Free The Tsunami File by Michael E. Rose

was being done.
    Interpol, and a score of national police forces, now badly wanted a piece of the media action to satisfy their home constituencies that they were front and centre on the scene. Months after the disaster, however, Kendall’s PR chief, a weather-beaten former Australian television journalist named Gary Clarke, was doggedly standing his ground, if only because his job now paid him many times what he could ever dream of earning in the media, and his job very much depended on success in places like this.
    â€œYou can’t stop a global company or any company for that matter from issuing a press release if it bloody well wants to, Ruth. Even Interpol can’t stop us from doing that,” he said.
    â€œYou guys make me want to puke,” Connolly said. “You’re just out here peddling your wares and you’ve got the Thais by the short and curlies. If you want to issue a press release even remotely connected to this police operation, you come to me first. I’ve been telling you that for weeks. How do you know what I might have planned for the damn media on any given day?”
    â€œI don’t have to coordinate my media strategy with yours, Ruth,” Clarke shouted back “Your strategy is just to make your bloody shareholders rich,” Connolly shouted.
    â€œAnd yours is just to make Interpol look good,” Clarke shouted back.
    â€œI’m representing all the teams here, Gary,” she said.
    â€œBullshit,” Clarke said.
    They both noticed Delaney at the same time. “Are we on the record here, my friends?” Delaney said with a smile, and coming closer. “May I quote you on some of this perhaps?”
    â€œFuck off, Delaney,” Connolly said, reaching into her shoulder bag for a cigarette. “We’re on the record when I say we’re on the record.” Clarke lit a cigarette as well.
    â€œMs. Connolly is practising her inimitable scorched-earth policy of media relations,” Clarke said. “She’ll have me arrested next.”
    â€œI’m thinking about that very thing,” Connolly said, taking a ferocious drag on her foul-smelling Thai smoke. She was tall, busty, broad-shouldered and strikingly attractive. She wore an Interpol baseball cap and her long auburn hair was tightly tied back. Delaney thought when they met for the first time that she would make an outstanding undercover drugs officer. Perhaps she had done such work in Ireland in her pre-Interpol incarnation.
    â€œWhat do you want from me now anyway, Delaney?” she said. “Nobody still reads International Geographic anymore, do they? Except in dentist offices?”
    â€œI’ll leave you to your fate,” Clarke said to Delaney. “Ruth, shall we leave this for another day?”
    â€œJust keep your overpaid spin monkeys off their typewriters from now on,” she said.
    Clarke laughed as he moved off. “Good luck, Delaney,” he called out over his shoulder.
    Connolly watched intently as Clarke got into a gleaming emerald-coloured Land Cruiser with Kendall logos emblazoned everywhere.
    â€œHe is one scumbag,” she said bitterly. She laughed, however, as she looked over at Delaney. “Off the record, of course.”
    â€œAh, the politics of international police cooperation,” Delaney said.
    â€œThey’re not even fucking police,” Connolly said bitterly. “That’s what gets my goat.”
    â€œNot everyone can be police,” Delaney said.
    â€œPity,” she said. “Now what are you going to bother me about today, Delaney? Can’t you see I’m busy alienating the global business community? Haven’t you got enough for a little magazine story yet? You’ve been prowling around here for days and days.”
    â€œI’m still waiting for my interview with Adrian Braithwaite,” Delaney said.
    â€œI’ve made the request,” Connolly said. “He’s a busy