and stopped. Anna answered.
A thin, medium-built man dressed in an expensive dark suit entered. Gebhard Keller. A young-looking sixty- seven, with sharp features, black eyes, and fine silver-white hair. Keller carried a dark leather briefcase. He seemed to Charles Mallory like an upscale salesman, except he didn’t smile.
Charlie had asked Chidi Okoro to run a background check on Keller. He had found an impressive, and apparently clean, record. Keller retired early from German intelligence nine years ago and started his own pharmaceuticals intelligence firm. He’d contracted with most of the majors: Bayer, Pfizer, Roche and, prior to their merger, Glaxo and Wellcome. As with other pharma spy firms, the majority of his work involved patent violations. Nineteen months ago, he had sold his company, and he wasn’t really in the business anymore, although he had taken on at least two independent projects since then. Three, including this one. Charlie supposed his continued freelancing was like a prizefighter going back for one more bout. Once it was in your blood, nothing else provided the same charge. He understood that.
Keller sat at the table and slid the latches to open his briefcase. “I’m going to lay this out for you in general terms first, if there’s no objection. I will provide answers to your five questions, along with supplementary documentation. Then, I will try to answer any additional questions you might have.”
Anna nodded. Watching her, Charlie felt a longing again, a complicated feeling he wanted to simplify.
“If you show me that you have brought the second payment, we can proceed.”
Charlie handed him an envelope.
Keller examined it quickly and tucked it in a pocket of his briefcase.
“Did you do everything yourself?” Charlie asked.
“Everything myself. That’s correct.” His face creased into a weak facsimile of a smile. “I made some inquiries, as you can imagine, but discreetly. You have nothing to worry about.” He spoke with a slight German accent. “Yours is an unusual investigation. Most of what my company did was patent infringement. Not that that’s a small thing, of course.” He pulled sheets and clasped stacks of paper from the briefcase, organizing them on the table top. “Nearly ten percent of all drugs sold today are counterfeit, you understand. A successful drug these days, it’s a billion- dollar-a-year product. Fifteen years ago, a successful drug was one-tenth that. So, not surprisingly, there is a great deal of corruption in the industry.”
They waited. Keller fidgeted with a gold pen, then set it aside.
“You asked me five questions,” he said. “Here are my answers. Number one, you asked if there had been any dramatic increases in the production of flu vaccine or the flow of flu vaccine to Africa over the past six months. The answer is yes.
“The second part of your question assumed that answer. Where in Africa is this vaccine being shipped and what company or companies are handling the distribution?”
His eyes went back and forth from Anna to Charlie.
“The distribution mechanism is not one company. It’s at least seven different firms.” He rotated a list of names, in eighteen-point type, and slid it across the table. Two copies, one for each of them. “Sort of like a prescription drug addict going to seven different doctors to get his prescription. Hoping no one will catch on.”
Charlie glanced at the list of company names. Four with addresses, three were just names.
“Identifying the firm is one thing,” Keller said, as if anticipating his question. “The actual ownership, that’s something else.” Anna gave Charlie a sharp look. “A lot of companies hide behind a network of holding companies. From Liechtenstein to Panama to the British Virgin Islands. It’s gotten very difficult to track some of them. Or impossible.”
“Okay. So what can you tell us about these?” Charlie said.
“I’m getting to that. Your second question was about a company called VaxEze.”
Mallory nodded. The health consortium supported by Champion Group funds, which had hired Ivan Vogel. Investment funds supported by philanthropist Perry Gardner.
“They are part of this chain,” Keller said, pointing at the sheet of paper he had set in front of them.
“One of the seven,” Anna said.
“Correct, although they go by a different name now. VaxEze was purchased five months ago and merged with another firm, Wenders Pharma. The merged companies became a new entity called GenVac.”
They waited as he pulled out more papers.
“Last summer, VaxEze made a significant investment to quadruple its production capacity for anti-malarial medicines. The deal involved purchasing three modularized production facilities: one in Switzerland, two in West Africa. But I can tell you with certainty that what they have produced is not malaria vaccine. It’s mammalian-based flu vaccine. It’s what’s being shipped right now to various locations in Africa.”
“So this was in the works months before this flu virus appeared,” Anna said.
“Yes. That is correct.”
“What’s considered a significant investment?” Charlie asked.
“In the neighborhood of ninety million dollars,” Keller said.
“Where would they be getting that kind of funding?” Anna asked.
He began to smile. “Not one of your five questions. But let me continue, and I will try to answer that. Now, GenVac has an R&D lab and a manufacturing/shipping facility that appears to be producing flu vaccine in very large quantities. Its drugs began shipping six weeks ago to a health consortium that serves three African nations: Sundiata, Buttata, and Mancala, but primarily Mancala. I’m told that a subsidiary of GenVac won a several-million- dollar contract with the government of Mancala in July to produce and distribute a flu vaccine. They also purchased large tracts of property at several locations in the country.”
This confirmed what they had already learned.
Keller continued, “Now, sometimes, in the course of an investigation, you get lucky. You find a connection that isn’t something you had imagined. I like the adage that the harder you work, the luckier you get.” He nodded at Charlie, trying to elicit a smile in return. “That happened here. As I was looking into GenVac, I found something else: a small, private research lab, which develops its own drugs and occasionally does contract research. According to my investigation, this firm developed and licensed the vaccine called Sera-Flu, which is what’s being shipped to Africa in large amounts now by GenVac. It’s based in Basel, Switzerland.”
Anna frowned thoughtfully. “Who’s behind it?”
“Who owns it exactly, I can’t tell you. It’s a holding company registered in the Cayman Islands. All right? But the scientists who are directing its programs, I
“Go ahead,” Charlie said.
Keller closed his eyes, nodded slightly and continued.
“Stefan Drosky is the head scientist. He also has an ownership stake in the lab. Drosky recruited several others, including Gregori. The lab he works for is called Horst Laboratories. It was acquired by GenVac recently. Now, here’s the interesting thing, and the main reason I was able to find this out: Drosky appears to also have interests in the black market. He’s basically an independent researcher and businessman, and he’s managed to establish a lucrative side market. A supply chain to distribute a generic version of this vaccine, which he is illicitly selling to a third party, a distributer known as Arnau Inc. The distributor is co-owned by Drosky himself. He thinks it will make him a very wealthy man, evidently.”
“Who is he?”
“Drosky? At one time, he was a lead research scientist with Biopreparat, the Soviet biological weapons program, as were two or three of those who work with him.”
“Any personal information on him? Background?” Anna asked.
“Some, but he’s very guarded. He left Russia shortly after the break-up of the Soviet Union, evidently. His father apparently once worked for Vector, which was the largest of the Soviet operations.” Keller’s eyes widened for a moment. “Oh, I did hear something else about him. Basel has a small red-light district. Drosky pays some of the women there to visit him at home. There’s more in here,” he said, tapping his index finger on a stapled report. “When the Soviet Union broke apart, the biological weapons program was largely dismantled, as you know. Many people lost their jobs. He was sympathetic to them and hired several for his lab.”
