Sohlberg and the White Death (30 page)

~ ~ ~

Laprade honked the horn as soon as the traffic light turned green. “Look at these idiots. They just can’t accelerate. Alright . . . here we are . . . call me as soon as you get back.”

Laprade stopped the car and let Sohlberg get out in front of the
Cité Administrative d'État
building at 165 Rue Garibaldi. Sohlberg entered the enormous 13-story building that took up an entire city block. The building housed countless government offices and it provided the perfect cover to shake off anyone who might be tailing them. Laprade drove down another hundred yards and turned left into Rue du Docteur Bouchut. He parked on a driveway next to the modern glass building at the corner and he spent the next hour pretending to wait for Sohlberg.

Once inside the building Sohlberg executed a complicated set of surveillance counter-measures. He rode an elevator to the tenth floor and scampered to a bathroom that let him exit into another hallway. He took the stairwell down three floors and then crossed an entire floor packed with bureaucrats. Sohlberg then waited ten minutes inside a stairwell on the west side of the building.

Although the building was packed with people not a sound could be heard inside the stairwell. It was as noisy as an abandoned mausoleum. No one seemed to be following.

Sohlberg took off his reversible windbreaker jacket and turned it inside out. His garb went from blue to brown in an instant. For good measure he put on a lightweight dark-brown wool driving cap which could be easily rolled up and concealed in the jacket’s pocket. The jacket and cap helped him throw off any surveillance.

Another flight of stairs led him down to a service elevator that dropped him off on the ground floor. Sohlberg walked out to Rue Servient through a side door. A few minutes later he reached the Part-Dieu-Servient tram station in front of the towering
Le Crayon
. The T-1 tram line whisked him to the next stop—Lyon’s colossal train station—
Gare de Lyon Part-Dieu.

A throng of travelers swallowed up Sohlberg as soon as he passed through the train station’s busy
Vivier Merle
entrance. He checked for surveillance and went in and out of two restrooms before heading out to the gate where the TGV bullet train was about to depart for Paris.

“All aboard!” yelled the conductor.

Sohlberg ran down the platform and jumped into the last door of the last carriage at the last minute. The doors closed. No one could have followed him into the train.

The detective smiled. He had taken the precaution of leaving his personal and work cell phones at home. Therefore, no one could trace his movements through those cell phones. He had also removed the battery and anonymous prepaid SIM card for a disposable cell phone that he only used for traveling in Europe. He slipped that phone and its battery and SIM card into the interior pocket of his reversible jacket.

Despite his precautions Sohlberg could not shake off the mystifying sensation that someone was following him.

I wouldn’t put it past Internal Affairs to place me under surveillance. . . . Ishmael would also like to know what I’m doing today.

The train was scheduled to reach Paris in 2 hours thanks to TGV speeds of 200 mph. The landscape was nothing but a blur.

~ ~ ~

Sohlberg again undertook extreme counter-surveillance measures at the beautiful
Gare du Nord
train station in Paris before jumping on the Thalys bullet train to Brussels. He arrived in just 90 minutes at the Brussels Midi/Zuid train station. He walked north on Avenue de Stalingrad to his destination less than a mile away.

At Place Rouppe—at the corner of Rue de Chasseur and Avenue de Stalingrad—he turned right at the traffic circle and went inside the world-class restaurant of
Comme Chez Soi
. He pretended to look at the menu while he glanced out the window to see if anyone was following him.

The
maître d'
approached him with suspicious eyes and said:

“Ah. Monsieur. Thinking of a table? . . .”

“Maybe.”

Sohlberg’s embarrassed smile confirmed the headwaiter’s impression: Sohlberg’s crummy wardrobe indicated a complete inability to pay the restaurant’s exorbitant prices.

“Monsieur . . . please understand that we have a dress code.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course. I’m not here for lunch. I’ll just take a business card with your phone number and call later if we can make it tonight for dinner.”

The acerbic waiter nodded a curt dismissal at the detective.

Sohlberg went outside and stood by the restaurant’s door. He studied the pedestrians and cars in the circle. Nothing and no one unusual stood out. He glanced at his watch to make sure that he was on time. The detective turned right. He strolled past one building on his way to a narrow corner building that had just two windows in each of the four floors above the ground floor.

A yellow pot on the right window of the second floor meant that it was safe to proceed. The building presented itself as a secure little fortress without any windows on the ground floor.

At exactly 1:11 PM Sohlberg approached the enormous gate. He pressed the buzzer for the second floor apartment—three long and two short rings. The gate’s electric lock snapped open with a loud clanging noise.

Sohlberg tramped up a flight of stairs. He rapped three quick knocks on a thick wood door. The peephole darkened at Apartment 2-B.

“Tom? . . . Is that you?” said a man’s deep voice in English with a heavy French accent.

“It’s me. Dickie sent me. How are you Harry?”

The door cracked open. “Come in.”

A gloomy twilight trickled into the run-down room through a dirty window which faced an interior lightwell. The shabby office was unfurnished except for an old desk and chair at one end and two ratty sofas that bordered on collapse at the other end of the room. Sohlberg’s host closed and locked the door.

“Go over there.” The beefy and unfriendly young man in a cheap suit pointed Sohlberg to the sofas while he walked over to sit behind the ruined desk. The bulk under his left arm hinted at a submachine gun.

A nondescript man sat on one of the moldy sofas. Uffe Qvistgaard was in his late 50s and one of thousands of faceless bureaucrats who labored in obscure government offices of the European Union.

~ ~ ~

The pale Uffe Qvistgaard stood up. A limp appendage flopped wet and cold into Sohlberg’s hand in what passed for a handshake in EU bureaucratic circles. The two men sat down on separate sofas. Qvistgaard began speaking in English with a slight Danish accent:

“Your friend Laprade asked me to get some information.”

“Yes. Go ahead. But first tell me a little about yourself.”

“I’m Uffe Qvistgaard . . . I have a doctorate in organic chemistry and a master’s in business administration. I work for the European Commissioner for Health and Consumer Policy . . . the commissioner is in charge of the Directorate-General for Health and Consumers . . . or SANCO . . . as it’s better known.”

“SANCO . . . of course,” said Sohlberg who had little knowledge of the byzantine structure of the EU and its European Commission with headquarters in Brussels.

“Under the European Commissioner you have the Deputy Director General for Consumers and Health . . . and she’s responsible for the B . . . C and D Directorates.”

“Yes. Of course . . . the directorates.”

“The D Directorate is for Health Systems and Products.”

“I understand.”

“I’m in the D-One Directorate . . . we’re responsible for strategy. My job there is to coordinate the D-Five and D-Six Directorates . . . the D-Five is responsible for the legal authorization of medical products . . . and the D-Six Directorate is responsible for the quality and safety and efficacy of medical products.”

“Yes. I understand. Go ahead.”

“I was asked a few weeks ago to look into a biochemist known as Edvard Csáky. And. . . .”

“And . . . what?”

“I myself have had certain suspicions about this man from the very first time that I came across his name a couple of years ago. But the Deputy Director General would not listen to me. Nor was anyone else at any Directorate interested in this interesting man. . . . But I do what I’m told and now your people told me to find anything and everything that involves this man in any manner.”

“That’s correct. . . . What do you know about this man?”

“Doctor Edvard Csáky testified as an expert at hearings that we held . . . a year ago . . . on whether to authorize . . . for human use throughout the European Union . . . two drug patents that were filed . . . by Ultra Laboratories. The company filed for the patents in Bulgaria four years ago. . . . They got approved in Bulgaria for human consumption a year later after clinical trials.”

“Excuse me. But did Csáky testify as an owner or shareholder or interested party in the company?”

“No. Only as a scientific expert. . . . But I’ve always thought that he owned a secret percentage or interest in the company.”

“Ultra Laboratories . . . where’s it from? . . . Who owns them?”

“Ultra Laboratories is a Dutch B.V. or limited liability private company . . . a
Besloten Vennootschap
. . . and that Dutch company is owned by two entities . . . Windsor Charitable Trust . . . registered in Switzerland with offices in Monaco . . . and Ultra International Holdings A.G. which is a Swiss corporation that is in turn owned by a Luxembourg joint stock company . . . a
Société Anonyme
type of corporation . . . Ultra Worldwide Holdings S.A.”

Sohlberg nodded. He could almost smell the laundered money pouring out of shell companies in the corporate labyrinths of Switzerland. “Very good. How did you find all this information?”

“They have to report ownership information under E.U. regulations.”

“Of course. Please continue.”

“Now . . . as you might know . . . we at the European Commission have to decide whether to allow the medical products of one country to be exported and used in all other twenty-six member nations of the E.U.”

“What type of drugs were involved?”

“The first one is Olera . . . a powerful synthetic narcotic pain-killer with anti-depressant properties. Think of it as a mixture of three drugs . . . the world’s most popular prescription narcotic . . . oxycodone . . . and two of the world’s most popular prescription anxiolytic anti-depressants . . . prozac and xanax.”

“A triple home run.”

“Oh yes. I’ve always wondered if the chemist genius behind the Olera patent wasn’t the rogue scientist who reverse-engineered oxycodone a few years ago.”

“But isn’t that illegal?”

“Yes . . . but only if the person can be sued in court. Then and only then could the owner of the worldwide patent rights for oxycodone have any recourse.”

“Who are the owners of the oxycodone patents?”

“Purdue Pharma in the U.S.A. They also own the trademark name of oxycontin for the drug.”

“Public company?”

“No. Private.”

“Private? . . . Are you kidding me?”

“No. Purdue Pharma is owned by the Sackler families . . . the heirs of three brothers . . . Arthur . . . Raymond and Mortimer.”

“They must be billionaires.”

“Many
many
times over. Interesting thing is that Purdue Pharma knows that it makes billions in profits from the prescription abuse and fraud that goes on with oxycodone . . . it’s stolen from pharmacies . . . it’s over-prescribed and then resold for giant markups.”

“What else do you know about this Purdue Pharma?”

“Purdue Pharma sure wasn’t happy when they started losing ten billion U.S. dollars a year in profits to the generic street version that the rogue chemist reverse-engineered. But what could they do? . . . Purdue Pharma couldn’t sue an illegal drug lab for infringing their patents for oxycodone.”

“Where did the counterfeit drug come from?”

“I wouldn’t call it counterfeit . . . it’s an exact copy with the same pharmacological properties and components. . . it’s almost impossible to distinguish from Purdue’s oxycodone. I’d call it a generic imitation. We think it was made somewhere in East Europe. Maybe Russia. Maybe Romania.”

“You said that Ultra Laboratories also wanted approval to sell another drug in Europe. What’s the drug?”

“Kyra . . . for post-traumatic stress disorder. It would be a very profitable blockbuster drug if we approve it. The same goes for Olera.”

“Does the E.U. plan on approving the two drugs from Ultra Labs?”

“We approved them five weeks ago.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” said Sohlberg.

“I agree. But the higher-ups have made up their minds. There are rumors floating around . . . whispering that the higher-ups received substantial bribes . . . but that’s none of my business. I’m just an underling.”