Informant (30 page)

“I’m doing all this for you and the children,’’ he protested. “I want to give you guys everything. That’s why I’m working so much. It’s for the family.’’

Ginger took a breath. Mark’s tone was snippy. He had always been so bubbly and happy; these days, he was often just unpleasant and tired.

“Mark, this isn’t for the family,’’ she said. “We don’t need all these things.’’

“What, you want to be somebody living in some small house?’’ he snapped. “You want to be like those people who can’t afford cars for their kids?’’

Ginger felt taken aback. It sounded as if he thought that money made him superior to people with smaller incomes. Something inside him had changed.

“You’re not better than somebody else because you have more cars or a bigger salary,’’ she said. “It has nothing to do with the kind of person you are.’’

She paused. “You used to know that,’’ she said softly. “You used to know what mattered. You need to find that out again. You need to turn back to God.’’

Mark glared at her.

“I don’t need God,’’ he said. “I’ve got more power than God.’’

On February 2, 1994, Whitacre met with Shepard and Weatherall. In the weeks since Tokyo, he had recorded a number of tapes, mostly haggling with the Japanese. Still, the conspiracy was working: Whitacre estimated that ADM would go from a two-million-dollar loss in lysine for 1993 to a fifty-five-million-dollar profit in 1994.

That night, Whitacre seemed eager. “Our next price-fixing meeting’s been scheduled,’’ he said.

He paused. “It’s gonna happen in Hawaii.’’

In his conversations with the Japanese in recent weeks, Whitacre had been talking up Hawaii. His message was always the same: the golf, the golf, the golf. Finally, with a new sense of trust emerging among the lysine producers, the Asian companies agreed. They would meet in Hawaii and play golf.

Everything was arranged, Whitacre said. They would be traveling to Hawaii in early March. A meeting of the official lysine association was scheduled to provide cover for the price-fixing meeting.

Shepard and Weatherall were delighted with the news. Their long shot had finally come in. And all thanks to Hawaii’s world-renowned golf.

C
HAPTER
9

O
utside a terminal at Honolulu International Airport, Weatherall tossed his suitcase in the back of a rented convertible, feeling delighted with his luck. The convertible had been available at no extra charge; now he could soak up some Hawaii sun. Herndon hopped into the passenger seat, setting a case loaded with recording equipment on the floor. In a few minutes, the car top was down and the agents were starting the forty-five-minute drive to the Makaha Valley.

Soon, they were on a road between the rugged cliffs of the Waianae Range and Oahu’s western shore. As they drove, they saw a gorgeous, eighteen-hole golf course, with views of the Pacific and Makaha Valley, framed by huge volcanic cliffs. Behind the course, quaint, cottagelike structures came into view—the luxurious 185-room Sheraton Makaha Resort and Country Club. This was the place, in an isolated and lush part of Hawaii, chosen by the price-fixing conspirators as the site of their next meeting, scheduled in two days.

Weatherall and Herndon left their hotel rooms early the next morning dressed like any other tourists, in slacks and open-neck shirts. They walked to the lobby and headed straight to the front desk.

“Excuse me,’’ Herndon said to the desk clerk. “We’re here for some meetings with Mark Whitacre of ADM. I understand he has some conference rooms reserved. Can we take a look at them?’’

A hotel employee led them across the grounds to the cottages. They headed down an outdoor hallway to the conference room. The employee opened the door.

The room was a disaster. It was huge, giving the conspirators plenty of space to walk around—a potential problem for the videotape. Worse, the neighboring room where the FBI was supposed to work was separated by only a flimsy partition. Even if the agents were not heard, anyone could open the partition by pushing a button. Herndon glanced at Weatherall.

“I know,’’ Weatherall said, “this is not good.’’

Weatherall looked over at the hotel employee.

“This room is simply not going to work,’’ he said. “We need to do something about it.’’

The three men headed back to the hotel lobby. While Weatherall and Herndon were waiting, an agent from the Honolulu Field Office arrived, accompanied by members of the FBI’s surveillance team known as the Special Operations Group, or SOG. The SOG members would never have been mistaken for FBI agents. Several were dressed in shorts, with open, brightly colored shirts. With their deep tans, they were not likely to stand out among the hotel guests.

The agents headed to the office of the hotel’s head of security and explained the problem with the conference room. This was an FBI operation, they explained. They needed a smaller room, preferably connected to another room where they could work.

“This isn’t easy, guys,’’ the security chief said. “The hotel’s full. But let me work on it.’’

The group headed out the door. Weatherall sighed.

“I’ll tell you, Bob,’’ he said. “Nothing simple is simple.’’

Later that afternoon, Herndon stood in one of the hotel suites. It was small and would probably be pretty uncomfortable as a meeting place for the lysine executives. But it was the best the hotel could do on short notice. Whitacre would stay in the suite’s bedroom; that would provide a plausible explanation for why the meeting was being held there.

With less than twenty-four hours to go, new problems cropped up. The neighboring rooms were occupied, forcing the agents to set up far down the hall. For the camera to work, they would have to shoot microwaves through the walls of two rooms; it would be impossible to hide wires over such a huge distance.

After bringing in the first load of equipment, the SOG team ran a test. The signal went in and out—they were sure to miss parts of the meeting. The team dashed out of the room, coming back with several boxes of new equipment to boost the signal. Everyone held their breath as the equipment was turned on. The picture came through; the microwaves would work.

But unfortunately, the camera would not. Unlike the device in Irvine, this camera could not rotate or zoom in. Because the new meeting place was so small, the camera could not be placed far back enough to get a wide view of the room. Half the people in the room would be outside the shot. The SOG team placed an emergency call to a technical support group in Quantico, Virginia, asking for another camera.

As they waited for the delivery from Quantico, the agents did their best to arrange the room. They pushed the chairs into a circle, hoping to narrow the shot. They moved a table in front of the window, with plans to put the lamp there when it arrived. The room looked unnatural, but it would have to do.

The next morning, a box with the new camera was delivered to the FBI office in Hawaii. A technical agent drove it to the Sheraton Makaha. Herndon and Weatherall watched as an agent opened the box, pulling out a green-tinted glass lamp. It looked familiar.

“Yeah, we’ve seen this one,’’ Weatherall said. “It’s kind of been making the rounds in our case.’’

The lamp appeared identical to the one that had been used at the meeting in Irvine, California. But it was too late for a change. The agents could only hope that, if the executives noticed the similarity, they would just assume that some lamp company was doing a good job marketing to the nation’s hotel chains.

The next morning, Whitacre came back from breakfast and walked straight to the FBI’s command center, where he knew Herndon would be waiting.

Herndon studied Whitacre as he slipped inside. He showed no tension, no fear. This was a big day, but Whitacre was calm. The agents traded greetings with him, talking a bit about the quality of the hotel.

Bringing out a small bag, Herndon unzipped it and removed a razor and shaving cream.

“It’s that time again, Mark,’’ he said, an apologetic tone in his voice.

“Oh, sure, no problem,’’ Whitacre replied.

As Herndon filled his hand with shaving cream, Whitacre pulled off his shirt. The agent smeared the cream across Whitacre’s chest and carefully shaved his body hair. It was an uncomfortable moment.

Afterward, Herndon brought out the equipment. It was one of the earliest generations of a new device, known as F-Bird, after FBI Research and Development. This was one of the first FBI investigations to use the new equipment. It was thin, about the size of a cigarette case. It did not need tapes; instead, the device recorded digitally using memory cards, allowing conversations to be uploaded later and played on a computer. There was no On/Off switch for Whitacre to worry about. Before a meeting, the agents would turn the device on, after programming it with a time limit for recording. The F-Bird would keep running until either the time ran out or the agents switched it off.

Herndon strapped the device onto the small of Whitacre’s back, then attached the microphones and fed the wires to the front. He carefully taped them to the spots he had just shaved.

Whitacre dressed. “Bob, I really think this will be a good meeting,’’ he said, pulling on his shirt.

“Think you’ll have any problem with the room?’’

“No, the room will work out. It’ll be fine.’’

Herndon ran through a few last points before remembering the instructions from the prosecutors.

“Mark, one more thing,’’ he said. “When you guys start agreeing to volumes and prices, I want you to poll the group and see if they’re all in agreement. And I want you to use the word
agreement
.”

Herndon expected Whitacre to object. People just didn’t talk like that. Even Herndon thought the move would potentially be a tip-off, but the prosecutors were demanding it. Surprisingly, Whitacre calmly said he would have no problem taking the poll.

“Now, during the meeting I’ll probably give you a call,’’ Herndon said. “So just act like it’s room service or the hotel management, checking to see if everything’s all right. I’ll call even if there aren’t any problems, just to let you know we’re in place.’’

“Okay.’’

Weatherall arrived in the room, looking serious. He was ready to get started.

Herndon turned back to Whitacre. “Everything will be fine, you’ll be great,’’ he said. “Remember to use the word
agreement
.”

“Okay, Bob.’’

“And remember, don’t talk too much. Let the action come to you.’’

“I gotta talk, Bob,’’ Whitacre said, exasperated.

“I know that but . . ’’

“I mean, I’m there representing ADM. I’ve gotta make sure our interests are portrayed. Otherwise, everybody would be suspicious.’’

“I understand, Mark. You can talk. Just don’t dominate. We want to see the others’ involvement.’’

“I got you. I got you,” Whitacre said.

Whitacre was ready to go. At that moment, Herndon felt some level of affection for him, felt lucky to have Whitacre on his team. He was the reason they were here. He was the one allowing the FBI to collect the evidence of this crime. Without Whitacre’s help, the case could never happen.

Masaru Yamamoto of Kyowa Hakko pushed open the glass doors to the lobby of the Sheraton Makaha and walked outside. He had enjoyed breakfast at the hotel restaurant and was now headed to the meeting in Whitacre’s suite. Despite his casual dress of slacks and a sport shirt, Yamamoto looked almost formal compared with the many guests heading out for golf.

As he walked, Yamamoto did not notice the casually dressed man following him. Yamamoto reached the path going downhill to Whitacre’s room, and the man stopped, touching the microphone on a concealed radio.

“I’ve got an Asian male, about forty years old, dressed nicely, and walking your way,’’ the man said.

Yamamoto rounded the corner at the bottom of the hill, a few dozen feet from Whitacre’s room. He walked near a window that appeared to be blocked by a blind.

Behind the blind, another agent aimed an automatic, motorized camera through a tiny opening.

The camera clicked repeatedly as Yamamoto passed.

Herndon took a seat in front of the blank monitor and slid the earphones over his head. The SOG agents came in, telling him that Whitacre and some of the other lysine executives were in the room. Herndon glanced at the clock; in a few seconds, it would be 8:55. He pressed down the buttons on the recording equipment. Images and sounds instantly emerged from the monitor. Terry Wilson was talking.

“We’ll give you five percent of the market,’’ he said. “That’s what we’ll give you.’’

Yamamoto was amused. “Five percent, oh yes.’’

“That should wake him up,’’ said Henri Vetter, Eurolysine’s representative to the meeting.

The men laughed.

Herndon wasn’t positive what they were discussing. It didn’t matter.

Manipulating the joystick, Herndon grew concerned. J. S. Kim, a Korean executive from Miwon, had placed a chair in front of the lamp. But almost as soon as it was there, it disappeared. Herndon watched Whitacre move the chair to another part of the room. Herndon smiled. Whitacre was paying attention.

Whitacre looked around the cramped room. The seats were unnaturally close together. The lamp—wait, was that the same lamp from Irvine?—was set up in front of the window and looked out of place. Whitacre had stayed the night in the suite but hadn’t noticed how bad it was until he saw all the lysine executives crawling over each other.

He checked his watch. It was time to get started.

“I’d like to welcome everybody here to this meeting,’’ he said. “Glad everybody could make it, and sorry for the ones who can’t play golf tomorrow. We’re gonna have a good time.’’

The nine other executives laughed as many sipped coffee or orange juice.

Whitacre said that in the morning the executives would discuss production volumes and the results from the group’s last meeting in Japan. In the afternoon, they would deal with Cheil, the smaller of the two Korean companies involved in the scheme. Cheil was still refusing to agree to a reasonable volume allocation. The others had decided to keep its executives out of the morning meeting, figuring that might put pressure on them to accept a deal.

“We can discuss some of the pricing situation this morning, too, obviously,’’ Whitacre said.

Wilson, sitting on a light-colored couch, grabbed a cigarette. Smoke filled the small room.

Whitacre turned the meeting over to Kanji Mimoto, who walked toward an easel in the corner of the room. For several minutes, he wrote a series of numbers on the board. These, he said, were the sales figures for February reported to him by each company. He compared them to the allocations that everyone had received.

“We are doing this, you know, to keep the price,’’ he said. “And, uh, to keep the price, we have to understand each other.’’

For thirty minutes, the conversation continued. Whitacre was getting antsy. Herndon hadn’t called. Maybe the phone was broken. Maybe the agents couldn’t get to him. He didn’t have the patience to wait.

At 9:34, Whitacre picked up the telephone, and dialed a number.

“I’m gonna order another orange juice,’’ he said.

•   •   •

Herndon picked up the phone on the first ring.

“Is everything okay?’’ Whitacre asked. It was hard to believe that the man was placing this call right in the midst of the conspirators.

“Everything’s fine,’’ Herndon said. “That chair was a problem at first, but everything’s fine now.’’

“Yeah, okay,’’ Whitacre said. “Another orange juice. Thanks.’’

Both men hung up. Whitacre rejoined the meeting. Herndon fixed his eyes on the monitor once again.

None of the agents in the command center bothered to prepare any juice. If any of the executives ever noticed that the juice had not arrived, it would probably be blamed on lousy room service.

If they shared production numbers, how could the conspirators be sure they were true? Perhaps, one executive suggested, they should revive the idea of hiring auditors. That made Mimoto uncomfortable.

“If we, uh, we don’t trust each other, then it must be audited,’’ he said in fractured English. “But we don’t want, clearly, because it, uh, is illegal thing we are talking and we don’t want to—”

Wilson broke in. “It’s not illegal.’’