The Tsunami File Read Online Free PDF

she stayed with him until dawn—was not the technical difficulty of the identification itself, or even the details of exactly how the file had gone missing. The fundamental question was the following: Why would anyone want to prevent the body of a tsunami victim from being identified?

Chapter 2
    T he Information Management Centre in Phuket Town had been set up in a disused wing of the cavernous Thai Telecommunications building. The centre was a busy, even a cheery, operation most days, incongruously so given the grim events that preceded its creation.
    Over the weeks and months, police and civilian staff who were rotated through the disaster zone from many countries had added the little human touches to be found in any busy office anywhere. Pictures of family were taped to computer terminals. Little animal figurines graced some desktops, along with flowers, boxes of tissues, bottles of mineral water, plastic containers of takeaway food. There was much animated conversation in a variety of languages, much cross-cultural banter, frequent laughter and smiles.
    The IMC was like almost any busy police office anywhere, like almost any office of any sort anywhere—crammed with desks and filing cabinets and photocopiers and phones, and with personalities, personal histories, ambitions, rivalries and insecurities.
    Smith’s large metal desk was in one corner, among those assigned to the Interpol staff that had come out from Lyon. For the moment, the team comprised two perpetually disgruntled French civilian data compilers, Nicole and Sandrine; Ruth Connolly, the tough-talking Irish press officer; Werner Eberharter, Interpol’s portly Austrian deputy team leader, nearing the end of his police career; and Janko Brajkovic, the grim-faced team leader, seconded too many years previously to Interpol from the Croatian police, nowhere near retirement but in no hurry whatsoever to leave his dream sinecure in southern France for a return to Zagreb and the nightmare of Balkan policing. He had been treating the Phuket assignment as an unexpected beachside holiday.
    The young French compilers worked with pursed lips at their computer terminals all day in an apparent state of controlled rage. They, like so many of their countrymen and women, were never at ease anywhere except in France. Smith often heard them complaining between themselves in French about their Interpol travel allowances, their hotel rooms, the local food and water, the Thai clerical staff at the IMC, and any number of other things that did not at all live up to their Gallic expectations.
    Eberharter and Connolly were not at their desks when Smith came in. Brajkovic was at his, however. He was in a foul humour, clearly hung over, and drinking coffee directly from a red Thermos flask when Smith approached him with his problem.
    Brajkovic rarely used a cup or a mug for coffeedrinking purposes.
    â€œWhat, what, what?” he growled when Smith came near. His desk sat under a giant powder blue Interpol flag pinned to the wall behind him. “Leave me alone, Smith. I am in a bad way.”
    Brajkovic had a very young Thai girlfriend, like many of the expatriate police at the tsunami scene, and his nights were long and arduous. His professional specialty at Interpol was stolen motor vehicles. His personal specialty was girls of barely legal age.
    â€œJanko, I need a word,” Smith said.
    â€œPlease, Smith, I am in a bad way. No troubles, OK? Please? Go find some bodies, make fingerprints, do something else. Send cadavers home, leave me alone.” Brajkovic slurped coffee, wiped his handlebar mustache and his chin. He suddenly raised his left hand high above his head in a hearty greeting as a smiling young Thai clerical assistant walked by the Interpol area with her arms full of wire in-trays destined for desks somewhere else.
    â€œThere goes a nice one, Smith,” Brajkovic said.
    â€œSee, behind you. I must examine her for identifying marks at