Vollebaek told them how Mrs. Stokke had shrieked and shrieked and shrieked, and then how she had collapsed in his arms, sobbing as if she would never be able to stop. When, eventually, the tears stopped coming, for a short time, he had driven her back to her hotel and arranged for a Thai nurse and a Thai policewoman to help her undress and get into her hotel bed. A day later, Vollebaek said, Mrs. Stokke was still, apparently, in that bed, with the same Thai nurse sitting by her side.
“My commissioner in Oslo has asked me to congratulate all of you on behalf of the National Police Directorate and the Police Minister,”
Vollebaek said.
Smith thought Vollebaek looked even more worn out than Braithwaite looked. The Norwegian detective was probably only a very few years away from retirement. He was a policeman of the old school; he would not give up on a case until it had been definitively solved, no matter how many hours of casework it took, no matter what the toll on his personal life and his health. Vollebaek was the only person in the sweltering IMC that day wearing a dark suit and tie, downtown detective-style. Sweat poured from his ruddy Scandinavian face.
“You are all heroes, all of you on the teams here,” Vollebaek said, allowing himself, as Smith and Conchi decided afterward, to get somewhat carried away.
“It’s our job, Magne, it’s what we’re all here for,” an Austrian DVI man called out.
“Here, here,” Smith called out from the back. Conchi squeezed his arm. “Don’t, Jonah,” she said.
Hamel and Krupp looked around to glare at him from where they stood. Horst Becker, it seemed, had decided not to attend today’s little celebration of identifications made, of files closed.
Smith wondered if Klaus Wolfgang Heinrich—assuming that body number PM68TA0386 in mortuary container CRL0912863 was indeed that of Klaus Wolfgang Heinrich—had a family somewhere who would mourn his death. Perhaps a family had already mourned for Heinrich, mistakenly, in October 2001. Smith wondered if any tears were likely to be shed when he and Delaney and others, confirmed, if they ever managed to do so, that body of tsunami victim PM68-TA0386 was indeed that of one Klaus Wolfgang Heinrich, West German spy.
That night, Jonah Smith dreamed of his own dead daughter. It was a recurring dream, always the same in every detail, but he had had to endure it only occasionally in recent years. In the years immediately after his baby had died in his wife’s womb, Smith had the dream far too often for his own good or for the good of his marriage:
In the dream he is in London on a busy street. Hundreds, thousands, of pedestrians block his path as he tries to hurry along on his appointed duties. Cars and black taxis and red double-decker buses block streets and intersections on all sides. He carries a Scotland Yard evidence card, clutches it tightly in his right hand. On the card are the tiny perfect fingerprints of his unborn daughter. It is his job to match these prints to the beautiful young girl he is certain she would have one day become. He pushes and shoves and elbows his way desperately through the crowded London streets, peering into the face of every little girl child he sees, urgently trying to identify his daughter. He grasps at the hands of bewildered, frightened children, trying to peer at their fingertips to make the all-important match that only he is qualified to make. Angry parents push him away, shout warnings at him, call out for the police to come and take this bespectacled madman into custody. Little girls he has frightened run away from him, crying for their fathers and mothers. Then his wife glides slowly past, standing up in the back of an elegant open car. She points an accusing finger at him from the big black car as she passes by. Everyone in the heaving crowd of parents and wailing children now points accusing fingers at him. The evidence card with the crucial fingerprint evidence slips from his grasp. His only hope of a positive identification is about to be lost forever . . .
Stefan Zalm had been keeping his distance ever since the day he confessed to his sins. He nodded to Smith in the morning when they crossed each other’s paths at work, but he had not proposed drinks at the Whale Bar for days. Smith thought the young Dutchman was looking distinctly unhealthy and certainly unhappy.
Smith did not share Delaney’s lingering suspicions about Zalm. In fact, Smith doubted whether Delaney himself was truly suspicious of Zalm at all anymore, or simply keeping what the Canadian reporter would call “all options open.” Smith thought Zalm had just made a mistake, had been too eager to succeed in Phuket, had let ambition or dedication or immaturity or inexperience get the better of him. Smith did not believe that Zalm was part of what one might call the conspiracy to prevent the identification of the Deutschland body.
He decided to defuse the situation and put Zalm at ease.
“I’m not mad at you anymore, Stefan,” Smith said late one afternoon as he stood beside the Dutchman’s desk. “I was, but I’m not now.”
Zalm looked up from the dental X-ray he was examining with a magnifying glass. He looked like he was going to burst with relief and delight.
“I’m so glad, Jonah,” he said, putting down his work. “I never meant to cause this trouble.”
“Someone else caused this trouble, Stefan.”
“I’m sorry they beat you up, Jonah.”
“It’s all right, Stefan.”
“Thanks, Jonah.” The Dutchman paused.
“But that Frank Delaney still thinks I’m no good,” he said. “He asked me a lot of questions before he went to Berlin. He thinks I’m involved somehow in all of this mess.”
“He’s a reporter. They always ask a lot of questions.”
“I want to find out who that German guy really is too, Jonah.”
Smith, despite trusting that Zalm wasn’t part of any conspiracy, had not told him what Delaney had already found out about Klaus Heinrich. Perhaps this was the real test of whether he did trust Zalm one hundred percent. Or perhaps he was simply spending too much time with a rather jaded Canadian journalist these days.
“We’ll find out about him, Stefan.”
“I think we will, too, Jonah,” Zalm said.
He did not, however, look entirely convinced. He hesitated, and then said hopefully. “Pedophile?”
“Maybe. I’m not so sure about that,” Smith said.
“There’s so many of them out here, Jonah. From Germany, from everywhere in Europe.”
“Frank is in Berlin working on this right now.”
“He’s a reporter, Jonah. He’s not even police.”
“Yes? And?”
“He wants a story.”
“So. He gets a story and we find out who our man really was.” Zalm looked uneasy.
“I suppose it’s none of my business anymore after what I did, maybe it never was my business, this,” Zalm said. “But you can’t tell with reporters what they’re going to do with information when they get it, Jonah.”
“You can’t tell what police are going to do with information, Stefan. You can’t predict what anyone’s going to do with information when they get it.”
“You should be the one who decides on this, not Frank,” Zalm said. “Don’t you think? We don’t really know very much about him, what kind of person he is, who he really is. But I suppose it’s none of my business anymore.”
“He’s a well-known journalist. He’s a foreign correspondent. People know about him. I saw the stuff he wrote about Burma a few years ago. He’s written books about the Vatican, Cuba, Quebec. He’s who he says he is, Stefan.” Zalm still looked unconvinced.
“Frank isn’t going to do anything without talking to me about it first, Stefan,” Smith said.
As he spoke, Smith realized, in his heart, how naïve that sounded. However, Zalm, on his best postconfession behaviour, appeared willing to let naïve remarks pass unchallenged. “I’m not going to fingerprint the guy and check him out with Interpol before I let him help me, Stefan. Am I now?”
Zalm still looked glum.
“Drinks?” Smith said. “At the Whale?”
“Always, Jonah.”
Chapter 10
It seemed that the new Jonah Smith was becoming prone to anger. He got very angry indeed when Conchi told him a day later that Horst Becker had come to her room at the Royal Phuket Hotel, where the Spanish DVI team was billetted in luxurious surroundings. Becker she said, was drunk again, or feigning drunkenness again, and exuding menace. Conchi was, she told Smith during their walk through Phuket Town on their lunch break, just out of the shower with a towel around her head and wearing a hotel bathrobe. Becker had pushed his way into the room when she opened the door.
“Why did you open the damn door?” Smith shouted at her. “Don’t you know that’s dangerous, to open a hotel room door to just anybody? Didn’t you look through the peephole first, for goodness’ sake?”
“I thought it was the night maid bringing me the little chocolate they always bring at bedtime, Jonah,” she said. “They turn down the beds at the Royal at night.”
“And Becker pushed his way in?” Smith said, stopping amid the traffic and crowds of Krung Thep Road to look directly at Conchi as she described what happened.
“He didn’t push exactly. He just came right inside without waiting, before I said it was OK.”
“It is certainly not OK. It’s not OK at all,”
Smith shouted.
A passing Thai driver slowed down and called out to them: “Taxi, taxi? Airport?”
Becker, Conchi said, had stopped short of threatening her directly. But there was no doubt in her mind that the visit was another warning. Becker had said as much.
“He said it was the last time he was going to warn us to stop making a fuss about the file,” Conchi said.
Passersby stared at the two foreigners having such a heated conversation in the middle of a busy noontime sidewalk.
“What does ‘the last time’ mean? What on earth does he mean by that?” Smith shouted again.
“Jonah, Jonah, stop your shouting in the street,” Conchi said.
“I’m going to go find that bastard right now,’
Smith shouted.
“Jonah, please, take it easy. We know what that Becker is like,” she said.
“Precisely. Precisely. That’s why I’ve had enough.”
Becker had not stayed long in Conchi’s room. As he had done the time he arrived unannounced and exuding menace at Smith’s hotel, Becker railed at Conchi for a few minutes about German reputations being at stake, about unfounded allegations being tossed around, about unspecified consequences for Conchi and for Smith and for Frank Delaney if they did not stop stirring things up about the lost file.
“I was scared a little, Jonah,” Conchi said. “Just a little. But I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Of course you were scared. The bastard meant for you to be scared. He meant for me to be scared when he got some goons to beat me up and he meant for Frank to be really, really scared when someone tried to run him over with a car.”
Conchi started walking again down Krung Thep Road.
“I’m going to bloody Braithwaite about this, Conchi. This is getting out of hand,” Smith said.
“What good will it do, Jonah? What is Braithwaite going to do? He wants you off this thing about the file too.”
“Well, if Becker is also threatening you now .
. .”
“He wasn’t exactly threatening me, Jonah. He was just mad.”
“Well, I’m bloody well mad now too.”
“He was mad, too, he said about his ID card.”
“His what?”
“His ID card. He said we stole it from him.”
“He what?” Smith stopped again in the street.
“He said his ID badge was missing. He thinks we took it.”
“Why would we take his damn ID badge?”
Smith said. “He’s a damn fool. What’s wrong with that man?”
All members of the international DVI teams were issued photo identification passes by the Thai police when they arrived in the disaster zone. Everyone—police, civilian forensic experts, local clerical staff—wore the passes around their necks whenever they were on duty. Smith and Conchi were wearing theirs now as they walked through Phuket Town at lunchtime.
“He said he knew we stole his ID card and he wanted it back,” Conchi said.
“He’s crazy,” Smith said. “Why would we do that? Why would anyone want to do that?”
“He just said he wanted it back.”
“He’s lost it, the fool. Why doesn’t he just go get another one? What use is a photo ID card to anybody else?”
“He said there would be big trouble for us if we didn’t stop bothering about this file thing and if we didn’t give him his ID card back.”
“Big trouble,” Smith said. “Was that the phrase he used?” “Yes, Jonah.”
“The bastard,” Smith said.
Conchi had eventually persuaded him not to confront Becker about the hotel visit. Smith had not seen Becker for days in any case. Conchi also persuaded Smith not to go to Adrian Braithwaite about Becker either.
They were sitting at the Circle Café in Rasada Street where they often ate lunch. Smith had calmed down a little. He started to see that Conchi was probably right, that there was not much they could do now except watch out for themselves and hope Delaney would be able to gather information that would defuse the situation somehow.
“We’re right in the middle of this thing now, Conchi,” Smith said as he watched her eat kuaytiaw noodles and drink tea. “We’re just going to have to ride this out, I’m afraid. But Becker has really gone too bloody far this time.”
“No, Jonah,” she said. “This time it’s OK, really. But he got you beaten up. And he got Frank into bad trouble with a car. That’s what’s going far, Jonah.”
They agreed Smith would tell Delaney what had happened and do nothing else for the moment. Except watch their backs, and hope that Becker wouldn’t decide to go further than he already had.
“Don’t be scared, Conchi,” Jonah said.
“I’m not that scared,” she said. “I’ve been to Bosnia. I like to dig up bones from graves. I’m a tough Spanish girl from Madrid.”
“I love you, Conchi,” the new Jonah Smith suddenly deemed it entirely appropriate to say.
“For now?” Conchi said with one of her brilliant Spanish smiles. “Or for a little longer maybe?”
Smith also now deemed it appropriate to tell Conchi what Delaney had found out about Klaus Heinrich. He told her as they walked back to the IMC after lunch. She listened carefully, saying nothing at first. Then it was her turn to stop in the middle of a busy Phuket street.
“A spy,” she said.
“Apparently,” Smith said.
“A West German spy ends up dead in the tidal wave here.” “Apparently.”
“Why? Why was he hiding in Thailand?”
“Congratulations, Conchi. That’s exactly the question I asked Frank when he told me about it.”
“How does Frank Delaney know these things?”
“Sources,” Smith said. “Or so Frank tells me. Doesn’t that sound exciting? Media sources or goodness knows what kind of sources.”
“Sources,” Conchi said.
“Precisely.”
“Maybe not so precise. Not always. A German spy. Jonah, come on.”
“It’s possible. Anything’s possible.”
“But why hide? After the Wall, everything changed in Germany. There was no East–West stuff over there anymore, so who cares about spies anymore?”
“Spies make enemies, right? Maybe that’s it.”
“So this Klaus Heinrich, he hides, OK, maybe. Then he dies in a tidal wave on the beach. OK. So who cares then? People find out. But he’s dead.” “That’s what Frank is trying t
o find out in Berlin as we speak.”
“Maybe Frank better hurry up.”
Conchi stayed with him that night in his hotel bed where she now belonged. She slept, as always and despite their situation, deeply, easily, happily, letting out ever so slight, almost imperceptible, snuffles and wheezes as she slept.
Smith liked to watch her sleep. He liked to listen to the snuffles as she slept. He lay beside her, happy despite the present difficulties, and pondered scenarios.
He imagined Delaney playing reporter in Berlin, getting in and out of taxis, going into homes and offices, asking hard questions of everyone he met, writing things down in little notebooks as reporters do. He imagined German officials and police and media sources being helpful to Delaney; being forthcoming, knowledgeable, generous with their time. He imagined Delaney finding out everything they needed to know about Klaus Heinrich and why he had ended up dead in a tidal wave in Phuket instead of in a house fire in Bonn.
He imagined Delaney returning to Phuket with the real story. He imagined Delaney writing that story and it appearing on newsstands everywhere, and it bringing people to justice if justice needed to be done, confirming suspicions of various sorts, clearing up mysteries, uncertainties, moral ambiguities.
He imagined the Deutschland story coming to a happy end, with all loose ends tied up, all players, good guys and bad, getting exactly what they deserved. He imagined himself and Conchi celebrating after the Deutschland story had ended, and again after the entire disaster victim identification operation had ended, after the international teams all started at long last to go home.
But here the imagined scenarios began to get murky. Smith stared at the ceiling, as his lover slept deeply at his side, and tried to imagine how the Jonah Smith–Concepción Garcia Ramirez story might eventually end.
The Tsunami File Page 20
