‘That’s hardly a justification for not cracking down on it now,’ Li said.
‘Of course not,’ Cai responded. He glanced at Margaret as if he felt the need to underline his point. ‘Which is why supplying banned drugs to athletes was made a criminal offence in China in 1995. Unlike the United States where most of them can be bought freely on the Internet.’
‘Why don’t we keep our point-scoring to the track and field?’ Li said pointedly.
Cai glared at Li. ‘I really cannot spare any more time, Section Chief. Are you finished, do you think?’
A collective sigh washed across the stadium beyond the glass. The Chinese pole-vaulter had finally brought the bar crashing down with him.
‘For the moment,’ Li said.
II
They took their seats high up in the main stand with a superb view of the track below and the layout of the field events within it. A giant television screen kept them apprised of what was happening, and a constantly changing scoreboard flashed digital figures in red, green and yellow. Lengths jumped, heights gained, distances thrown; the current standings in every ongoing event; the points totals to date. Every seat was taken, and the stadium was filled with the buzz of anticipation, and the monotonous voice of the female announcer whose relentless, high-pitched, nasal commentary penetrated the very soul.
Around them, People’s Liberation Army officers in green uniforms sat together joking and snacking and drinking beer. Li had obviously been given tickets in a section set aside for ‘guests.’ The fact that he was accompanied by a non-Chinese had drawn some curious looks.
A giant of an American with blond hair tied back in a pony-tail threw his shot-put more than twenty-three meters sixty, taking the lead in the competition, to a groan of disappointment from the crowd and a sprinkling of polite applause. The Americans had already won the pole-vault.
‘I don’t understand,’ Li said to Margaret, ‘why an athlete would risk so much just so they can stand on the winner’s podium. I mean, it’s not just the risk of being caught and branded a cheat. Humiliation’s bad enough. It’s what they’re doing to their bodies. The side-effects of those drugs are horrific. They must be out of their minds!’
‘Well, I’m sure psychology is the biggest part of it,’ Margaret said. ‘The pressure to win must be enormous. And it’s not just the expectations of your family and friends, is it? Or your state. It’s your country. Millions of people who live their lives vicariously through you. Your victory is their victory. You win for China, or for America, you win for them. So when you lose…’ She left the consequences of that hanging. ‘And then, of course, there are the rewards. Big prize money, millions in sponsorship.’
Li thought about the apartments he had visited earlier that day.
‘And then there’s the fame and the glory. One minute you’re nobody, the next you’re a star. Everybody wants to be your friend. Your picture’s in all the papers, you’re being interviewed on TV.’ She shrugged. ‘I can see how weak people could be seduced.’ She thought about it for a moment. ‘And then there’s national prestige. Just look at the lengths East Germany went to so that their athletes would bring home gold medals.’
Li shook his head. He knew nothing about East German athletes. ‘I’ve never really followed sports, Margaret.’
‘Sport?’ She laughed. But it was a laugh without humour, full of contempt. ‘It was never about sport, Li Yan. The East German state seemed to think that if their athletes brought home more gold medals than anyone else, it would somehow endorse a whole political system, prove to the rest of the world that their corrupt and repressive regime was actually working. So they took their most promising young athletes away from their parents, many of them still children, and systematically pumped them full of drugs.’
‘And the kids just took the stuff, without question?’ Li found it hard to believe.
Margaret shook her head. ‘They didn’t know. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen-year-old kids, taken from their homes, subjected to the most ferocious training regimes, and given little pink and blue pills every day which they were told were vitamins.’
‘But they were drugs?’
‘State-produced steroids. A substance called Oral-Turinabol, of which the active ingredient was chlordehydromethyl-testosterone. They also had something called Turinabol-Depot, which they injected into the muscle. It contained nandrolone.’
‘And did the athletes get caught?’ Li asked. ‘I mean, drug-tested, in competition?’
Margaret shook her head. ‘In the early days there was no simple urine test for testosterone. Then they discovered a test in the early eighties that could measure the levels of testosterone in the body against another naturally occurring hormone, epitestosterone. If the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone was greater than six to one, they knew you’d been topping up your body’s natural production with additional testosterone. Of course, the whole corrupt machinery of the East German state went into hyperdrive to find a way round the new test.’
‘And did they?’
Margaret pulled a face. ‘It was very simple really. They started manufacturing artificial epitestosterone and giving that to their athletes in direct correlation to the amount of testosterone they were taking. That way the balance between the two was maintained, and so the drug-taking didn’t show up in urine tests.’
Li looked at her quizzically. ‘You seem to know a lot about this.’
She smiled. ‘I don’t know too much about drug-taking these days, but back in the nineties I came face to face with it on the autopsy table. A former East German swimmer, Gertrude Klimt, who emigrated to the United States.’ She could still see the pale, bloodless flesh of the young woman lying on her table. Short, blonde hair. Bold, aggressive, Aryan features. ‘She was still only in her early thirties. Died from tumours on the kidneys. Prosecutors in Berlin paid for me to go to Germany to give evidence in court proceedings against former East German coaches. A lot of former athletes were giving evidence. Some had tumours, some of the women had had children with horrific birth defects, one had even been pumped full of so much testosterone she had changed sex. Heidi had become Andreas. I gave evidence on behalf of poor Gertrude.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘You see, it all came out after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the files of the secret police, the Stasi, became public. It turned out that a lot of those coaches and doctors were also members of the Stasi, with code names and everything. In those days, the athletes were the victims, and they finally got their revenge in the late nineties when the people who tricked them into taking steroids as children were convicted under the new, reunified Germany.’
Li shook his head in wonder. ‘I never knew anything about this.’
Margaret cocked an eyebrow. ‘Call me cynical, Li Yan, but I doubt very much if anyone in China heard much about it. And the Chinese were having their own drug-taking problems in the nineties, weren’t they? I seem to recall something like thirty-plus Chinese athletes testing positive at the world championships in the mid-nineties.’
Li shrugged, embarrassed by his country’s record in international competition. ‘Things have changed,’ he said.
‘Have they?’
He looked at her very directly. ‘I don’t think any country sees a virtue these days in winning by cheating.’