‘Yes,’ I said. I knew most of this from discussions Tony and I had had during the last fourteen days. ‘But where do I fit in?’
Tony looked around him as if making sure no one was lurking and listening. He also lowered his voice.
‘For some time I have had my suspicions that we have an informant in our ranks.’
‘Mmm,’ I mused. ‘Corruption within the anti-corruption agency. Not good.’
‘Indeed not,’ Tony said.
‘How do you know?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Tony said. ‘I only have suspicions. My racing team have initiated several operations only to discover that the target has got rid of the evidence just before we turn up. At first I thought it was bad luck, but it has happened too often.’
‘What sort of operations?’ I asked.
‘We recently raided the barns of a trainer who we believed was employing illegal immigrants as grooms, mostly Mexicans, paying them well under the minimum wage and in cash to avoid federal payroll taxes and Social Security dues. We had done our homework and were pretty sure we had the trainer dead to rights. All we needed was to catch the illegals in the act.’
‘But you found none?’ I said.
‘Not one. Vanished like mist in the morning sunshine.’ Tony held his hands out, palms uppermost. ‘On another occasion we received a tip from a disgruntled ex-employee that a Maryland horse farm was using an unlicensed antibiotic together with equine growth hormone on a newly born foal in order to determine if they made the foal grow faster and larger. This practice would be unlawful under the US Animal Welfare Act, but we were involved because it would also constitute a fraud on the future buyer of the foal. So the team arrived one day at dawn to search the premises and take blood samples for analysis.’
‘What did they find?’ I asked.
‘That the foal had been euthanised and the carcass cremated.’
‘Did the farm give a reason?’
‘They tried. Some hooey about the animal kicking out and breaking its leg. But the pit was still red-hot from the fire. They must have incinerated the poor thing through the night.’
‘It could have been a coincidence,’ I said. ‘They do sometimes happen.’
‘If it were only those two I might agree but there have been more, like a fire that conveniently destroyed all the computers in the office of an illegal bookmaker hours before they were to be seized.’
‘Arson?’
Tony rolled his eyes. ‘Not that anyone could prove.’ ‘Have you had a leak inquiry?’ I asked.
‘Not officially. But the Director and I initiated a review of our internal and external communications. In the process, we covertly examined the email and phone records of all of our staff who knew about the operations ahead of time, but it turned up nothing of any use.’
‘How many people knew about these operations beforehand?’
‘About twenty.’
‘Why so many?’
‘There are eight field agents in the horseracing team with a half a dozen backup support staff. Then there are three or four senior personnel, myself included, who would be fully briefed. Plus the Director. All would know about an operation ahead of time. Most would be involved either in the planning or in the decision to give it the green light.’
‘That’s far too many,’ I said. ‘A true secret stops being secret when two people know it, let alone twenty. Planning should be done by only two or three key decision makers, with those taking part in the raid briefed about the operation and told the target only immediately before the off, when it’s too late for the information to be leaked.’
Tony looked down at his hands as if somewhat embarrassed.
‘We are a relatively new agency,’ he said. ‘We clearly still have much to learn.’
‘So you want me to come and teach your people how to do it,’ I said rather flippantly.
‘I suppose that would be nice eventually,’ Tony said seriously, ‘but what I really want you to do now is to come and find our mole.’
‘Why me?’ I asked.
Tony and I were safely back in my office with the door firmly shut. Even so we kept our voices to a murmur.
‘A number of reasons,’ Tony said. ‘Mostly because you know what you’re doing and, because you are an outsider, you are above suspicion. I came to London specifically to recruit you but I needed to be sure. Hence I’ve watched you closely over the past two weeks and I am sure you are the right man. You are determined and single-minded and, most important, you are unflappable. Yesterday you demonstrated admirably that you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs, and that includes me.’
‘I try,’ I said.
As an army intelligence officer in Afghanistan, it had been my task to acquire information from local tribal leaders, most of whom hated the Taliban only fractionally more than they hated the British. Meetings were always fraught with danger, and a wrong word or action could result in an all-out shooting response. Keeping one’s head at all times was essential, metaphorically and literally.
‘But surely there is someone else in another part of your organisation who is better placed to investigate the leak?’
‘I need someone who understands the racing industry.’
‘I know British racing,’ I said. ‘not American.’
‘No matter,’ Tony said. ‘I’ve realised during my stay that horseracing here is much the same as in the US and the potential for trying to beat the system is identical.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. I’d been to the United States before, on holiday, and everything had seemed very different — bigger, brasher and more ballsy.
But Tony wasn’t giving up that easily.
‘Jeff, I need your help. Having a corrupt component in an anti-corruption organisation is like having a cancer. It has to be excised and destroyed, otherwise it will grow and spread, killing the whole body.’
I knew what he meant more than most — my sister had cancer.
‘But I know nothing about how your organisation operates.’
‘I consider that a plus. You won’t be blinded by procedure and protocol. You will be able to look at things afresh while being someone who knows what to look for. I can hardly ask one of my own racing team — I might be approaching the very person we’re looking for.’
‘Don’t you trust any of them?’
‘I thought I did. I picked them all myself. Nearly half are ex-military and the rest are ex-cops. I’d have trusted each of them with my life six months ago. Now I wouldn’t walk down a dark alley with any of them.’
It never ceased to amaze me how wafer-thin and fragile trust can be. All relationships, both work and play, rely on trust as their foundation, yet that trust can be dispelled so quickly by a single word or a casual action, anything that plants a seed of doubt in the mind. And once trust has gone, it is difficult, if not impossible, to re-establish. Ask any divorce lawyer. It’s not a lack of love that drives most marriages apart, but a lack of trust.
‘But there must be other people you could ask, someone from another agency like the FBI or CIA?’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But would they know what to look for? Also, we at FACSA value our independence. It took much persuasion in Congress for our agency to be set up outside of the FBI rather than as a subsection of it, against the wishes of their then Director. Neither my Director nor I have any wish to go to the FBI now and admit we were wrong.’
‘And were you wrong?’ I asked.
‘Not at all. FACSA reports directly to the Attorney General and the Department of Justice, the same as the DEA and ATF do, and I want to keep it that way.’