Whistle Blower (17 page)

"I have a very pleasant home and paint a good deal but conversation is mostly with myself these days. I travel around on my motorcycle and have recently been traveling abroad on business, but I often end up in Lek's internet cafe where I had my unfortunate experience. I believe the doctors would say I do not take adequate care of myself—diet and so on—but I have to say that until a few days ago I had not had a day's sickness in my life."

"Well, for sure you look a lot better than when I saw you on the floor. I must admit to having found myself on the floor of the odd bar on occasions in the past but nothing so serious that required an ambulance." Tom laughed, perhaps a little falsely and it went on too long. But it was a symptom of hope that humor might lubricate the conversation. Jim merely looked at him.

"So are you visiting the area at present? On holiday perhaps?"             

It was Tom's turn to pause as though he, too, was not now sure what to say.

"Yes, yes," he said. "A holiday."

"So why here? Why not Bangkok, Phuket. Pattaya, the beaches, the north. Do you have a special interest in the bridge over the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi? The war graves? Why here?"

"Ah yes, the bridge. I did stop there."

"So when did you arrive?"

"Ah, two days ago."

"And where are you staying?"

"I think it is called the Pong Phen Guest House. Do you know it?"

"Yes," Jim said and another silence fell,

Tom now tried another tack. "So how old are you, if you’ll excuse my impertinence."

"Sixty something"

"Sure, that's not so old. But just to make you feel very old I can tell you I am a mere youngster. I'm only fifty-six." He laughed before continuing. "So have you no family at all?"

"No," Jim said. "No, not here."             

"Did you never marry or anything, Jim?"

"Yes," he replied, "It seems a long time ago."

"Did she pass away, Jim?" Tom's question was blunt but he had his reasons.             

"No. Just problems, complications."              

"But you got over it, Jim?" 

The question was again deeply personal. Jim pondered on a suitable answer. A thousand events poured through his mind in seconds. He constantly toyed with regrets and was still haunted by the stigma of being finally recognized as an inept failure. Had he got over it?

"Probably not," he replied and his eyes met Tom's.

"Well I must tell you, I lost my wife, Maeve, a year ago. Breast cancer. Doctors failed to spot it quickly enough in my opinion. But what can you bloody do? By then it was too late. For sure I miss her—every single day. Even on the plane I thought how much she would have liked to join me on this trip. But, well, there you go. What can you do?"

Jim was staring at him. "I am sorry. Life can be very depressing, but it is meant to be a struggle. Without daily struggle we are lesser people."              

It wasn't much that he had said but, for Tom, it seemed enough for now. "Well I think I must be on my way. I hope I can get a taxi out there."

Jim was still looking at Tom's slightly sad blue eyes with his own, unblinking brown eyes. "Will you come again?" Jim asked. "Tomorrow?"

"Sure, be pleased to. In the afternoon? Would that suit you, Jim?"             

"Yes, very well."

"Till tomorrow then," Tom said and held out his hand. Jim took it. There was a single shake and Tom turned and went towards the door. But as he did so, he heard a movement behind him as the bed creaked. He turned. Jim was sitting up, no longer supported by the pile of pillows and looking straight at him.

"You're from the press aren't you? You tracked me down. Deliberately."

JAN KERKMAN WAS pressing the button for the lift when he felt the hand on his shoulder. He turned. It was Dirk Eischmann, "One minute, Jan. Come."

A fear erupted inside Jan's stomach. 

"Uh, the EAWA Steering Group is in five minutes, will it take…" he offered.

It was Thursday, 1:50 p.m. and a meeting of the "EAWA Steering Group"—a group of middle-ranking officers who reviewed funding applications for West Africa—was due to meet at 2:00 p.m. Jan's mind, as he felt the hand, had been on what Jonathan had told him the night before. Jonathan's Sierra Leone funding bid for the Nigerian Mr. Johnson might soon come the way of the EAWA group and Jan was already pondering on how to use it. 

"One minute only," Eischmann said and walked towards an open office door just a few paces away. He beckoned with an impatient nod of his head once more. "Come."

Jan followed him into the committee room, empty except for the usual meetings table and chairs. Eischmann closed the door. "Expect a call," he muttered. "Our Italian friend wants to meet you again. He has an office somewhere that you know about—apparently you've been there. I know nothing about this but he left a message saying that more tuition has been organized. Do you understand?"

There was a brief pause before Eischmann continued. He was looking at Jan from the corner of his eye. "Our Italian friend will have warned you about confidentiality," he said. "He may well have spelled it out very clearly in his usual style. You will be well advised to heed the warning. OK, you can go." Then he opened the door once more.

Jan, who had said nothing, returned to the lift and was sitting in the EAWA Steering Group meeting room before the clock showed 2:00 p.m.

He assumed the call from the Italian would come on his private mobile phone—the one known also to Eischmann. He did not expect the summons to come the way it did.

It was 6:30 p.m. and almost dark outside. Jan, with his mobile phone in a back pocket, was on his usual jogging route through the Warandepark, the Parc de Bruxelles, close to the Royal Palace when, in the light from a path-side lamp, he spotted a man on a wooden bench with a dog on a leash.

Seeing a man wearing a white prayer cap and a large, brown Labrador dog on a lead in this park was unusual enough but as Jan got closer, the man suddenly stood up. The dog ran across the track. But the man stood still and the leash stretched right across the track like a finishing line. Unable to go further without either jumping the lead or ducking beneath it, Jan stopped running. The man in poor fitting jeans, a long, dark anorak and curly black hair showing beneath the prayer cap walked up to him. "Pardon, monsieur…
mon chien
…crazy. This for you, monsieur." And with that he pushed a slip of paper into Jan's hand and walked after the dog.

Jan stood, staring after the man as he walked quickly across the grass behind the dog towards the park gates and the brightly lit road. Then he unfolded the slip of paper and read, "Delft 1:00 p.m., Domenica." Domenica being Italian for Sunday, Jan was in no doubt that this was the message he had been told to expect. He started walking, the motivation to continue his jog gone, replaced by a feeling of nervous apprehension. More than anything he wanted to talk to Jonathan.

In London, Jonathan also wanted to talk to Jan about Jacob Johnson but they had both agreed at the last meeting with Jim that they needed to be increasingly careful and that included communications with one another. Both used separate mobiles to their normal day-to-day phones. As Jim had re-enforced during their last meeting in Amsterdam: "Make no mistake, these are powerful people. They already have money and resources but they are out to make even more. Security is what keeps them out of sight. Politics and bribery is what shuts mouths. Threats and fear of repercussions are what keeps people in their place. That is the power they think they have over you."

And then Jim had gone on to explain how they had dealt with him when they felt he was on the verge of blowing the top off of their lucrative business.

"Don't think they are all criminals in the usual sense of the word. Oh no. They depend on ordinary people only interested in holding onto their ordinary jobs by doing ordinary things—things they are told to do day to day. But they'll use anyone—politicians, big and small businesses, the press, PR consultants, magazine and newspaper editors, TV, the radio—they'll pay anyone for a story or a piece of news or a comment to counter suggestions that things are not as clean as they appear. They'll tap phones, they'll record conversations. And if all that doesn't work then they'll bring in the really nasty elements—underworld characters who know nothing of what is going on but who'll do anything for the promise of big money. I know because it happened to me and if they think I'll come back and start again then they'll target me all over again. That's why I'm staying out of sight for the present. But I'll be back."

Jan had driven back to Brussels from his first meeting with Guido with Jim's words echoing in his ears and Jonathan had lain in bed next to Claire remembering them after his meeting with Jacob Johnson. Now, Jan was remembering the words once again as he walked back to his apartment thinking about another meeting with Guido on Sunday.

"I think we will find they are a sort of modern mafia who have learned to specialize in this form of crime," Jim had said. "There are probably just one or two sitting at the top with a structure of lesser fraudsters beneath them, all kept in order by threats, blackmail, bribes and promises of money."

Had he, Jan Kerkman, become one of those lesser fraudsters? Definitely, Jan decided, but in his case it was deliberate. He'd become a whistleblower when the time was right.

"Finding those at the top might not be as difficult as we think," Jim had continued, "But they will be protected by a reputation of dignity, professionalism and status that has been deliberately constructed to make any accusations from outside look absurd and totally inconceivable. I tried that accusations route and I failed.

"And I also suspect they are using technology, software, the internet—anything to conceal what they are doing. As for the lesser fraudsters, they want to keep them in charge of the day-to-day operations because they still need them. They need all the systems to appear to be working normally and efficiently, because they might one day need to explain away the bureaucratic weaknesses they have been ruling over for years, and they'll need plausible excuses for losing vast sums of taxpayers' money. That is when the complete innocents and the lesser fraudsters will suddenly find fingers being pointed directly at them. They will become the dispensable, sacrificial offerings to muddy the waters and divert attention.

"So be aware, those fraudsters sitting at the top will not look like fraudsters. As they go about their day to day lives, they will look and appear calm and normal because they feel totally untouchable.

"And even if massive fraud was proven, would they automatically lose their jobs, status, pensions? No, not necessarily. Because the entire system is designed to automatically cover up such activity and if it ever came to public enquiries—which is unlikely—they would point fingers at each other and then hide without fear of prosecution behind the complexity of the organization. Things like that can take years, if ever, to come to Court.

"So, in a way, we will probably show that the whole system is at fault here. Whether we can do anything about it in our own small way I really don't know, but I'm damned sure the millions of hard-working, honest, taxpayers out there would support us in anything we do. That is where our strength lies."

After Jim had finished, both Jan and Jonathan understood exactly why Jim had gone into politics after a career in business and for Jonathan, who, until then, was still feeling slightly reluctant to get involved, it had been the turning point. He was in it, up to his neck in it and determined to see it through to whatever conclusion.

In Brussels, still clutching the piece of paper, Jan gave up on his evening jog and walked back to his apartment.

"YOU ARE FROM the press aren't you? You found me. Deliberately."

Tom Hanrahan had stopped, one foot still inside Jim's room, the other foot already in the corridor. A nurse passed by, another went the other way carrying a bundle of papers. They smiled at him.

"Well?"

Tom turned his head to see Jim sitting bolt upright in the bed looking as if he was about to get out. "Yes," he said. "But…but I'm not the sort of reporter you dislike, Jim."

"And what sort of reporter do I dislike?"

Tom turned fully around to face Jim but remained standing in the doorway. "Those who ruin good men by inventing stories to satisfy a public mood or are paid to find scandal where there is none. Those who wound and then rub salt in just to sell copy. Ones paid to find faults and weaknesses where none exist. Highly paid character assassins, liars, cheats, empty self-publicists, paparazzi… that sort."

Jim listened intently. He had hardly blinked. "You're using some of my very own words, Mr. Hanrahan—words I used when I once spoke to Der Spiegel because I thought they'd like them and might translate well into German. Been checking my life history?"

"Yes."

"And so what sort of reporter are you?"

Tom moved just inside the room. "One who wants to get to the truth. One who once hated what he was being asked to do so much that he gave it all up to run a feckin' paper shop in Dublin…and still does."

Jim, one arm attached to the drip and monitor, the other dug into the pillow behind to support himself, raised a questioning eyebrow although Tom Hanrahan would not have seen it. Long strands of gray hair covered most of Jim's glistening forehead. "So what do you want?"

Tom came another step closer, but the door to the corridor was still wide open. "I hated what was going on, Jim. I watched you on TV. I watched your wife give an interview under huge pressure from somewhere. I watched the reporters outside your London flat, stood, huddled, waiting like hungry lions by a waterhole…and I was supposed to be one of them… but I couldn't do it. I refused, got called in, got another disciplinary warning—I was beginning to collect them. But this one, I was told, was my last—official stuff, written down, refusal to obey instructions, employment law crap. I'd already said that what was going on was bloody wrong. I said we needed to find the real story, the story behind the hounding."

"Answer the question, damn you. What do you want?"

"I'd like to help, Jim."

"And what else?"

"I suppose I want a story."

Jim seemed to relax slightly. "Bloody hell. Honesty from a sacked hack. What paper?"

"I told you I don't work for one any longer. I run a feckin' paper shop—sweets, crisps, chewing gum, fizzy drinks, lollypops—high quality stuff for overweight kids." Even from a distance, Tom saw beads of sweat on Jim's forehead. In his condition, this was not a good time for a discussion like this, but he was still shocked by how quickly Jim had cottoned on.

"So how did you know where to find me?"

"Jim, listen to me." Tom edged even closer. "This is the God's truth. It was sheer chance I sat next to you yesterday morning in that bar. You didn't look at all well. Next minute you're on your feckin' back. I didn't plan that, for Jesus' sake."

"I said how did you know where to find me? Are there any more like you on their way?"

Jim coughed, a hand went to his chest. He coughed again and then slumped back onto the pillows, mumbling something. Tom went a few more steps closer wondering whether to call a doctor. He went right up to Jim, bent over him and touched his arm.

"Jim—take it easy, OK? I'm sorry but I was going to tell you. But I didn't even know for certain it was you. Give me a chance. You've changed you know, I hardly recognized you."

Jim turned his head away. 

"Listen, Jim. I want to help you. But only if you want me to. You don't know me but I feel I know you. I always admired you. I'll never forget some of the things you used to say—the election, your speeches, interviews, fantastic stuff. I found it so refreshing and I wasn't alone."

Jim turned to face Tom who was now doing something to the duvet cover, drawing it up over his chest with fat hands. His big pink arms with the mass of thick, gingery hair looked enormous. He took a deep breath, his gray eyes blinking, watery, red. His voice was quieter now, sounded weaker. "What speeches? I hardly made any. I didn't get a chance."

"You know what I mean."

Jim shifted, tried to sit up again, failed.

"Hanrahan," he muttered as if remembering something. "Tom Hanrahan. Are you the one who punched that photographer outside my flat?"

"Yeh, sure. You remember that? I had a right brawl with that fucking prick after you left. Never upset a Paddy when he's already mad, OK? It was the start of my own problems. Another warning. Aggressive behaviour towards a colleague. You want to try sitting up again? There you go. You need some more rest, Jim. Why don't I go now. Come again to see you. I'm trying to help, Jim. Believe me. Can I come again tomorrow? Quiet chat. Would you like that?"

Jim looked at the big Irishman. He remembered him now. At the time, he'd actually felt pleased that someone had done what he had been tempted to but daren't. Yes, he had once been grateful to Tom Hanrahan. He looked away and closed his eyes but behind the lids his mind was racing on everything that was important to him—the unfinished business, Jonathan, Jan, his house, his paintings, his garden—Margaret. Where was she now? What was she doing? Was she well?

But he knew that if he opened his eyes right now he'd see his predicament—tied to a hospital bed with a needle in his arm, a plastic tube, a drip and a bleeping monitor. And far too close, next to him, was an Irishman whom he could hear breathing heavily through his nose—a press reporter who had been there when he had finally decided to escape from the madness to get away, to think and to decide what to do—three years ago. Three years was a long time to still be trying to resolve the mess he had found himself in. And what had he achieved so far? Nothing yet.

But what had he learned about himself in three years? A lot. That he was just as determined and opinionated as ever, but also a different person—calmer, despite what it may have just appeared—more sensitive, far more aware of his surroundings. He saw many things quite differently. Forgiving those that had tried to destroy him was hard and wrongs still needed to be put right, no one could argue with that. Perhaps he should at least make a start on forgiveness. Could he not bring himself to trust just one of those who had once pursued him—pursued him merely because it was what he was being paid to do.

A quote suddenly came to him—he had read it somewhere—a saying similar to one about a small ant that he'd told Colin. 'Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.' That was it.

Tom was watching Jim's lips moving. Then his eyes opened, he mumbled something and turned his head. "Mark Twain I think it was." Then a pause. "Just tell me something, Mr. Hanrahan. With the whole world to choose from, how did you know to come to this particular, far flung outpost?"

"My daughter, Katherine," Tom said without hesitation. "She was on a gap year, traveling with an American friend of hers. Pure chance again. She recognized you and told me when she got home. She knew I liked you. I told her not to tell anyone. But I couldn't do anything at the time. My wife, Maeve, was sick—cancer you know… I'll get the nurse for you, Jim. You just lie there. Rest. Take it easy. Then, for sure you'll be up and running around in no time. I'll come back tomorrow. Would that be OK with you?"

"Yes," Jim said. "I think so."