Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  “Here’s another one. Between when Pascal left Toshio’s office and me starting that conversation with him on the North Lawn, there were about ten minutes. And when I saw him leaving Toshio’s office, he wasn’t panicked or scared. But by the time I caught him, he was running. Even before I started asking questions, he was a frightened man. How do you explain that?”

  “You are asking me?”

  “Matate and Pascal both ran. But Matate took the regular way out, he headed straight for East Forty-third. Pascal didn’t. He went for the public exit.”

  She lifts a shoulder. Looks perplexed.

  “No comment?”

  “Only perhaps you are wrong,” she says, stooping to pick up the slip, the Time number, from the tray. “Like with this.” She folds the slip into a tight square and drops it onto the table.

  “I’ve checked the surveillance tapes. I watched Pascal run through the building, what he did from when he got in the elevator on twenty-nine after leaving Toshio’s office.”

  Marie picks up her notepad and pen and takes them over to her desk by the bookcase. She keeps her back turned to me.

  “Just before he got to the Maintenance Room he received a message on his pager. That’s when he ran. He dived into that Maintenance Room like he’d just been hit with a thousand volts. But when he came out he didn’t make for the nearest exit with Matate. No, Pascal headed for the public exit. Because on his way to the public exit there was a place Pascal needed to go, wasn’t there, Marie? Something he needed to get.”

  “Speculation I cannot use in my story.”

  “The UN bookshop,” I say. “Pascal was in and out of there in fifteen seconds. He wasn’t there for the books.”

  Marie comes back over and picks up her espresso. She takes a sip, then wrinkles her nose. Cold, she says, replacing her cup on the tray.

  “Pascal went straight to one particular shelf,” I tell her, determined to see this through. “He stuck his hand down behind the books and brought out an envelope. Once he had it, he headed for the nearest exit. It’s all on the security tapes.”

  “Should I make a note?”

  “You put that envelope there.”

  Marie bends to collect the tray and cups, an act of unconcerned domesticity.

  “That’s on the security tapes too,” I say. “Just minutes before Pascal arrived in the bookshop. You were there. The same shelf. And you planted that envelope.” Taking the clock from the tray, I hold it up. “See that? Set for eight-thirty.” I turn the clock over. “And see this?”

  She lifts a brow.

  “It’s off. I didn’t sleep through the goddamn alarm. You never set it. Or if you did, you switched it off when you came back.”

  She starts to turn from me. I chop a hand down hard on the tray and it crashes to the floor. Cups go flying, something breaks. Marie fixes her eyes on the coffee stain that has suddenly appeared on her ivory-white sofa.

  “Leave,” she says.

  I remain planted to the spot.

  “Now,” she says, lifting her eyes.

  “I went and identified Pascal’s body. They let me take a look at his personal effects. His passport. Things like that.”

  Marie pivots, heading for her bedroom. Taking two strides, I grab a handful of her sweater and she screams and lashes at me with her heel. Then she jerks to one side, breaks my hold, and dashes into the bedroom. But when she tries to close the door behind her, I drop my shoulder and shove hard and she falls backward. I grab her shoulders, fling her down on the bed, and plant one knee on her stomach. She thrashes around, her nails rake my right hand, then I manage to clutch another handful of sweater and pin her down.

  Her head goes back, her body arches, and she screams. Screams loud. In one sharp movement I cock my arm and bring it down hard, backhanding her across the mouth. Her head jerks sideways, her scream dies.

  My body is poised over hers now, our chests are heaving. Then she looks at me. Looks at me hard. And in the next moment, I can hardly believe I am feeling it, she lifts her hips and grinds her pubic bone against my shin. Her eyes remain fixed on mine. My hand goes back and then stops. She tilts up her chin, waiting for the blow. Inviting the strike. I waver. And then, swearing, I shove away from her and step back from the bed.

  “You know why you didn’t have to let me in from the street? Because I didn’t buzz you. I buzzed your super. He let me in.”

  She stares at the ceiling. The skin around her mouth is turning red.

  “You know, he’s got a serious thing about you.”

  “Cochon,” she says.

  “Keeps an eye on you. Like when I was here last night, that kind of stuff he notices. Turns out he’s a big-time racist. I guess you knew that too.” I take the UN personnel photo of Pascal from my pocket and hold it up. She glances at it, then away. “Your super, the pig, he recognized it. Almost went crazy when I showed him.” I flick the photo onto the bed beside her. “Pascal Nyeri. He’s been a regular nighttime guest of yours for the past three months.”

  “You are jealous already?”

  “He’s dead,” I say, barely able to speak, my voice squeezed tight by the constriction of my throat. “The guy you’ve been screwing for the past three months is dead. He’s dead, and you knew that before I got here, and what do I find you doing? You’re brewing coffee, for chrissake.”

  She sits up and straightens her hair. Then she reaches across to her bedside table, picks up a pack of cigarettes and taps it until a cigarette drops into her hand. She looks around for her lighter. But her calm is too studied to be natural. She is trying to recall, I guess, all the coaching she must have had in order to deal with this situation. Cover blown. The endgame.

  “Pascal killed Toshio. But he didn’t do it for Lemtov. He did it for you, Marie. For you. For the French passport you offered him. His ticket to a new life. The life he’d been dreaming of since he was a kid. Paris. Culture.” In my mind’s eye I see the books by Pascal’s bedside in Harlem. Voltaire. Montaigne. “French civilization,” I say hoarsely. “He did it for you and your fucking country.”

  Marie rolls and searches for her lighter in the other bedside drawer.

  “You people never changed your policy, did you? When France finally gave in and agreed to let the Japanese seat go to a vote, Bruckner high-fiving it with everyone thinking he’d made the big breakthrough, that was all horseshit. Bruckner hadn’t changed your minds. You just let him believe he had. But you people never for one moment wanted Japan to get that seat. Your country doesn’t want a new world order. The old world order suits France just fine.”

  “This is your fantasy.”

  “You’re an agent of your country. You report to Froissart. And you used Pascal to murder Toshio.”

  She turns and looks straight at me. She does not deny it. She does not say anything; she simply points to the door and waits for me to leave. She knows, of course, that there is not a snowflake’s chance in hell that I am going to let her back into UNHQ. I have already entered her name on the security blacklist, and as soon as I can I will be making sure that her press accreditation is permanently withdrawn. But I am pretty sure that now that she knows what I know, she will be removing herself from New York anyway. Two men are dead, and if I have figured it out, someone else might do the same. Her speedy departure is the best I can hope for too, hence my visit here. To let her know what I know. To get her gone. What evidence I have against her would not stand up in a court of law, but it is not only that. The fact is that my brief carnal sojourn with her last night, as Marie no doubt intended, has given her a weapon. If I make an accusation against the French, she will attribute any personal motive she pleases to my words. Froissart might even manage to drag Rachel back into the fray. And the thought of Rachel being flayed on the altar of my stupid indiscretion, the idea that my thoughtless action might have rendered her vulnerable again, is simply too painful to face.

  So now I have done what I came to do. Marie Lefebre knows what I know. The moment I walk o
ut the door she will be packing her bags to leave. But seeing her sitting now, so composed on the bed, I cannot help thinking of the scene down at the morgue and Pascal’s broken body; and the scene Tuesday morning in the basement, Toshio’s glassy eyes staring at nothing.

  This should be worse for her, I think.

  Reaching down, I grab her arm and haul her out to the living room. She swears in French and tries to pull away.

  “Pascal sent you a message.” I lean over to the recorder.

  She looks from the recorder to me, thrown now and uncertain, while I hold her arm tight. With my free hand I crank up the volume, then I hit rewind a moment, and then play.

  “—and you, Pascal, you killed Toshio.”

  Traffic noise on the tape, distant, from down on the Drive. In my mind’s eye I can see Pascal’s face. He is looking right through me. Thinking, I know now, of Marie. Here in the living room I watch her beside me. At last, on the tape, Pascal speaks.

  “Le plus beau moment de l’amour c’est quand on monte l’escalier.”

  Marie makes a sound, her lips part. Le plus beau moment de l’amour c’est quand on monte l’escalier. The same words Marie’s super shouted after me. The same words he must have been shouting at Pascal for the past three months as Pascal followed Marie up to her apartment. The best part of passion is the walk up the stairs.

  How right he was, I say.

  She continues to stare down at the recorder. Finally I release her arm and turn away. When I get to the door, I look back, but she has not moved. The tape plays on.

  Rachel’s crying for her mother, sobbing into my chest; Mike up on the terrace shouting at the guards on the walkway, ordering them to back off; a few moments’ silence and then that sound of crumpling metal, a six-car pileup over Pascal’s broken body.

  Marie’s eyes remain dry.

  I let myself out. As I move across the landing I hear a cry rise behind me and I pause, but it is not her. Not Marie, but the tourist who witnessed Pascal’s fall, the woman up on the UN terrace caught forever in the fatal moment, screaming. My hand on the banister, I hang my head and descend the well-worn stairs.

  SATURDAY

  44

  AFTER THE MORNING’S BIG POWWOW UP ON THIRTY-EIGHT I spend a couple of hours in my office, playing catch-up with the paperwork on my desk. Problems arising from the General Assembly session and the more usual troubles from out in the field. Added to these is a flood of queries relating to Afghanistan; it seems that someone has suggested my office as an alternate destination for anything addressed to Toshio Hatanaka. I will probably be receiving this stuff for weeks before the mix-up is straightened out. In the meantime I pile it all into a box. Then, when my own work is done, my desktop visible again, I take the box down the hall to Toshio’s locked office. The box is perched on my thigh, my knee pressed against Toshio’s door, and I am digging in my pocket for Toshio’s key, when Mike comes strolling toward me down the corridor.

  “Heavy?” he inquires.

  I hand him the box, then open the door. He follows me in.

  “Misdirected mail,” I explain as he deposits the box on the desk. I tell him about the mix-up and my admittedly crude solution: The problem is now someone else’s. Mei Tan, Toshio’s secretary, will have the task of guiding Toshio’s yet-to-be-named replacement through all the paperwork in here.

  Mike turns to the open door and starts peeling off the security notice, the No Entry sign.

  “You pleased how things went this morning?” he asks me. The big meeting upstairs, he means. Mike and Eckhardt were both there, along with me, Patrick, and the Secretary-General.

  “I’m pleased it’s over,” I say.

  He leans back, tearing the notice off in one sweeping motion. Then he crushes it into a large ball.

  “How’s Rachel?”

  “She spent the night back home.”

  “Permanent?”

  “Nope.”

  Almost the first thing Rachel said to me over breakfast was that she wasn’t staying, and the next thing she said was that she’d made an appointment for herself with Dr. Covey. After the emotional roller coaster she has been on the past few days, I had, naturally, feared the worst, that she might revisit the dark territory of withdrawal, the place into which she retreated after Sarah’s death, the first stop on the way back to anorexia and the intensive care ward. Instead, she seems to have come through it, battered but determined to go on. Determined not to be one of life’s victims. Though I cannot take any credit for how well she seems to have coped with what has happened, I am more pleased and more relieved than I ever believed possible to find that my daughter has discovered in herself that kind of quiet courage. I take it as a sign, I suppose, that in the years since Sarah’s death, I have not failed totally as a father.

  “Look at the pluses,” says Mike. “For one, you don’t have to see the goofballs she brings home for supper.”

  I give him a look.

  She’s a good kid, he says. She’ll be fine.

  Though being a good kid is no shield from harm, certainly not in this city; that is not what Mike really means. He is simply telling me that I cannot lay a protective hand over my daughter’s head forever. From Mike I appreciate the platitude, the reassurance and hope that he wants to convey.

  We stand by the desk a moment, looking around Toshio’s office just as we did Tuesday morning. The knowledge of what has happened since, everything our investigation uncovered, seems to have given the place a darker, more somber aspect. And when my gaze falls on the place where Rachel lay curled up and quivering yesterday, a cold hand seems to touch me. Whoever the next occupant of this office might be, this is one place that in the future I will be going out of my way to avoid.

  As we head back to my office I ask Mike what he’s doing up here anyway. “What happened to the grand Security review?”

  “We just finished phase one,” he tells me. “Eckhardt kicked my butt for an hour, I went and kicked ass downstairs.”

  In the aftermath of Toshio’s murder, the discovery of how it was done, the inevitable reassessment of security procedures has been set in motion. Upstairs this morning the SG made it clear that he was not a happy man. He spent much of the time pacing the floor, yelling, while the rest of us hung our heads, jotting unnecessary notes in our files. He has demanded a full review of UN Security, to be followed, naturally, by a full and lengthy report. There will be no glory in the task, so Eckhardt has palmed the whole thing off on Mike. Which Mike ruefully accepts as a justified penance for everything that has gone wrong in his department.

  “I was thinking maybe you had something to tell me,” Mike remarks now, lobbing the balled-paper wad into the trash can as he strolls into my office.

  “About Rache?”

  “No.”

  When I glance over, the look Mike gives me is unexpectedly direct and probing. Sitting down, I rearrange the pens on my desk.

  “Actually,” Mike says, “I was thinking you had something to tell everyone. Upstairs this morning.”

  I shrug and shake my head.

  “You sure?”

  “What’s this, a quiz?”

  When I smile, Mike very pointedly does not. “I went down the morgue, Sam. Spoke to the guys you saw when you identified Nyeri’s body. I saw the stuff from his pockets.”

  I take a moment with that.

  “Also,” he says, “I talked with our guys in Surveillance. Thought I’d better smooth things out there, put them straight about you. Let them know you’re not the jerkoff they think you are.”

  “Did it work?”

  He just looks at me. “They tell me you went back there, got them to help you with the editing. That you spliced together some of yesterday’s tapes.”

  “Guilty.”

  “So have you got something to tell me now?” he asks, and by this time, of course, it is clear to me that this is no offhand inquiry.

  I had asked myself, naturally, how it would be if someone wasn’t satisfied with the
Lemtov-Nyeri tie-up, everything that seemed proven by my taped conversation with Pascal out on the North Lawn. Lemtov, unsurprisingly, denies the whole thing categorically, denies any relationship whatsoever with Pascal. But last night the SG invited the Russian ambassador up to the thirty-eighth floor to peruse the FBI report. That, along with Pascal Nyeri’s death and my tape of the final conversation, has convinced the Russians that Lemtov is finished. The carefully constructed edifice of his career is in ruins; his ambassador is in no mood to listen to his pleas of innocence. And for her part, Jennifer has accepted the chain of events at face value too; and so, apparently, has Patrick. But the possibility that Mike Jardine might not be satisfied, that he might independently uncover at least part of the truth, that one I missed. On reflection, I really shouldn’t have.

  “You saw the passport?”

  “Ah-ha,” Mike says. “French. And I saw the date of issue. Yesterday.”

  “You noticed that.”

  Mike waits. He has me on the hook, he has no intention of letting me slip free. So at last I reach into my desk drawer and take out the videotape. I turn it over in my hands.

  “Lemtov should never have been here.”

  “Says who?”

  “He should never have been here, Mike. And I don’t mean just what he put Rachel through. This is a guy whose only interest in the UN was the cover it gave him. Now he’s out, and if I had any part in that, I’m not sorry.”

  “Okay, so you’re not sorry.” He points. “What’s on the tape?”

  “Do you want Lemtov back here?”

  “Sure. Great guy.” Mike squints. “What are you saying, do I want Lemtov back here? Guy’s a crook. I want him back here like I wanna dose of the clap. Now, what’s on the goddamn tape?”

  No way around it. On my way to the VCR in the corner I close my office door; then, as I slide the tape into the machine, Mike comes and stands by me. The tape clicks, begins to play, and Mike leans forward.