Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta corruption. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando las entradas con la etiqueta corruption. Mostrar todas las entradas

miércoles, 23 de enero de 2019

Tough job


   The body arrived at the morgue very late at night. Doctor Smith was there to receive it and check it before anyone else. It was one of those cases that she hated to attend: a suicide. The victims were often very young, kids that hadn’t even known love or anything in life, all the good things that she knew came up later in life, during college or when you started to live as an adult. Doctor Smith was still young, or so she like to think, so the see those young people on her table was beyond heartbreaking.

 She had the obligation to check the body in order to give a proper statement of what had happened, no matter how many witnesses were there. Insurance companies were to blame in this case, because most people would never want their children or parents being opened up only to check something that was already known. But it was part of her work and she just had to do it and in those dark hours of the night, which didn’t really make things better. She just put on her gloves and started working.

 The body had multiple lacerations, deep cuts in the wrists and even some smaller ones in other parts of the body, as in the chest, the face and the thighs. She took pictures of all of it, putting special attention to the smallest incisions, which she believed had been caused by a razor blade. A knife would never be that exact or cut in that way. Besides, she knew perfectly how different cuts looked. She had too much experience with things like that, so she tried not to overthink this when checking a body.

 After taking the pictures, she started checking for other marks on his body. She only found one big lump on her head, probably caused by something hitting that point a while ago. It hadn’t fully healed but it was there and it was still noticeable. She took pictures of the head, carefully tilting it to one side and to the other. Touching their faces was always overwhelming, and she had a technique for it: she looked straight at them and thought of her children, her family and every happy face she had seen recently.

 Sometimes she cried in silence when she checked the bodies, but it was always for a little while. She would then dried her tears with a tissue and move on with her work. But that time, her phone rang when it never did. It was too late at night and her bosses would never call at that time. She wished, but she would often get up to their calls, in the afternoon. It was the worst thing to have to sleep at odd hours and then be awakened by them, calling to ask things that she had already reported on thoroughly. But as with everything, she had grown accustomed to it.

 That time, it was one of her bosses who had been awakened himself by a call. Apparently, the body Doctor Smith had on her table was not only the body of a victim of suicide, but also the one of the son of a prominent government official. They were calling every single person in the city that could help cover up what had happened, at least for a little while. Apparently, the man was part of a very religious cult that had been growing in reconnaissance all over the country and he had gained his post because of that.

 To the doctor, it all reeked of corruption and she hated to be part of things like that. She had been asked to do things like that before but she had always been saved by her bosses at the very last minute. This time though, there was no way someone would save her from doing something she really didn’t wanted to do. She told her boss she hadn’t finish the autopsy, so that he should call her later in the day for when she had completed the whole thing. From then on, they could discuss the delay of the final report, not before.

 The man was about to talk further but she hung up and he didn’t call back. She had been clear enough and she had a job to do. Her hands were shaking, because all of those attitudes made her really mad, but she tried to clear her head and move on to more pressing things. She started opening the body a while after she had hung up. Everything inside of the boy was normal, nothing was out of place except some strange abnormalities that she didn’t recognize at first, and so she decided to do some tests.

 A thorough blood test would take a long time in a regular hospital but in a morgue it was a little bit faster. It would take an hour or so, time she spent checking the rest of the body and having something to eat. After all, she hadn’t eaten one bite for a long time. Her husband would often pack some things to snack on at work, because he knew very well she missed meals because of her work. In spite of it all, she loved what she did and really thought she made a difference for the rest of the world.

 She ate a yogurt, a banana and when she was in the middle of a cookie, the blood test was completed by the computer. She finished eating while reading the information and she was shocked to see what was on the screen. She looked at the body and looked at its surroundings. She put on a new pair of gloves and checked carefully for blood on the table and on herself. She used a mirror that was always there, unused, to see if she was safe. It was horrible to think like that but she knew being careless was unforgivable. HIV was not something to take on lightly.

 How a seventeen-year-old kid had been infected with that various, she did not know. And suddenly she realized why they wanted everything to be covered up and delayed. It wasn’t the fact that the kid had committed suicide but that he had HIV and maybe even that he was gay… That was too much to assume, because drug addicts were also prone to the disease, but she had checked the body carefully and there were not traces of injections on his arms or anywhere else on his body. She checked again but the results were the same.

 Doctor Smith closed the body and left it as untouched as she could. She finished late or very early, however people may have thought about it. She expected another call from her boss soon, as her shift was not very far from ending. However, he did not do that but decided to get there in person, which was highly irregular. What was even worse, was the fact the child’s parent was also in the building, apparently waiting for his cover up to be confirmed. Her blood was boiling once again.

 She explained the case to her superior and he just listened to everything she had found. When she finished reporting her results, he asked if she had written it all already. And she nodded; she had finished only minutes before their arrival. She had printed out a copy and put the digital version on a portable device. The man grabbed both and then told her it was very important that she understood that no part of that information could leak out of the building. He then announced the man was going to see the body.

 Before she could protest the man and his bodyguards were there. She asked the armed men to leave, stating that they had to respect the bodies that were stored in that room. So they left and only the doctor, her boss and the parent stayed there in silence. She looked at the politician as he looked at his son. She tried to decipher what that look on his face meant, but it was too hard. The man was an expert already; he had learned to use that same face in his political life and had found a way to use in his personal one.

 The man left a few minute afterwards. Her boss took the information away and reminded her of shutting her lips, as saying anything could endanger all of their posts and even their lives. The man had grown too powerful and it was necessary to know not to talk until they knew exactly what to say.

 Her boss left too and her shift finally ended. She was tired and her head was spinning. She thought it was criminal what was happening but she had no say in the matter, her voice had been silenced in a second. It was good to leave for home though, and enjoy that life that seemed so far away from her work.

sábado, 22 de agosto de 2015

Corruption

   When Nelly woke up that morning, she only wanted to train. She was running a marathon in only two weeks and she needed to be ready to face off against so many other women that were coming into the city to participate. She wanted to be the best and for her city and country to be recognized everywhere in the world. She had begun training only recently but had been a runner for all of her life. She had won several tournaments and contests around the world. She even had a bronze medal from the Olympic games, her proudest achievement. Now, she was a little bit older and she knew she couldn’t be as good as the younger ladies but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be outstanding. She was ready to show the world, one more time, what she was made of.

 But that morning, when she stepped into the field to practice, she overheard two people in the locker room. She was going to leave her things there and put on her running shoes but as soon as she heard people inside she stopped. She had no idea why because normally she would’ve just come in but she didn’t. Instead, she heard everything about a medicine, some sort of shot, which a very well known athlete was taking to stay fit for the marathon. The two people were discussing bringing the medicine from another country and how they would do that. Apparently, the substance was not legal. They also said that the athlete needed to prepare herself for an upcoming anti-doping test.

 Then, Nelly heard movement so she silently walked back to the entrance and just pretended to be arriving. The two men inside the locker room came out and Nelly almost yelled when she saw who they were: a man working for the federation of athletics and her own personal trainer. For a moment, she stopped walking because she felt so overwhelmed but then she kept moving and greeted both men. The one from the federation left shortly after and her trainer told her to hit the locker room to prepare. As she put on her shoes, she thought about how disappointed she felt. She knew her trainer coached other women but not that he used forbidden substances to make them win. She had to do something about it but didn’t know what.

 The training session went as usual. She warmed up first and then practiced by jogging around the stadium several times. Her trainer would correct her several times and would show her on a map the several road features along the way of the marathon. But the truth was that she couldn’t be totally focused on what he was saying or on what she was doing. What she had heard was too serious. After all, an athlete couldn’t know about anti-doping tests because the point was for them to be a surprise and check the real current state of an athlete. They were cheating, probably to make her stay clean until they had to test her and then they could give her whatever substance she was taking.

 When training was over, her coach was willing to take her home but Nelly told him that she was going to meet a friend nearby for lunch. This was true and she couldn’t be happier that it was. Her friend wasn’t part of the sports world but she was a very pragmatic and effective friend who worked for the ministry of culture. Her name was Grace and she was waiting in the restaurant when Nelly arrived. She excused herself but Grace told her she was actually early because of her work. Apparently, everything related to a ballet performance coming from Ukraine had gone great and her presence was not needed anymore. So Nelly sat down and told Grace everything, not even breathing properly to stop. She finished by saying she had never witnessed anything like that.

 Grace told her she had seen a documentary about something like that but that it happened in poor countries, where people needed to win because of the amount of money that moves around in those types of competitions but she wasn’t surprised that it happened there either. She then asked Nelly what she was going to do about it but Nelly just couldn’t answer that question. She was worried because anything that she said would be very bad for her trainer but she felt a responsibility to do something. After all, she had been running for at almost twenty years and she had always been clean. For her, it was awful what some people did to stay on top.

 Her friend told her that the best she could do was to investigate more about the two guys. If they were cheating it couldn’t be the first time so many other people may be in it and some would even be willing to tell the truth. Grace told her that she would investigate with people in the ministry of sports, who had been created some years ago, specifically to deal with all of these issues. She knew a couple of people there and they might be able to tell her more. Nelly thanked her and they then had a very nice lunch, discussing other topics that had nothing to do with sports or culture. They had been best friends since college and they understood each other perfectly, even to the point where they knew what the other would do or say in some contexts.

 Later that evening, Nelly began her investigation online. She found out about small scandals and wrote down some name that would be willing to tell more about what they had seen in the past. She knew that what she was doing was going to put a personal friend, her coach, in the line of fire. She had thought she knew him for all these years but now, she had no idea what to think. But she knew that other athletes, honest like her, didn’t have to put up with cheating of any kind. Training and been ready for any type of sportive event was tough enough and cheating just felt like the worst kind of betrayal.

 The next day, Nelly decided to visit a man called Frank Underwood. Several articles pointed at him after he had allegedly denounced corruption in the federation of athletics. Nelly went directly to his house because meeting in any other place would be too dangerous. The man did not know who she was but when she announced her intentions, he rapidly let her in. He was surprised to know she was an athlete and, for whatever reason, he knew who she was and told her she respected her work immensely.  Nelly told her she suspected her coach and at least one federation man of corruption and leading athletes to forbidden drugs. The man faintly smiled and told her he had had been thrown out of sports altogether of what he had seen inside of the athletics world.

 He told her that he found out how they imported a substance called “tetromizine” into the country. Apparently the procedure was even more difficult to achieve than if they wanted to import marihuana or even alcohol. They would just put it in home appliances like refrigerators and microwaves. Someone in the port would help them get their stash and then a single box would have enough for at least a hundred athletes or more if they knew how to use it. It was, to put it simply, a drug ring and everyone in the federation was involved, from a beginner in the athletic world to the president of the organization. Every point of the pyramid was rotten beyond repair.

 Before leaving, the man told Nelly to have proof before saying anything. He didn’t want her to live through the hell he had lived some years earlier. She took her advised and begun investigating harder, even to the point when she was really letting go of the training for the marathon. Her coach asked her several times what was going on and she always had an answer, namely something related with the female anatomy. But the truth was she was getting closer to what she saw as the truth. Her friend Grace gave her some statistics to work with and the number proved that the athletes had consumed something before some of the events as their blood results were all over the place.

 Then, one other morning of training, she heard them again but this time she came ready. She recorded the whole conversation and decided it was time to act. The marathon was only three days away but she needed to do this now. So Nelly went to the police and then to the federation and formally accused both her coach and the man from the federation, called Marcus Fröm of drug trafficking and influencing official sportive events. There a huge scandal, of course, and many people attacked Nelly because of what she had said. She never talked to her trainer again, mainly because he was sent to jail for ten years. The evidence had been to solid to refute.


 She participated in the marathon and finished fifth, which she considered to be a triumph. She celebrated with Grace and other friends who praised her for her decision to denounce what was wrong with sports. However, only a year after it all broke out, she decided to leave the world of sports. The pressure from all sides was too much to handle and she wanted to have a peaceful rest of her life. So she retired and started enjoying many other parts of her life she had never explored. She still ran though, because she felt it made her free.

martes, 28 de abril de 2015

Rotten Nation

   It was raining. The small plane taxied for several minutes through the airport until it parked in front of a large hangar, owned by the police. This was very uncommon, as the president had a special building were he always arrived at after national or international tours. It was well know but the media and the public, that he had personally being overlooking the destruction of several drug labs in remote areas. So maybe that was the reason why, stepping out of the plane, he only looked forward, towards the small group waiting for him.

 They walked in silence inside the hangar and then went through a door that led into the building behind it. The president’s assistant was in front, going up some stairs, several corridors and finally arriving at a conference room. The president sat down in the chair in one end of the table as the others sat in the remaining seats. Only one seat was empty. Some mumbled trying to find out why its occupant was missing, others said nothing. The president drank some water and waited until his assistant told him something to the ear and then sat down in a chair in the corner, right after closing the door.

 The president stood up and looked at the eyes of every single one of those men: the chief of police and other men of that entity, generals of all of the military branches and also the head of the secret police. On every single one of them rested the defense of the country, the physical power that it had in order to maintain things as they were. The president inhaled and then looked to the empty seat and sat down again.

-       Do you guys know who occupies that seat?

 One of the generals, visibly eager to participate in order to seem important or smart, shoot his hand up. The president looked at him.

-       That’s where General Arroyo normally seats, the head of the aviation.

 The president nodded, without saying a word. He looked at the seat a little more then announced that General Arroyo had been arrested during the raid against the drug cartels. Every single one of the people present, except for the president’s assistant (the only woman in the room), were baffled at the news. They started asking and demanding and saying it was an outrage and how surprised they were and also hurt. The president asked them, with a gesture of the hand, to end the noise.

 Once the room was calm again, he stared directly at the director of the police. The man was a tall, white and pink skinned man. He looked scared as the president looked at him, with his piercing eyes and soft breathing. None of the military men, all experience in combat and enemies, had ever seen that look on a president or any other person. He looked vicious and hateful.

-       General García.
-       Yes, sir? – Answered the director of the police.
-       How many years have you been head of the police?

The man thought that was a weird question to ask but also felt more fear than before. The president had stopped looking at him and that made him feel even uneasier.

-       I have been in the post for almost ten years.
-       Ten years. – Said the president, in a surprisingly grave voice.
-       Yes…
-       Too many?
-       Sorry?

 Everyone present was surprised at this question. Some of the men tried to reply something but weren’t able to find the words.  No one would ever say that unless they wanted to sack someone. But, then again, what reason did the president have? And, would he only be interested in sacking one man?

 This meeting had been ordered by the president on his flight back and most men had narrowly missed his arrival, as it was imminent. Since he had been elected, almost a year ago, he had proven to be quite and unpredictable man. He had won narrowly in a country that normally hated the likes of men like him but somehow, it had happened. Of course, there had been recounts and lawsuits but nothing had moved him from remaining in power. He had powerful enemies, namely the men that had been in power before, as he was not the typical president.

 Not only he was on the left side of the spectrum, a “soft” left in his words, but also he was interested in preserving culture and encourage the inner growth of the people. Some even said that was precisely why he won: the ones always outside had chosen him in the bigger cities and that had been enough. The military and all public forces had been scared of him but he had went on with the recurrent struggle against the cartels just as the others did so they had all relaxed, to this day.

-       I said, have they been too many?
-       I… I don’t know sir.
-       I think it’s time to clean up, wouldn’t you say misters?

 He said that looking at everyone in the table, and with an annoying smirk on his face. He then turned to his assistant who instantly produced a folder with several sheets of papers. They went through them and took out only six papers. The woman put away the folder and went back to her chair. The president held the sheets on his hand, looking at the men again.

-       Any idea of what that is?

 The same man that had raised his hand before, raised it again:

-       Our resignation letters?

 The president then laughed. It was an obviously fake laugh but it went for so long than people didn’t know how to respond. Some of them smiled and others just trembled in their spots.

-       Not exactly. In here, I have several names, including General Arroyo’s one. All the people listed here have been tracked down by the secret police and we have enough proof to put them in jail. There are some as high profile as the general and others not so much. I need you… Well, I demand of you to clean up your mess.

 He put the papers in front of him, in a way that anyone could have taken them but no one did. They were visibly bothered by what was happening but did not dare to say a word.

-       Any comments, gentlemen?

 The oldest one of the bunch, a general of the navy, looked straight at the president and pointed at him, his hand shaking like mad.

-       You have no right to do that.
-       Excuse me?
-       You cannot tell us what to do, not like this! We’re not children!

 The old men had stood up and raised his voice. The assistant instantly looked to the door, worried people might hear on the other side.

-       We are older than you, more experienced and you should take our advice instead of telling us how to run our entities.

 The president then stood up and smiled weirdly again. It was very unpleasant.

-       First, I have to ask not to raise your voice. Second, what do you mean with “your entities”?
-       I mean we have maintained…
-       Exactly – Said the president, interrupting him. – You have kept them going but those entities belong to the State, to the people. You all took an oath to protect them and you work for me and I for them. Do you understand that?

 The old man sat back down. Everyone was looking at the president as if he had gone insane but he kept his smirk on his face and didn’t sit back down.

-       Gentlemen, I repeat, I demand of you to clean up your entities. They are rotten and you should be grateful you’re not the ones to be sacked first. Your entities are supposed to be the ones protecting us and making the example and that is not the case right now. You know what we found out? Do you?

 Again, no one said anything, only scared faces looked at him.

-       Several policemen involved in bribes and corruption, navy officers helping the cartels, aviation officers bringing whores to the compounds. Even my own personal guard has been known to film pornographic films in State property. Do you understand how bad this is?

 Some nodded, some didn’t. They looked to the ground now, exactly like children after having been grounded.

-       The president’s before me let it all happen, let this country rot from the inside out. I’m not going to tolerate that anymore. If you don’t put this entire people under trial, I will. I have proofs. And if you fail to do it fast, I have many candidates for every single one of your posts.
-       But…
-       But what general Márquez? But what?

 But general Márquez, of the air force, had no idea what to say next. He was as intimidated as the other ones. As men of force, they were already thinking of a way to keep their posts and form an opposition but then the president drew attention back to him by coughing.

-       I have a dinner to attend to with the ambassadors residing in the country. But before that I want to warn you: I’m decreasing the amount of money invested in the military and the police and allocating it to education and health. Tell it to your men, the announcement will be done tonight.


 And then the assistant opened the door and the president left, leaving the country changed and the forces of the past in a state of induced coma.