Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  It takes every ounce of self-control for me not to pivot. I fix my gaze firmly on a point between Marie’s shoulders and follow her straight down the hall. Drew Armitage cannot have the full story, I am sure of that. But I am equally sure that what he does have comes from Patrick, that what I have just felt is a tug on my chain from the thirty-fifth floor.

  The Agence France-Presse office is empty. We go in, and I lean my back against the closed door.

  “Why did he ask you that?” Marie deposits her purse on a desk. Bending, she searches a drawer. “A UN guide?” she says, idly curious. It seems she did not hear the jerk announce my name, or maybe she heard him but missed the allusion.

  I wave a hand vaguely. I disclaim all knowledge. “Someone’s idea of a joke,” I say.

  “A joke on you?”

  Yes, I tell her. A joke on me. Something like that.

  She pulls out a long reel of tape, its ribboning tail dangles. Then she crosses to the reel-to-reel machine by the wall and clicks the tape onto a spool. Like every other journalist in the building, Marie has an opinion on the vote. Now she gives hers to me. According to Marie, the Yes and No votes are evenly divided but there remains a big question mark over Africa. Less than an hour to the vote and the journalistic consensus is that the Africans will decide which way it goes. Which explains, of course, Patrick’s call to the ambassador from Liberia and Asahaki’s whispered conference with Sekelele. The last frantic push for votes is on.

  I ask Marie how Agence France-Presse is calling it: thumbs up or thumbs down.

  “The Africans are poor.” She shrugs. “The Japanese have money.”

  “The Japanese buy themselves a Council seat?”

  “Oui.”

  Supremely cynical but by no means absurd. Soft loans, aid, investment in infrastructure, all perfectly acceptable weaponry in the modern power game. High finance. Diplomacy by other means.

  “If Asahaki had not returned,” she adds, “I am not so sure. I think then maybe the Japanese would lose.” She points at me. “But we have not been told everything about Ambassador Asahaki. No? Him and Envoy Hatanaka?”

  “You’ll get your story.”

  “Oh, I am not worried. We have a deal.” Smiling as she turns to the tape machine, she darts me a look from the corner of her eye.

  “I need your source on Po Lin.”

  Her smile dies instantly. She turns her back on me.

  “Is that a no?” I ask her.

  She does not bother to reply.

  I am naturally not thrilled to find yet another door being closed in my face, to find that I am butting my head against a solid slab of oak. But from the outset Marie has not pretended to be other than she is. She openly staked her claim on what she wanted, the job at Time, and pursued it according to the lights of her own code. How many others here at Turtle Bay could honestly say the same?

  I glance around the room. A purely functional space: PCs and recording equipment on half a dozen desks, wires hanging down behind machines, then running in tangled loops across the floor. Above the door, a framed photo of the French president shaking hands with the SG. Finally I see what I’m looking for, three large filing cabinets lined up behind the door. I go over.

  “Do you keep your files on the perm five delegations here?”

  “Oui.”

  “Delegation members?”

  “Who? Po Lin?” she asks, looking over her shoulder.

  “That’s a yes, I presume.”

  “We have nothing on the UNDCP Special Committee.” She nods to the cabinets. “This is not my source.”

  “Then you won’t mind if I take a look.”

  She drops what she’s doing and comes across to the gunmetal-gray steel cabinets. She opens the middle one and hauls out a file. “You are wasting your time.”

  I reach for the file but she shields it with her body. “What do you give me?” she asks.

  “You?”

  “Me,” she says. We look at each other, two adults suddenly aware of an unexpected undertow.

  “I thought I was wasting my time.”

  “If that is what you want.”

  I turn my gaze back to the cabinet. “I want to see Lemtov’s file too. Give me that, and I’ll tell you something you’ll be interested to hear.”

  Marie makes a clicking sound with her tongue as she studies me. Then finally she pulls Lemtov’s file from the cabinet and lays it with Po Lin’s on the desk. Smiling now. Playful. I have not the slightest doubt that if I attempted to grab the files, she would tear my eyes out. She tilts her head and waits for my news.

  “Once I’ve told you, you give me both files.”

  “Is it worth it?” she says.

  “Po Lin’s been executed.”

  Her head comes up straight. Her lips part and a sound rises in her throat.

  “That’s unconfirmed. And don’t ask me if it’s connected with the fraud or his investments,” I add quickly, “because I honestly don’t know.”

  “You heard this in the Secretariat?”

  “From Lemtov.”

  She looks down at the two files. Wang Po Lin. And Yuri Lemtov. When she lifts her eyes, I pull the files quickly from beneath her hand.

  Then one of her Agence France-Presse colleagues comes barreling in. When he crosses straight to the tape machine, Marie shouts and hurries over to stop him from ruining her work. She calls a warning to me over her shoulder. “The files must stay. You can read them here.”

  While she commences an argument in French with her colleague, I slide the files along the table and pull up a chair.

  In the Secretariat, brief notes on the accredited delegates are kept by Protocol and somewhat more extensive pieces on the major delegations by Political Affairs. All this information is volunteered. Volunteered, of course, meaning anodyne or downright misleading. Idi Amin’s appearance at UNHQ some years back, for instance, resulted in a glowing encomium on the dictator’s contribution to human rights finding its way into the Ugandan files; rogue copies of this document still surface from time to time amid general hilarity. But on rechecking Po Lin’s and Lemtov’s files upstairs this morning, I found nothing outrageous, just the usual list of previous posts and qualifications. In Po Lin’s case, a footnote relating to his temporary recall to Beijing.

  My hope here is that Agence France-Presse, free from the political constraints placed on the Secretariat, has made a more thorough and critical analysis of the two men. After a few minutes’ inspection, my hope slowly fades. Both files seem to be French translations of the documents I viewed this morning in English up in Protocol. I lift my head and glance across at Marie. She is leaning over the tape machine, her skirt riding upward. Her colleague hovers impatiently at her side, and when the guy looks my way, I rebury my head in the files. A minute later I come across the clippings.

  Real clippings, not just some faxed sheet from a clippings agency. In each file there is a large envelope, buff-colored, crammed with bits of paper. I spread the Po Lin clippings on the table. A few are torn, others carefully scissored from various newspapers and magazines, maybe a dozen in all. In some pieces Po Lin is merely mentioned as one of a list of names, in others he figures more prominently, but there appears to be no particular method in the selection. Random scraps. Whatever caught the clipper’s eye. Finishing the last piece, I reach for the Lemtov envelope just as Marie appears at my side.

  “You are certain Po Lin was executed?” she whispers.

  “It’s what Lemtov told me.”

  “You are not certain?”

  “You’re the journalist, Marie.” I nod toward her colleague at the tape machine. “Put your heads together. Use your contacts. I’d be interested to hear some confirmation myself.”

  She rolls her eyes. “From Paris,” she whispers, referring to her colleague. The implication being, I take it, that she has no intention of letting the guy in on her story. She points to the Po Lin clippings. “This is useful?”

  “Not as useful as if you just
told me your source.”

  She makes a face: No chance.

  I hold up the Lemtov clippings. “Can I take these?”

  “No.” Unsmiling. Deadly earnest.

  Then the big shot from Paris calls for her assistance and she curses quietly and goes over. Alone again, I spread out the Lemtov clippings.

  Nearly all the clippings feature him prominently; unlike Po Lin, he is rarely bracketed by a list of names from his delegation. Some pieces mention Lemtov as the likely successor to the current Russian ambassador; a few go farther and speculate on a possible promotion to the post of foreign minister at some future date, speculation that I’ve heard myself from several quarters, notably Patrick, whose opinion on such matters is generally considered oracular. After wading through maybe fifteen or more clippings I notice a recurring motif, the seemingly off-the-cuff remark from Lemtov that passes directly into the journalist’s copy as a quotable quote. Self-deprecating, wry, humorous; but seen together like this they present a picture of the not-so-loyal second-in-command carefully laying the groundwork for his run at the top.

  Son of a bitch, I think as I come across yet another of his casual bon mots, this one a backhanded compliment directed at the current Russian ambassador.

  And then three lines down, a single word leaps out at me from the page.

  Basel.

  I make a sound, something like a moan.

  I sit up straight. Now my eyes scour the rest of the clipping, searching for the meaning of what I’ve found. But the word does not recur. There’s just that one mention—a UN-sponsored conference in Basel that Lemtov attended—then the article moves on to the prospects of success in some long-forgotten disarmament talks. I turn quickly to the other clippings, searching, but that first mention of Basel seems to be all there is. Finally I pick up that clipping again, a scissored cutting, cheap paper, and study it carefully. It seems to be taken from some academic journal, one of those erudite publications that lie on the shelves unread in every college library. In the bottom left-hand corner someone has scribbled a date: April, three years ago. If I could take the clipping to the Dag Hammarskjöld Library I could probably find the article, cross-reference it with our files, and track down which UN-sponsored conference Lemtov attended.

  “We are leaving,” says Marie. When I look up, she is holding her notepad. Her colleague shoots a cartridge into the tape recorder that hangs like a purse from his shoulder. Outside in the hall I hear other journalists streaming by, smart-aleck remarks and laughter, cursing in a variety of languages. The migration to the General Assembly Hall, the jockeying for prime positions, has begun. Marie nods to the files. “You are finished?”

  Not really a question. They want me out. So I shuffle the clippings back into the envelopes and reorder the files. I wait. After half a minute, Marie’s colleague impatiently directs her attention to the clock, and they both look up. At that moment I bring my hands together, sliding the Basel cutting beneath my watchband. I tug at my sleeve. Then I rise from the table calmly, thank Marie for her trouble, and depart.

  28

  “WHO’S PLAYING HERE, THE YANKEES?” Standing by me at the rear of the General Assembly Hall, Mike runs a laconic eye over the milling delegates. Neither one of us has ever seen the Hall so crowded. And there is no mistaking the sense of occasion. It is like opening day all over again, clouds of exotic national costumes moving like kaleidoscopic whorls through the ocean of dark gray suits. Historic. Today the most abused word in the lexicon of UN grandiloquence is absolutely appropriate. Only the second time in the UN’s history that a proposed change in the Security Council’s composition has made it to the vote, and no one who has any right to be here has stayed away. Committee meetings have been suspended, talks and conferences rescheduled; from every quarter of Turtle Bay the delegates, Secretariat staffers, and NGO observers have massed here on the plenary session, filling the Hall. Down by the podium the Secretary-General and the session president are standing side by side, talking together as they scan the ranks of delegates. From this distance they look like two small boys.

  Mike whistles through his teeth and shoulders his way along the aisle, searching for a pair of vacant seats. If he gets us seats, I have told him, he can have a look at the thick bundle I am carrying beneath my arm. And Mike is curious.

  After leaving Marie’s office I went directly to the Dag Hammarskjöld Library, where, in the absence of inquiring journalists and delegates who had already departed for the Hall, a holiday air prevailed. Feet up on desks, paper balls lobbing into trash cans, and the female librarians huddled together over the glossies. A young Spaniard, clearly a newcomer to the ways of Turtle Bay, seemed embarrassed by his colleague’s lack of interest in my inquiry. Once I’d traced the source of the Agence France-Presse clipping, he led me down into the section dedicated to UN conferences—a labyrinth of shelves and cabinets and boxes—and loaded my outstretched arms with papers and files. Five minutes’ sifting and I had what I wanted, a manageable bundle that I have brought with me to the Hall.

  “Nada,” Mike reports, coming up the stairs to rejoin me. Turning, he surveys the scene again. Words, talk, diplomacy’s permanently debased currency, jangle loudly through the Hall.

  I locate the U.S. delegation off to the left, halfway down the tiered chamber. Ambassador Bruckner is on his feet, glad-handing the neighboring delegates, smiling a smile that you can see from way back here. You would think he hasn’t a care in the world, but his fellow U.S. delegates look distinctly apprehensive. Jennifer has her arms crossed, her back turned to Bruckner as she talks to someone across the aisle. Her body language is defensive and tense.

  They don’t know.

  After all the arm-twisting, the years of lobbying and backroom deals, in spite of Rachel’s detainment and Asahaki’s recall, they still don’t know. The U.S. has not been able to bed down the result. The upcoming General Assembly vote, for once, is not a foregone conclusion.

  “Hey,” says Mike, nodding down toward the front. There are two empty chairs between the podium and the exit. A guard standing nearby.

  “Security?” I say.

  “Two tickets, ringside.” Mike brushes past me. “Or if you want you can stay up here in the goddamn bleachers.”

  The aisles are jammed, so we end up taking the long way, back out to the empty gallery behind the Hall, then around to the stairs. A few late arrivals go hurrying by, determined not to miss the big moment. As we walk, Mike fills me in on his morning.

  “Guy comes up to my office, hammering on my door. Haven’t even got my coffee yet. He’s throwing a fit, telling me he’s going to bust, tearing his goddamn hair out. I’m thinking like, Who is this guy? Turns out he’s the caterer.”

  “The cafeteria?”

  “Right.” In the coolroom of which we have stored Toshio’s body. “This guy,” says Mike, “he’s got the catering franchise down there. Italian. He says we don’t let him open up pronto, he’ll be outa business.”

  “Does he know what’s in his coolroom?”

  “Public relations ain’t my department.” Mike glances across. “He started about suing someone. I gave him your number.”

  Grimacing, I turn for the stairs.

  “So how’s the gut?” Mike asks me.

  My hand rises to my stomach, the place where Lemtov’s bodyguard connected. Sore, I say, but I’ll live.

  Mike gives me some advice on the treatment of internal bruising, cop tradecraft, but as we walk, I get the feeling that he’s got something other than my state of health on his mind. Halfway down the stairs, he finally comes out with it.

  “How come you never told me the full story on that Martinez kid, the hippie?” He continues down the steps in front of me. When he gets to the landing, he stops, one hand on the banister, and faces me. “You didn’t hear the question, Sam, or you just thinking?”

  “What full story?”

  “How the kid’s old man died out in Afghanistan. The kid’s old man, who happened to be leading
that medical team that Sarah was in.”

  I comment, somewhat ingenuously, that I don’t see the problem.

  “Could be a big problem,” Mike tells me. “What if the kid blames Hatanaka for screwing up the hostage rescue that got his old man killed?”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “You asked him?”

  “No.”

  He pauses a moment. Sensing the next question, I steel myself. Then it comes.

  “You ever asked Rachel?”

  I make no reply. Mike fills his cheeks with air, then blows. “I’m gonna bring the Martinez kid in again. And if I’m not satisfied with what he tells me this time, I might have to speak to Rachel too.”

  I cannot pretend to be pleased. But given the givens here, Mike has handled this as well as he could have. Straight. Totally up front with me. But now, as we make our way toward the Hall, I feel him glancing at me from the corner of his eye. Not so much mad at me as suddenly, and somewhat to his own surprise, touched by doubt.

  Inside the Hall the talk is dying away, delegates who have strayed from their places hurrying to retake their seats. Mike has a word with the guards, who point us to the pair of empty chairs by the NGO observers’ box. Mike unbuttons his jacket as he sits; I catch a glimpse of the leather holster beneath his arm.

  “I asked Dieter to check Patrick out,” I whisper, sliding into the chair beside him. “He’s telling me maybe next week.”

  “Guy doesn’t have the balls to front O’Conner. Not next week. Not even next year.”

  But Mike, I am sure, has got Dieter wrong. On reflection, my encounter earlier with Dieter proves only one thing: that we have no real evidence against Patrick. On reflection, I feel sure that if we had something concrete, Dieter would not hesitate to act.

  A gavel bangs down on the podium; it seems we have arrived just in time. The Secretary-General takes the rostrum over to our right, and the noise fades to silence as he looks out across the Hall. Caesar before the Senate. Lincoln at Gettysburg. A born showman, he milks the moment, arms braced and chin thrust forward. Silent strength seems to be the PR pose for the day. Then he begins his address, and right from the outset it is woeful. His voice rises at inappropriate moments. He gesticulates grandly. He expounds on three or four abstract topics without drawing breath, all the time swaying on the balls of his feet. It was Lady Nicola who pointed out to me that since its inception, not one great speech has issued from the main rostrum of the United Nations. We have had Khrushchev banging his shoe on the woodwork, promising to bury the West, and Castro grandstanding up there for hours, but this potentially great forum has yet to find its Pericles, and this speech we’re hearing now from the SG is certainly not going to break the shoddy mold. Leaden platitudes come tumbling out like useless ingots off some haywire production line. It is truly, mind-numbingly, awful.