Dead Centre 2 - Even The Wrong Can Be Right Sometimes!

1 BANGKOK, THAILAND-1

1 BANGKOK, THAILANDMichael Adams, a medium-ranking civil servant at the British Embassy on Wireless Road in Bangkok, put a hand over his left ear and tapped the table top between himself and his Thai assistant, Jenny, who was sitting opposite him. She noticed the movement out of the corner of her eye, smiled, pushed the pause button on her wireless headset and waited for Michael to say something.

“What’s that racket? We’re not expecting visitors today, are we?”

“Not that I know of, Mike.” She was allowed to be informal, when they were alone at work, as they were now, or at the home they shared not far from the Embassy. They had been working together for two years and were making plans to get married before the end of the year. She reached out and put her left hand on his.

“Shall I phone down to find out what’s happening?”

He, smiled, took her hand in his and nodded back, the sound of rotor blades was deafening in the small top-floor office, where they were processing suspicious visa application forms.

As she started to move her right hand towards the telephone, he mouthed the words, “Yes, please, you beautiful…” but he didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence or return her adoring smile.

There was a loud crash directly above them, which sent a spray of small, sharp pieces of masonry to cut their faces and something flashed before their eyes a millisecond before it took their conjoined hands off, cut the desk in two, thus breaking their legs and disappeared through the floor.

As large lumps of concrete hurtled down on them from above, there was a terrific explosion from one of the floors below, which squashed them like mosquitoes, first against the walls behind them and then against what was left of the ceiling and the roof. If they had been alive, like a few in the building still were, they might have witnessed a second reinforced, fifty-gallon drum plummeting through the same hole and exploding into an inferno of flames. There was no need for a third, no-one had survived the last one, but Mike and Jenny were already on their way to Heaven still holding hands, still unaware of what had befallen them and all their colleagues.

∞

“Have the Americans got any more intel than we have?” asked the Prime Minister, Huw Lloyd, of his Foreign Minister, Richard Wilkinson at an emergency meeting at nine thirty am, about forty minutes after the events had occurred.

“No, sir, or they’re not saying anything yet, but I suspect that they’re just as much in the dark as we are.”

“What happened to them exactly?”

“No-one’s saying exactly, sir, but it looks like they took a barrel bomb of high-explosives through the roof, like we did, then they tossed the pilot out, who was an American national working in Bangkok, and plunged the helicopter full of fuel in through the hole, causing pretty much the same level of damage that we sustained.”

“You mean no survivors there either.”

“I’m afraid it looks that way, sir, only those who were lucky enough to have been on leave.”

“Damn it all and these two embassies were right next to each other?”

“No, not quite, sir, but not far apart… Ours was on Wireless Road, theirs was over the junction and down the road opposite, both in Lumpini, in the centre of Bangkok.”

“That was bloody stupid planning, wasn’t it? Just asking for trouble, if you ask me.”

“Yes, sir, but those embassies have been situated there since before the invention of aircraft, sir.”

“Oh, I see… Are there any more details, Richard?”

“No, sir, we’re working on it, but Thailand was not deemed a high-security risk and the bombs took out all our people on the spot. The Thai authorities are putting the fires out and have cordoned off the area, and we have people on the way, but it will be tomorrow before we know a lot more.”

“What a catastrophe, and in election year too! Two big embassies close together like that looks like a disaster waiting to happen, doesn’t it? No-one has claimed responsibility then yet, I take it?”

“We have had a few phone calls, but they were from the usual lunatic fringe groups who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery. I’m afraid it looks like we’re dealing with ISIS or Al-Qaeda.”

“I wasn’t aware that they had any connections with Thailand.”

“No, nor were we, sir, but there are the Muslim Separatists in the south. It’s only a hypothesis at the moment, but it’s the most likely thread we’ve got.”

“Have you told the Americans that idea yet?”

“No, sir, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they have come up with it as well.”

“Fair enough, well, get me as much info on Muslims in Thailand as you can, and keep me informed on everything that comes in. If you can get me something to read for now and tonight at home, so much the better. Get someone onto it right away, Richard. Right away, do you hear?”

“Yes, sir, I’ll start at once.”

“Oh, one more thing before you go, I want a meeting in here at three o’clock this afternoon with all the specialists we’ve got including MI6.”

“Yes sir.””

∞

The Commissioner-General of the Royal Thai Police, Police General Phao Dhanaranjata called the first crisis meeting concerning the two attacks also for four thirty pm, which was thirty minutes after the news of the bombings had reached him. Eye-witnesses, who included on-duty police officers, officials at other embassies in the area and local residents, put the timing of the attack on the British Embassy at three forty-eight p.m. and the second on the American Embassy just four minutes later.

The Fire Brigade reported that the fires in the buildings were under control, but still burning and that the areas were still too hot to enter, not that they had the authority to do that anyway, since the embassies were technically on foreign soil.

The police reported that the areas had been cordoned off for fear of secondary explosions and the Thai Foreign Office reported that their ambassadors in London and Washington had requested a list of all Thai nationals who had worked in the embassies, and were standing by to pass on any reports from Bangkok they had to the British and American governments.

The Commissioner-General was assured that everything was being done that could be and that the foreign governments would send the lists of employees later that day. He knew from experience that he would be required to launch his own investigation into the terrorist attacks, but that the British and the Americans would want the freedom to make their own enquiries as well.

He had no objections to that per se, so long as their people realised that they were on his patch and gave him the respect he deserved. His first move was to find out who owned the helicopter, so he ordered one of his deputies to get on with that, while he worked on his speech for the news bulletin.

It was a priority, as the news crew from Military Channel 7 were already outside waiting and they would have to be told something quickly, although it had to be done properly, as this was his first time on the world stage and he wanted to look competent and efficient.

∞

As it happened, the first hurried news report of the attacks had already been televised. Some witnesses had taken footage of the helicopter hovering over the British Embassy and followed it on its deadly mission, so it had taken a simple phone call to trace the owners of the aircraft from the call-sign that was stencilled on its fuselage. It was owned by a local company called Bangkok Aerial Photography Limited, that leased helicopters with pilots mostly for the purpose of aerial photography. Some people were trying to sell their videos, while others had just uploaded them to YouTube for the world to see and copy, which many TV stations did without scruple.

The police chief’s statement and appeal for information was tagged onto the end of that coverage.

The people of Thailand were horrified and outraged that such atrocities could be perpetrated on Thai soil, or at least on Embassies in Thailand.

∞

The four men seated at one end of the large table in Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, for which the abbreviation was COBRA, in Number 10 were the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary for Defence, Toby Smythe, the Chief of Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshall Sir Roderic Jones, and the Chief of MI6, Sir Arthur Tobin. Richard Wilkinson handed out a sheet of paper to each man and put one before the empty seat at the head of the table for the P.M. who was due any moment.

“Chief, is it true that one of your men in the Embassy was Michael Adams?”

“Yes, that’s right, Toby, did you know him?”

“Not well, but we did have occasion to meet… twice, I think. He struck me as a good man. Commiserations, old man.”

“Thank you, Toby. People said he was solid. Just put in for leave to get married apparently… A girl in the office, a Thai, bit of a stunner by all accounts…”

“Order, gentlemen,” said the Foreign Secretary tapping the table with his knuckles. “Thank you. I apologise for the paucity of intel, gentlemen, but that’s all we have at the moment. However, there is more information coming in all the time. The time difference doesn’t help…”

“Yes, that’s one of the gems of information you include on this fact sheet, they’re seven hours ahead of us,” said the head of MI6 somewhat shirtily. “All this stuff has been on the television several times since it happened.”

“Yes, I’m sorry, Arthur, but all our bods were killed in the attack. It was a total wipe-out in our embassy and the Yanks’.”

Suddenly, the doors opened at the far end of the room and the P.M. entered with his entourage.

“All right, you may leave us now,” he told them. “Tell all concerned that we are not to be disturbed for anything. This meeting has top priority.”

He watched as his staff left the room.

“All right, gentlemen, let’s get down to business. Richard, you put this meeting together, so why don’t you start?” He pulled his fact sheet towards him, read the few lines of information on it and turned it over looking for more, while the Foreign Secretary cleared his throat. He raised his eyebrows at those who were watching him and pushed the useless piece of paper away again.

“Yes, well, gentlemen, this is very much a preliminary meeting in order to pool what small amount of detail we seem to have and try to come up with a strategy. We have arranged for a team of MI6, police and military intelligence officers to fly out to Bangkok later today along with a skeleton crew as temporary replacement embassy staff. Needless to say, we applied for the necessary visas and diplomatic immunity as if they were all routine embassy staff and all the paperwork was approved as such.

“The Thai authorities are cooperating and have already allocated them office space in a building not far down the road which is being used by VFS.Global, a government joint venture initiative which deals with the preliminary processing of visa applications. This building had not been targeted or damaged in any way, but most of the staff there were local Thais…”

“Excuse me for interrupting, Dicky, but are you suggesting that the perpetrators avoided that building because most of the employees there were Thai?” asked The Chief.

“Not at this point, Arthur. We think that the targets were always the two embassies themselves, but it is worth bearing in mind, perhaps. Anyway, we had people study the footage available to us and the three bombs appear to have been modified two-hundred-and-fifty litre oil drums – IED’s. The first one on each embassy appears to have been filled with high-explosives, and the second one on our embassy with high-octane fuel. The same effect was produced on the American Embassy by crashing the helicopter thorough the hole caused by the IED…”