Rolling thunder, A CYCLING TALE, part neuf
Following is Part 9 of “rolling thunder”
Amazingly still subject to copyright. Some things never change. Please enjoy responsibly.
ROLLING THUNDER (cont’d)
Chapter 17
Petre Patrovski rumbled about the luxurious hotel suite he often called home atop the Kempinski Vier Jahren, or Four Seasons, on Westendstrasse in downtown Munich, surrounded by boxes and envelopes he used to package his products, and other boxes obtained from overseas colleagues and shipped to him by DHL, Fedex or UPS, containing various products he could buy and resell for a markup of three hundred to one thousand percent.
His only problem was how to fulfill all of the demand.
He had dozens of colleagues helping with that. Most were ex-athletes. Most stayed very close to their sports and had access to athletes and staff at all levels. Some were ex-footballers, some were runners, some were weightlifters, and some were former baseball players. Others were sports trainers or simply well connected businessmen who knew how to get the time and attention of serious athletes.
Petre was a former cyclist who judged that he’d avoided a life of penury and hardship only by grace of having been an inferior rider. Had he been better, he thought, he would have stuck with it and become a starving athlete, exercising demonically and performing in front of crowds under god-awful conditions and most likely taking every matter of drug that promised to help him become a decent racer. And he’d be schlepping from one two-star hotel to another until eventually he became too old to secure a contract, and then he’d be out on the streets as an uneducated former athlete with no commercial skills to offer.
Instead, Petre mused, he virtually lived in five star hotels. He could attend any sports event in the world, sitting in the best seats or skyboxes. There was nothing he wanted that he couldn’t afford. He had millions of Euros in the bank and a worldwide network of colleagues who bought their products from him, to serve their clients’ expensive habits.
Petre had no difficulty obtaining the products, and no difficulty finding agents wanting to sell them to athletes. So he worked a few hours a day in his hotel room, organizing and assembling shipments to fulfill orders from his colleagues, and then walked them down to the DHL box in the lobby. Every time he made a drop-off like this, his bank account grew by several thousand Euros.
Today, Petre wore a white linen two-piece suit from Armani, and not an off-the-rack one, god forbid. His was custom fitted and contrasted perfectly with his black silk tee. Petre liked to dress sharp. Petre had style. Petre liked to impress the women, and had enough money that they found no problem getting past his increasing age and unfortunate appearance he’d inherited from his mother’s family. Each woman was conquest, and each that said yes was the equivalent of another race won; the prettier the woman, the nicer the trophy. Petre was very competitive this way, and changed women as frequently as he rotated his wardrobe. Nightly.
As he finished his day’s work, which he thought was a fine result for a mere two hours’ effort, he stacked the medium-sized DHL shipping boxes on a small table by the door. The contents inside each one weighed less than the boxes they were being shipped in. Most of what was inside each box was wadded newspaper to cushion the contents. There were four boxes going out today, one each to Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires, and Kansas City. His trip to the lobby would be worth fifteen thousand Euros, more or less, and tax-free at that.
After he’d deposited them in the shipping box, he intended to ride his BMW motorcycle to Bodensee, about an hour north of Munich. The area possessed a large lake with a small Bavarian island densely filled with expensive Swiss-style shops and restaurants. He liked the ride there and back, and especially enjoyed lunching at the restaurant in the Steigenberger hotel, which was a converted fourteenth century monastery with original DaVinci-like panoramas painted on the ceiling that had been carefully preserved through the centuries, and had somehow managed to be spared from the Allied bombs that had carpeted the entire region and virtually decimated all other structures during the later part of the second World War.
Better yet, he enjoyed the thrill of riding for hours without the drudgery of pedaling. His BMW cycle had a powerful four cylinder engine, an XM satellite radio with over two hundred stations of whatever type of entertainment he might desire, a heater system that pumped hot air across his feet and through tubes into his jacket and gloves to keep him positively toasty even when temperatures plummeted, and a saddle larger than his entire derriere and stuffed with several inches of foam cushion. In his mind, it brought all the benefits of cycling, without any of the tedium and discomfort. It also had panniers, or cargo boxes on the back, containing a highly effective rain suit and a satellite phone, should either be needed.
As he grabbed his keys and wallet and prepared to heft the stack of boxes he needed to send off, there was a knock at the door to his suite. Not surprising. The maids came around each day at about this time, he thought.
He reached for the door handle and turned it and the door flew open almost explosively, snapping bones in one finger and the thumb of the hand he’d opened it with, and sending him tumbling back into the room. As fast as it had opened, it slammed shut again. Before he could say a word, someone was spraying something in his face from a small canister, and his vision went blurry, making it impossible to identify his attackers. Seconds later, he was out cold.
What he didn’t experience was a strip of duct tape being pressed over his mouth, another over his eyes, and another binding his wrists together behind his back. His ankles were similarly bound. A maid’s laundry cart had been rolled into the room and three men unceremoniously lifted him, allowing his body to fold into a ball, and dumped him in. They quickly grabbed towels from the bathrooms and sheets from the bed and threw them atop him until he was completely hidden. Then they rolled the cart to the service elevator, rode to the main level, rolled it out the back door and lifted it into a waiting van.
Petre awoke soon, but was unable to move. He felt grateful he wasn’t already dead, but had no idea who had snatched him. He hadn’t even known anyone wanted him for anything. He thought that it must be a commercial kidnapping. Some organizations still did this, even in Western Europe. All they wanted was to borrow a rich person long enough to get someone to pay to get them back. As long as there was sufficient money, the person was returned relatively intact. Petre knew this would be costly, but more money could be made. This would be over within a day, he thought.
Petre was wrong about many things.
The van drove for a long time and obviously had left the city, since Petre could tell that their speed remained steady and the van wasn’t making the types of low-speed turns it would in more congested areas. He wondered if he should try to speak. Surely they knew he wasn’t still unconscious. He wasn’t comfortable, bound up as they’d done him, but knew that it could be far worse, so he remained calm and quiet. He tried to gather clues as to how much time was passing, so as to possibly guess how far away he was being taken. Minutes turned into hours. He lost track of time completely. He fell asleep at times. His head still was foggy from whatever they’d drugged him with. Nobody in the van spoke, so he had no idea how many people might be with him. They stopped for gas one time. He could tell because of the smell of the petrol. Wordlessly, the trip resumed.
Finally, he mumbled aloud, tired of waiting. He kept it up, knowing he could be heard, but not knowing if anyone cared to check what was the matter.
Eventually, he felt the linens being lifted from him, and a gruff male voice said only, what? It wasn’t a happy voice. He mumbled in response. With the duct tape fixed to his mouth, that was the best he could do. Suddenly there were fingers picking at the edge of the tape and a searing sensation across his face as the tape was quickly ripped from it.
He groaned, and then said, “I need to use a toilet.”
The gruff voice responded only, “soon.”
Petre felt the linens being tossed back over him. It felt good to be able to move his mouth again. His bladder was full. It ached. He said loudly, toilet, please! He heard no response. After fifteen more minutes, he couldn’t hold the contents of his bladder back any longer, and let loose where he lay. He despised having to do so, but knew that he’d had to do far worse things in his life than wet himself. Soon the van reeked, and he heard a rare word when a man’s voice uttered aloud, asshole. Petre was confident that comment was directed at him. He’d heard worse, he thought to himself. Serves them right for not letting him out.
Finally the van pulled off the road, and from the sounds of crunching under the tires, Petre could tell they’d moved off paved road and onto gravel. They drove for a while longer, perhaps a half hour in which the van jostled and turned back and forth, leaning as it followed a road full of tight turns.
Petre wasn’t aware that night had fallen, and it was the darkness in combination with the rough, unlit roads that had slowed their journey. Finally, he heard the brakes squeal and felt the van lurch to a stop. He heard doors open, creaking as they did. He had the idea the vehicle was far from new.
The linen cart was pushed straight out the back of the van, tumbling over the bumper and spilling Petre and the now soiled linens onto the dirt. Hands grabbed him by the elbows and lifted him painfully, since his arms remained tied together behind his back. He thought his shoulders would dislocate as he was hoisted onto his feet. He felt the tape holding his ankles together being severed. He assumed someone had cut it with a knife. It was frigid cold out, much colder than it had been in Munich. They had driven far, and perhaps to higher elevations. The air smelled of the pine trees and flora and fauna one associated with the mountains. The air felt thin, so that the cold lacked the bite it would otherwise have.
Hands remained grasping his elbows, and then they nudged him forward. He walked blindly. He stumbled on the rutted and uneven earth, but was not allowed to fall. The hands steadied him. Nobody spoke. He was led through the forest, and it seemed as if the trail narrowed, based on how often his feet caught on underbrush. Their footsteps crunched on dried leaves and twigs. Finally they stopped, the hands not permitting him to move further. The tape binding his hands was sliced, and he had a moment’s hope that this would presage something positive, and then they nudged him again and he stepped forward into nothingness, and fell, and everything went dark.
Steineger received a troubling call as he lunched in an Italian restaurant he visited at least one day a week. He liked the food, and it was close to his office.
“Ja, hier is Steineger.”
“Guten tag, it is detective Blumenthal with Munich Police. I was told to call you when we picked up Herr Patrovski…”
“And you have him now?” Steineger interrupted.
“No, I’m afraid not. I think we have a big problem instead.”
“I’m listening. “
“We went to his room at the Four Seasons, and found it ransacked. We have reason to believe he was taken against his will.”
“You’re sure it was not a robbery?”
“I could have walked around and picked up fifty thousand dollars worth of goods I could carry in my arms. Jewelry, cash, watches, artwork, it was everywhere for the taking. Even his keys and wallet remained. We also found a great deal of materials used for packing and shipping goods, and various drugs that appear to be different forms of things athletes use.”
“That’s not surprising. Did you find his computer also, or any paper records by chance?”
“Not one,” Blumenthal said, and Steineger’s heart sank. “But three different computers linked in a network. We have a laptop, a desktop, and a server, all hooked to the hotel’s high-speed internet connection. We are in the process of copying the hard drives before we begin to examine what may be on them.”
“Would you mind if I have a colleague who is quite expert with computers on hand when you do this work?”
“Not at all. We’ll wait for your agent, eh, and who will that be?”
“Blancon, and it’s Frau Blancon, by the way. I expect she can be there tomorrow. We do have some reason for urgency in looking at these files. What else can you tell me about what may have happened to Herr Patrovski?”
“Nobody saw anyone enter or leave his suite. The door was broken by force, so it appears they surprised him and worked quickly. There was no blood at the scene, so we have reason to believe he may have been kidnapped and the goal was not to kill him. He had four shipping boxes we found scattered on the floor. These have been impounded and will be searched and catalogued. We’ll be happy to show the contents to Frau Blancon when she arrives.”
“Did anyone see a suspicious vehicle?”
“Nobody that we’ve interviewed. They appear to be quite professional in the execution of this crime. We are obtaining security tapes from the hotel and will review those for possible information. It appears, though, that they disabled the camera on the rear of the hotel, so it may not be that helpful unfortunately.”
Steineger had already come to the conclusion that Patrovski had indeed been taken by professionals whose intentions were something other than to kill him. Nor did they seem interested in his possessions, which were theirs for the taking. He suspected it was not a kidnapping for money, but possibly an act of retribution. These were not petty thieves they were dealing with. These people had other things on their minds, and were willing to leave valuables sitting about so that they could make a quick exit. This told him they were professionals. He anticipated they hadn’t yet heard the last of the Patrovski.
Steineger called Eve and gave her an update, then asked her to travel to Munich at her earliest opportunity. By high-speed train, she could be there in just a few hours. Eve said she would go to her flat and get a bag together right away, and be on an evening train from Paris. Steineger was proud of her dedication, knowing that others might move more slowly in her present condition.
He hung up with her and called another colleague who had been following Eddie Pagnoli in recent days.
Pagnoli lived in a house on the shore of Lake Como, about an hour’s drive north of Milan. Not only was it a favorite vacation spot for Europe’s well to do, but the surrounding mountain ridges provided endless routes for cyclists to practice their climbing, and thus it was a popular second home for professional riders. Pagnoli liked living there for the proximity to luxury and to many of his best customers.
“Sebastian, this is Michael Steineger, where is our man these days?”
“He’s been moving around since yesterday, actually. Got on his motorbike and rode from his house in Como to Zurich, spent the night, then got on again this morning and rode to Heidelberg. He’s checked into a hotel now, and I’m sitting in the lobby having a cappuccino and keeping an eye out for him.”
“Okay, well I think you won’t need to keep the surveillance any longer. One of his associates has gone missing and it’s pretty clear he went against his will. I think it is a good time to bring in Mister Pagnoli and see what he may know about this.”
“We’ll take care of it. As soon as my colleague is back from the car park, we’ll go up to his room and ask him to come with us.”
“Okay, I’ll be down in a couple of hours. I’d like to listen to the discussion with him, so maybe you can leave him alone with his thoughts until I arrive.”
“That will be no problem. Schoene reise, Michael,” said the agent, hanging up the phone.
Steineger had one final call to make, and that was to have the man named Aguillar pulled in. He knew Aguillar was on an entirely different continent, so it would be not be expeditious to travel overseas to participate in the interrogation. He would be able to watch via video link and any questions he wanted asked could be transmitted to the interrogator, so this should be satisfactory, he thought.
They had hoped to bring in these men to get at least one of them to speak out, after being given the impression that one of their colleagues had already spoken out against them. It was a bluff, and maybe had a fifty-fifty chance of success.
The disappearance of Patrovski introduced a new variable into the equation, and Steineger pondered how that might play into what they were hoping to achieve. It did not appear they would learn much immediately about who had taken the man or where he’d been taken. Professional jobs weren’t that easy to unravel. He suspected that, unless they got a lucky break somehow, the first time they’d hear from the captors was when the captors wanted to come forward. If there wasn’t any word within a few days, though, Patrovski’s body was probably feeding fish somewhere.
Chapter 18
Eve arrived in Munich on the ten p.m. train from Paris, it had been the last one available and she would have missed it but for a high speed, sirens and lights blaring ride to the train station provided by a gendarme who had been in her training class when she’d entered the force years earlier.
In Munchen she was booked at the Eurotel. It wasn’t easily confused with the Four Seasons. She checked in and forced herself to sleep, but was up again at five, and at the police station on Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse by six.
The officer on duty led her to a conference room that was all but bare but for a table and a single chair, and the three computers they’d taken from Patrovski’s room. The various boxes and cords were laid out neatly on the conference table, but nobody had bothered attaching them. She didn’t mind, since this task was momentary child’s play for her. Everything went together without problem but the room had no internet access, so she ran around the station looking for the nearest high-speed data outlet, and then had to borrow a long cord from another computer and snake it down the hall to the outlet. Since she appeared to know what she was doing, nobody at the station bothered her.
By six thirty, all systems were humming. She figured the laptop was the best place to start, since that was the unit she expected Patrovski would have used most often. Without any surprise, the computer was password protected. She tried using his last name as a password, but it failed. In the training she’d received from Interpol about IT systems, they’d indicated that one out of four persons used their own name as a password. If you threw in names of spouses or children, the frequency climbed to more than half. As a result, hacking usually required very little ingenuity. Rather than playing further guessing games, she plugged in a small UBS memory device to the port on the side of the laptop, and rebooted it.
As a law enforcement officer with specific training in forensic accounting and IT systems, she was provided with an extremely rare piece of hardware that contained software programs that would circumvent the password requirements on any machine using a Windows or Apple operating system. That covered more than ninety three percent of the world’s computers. As the machine booted up, it sensed the UBS device and checked for the presence of this master program, found it, and reset the machine’s password to one that Eve had chosen. When the login screen came up, she entered this, and became the new administrator of that machine.
The main question she faced, was to what degree Patrovski protected any documents or programs he stored on the PC. If his materials were guarded by the security of the operating system, her UBS tool would have the capability to disable this. If, on the other hand, he used an encryption system, this would be more difficult and time consuming - and maybe even impossible - to penetrate. Fortunately, she found that his documents, spreadsheets and emails were unprotected once someone got past system login.
She plugged in another piece of hardware she’d brought along and it immediately began making a mirror image copy of the contents of the PC’s hard drive. As it did this, she began combing his email. It appeared his email traffic was sparse — perhaps a dozen notes a day he either sent or received. It took only minutes to browse several of them, and they were exactly what she would hope for. Every one pertained to orders he was placing or filling, the product, volume, and price involved in the transaction, the date it would be fulfilled, and if another person would be involved in the process, who the contact would be.
There was no apparent effort to disguise the business being done; probably he thought there was no need to, since this trafficking wasn’t per se illegal in the EU – these performance enhancing drugs were not controlled substances under European law, but were treated little differently than the buying and selling of aspirin.
Eve wasn’t sure whether this would build any type of legal case against Patrovski, but she knew it provided the hard information they needed to see who else had a role in this network, and undoubtedly some of these parties would be doing illegal activities to fulfill their parts. She kept her nose pointed at the screen until early afternoon. Someone had slipped a sandwich to her and she’d managed two bites in the previous hour. Her left arm still had limited use due to the cast she wore on it, but she managed to rest it on the table such that she could finger the keyboard. With her right hand, she manipulated a pen across a pad of paper, taking page after page of notes based on what she found in the PC. The more she read, the broader the web seemed to be.
Patrovski regularly procured goods from various people whose names and contact information he kept in his computer. Eve found a list of people who provided drugs from labs and pharmaceutical companies in Eastern Europe, China, Taiwan, Korea, Argentina, Chile, Rumania, Germany, and the U.S. Within hours they would know much more about these people. Patrovski in turn regularly sent shipments to more than a dozen associates around the globe. Eve found Daniela’s name on this list. In addition, he seemed to have his own extensive client list that included a veritable who’s who of sports, especially among cyclists and eastern and central European athletes.
From these details, she could see the quantities of drugs these athletes received, when they’d received them, when they’d placed their orders, and when their payments had been received. Eve imagined these athletes probably failed to consider the risk that their dealer kept such orderly business records. While this information wouldn’t necessarily support a criminal case against Patrovski, just handing over these records to WADA would result in immediate unemployment for a large number of athletes. More importantly, she knew that this information would provide the ability to get testimony from many of these athletes about other people involved in doping, including team staff, doctors, and their own teammates.
She took a break mid-afternoon from reading emails and taking notes, and Googled some names she had check-marked in her notes. She came across physicians, pharmaceutical employees, sports trainers, sports agents, team coaches, and athletes’ friends and family members who were buying and providing these doping products to them. In a half-day’s work, she had gathered sufficient evidence to support dozens of arrests for trafficking, and most likely some tax evasion and money laundering cases as well.
Before she got back to data mining, she tallied the payments and receipts from the emails she’d already read, dating back more than ninety days. By her quick tally, Patrovski had spent over a quarter million dollars for the products he’d purchased during the period, and he’d billed out one point six million dollars when he’d resold them. If he did that on an annual basis, he’d be taking in about six million dollars, and netting more than four point five, tax-free.
Eve already knew he didn’t bother to pay income taxes. His tax records had shown less than twenty thousand Euros of income. Clearly he had other banking facilities probably including anonymous numbered accounts to store the surplus cash he accumulated, and it was increasingly apparent he made his major purchases with cash so that there were no credit card or sales records to expose his exhorbetent spending.
She made a point to look through his files for bank account numbers, and to check with the Four Seasons to see how he settled his substantial charges there. She expected it would take minimal effort to unearth his financial arrangements, and with this information, little further effort to shut them down.
Should Patrovski surface again, he’d find access to bank accounts was cut off. He’d also find a warrant for his arrest on tax charges. She expected that warrant would be in place within a day or two. The bank accounts held by his associates from which they’d sent funds to Patrovski would be embargoed also, until local authorities could investigate the roles of the account owners in this illicit drug network. Maybe it wouldn’t shut down the sports doping world, but it would certainly cause this little corner of it to shudder with sudden cash flow problems.
What Eve didn’t know, was that Patrovski’s life depended upon getting immediate access to a load of cash, and as he lay cold and injured at the bottom of the abandoned mine shaft he’d been thrown into, he hoped he would have enough to satisfy his captors.
Patrovski had awoken finally, lying on cold damp earth. Duct tape still in place, he had little further sensation other than that his body hurt all over, as if he’d been in a car accident. His feet were no longer bound, and it felt comforting to be able to move them, even if they were heavily bruised. As far as he could tell, he hadn’t been seriously hurt. Yet. There were no bullet holes, and he didn’t sense any broken bones. He rolled onto his side, and was able to sit up stiffly. Behind him, he felt an earthen wall against his back. He extended his legs and felt nothing. He worked his arms and felt the tape give just a bit. He kept at it until he was finally able to free a hand, and with that he removed the tape from his other one, then reached up and ripped the strip off from across his eyes, waxing away most of his eyebrows in doing so. Taped shut, his eyes had adapted to complete darkness. When he opened them, his surroundings were almost completely cloaked, but looking up he saw a bluish sphere above him that was the night sky peeking into the tunnel he’d been tossed into. He judged the rim to be twenty feet above, and the diameter of the shaft to be maybe two meters.
“Hello! Anyone there?” He yelled, expecting nothing in return. “Help me! Please! Help!”
He waited and listened. Silence.
Slowly he rose to his feet, and began surveying the hole that was his prison. The walls were rough, but offered few handholds. He seriously doubted there would be any way to climb out, and he had no rock climbing experience to enhance his odds of pulling it off. He shouted out some more, and then listened again. The likelihood of spending the night down there and hoping for better luck after sunrise was growing.
He sat down to rest and recuperate, and to think through the situation. As he did, his body convulsed with shivers, trying to fight off the night’s chill. The night was almost impossibly quiet. Occasionally he heard sounds above; nature gently stirring, nothing more.
“Comrade,” came a voice from above. It was a male voice.
“Yes, I’m in here, can you please help me? He shouted up hopefully. I would be happy to pay for your services.” Friend or foe be damned, he thought, money talks.
“Yeah, what would you have in mind then?”
“Name your price, I’ve got it. Just get me to a bank and I’ll make you a wealthy person.”
“Hmmm,” he heard the man mutter.
“Please, I’ll pay you whatever you want. Just get me to safety,” he pleaded.
“Someone has paid a lot of money to leave you down there, Comrade. And I think they would be quite unhappy if you were let out, but maybe it is worth consideration.”
“I’ll double whatever they’re paying. And I’ll double it again to know who has done this done to me.”
“How would you propose we would do this?” Came the voice from above.
“Help me get out, and when the bank opens in the morning you take me there. Any bank you want. It will take only minutes. I have the money in my accounts. Just name your price.”
“What if I said a million Euros for this?”
“Done. Throw me a rope and let’s find a bank.”
“Okay,” he said, dropping a rope just far enough down that Petre could almost reach it, but not quite, “then we agree it will be two million.”
For a brief second Petre almost lost his temper, and then remembered he had nothing to gain by doing so.
“Fine.”
The rope came within reach, and Petre gathered it around his waist and tied it off in a knot. He reached for handholds on the surface of the walls of his confines, and began to lift himself.
“Pull now!” He shouted, and slowly he rose.
When he finally made it to the top of the shaft, he was exhausted and covered in dirt and debris that had come loose as a result of his ascent.
Three men waited for him there. They didn’t bother hiding their identities. He guessed with little uncertainty they were the same ones who had kidnapped him earlier in the day. Now they’d apparently decided to cancel one contract in preference for another. That was plausible anyway, he thought, but naïve. More likely, they intended to collect on both, and thought that no one need be the wiser about it. A quick trip to the bank and in all likelihood he’d be back in the hole, if not worse off.
Nevertheless, he was glad to be above ground and to have at least a chance of changing his future. He suspected they would anticipate his intentions to escape, and, if at all possible, to avoid paying the agreed upon reward for pulling him up. They didn’t look particularly intelligent, but the fact that they’d figured out how to ambush him and haul him away in broad daylight told not to underestimate the degree to which they were both devious and dangerous. Petre intended to stay one step ahead of them.
“Thank you. I’ll make good on my promise and you will be wealthy men before the next day is over, he said, beginning a banter he intended to hold their attention as long as possible. Please, let’s find a bank where the transaction can be done in the morning. I will also need a change of clothes so that nobody panics when I enter. There should be nothing suspicious, eh?”
“Let’s go,” said their solitary spokesman, nudging Petre toward the van.
“So will you tell me the name of the person who hired you to do this?”
The three cohorts eyed each other nervously, then the spokesman said, “we got a call from Adrien Dellacorte, in Paris. He is a private inspector.”
“I don’t know any Dellacorte. He must be working for someone else. I supposed he didn’t say who wanted this done?”
“It would not have been important.”
“I suppose not,” he said, climbing into the van and assuming a spot to sit in its empty cargo area. “Well enough. I won’t have any problem contacting this Dellacorte and having him explain it to me directly.” Petre noticed nervous glances shared among the duo that had joined him in the back of the van. The third man climbed behind the wheel and started the engine.
“So where have you taken me, anyway?”
Chapter 19
Steineger arrived in Heidelberg, which sat along the Neckar River and in days before navies and air forces might have served to guard the country’s southwestern flanks from potential attacks by neighboring France. Throughout history, it had mostly served as a trading post with the French, who never seemed intent on attacking.
The U.S. military had slowly returned Heidelberg to German control over the decades following the second World War, and the Germans seemed to have duly conceded it to the tourists. It was a quaint, typisch Deutsche town like everybody wanted German towns to be, with beer gardens and restaurants, hotels and good shopping, and Frau and Fraulein alike serving whatever the tourists cared for. Should one tire of the effect, less than an hour away by car or train was a similarly Disney-esque French town called Strassbourg, which seemingly protected the French from Germanic intruders, but historically hadn’t lived up to the promise.
Steineger proceeded to the German federal police office in the town, which sported a seldom-used federal jail facility. The town bureaucrats demanded it be maintained, nevertheless, because if it weren’t these same bureaucrats would have difficulty justifying their jobs as jailers. It was a German thing, Steineger knew.
“Wo is der neuer Kriminal?” He asked, showing his identification, and was led through a strong door down a nondescript hallway adjacent to a half dozen meticulously organized but largely unoccupied jail cells. They reached the final one, which had a visitor, and Steineger came face to face with Eddie Pagnoli.
“Good day, my name is Michael Steineger, and I am with the German federal police, stationed in Berlin.” He showed the man his identification, but Pagnoli showed little interest in return. Perhaps he deduced that Steineger was unlikely to be an imposter. “My Italian is not very good, do you speak English? “
“I speak English just fine, thank you,” Pagnoli responded. “Can you tell me why I’m being held here?”
“We just want to ask you a few questions, and maybe you can be on your way.”
“Can I see a Rechtsanwalt, Herr Steineger?” Pagnoli asked, demonstrating he had a few words of German at his disposal; attorney being one of them.
“Of course you may, but perhaps you would like some information from me before you make the phone call.” Steineger remained standing outside of Pagnoli’s cell. “We could get a coffee and have a chat, eh?”
“Sure, whatever you say. Coffee and then you let me out or I want a lawyer.”
“Understood. Come this way,” he said, and the elderly jailer removed a key and unlocked the cell door, holding it open as Pagnoli fell in behind Steineger.
They found a small interrogation room and took chairs opposite a small table. The jailer remained elsewhere. Finally the man entered with a small tray and two cups of black coffee, strong enough to choke a Turk.
“So, I won’t play games with you,” Steineger began. “We have been investigating you and some of your colleagues who we believe are involved in providing drugs to athletes.”
“I know nothing about such things.”
“Of course you don’t. But please humor me for a few moments. We don’t need your confession, because one of your colleagues is ready to make a case against you so that he does not face any charges.”
“I have no colleagues, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Uh huh,” Steineger grunted dismissively. “So, we have a man named Aguillar has just signed a statement describing this business, and giving the prosecutor sufficient information to make a case against…”
“Nobody named Aguillar knows anything about me,” Pagnoli interjected coolly.
“Against Petre Patrovski, I was going to say.” Steineger could sense Pagnoli was getting edgy, and wanted to keep it that way. He didn’t want to jab at the man and force him into a corner, but rather to dance him around the ring, glancing with small blows, until he sensed the right moment to move in for the knockout. He smiled knowingly at Pagnoli, and then paused to take a sip of coffee.
“Why are you talking about things that have nothing to do with me, I want to leave or I want a lawyer.”
“So I tell you this, because Patrovski has suddenly gone missing. We have reason to believe he did not go willingly.”
“Yeah, what gives you that idea?”
Before answering, Steineger looked Pagnoli in the eyes. The door was opening, if only a crack. Steineger removed from his suit jacket an envelope, and from this he extracted a stack of photographs.
“This is his room at the Four Seasons. These pictures were taken yesterday at noon when our agents arrived. He watched Pagnoli flip slowly through the photos. The pictures succeeded where words would have failed. He has not been arrested, his room wasn’t robbed, and nobody has asked for a ransom at this point. So we have to assume someone wanted him out of the way. By the looks of the room, they were very determined, ja?”
“Who?”
“We were hoping you could help us figure that out.”
“Why would I bother? I mean, if I could.”
“Because you don’t want to spend a couple of years in a room like the one down the hall, and if you help us like Aguillar has agreed to do, that could be avoided.”
“So why should I believe that you have any information about me, eh? Maybe you are playing a game after all.”
Steineger reached into his brief case, removed a thick folder, and his reading glasses. He opened the file, leaving it in plain view so Pagnoli could spy what he cared to. Steineger read aloud from the pages.
“So we know about your cycling career, no surprises there. Afterwards, you retired from the sport and have been living quite nicely at your home by Lake Como. Your tax information says you made twenty thousand Euros last year. Not so much money these days. However, you spent almost a half million dollars. How? Well, perhaps the shipments you receive from Petre Patrovski each week have something to do with that. We have very many records about that. And Anguillar, he has described in detail the goods that Patrovski ships to you and to himself. The records came from the computers Patrovski left in his hotel room – you can see them in those photos, by the way – about the shipments he was receiving and then who he sent these goods to, and how much he paid and how much you paid him, and so on. Records with your name, the name of your bank, and your account number go back several years. Quite a nice sum of money you keep there, as well, I should note. Patrovski was very meticulous in his bookkeeping. But maybe I should stop and ask if you want to call the attorney before we discuss any further.” Steineger paused to let Pagnoli consider his situation.
“And what laws do you think I have broken?” Pagnoli prodded feebly. “Since when is it criminal to distribute dietary supplements?”
This was the opening Steineger had awaited. “Oh, I’m not sure we want to go through the trouble to argue with you about what you were selling to the athletes. That would be long and expensive, eh? But it is another matter when you do not bother to pay taxes on the money you make. The taxing authorities in your country would take this dossier and have you in sleeping in their concrete hotel tonight, I think.”
Pagnoli knew that was true. Even in Italy, where tax evasion was a virtual pastime, the authorities didn’t like it if you hadn’t paid them the appropriate tributes for such activities. They’d lock him up long enough to get him to hand over his bank accounts. He’d be out of business, and out of money.
“And what would you want to know from me?” Pagnoli asked.
“Absolutely everything, of course.”
“How long do I have to think this over?” Pagnoli asked.
“The offer is good until your Rechtsanwalt arrives, or until you walk out the door. After that, I give this matter to the prosecutor and go back to my business.”
Minutes passed as Steineger patiently sipped his coffee, and waited. Pagnoli said nothing, obviously lost in his thoughts. Finally, Steineger got up to leave. He needed to participate in a videoconference to watch the interrogation of Senor Aguillar. He needed to see if they’d get anything of value from the ruse they would employ to get the man to talk.
As he reached for the door handle, Pagnoli finally spoke. “One question. Why would you be willing to let me off of the charges if you feel the case is so easy? What are you after?”
“We’re after bigger fish in the pond. If you can help us find them, your case is not so important. If you cannot, then I will take what I can get. Maybe the boss will give me a bonus this year, who knows?” Steineger answered.
“Okay,” he responded. “I will answer your questions.”
“Then I will return in a couple of hours. I trust that you will be here when I get back.”
“You’re not going to keep me in the cell?”
“No, you are not under arrest. That would be against the law, since we have not charged you with anything. If you are not here when I get back, then it will be others who will be looking for you, not me. You are free to do as you see appropriate. However, to keep your part of the bargain, I suggest you ask the innkeeper here for a pencil and some paper, and begin making some notes that you think will be of great value to us.”
Steineger left the room with Pagnoli still seated and figuring out what it meant to be free to leave jail, in exchange for his freedom. He cupped his face in his hands, and sat.
Steineger watched the interrogation of Aguillar by the Mexican Policia Federal. It wasn’t nearly as verbally intricate or dextrose as his encounter with Pagnoli. It started with a commandante entering the room screaming and waiving a night stick, pounding it on walls and swinging it inches from the face of the small man who sat chained to a chair, crying and pleading not to be beat. Then the commandante stepped out of the room and another man entered, much less menacingly, and offered to keep the commandante from coming back in, in exchange for some information.
In Mexico, good cop/bad cop wasn’t a game of bluffs. Had the commandante needed to come back, Aguillar would have had reason to be afraid.
The next hour was little more than the rapid-fire story telling of Aguillar spilling his guts in exchange for the avoidance of pain. Steineger left halfway through the session. He didn’t have enough Spanish to keep with the conversation, and the translator had trouble relaying the conversation in real time. He would wait for the transcript; he trusted it would be comprehensive. For now, he needed to get back to Pagnoli get that man’s story.
On the way back, he phoned Eve and she described the wealth of information she was unearthing from Patrovski’s computers. She said she would be working for a couple more days just to have it all sorted and catalogued. After that, they’d have to get attorneys to review the records in more detail and determine which information would be useful in pursuing charges.
Steineger gave her the news that both Aguillar and Pagnoli were providing statements. Eve asked if anyone had information about Patrovski’s whereabouts, and Steineger indicated that there were no reports of sightings of the man, nor any particularly interesting clues or leads identified by the investigators who had painstakingly combed through his hotel room.
Steineger asked Eve the status of the bank accounts she’d identified from Patrovski’s computers, and she confirmed that the relevant banks had been contacted and the assets were now frozen. It had been seemed an uphill battle that promised to be difficult and time consuming to get certain off-shore numbered accounts frozen, but as she pondered how to get this done, she’d found a contact file that Patrovski maintained that contained the password to each bank account. With those, Eve had logged onto Patrovski’s accounts, provided the account number and the passcode, and then simply ordered a transfer of funds to an Interpol account. In all, she’d impounded two point eight million Euros this way, and another one point four million remained in accounts in Patrovski’s name but under order not to allow any withdrawals or transfers except as directed by the courts.
Eve hadn’t been aware that the morning after she’d completed these arrangements, Patrovski had made plans to withdraw large amounts of money from his accounts. Patrovski wasn’t particularly enjoying the circumstances he’d found himself in, nor the prospect of paying a princely sum to a trio of thugs to buy his way out of it. On top of that, he was convinced that the payoff would merely buy him a brief delay before they’d toss him back in the hole and leave him there for good. What he needed, was time to think of a way out of this mess.
When they’d driven him into town and escorted him to the bank, it became clear that he’d been removed from German to Hungary. Why, wasn’t clear to him, and his kidnappers weren’t speaking. He figured they must be Hungarian, and brought him there because that was the nearest hole in the ground they knew of. They waited at the outskirts of a small town until banks and business opened, and the men provided him with some clothes from their own duffle bags for him to change into. He changed and looked slightly less disheveled, but his eau d’urine cologne couldn’t be mistaken.
In Germany, looking as he did, they’d ring the police without hesitation if he stepped inside a bank lobby. In Hungary, the glaring fact that he hadn’t bathed in days and stank of his own wastewater might raise fewer flags.
At nine, they fired up the van and rolled slowly into town, found a bank and picked a discrete spot toward the back of the parking lot. Heads nodded, and the driver got out and opened the van’s rear doors, letting the three men out. Patrovski wasn’t sure but thought they seemed more nervous than he was. He walked casually toward the front of the bank. When they reached the bank’s large front doors, he pulled and felt the impressive weight of their solid wood construction. Very stout, he thought. He stepped inside the bank, but rather than hold the door for the next man, he pulled it shut behind him, surprising his captors and leaving them outside the bank. Before they could react, he kicked the floor lock, which sent a bolt on the door sliding into a hole in the marble floor, and firmly locked the bank’s doors. Thank god the door hadn’t sported a modern key-lock, he thought to himself.
The sound of the door slamming caused bank employees and the bank’s two customers to gasp almost in unison, and before Patrovski could do anything further, he felt the cold steel of a pistol at his head, and a guard shouted at him in Hungarian to get down on the floor. Patrovski didn’t recognize the words, but the message was clear. He kept his hands high, slowly lowered himself to his knees and repeated over and over, Help, please. Police. Help, please.
The bank’s manager came over tentatively and spoke to him in English, “What do you want, what’s the matter with you? You smell bad, monsieur.”
“I am Petre Patrovski, and there are men outside who took me from Germany yesterday. They want to rob your bank, and they force me to do this. I am a businessman. Please call the police and do not open your doors.”
“This is crazy, but the police certainly will be here momentarily. For your sake, I hope you are telling the truth,” said the manager. “Now please do not give Kaiser here any reason to shoot you, because he will not hesitate to do so, I assure you.”
“I swear I am telling the truth. They have a van in the parking lot and they are very dangerous men.”
The manager shouted instructions in Hungarian, and the bank’s clientele quickly shuffled toward a side hallway. Petre assessed that he was moving them away from the windows, in the event that shots were fired from outside. The guard kept Petre in place on the floor, and the large barreled pistol never wavered from Petre’s skull.
There was no sign of the men. Perhaps they waited outside or were scouting for other entry points to the bank, but after less than a minute, police sirens became discernible and Petre was sure the men would be making their exits.
Suddenly it occurred to him he might survive the day.
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