Corruption!

by Elizabeth Ducie

  Once they’d finished with this part of the tour, Nadia asked if they wanted to see the antibiotics building.

  “I’ve left it until last so there’s no risk of cross contamination,” she said. “We were very careful when we built this department, just a few years back. We complied with all the rules regarding separation of penicillins and non-penicillins. There’s a 60-metre separation zone between that building and all the others. The air conditioning plant is located in such a way that there’s no chance of blowback. And we do not allow passage between the two buildings under normal circumstances. There are even specialised quality control staff who only work in that one building, and in the laboratory, of course.”

  Suzanne thought back to the ongoing arguments she’d had in factories across the developing world in particular, where penicillins were being made in the same facility as ordinary pharmaceuticals. So many times, the staff seemed to think if they continued to ask the same question every time they saw her—if we increase our precautions, is it permissible to make these two types of product in the same building?—eventually, one day she would say: okay, yes, that will be fine! It was such a pleasure to visit a company where the technical people, and more importantly, the people holding the purse strings, really got it.

  “Yes, please, that would be good,” she said.

  Nadia checked her watch. “There should just be time to do that before we have to meet Yuri Mikhailovich for lunch. Come on, we need to get you some extra protective clothing before we go in there.”

  Chapter 28

  “Well, we know Ms Suzanne Jones is poking her nose into our business once more,” said Hawkins through gritted teeth. “Goodness knows how she found us or why she’s come all this way to visit Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals, but it’s a complication we could do without at this point in the proceedings.”

  “When will the next shipment be heading off?” asked Stefano.

  “In about ten days. The codeine phosphate tablets are almost ready for transport. We’re just waiting for our friends at the other end to finish their project. They’ve one final job, planned for the day after tomorrow, and then there’ll be sufficient stock in their warehouse to fulfil all the orders.”

  “And our African friends. When are they expecting the next delivery?”

  “In about six weeks’ time. They’re still working their way through the previous stock and need to clear that before they can take any more.”

  “And speaking of Africans, what do we make of this Mukooyo chap? I understand you know him from way back?”

  “Yes. We were at Kings together. He was a harmless buffoon then and I’m not sure anything’s changed. Rumour has it he only took the job at the World Health Organisation as a way to escape Kenya before he was pushed out of his ministerial post, or worse. From what I remember, he’s more interested in softball and other sports than he is in pharmaceutical factories. He’s probably only here for the ride, to give some credibility to Ms Jones’ visit.”

  “We don’t need to worry too much about him, then?”

  “No, I shouldn’t think so. Although if he happened to be in the same vehicle as Ms Jones and it just happened to meet with an accident on one of the quiet stretches of the road between the factory and the city centre, then so much the better. It would get rid of any loose ends.”

  “No, tempting as that sounds, I don’t think that would be a good idea at the moment, my friend.”

  Hawkins raised an eyebrow.

  “Not going soft on me, are you, Stefano?” he said with a grin.

  “On the contrary. I’m quite relaxed about the idea of Ms Jones meeting with an unfortunate accident; and her African friend as well, for that matter. I just don’t want it to be in my own city. It’s too close to home and would be difficult to brush off as a coincidence if anyone looked too closely at the factory.

  Hawkins sighed.

  “You’re right as usual, my friend. But I would feel much more relaxed if this meddlesome woman was out of the picture all together.”

  A small boy came out of the house and ran across the garden towards them.

  “Great-grandpa,” he said, “there’s a telephone call for you.”

  The old man struggled to his feet and stretched, pushing his hands into the small of his back and arching his shoulders backwards.

  “Oh, sitting on that bench isn’t good for my joints. I’m stiffening up,” he said. Then he nodded to the boy. “Okay, Paul, thank you. I’ll be in directly.” He turned back to Hawkins. “Are you coming back into the house for coffee?”

  “I don’t think so. Lunch was delicious, but I need to walk off some of those pirozhki if I’m not to spend the whole afternoon snoozing. Besides, I’m not sure Irina likes me all that much.”

  Stefano snorted with laughter.

  “You mean the way she slammed your plate down in front of you and then spent the time glaring at you? Whatever makes you think she doesn’t like you?” But then the smile disappeared from his face. “My grandson’s wife needs to learn this is still my house and my friends will always be welcome guests.”

  Hawkins nodded and smiled.

  “Yes, I know that, Stefano, and I’m grateful, but I’ve got some calls of my own to make. I’m going to say goodbye now and head off. Let’s talk tomorrow after you’ve had the report back from the factory and we can decide what, if anything, we need to do about Ms Suzanne Jones and her African friend.”

  “And you know,” said Stefano, “it could be a perfectly innocent coincidence. They might really be here on a World Health Organisation project as they said they are. In which case, we just need to find a reason to decline their offer of a place on the scheme and leave it at that.”

  Hawkins stared at him for a long moment.

  “Hmm,” he said finally. “Maybe. But I don’t really believe in coincidences.”

  Stefano watched as Michael Hawkins found his way to the garden gate and out into the street, turning to wave at the last moment.

  “No, my friend, neither do I,” he said as he turned and walked across the grass to the villa.

  “Yes?” It was just one word, but it carried a world of power and control. As Stefano Mladov sat at his desk with the phone in his huge paw of a right hand, the old man was gone and his air of being in charge had returned.

  “Stefano Nicovic, good day.” Stefano recognised the voice of his main contact in the Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals factory.

  “Josef Evgenevich, good day, how’s the audit going?”

  “Very well, very well indeed. The two visitors appear to be content with everything they’re seeing. They were particularly impressed with the new antibiotic sterile suite and with the warehouse.”

  “And in the tablet area?”

  “They had a quick look around, asked a few questions and that was it, as far as I can tell. I wasn’t able to find a reason to follow them around the whole time they were here. Yuri Mikhailovich took control of the introductions himself and then handed them over to Nadia, but they had quite a few engineering questions, so I was able to tag along for some of the time, to answer their queries as they occurred.”

  “And they really didn’t seem to have any difficult questions about the tablets?”

  “None at all, Stefano Nicovic. As it happens, we were producing an ordinary paracetamol product today, so there was nothing special to see anyway.”

  “And are they finished with their inspection then?”

  “Yes, I think so. They’re having lunch with Yuri Mikhailovich and then taking the early evening flight back to Kiev. I believe they’re planning to spend this evening in the hotel at Boryspol, working on their report. They said if they had any more questions, they’d call us. Then they’re leaving Ukraine tomorrow.”

  Stefano finished the call and put down the receiver. It seemed like his idea to put his contact in as an engineer, rather than as the general director was a good one. It allowed Yuri Mikhailovich to act perfectly normally as the head man running the company, while St
efano had a pair of eyes at the table most of the time.

  “And it looks, Ms Jones, as though it really might be a coincidence, you being here in my city, visiting my factory,” he mused. “So, I will give you the benefit of the doubt and let you leave Kharkiv unharmed. After all, the world is a pretty small place and I know where to find you if necessary. You and that brand new husband of yours!”

  Chapter 29

  The lunch at Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals dragged on much longer than they’d expected. Yuri Mikhailovich was proud of his factory and loved entertaining. Suzanne kept glancing at her watch as the time of the evening flight approached. At one point, their host noticed her concern.

  “Don’t worry, Mrs Jones. It only takes a few minutes to get to the airport. And it’s not an international flight, so the administration will be quite quick.” He picked up his glass. “Let us have just one final toast before I call for the driver.”

  By the time they left the factory, it was just fifty minutes before their plane was scheduled to take-off. Suzanne held her breath as the car turned onto the freeway and accelerated to more than 100 kilometres per hour. Within a few moments, she could see the airport control tower in the distance. But she could also see a bank of stationary red lights. The driver slammed on the brakes and they came to a shuddering stop just centimetres from the back of the queue. The carriageway in the opposite direction was empty of traffic.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Walter. The driver just shrugged. And for fifteen increasingly frustrating minutes, Suzanne and Walter stared out of the windscreen, hoping to see the red lights disappear and the cars start to move. Then they heard sirens in the distance. These went on for a long time before looking over her shoulder, Suzanne saw flashing lights in the distance.

  “Guvenator,” said the driver, pointing to a large limousine, which sported a Ukrainian flag and was both preceded and followed by two people carriers. All five vehicles had darkened windows. They roared down the wrong side of the road until they reached the gates of the airport, where they made an abrupt turn into the facility and across the tarmac towards a waiting plane.

  “Some sort of senior politician, I think,” said Walter. “I think he said ‘Governor’.”

  “Da,” said the driver, “Guvenator.”

  “Well, that’s all very well,” said Suzanne, as the traffic slowly started moving crawling forward, “but what makes these politicians think they can delay the rest of us?” Walter didn’t reply and she glanced across at him. “Don’t tell me the same thing used to happen in Kenya?”

  “Might have,” was the soft reply. Suzanne just shook her head.

  By the time they reached the terminal building, boarding for their flight was closed. They stood helplessly watching the little plane taxi along the runway and take off.

  “That’s a pain,” said Walter. “But Yuri Mikhailovich said there was another plane later tonight.”

  But apparently, Yuri Mikhailovich was misinformed. It was quite clear from the empty departures board and from the way the airport was gradually shutting down around them, that they were not going to get back to Kiev that night. The driver took them to ‘the best hotel in the city’ as requested by Walter Mukooyo; it was small and located next to a noisy bar in the central street, but it was clean, reasonably inexpensive and, more importantly, had two rooms available.

  Suzanne borrowed Walter’s phone to call Steve, but there was no answer. She left a message on the answerphone, telling him she’d missed the plane, but still hoped to get home by the next evening and asking him to let Charlie know, too. Then they spent the evening going through their notes and finalising their report. Although the main purpose of their visit had been to investigate the manufacture and sale of codeine phosphate tablets, the project on which they’d based their excuses, a pilot scheme for improving the standard of the industry overall, was genuine. Walter would be reporting back on both aspects when he returned to his office in Geneva later in the month. Although neither of them would be recommending the inclusion of Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals in the pilot scheme. There were just too many unanswered questions.

  Early next morning, they returned to the airport and managed to grab the remaining two seats on the first plane out, scheduled for 10am. It was due in from Kiev just after nine and although the arrivals board showed it was delayed by around an hour, they would still make their international flights if they reached Boryspol just before noon.

  “There was nothing amiss at Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals,” Walter said as they queued to get through the security gate into the check-in area, “in fact it was almost too good to be true. But we’ve not really made much progress, have we? I guess the answer to our questions lies in Russia after all.”

  “How much longer will you be staying in St Petersburg?” asked Suzanne.

  “Oh, for a week at least. I’m meeting up with Francine and Anton tomorrow to go through everything again. And I have a meeting with the customs officials on Friday. Once I’ve done that, I’ll decide on the next steps.”

  “And the Russian health authorities? How’re they reacting to all this?”

  “They’re being very helpful, thankfully. They were a little obstructive initially; not too keen on someone from outside coming in and trying to sort out their problems for them. But after the number of deaths started mounting, they changed their tune and have been most co-operative since then.”

  “It wasn’t they who called in the WHO in the first place?”

  “Well on paper, yes, it was. But if you dig below the surface, I think it was the Ministry of Justice who were pulling the strings. They control the police, and the police were getting nowhere in their investigations. I had an email after I arrived in Russia from a police captain from Vladivostok. He’d put in a request for international support and I suspect he wasn’t the only one. ”

  “It really must be getting bad for those proud organisations to ask for outside help.”

  “Oh, it is, Suzanne, trust me, it is.”

  Walter promised to send Suzanne details of anything else he found out. And Suzanne promised to go through Charlie’s ongoing investigations with him. They agreed on regular teleconferences.

  “And if you think Charlie and I could be of further help out here, just shout,” Suzanne said. “We’ll be happy to come out here again or to Russia.”

  When they reached Boryspol, there was a flight to St Petersburg ready to board, so Walter hurried off to get that. Suzanne saw she just about had time before her flight to reclaim her phone charger. She slipped out of the terminal building, across the road and into the foyer of the hotel. To her delight, the receptionist not only recognised her, but had her charging cable in a bag waiting for her. Slipping him a five dollar note in thanks, she hurried back into the terminal.

  Checking the time once she reached the departure lounge, she saw she still had a few minutes before the gate opened. She slipped into a seat next to an unused socket, plugged in and switched on the phone. The display immediately starting flashing at her. Seventeen missed messages. All from Charlie. Oh dear, she was going to be in trouble again, she thought with a grin as she clicked on the first one.

  But her grin faded and a wave of cold washed over her when she read her sister’s words. She shuddered.

  Company owned by old friends from Mozambique. Get out NOW.

  The remaining sixteen were increasingly frantic repetitions of the same message. She quickly responded to the last one, assuring her sister that both she and Walter were safe and on their respective journeys. Then she tried to call Walter, but his phone was switched off. And the departure board showed the flight for St Petersburg had already left. She’d have to wait until she landed in London before she’d be able to speak to him. She sent a quick text: Beware. KP owned by Mladovs. Will ring tomorrow. Then she headed for the gate and boarded the plane.

  Normally Suzanne slept through most flights, but this time she was wide awake throughout the whole thing. Wide awake and shaking!

&nbs
p; Chapter 30

  Stefano Mladov slept peacefully, with his concerns about Suzanne and Walter Mukooyo eased off. And the next day, he spent the morning with his great-grandchildren at the local park. It wasn’t until the afternoon that he got around to calling Hawkins. The two men discussed the previous day’s factory inspection.

  “We can expect the formal report in a week or so, according to Yuri Mikhailovich, but he’s very upbeat about the whole thing. Apparently, they had nothing but positive things to say about the factory and he’s very enthusiastic about the company getting a place on this WHO programme.”

  “Well he’s going to be sadly disappointed, then, isn’t he?” said Hawkins. “We’ve got a nice little business going here. The last thing we want is any further scrutiny either from the Ukrainian government or the World Health Organisation.”

  Stefano wondered briefly if he should query the tone of Hawkins’ voice and remind him that where Kharkiv Pharmaceuticals was concerned, there was no ‘we’. Hawkins was an old friend and a close collaborator in many a business venture. His contacts in Africa in particular were very good. And he was useful in many ways. But occasionally, he got above himself and started acting like he was a full partner in the Mladov businesses. And that would never happen. For Stefano, family was everything and this sentiment grew stronger with every passing day. But he decided to let it go for now. At that moment, Hawkins began speaking again.

  “I have some rather interesting news from St Petersburg,” he said. Stefano’s heart thudded.

  “Nothing going wrong with our plans, is there?”

  “No, it’s all fine. Boris has everything in place and is looking forward to receiving the next shipment. No, it was something one of the drivers said in passing about our friend Anatoly Vladimirovich. Apparently, he has a new woman in his life. A long-stay house guest.”