Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  “Maybe you don’t know what you have.” Her glance wanders inside. Froissart is mustering his forces now, preparing for an advance on the ballroom.

  “Do you have anything on Po Lin you’re holding back?” I ask. “The dates on those investments? Anything?”

  Pulling at her sweater, she says, “I must change,” and her gaze wanders back to the lobby. I am not blind. I get the idea. Marie does not want to miss her chance by standing here talking to me. She wants to scoot off and change so that she can get back in time to mingle with the big guns like Lady Nicola and Froissart. Maybe the SG might even put in an appearance later. Journalistic nirvana.

  “Marie.” I open my hands, a despairing gesture.

  She considers me a second, then takes my arm. “Come.” She turns me around and leads me to the curb. She checks both ways down the street, then hauls me out through a break in the traffic. “You can talk and complain,” she says, casting an envious glance at another delegate’s wife stepping from the rear of a limo. “I can look at my wardrobe and cry.”

  Marie’s apartment building is by an old Huguenot church, an elegant redbrick building that seems stranded from another time. A strong aroma of coffee seeps out of the apartments into the stairwell as we climb; many of the nameplates on the doors are French. And Marie keeps up the same inconsequential patter she launched into when we left the hotel. I am beginning to wonder if she intends to tell me anything useful at all. Then a guy sticks his head out from the apartment below and calls, “Monsieur!”

  A fat guy in a Chicago Bulls sweatshirt. He gives me what can be described only as a leer; then he shouts, a short burst of French.

  “Le plus beau moment de l’amour”—something I don’t catch, then—“l’escalier!” Stairs?

  He withdraws his head, slamming the door, and I look to Marie for the translation, some explanation. She continues to climb. “The super,” she tells me. “He is a pig.”

  Taking out her keys, she leads me to a door just off the next landing. Her apartment is tiny. The front door opens onto two square yards of hall, an open door to the left leads into the bedroom. From the hall I can see the high bed in there and the dark drapes over the window. To the right of me is the living room, shelves piled with books, and a sofa against one wall, and immediately in front of me is the kitchenette. Marie flicks a switch in the kitchenette, then disappears into her bedroom.

  “Alors,” she calls back. “Now, what is my story?”

  “Which one do you want?”

  “The one that makes me famous.” Her face reappears in the open doorway. She smiles. “The one that gets me the job at Time.”

  I tell her, only half jokingly, that I have not reached the conclusion to that one just yet. Her face disappears. I hear her opening and closing a closet, a drawer sliding.

  Go in, she calls. Sit down.

  So I wander into the living room, run my eyes over the framed floral prints on the wall, then slump onto the white sofa. A woman’s room. I put my hands behind my head. If I closed my eyes now, I would sleep.

  “Did it help you,” Marie calls, “what you stole from our files?”

  My eyebrows rise. I decide after a moment that I have not misheard her. “What I stole?”

  Laughter from the bedroom. “I saw when we returned from the vote. The filing system is not so bad like it looks.” She recites the date of the article on Lemtov that I purloined.

  I am embarrassed, of course, but I have a feeling that an apology is not expected here. Marie’s somewhat blasé acceptance of my breach of faith seems to signal that we are to handle this after the Gallic fashion, purely pragmatically.

  The article was, I admit now, helpful.

  Marie makes no response. I give it a moment, then raise my voice. “I said it was helpful.”

  “Good.”

  My head swings around. Marie is standing in the doorway dressed in a red cotton robe; my eyes make an instinctive sweep down her body.

  “I need to do this,” she says, holding up a compact and lipstick. “I cannot hear you out here. Come in.”

  When she withdraws, I ponder the situation a few seconds. Then I rise and go in. She is standing in the bathroom, the door open behind her, leaning over the basin. She inspects herself in the mirror, then she applies her makeup, a well-practiced routine, while she talks.

  “Does Lemtov become the new Russian ambassador?” she asks me.

  “I wouldn’t waste my time writing that one up just yet.”

  She wrinkles her nose at the mirror. “You mean no.”

  “Who gave you all that detail on Po Lin? His connection with Jade Moon. Those investments.”

  “A friend.”

  “Your friend’s name?”

  She continues with her makeup. Eyeliner now.

  “When was the last time you interviewed Lady Nicola?” I ask her.

  Marie shrugs.

  “Weeks?” I prompt.

  “Months.” She pushes her hair back from her face. “And it was not one-to-one with her. I am not so privileged. Always she has a press aide. Someone to hold her purse.”

  “Not your favorite ambassador.”

  “A bitch,” Marie declares, straight to the point.

  From which I think I can safely conclude that Lady Nicola is not Marie’s source on Po Lin. But then, Lady Nicola would not be the only one in the British delegation to be aware of Po Lin’s connection with the Kwoks. I take a quick mental check of the senior British delegates. It strikes me that at least two of them might be susceptible to the charms of a woman like Marie. I mention one of them by name, but Marie ignores me.

  “Are you ready for tomorrow?” she says.

  I prop my shoulder against the door frame. She puckers her lips at the mirror, applying a bright shade of red.

  “Today everyone is crazy on the vote,” she explains. “Interviews. Features. Why the Japanese lost. Tomorrow everyone who flew in, they will fly out.” A considerable number: More than a thousand journalists have been given temporary UN accreditation this past week. She dabs a perfumed finger on her throat. “Once they are gone,” she says, “people like me will ask different questions. For example, I am not the only one curious why Ambassador Asahaki left like that Tuesday night.”

  “He came back.”

  “Yes. Too late to save the vote. And everyone knows his relationship with Hatanaka was not good.” She studies me in the mirror; she is fishing again. Which was meant to be my role here.

  I say another name: John Bradley, a British delegate, my next best guess as to Marie’s source on Po Lin. Marie pulls a face, then turns.

  “Is it true your daughter has been detained for Hatanaka’s murder?”

  The question catches me like a slap. I actually flinch. She sets down her perfume.

  “It is true,” she says, amazed.

  I guess it really was too much to hope this would not get out. And if Marie knows, others can’t be far behind. My imagination momentarily runs riot. I see the banner headlines. Father and daughter in UN murder pact. Full story inside.

  “It’s true she’s been detained,” I admit. “The rest is crap.”

  We look at each other. She does not know what to say to me. Finally I go into her bedroom and slump into a chair.

  “Stay,” she orders, then, going out to the kitchenette, she tosses back a few candid remarks on my appearance. “Terrible” is about the mildest. Returning with a glass, she presses it into my hand.

  “What is it?”

  “Drink it,” she says.

  Absinthe. It burns my throat, tears film my eyes.

  More, she says, and I take another shot. She stands by the chair, surveying the battle-fatigued figure that is me. A day that started with an explosive rearrangement of my internal organs has not much improved; I am not, I imagine, an attractive sight. When I glance up, Marie is checking her watch.

  Putting the glass down, I try to get to my feet, but Marie presses a hand on my shoulder, nodding to the glass.
/>   “Finish it.”

  Then, moving around the bed, she picks up a black dress that shimmers in the light. She signals for me to turn and face the window. Which I do. As if this situation is as unremarkable to me as it seems to be to her; as if my heart is not suddenly racing or my mouth, despite the absinthe, strangely dry.

  I hear her cotton robe swish down softly, the muffled sound of her feet on the carpet, a quiet groan as she struggles into the dress. “Where are you going to now?” she asks me.

  “Secretariat.”

  “Everyone will be at the cocktails.”

  “Not everyone.”

  Reaching from the chair, I part the heavy red drapes. There is no view, just a long row of office windows across the street.

  “Your daughter?” she says.

  I make no reply.

  “I do not understand it,” she tells me. “What is happening there?”

  Letting the drapes fall, I sip the absinthe, then study the moon of light in the glass.

  “You can turn now,” she says.

  So I do. The black velvet clings tightly to her curves, her shoulders are bare and pale. She takes up her bedside clock and sets it.

  “Use the shower if you want.”

  I say with no real enthusiasm that I really should be leaving.

  “Two hours, I have set the alarm.” She places the clock on the bedside table. “Call your daughter. She will understand you need some rest.” Diving into the bathroom, Marie takes a last look in the mirror as she gives me some final instructions. Towels in the dresser. Food and drink in the refrigerator. Then, stepping past me, she grabs her purse from the bed and hurries to the door.

  “You will be gone when I get back,” she tells me. “Make sure the door is locked. Pull it hard.”

  Opening the door, she pauses. It is like a whirlwind suddenly dying. “Like this,” she says, poised to demonstrate.

  “Marie—”

  But the door has already banged shut. And Marie Lefebre has already gone.

  33

  QUIET. FOR THE FIRST TIME TODAY, SOLITUDE. MY first thought, of course, is that I should just hit the lights and leave, but instead of that I find myself sinking back into the chair. Traffic passes down on the street, sirens wail in the distance, everything moving and urgent while I sit here totally exhausted, momentarily becalmed. My eyes run tiredly over the unfamiliar feminine touches around me: a vase of asters, a framed black-and-white poster of a barge on the Seine, the patchwork quilt on the bed.

  By this time tomorrow the worst should be over. By this time tomorrow Rachel should be free, but somehow even that thought fails to buoy me right now. Because right now, looking back over the events of the past few days, pondering everything that has occurred, I feel that I have been involved in a highway pileup and that I have staggered from the wreckage, torn and dazed, and in a brief second of lucidity before total collapse turned to survey the scene. And the scene is bloody.

  Toshio is dead and we still do not know who killed him. Patrick O’Conner and the entire perm five are scapegoating me for Japan’s failure to obtain a permanent Security Council seat. Rachel is a hostage, and I have brazenly bartered for her freedom any prospect of bringing Lemtov to justice for the fraud that I am convinced now he was involved in. Closing my eyes, I smell lavender. And the downward spiral of my thoughts touches Jennifer.

  I do not understand her. There was a time when I believed I did, at least the major lines of her character. Her thoughtfulness. The fearless drive and resolution. Her fierce intelligence and her honesty, qualities that made her such a daunting figure at Columbia but that have been a steady shining light to me these past few months, a growing promise of personal hope and renewal. Now? After the pasting she dished out to me in the side chamber earlier, I find myself grasping at a shadow, the insubstantial figment of my own imaginings: the woman I thought I knew.

  And then my own behavior, the fuck-you scene in the corridor. How exactly does that square with the glowing self-portrait I carry around in my head? Was that the behavior of a civilized man, or something I might have expected from Patrick O’Conner?

  Leaning my head back, I breathe deeply. And my thoughts come to rest at last on Rachel. I put down my glass. I pick up Marie’s phone and dial my cell phone.

  “Rache? It’s me.”

  “Hey, Dad.” Quiet, but in control.

  “I’m uptown. I can get over to see you in an hour or two. I just wanted to check if you’re okay, if you wanted anything.”

  A pause. “No,” she says at last. “And you don’t have to come and see me, Dad, I’m fine. Weyland’s here.”

  In fact, she does sound okay. Tired, of course, but not wallowing as I feared in some dark pit of despair. She tells me that she’s up on the North Lawn with Weyland, getting some air. We take a few more stabs at conversation, but these go nowhere and our voices trail into silence.

  “Rache?”

  “Don’t say something corny, Dad.”

  I smile at that. A small one. “I’ll be over there soon.”

  “Go home. Nothing’s happening here.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Another pause. I can hear the traffic down on the FDR Drive, and I picture Rachel and Weyland on the walkway, looking out over the East River.

  “I love you too, Dad,” she says, and hangs up before I can speak.

  I put down the phone. Then I get up and wander into the bathroom, hang my head over the basin, and splash my face. I glance at the dripping shower head, then behind me to the bed. Two hours. Marie has set the alarm to go off in two hours.

  When I wake, the first thing I see is the black velvet dress. It is draped over the chair beneath the window. A phosphorescent orange glow slants in from the night outside, lighting the dress and the chair and my right arm, which hangs over the side of the bed. The traffic noise seems distant now, subdued. Still drowsy, I reach for the clock: eleven fifty-five. Five minutes to midnight. Softly I groan.

  “I did not want to wake you.”

  The words, not a whisper but spoken quietly, come from a place just inches behind me. For a long while I lie very still. I can hear her breathing now, and I can feel the warmth of her breath on my neck. At last she speaks again.

  “Sam?”

  The skin on my neck tingles. What is the etiquette, I wonder, for a man stripped to his boxers, waking from slumber in a strange woman’s bed, to find that that woman has joined him?

  “I missed the alarm,” I say, unmoving, my voice thick.

  “Oui,” comes the response from behind.

  I wait. She waits. Then, raising myself on one arm, I begin to push back the covers. Her hand shoots across, her fingers close on my hip. I stop. “My daughter’s waiting for me.”

  “She will be asleep.”

  That’s right, I think. Rachel will be sleeping now, peacefully; why wake her? I glance at the clock: eleven fifty-six.

  “You also sleep,” says Marie.

  But for a second I remain just as I am, raised on one arm, gazing at the light slanting through the window, struck still by the strangeness of things, the awful power of the unpredictable in life. Sarah flies to Pakistan to help women give birth and within three weeks lies dead on a snowswept Afghan hillside. Rachel puts on her UN jacket and wanders into Turtle Bay one morning, only to find herself detained as a suspect in a murder. I start the day believing that I know the woman with whom I will probably share the rest of my life, that woman proceeds to dump a truckload on me, and I end the day in another woman’s bed. And God doesn’t play dice with the world?

  “If you want,” adds Marie.

  Her hand all this while has not left my hip. Now I feel one long-nailed finger trace a slow line along the bare skin toward my navel, and an involuntary sound whispers deep in my throat. Then the hand is gone and my penis, swelling, brushes lightly against my thigh.

  I could turn now, she must be expecting it, but I don’t. I lie quite still, intensely aware of every sound and every movement:
the stir of the curtain, muted voices on the stairwell, the clock. When I was sixteen and sleeping with the high school beauty queen, I was introduced to a game she called Wait for It. It was what it sounded like, the moment of congress delayed in order to heighten the pleasure, winding ever upward to an exhilarating pitch of anticipation and final release. That, at least, was Leanne Brady’s theory. At sixteen I did not really see the point, and when Leanne turned a barely acceptable delay of minutes into hours, then days, as our regular daily meetings in her father’s woods slipped to once a week, I dumped her. Thereafter I expended my sexual energies on more straightforward fare, primarily Gracie Morton, a plain-faced girl of sweet disposition and tremendous breasts whose own sexual inclinations could best be described as Keen for It.

  But right at this moment it is Leanne Brady whose spirit, undeniably, unexpectedly, hovers over me. Wait for It. Behind me, Marie lies absolutely still. The air seems to thicken in the room, the back of my neck and my spine prickle with the intense awareness of her presence just inches away. I can feel my own heart beating. And holding my breath, I listen; finally I hear it, her breath, no longer on my neck but faint, irregular and trembling.

  I turn my eyes to the clock: twelve-oh-one.

  “Marie?” Quietly.

  No answer. So I roll slowly onto my back, pause, then turn my head on the pillow to face her.

  She is lying on her back. Her eyes are closed, her lips fractionally parted, and as I watch her hand where it rests on the covers on her chest, the shallow rise and fall as she breathes, my first thought is that she has fallen asleep. But then I feel the touch of her hidden hand beneath the covers. Just one finger that slides up my left side over my ribs to the nipple, where it circles. My heart seems to pound in my throat. Then her hand flattens gently against my chest and feathers lightly down over my stomach and comes to rest on the straining bulge in my shorts. She strokes me through the cotton, a rhythmic movement that brings me up onto my elbow, suppressing a moan.

  Then my hand moves down her soft belly into the thick mat of dark hair. My knee presses between her thighs, her legs part, and my fingers slide into her.