26

The Investigators

2012 . . . Big cases, big problems . . . Weighing a tip . . . A scramble for gold . . . New deals in the works . . . Looking for cooks

 n the world of law enforcement, there’s a saying so commonly recited that it has traveled beyond cliché into the realm of man- tra: “Big cases, big problems. Little cases, little problems. No cases, no problems.” Kent Bailey loved to deliver it with a pause before the kicker: “I’ll take big cases every time.” In 2012, he would find ample opportunity to use it.

Now that GISE had Le Roux under surveillance in Rio, and SOD was off working in secret to engineer his capture, the case that had puttered along for almost half a decade began to acceler- ate. Information that Brill had spent years meticulously corrobo- rating came flooding in, almost as fast as she and Bailey could process it. They could now see up close the kind of control Le Roux exercised over the operation, and how he worked to feed his own insatiable hunger for deals. They’d heard him on the phone, specifying the servers required for the office, arranging a hundred- kilo drug shipment out of Ecuador, and directing the purchase of airline tickets for Ivan Vaclavic to fly to Brazil—all in the same