Skinner's festival

58

As Skinner was heading for the exit, he was stopped by the ChiefConstable's staff officer, a uniformed superintendent.

'Sorry, sir, but before you leave, could you please call Mr Doherty. He's in his office. He said you would know who he is.'

'Thanks, Malcolm.'

Skinner sprinted up the stairs to his office, and punched in Joe Doherty's number on the secure line.

'Joe? What can I do for you?'

'Just listen, that's all. I have a story to tell you, about Giminez and your friend Macdairmid, the patsy. I've found out who was I behind it all.'

Skinner sensed that Doherty was spinning out the suspense.

Joe, come on, for fuck's sake. I've got a crisis here.'

The FBI man laughed. 'So have some cousins of mine. OK, I'll get to the point. It's the CIA. They've been running Giminez.'

'What!'

'Yeah. To be exact it's one man. A crazy hawk at Langley called Goodman. It seems that at some point during the last administration, the President was being given an interdepartmental briefing on the drugs problem, and he made some sort of throwaway remark, along the lines of: "If someone would just go away and come up with a miracle cure for all this, what a goddamned hero he'd be." A bit like your Henry II wishing to berid of that turbulent priest of his. So Goodman's at the meeting, and his crazy little mind starts to work. He figures, "We'll never kill all the Colombians and the Burmese, or torch all their crops.

So what we have to do is discredit their product."

"The health agencies all over the world have been saying it fof: years: "If you touch smack or coke you will die, eventually." to an addict that just ain't true. We've had a boom in the di market, and in all the other crime that runs alongside it.

Goodman figures that what he's got to do is make the u believe: "If you touch heroin or smack you will die… now! No second chance." Then he does some more thinking and comes up with Giminez. The CIA have been running him for years, doing all sorts of things that we won't go into. Goodman tells him what he wants, Giminez says: "OK, gimme da money, I do it. But it'll take time." Goodman siphons off dough from a big CIA slush fund.

Giminez drops out of sight, and stays in deep cover for years.

What he's been doing is one, he's been building up supplies of horse and coke; two, putting some of the world's finest illicit chemists to work in making them lethal; and three, and most recently, setting up relationships with dealers around the world, like your MP friend, all of them greedy and in the market for cheap supplies. Say, Bob. Being an MP, that's pretty good cover, eh?

"The final stage of the plan, and it's a beauty, I have to say, is that Giminez, through his network, feeds the marks a little good stuff to whet their appetites, and get the street excited, then drops the bomb with the big shipment. End result is, dead users all around the world, stories leaked to the press, mass panic, and everyone too scared to touch the stuff, like ever again.'

Time was ebbing away, but Skinner was fascinated. 'So how did you get on to Goodman?'

'I passed the name Giminez on to Langley. They found the slush money, traced the payment to Goodman, and used all means necessary to make him talk.'

'So how do they stop it?'

'God knows. Maybe they can't. Goodman doesn't know names, or even how many Macdairmids there are, and the CIA can't get to Giminez anyway. He's operating blind. Broke contact with Goodman long ago. All the CIA can do now is put the word out on the street, and tell the Colombians about Giminez in the hope that they can stop him. But maybe they won't do that either.

Because, goddamn it, crazy Goodman's crazy idea could actually work. I did hear that the DBA can't figure out whether to give you a medal for uncovering this whole operation, or put a contract out on you! 'Meantime, Interpol has started to log reports from Hamburg of dozens of coke users – some of them top people – suddenly winding up dead all over the city. And somehow I doubt if that'll be the last we hear of Giminez and his special deliveries. Hope your crisis up in Scotland turns out to be a damn sight easier to solve!'