The Tsunami File

by Michael E. Rose

  “I just want people to know about this,” Smith said.

  “Who? How many? Where? To achieve what?”

  “That’s the sort of question you journalists have to ask,” Smith said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “OK, Jonah, fine, so we’ll be journalists in this one. Is that what you want? We won’t be spy guys or friends of spies. Not cops or friends of cops.”

  “Well, we certainly can’t find out about a story like this and just let it go.”

  “Tell your cop brethren who the man was, and how Ulrich Mueller was connected to him, and tell them about the coverup and let it go. Make the identification and let it go. Isn’t that what you used to do?”

  “This is different,” Smith said.

  “It’s a big bad old complicated world out there, Jonah.”

  They agreed to let the big questions ride for a little while longer. But Smith seemed in no hurry to go back to the IMC and Delaney wanted a briefing of his own.

  “Becker?” Delaney said. “How’s he been this past while? He certainly saw me today at the ceremony. He may think it’s his move now. Or maybe he’s the kind who’ll wait for opponents to make another move.”

  “He hasn’t said a word for quite a while,” Smith said. “Since that time he went to see Conchi at her hotel just after you left; he hasn’t come near us again.” “He scare her bad?”

  “Yes, she was scared. But she’s pretty tough. She didn’t give anything away.”

  “He doesn’t need much from her anyway if he’s listening to your conversations with his little microphones. I hope he heard our little playlet last night.”

  “You think that’s him with the microphones?”

  “Quite possibly,” Delaney said.

  “Who else?”

  “Police, maybe, from a couple of countries. Your own people, maybe. Braithwaite, for example. He’s got a big stake in this. The Thais, maybe.”

  “No,” Smith said. “Not Braithwaite. Not my people.”

  “German police. German intelligence. BND. The Americans.” “The Americans?”

  “No, probably not. Not yet, in your case anyway. They’re interested in what I do now, as I told you. Not you. Not yet. That bug was planted when the Yanks didn’t even know your name. If they even know it now.”

  “The Americans can’t be that interested in this in any case, surely.”

  “The Americans have a long history of taking a great interest in things that might influence elections. Anywhere. Things that might put like-minded administrations in power somewhere, or recalcitrants out of power.” Smith looked dubious.

  “What about your people?” he said. “Your friends at CSIS.”

  “No, I don’t think so. Canadian spooks play things a little different. They’ve got different priorities. They’re still not in the big leagues. And they’d figure they don’t need to plant microphones on this one anyway. They think they’ve got me for that sort of thing.” “Do they?”

  “Not always.”

  They walked some more. A man and a woman dressed in white stood at the edge of the sand and looked forlornly out. The woman threw a small bouquet of flowers onto the water and started to cry. Her partner rubbed infinity patterns on her back with his left hand. Their child, a sunburned blonde girl also dressed in white, built sand castles not far away and talked happily to herself as she worked.

  Delaney and Smith stopped to watch from a distance.

  “I’m leaving Fiona,” Smith said suddenly. “I thought you should know that, for some reason. Not sure why.”

  “Well, well, well. There’s the lead story, as we say in the trade,” Delaney said. “Yeah. It’s a pretty big story.”

  “Next step?” Delaney asked. “After that?”

  “Not quite sure at this stage. Spain maybe. Or Bosnia. Not sure.”

  “I see. With Conchi.”

  “Oh yes,” Smith said.

  “She knows this?”

  “Who? Fiona or Conchi?” Smith smiled wryly.

  “Both. Either.”

  “Fiona, no. Not yet. Conchi, yes.”

  “Spain. Nice this time of year.”

  “It wouldn’t be right away. There’s still work to do here. And Conchi has her work left to do in Bosnia.” “Bosnia then.”

  “Not sure yet. We’ll sort it out.”

  “Lots of unidentified bodies still in Bosnia.”

  “Perhaps they’ll need some help from a slightly damaged middle-aged fingerprint man over there,” Smith said with another smile, this one almost rueful. “That’s who I am.”

  “They’re always in demand, my friend. Lots of identification work left to do out there in the big bad world.”

  “Disaster victims,” Smith said. “People not unlike myself.”

  “You’re no victim, my friend,” Delaney said.

  “No?”

  “No. I don’t think so,” Delaney said.

  They agreed to meet in the afternoon at the Whale Bar. Smith said he needed to get back to work and needed more time to think. Delaney was glad of the unexpected additional time for thinking and resting.

  Back at the hotel, he read a couple of agitated email messages from Rawson and listened to some Rawson voicemails. His editors at International Geographic were understandably agitated as well. There was little else of note on his computer screen or on his phone. Kate Hunter was maintaining her silence. Delaney was not sure when, or if, he would try to break that silence.

  He slept for a while—in a hiatus, at that familiar point where a story, as a result of a reporter’s intervention, begins to take on a new life of its own.

  At 3 p.m. he showered and dressed and made his way past the smiling girls in the hotel lobby. All was quiet on the streets as his taxi made its way to the Whale Bar. The bar, too, was very quiet. Off-duty DVI teams had not yet filed in to swap stories.

  A few people, not locals, were on high wooden stools, chatting to Prasan the barman. Only a couple of tables in the dimness down past the row of stools were filled. Smith was sitting at a small round table near the front, in a pool of warm sunlight that had formed on the floor below the plate-glass façade. Delaney was surprised, and not pleased, to see Conchi and Zalm sitting with him. This was to have been a working meeting, a meeting for private discussion about next steps—not for after-work drinks. Smith sensed his displeasure.

  “Conchi and Stefan are just going to have a fast welcome-back drink with us, Frank, and then we can get down to business.” Delaney looked over at Zalm.

  “Jonah is being very mysterious, Frank. He hasn’t told me a thing,” Zalm said, raising his glass. “I’m still not to be trusted, it seems.”

  “All will be revealed in due course,” Smith said.

  “Will it?” Delaney said.

  “You’re in a very bad mood this afternoon,” Conchi said.

  “Yeah, I am,” Delaney said.

  “Have a drink,” Zalm said. “I’ll buy.” Zalm summoned Prasan. The barman came over, gave their table a wipe, and smiled broadly at them all.

  “Welcome back to the Whale,” he said to Delaney.

  “Singhas again all around, I think, Prasan. Beer OK for you, Frank?” Zalm said.

  “I’ll have a small whisky with mine, thanks,” Delaney said.

  “He is in a very bad mood, Prasan,” Conchi said. “Give him a very big whisky.”

  It was true that Delaney was beginning to feel irritated, uneasy, that valuable time was being lost with social niceties in tropical bars.

  They drank, made small talk, wasted time. Delaney could see Smith watching him and trying to make silent apologies across the table for the delay.

  “Frank Delaney is now going to make things right,” Conchi said eventually, out of the blue. She seemed uncharacteristically giddy that
afternoon. Perhaps she was in love. Perhaps it was the beer. “Then we can all get back to our normal work.”

  “Is our work normal, Conchi, my dear?” Zalm asked, red in the face from the hot sun streaming through the expanse of window glass.

  Delaney fought back his feelings of frustration. He sat half listening to the chatter and looked idly around. Prasan was deep in conversation with the drinkers sitting at the bar. One of the patrons from the back tables, a fat man in a sweat-stained white mourner’s outfit, headed to the toilets near the entrance.

  A tall man, not a Thai, came in from outside and sat at the lone table between their own and the L-shaped bar. Too close, Delaney thought, becoming increasingly irritated, for any serious conversation to be had with Smith even when Conchi and Zalm decided it was time to leave. He began to doubt that any real progress would be made that day at all.

  The new arrival had a close-cropped military haircut and wore big aviator’s sunglasses with dark green lenses. He set down on the floor a black Nike sports bag he had been carrying. He nodded silently at Delaney, and then went up to the bar to order his drink. Cop, Delaney thought. Or soldier. Tough guy.

  After about 15 more minutes, Conchi and Zalm finished their beers and got ready to go.

  “So sorry, mischief boys, we will go now and leave you all alone,” Conchi said. “Good idea,” Delaney said.

  “Oh please, Frank Delaney, cheer up today, OK?” she said.

  Conchi got up, looked around for her bag. It was under Smith’s chair. Zalm stood up too.

  “We will leave you two very serious people alone,” Zalm said. “But maybe we’ll have some dinner tonight, Jonah, OK?”

  “We’ll see, Stefan,” Smith said. “I’ll call you.”

  Then things began to happen very, very fast.

  Delaney noticed that the tall drinker in aviator glasses had still not come back to his table. He instead sat on a bar stool, drinking his beer there and talking with Prasan.

  As Conchi and Zalm made their preparations to leave, the aviator apparently decided it was time to pay and go as well. He quickly placed some Thai baht notes on the bar, drained his glass and strode toward the door. Delaney watched him as he went by. The man looked back over his shoulder from the doorway, and then he was out and hurrying across the street.

  Conchi kissed Smith goodbye. Delaney also got a brief kiss on the cheek. Zalm shook Delaney’s hand. Then Zalm and Conchi started to move toward the door, hoisting shoulder bags. Sun poured through the window. All was silent for a moment.

  Then Delaney saw the aviator standing on the other side of the street, looking in at them from a distance through the window of the Whale. Delaney watched him through the glass and the car and motorbike traffic beyond. Then he looked over to where the man had first sat down. The Nike bag was still there on the floor.

  “That guy’s forgotten his bag,” Delaney said.

  “What guy?” Smith said.

  Suddenly, all was clear—all was in bright, sharp, sunlit focus. Prasan headed their way from behind the bar to wipe the table and collect empty bottles. Delaney looked out the window again and then back to the abandoned bag. He looked through the window again. He saw the aviator holding a cell phone in his left hand, tapping numbers with his right.

  Delaney jumped up, knocking a chair over in his haste. He grabbed Smith by the shoulder and heaved him to his feet.

  “Run!” Delaney shouted. “Out, out, out now. Fast!”

  “What’s up?” Smith shouted.

  Delaney half dragged, half carried Smith to the door, staying very low.

  “Out, out, out now!” Delaney shouted again. “Bomb, there’s a bomb! Prasan, get down, down, get down now!”

  When the bag exploded with a terrific boom and flash, time, for a split second, stood still just as witnesses and survivors of such bombings invariably say. Delaney and Smith had just cleared the doorway when the bag blew. Delaney felt the shockwave on his back and the whump of hot air pounding his eardrums. Debris and shrapnel peppered his neck and back as he tumbled with Smith out of the Whale and into the street. The top of a bar table cartwheeled out with them.

  The plate-glass window disintegrated into a million deadly projectiles. Conchi and Zalm had made it well out into the street before the bomb went off. But they too were showered with flying glass and other chunks of debris. Delaney saw them both go down hard onto the road.

  Delaney stayed on the sidewalk where he fell, crawling flat through bits of rubble toward Conchi and Zalm, still trying to drag Smith with one arm as he went. Passersby screamed and shouted and pointed. A local man was down on the sidewalk with them, moaning and holding his hands to a big bleeding gash on his temple. A motorbike had overturned on the road. No cars moved.

  Delaney stopped crawling away from the Whale and lay on his side on the street. He didn’t think he was very badly hurt. His neck and back were itchy with shrapnel hits and blood and sweat, but he didn’t think he was going to die. His ears were ringing and he thought an eardrum might have burst.

  Smith lay panting beside him. He was face down, flat on his stomach, but he was alive. In shock, probably, but alive.

  “Jonah, Jonah,” Delaney called out. “Are you OK?”

  Delaney could hear his own voice only faintly, as if from a distance. Smith didn’t answer. His ears, too, were likely damaged by the blast.

  Delaney crawled over to where Smith lay. He shook his shoulder gently. Smith moaned, turned his head slightly and made eye contact. His eyes closed again. Delaney rolled over and looked again toward Conchi and Zalm. Conchi was trying to pick herself up from the gutter and the broken glass. She looked badly scraped up.

  Zalm, though, was lying motionless. Conchi managed to get to her knees. She tried to pull the Dutchman up and shake him conscious.

  “Leave him, Conchi, leave him,” Delaney shouted out. His voice was weak and dry and hoarse. “It’s better not to move him.”

  “Jonah!” Conchi shouted. “Jonah!”

  “He’s OK,” Delaney said. “He’s OK.”

  “Jonah,” she called out again. She sat back on the sidewalk, hugging her knees and crying.

  In the distance, as he lay in the street, Delaney heard sirens coming, still far off. Two local policemen ran up to the scene, handguns drawn, staying low. They shouted to each other and to the crowd in Thai.

  In English one of them shouted to Delaney: “Bomb? Bomb?”

  Delaney heard the words as if from a great distance, as if in a dream. “Yes,” he said. “Bomb.”

  “Who are you?” the policeman asked, coming closer.

  “Journalist,” Delaney said. “Journalist.”

  EPILOGUE

  Senior Minister Is Latest Victim in Widening German Spy Scandal

  BERLIN, 28 May 2005 (Deutsche Press) – The growing scandal over the true identity of German super-spy Klaus Wolfgang Heinrich claimed another political victim on Wednesday with the sudden resignation of Interior Minister Edmund Heilbronner.

  Heilbronner, 59, who is one of the most powerful ministers in the SPD government of Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder, had until now been resisting repeated calls by some opposition parties and the media for him to resign in the wake of spectacular revelations in Die Welt newspaper on 30 April that Heinrich, long regarded as a hero for his many years of supposed work in the then East Berlin as a spy for the West, was in fact a Stasi double agent.

  The Die Welt story, written by the newspaper’s Political Editor Gunter Ackermann, revealed that some seven years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Heinrich’s subsequent installation in Bonn as a highly paid civil servant, his true identity was covered up when certain declassified Stasi files came to light. The story also reported that Heinrich did not die in a house fire near Bonn in October 2001 as previously reported, but in fact drowned in the tsunami disaster in Thailand on 26 December 2004.
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  In another revelation, the Die Welt article revealed that Heinrich had conducted a secret homosexual affair with BKA President Ulrich Mueller for at least several years while living in Bonn, and that the police chief had been forced to leave his post in disgrace in 2001 when the relationship was discovered. The Interior Minister and the BKA said at the time that Mueller had opted for early retirement in France, where he now lives. No other explanation was ever given.

  Announcing his resignation on Wednesday to journalists at a packed news conference, Heilbronner insisted he had done nothing illegal and claimed that the decision to cover up the truth about Heinrich’s Stasi affiliation and to subsequently provide him with a new identity in Thailand in 2001 had been taken by unnamed individuals from the previous CDU administration. “My party came to power in 1998. That was after the Stasi files in question became known in certain circles and after the decision to hide the truth about Heinrich’s work for Stasi,” a defiant Heilbronner said, reading from a written statement. “It is the previous CDU government that did not take adequate care to check on Heinrich’s past and the true nature of his activities in the years before he left East Berlin in 1990. It is the CDU that is responsible for this debacle.”

  “I am resigning my cabinet post today only because as Interior Minister I must take responsibility for the decision not to immediately reveal the security threat and potential blackmail threat posed by the homosexual relationship between Heinrich and Mueller when this became known in certain circles.”

  Heilbronner refused to say whether he had resigned voluntarily or had been ordered to do so by Chancellor Schroeder. He also refused to answer questions about whether he or any members of his government were aware, at the time Ulrich Mueller was forced to leave the BKA, of Heinrich’s past as a double agent.

  The Heinrich scandal comes when a federal election is on the horizon and opinion polls show Schroeder’s SPD substantially behind the opposition CDU, led by the party’s new leader Angela Merkel.

  However, the CDU’s party chairman Oskar Kaufmann, who served as senior adviser to former Chancellor Helmut Kohl before the previous government lost power in 1998, has also resigned over the Heinrich scandal. Kaufmann, 70, claims that so-called out of control elements in Germany’s BND security service were responsible for the original decision in approximately 1997 to cover up Heinrich’s work for Stasi and then to fake Heinrich’s death in 2001 and set him up with a new identity in Thailand.