he could walk right by them and never know it. He hoped Eve’s colleagues could do better.
Shamus finished his breakfast, sparing the others at the table any further prodding about what might have happened to Daniela, but leaving the copy of Le Monde prominently in the middle of the table, like a talisman. Finally he rose, said cheers, and went back to his room to use the toilet before climbing on the bus for the long trip home. Normally, the day after the team had achieved a podium finish in a Classics race, the mood would be buoyant. Daniela’s death understandably changed all that. Shamus knew that it would be his job as team captain to help balance the group’s emotions. There was nothing they could do to bring her back, anyway. Mourning was appropriate, so long as it didn’t rob the team of its vitality. Even Daniela wouldn’t want that.
Shamus emerged from the toilet as someone knocked on the door to his room. He opened it and his Flavio Ramoli was there. Flavio was the Italian speedster. He hadn’t been in the dining room earlier when Shamus had stirred up a hornet’s nest.
“Yeah, mate, come on in. What’s up?”
“Shamus,” Flavio said, in proficient if strongly accented English, I need someone to talk to. “I can’t stand to ride all the way back to Gerona with these things on my mind.”
“Sure, my friend. What’s bothering you?”
Flavio took a seat in the one chair the room came with; Shamus plopped himself on one of the twin beds.
“I think I can trust you Shamus. You’ve never crossed anyone, they say. People like you. Gerard liked you very much, and trusted you.”
And look what that got him, Shamus thought to himself.
He nodded at Flavio, waiting for the man to get to whatever point he might be intending to. “It’s just you and me, Flavio. Anything you tell me stays in this room, mate.”
“Okay,” he said, mentally crossing a threshold. “It’s about what happened to Daniela.”
Shamus nodded affirmatively.
“Her death is not an accident. I mean, something made her do it, and I know something about this matter. Daniela was a wonderful girl. We even dated for about two weeks – just like you did, you know?” Flavio smiled at him.
“She makes a quick impression, for sure,” Shamus said, returning the smile.
“So I don’t know what she said to you or not, but you might know that she was involved with the people who get medicines for the riders,” he said in a sort of question, dropping eye contact as he did and then slowly looking back up to see how Shamus’ face registered this statement-question.
Shamus certainly wasn’t surprised by the assertion, so his face registered as much. Once again, he merely nodded affirmatively, as if Flavio had just asked him if he were aware that the moon orbited the earth.
“Between you and me only, I will say that I know this from experience. Not now, but at the start of last season when my legs were like, eh, telephone poles, you know? Daniela got some medicine for me to get the speed back in the legs.”
”I know she was involved with doping,” Shamus said, and Flavio’s face went stone as he waited to see whether Shamus was going to indict him based on his admission. “I know this, because she gave me help also,” he said conspiratorially.
Flavio chuckled as the stress eased from his body. He’d made the right call about Shamus, and felt grossly relieved to have a confidant to share his burdens with. “So we’re all human.”
“Undeniably,” Shamus said. “Now I don’t think you came to Father McDonough para confesion, so what’s bothering you?”
Flavio proceeded to unburden himself in a rapid monologue that Shamus finally had to cut off because the rest of the team would be on the bus downstairs by now, waiting for them. Mercifully, by the time Shamus called time, Flavio had quite completely put his cards on the table, and Shamus was confident Eve and Steineger would appreciate some additional leads to run down. Perhaps as importantly, Flavio had painted a picture of how prevalent doping was on the squad. After all, it wasn’t a topic riders normally opened up to each other about any more than two attorneys would brag about times they’d violated ethical standards in the name of winning a case. It was merely understood to be a practical necessity, but way too gauche to speak of among company.
Flavio, though, had formed opinions about who was involved directly or indirectly. He also proved to have an acute eye, and noticed the same types of seemingly innocuous coincidences that meant little individually, but over time told a story. Shamus had feigned disbelief at various points just to see how Flavio might react. If he were merely speculating, it would be apparent. Instead, when Flavio made assertions about riders or staff who might be doing dirty business, it seemed he’d accumulated sufficient circumstantial evidence to put forth a compelling case.
Finally, Flavio gave Shamus the names of almost half a dozen of the black motorcycle riders. So many that Shamus feared he wouldn’t be able to remember them long enough to relay them to Eve. Fortunately, one name had been that of Eddie Pagnoli, easing Shamus’s task a bit and at the same time supporting the veracity of Flavio’s accusations. Flavio had ridden with Pagnoli on the junior national squad in their younger days, so he knew the man reasonably well and wasn’t likely to confuse him with someone else. The next handful of names were new to Shamus, and as Flavio reeled them off Shamus repeated them over and over again in his mind until they were cemented in his memory. He thought that grabbing for a pen and paper would have changed the ambience in the room. The final name Flavio had put forth, though, again registed with Shamus, because he’d only learned it for the first time less than twenty four hours ago, and he wasn’t likely to confuse a name like Petre Patrovski.
They rushed to the bus and climbed on, Flavio lightened of the weight of burdens he’d now left for Shamus to shoulder. Shamus, on the other hand, wished for even ten minutes to call Eve and give her the information he’d received before it spoiled in his head. There wasn’t time for that now though, so he’d have to take care of it at the first rest area they stopped at later in the day. In the meantime, Flavio had given him plenty to mull over.
Flavio had ridden with Pagnoli in Milan during the nineties, when both were still teenagers. Pagnoli didn’t have the heart of a winner, Flavio said, and his legs were also mediocre. But they’d been friends. Pagnoli knew even then that he’d never earn a decent living, so he constantly found little sidelines to make a buck here and there. He imported Japanese bike parts to Italy somehow in an end run around customs, and made a nice profit selling them for less than wholesale prices on the street. Then he got hooked up with a guy selling Chinese versions of Japanese parts, got those around customs, and made profit margins of several hundred percent each time someone bought one. Trouble was, the Chinese parts failed shortly after they were installed, if not during the course of being so, and Pagnoli’s reputation as a parts distributor was ruined.
Not to be defeated, as he sat aboard the team bus rumbling up to Switzerland, or Austria, or France or Germany for their races, none of which the winner could take home more than a week’s rent money from, another idea came to him. Soon, he’d paid off the bus driver to look the other way, and had not only taken one of the bus’s air conditioning units out of service, but he’d completely removed it. Their bus had two of these units mounted on its roof, each covered by a sheet metal box with appropriate baffles to allow outside air to cool the units. Each box was roughly a foot high by two feet wide and two feet long. Given how few truly hot days they encountered each year, the bus was normally quite comfortably served by a single a/c unit. Other days, when the temperature exceeded thirty-five centigrade, they simply sweated a bit.
Since border checkpoints required all automobiles to stop for a document check and potentially be searched by dogs sniffing for illicit goods, Pagnoli figured that their bus could provide a good subterfuge for more risky and remunerative import/export activities. The empty a/c box on top of the bus virtually guaranteed storage safe from the noses of inquisitive dogs or physical inspection by the border guards, so Pagnoli took full advantage and stuffed it before every trip. The product he moved wasn’t heroine or cocaine, but sports drugs. Eddie figured that he was spending all his time going to and from places where people didn’t go to buy recreational drugs, but where there was a built in market for performance drugs. His Chinese supplier stopped sending knock-off derailleurs and switched effortlessly to shipping the latest and greatest drugs du jour he’d obtained from employees in various labs in Canton. Eddie speculated that some of these products were pilfered from warehouses, some were recovered after being thrown out post their expiration date, and some were just water or ground up horse’s hoof put in a vial with a convincing label printed in some Chinaman’s basement.
All this Flavio knew about the early exploits of his friend Eddie, because when Eddie left the team he invited Flavio to become his business partner. Flavio said that for his business to grow, he’d need associates who were inside the sport and could make connections with other riders and other teams. He offered a forty-sixty split of profits, in Eddie’s favor, of course.
Flavio debated it with himself for weeks before turning Eddie down for good. The money Eddie was making already rivaled that of an elite pro racer, while Flavio was sharing an apartment with six guys and barely making ends meet. As far as Flavio knew, Eddie never left the business. There was no reason to. He just changed products as the technology evolved, and with the dismantling of borders between EU countries, Eddie no longer needed to find clever hiding places – he simply carried the product in the storage boxes on his motorcycle. Almost easier yet, was moving product beyond the EU, since the inception of Fedex and overnight shipment made child’s play of getting pretty much anything to anywhere. Eddie had no need to sweat arrest, since he wasn’t shipping illegal drugs at all.
In most countries, it wasn’t against the law to buy, sell, or own these substances; it was only a potential violation of sporting for them to be used, and even then, it was usually the athlete who got in trouble.
At the afternoon rest stop they had an hour to stretch the legs, eat some food, and have as many cappuccinos as they cared for. Shamus’ teammates found spots in the grassy areas outside the restaurant and ate in the sun, soaking up the rare warmth of an early spring day in Southern France.
Shamus ate his sandwich while talking on his cell phone to Eve, recounting what Flavio had told him.
“And then Flavio tells me about this guy Petre Patrovski, who is like the Central European version of Eddie Pagnoli. It’s like these guys have their franchise areas and if you need something delivered in that area, you go through that person.”
“Sounds very efficient,” she said.
“And equitable. Nothing hurts prices like competition, so they make sure there can be none.”
“What else did he say about Patrovski?”
“He said Patrovski is also hired muscle. He’s a big man, at least by the standards of cyclists, so if there’s a problem, he can influence someone to pay their bill or what have you.”
“Which makes him especially interesting regarding your accident last year.”
“I asked Flavio if any of these guys he named had been in France for the Tour last year, and he confirmed that he saw Patrovski in the start village at the Prologue, but didn’t recall running into him elsewhere. The important thing though, is that Patrovski was in the area at the time, so that should give you something to work with.”
“Oh definitely. We will trace his registration to hotels in the area during that time.”
“It shouldn’t be so hard, either, since Flavio said that these guys don’t see a need to be overly. It’s just another day at the office for them.”
“You should ask Flavio if he recalls the name of the Chinese distributor. We have traced the drug samples you sent us and the documents showed them delivered to a shipper named Chao Ling, from Canton province. After that, they disappear. We believe he may be the person who is obtaining the drugs from the Chinese labs.”
“He’s in China then?”
“No, he’s from China. He is now a U.S. citizen and lives in California since nineteen and eighty. He was educated as a Chemist, and I bet you will be surprised where he works now.”
“Where’s that?” Shamus asked.
Chapter 16
“Ou est la, he is a senior product manager for Amgen Pharmaceuticals.”
“Good god, he works for the blokes who sponsor the Tour of California?”
“Yes, but we have no evidence he is involved in illegal activities. We found Chinese shipping documents showing he was to receive certain drugs from Canton area. But his job could involve shipping products to various places and he works for a drug company, so this could turn out to be legitimate work and unrelated to our case. However, we still believe it looks highly suspicious that the drugs you received from Daniela are traced to him, so we are gathering more information. What Flavio told you is very helpful. We will have these notes transcribed and sometime it may be necessary to have him sign a statement about these things. We will not do this until we have a solid case to take to the prosecutor.”
“I understand. I suggest you check something else when you can.”
“What is that?”
“See if you can find records tying Chao Ling to Daniela or to Eddie Pagnoli or this guy Petre. See if they stayed in any of the same hotels, or phoned each other or exchanged emails, or if they shipped anything to each other. Somehow there’s got to be a link that brings their business together.”
“That makes sense. So maybe you would like to become an investigator when you are done riding the bicycle?” Eve said in a friendly jest.
“No way, the pay’s too modest and I’ve seen the injuries you secret agents get. What else have you found out?”
“It is not a question of how much we have learned, but which information is important, non?” She responded rhetorically. “You see, the interesting relationships are very many.”
“Such as?”
“Such as Monsieur Trusseau, who was coach for an Austrian team sponsored by Mont Blanc years ago. When he was with Mont Blanc, the team doctor was Mario Cantarini.”
“The infamous Doctor Cantarini?” Shamus asked, referencing the singular person who many in sports medicine suspected was behind doping up the vast majority of the top riders throughout the past decade, as well as having industrialized the practice of dispensing performance enhancing drugs to other athletes around the globe. Rumor had it that he maintained clinics in numerous countries to make it easier for athletes to visit discretely and undergo their treatments.
“He worked for Trusseau?”
“Yes, and when Monsieur Trusseau sees his own physician, it is Doctor Yvonne Beauchamp in Paris.”
“And?”
“The WADA lab, the Agence Française de Lutte contre le Dopage, in Chatenay-Malabry, France, is under the direction of Pierre Beauchamp.”
“Her husband, I suppose.”
“The son, actually.”
“This is fun,” Shamus said only half sarcastically. “What else do you have?”
“So your team doctor, Monsieur Gabelli, his roommate at Yale Medical School was Thomas Sattelberger, a German who became a medical researcher for a company called DNA Components. Another firm purchased DNA Components in 2002, and so Monsieur Sattelberger does research…”
“…For Amgen, I suppose.”
“That is correct. A-plus to the student in the first row!” Eve kidded.
“Any chance he’s connected to Mister Ling?”
“That is certainly something for us to check, but an interesting coincidence, non?”
“One of many, it seems. I can’t wait to hear what else you find out.”
Finally they hung up, but his mind couldn’t let go of how that call had made the world suddenly seem smaller and more inter-connected than he’d imagined. Everybody seemed related to everybody else. He surmised this was probably the downside of the information age; so much information, everything seemed somewhat relevant to everything else. How was one to choose which relationships to investigate, and which ones not to? Even the world’s favorite search engine, Google, struggled to figure out how to limit the number of responses to any particular query. The simpler the input, the greater the potential number of related outputs.
He grew weary of this work, and heavy of heart for how desperately he missed Eve. Nonetheless, he’d have to get used to it since she wasn’t so mobile these days, and before long his race schedule would be kicking into high gear again.
With two races completed, and with good results at that, there were another twenty the squad might do before the season wrapped up. In reality, not everybody would do every one, or they’d simply wear down. Shamus counted on doing the infamous Milan-San Remo single-day race through the Alps toward the end of March, then April was chock-a-block full of single day Classics races across Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, including the Ronde van Vlaanderen, Gent-Wevelgem, Paris-Roubaix, Amstel Gold, the Fleche Wallonne, and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.
May kicked off the tours season, with the Tour de Romadie in Switzerland followed a week later by the three week long Giro d’Italia, which generally one skipped if they planned to ride the equally lengthy Tour de France. One might opt instead for the concurrent weeklong Volta a Catalunya in Spain, then back to France for the Criterium du Dauphine Libere or the Tour de Suisse in mid June.
All clocks stopped in July though, as far as this sport was concerned, for the mother of all tours. It so dominated the cycling world’s attention, that no race promoter would be foolish enough to bother scheduling another professional event during that hallowed three week span of time.
The Tour de France began each year in the first week of July, making either a clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on odd year or even, twenty-two-hundred-or-so mile spin around the country. Often, the route included stages from, to, or through neighboring countries, and even occasionally from ones sharing no border whatsoever with France.
Wherever it ran, though, millions of fans lined the roads to watch the racers. Most of these would be Europeans who’d grown up with the sport, along with smatterings of North Americans, Latin Americans, and possibly an odd Asian or two who were rabid enough about the sport made a long pilgrimage to the Continent to be ready to stand in long coats, umbrellas hoisted as they fought off the damp, blustery weather long enough to glimpse the quick passing of these athletes as they battled over centuries-old cobbled streets for a sliver of advantage within the pack and finally contested for the win. At other times, it might be sunny and hot and the fans would doff their heavy cloths and soak the rays into their pearlescent bodies as they sweated away the hours awaiting the quick passage of the peleton.
People took entire weeks off work to follow the rolling carnival from city to city. They camped, they ate, and they drank freely as they took in the largest and longest singular sporting event in the world, which, ironically, charged not a cent to watch.
For Shamus and the team, everything up to that point would be about training and preparation for it. The Tour was the absolute pinnacle for any pro rider. Over three weeks, one needed to show almost perfect form and have brought along the right support staff and all the best equipment. What they faced when the race got underway was physical stress and challenge similar to running a competitive marathon each day for three weeks, with only two rest days during the entire period. Provided one possessed suitable physical vigor and all the right support to help endure the task, then it helped immeasurably if one managed to avoid accidents, which asked a lot when almost two hundred riders spent full days at a time crowded inches apart from each other riding across often wet and sometimes snowy roads with gusty winds over uneven pavement. Just a second’s lapsed attention during all those days and hours, and the wheels touched and men went down. All too often, they left in ambulances. Race over.
Eve got off the phone with Shamus and immediately went to work. First she transcribed the information he’d given her into an online database that stored all the relevant information for her case. Whenever she typed in a name or place or business, the computer automatically highlighted it and created a hyper-link to any other potentially-related information it had about that subject. An agent could then click on any hyperlink and be shown a list of these potentially related topics, sorted in order of relevance. As she entered this information, not only did the creation of these links aid her efforts to solve her case, but the links the computer created were also reflected in any other ongoing Interpol cases that involved these same subjects. In this way, Eve’s information might enable another agent elsewhere on the globe to solve their own case, without her having any knowledge of it. Another key attribute of Interpol’s criminal database was that it used this same information to make suggestions, based on math and probabilities, as to where agents should focus their investigative efforts. Some agents resisted following these cold calculations to solve their cases; Eve was entirely open-minded about it.
After her report was complete, she went to Steineger’s office and brought him up to speed. Steineger listened carefully and noted that where there were so many coincidental relationships – and this case already appeared to have more than its share – there was a good chance a conspiracy could be found.
Steineger and Eve discussed that it was important to work up the food chain, but to do that they needed to start near the bottom. They now had enough preliminary information to outline a likely picture of what might be happening, and who was most likely to be involved.
Their next step, it was agreed, would be to approach some of these persons of interest, as, for legal reasons, suspects were now referred to up to the point they were actually jailed for a crime, and give them the impression that other persons of interest had informed on them. If it worked, the ball would roll upward as one suspect after another traded incriminating information for leniency in their own case. If it didn’t work, Shamus and anybody else involved in this case would be in great danger, and the suspects would quickly make themselves hard to find while their associates tried to scare off anyone who might be in a position to implicate them in any lawbreaking. Agents had already been assigned to follow some of the key persons of interest, so bringing them in wouldn’t take long.
They sensed Patrovski might be a key player, more broadly involved than some of the others and therefore having more valuable information about other actors higher in the pecking order. However, Patrovski seemed to be a tough guy, and they thought he might prove slow to wilt under pressure. They needed to approach him once they had some tangible facts with which to convince him that the charges they would make would hold up in court. They thought it would also help if he perceived his colleagues were acting differently, and perhaps gave the appearance of being frightened.
They decided to begin by pulling in Pagnoli and Aguillar, and see what happened from there. Before they did, a trip to the attorneys would be made so they could determine the most favorable locations for detaining them. Some countries severely limited the ability of police to hold suspects unless charges were pressed immediately. Other countries gave police more flexibility to undertake questioning. All things being equal, they’d prefer to do it in a more amenable location.
Steineger told Eve their agents had determined that Mr. Ling’s shipments of EPO from China were not associated with his role at Amgen. He was a product manager, which meant that he managed the marketing of drugs to doctors. That was a back-office job and company attorneys had confirmed there would be no proper reason for a product manager to be handling the actual product, and doing so would actually be in violation of FDA regulations and other laws.
Based on this, he might be a rogue employee. The drug business brought abundant temptations with its plethora of pocket-sized products for which people gladly exchanged hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and soon were back for more.
They’d further determined that he maintained a personal account at a Fedex/Kinkos near his home in San Mateo, and frequently shipped packages from there. In fact, over the past year he’d sent two to three shipments per week, and the bills of lading showed that they were all medium sized shipping boxes weighing one to ten pounds. Although they lacked any smoking gun, the names of the recipients and dates of these shipments were being obtained from Fedex, and would be loaded into the Interpol database. Time would tell what they’d learn then.
The money trail took longer to trace. They began by obtaining and databasing the financial records of the persons of interest, then looked for unusual inflows or outflows and tried to trace where those came from or went to. They also looked for situations in which persons repeatedly spent more money than they appeared to make. They also examined whether these individuals had relationships with any of a long list of questionable financial institutions – offshore banks, for example. Finally, they reconciled this information against tax records the individual had filed. If there were large amounts of unreported income, that information could be used to convince a subject to cooperate in exchange for favorable treatment. Otherwise, it could be referred to taxing authorities and often the punishment for tax evasion exceeded – and sometimes by quite a bit – the repercussions of whatever other crime they were thought to have committed.
They also discussed what Shamus could do further, and came to the conclusion that his best efforts should be simply to protect himself as all this took place.
As they plotted next steps, Marcel Trusseau was on his cell phone at the Four Seasons hotel where he was staying in Milan. The man on the other end of the call, Adrien Dellacorte spoke quickly and with no pleasantries. Eve Blancon, he’d confirmed was a former Gendarme, but was no student at the University now. He’d spoken to an absolutely reliable source who confirmed that Eve Blancon was in her second year with Interpol. What she was working on wasn’t readily known. However, it would be soon. Trusseau knew the man had the proper connections; nothing he said would be in error. Trusseau snapped his handy shut and went back to his business. The matter of Madamoiselle Blancon could wait; he had more immediate matters to attend to.
Trusseau dialed his phone.
“Patrovski here. “
“Petre, this is Marcel.”
“Yes, Marcel, what can I do for you?”
“Nothing for me, actually. I’m calling because there is a problem.”
“Aside from Daniela killing herself yesterday, you’re telling me we have another problem?” Patrovski said in an aggressive tone that was the only way Trusseau had ever heard him speak with.
“Yes. Aside from Daniela. There is a lady named Blancon who is involved with one of my riders, and she’s with Interpol. I do not know if he is aware of that, but I suspect he is.”
“Are you going to make me ask who this rider is?”
“I would think you could figure it out, actually,” Trusseau said partly to put Petre in his place, and partly as a challenge to the man’s capabilities. Trusseau thought it was at best a toss-up whether the man could get it right.
“Well, I know the person I’d be most concerned about if they were in bed with the authorities, and that would be your golden boy from the land of shamrocks. So tell me I’m wrong.”
“Nothing would make me happier.”
“I’m sure that’s true. But since that isn’t the case, what do you suggest we do about this?”
“Well,” Trusseau pondered, “I think we need a different approach than the last time we faced such a problem.”
“It worked though, didn’t it?”
“By what measure do you think so?”
“The trouble went away.”
“Did it?” Trusseau asked challengingly. “Before, there was an athlete who wanted people to quit bringing drugs to his teammates, but there was no crime being committed. Just some embarrassing matters if it were exposed, eh? So now you tell me that things have ‘worked’ when we have a dead athlete, a dead sougnieur, and Interpol on the property. Is that how you see it?”
Trusseau knew that dealing with thugs such as Petre and his colleagues was dirty business, and nearly impossible to manage. The problem was that they didn’t have much to lose. Their approach to life was like that of cockroaches, he thought, but very dangerous ones.
When Patrovski didn’t respond to Trusseau’s question, he continued. “So, I simply suggest you be very careful. There’s nothing personal about that, but it is bad for business if we have any further trouble. The season is just getting underway and we’re off to a promising start, if you hadn’t noticed, so I do not want to risk any further unpleasant publicity for team’s sponsors, if you understand what I’m saying.”
“Right, you want no problems. But I have obligations also, and my season is also just starting. Are you proposing to pay me to shut down my business while you get yours under control?” Petre said, flipping responsibility onto Trusseau’s shoulders.
“Now listen, Petre, we both know who did what, and the only element of my business that needs to be managed better is the part that concerns you.”
“I don’t need any help by you, Marcel. You run your business and I’ll run mine, and if I think that anybody is going to cause problems I’ll deal with them as I see fit, Petre shot back. Thank you for informing me that we have strangers among us, and it’s been very nice speaking with you. Now I’ve got some important matters to attend to, if you don’t mind.”
Trusseau seethed at the disdain and lack of professionalism of the man. He had tried to help Petre, but may have only made matters worse by doing so, and the risks to himself and his team might have only ratcheted up as a result. Less questionable, was that the risks to Shamus and his lady-friend had changed; clearly, they were in a perilous position.
Trusseau rang back Adrien Dellacorte.
“Dellacorte, bon soir.”
“Adrian, it’s Marcel. I need your assistance once again.”
“Ok. What may I do for you?”
“I spoke with Petre, and he is simply not to be trusted. That is no surprise, of course. However, I am afraid he may respond to the threat we discussed earlier in some way that will not be helpful at all.”
“And you would like what?”
“I’d like for you to convince Petre to act appropriately. I can afford no scandals at the moment, and I certainly cannot count on Petre to go into the shadows when he is thinking only of making money.”
“So you have a proposition?”
“Yes, I do. I would ask that you ensure that Petre causes no problems for the team this season, and I will pay you ten thousand Euros?”
“Do you care how this business is done?”
“That’s not my field of specialty,” Trusseau said. He didn’t bother to add, the more permanent and painful the solution, the better, but thought it anyway. He understood what Adrien was proposing, and that these goals would be addressed.
“For twenty five thousand, I will do this job and you have nothing further to worry about. And if you think about asking me to do it for less, my price goes up to fifty thousand.”
“Twenty-five it is,” Marcel said. “Bon soir.”
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Categories: Book, Doping, Hub, System6, Tour de France, Tour of California
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wow, each section is better than the last. Please keep them coming.
thanks