The Tsunami File (9 page)

“And security at the sites, the mortuary site or other places, has that proved to be a problem at all?” Delaney asked after Bishop had gone.

“What do you mean, security at the sites?” Braithwaite said, suddenly wary.

“Security as in preventing unauthorized people from entering,” Delaney said.

“Why would unauthorized people want to enter a disaster victim mortuary site, Mr. Delaney?”

“Families, possibly.”

“Families are welcome to ask for assistance at the management centre information desk,” Braithwaite said. “We have teams there, as I mentioned earlier, to deal with queries and concerns from families. And trained grief counsellors.” “So security is not a problem?”

“I don't really understand your question,” Braithwaite said. “You're talking about people wanting access to the mortuary site? Unauthorized access?”

“Or here at the management centre.”

“I really don't understand what you are getting at.”

Delaney, after conducting hundreds of interviews in his career, could see this one drawing rapidly to a close.

“So you're saying that the sites and their equipment and records and so forth are secure.”

Braithwaite put his cigar down in a coffee mug on his desk. He looked intently at Delaney and said nothing for a while.

“This place, and the mortuary site, and all other sites related to this DVI operation are literally crawling with police officers,” Braithwaite said. “I can tell you that much. However, I see no reason to have to say such a thing because I fail to understand why you would even ask such a question. Why would anyone want to gain access to such places in an unauthorized fashion?”

“Why indeed?” Delaney said, locking eyes with Braithwaite. “Can I quote you as saying then that you are having no problems with security at the sites, and with securing confidential police records and other data here in Phuket. Is that correct?”

“Your question makes no sense,” Braithwaite said.

Delaney waited. It was an accepted law of journalistic dynamics that silences must always get filled.

“Who else have you interviewed for this story of yours, Mr. Delaney?” Braithwaite asked eventually.

“I have done a lot of interviewing. Your press officer has been very helpful.” “Interpol's press officer.”

“I understood that she represents the DVI operation as a whole,” Delaney said.

“Yes and no,” Braithwaite said. “I take it she doesn't sit in with you when you interview members of the DVI teams?”

“She isn't sitting in with us today, Superintendent.”

“I'm the joint commander of this damn operation,” Braithwaite hissed. “I take full responsibility for what I tell journalists. I don't need a press officer to help me out with that.”

“Well, the other people I have interviewed didn't appear to need that support either.”

Delaney wondered if Braithwaite would actually mention Jonah Smith by name.

“I'd like to see the story you are working on before it goes to your editors, Mr. Delaney. If you wouldn't mind.”

“I have never done that in more than twentyfive years in the field,” Delaney said.

“Is that right,” Braithwaite said. “In the field, as it were.”

“Yes,” Delaney said.

“Well, I may just have a word with your editors after you have submitted your story, Mr. Delaney,” Braithwaite said.

“You're welcome to contact them. You have my
International Geographic
business card there on your desk. Phone and fax numbers. Email address. They will tell you the same thing I told you.”

“Will they now?”

“I'm confident they will,” Delaney said.

“Well, be confident about something else, will you Mr. Delaney? I don't like the tone of your last few questions. I don't like the tone at all. Be aware that I won't have some hack journalist attacking this operation in any way, do you hear me?”

“No one is attacking this operation, Superintendent,” Delaney said.

“Not yet anyway. Not on my watch. I won't have it. And now you can consider this interview terminated. I will be calling Ruth Connolly immediately after you get out of my office and I will be looking at the list of people you interviewed for this story of yours. I will make up my mind then as to what, if anything, I decide to do next. I do intend, however, to call your editors in, where is it, Washington, to have a word with them about this story of yours and about you personally.”

“You're welcome to do that. The magazine knows my work very well. I've filed to them from Afghanistan, Iraq, a number of places, over the years.

They know how I operate.”

“Do they now? Well, they will now also know how I operate and how the police operate in a situation like this. We don't deserve to be criticized in any way, is that clear? We have dedicated teams of very talented officers out here from more than twenty countries doing the best work they possible can. We do not deserve to be criticized. I won't have you going off half-cocked chasing wild rumours or loose talk about document security.”

Delaney knew this spelled trouble for Jonah Smith.

“It's a natural thing to ask about, Superintendent. In a situation like this.”

“Is it really?” Braithwaite said, getting up from his chair. “We'll see about that.” Delaney remained seated.

“This interview is over, Mr. Delaney. A highly experienced journalist who has, goodness me, filed stories from exciting places like Afghanistan and Iraq can see that very clearly, I would imagine.”

Delaney couldn't remember the last time he had been to a karaoke bar, in Asia or anywhere else. This may have been because one usually goes to such places in a drunken state or unavoidably ends up in such a state, and memory often fails in such circumstances.

The night after his interview with Braithwaite, this was very much the case. He was drunk, Jonah Smith was drunk, so too was the lovely Concepción and a young forensic dentist from Netherlands named Stefan Zalm. The only sober ones among them were Tim Bishop and Zalm's extremely young and extremely shy Thai girlfriend, whose name was Rattanasiri. She was known to all as Rat. Even she and Bishop, however, appeared to have been carried away by the spirit of karaoke.

The Whale Bar did not do karaoke. The group had ventured farther down the bar strip after their dinner together to an extremely crowded, extremely noisy and extremely hot place called Electric Light. The patrons were a mix of wellheeled locals and international police with far too much money to spend on booze and far too little time to do it.

“Who do you want to be tonight, Jonah?” Conchi shouted, her face flushed with the heat and the noise and cigarette smoke and the rum she was drinking in large quantities. “Who do you want to be tonight, Mr. No Problem Frank Delaney? Tom Jones? Be Tom Jones, yes please. Frank Sinatra? Yes, yes. No, no, maybe Julio, yes be Julio Iglesias for me please. I love Julio, very, very, very much.”

Delaney could see again, all too well, why a man like Smith would risk all for this young woman. Conchi's olive skin glowed in the intense downlights of the bar—she glowed with warmth and vitality and possibility. Her purple T-shirt clung to her like an exhausted dance partner. A small silver crucifix sparkled incongruously on a chain round her neck.

Delaney ignored her pleas, having arrived at the still, small space where large amounts of alcohol, if taken at precisely the right dosage, could transport him. But Conchi continued to insist that he get up and sing.

Bishop grinned at Delaney across a table laden with glasses and large bottles of Singha beer, raising high his customary glass of lemonade. He knew the signs when Delaney was drunk.

“What song does a journalist sing, Frank?” Conchi shouted. “Who do you want to be tonight? Tim Bishop, Tim Bishop, Tim Bishop, make your boss sing.”

Her question was uncannily like what Kate Hunter asked Delaney all too often these days, and what, in fact, Rawson and CSIS asked him too often as well: Who are you, really, Francis? Who do you want to be? Journalist or spy? Or, perhaps, neither anymore?

Jonah Smith was a quiet drunk, like Delaney. He sat contentedly beside his breathtaking Spanish girl, watching everything unfold and looking occasionally over at Delaney with a thin smile. He had been briefed earlier about the difficulties with Braithwaite. The news did not appear to be spoiling his evening.

Eventually, Zalm rose unsteadily to his feet. “I will now sing,” he announced with a slight bow from the waist.

“Hurray, hurray, hurray for the Dutchman!” Conchi shouted.

Other bar patrons applauded wildly as Zalm made his way with some difficulty through minefields of tables and chairs to a raised dais at the front. A revolving mirror ball mounted on the ceiling cast squares of light on his bony shoulders. The master of ceremonies, a small Thai individual of uncertain sexuality and heavily gelled hair, shouted into a portable microphone that sent waves of feedback and distortion through giant speakers mounted in every corner of the bar.

“What song, please? What song please?” the MC shouted. “Who will you be?”

Zalm picked up another portable mike and peered at the audience through the glare of smoke and spotlights. He held onto a small railing for support.

“I will sing a Tom Jones song for the girlfriend of my British friend, as she requests,” Zalm said, slurring his words ever so slightly. “I will sing, I think, ‘It's Not Unusual.'”

A tremendous roar went up from the bar patrons and the MC tapped buttons on an electronic console. Suddenly, a wave of overproduced rock and roll, with overblown orchestral backup, blasted through the room.

Zalm was transformed. He stood stock-still, as if electrocuted, and then raised his eyes to the ceiling, raised his microphone at an acute angle to the floor, and became, for a few minutes, an international singing celebrity. The audience, too, was transfixed. They gaped at this sudden, complete personality transformation they had been invited to witness.

Zalm belted out an extraordinarily energetic rendition of the Tom Jones hit, complete with outstretched arms and legs, and the occasional pirouette and pelvic thrust. The sound was deafening, the audience mesmerized. When he was done, the room erupted with applause, laughter, shouts, whistles, stamping. A star was born. Bishop stood near the stage, firing flashgun salvos with his camera, representing paparazzi everywhere.

When Zalm was finally allowed to regain his table by ecstatic fans, he was dangerously flushed.

“For you, my dear Concepción,” he said gallantly as he sat down, panting in the heat and the accolades. “And of course for my little Rattanasiri.”

Rat said nothing, content, as a bar girl, to have been invited anywhere at all. Conchi leapt up and planted a kiss on Zalm's sweating cheek.

“Thank you so much, Stefan, my friend,” she said. “
Gracias, gracias, mi amigo
.”

She stood, hands on hips, and scolded Smith and Delaney for their failings.

“At least one of us, at least my good friend Stefan Zalm knows who he wants to be tonight, no?” she said. “Jonah Smith? Mr. Frank Delaney? No?”

J
ust before word came that Smith had been badly beaten and rushed to hospital, Delaney was on the telephone with Brian O'Keefe in Montreal. Both of them were under the weather, though thousands of kilometres apart. Delaney was suffering grievously from the effects of the previous night's drunken karaoke expedition; O'Keefe was suffering the effects of a lifetime of heavy drinking, smoking, womanizing, journalism.

O'Keefe had become, whenever Delaney stopped to consider such matters, his closest friend. A man who had spent almost his entire journalistic career at the
Montreal Tribune
, originally a promising young hotshot and a fine writer, the archetypal newshound, with a flare for dramatic leads and an intense desire for front-page bylines. Standard stuff, for most talented young reporters early in their careers.

Delaney's career, however, took off and led him far from Montreal and from local stories. O'Keefe's career, whether because he was just a city reporter at heart, or because he married unwisely and became mired in domestic disharmony and professional bitterness, or because he was by then simply a lazy drunk, never really flourished as it should have.

Delaney was not sure whether O'Keefe's catastrophic career problems and marital problems were the cause, or the effect, of his legendary drinking. But now, as he and others of Delaney's generation of reporters began to age gracelessly, the effects of his lifestyle had well and truly caught up with him.

O'Keefe had been in and out of hospitals for much of the previous two years, stricken with everything from alcohol-induced pancreatitis to smokinginduced bronchitis and pneumonia to obesityinduced knee and ankle problems. He was recently out of hospital again and Delaney called him often, as O'Keefe always did when Delaney was in a bad way.

“I'm doomed, Francis,” O'Keefe shouted down the phone line from his bedroom in the disreputable house on the small farm south of Montreal that he and his wife still shared with the greatest of unease. “The doctor says I have less than twenty-four hours to live.”

“That's longer than a lot of us expected for you this time around,” Delaney said. “Make the most of it.”

“Yes, I will, there is something very good on the TV tonight, Karen tells me. We can watch that. A sixty-year-old black-and-white movie. A love story. Young Karen and I will watch it together on my sickbed. I will drink a couple of shots of hot milk, the aphrodisiac qualities of which are well known, and we will fall hungrily into each other's arms as the credits roll. All will end beautifully, in life as in celluloid art.”

“Nice,” Delaney said.

“Nice,” O'Keefe said.

“When can you go back to work?”

“Doctor says two more weeks. Bed rest required, as he still so quaintly puts it. An older man, he is. Like myself, in fact. Nurse Karen agrees with the advice about bed rest. It is true that my gut is still really quite sore.”

“So take his advice, take my advice, stay in bed and try not to die. I'm in the middle of something over here and can't fly back there to stand by your graveside just now.”

“You are always in the middle of something somewhere. I do not expect nor require your presence at my funeral, my friend.” “I'll come anyway.”

“What is it you are in the middle of, anyway?” O'Keefe asked. “You in trouble yet?”

“Not yet,” Delaney said. “I'm still in Thailand on the tsunami story for
International Geographic
. The disaster victim identification thing.”

“Tell them to come to my house when they're done. It's a fucking disaster zone over here as you can imagine. Complete with my putrefying corpse.”

“It's a good story over here too, Brian. Everybody's a bit tied up to do you.”

“What hat you wearing this time, Francis? You still a reporter on this one?”

O'Keefe was one of the very few who knew something of Delaney's extracurricular activities outside journalism.

“Of course, always a reporter, a simple gatherer of facts,” Delaney said.

“I've heard that before. Then you call me from Burma or somewhere and tell me you've been arrested and fucked up for consorting with spies. Wanting sympathy.”

“So far, so good, Brian. There is a little bit of an angle developing here on some missing documents, however.”

“Oh, oh . . . here it comes.”

“Nothing earth-shattering so far.”

“I'm sure you will leave no turn unstoned,”

O'Keefe said. “Exactly.”

“And your love life? Thailand's reputation being what it is?”

“I'm a one-woman man, Brian.”

“That is not what young Kate Hunter of the RCMP tells me, my friend. Which woman are you referring to exactly? Kate called me last week, pretending to inquire after my pancreas but clumsily fishing for information about her missing loverboy. It seems you call your ailing pal O'Keefe more often than you call Captain Hunter of the Mounted Police. She seems to think you're a bit of a nowoman man right now.” “Complicated,” Delaney said.

“We know that. Are you guys on again or off again? She seems to want to know.”

“Not sure.”

“You never are.”

“Correct,” Delaney said.

“Are we on the record on this, or off? On again, off again with Kate, on or off the record.”

“Off.”

“The record, or Kate?”

“No comment.”

Conchi was in a bad way, too, when she called Delaney later that morning in his room at the Metropole. She was very upset, almost in tears, losing her English in the agitation, her Spanish accent heavier than usual.

“Jonah's lying there with bruises, bruises, bruises, all over him, Frank. He is breaking my heart, my heart is gone in two. They gave him a bad, bad, bad beating, Frank. For what? For what?”

“What hospital, Conchi. Where?” Delaney asked.

“Phuket International. On the bypass road near the airport. They seem good there, Frank, they seem like they are smart. They say he will be OK. He is just sore, he says.” “He's conscious,” Delaney said.

“Yes, yes. But he went unconscious right after. Someone found him near the Electric Light. Very late.”

“You weren't with him?”

“He wanted to stay for more beer with the Dutchman and some others. I went home in a taxi.”

“Who was with him?”

“Nobody, I think.”

“Why? We were in a big group at the end.”

“Frank, Frank, I don't know this, we were drunk, everybody's drunk, who knows? It is like this with drinking, no?” “Who beat him up?”

“Frank, Frank, please, how can I know? Come to the hospital. You find out who beat Jonah, OK? You are a reporter. Find out who beat up Jonah and put it in your newspaper, OK? Bastards, bastards . . .”

“Is he badly hurt?”

“The doctor say no. Bruises, concussion probably. Cuts. Jonah says they used sticks.”

“How many?”

“Sticks? Frank please, don't act stupid, OK?”

“How many people, how many guys beat him up?”

“I don't know this, Frank. Come to the hospital, OK?”

Delaney got there by midday. He was not sure the wheezing Mazda taxi he had climbed into outside the hotel would make it in the intense tropical heat. Conchi was waiting at the hospital entrance, wearing her UN shirt though Delaney doubted she had been to work that morning.

With her was an extremely disreputable-looking individual, unshaven and smelling distinctly unfresh, wearing a crumpled Interpol shirt. He was clutching a dented red Thermos flask, stained with coffee.

“Frank, good, good, you are here,” Conchi said. She kissed him on both cheeks. “This is one of Jonah's Interpol people. He's just arrived too.”

“I am Brajkovic, Janko, Interpol team leader on this operation,” Brajkovic said stiffly. “And you are?”

He offered Delaney his hand. Delaney took it, despite the filthy fingernails that came with the package.

“This is Jonah's friend,” Conchi said. “Frank Delaney. A Canadian.”

“His friend,” Brajkovic said. “I do not know you from this operation. Which team?”

“I'm a journalist, actually. Covering this story. For
International Geographic
. Jonah has been helping me out.”

“As a friend,” Brajkovic said.

“I suppose so, yes. I've interviewed him a couple of times. We've had some drinks.”

“Janko, Janko, stop playing policeman, OK, please,” Conchi said. “Frank is OK. Jonah likes him.”

“A journalist and a friend,” Brajkovic said.

“Not always an easy combination in my experience, in my country Croatia in any case.”

Delaney had heard variations on this refrain throughout his career.

“Your country Croatia is a Fascist hole, Janko,” Conchi said. “Please stop this now. Jonah wants to see Frank.”

“I have not authorized press interviews, Conchi. Not now and not even before, in fact, though Jonah seems to have gone ahead anyway.”

“I'm visiting him today as a friend,” Delaney said.

“Possibly,” Brajkovic said. “But it's a good little story, Mr. Delaney, you would agree? Police official getting beaten in Thailand while trying to do his work after the tsunami. An Interpol man?”

“I don't know if it's a story or not,” Delaney said. “People get beaten up and robbed on resort islands all the time.” “Do they?” Brajkovic said.

“Was he robbed, Conchi?” Delaney said. Conchi looked uneasy. She gave Delaney a steady look and then looked at Brajkovic. “I don't know,” she said.

“Didn't Jonah say?” Brajkovic asked.

“No,” Conchi said, with another look at Delaney. “He just said they gave him a bad beating up.”

“Let's go see him now,” Brajkovic said.

“He's tired, Janko, and sore all over,” Conchi said.

“Too sore to see Mr. Delaney as well, then, too,” Brajkovic said with a thin smile jammed with nicotine-stained teeth. “Frank is a friend.”

“I am his team leader. I will come too,”

Brajkovic said.

“Let him come, Conchi,” Delaney said.

“Thank you so much, Mr. Delaney,” Brajkovic said. “For your kind permission to see one of my men.”

“Don't be Fascist, Janko, please OK?” Conchi said.

Hospitals in Thailand can be very good. This appeared to be one of the good ones. The surroundings were clean and ordered. An extremely young, white-uniformed Thai nurse was bustling around when they came into Smith's room—filling a water glass, straightening Smith's covers, adjusting the speed of a ceiling fan. There was another bed in the room, unoccupied. The nurse gave the visitors a brief wai, a quick smile, and retreated saying nothing at all.

Smith did in fact look very bad. He was propped up in his white metal bed, pale and bruised. What was left of his thinning hair was tousled. He needed a shave. He was not wearing his glasses, and one of his eyes was blackened and swollen almost shut. One side of his mouth was also swollen and cut, with stitches showing where doctors had patched him up. His sinewy forearms, protruding from a white hospital gown, were bruised and cut; wounds, Delaney knew, that were inflicted on those who have fended off police batons or civilian sticks in a beating.

“Well, you are a mess, Smith,” Brajkovic said, placing his Thermos flask on the bedside table.

“And you've brought me some of your foul coffee as a gift, thank you for the gesture,” Smith managed to say through his swollen lips. Spittle glistened at edges of his mouth as he tried to form the sounds. He winced. “It's a bit hard, talking.”

“Don't talk, Jonah,” Conchi said, sitting on the edge of his bed. “Rest. We will talk later.”

“Who did this to you, Smith?” Brajkovic asked. “Robbers?”

“Yes, probably,” Smith said, looking over at Delaney. “I would imagine so.”

“Did they get your wallet?” Brajkovic asked, ever the steely Croatian police investigator.

“I think so. It's missing anyway,” Smith said, dribbling slightly. Conchi dabbed the corners of his mouth with a tissue.

“I will have to make a report. To Braithwaite and Colonel Pridiyathorn, and to the SecretaryGeneral in Lyon,” Brajkovic said.

“OK,” Smith said, putting his head back on the pillow.

“Why would anybody want to beat you up, Smith?” Brajkovic asked. “Have you been annoying people again with your questions, questions all the time? Is that it? This file business?” Smith said nothing. He sighed in his bed. “He's tired, Janko. Talk later,” Conchi said.

“And our journalist friend?” Brajkovic asked.