‘Certainly not; for FDA and MHRA approval, we will need to conduct clinical trials, and for the clinical trials we will need to manufacture large quantities of the drug. That will be our starting point. We will falsify the trial results, get the approval and then; big time production.’
‘By which time, the quantities we have produced will go onto the open market as loss leaders, to get the junkies and dealers interested,’ finished Ernesto. ‘I like it a lot; it’s hiding in plain sight.’
‘Yep,’ said Guido.
‘So, are we going to run this operation?’ asked Ernesto.
‘We are,’ replied Guido. ‘But I already have someone in place in Ireland; referred to me by one of our European colleagues. A person who is prepared to run a facility like the one we propose; who already knows the real intent and who can be trusted, as far as any criminal can be. He’s young and eager which helps too, and he loves making money. He has also invested a lot of his own cash and has already started on the building refurbishment.’
‘A man who is motivated by money is the best type, I always think; whose only scruple is how much of the profit we cut them in on,’ said Ernesto.
‘Here’s to capitalism,’ said Guido.
Ernesto raised his glass, and Guido saluted him. They settled back in their chairs and enjoyed the silence for a while. Then they heard the sounds; slow measured footsteps coming down the hall toward the door. There was a discrete knock. The brothers looked at each other. It was a deviation from the norm.
‘Come,’ said Ernesto quietly.
The door opened and he walked into the room. Antonio managed the Mancini household. An enormous man, he was almost six feet five, and like all Mancini employees, he wore an immaculately tailored two piece suit; one of the perks of the job. He had been with the brothers for twenty years, joining them when his parents were killed in a gas explosion.
He walked over to Guido, bent down and began to whisper something in his ear. As he talked, Ernesto saw Guido’s face harden.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Guido.
‘That’s what he said, sir,’ replied Antonio in his clipped, almost upper class accent.
‘Ok, thanks Antonio,’ said Guido, flashing him a smile of gratitude.
Antonio nodded, and left the room.
Guido turned back to Ernesto.
‘Change of plans,’ he said, shortly and vehemently.
Chapter 9 – Whisperings
11th May 2011 – The morning after the Storm.
Goodness speaks in a whisper, evil shouts. – Tibetan Proverb.
Even as he wrote the words, he knew it was an exercise in futility. He read back over what he had written, furiously crossed it out and tried again. After an hour of fruitless head-scratching and eye popping concentration, he came to a sharp realisation; he couldn’t keep up the pretence any longer.
He sat back sharply and threw away the pen, his eyes stinging with un-spilt tears of frustration. And then, as he tasted the bitter aftertaste of bile in his throat, he had to smile wryly. His mum used to have a phrase for it. She called it putting lipstick on the pig.
He looked at his watch; it was way past midnight and everyone else in the office had long since gone home. It shouldn't have to be this hard.
Special Agent Dale Foster had always been an overachiever, or put it another way, he had always tried too hard to achieve. There was a fine line between getting it just right, and doing that tiny little bit too much, and Dale had never managed to differentiate between the two.
All through his school years, it had been the same. He could never leave something alone. He always had to add one more statement; ask one more question. People laughed it off at first, but as he got older, they found it more and more irritating and annoying. Classmates thought he was sucking up to the teacher; the teacher thought he was just being a smart-arse.
In university, things were little better. He had graduated from high school with an excellent diploma, but in university this counted for pretty much nothing. He had to start from zero again.
And start from zero he did. He put his head down into his studies and despite managing to alienate the entire teaching faculty, and most of the student body, he still graduated with a first class honours degree in history and philosophy. Sure, he pissed a lot of people off along the way, but he’d never bothered about things like that. For him, it was all about the result, not the impact of his actions, and consequently he was very much a loner. Strangely, he was not lonely; there was a subtle difference between the two, and Dale flourished in his own company.
The one thing that he did feel passionately about was the law. He had a hugely developed sense of right and wrong. He was particularly outraged at the swathe that hard drugs were cutting through communities. For him, they were the ultimate in indiscriminate evil.
Drugs did not recognise creed or colour, religion or marital status, age or gender. Drugs were unheeding of social status and uncaring of financial situations.
Dale really wanted to do something that made a difference.
It was one of the many contradictions about Dale; he didn’t care about an individual as a person, but he really cared about people. So when he was walking down the street from his graduation, still wearing his college finery, and saw a recruitment poster for the Drugs Enforcement Administration, he thought, why not?
He dragged his attention back to the present and massaged his temples in an effort to concentrate. He only had himself to blame, but that wasn’t making him feel any better. It was just another botched raid; another half baked job that he had to somehow try and spin to his superiors as positive. It didn't matter to them that it wasn't his fault; it didn't matter to them that the information he got was wrong and the tip off was flawed.
It all went back to the golden period; to the time when he’d had all of their attention.
Something huge is going down, he had told them. And he had been right; something huge had gone down. His entire career had gone down; crash and burn, baby.
He should have seen it coming. It’s not that he wasn’t an intelligent young man. He had underestimated them, he could see that now. He was not a people person, so consequently he was not in tune with the nuances of the way his snitches expected to be treated. He had also underestimated the sheer street-smart intelligence of some of his informers.
One of them in particular would always stand out. He would never forget the name; James Temple-Hill. At the time he had thought it was quite prophetic. It was almost biblical in its resonance; a sign from God. It was a name that was going to get him something; information that was going to get him somewhere. But unfortunately for Dale, James had a long memory, was easily insulted and had a huge and unhealthy thirst for vengeance.
Dale had been a rookie, barely into his first year. He’d been assigned to a divisional task force, looking at innovative ways that the DEA could maximise the benefit from the busts made by uniformed PD. Part of the role was to interview drug suspects, to see if they could be pumped for information. And that was when he first met James Temple-Hill.
James was not your average drug addict or pusher. Originally from England, he had grown up in a closeted world of wealth and affluence. He was Harrow and then Cambridge educated and had graduated with a first in applied mathematics. He and Dale had hit it off from the start. For some reason, he seemed to have an easy superiority and honour system that the other addicts just didn’t have. James looked down on them as needle fodder looking for cheap fixes. He regarded himself as a very uncommon addict; searching instead for spiritual enlightenment. Dale was sceptical of his motivation, but not of his methods of providing information, or the quality of the end product.
James was more than happy to share his opinions with Dale; he was a very opinionated and patronising person and liked to demonstrate his intellectual superiority. In turn, Dale had identified early on that by pandering to his ego, he could extract a huge amount of potentially useful information.
James prov
ided a steady stream of tip-offs. He gave Dale a lot of information that he could use, and boy did he use it. One of the tips resulted in the earliest successful bust that Dale could remember in his DEA career. He had been over the moon. It had brought him to the attention of his superiors, and had marked him as a rookie to watch.
The unfortunate thing was that Dale had made a fatal mistake; like everything he undertook, he failed to pay attention to the small personal details, and this was to be his undoing.
Dale had negotiated a reward for James; it was only a small amount, a token really, but these things were important. To a snitch like James, where his life was literally in the balance, they were part of the honour system. More than that, they were part of his honour system. So, when he didn't get his reward, he took it as a personal insult and vowed revenge.
Of course, Dale had been oblivious to this; it was a different section that looked after the payments, and he’d neither asked, nor if the truth be known, cared, whether James had been paid. But as far as James was concerned, Dale had deliberately slighted him, and when he saw his opportunity to get his own back, he’d grasped it eagerly with both hands.
Dale had to admit it was a sting that Robert Redford would have been proud of. James behaved ostensibly like nothing had happened and his tip-offs led to a number of significant busts. Then, a few months into his plan, James intimated that a huge transaction was going down. Dale was fed line after line, all of them seemingly authentic. He followed up every one, and when he’d checked out a suggested warehouse on a given night, he saw what could only be characterised as suspicious activity.
So, he bit the bullet, and brought in the big guns. His boss had seemed as convinced as he was, and because of Dale’s track record, he was given access to all the resources he needed.
He smiled wryly at the memory. At this stage at least, he could laugh at it a little bit. He did have to applaud James for his sense of humour. After an operation involving twenty agents, and costing twenty five thousand dollars, the DEA succeeded in intercepting four container loads of toilet seats from Taiwan; their only crime the evasion of import duty. Some would argue that it was a fitting epitaph to his career; flushed away.
A ringing phone interrupted his reverie. He snatched it off the rest.
‘Yes,’ he barked.
‘Guess who?’ said the voice.
‘I don't fucking believe it,’ said Dale. ‘I was thinking about you less than five minutes ago, you little turd.’
‘Ah, come on Agent Foster,’ answered James. ‘Where’s your sense of humour? We’re even now. No hard feelings.’
‘Says who,’ said Dale. ‘You’ve got some nerve, calling me, you know that?’
‘It was for your own good, Agent Foster,’ replied James. ‘You’re only as good as your last snippet of information. We are a rare breed, good dependable snitches. We just need to be looked after properly.’
‘Jesus, that kind of bollocks is melodramatic, even for you,’ said Dale.
‘Agent Foster, I don't like being jerked around; simple as that. You jerked me around and I retaliated. That's done; it’s over. I’ll never call you again, you can be sure of that.’
Dale heard the conviction in his voice.
‘But this,’ he stopped, and Dale heard him swallow distinctly. ‘Man, this is going to be bigger than both of us. Way bigger than any petty misunderstanding and bad blood between us.’
Dale laughed shortly.
‘Do you know what, James? I’m sitting here wondering. I’m sitting here thinking, what is his angle? And do you know what, I just can’t figure it out, other than it is brown and comes out of an arse.’
‘There is no angle, Agent Foster,’ said James. ‘This is serious; certainly not bullshit.’
Dale sat forward slightly. Something had penetrated the childish outrage of his fragile ego. There was a genuine quaver in James’s voice. He was openly frightened of something. Dale still went on gut instinct, even since the issues with James and the lack of trust. He knew there were few less trustworthy individuals in the world than drug addicts and drug pushers, but for some inexplicable reason, he had an intuitive belief about James this time; it made him uncomfortable, but it was undeniable.
‘Okay James,’ said Dale with a sigh. ‘Give me your information. I’m not making any promises, but....’
‘What, you think this is about money?’ asked James. ‘If half of what I am hearing is true, this is going to spread like the plague. This is scary stuff. I don’t want anything to do with this. You guys need to take some action; get this stuff off the market, before it hits the streets.’
‘Get what stuff off the streets?’ asked Dale. ‘I’ve heard nothing.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ said James. ‘Since you made such a balls-up over the toilet raid, you are persona non grata. Nobody talks to you anymore; I made sure of that, remember? But I’m hearing things, and I’m making sure you know what they are. You may not be a lot of things, Agent Foster, but you are honest, I’ll give you that. You just need to look after your snitches a little better, that’s all.’
‘Can you be more specific?’ asked Dale, ignoring the implied superiority.
‘Something big and I mean gigantic, is going down soon. These rumblings are coming from all quarters,’ said James. ‘The only concrete thing I can give you is this. One of my contacts told me that there’s a Storm coming. It’s unstoppable, will cut through the city like a scythe through wheat, and will make anyone lucky enough to be involved in it, very rich indeed. Those were his words verbatim; there’s a storm coming.’
Dale heard a click and realised James had hung up on him. As he tried to rearrange the sensory input into rational thought, he got a strange and unsettling sensation; he believed every word that James had just told him. It was just what he fucking needed though; another potential nowhere bust. Just because James believed it, didn’t mean it was true.
He turned back to his computer and tried to block it out. A new distraction wasn’t going to get his report written any faster, but the words kept cycling around his head and coming back, like echoes in reverse. He could see the thunder and lightning of the storm in his imagination, lashing the road, as he tried desperately to get to his destination. The rhythmic tapping of his fingers on the keys, started blurring the letters together on the screen. He felt his eyelids become heavy. They became so heavy that he could not keep them open, so he no longer resisted.
Chapter 10 – Proof
11th May 2011 – The morning after the Storm.
A fact in itself is nothing. It is valuable only for the idea attached to it, or for the proof which it furnishes.–Claude Bernard.
He started awake, his head banging off the desk in front of him. For a second, his befuddled brain didn't know where it was. His eyes opened and focused slowly on the trail of drool across his notepad. He saw heavy, ink-filled doodles and it was only then that he remembered his location.
He slapped his cheeks a couple of times and then clicked on the stereo.
While the music played, you worked by candlelight.
He smiled; twilight more like.
He rummaged around in the desk drawer behind him, his hands coming up with a packet of Lucky Strike and a lighter. Lucky strike, there’s a laugh. He was just about to spark up when he realised where he was; tobacco free workplace.
Dale was a secret smoker; so secret that the entire office knew about it. He, of course, had no idea that he had been rumbled almost from the start. He thought the level of his subterfuge was amazing; worthy of the CIA itself. He went to complicated extremes so that he wouldn’t be spotted, little realising that the reek of tobacco on his clothes and on his breath gave it away instantly.
Half the problem of course, was that he had never wanted to give up in the first place. He had done it to impress an old girl friend; a relationship that had been built on lies and half truths, and which had perished in the dying embers of half heartedness on both their parts. But the inescapable t
ruth was that he loved everything about smoking. It seemed no matter how hard he tried, neither his mind nor his body were ready to capitulate.
He took the fire escape to the ground floor and rounded the corner to the smoking hut at a fast walk. As he sat down heavily on the single bench that ran along the back wall, he flicked the lighter to life. The flame danced and flickered in the still night air and wisps of smoke curled towards the roof of the hut. Just like my career, he thought; straight up in smoke.
He dragged his way through the cigarette in about five pulls. He ground it out savagely under his foot and went back up to his desk, taking the stairs two at a time. He slipped his bounty back to its rightful desk, not his own, and then retrieved the toothbrush and toothpaste from his top drawer. Even though there was nobody around, he still liked to keep up the pretence.
His mouth was full of toothpaste, when he felt the iPhone vibrating on his hip. At least this time it was an actual phone call. He hated these so-called smart phones, with their e-mails and their apps and their texts. All he wanted to do with a phone was talk to someone. He spat out the toothpaste quickly.
‘Foster,’ he answered briskly.
‘Agent Foster, its Ryan,’ replied a disembodied voice.
Ryan was about the only one of Dale’s informants left, proving there was some shred of loyalty in the criminal fraternity. He had always been regular and reliable with information; small time stuff mainly, but just about keeping Dale in a job for the present.
‘Hey Ryan, what can I do for you?’ asked Dale, suddenly animated.
He liked Ryan.
‘Can we meet, Dooley’s downtown, in about an hour?’
Dale looked at his watch. Four thirty; that would make it at least five thirty in the morning before he could get there.
‘Sure,’ he said to Ryan. ‘Sleep is overrated anyway. I’ll be there by five thirty, no problem.’
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