Felix Francis - Triple Crown

I knew that to be untrue, but how could I prove it?

And, from what I could see, there was no record of Debenture ever having being given any cobalt salts. But then there wouldn’t be, would there? Cobalt was a banned substance.

Keith returned to the office but I had already closed the register and made sure it was back exactly as I’d found it.

‘Thanks, Paddy,’ Keith said, settling down again in front of the TV.

‘No problem.’

I went off in search of a quiet corner to call Tony on the non-smart phones.

‘I think it is time to start setting our trap,’ I said.

‘How?’

‘Who do you communicate with on your private email?’

Tony clearly thought it was an odd question.

‘Friends and family, you know, and other private stuff.’

‘Do you ever send emails to anyone involved with FACSA using your private account?’

There was a pause while he thought.

‘I’m in touch with my predecessor as Deputy Director. I worked under him for thirteen years and we’re still friends. I occasionally email him about FACSA matters, especially if I need some advice.’

‘He’ll do very nicely,’ I said. ‘I assume you trust him?’

‘Without hesitation.’

‘Will he keep things confidential from everyone, including the others at FACSA?’

‘I am sure he will if I ask him to.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Call him, but not from your office or your home phones, and certainly not with your own cell. Use the one you’re speaking on now. Explain that you believe your emails have been compromised and you are trying to set a trap for whoever has done it. Give him as much detail as you think is necessary but make it clear to him that he should never call you, or send you anything unless you have called him first.’

‘Do you really think my phones are bugged?’

‘Probably not,’ I said, ‘but it is better to assume they are than to get caught out later. After you’ve spoken to him, send him an email saying that you are now convinced there is someone in the FACSA setup who is leaking confidential information to potential racing targets. That should get our mole’s attention.’

‘Is that enough?’ Tony asked.

‘To start with, yes. It will put our mole on alert but not to the extent that he, or she, thinks we know who it is.’

‘Which we don’t,’ Tony pointed out.

‘I’m well aware of that,’ I said, slightly irritated. ‘But, in time, we might try to make him, or her, believe that we do, in order to flush them out into the open.’

‘Do you want my friend to reply to the email? I would, if I were him.’

‘Yes, tell him to send a reply asking why you believe there’s a problem. But don’t answer until tomorrow.’

‘Why not?’ Tony said.

‘Because I’m still working on what and how much we should divulge. If we do too much too quickly, our mole will smell a rat.’

‘Can moles smell rats?’ Tony asked with a laugh.

I laughed too. It eased the tension.

‘There’s something else I would like you to do,’ I said. ‘Tell Norman Gibson officially that the Maryland Racing Commissioner has informed you in confidence that a horse failed a dope test for excess cobalt at Pimlico on Preakness Day. Say that the information is not being made public yet because you have decided that FACSA should conduct a review into the misuse of cobalt in American racing and you do not want to send everyone into hiding. When that gets around your office there will be even more for our mole to think about. He’ll be desperate to find out which horse failed the test.’

‘So I don’t say which horse?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’d be worried about our mole immediately alerting George Raworth. He might then remove the liquid nitrogen flask and we would end up with nothing.’

‘Have you found out whether there’s any semen in it?’ Tony asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘And I’m unlikely now to get a chance.’

I explained to him that I had lost my lock picks, without actually giving him the details of how. That would have been too embarrassing.

‘I could easily get a search warrant,’ Tony said. ‘We can’t risk that Raworth will infect any more horses with EVA.’

He was right. Of course, he was right.

‘But if we move too soon then we might lose the chance of catching your mole, and that’s the reason why I’m here in the first place. Today is Sunday. The Belmont Stakes horses won’t be gathering here until the end of this week at the earliest. If I don’t have the mole by the coming Friday, then you can get your warrant.’

I could tell that Tony didn’t like having to wait, but he liked having a mole in his organisation even less.

My only problem was working out how I was going to find the FACSA mole in just five days.

On Monday afternoon I had Tony write another email to his friend listing the reasons why he was certain that FACSA had a mole.

I asked him to explain how some trainers had been clearly pre-warned about upcoming raids, and also how he had brought forward the raid on Hayden Ryder’s barn at Churchill Downs by three days, only to discover that the trainer had arranged for the horses to be moved out on that very morning due to a tip-off.

‘Also tell him all about the journalist Jason Connor, including his trip to Laurel and how he died on the way home,’ I said. ‘Say that you don’t believe the medical examiner’s report and you are convinced the mole in the organisation is somehow responsible for Connor’s death.’

To be honest, by doing this, I thought we were moving things along a bit too fast, but my timescale was limited.

‘I need the mole to know that we are chasing his tail.’

‘But surely it would be better if he didn’t,’ Tony replied. ‘Then we could catch him unawares.’

‘Yes, ideally,’ I said, ‘but how would we? We need him to come out into the open and, this way, he knows we know, but he doesn’t know that we know he knows we know.’

‘Eh? What was that? Can you run it past me again?’

‘By reading your emails, the mole will know that we are aware we have a mole in the first place. But, I’m hopeful that he, or she, doesn’t also know that we are aware that your private emails have been compromised, so that he is unaware that we are giving him the information that we know about him on purpose.’

‘What if he does know?’

‘Then we will probably never discover who it is. That’s why we need to be very careful about what you should write to your friend. We absolutely must not let on to the mole that we know he’s reading it. Otherwise we’ll never catch him out.’

Life in Raworth’s barn went on as normal during Monday’s evening stables, except that Diego had decided that his self-imposed truce of the last few days should come to an end.

I couldn’t understand why. He had clearly so scared Maria that she hadn’t said a word to me in over a week and she had even ignored the other young grooms, choosing to eat her meals either alone or with Diego and avoiding the recreation hall altogether by returning to her room immediately after.

But that didn’t seem to deter Diego in his vendetta.

Twice he tried to knock feed out of my hands in the shedrow and, when I went to sidestep him, he kicked out at me, causing me to stumble into the dirt.

‘What’s your problem?’ I shouted at him from my knees, but he didn’t reply. He only stared down at me with his cold black eyes.

Things only got worse when I went for my supper. I had hung back in the hope that he would go to eat with the others, and I would come along later and avoid him.

But my plan didn’t quite work out that way.

Diego was waiting for me outside the track kitchen, together with his three Puerto Rican lieutenants, and he had a knife in his right hand. I could see it glinting in the late-afternoon sunshine.