Shadows in the Vineyard: The True Story of the Plot to Poison the World's Greatest Wine Read Online Free PDF

case.

    His headlamp beam settled on a container not much larger than a lunch box. It was on the floor near the cot. He opened thecase. Inside was a battery-operated drill. A Black & Decker. Not far from the drill, a few syringelike devices similar in size and appearance to turkey basters. He grasped one of the syringes—his fingers were as stubby as hors d’oeuvres sausages—and reached for a plastic gallon container and from it clumsily poured a liquid into the syringe.
    His heavy breathing became more strained as he pulled on calf-high green rubber boots. From a hanger dangling on one of the crossbar tree limbs he removed a long hooded rain jacket. Green and rubbery like the boots, it wasn’t so much a coat as it was a hooded cape. He put it on, tucked the drill and syringe into a pouch belted about his waist, and turned to the door.
    The hatch, too, was made of sticks. He pulled on the door, once, then again. The bottom of the door, as always happened, had snagged on the dirt ground. He opened it just enough to squeeze through.
    Outside, the chilly air sent a shiver up his sweaty back. He scrambled a few feet up into a small clearing surrounded by dense woods. The night sky was as black and as soft as tuxedo satin. So many stars. The moon was full and bright. Liquidy, as if the orb were filled with white lava. Wisps of clouds crossed its face. There was no need for the headlamp. He clicked it off. Doing so decreased the already slim chance of his being noticed.
    He waited a moment to give his eyes time to adjust.
    Sometimes, at about this hour, there were the sounds of wild boar cracking through the woods around him. Off in the distance, straight out in front of him, to the east, he could hear the faint whooshing whistle-groan of the TGV. The high-speed train streaked along tracks either bound for the city of Dijon in the north or heading south toward Beaune.
    The train was how he would make his getaway. He was soclose. He just needed to finish this last critical bit, then collect the money, and take his cut, and be gone.
    As he stood there above the shelter, it would have been understandable if the man felt a sense of accomplishment. Viewed from this perspective his handiwork was all the more impressive. His flat, square box of a cabin was inside a square ditch. The walls, which were about six feet high, were almost entirely below ground level. The exterior was wrapped in olive-colored plastic tarp. The roof, covered over with leaves and twigs, was indistinguishable from the forest floor.
    Some of the most skilled detectives of the French national police soon would come to learn you could fly a helicopter over it a dozen times and not see it. Hell, you could be standing right next to it and never realize it was there. Investigators would marvel at the structure. The excavation alone, not to mention everything else involved in erecting and equipping the place—sturdy, water resistant, bivouacked into the earth, buffered from the wind, masterfully camouflaged… it had taken months.
    The man headed off into the woods.

    Within minutes he emerged from the forest and stepped into a panorama that was as expansive and as ethereal as his shelter was small and squalid. A silhouette in the hooded cape, he stood atop a hill, his pulse throbbing within his thick neck. As he had done so many nights before, he scanned the landscape to make sure all was clear.
    In the moon’s glow, the view was empowering; the world was at his feet: Spilling down the hillside and then everywhere was a vast patchwork of vineyards. Sprawling straight out in front of him, to the east, and to the north and south, seemingly withoutend. Row after row they unfurled, barely separated from one another by ribbons of fallow land or narrow road. The vines were frost dusted and barren, twisted and vulnerable, like the skeletons of arthritic hands reaching for spring.
    Just as he had come to expect, just as it had gone on the previous nights, no one else was