by Terry Morgan
He had been lying imagining the sunset from the hillside behind his house and, at first, he thought it was the nurse, but it was a much heavier squeaking sound and so he kept his eyes firmly shut.
His visitor saw the closed eyes but also saw them moving behind the lids. He came closer, stopped and waited as Jim opened them, one at a time, and recognized the pink face, large white hands and ginger hair. It was the Irishman, but Jim was still nervous of strangers and had got out of the habit of receiving people he did not know.
"Do you recognize me?" the big, ginger one said coming closer, his accent obvious but the sound quite pleasant on the ear. Jim looked at him, nodded but said nothing. "Jesus, what have they done to the beard? Are you sure it’s the same fella?" He smiled but there was no visible response from Jim.
"I hope you don't mind me coming, but for sure you gave me a real fright the other morning. There I was just about to swallow the first of the day and, by Jesus, what did I see out of the corner of my eye but a man collapsing in front of me."
The Irishness of the words were almost enough to make Jim smile, but he was not ready for smiling or interaction with a stranger and so he mumbled a "Thank you."
"Not at all.” There was a pause. “So, how are you? I called the hospital to check and they told me you were not dead but under observation, whatever that meant. Had a mite of a problem trying to make myself understood on the phone you know, but I managed. You know how it is." He looked down at Jim and frowned. "They said you were on your own, no visitors if you know what I mean. So I thought, well, the man might need a bit of a hand. They said they thought you were English. Is that right?"
Jim felt mildly touched. He nodded.
"Can I sit down? Do you mind?" The big man pulled up the only chair but then sat at some distance from the bed with his back to the second window. But the brightness from outside meant that Jim only saw a black silhouette. "So, how do you feel? How long did you own the beard?"
Jim turned his head to face the silhouette. "I miss it," he mumbled.
The Irishman then put his head on one side. "Jesus," he said. "To be sure you can't see me sitting here. The sun outside is very bright today."
He got up, moved his chair closer to the side of the bed and sat down again. Jim could now see he was about fifty years old, well built but with a widening middle and probably the same tee shirt and shorts as yesterday. The Irishman folded big arms across his stomach and as their eyes met for the first time, Jim stirred beneath the white sheet and tried easing himself into a more dignified and respectable position to meet a stranger.
"I would like to thank you for whatever it was you did for me. It was an unusual predicament. I don't normally collapse in public."
The Irishman looked at him, noted the accent and shook his head. "Not at all. Lucky I was around. I'm sure you would have done the same for me. But I'm not sure if the ambulance would have come so quick if I hadn't kicked the bloody barman. It seemed to me, he was more interested in watching you gasping for air than doing anything to help."
It was Jim's turn to note something. He'd have a word with Lek sometime about his treatment of sick customers. It was never good for business.
"The name's Tom, Tom Hanrahan. I'm from Dublin."
Jim moved his hand from his face towards the hand that was outstretched and his artist's eye then noticed the color contrast—dark brown hand against white. And the shape—a sinewy hand against a podgy one, as his mother used to say. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance," he said and briefly took the hand. Then there was another silence.
"So, what's your name? To be sure you must have one."
"My name is, uh, Jim. I'm not used to welcoming visitors to my bedside."
The words were odd, the voice baritone and clear, the accent straight from popular English films of the fifties and, for some reason, the Duke of Edinburgh sprang to Tom Hanrahan’s Irish mind. It was pleasant on the ear for all that and he waited for more. Nothing seemed forthcoming so, to encourage him, he said, "Jim. Well that's good enough for me. Tom and Jim. Doesn't sound as though either of our parents had much imagination but I reckon you can get by without too fancy a name. Did they give you a middle name by any chance? They dubbed me Patrick after my father, so it’s Tom Pat Hanrahan. Can you do anything better than Pat, Jim?"
"It may interest you to know that I, also, was named after my father."
"And what might that have been, Jim"
"William, so I suppose it's Jim Bill. Nothing imaginative as you've noted."
"So what are you up to in these parts, Jim?"
Jim was thinking, worried about giving too much away to a stranger. "I live here."
"Yes, I thought as much. The tan is a bit of a giveaway, Jim. I know a few folk who'd pay a fortune for a tan like that—women mostly. They'd even spray it on. And how long have you lived here?"
The small talk was getting too much. "A few years."
"Obviously you like it."
"It has its attractions."
"And what might they be, Jim? What do you do with your time?"
"I paint a little."
"You're an artist?"
"I try to be."
"So what do you paint, Jim?"
"I find natural subjects of most interest."
"Well that's a fine thing. I like to go fishing, myself. Have a friend in Donegal. We often go fishing together. I like the peace and quiet. Nature's a wonderful treatment for the frustrations of modern living, don't you think?"
"Yes, I suppose it is but I must admit to not having had much to do with civilization for a while."
"Ah, you're a wise man for sure you are. So you're well known in the town so to speak?"
"Well I would hardly say I am well known. Easily recognized is probably a more appropriate expression."
"Ah, yes, the beard must have had a bit to do with that." Tom gave a wide grin to encourage Jim to keep going. He was finding him slightly hard work but he had decided to pay the visit so he thought he'd persevere a while longer. To his surprise, Jim spoke, unprompted.
"The locals seem to regard them as far too hot and perhaps a little unhygienic but of course I make a point of washing every day. I admit to feeling somewhat undressed in its shortened form." That was better, Jim decided. Far more polite and sociable.
"So when are they letting you out?"
"I am a little uncertain at present. The doctor has advised me to take things easy and I will need to take some medication for a while."
"So do you live alone, Jim?"
"Yes," Jim said and crept lower beneath the bed sheet.
Tom watched, suddenly unsure about the wisdom in visiting the old man. He, himself, hated intrusion without invitation. Jim had looked like a weather worn tramp in the café and now looked like a sick tramp in blue pajamas. There was a kind of secrecy about him but the way he spoke suggested a far deeper side. As he watched, Jim nestled down still further and Tom wondered if he was to be left watching a man fall to sleep. He coughed deliberately. "So," he said, "I'll be getting along then. Pleased to see you are OK now. Take care now." He started to get up but Jim stirred and turned his head.
"You need not go just yet," he said quietly and then moved more abruptly as though trying to sit up. "That is unless you have other matters to attend to." Tom saw a look of concern on Jim's face as he was trying to ease himself up. He appeared weak. So Tom took his arm, the one that was not connected to the tube and helped him into a sitting position. "There you go now," and he pushed two pillows behind his head and sat back down to watch.
For the first time, Jim seemed to say something without being asked. His mouth twitched and his dry, cracked lips opened and shut slightly.
"I am most grateful, you know, for your help and for coming to visit me—a complete stranger. I didn’t expect it." He paused. "I live alone and it can be a little quiet. I don't meet too many folk, particularly ones like yourself."
To Tom, it sounded as if he had been categorized, but that the
category was not a bad one and Jim's sentences were getting noticeably longer.
"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."
Chapter Thirty-One
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 f
or 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.