The Tsunami File (34 page)

They heard a car labouring up the steep rutted track toward the house. It was almost noon. They had been talking for more than three hours. They sat looking at each other in silence as a car door slammed outside the wall. Then the carriage gate opened and Rochemaure came into the courtyard. He stood just inside the wall, glaring at them both.

Mueller, despite looking very fatigued from the long morning of talk, took the offensive. In his prime, Delaney thought, he would have been a formidable police officer and boss.

“Pierre, before you take one step further into this place, I warn you not to act like a fool,” he called out. “Of course you are drunk. This is boring to me. So be very, very careful not to act a fool, my Pierre.”

“This bastard is still here?” Rochemaure shouted.

“You have been warned, Pierre,” Mueller said calmly. “There will be none of this.”

Delaney wondered how Mueller intended to make good on his policeman's warnings, in his present condition and given Rochemaure's size and demeanour.

“You bastards,” Rochemaure said, swaying very slightly.

“Go in and have a sleep. Do not embarrass me anymore,” Mueller said. “Go. Your drunkenness disgusts me.”

To Delaney's surprise, Rochemaure stood swaying where he was for a moment, then flung away his cigarette—clearly his nonverbal communication method of choice—and simply stalked on past both of them into the house. The heavy door slammed, and a moment later another door slammed inside.

“I'm sorry,” Mueller said.

“It's fine, it's fine,” Delaney said.

“It is like this now, I'm afraid.”

“It's no problem. But maybe I should be going.”

“Yes, perhaps. I would say.”

“OK.”

“And your plan now?”

“First, I need to go up to my room and write in my notebook. Before I do anything else. I want to make sure I'm clear on all of this and get some notes together. Then I think I'll head back up to Lyon and get a plane to Berlin.”

“And then?”

“Then I'm not sure. I need to think. Thailand, probably. I'll absolutely need to speak to some people there. Then I can decide.”

“As you wish,” Mueller said. “You go to your notes. I will rest. You come to find me before you go.”

“I will.”

For some reason Mueller thought it appropriate to offer Delaney his hand. Delaney took it. The handshake was a pact of some kind. But neither of them, it seemed, was clear on what the pact actually entailed.

“You listen well,” Mueller said.

“Years of practice,” Delaney said. “It's what I do.”

Delaney rested too for a while, then sat at the little writing desk near the window of his big old room, doing up his notebook. He stopped often to gaze out at the lovely French scene below—ordered squares of gravel and plants, well-trained vines, an ancient door in an ancient wall. Everything in its place. But there was no such order in his notes or in his thoughts. Not yet.

The house was quiet. Madame Chagny had so far not returned for her afternoon and evening duties. Cicadas hummed in the trees in the late spring heat. They almost masked the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs and down the tiled hallway to his room.

There could be no missing the very loud knocking on his door, however. His visitor didn't wait for Delaney to open it. There was more knocking, then the door flew open and Rochemaure strode in, still red in the face and still clearly not a happy man.

He was carrying an old long-barrelled revolver. It was blue-black. He waved it with theatrical flourish at Delaney as he came into the room.

“You must leave this house immediately, you bastard, you leave now,” Rochemaure shouted.

Drunk. Angry. Delaney knew it was best in such situations to agree to everything.

“All right, that's fine. I'm going, I was about to leave anyway,” he said quietly.

He wondered if Rochemaure was drunk enough or had seen enough bad movies to demand that opponents put hands up over their heads. Delaney very much doubted Rochemaure would use the gun, even if it were loaded. But with angry drunks and guns, accidents can happen.

“Go now,” Rochemaure shouted. He went over to the bed and took Delaney's small travel bag and threw it onto the floor. He kicked over a wooden chair for theatrical good measure. “You go now.”

Delaney slowly picked up the bag and began to toss his few things inside. He tossed his notebook inside.

“What is in that notebook?” Rochemaure shouted. “Give that to me.”

“It's nothing, Pierre. Relax. It's my notebook for work.”

“Give that to me,” Rochemaure shouted again. Delaney knew it was always best to surrender notebooks to angry people brandishing guns. He threw it onto the bed. Rochemaure picked it up and flipped through pages.

“What is in here, you bastard?” he shouted.

“You are trying to ruin us.”

Rochemaure, when Mueller appeared in the doorway, was attempting with mixed results to read Delaney's notes and look menacing with his gun at the same time. Mueller looked extremely flushed and worn out from the short climb up the stairs. He leaned heavily on a stout cane.

“What is this shouting, Pierre? I will not have such shouting in my house,” Mueller said. He looked furious. A furious police officer confronting an unruly drunk.

“My house, my house. This is my house,” Rochemaure shouted.

“Calm yourself, Pierre. Put that gun down immediately.”

Rochemaure amazed Mueller and Delaney, and quite possibly himself, by firing a random shot into the ceiling. This was enough for Mueller. He stepped forward to smash his cane down very heavily on Rochemaure's skull. Rochemaure went to his knees immediately and dropped the gun. Mueller hit him savagely with the stick three more times, about the head and neck. They were extremely heavy blows. Delaney thought Mueller might add a few kicks after Rochemaure collapsed, unconscious and bleeding, to the floor.

Mueller sat down on Delaney's bed. He was panting heavily. He leaned with both hands on the cane.

“Jesus Christ,” Delaney said.

“Now the fool is injured,” Mueller said.

“I would think so,” Delaney said. He went over to have a look.

“Is he dead?” Mueller asked, far less worried than Delaney thought he had reason to be. Delaney put two fingers against an artery in Rochemaure's neck. There was still a pulse.

“He's not dead. But you could have fractured his skull, the way you hit him.”

Delaney was kneeling beside Rochemaure now. He loosened the unconscious man's shirt and belt, and tilted his head back so he wouldn't choke.

“We'll have to get a doctor or an ambulance, I think,” Delaney said. “I'd better not move his head and neck too much. He could be badly hurt.”

“Good,” Mueller said. “Very good. He deserves to be hurt, the fool. He has started to bore me with his nonsense. It is what he deserves.”

Delaney tried as best he could to tend to Mueller's injured lover. Mueller watched calmly. He made no move to call for help. Delaney could see clearly that it was still far more dangerous to be this old policeman's enemy than his friend.

A
t Mueller's urging, Delaney left the house as quickly as possible. Madame Chagny had still not returned. Mueller thought it best if Delaney were elsewhere when she got there, and when the ambulance arrived and possibly the police.

Rochemaure was definitely in need of an ambulance. He had still not come to. His colour and breathing were not good. Delaney didn't like the look of him at all while he collected a few belongings before exiting the house. Mueller, however, was completely unperturbed.

“Just go,” Mueller said. “I will take care of this.”

“How will you explain what happened?”

“Leave it to me, Mr. Delaney. If you please. Just go and do what you now need to do in this matter.”

“The police will have to consider this an assault,” Delaney said.

“It was indeed an assault,” Mueller said. “I'm familiar with such crimes after a long law enforcement career. I'm also a very good friend of the local Prefect of Police. He comes up here to drink my Armagnac from time to time. It was a crime of passion.

He will understand this. Alcohol plays its part, emotions are allowed to get out of control. I am an old invalid, under stress, worried about my condition. Such things happen. This is France, and he is a very experienced police officer. Please do not worry.”

Delaney found it hard to believe the situation would be resolved as easily as that, but he left the house nonetheless. He had no wish to be embroiled in a French police investigation just as his story was breaking wide open.

It was just after 1 p.m. He drove too fast down the winding track to Saint Lager Bressac and then onto the better D22 road that would take him toward La Neuve, then Le Pouzin and the bridge over the Rhone to the autoroute. As soon as the car bounced out of the trees and onto the paved road, he was back in cellular signal range and his phone rang immediately. The screen said: “Seven missed calls.”

He pulled over near the modest Saint Lager church and listened to his voicemail. Two messages from Rawson, three from Mareike, one from Ackermann and one from his
International Geographic
editor asking for a firm delivery date on the tsunami article. Nothing from Jonah Smith. Delaney wasn't sure whether this was good news or bad news.

He had nothing but bad news about progress on his original assignment for the magazine, so he did not call
International Geographic
in Washington. Rawson didn't get a callback either. His message was the usual mix of quiet resignation and understated outrage at Delaney having gone to ground once again.

“Not good, Francis, not good,” the second of Rawson's messages said. “Time for you to check in, very much so. This thing's getting more complicated by the day.”

Mareike's outrage was less understated than Rawson's.

“I don't like this, Frank Delaney,” she said in her final message. “Don't ignore me, I don't like this. No one answers the land line at the chateau. You don't answer your mobile phone. I want to know about your time with my uncle.”

Ackermann was the only one whose call Delaney returned.

“So?” Ackermann said. “Are you smarter than me or am I smarter than you?”

“I'm smarter than you,” Delaney said.

“
Sheise
,” Ackermann said. “They're connected? Mueller and Heinrich?”

“Yes, absolutely. A very clear connection. Mueller admits to it. He's told me the whole story. Or as much of it as he wants to tell, and as much as I need to go to the next step.”

“Which is?”

“I'll come back up to Berlin to see you and we'll talk things over. I may need some more facts checked out at your end. Then I'll have to get back to Phuket to see Jonah Smith and tie up some loose ends. A few more questions need to be answered over there. And Horst Becker is still in Thailand, I would think.” “And then? Then what?”

“Then we'll see what's the best way to play this thing.”

“You torture me, Francis. You torture and you punish me. It is not right, how you treat me.”

“I'll see you tonight. I'm just heading back to the highway from Mueller's place. I'll get the lateafternoon flight out of Lyon for Frankfurt and then catch something over to Berlin. Stand by until tonight.”

As he was pulling back onto the road, Delaney noticed a dark blue Renault Espace van in the church parking lot. It had been there as he spoke on the telephone. It had Paris registration plates. Two men in windbreakers and baseball caps sat watching him through their windshield.

Delaney looked in his rearview mirror as he pulled away. After a few moments, the van also pulled out onto the road and rolled along with him toward La Neuve. It was close enough so that in the mirror he could see the van's passenger talking on a cell phone. The driver lit a cigarette and kept it between his lips as he drove.

There was little traffic on the backroads of deepest Ardeche even on a Saturday afternoon. Delaney put his phone where he could reach it easily on the seat next to him and drove fast, keeping an eye on the rearview. The van speeded up too. He slowed down suddenly. The van did not pull out to pass.

If they were following him, the two men behind him made no attempt to disguise it.

The D22 ends at the Rhone. The long, low, narrow bridge over the river leads to the N304 approach road for the Autoroute de Soleil. The surface of the bridge was made of steel grates that hummed loudly as Delaney's wheels rolled onto it. The wheels of the van behind him hummed too, then suddenly far louder than his as the driver speeded up.

The danger came suddenly. The van rammed the back of his Peugeot with a terrific jolt and the impact threw Delaney's neck back hard against the headrest. Immediately the van driver powered forward again, engine racing as he shifted gears and hit the accelerator.

The second impact threw Delaney's car toward the bridge railings. The right front wheel of the Peugeot went up onto the narrow cement sidewalk and Delaney fought hard to control the steering. His right front headlight smashed as it grazed the steel rail, but he managed to wrestle the car back onto the road. He stamped on the accelerator and raced away from his pursuers.

The Peugeot he had rented was very fast. He saw the two men behind him gesticulating at each other as he sped away. They, too, were driving fast but it was clear he was going to be able to leave them behind. Delaney hoped they were not determined enough to stop him, or kill him, to begin firing guns from behind.

There were no guns. By the time Delaney had raced down the few kilometres of good straight road to the autoroute entrance ramp, he was at least 500 metres ahead of the van. He did not stop at the toll plaza to get a card from the automatic dispenser. There was no boom gate, so he just raced through. An attendant shouted in French and ran from his kiosk, but Delaney was already gone. Explaining at the autoroute exit near Lyon why he did not have a toll payment card was something he would address when the time came.

The driver of the van had to brake and swerve in order to avoid hitting the autoroute man. Delaney pushed the Peugeot as hard as it would go and the tachometer quivered into the red zone. Then there was heavy traffic on the highway, a mix of cars and big semitrailers from all over Europe. Signs warned immediately of speed cameras, radar, unmarked police cars. He doubted very much that the van driver would chance anything here, even if he had been able to clear the plaza and even if his vehicle could now catch Delaney's.

Delaney's heart was beating fast. He dried his palms, one after the other, on the thighs of his jeans. Far behind him, in the mix of cars that now streamed northward, he thought he could see a dark blue van. But the immediate danger appeared to have passed. Delaney ignored all the dire speed warnings and drove as fast as the car would go, thinking that being stopped by a radar cop might be one good solution to his immediate problem. Better still if the Espace van got stopped by the highway police instead.

He thought also that this might be the right moment to call one Jonathan Rawson in Ottawa. Suddenly, checking in with a spymaster, even a Canadian one, even one an ocean away, seemed like the wisest course of action.

Delaney knew Rawson's personal number by heart after the years they had worked together and sometimes refused to work together. It was almost 8 a.m. in Ottawa. As usual, Rawson understated his displeasure at Delaney's long silences.

“Ah, Francis,” he said. “Where are you?”

“On the Autoroute de Soleil in France, somewhere just north of a place called Loriol, Jonathan, to be very exact. I'll be passing Valance pretty soon.”

“How lovely for you,” Rawson said. “And all this time we thought you were working on the Heinrich thing in Germany. Silly us.”

“Someone has just tried to run me off the road over here, Jonathan. They've followed me and they've tried to put me into the Rhone.”

Whenever Rawson took a moment longer than usual with a comeback, Delaney knew he had well and truly captured the CSIS man's attention.

“You OK?” Rawson asked.

“Yeah. I can't see the guys anymore. Renault Espace van, dark blue. Paris plates.”

“We can get the French police on this if you want. It wouldn't take long from here.” “Not sure, Jonathan. Seems OK for the moment. I just wanted to tell someone what was up in case it gets bad.”

“That's what I'm here for, my friend.” It was true that Rawson had bailed him out of a number of bad scrapes in the past. A nasty few weeks in Burma's Insein Prison came immediately to mind.

“I'm in a black Peugeot 307 rental,” Delaney said. “French plates. Heading to Lyon airport. Just in case there are any flaming wrecks reported later today.”

Delaney knew that Rawson would be carefully writing down place-names and makes and models of cars on a sheet of paper in Ottawa.

“I don't suppose you will think it out of line, then, for me to ask you what you are actually doing in the south of France?” Rawson said.

Delaney was in one of those situations where he wasn't sure how much or how little CSIS knew, or how much they would insist on knowing before becoming useful to him again. He held his phone with his left hand and the wheel of the speeding car with his right. Even at highly illegal speeds, it would be at least two more hours to Lyon airport, depending on traffic.

“You said in your voicemail that this thing was getting more complicated by the day,” Delaney said.

“My turn to ask questions, isn't it?” Rawson said.

“Jon, for fuck's sake. Someone's just tried to take me out down here. Who's so interested in what I'm doing that they would try to do that?”

“We don't even know exactly what you're doing, Francis. That's always the problem. It's always the same problem.”

“What have you got, Jon? Seriously. Let's get serious, OK?”

“I would like that too in this thing.” Delaney drove in France. Rawson waited in Ottawa. Eventually, Rawson said: “Well, for one thing, the Americans are very keen to know more about what's happening over there, Francis. In Thailand in particular.”

“The Americans. How did they get wind of this?”

“One thing leads to another in this sort of thing, Francis, you know that perfectly well. We make an inquiry here and there about a person or a file, and people prick up their ears. The Americans are all ears these days. You know that.”

“For fuck's sake, Jon,” Delaney said. “Did you have to start asking them about this stuff?”

“Everything's got everything to do with everything for the American spooks, Francis. Always. In this case, it's Stasi files they find interesting, some of which they themselves, or the CIA anyway, may have picked up off office floors in various places around East Germany when things went pearshaped in 1989. They've been giving papers back to the Germans a fair bit in the last few years. They're very keen to know who's trying to use the information and who's trying to stop it from getting out. That sort of thing. They want to know what you know.”

“Why don't they just concentrate on their crazy war on terror? Aren't they busy enough as it is finding terrorists under the bed?” “Apparently not, Francis.”

Delaney waited, and then asked: “Did the German side ask the Yanks to help them when they were looking for a place to stow Heinrich a few years back?”

“I don't know the answer to that question, Francis,” Rawson said.

Delaney doubted this very much.

“Come on, Jonathan. They asked you guys, they asked the Australians and the New Zealanders, you said. Why not ask the Americans?” “I don't think they did.”

“So why do the Americans care now about Heinrich?”

“Well, here's a possible, Francis. Try this on. It's an election year in Germany. Gerhard Schroeder's government has not been too helpful at all about the war in Iraq. But it looks like the CDU could get back into power if all goes well, and then things wouldn't be as tricky for the Americans anymore with Schroeder out and like-minded people at the helm in Berlin. Angela Merkel is not as squeamish as Schroeder about helping out the Americans in Iraq, even if it's just airspace access over Germany, or backroom diplomatic support, nice comments in the media, that kind of thing. It's not going to look good to all those skittish German voters over there if the CDU now gets caught up in some crazy Cold War scandal about maybe faking a spy's death, giving a big-name spy a new identity for some reason, generally messing up. Germans want to think their governments are not doing that sort of thing. This could very much affect the outcome of the election, Francis. You must see that.”