Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she says. “And you know what? That just doesn’t matter.” She draws up her legs and presses her face into her knees.

  Now I hit the two-way, whispering urgently, “Mike?”

  Still no answer. Rising, I move around the desk toward Rachel, intending to do the only thing I can: hold and reassure her, promise her that while a single breath remains in my body she will not have to face a trial alone. But then I stop suddenly. And I look down at the pink folder in Toshio’s in box. A pink file. In bold black letters an inch high the word confidential is stamped right across its cover. I stand very still a moment, then I take out the file and open it.

  The first page is a memo from Patrick, a masterly piece of bureaucratese that gives Toshio full responsibility for the investigation of the UNDCP Special Committee while retaining full rights of intervention for Patrick. Next come a few pages of notes on Asahaki, Po Lin, and Lemtov—background profiles—and then three separate sections that appear to be information Toshio turned up on each individual during his investigation. The largest by far is the section on Po Lin. When I flick to the conclusion of the section on Lemtov, there is no mention of his money-laundering activities and not even a passing reference to the FBI report.

  Closing the file, I look at the in box. And I picture the scene. On the morning of Toshio’s death, when I came up here with Mike, I placed the entire contents of the in box in my lap and went through it page by page. I am absolutely sure of that. I have not misremembered. And I am absolutely certain that this pink file, at that time, was not here. Not in the in box. Nowhere in the vicinity of Toshio’s desk. And since that morning the door to this office has been locked.

  “Sam!”

  I snatch up the two-way. “What’s happening with Lemtov?”

  “Zero. They’ve called the Tunku into the side chamber. Froissart’s gone to the can. That’s it. Zip.”

  I glance across at Rachel. She rocks back and forth, her eyes fixed on the two-way. “Who shut down the security cameras up here?” I ask Mike.

  There is a pause. “How the fuck do I know? You haven’t noticed, I been busy down here.”

  “Can you find out?”

  “Listen, forget that shit. You want, you got about two minutes to get yourselves outta there. The south stairs are still open, but the elevators, everything else, we got covered. You wanna move, move now.”

  “Find out who shut them down,” I tell him, then I grab the walkie-talkie and the pink file. I go to Rachel and crouch beside her, shoving the file beneath my shirt as I speak.

  “Don’t open the door for anybody except me. Not Mike. Not Weyland. Anyone says they’re going to smash the door in, let them. More likely they’ll go find a key. It’ll buy us some time. You just sit tight right there.”

  “I knew it wouldn’t work.”

  “It’s not over, Rache.”

  She continues rocking, hugging her knees, and I embrace her, hold her close while she buries her face in her knees. Bending, I kiss her head as I used to kiss her when she was a child. She doesn’t respond. And when I cross to the door, she doesn’t say a word either.

  Stepping warily into the hall, I take a final glimpse at her before I close and lock the door. Rachel is rolling onto her side on the chair, curling into the fetal position. Curling up tight like a ball.

  40

  THE SOUTH STAIRS ARE CLEAR AND I DESCEND WITH speed, one hand skating down the banister for balance, the other clutching the file against my stomach. My legs jar with each leaping stride. Passing beneath the first security camera, I hear Mike tell the surveillance guards, “They’re coming down. What’s covered?”

  I keep on going, racing now, getting as far from Rachel as fast as I can. The farther I can lead the guards astray, the more time I have to figure this out, the more time Lemtov has to run.

  “She’s alone,” says Mike, meaning me. He sounds uncertain, he knows something’s not right. And then, “Okay, you’ve got someone where? The stairs on twenty? Right. And those other two on twenty-nine, they’re coming back to the stairs? Yeah, fine. Kid stays in the stairwell, she’s trapped.”

  Diving out of the stairwell at twenty-two, I sprint to the elevators; one has just arrived. When the two maintenance guys get out, I jump in and clap the button for fourteen, praying that the guards on the stairs at twenty don’t have time to get to the elevator. The doors close. I hold my thumb on the button; the elevator seems to descend so slowly that it might be moving through molasses. As I pass twenty-one I find that I’m instinctively holding my breath. Number twenty lights up over the door. Move, I think, move. But the light seems to stay on and on, then suddenly winks out. Nineteen lights up and I am still descending, and I think, Oh, Jesus, no more.

  “How many guys you got waiting on fifteen by the elevators? Five guys?”

  Nineteen. Eighteen. Paralyzed, momentarily hypnotized by the numbers, I watch as they wink on and off above the door.

  Seventeen.

  Then I slam the heel of my hand into the button for sixteen. The elevator stutters. Then it slows, stops on sixteen, and the instant the doors open I am running again, straight down the hall. It won’t take the guards a minute to get up here from fifteen, and once they’re up here, guided by the Surveillance Room, it won’t take them a minute to collar me. There are security cameras at both ends of the hall. Running is useless. If I keep running now, it is over.

  In a moment of desperation I improvise. Just before I reach the corridor that cuts at right angles across the hall I’m running down, I turn left into a conference room. It is empty. Out of sight of the security cameras now, I pull off the baseball cap and Rachel’s sweater, dumping them in the trash as I cross to the door that leads into the adjoining corridor. Then I pull the pink file from beneath my shirt, tuck my shirt back in my pants, and smooth down my tousled hair. Taking a breath, I step out into the corridor, file open, head down. I turn right. Now I am just another office gofer in shirtsleeves, examining the paperwork. Just another UN bureaucrat with a file.

  I examine the paperwork, praying that the sudden switch has thrown them. I study the paperwork in the file and keep walking.

  Then I turn right again, heading back toward the elevator, retracing the path I’ve just run. A woman steps into the corridor in front of me; she hardly seems to see me as she hurries by. I am almost at the elevators when I hear the guards come bursting from the stairwell around the corner.

  “You’ve got her,” Mike says flatly. “She’s still in the room.”

  I quickly switch off the two-way. The next moment four guards appear; I step aside and they charge past me without a glance. Keeping my head buried in the file, I cross the last few yards to the elevators, waiting every moment for a cry at my back. But no cry comes. And the last thing I see of the sixteenth floor is a view of a long, empty hallway between the closing elevator doors. Then I bend over Toshio’s pink file again. And now I am not just pretending. Now I am actually reading what is recorded here in these pages.

  “Mike!”

  He is standing in the doorway of the Surveillance Room; his head jerks back at my call. When he sees me, he comes jogging.

  “They found the sweater and cap,” he tells me, drawing me into his office. “They figure she’s still between twenty-nine and thirty-two. All the guards are back up there, searching.”

  “Who shut down the security cameras?”

  “Some guy, Matate they’re telling me.” Mike goes and taps at his PC keyboard. “Name mean anything to you?”

  Shaking my head, I move to where I can see the screen. Mike is calling up this Matate’s personnel file.

  “Rings bells with me,” says Mike, biting his lip as if something about the memory has him worried. And then Matate’s file appears, a large mug shot of the man in the top left-hand corner of the screen. Mike groans. “This is one of the guys I interviewed. Part of the team that shut down the cameras for maintenance when Hatanaka died.” Mike flicks the screen with his f
inger. “You wanna tell me what the fuck’s going on here?”

  “You said the maintenance crew had alibis.”

  “For the murder, sure. This Matate was working with two other technicians. Three of them in the same room the whole six-hour shift. They bring their own sandwiches. There’s a can right off the maintenance room. These guys were in each other’s pockets the whole six hours. This Matate”—Mike lays his finger on the screen—“this guy never had a chance to kill Hatanaka. No way.”

  I study the face on the screen. Matate. His hair is like thick black fleece, tight curls, but not wet and dripping as it was when I last saw it. There’s no question in my mind that this is him. The broad, flat cheeks, the wide smile, and the quarter-inch gap between his two front teeth. Not the kind of face that is easy to forget. Mike has not forgotten him. And neither have I. Matate. Whom I last saw wearing nothing but a towel, dripping his way through an overcrowded apartment up in Harlem.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Christ knows.” Mike considers a moment. “If he’s working on the security cams, he’s probably still down in Maintenance.”

  I tell Mike that we need to find Matate. Find him fast.

  “He couldn’t have done it, Sam.”

  “Yeah, well, Rachel didn’t do it either.”

  Mike looks at me.

  “Upstairs now,” I say. “I didn’t ask her, she just told me. And I believe her.”

  Mike throws up a hand. He mutters something about Eckhardt setting heads rolling, then leads me back to the Surveillance Room.

  The monitoring guards turn to update Mike as he enters. Then they see me. The senior guard rises, pointing at me over Mike’s shoulder, telling Mike in a tone of angry amazement that the son of a bitch is right here.

  “You found the girl?” says Mike gruffly.

  They haven’t. The senior guard starts in again about me.

  “Save it,” Mike tells him sharply, nodding at the bank of screens. “Show me Maintenance. I’m looking for that guy Matate.”

  “Ain’t we all,” says another guard farther along the console. He tells Mike that they’re still trying to raise someone in Maintenance to get the cameras up on twenty-nine through thirty-two switched back on. No one in Maintenance is answering.

  “Here,” he says, pointing to a screen. Nothing. A picture of a closed door marked Maintenance and an empty section of passage.

  “If nobody’s answering,” Mike remarks, “could be nobody’s there.”

  The guard shakes his head. He tells Mike he saw someone go in there two minutes ago. From along the desk another guard with a phone to his ear calls across that he’s still getting no answer from Maintenance.

  My glance slides over to the Security Council screen, where there is a sudden stir of movement. First Lady Nicola, then the other senior diplomats come filing back in from the side chamber and retake their places at the horseshoe table. Chou En. Froissart. Bruckner. For a second my heart leaps wildly. Lemtov is not there. It has worked, I think. He has run. Light-headed, I point to the screen to show Mike. But Mike is already shaking his head, and then I see him too: Lemtov. He takes his place behind the Russian ambassador and leans across to share a joke with one of the Chinese.

  The surveillance team here is receiving reports from the guards searching for Rachel over in the Secretariat. The guards report that they have swept thirty-two and thirty-one; now they’re moving down to thirty. Twenty-nine after that.

  Mike looks at me. He is finished; there is no more he can do.

  Drawing him out into the hall, I turn my back on the Surveillance Room. “This is Toshio’s file.” I slap it with the back of my hand. “The one that went missing? The one we couldn’t find? I just found it up in Toshio’s office. On his desk.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “Listen. Matate turns off the cameras on twenty-nine, the missing file reappears. He shuts the cameras off in the basement, Toshio ends up dead. Spot the connection. And one more thing. Matate’s got a roommate. Name of Pascal Nyeri.”

  Mike’s eyes narrow.

  “And guess who I just saw leaving Toshio’s office?” I ask, holding up the pink file.

  It takes a moment for the pieces to come together. When they do, Mike swears.

  “Sir?” says a guard from the room behind us. We turn to find him pointing up at the Maintenance Room screen. The Maintenance Room door has opened; we watch two men come out, one dressed in the white coverall of a technician, the other wearing a suit. Africans.

  “Matate,” says Mike.

  But it is not Matate I am looking at. Going over to the screen, I reach up and place a finger on the suit. “Pascal Nyeri.” Even as I speak, they part. Matate goes left, Pascal right. Pascal walks briskly and after a second Matate breaks into a run.

  “Oh, shit,” says Mike. “Shit. We got every spare guard upstairs chasing Rachel, for chrissake.” He points to the screen, giving the surveillance guards their orders. “Keep them two runners on-screen. Warn the gates. I want ’em both collared. No fuckups.”

  I stand here staring. I cannot believe it. We have come this far and now for no good reason we’ve blown it. In five minutes Pascal and Matate could be gone, over a fence into New York, where we have no jurisdiction, then into a cab and straight out to the airport. Lemtov is sitting calmly in the Council Chamber. And Rachel is still going to be handed over, charged with a murder in which she had no part.

  I give Mike the pink file. “Which exit’s Nyeri headed for?”

  “Sam.”

  “Which exit?” I shout, backing out of the Surveillance Room, switching on my two-way.

  Mike glances at the screens. “North.”

  North, I repeat, and I am already running.

  The three-dimensional game of chase recommences, this time with me the pursuer, not the pursued.

  “Nyeri’s in the basement, still going north.”

  Several floors above Pascal, I race north down the hall.

  “He’s coming up to the public area. The cafeteria and post office, all that.”

  Cutting past the Delegates’ Lounge, I head for the elevators.

  “Okay, he’s in the public area.” A pause, then Mike says, “What the hell?”

  I snatch up my two-way. “What’s he doing, Mike?”

  “He’s gone in the goddamn bookshop, we’ve lost him. Hang on, we’re trying to bring up the screen.”

  “What?”

  “Hang on.” Another pause, then he says, “No, it’s okay, he’s coming out, wrong turn or something. He’s headed for the stairs now, going up.”

  Leaping into the elevator, I press the ground-floor button. When Pascal gets to the top of those stairs, he will be fifty yards from First Avenue, where neither Mike nor I can touch him.

  “Where are you?” Mike barks. “He’s up on the ground floor.”

  The elevator finally stops, and I shoulder my way out of the opening doors. Tourists wander like sheep around the North Concourse, some lining up for the security check, others flocking over for the guided tours. I charge through a line of schoolkids near the Meditation Room; their teacher shouts after me.

  “Nyeri’s out,” calls Mike.

  I can see that for myself through the plate-glass wall. Pascal has just gone out the concourse exit and turned left toward First Avenue. He hasn’t seen me, but he is walking fast now, striding out. Sprinting through the concourse, I leap over the rope barrier, carve my way through the tourists, then swing left out the exit, hard on Pascal’s heels.

  “We’ll stop him at the guardhouse,” Mike says confidently.

  But with Rachel cowering in Toshio’s office, NYPD Homicide still waiting to collect her, there is no way I am leaving this to the UN guards.

  Pascal doesn’t hear or see till I am right up beside him. As his head turns, I slide my hand beneath his arm and take a firm hold. I bring him to a stop. He makes a sound and pulls away, but I hold on tight.

  “You want to talk to me, Pascal?” Th
en I point up ahead to the guardhouse. “Or them?”

  Pascal jerks his arm again, but I hang on grimly. At last he tries to act as an innocent man might. “What?” he says, his mouth struggling to smile in feigned surprise.

  The UN guards appear from the guardhouse with Jennifer; I shake my head and wave them off. While they confer on their two-ways with someone upstairs, I tug roughly on Pascal’s arm, hustling him around the giant knotted gun-barrel statue, down the steps, and across the North Lawn. When Jennifer tries to follow, I shake my head again and wave her back.

  Pascal starts asking me what’s happening, what this is all about, but I don’t answer him immediately. I lead him to a stone bench on the promenade over the FDR Drive, then push him down onto the bench and stand over him. He tries to rise. I push him down again. He looks up at me defiantly.

  “What is this for?” he says.

  Fury wells up in my chest. Toshio Hatanaka is dead. Rachel has been deprived of her liberty, dragged back to the edge of a personal abyss, and at this moment lies quivering with fear, waiting to be arrested and charged with murder. Put on trial for her life. What is this for? I think, my heart silently raging. It’s for two innocent lives. It’s for Toshio’s life already lost, and Rachel’s, now hanging by a thread.

  My tongue is thick, my throat dry. I breathe deeply a few times to calm myself. Something in my look gets to Pascal; his eyes dart down to the slab beneath the bench.

  It’s while he’s like that, head down, wondering how much I know, what lies he can get away with, just how much he is going to tell me, that I muster enough sense to reach into my shirt pocket and press the button on the tape recorder that Mike gave me to use on Patrick. There is a faint vibration against my chest as the tape turns. Then I sit myself down on the bench. When Pascal attempts to rise, I pull him back down.

  The rumble of traffic passing below us along the FDR Drive is a useful background hum; even I can’t hear the recorder. I fix my gaze on the old Pepsi-Cola sign across the East River, its color faded; the clouds above scud low and gray. I gather myself a moment. This is it, I think, my last chance. When I face Pascal, he is not looking at me but out over the river. I lean toward him and I ask my question.