The 207th National Academy class had raised the money to purchase the memorial in honor of everyone who died when the twin towers fell, including the two National Academy grads who were with the Port Authority.
Agent Kantsos told me that over the last two days he’d studied our case files on Corey Wellington’s death, but he had a number of questions that I now did my best to answer. When I was through, I summarized what we knew about Natalie Germaine’s suicide in Montana.
“The cable news stations are saying Corey’s death was a suicide,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Are you suggesting his wound might not have been self-inflicted?”
“No, by all indications it was.”
“Okay.” He sounded confused. “Honestly, from what I’ve heard so far, I’m not sure I can help you out much here.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, first, because I’m no expert on psychotropic drugs. Second, I have a view that’s a little more, well, extreme than ICE’s official stance about counterfeit pharmaceuticals.”
“What view is that?”
He bent and brushed some grass blades off the melon-size piece of the Pentagon that lay in front of the 9/11 memorial.
“In this attack, when the towers fell, how many people died?”
“I’m not sure exactly. I think just under three thousand.”
“Do you know how many people die each year of malaria?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“Over a million, worldwide. And nearly fifty-five percent of the malaria medication used on the African continent is counterfeit. Each year over two hundred thousand people die of malaria that goes untreated because they’re taking counterfeit drugs. And that’s only a conservative estimate of the death toll of one disease from one category of counterfeit drugs on one continent.”
“A quiet, unreported genocide,” I said softly.
“That’s one way to put it.” He stood, then gestured toward the monument. “We remember the three thousand people who died on 9/11. Not many Americans give a second thought to the hundreds of thousands who die each year because they’re unknowingly taking counterfeit drugs. Where are the memorials for them?”
I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Agent Bowers, if I knew you were dying of cancer and I purposely substituted your lifesaving medication with one that I knew was inert or dangerous — but in either case, one that I knew full well would not treat your cancer — if I did that to you, fully aware that my action would contribute to your death, isn’t that a form of homicide?”
“I would say that it is.”
“So would I — but our government does not.” He shook his head and we walked to the other side of the courtyard. “Companies and individuals have been prosecuted over wrongful deaths from counterfeit drugs, but no one has been successfully prosecuted for first-degree murder for distributing counterfeit drugs — even though the manufacturers doing so know full well that they’re causing thousands or tens of thousands of deaths.”
His cynicism seemed well founded. “You might distribute millions of counterfeit drugs and face a sentence of maybe five years in prison. Plus, perhaps, some fines for fraud and conspiracy charges, but never homicide or manslaughter. Accidentally start a fire in a national forest that causes a hiker to die and you could spend decades in prison, but knowingly distribute drugs that’ll directly defraud people and result in thousands of deaths, you receive a slap on the wrist.”
The more he explained the extent of the problem to me, the more I could see why he had such sharp views. His words reminded me of my lecture earlier in the week when I was discussing with my class the three ways criminals have the advantage over those who track them, specifically the third reason: until we catch them they’re always one step ahead.
Which means we’re always one step behind.
Kantsos went on, “A decade ago it was difficult not only to produce the drugs but to distribute them. Today, the production is easy — just about anyone can do it. And with the Internet and international shipping, the distribution is easy too. No middleman. Apart from a few isolated exceptions, drug dogs can’t sniff counterfeit pharmaceuticals out at the airport. And the profit margin is extraordinary. If you produce the drug well enough, no doctor, no pharmacist, not even FDA investigators can identify them using the naked eye.”
“Like the people who died in 2008 from the tainted heparin that made it past all those inspections.”
“Exactly. Since Americans tend to trust Canadian pharmaceutical firms to sell name-brand drugs at discount prices, counterfeiters know that one of the easiest ways to get the drugs to Americans is to set up Web sites that purport to be from Canada. They simply route the drugs through the Canadian package delivery services. Some counterfeiters will even set up fake call centers.”
He reflected on that for a moment. “Of course, you can just ship them into any U.S. ports of entry along with a load of legitimate pharmaceutical products. It’s not like the distribution system is secure.”
Everything he was saying made me reticent to ever fill a prescription off the Internet again.
We spoke for a few more minutes about the implications of all of this. Then, since I was primarily looking for a connection between Corporal Tyree and a facility that might be producing the lot number of Calydrole under question, I directed the conversation back to the main reason I’d asked to speak with him in the first place. “I told you about Tyree’s prints. It looks like there’s something more in play here than just counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Are there drugs out there that cause people to commit suicide?”
He wavered his head back and forth slightly, as if he were balancing how to respond to that. “Again, I’m not an expert on that specific topic, but I wouldn’t say there are ones that cause you to. However there are certainly drugs that lower your inhibitions, blur your judgment — especially with SSRIs in adolescents.”
We entered the classroom building and headed for my office. “SSRIs?”
“Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. They’re probably the most common kind of antidepressants. They block the reabsorption of serotonin, which helps the brain cells — the neurotransmitters — to communicate with each other, helping the person’s mood stabilize. But they cause some people to become more suicidal.”
“So, you take an antidepressant to stop from having suicidal thoughts, but it might end up causing more of them?”
“Antidepressants work for most people,” he said somewhat resignedly, “but for some people they don’t.”
In my office, we took seats on each side of my desk.
“Well, that’s one more reason we need to track down this production plant as soon as possible. We think this lot might have come from India.”
“That would make sense. Taken together, India and China produce nearly ninety percent of all counterfeit drugs.”
“Great,” I muttered, “that’ll really help us narrow things down.”
“Well, no one makes one fake pill at a time; you make batches. So every counterfeit drug you discover means there’s a batch of thirty to sixty thousand out there. That might help you find some.”
“You mean this lot number, this batch, might have tens of thousands of tainted or contaminated products?”
“I’d be surprised if it didn’t.”
Oh, this was just getting better and better.
He was eyeing the photos on my wall of some of the raft trips I’d led in college.
“Jason, there are a lot of agencies that might have jurisdiction on this, but I’m afraid information will slip through the cracks if too many people stick their fingers in it. Can you see what the FDA finds out about these drugs and then let us head this up? We have a team of people working on the case already. I think it would be best if our agents stayed on task here rather than hand things off.”