Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  So whose slate stays clean? Do I shrug the burden onto his shoulders, or do I lie and carry the burden alone?

  Sensing my hesitation, he tilts back his head. Finally I nod.

  “That’s everything.”

  He looks at me a moment longer. “No,” he decides with a sad kind of ruefulness. “That’s just everything you’re gonna tell me. But, hey, you owe me nothing, right?”

  We look at each other, my lie hanging between us like poisonous vapor. Later I might find the strength to tell him the truth, but not now. For now it is all I can do to hold myself steady, to meet his unflinching gaze without wilting.

  “I expected better,” he says at last. He does not wait for a response. He leans toward me, chucks my shoulder a little too hard, then he goes.

  45

  WHEN I FIND RACHEL, SHE IS SITTING WITH THREE other guides in the room behind the UN Public Information Office in the basement, drinking Coke. Unlike her uniformed friends, Rachel is dressed in jeans and a sweater; she has her own UN guide’s uniform draped over the chair beside her. The talk dies when I put my head in, so I keep it brief. Is she ready to go? Not yet, she’s waiting for her boss, she says. There are some more forms she has to sign. How long? She shrugs and tells me maybe fifteen minutes. Then I hesitate in the doorway.

  “Did you see Jennifer?” Rachel asks me, and a gentle heat immediately moves up from my neck, suffusing my cheeks. I shake my head. Two of Rachel’s friends exchange a look; one of them rolls her eyes. “She was down here,” Rachel goes on. “She just came in and asked me like, if I was okay. She said she might see you. I think she went back to her office.”

  I tap my hand against the door frame, casting around for some dignified way to make my exit. At last it is Rachel who speaks. She says that if she finishes up here soon, she’ll come looking for me across the street, then she smiles and sips her Coke through a straw.

  When the marine guard overhears the USUN receptionist tell me that Ms. Dale is not in the building, he steps forward to inform me that Jennifer has just gone around the corner to see her son. So a minute later I find myself standing on the sidewalk outside the kindergarten where Jennifer’s son, Ben, spends five mornings a week. On the far side of the glass wall there are balloons and a low table bearing a large cake decorated with white icing and four stubby red candles. The teacher appears to have opened this place on a Saturday morning so that some four-year-old kid whose parents are busy saving the world across the street at the UN can celebrate his birthday. But with so few kids in attendance, the place looks empty, and despite the cake and the balloons, not festive but sad. Jennifer, somewhat incongruously, is wearing a green paper party hat and a sober gray business suit. Crouching by Ben near the cake, she glances up now and sees me looking in from the street.

  “Hi,” she says, coming out to join me on the sidewalk a few moments later. Then she gestures past me. “I saw Rachel. She’s quitting?”

  “Only her job.”

  Jennifer considers my remark. Then, hearing music start up behind her, she glances back over her shoulder. She stays like that, apparently unwilling to face me directly.

  “Jennifer.”

  “Mmm?”

  When I touch her arm, she faces me again.

  “You wanted to see me,” I tell her. At this, Jennifer looks momentarily puzzled. “You told Rachel?”

  “Oh, that.” When her hand wafts up in airy dismissal, a heavy weight settles in my gut. Her words to Rachel were no more than a parting aside. Jennifer was not, as I thought, hoping to see me. In fact, judging by her demeanor, her apparent unwillingness even to look me in the eye, it seems that my unexpected arrival is far from welcome. For a moment I actually consider leaving this for another time, but that thought quickly passes. Time is not going to make this any easier.

  I nod down the street. I ask if she minds if we walk.

  Dead leaves, the first of fall, go scudding past our ankles, driven by a sudden gust of wind. Overhead the sky is a brilliant cloudless blue. Walking beside me, Jennifer reaches up to sweep the green paper hat off her head.

  “So Lemtov’s out,” she says, pushing the hat into her jacket.

  UN tom-toms, I think. Patrick has passed the word to Bruckner, and Bruckner has told Jennifer. Probably a few more of the U.S. delegation. By Monday morning the entire General Assembly will have the news. But Jennifer’s tone is surprisingly downbeat.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Hatanaka and Nyeri are dead, Sam. And the Japanese lost the vote. If the Secretariat had acted on the Bureau’s report when we gave it to you—”

  I raise a hand, cutting off the retrospective apportionment of blame. She draws her jacket tight around her waist.

  “We’ve all made mistakes on this,” I tell her meaningfully. “All of us.”

  She contemplates her feet as she walks. Then, scuffing her shoes over the fallen leaves, she offers a few remarks about Bruckner’s reaction to the whole sorry episode. Apparently he has decided that the Secretariat had some hidden agenda all along, that we were working to block the Japanese ascension to the Council from the start. I absorb these remarks in silence. I do not, of course, tell Jennifer that the hidden agenda belonged to one of the U.S.A.’s fellow perm five members, France; that dirty political battle has been waged, won, and lost, and a public revelation of the truth now would simply introduce an element into the Security Council, into the whole UN system, as corrosive as acid. It is not lost on me either how easily my own role in the affair could be magnified and distorted by the French into villainous caricature. So I just walk, keeping my gaze straight ahead now and nodding from time to time.

  Then I hear her say, “So how’s O’Conner seeing it?”

  I stop. A few more steps, then she stops and faces me.

  “How’s O’Conner seeing it?” I repeat.

  Surprised by my reaction, she cocks her head. But after a few seconds it registers, and she raises a slender finger and points. “I asked you that before.”

  “Right.”

  “Tuesday morning. The opening.”

  “And do you remember what I told you then?”

  She ruminates a moment, gives a wry smile. I told her, as she now remembers, nothing at all.

  “Jennifer—” My throat is suddenly dry. “Jennifer, I didn’t come over here to discuss O’Conner’s political opinions on the state of the world. It wasn’t the USUN legal counsel that I wanted to see. It was you.”

  “Same thing.”

  “You know it’s not.”

  We study each other awhile.

  “Look, if you can put your hand on your heart, tell me you don’t care if you never see me again, I won’t make this worse.”

  She doesn’t reply.

  “Can you tell me that?” I ask her. “Honestly?”

  “It isn’t that easy.”

  “Hand on heart?”

  “Don’t push me, Sam,” she says quietly, walking on.

  After a while, tentatively, I lay a hand on her arm. She makes no move to pull away.

  “I’m sorry, Jennifer. Is that what you want to hear from me? I made a mistake. A big one, and I’m so goddamn sorry, I just can’t tell you—”

  Her eyes, when she lifts them, are clouded. “I can’t do it, Sam. I can’t go through it all, not a second time.”

  “Jennifer—”

  “Please.” Her face goes tight. She turns suddenly and heads back toward the kindergarten. I go after her, then fall in step beside her. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, then shakes her head. “I guess if this is apology time, I really wasn’t too understanding either.”

  “You?”

  She pulls a face. “About Rachel, I mean. What you were going through.”

  I wave a hand, dismissing her apology.

  “No, really,” she says.

  But in truth my own behavior and language were nothing to be proud of, and I tell her that now. It is her turn. She waves my apology aside.

&nb
sp; “So we’re agreed. We’re both total lowlifes, scum of the earth.” A corner of her mouth rises. We stop by the sandbox outside the kindergarten. She looks in through the window to where the birthday candles on the cake have been lit. Ben is staring at the candles wide-eyed, he has not seen her yet. In a few moments she will be going in to join him.

  And what is left now for Jennifer and me to say to each other? So long? It’s been a fine few months, pity how it ended, but good luck with the rest of your life?

  “I slept with her once, Jennifer.”

  Her gaze stays fixed on her son.

  “I’m not excusing myself here, but that’s the truth. It wasn’t some ongoing thing. She was chasing a story. You were breaking my balls. I slept with her. If it’s any consolation, she’s gone back to Paris.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Okay.” I take a breath. “I just wanted you to know that.”

  “Can you imagine how I feel right now, Sam?”

  When I don’t answer her, she turns. “I feel,” she says, looking straight at me, “like I really could murder you.”

  She does not look like she could murder me. The look in her eyes is not fierce or wild, but wretched. Totally spent.

  “Only that’s not what I’m thinking,” she says. “What I’m thinking is that you made a mistake, like you said, and that you’re sorry. And I think you are. In my head, Sam, I believe you, I really think you are. But in the end, you know, that just doesn’t help. Because what I feel, how I feel, that wins every time. You’re standing there saying sorry, and I’m so mad at you I’m having visions of meat cleavers and knives.” She smiles crookedly. “A pretty shaky foundation for a relationship, don’t you think?”

  “We could work it out.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to try?”

  “Trying has nothing to do with it.” Her expression and her voice are now strained. “That’s what I’m saying. I have tried. And what I’ve found is that I can’t do it. This thing.” She lifts a hand; she cannot even bring herself to say the words. Betrayal? Adultery? Finally she gives up, facing the kindergarten window again. “I really am so goddamn angry with you,” she says, folding her arms, hugging them close.

  For a moment my heart beats erratically, painfully. When I open my mouth to speak, she cuts me off.

  “Don’t,” she says.

  “Can’t we just give it some time?”

  She shakes her head, a short, sharp movement. She is hating every second of this, but she has steeled herself against persuasion. And this is Jennifer. She is unlikely to weaken.

  And me? By now I am dying inside.

  “I have to go,” Jennifer says.

  When I lift my eyes I see that she has offered me her hand. And after a moment I take it. But when she attempts to withdraw, to retreat to the refuge of the kindergarten, the solace of Ben’s loving embrace, I hold her hand firm. I fix my eyes on hers as I speak.

  “If I thought you had something better lined up, someone better than me, I wouldn’t stand in your way. I wouldn’t make it this hard. You know that. If you had a better life to go to, if I honestly thought you had, I’d stand aside. I’d even wish you luck. But that’s just not the way I see it, where you go from here.”

  She pulls her hand free.

  “The way I see it, if I just step aside now, you’ll retreat into your career. And maybe a year or two from now you’ll figure having a great career isn’t the same as having a great life. And you’ll look around then, Jennifer. Maybe you’ll find someone. But that guy, Mr. X, he won’t be perfect. Because that’s not the way we are. None of us. And so what are you going to do when Mr. X screws up? Or the next guy?”

  She drops her head but says nothing.

  “We can have a future together. A good life. And I don’t pretend to know what you want, but I know what I want.” Reaching, I touch her arm. At last I speak the words that I know she has been waiting to hear from me for months now; I hope is still waiting to hear. The only words that will prove to her that I am ready to take another shot. At love. At some kind of life that is deeper and more complete and true than the life I have. “I want you, Jennifer. I want you.”

  For a long while she is still. Then she moves close to me, rises on tiptoe, and clasps my arm as she presses her cheek hard against mine.

  It’s too late, she whispers.

  Then she turns and bows her head and walks away. My heart, for a moment, ceases beating. I look up at the sky. And I know then, beyond hope, that it is over.

  Epilogue

  TOSHIO HATANAKA’S BODY IS BEING RETURNED TOJAPAN. When Moriko called with the details of the arrangements, I went up to Patrick’s office for the first time in days and told him I was going out to the airport. I thought someone from the Secretariat should at least make that effort.

  “You asking for my permission?” he asked me.

  “No,” I said.

  He waved a hand to the door and I silently withdrew. Since announcing his resignation Monday, he has spoken to me just once apart from this morning, when he called to inform me that the rumors were true, that he’d been appointed the Australian High Commissioner in London. His resignation will take effect within weeks; by the end of the month we will have a new Undersecretary-General for Legal Affairs. I could not pretend either surprise or sorrow. And yesterday I heard from a source on the thirty-eighth floor that in Patrick’s letter of resignation the customary parting courtesy of the Undersecretary-General to his deputy was omitted: The name Windrush did not appear on his list of recommended candidates to succeed him. Though as a U.S. citizen I never would have expected to be a serious candidate for the post, I really would have appreciated the gesture. But Patrick, true to form, has remained graceless to the end.

  After leaving Patrick’s office I went downstairs to get Mike, but he was too busy with his own reestablished routine to spare the time for a trip out to JFK. I get the impression Mike would like to forget about Toshio and the whole affair as soon as he can; he does not regard the investigation or the outcome as anything like his finest hour. But he suggested I phone Jennifer, that USUN might want to send someone to fly the flag. I wound up my courage and finally called her. Jennifer relaxed a little when she understood that the call wasn’t personal.

  “I can’t make it,” she told me.

  I suggested Bruckner. Jennifer laughed at that; then with a few carefully chosen words she let me understand that a commemorative farewell to Toshio Hatanaka was not high on the list of USUN’s priorities.

  “You heard Patrick’s leaving,” I said, knowing of course that she had.

  “Ah-ha. Stay tuned for the bulletin from over here.”

  I took a moment with that. “Bruckner’s leaving?”

  “Stay tuned,” she repeated before hanging up.

  So we are talking again. And I am not really surprised by the news about Bruckner. There is no political mileage in trying to rebuild the pro-Japanese consensus; it will be years before Security Council reform gathers enough momentum to make it back to an Assembly vote. Like Patrick, Bruckner wants to put this failure behind him; his career path will have to undergo a sharp change in direction. Maybe a Senate seat, but wherever he goes I doubt Bruckner will be staying in New York to endure the daily reminders of this week’s fiasco at Turtle Bay. And wherever he goes I guess Jennifer will be going with him. On reflection, maybe that “stay tuned” was a subtle way of breaking it to me that she is leaving. One to mull over in the quiet of my apartment tonight.

  Now that Rachel has returned to Juan’s place in Alphabet City I have plenty of downtime in the evenings to think things through. Something I’ve thought through already is that there is no going back to the half-life I was leading. If nothing else, my time with Jennifer has shown me that. On the personal front I am ready—no, more than that—I really do want to take another shot at life. But for now the hint of an impending departure from Jennifer causes a powerful ache somewhere in my heart. It hurts like hell. It w
ill not be fatal.

  Out at the airport it is raining, a fine drizzle, not really much more than a heavy mist. The guy from the airline holds an umbrella over me as we cross the wet tarmac to the hangar where the giant doors are wide open. He gestures me in, then retreats back to the warmth of his office.

  It is the flags I notice first, UN and Japanese, one of each draped across the brass-handled coffin. The coffin lies on a baggage trolley, ready to be towed out to the plane. Moriko is standing there. She raises a hand when she sees me, and my head dips in sad acknowledgment. Then, as I begin the trek across the oil-stained concrete, I recognize the man at her side. Bunzo Asahaki. I walk on, then come to a halt by Moriko.

  “He would have been glad you came,” she says, touching my arm.

  I apologize for those who could not make it, people she might have expected to see. Patrick. The SG. She nods and bows slightly. She tells me that she understands. Then I reach across her, offering Bunzo Asahaki my hand, but he does not deign to notice the gesture. Finally I let my hand slide into my pocket, then I turn and face the coffin.

  It looks too small. And in some strange way that seems appropriate. The coffin looks too small for the body just as the body always seemed too small for the life it contained. He meant so much to so many people. That fact has been brought home to everyone these past few days as the letters and tributes have poured in from innumerable NGOs and governments, UN staffers all over the globe. The same sentiments keep recurring. Toshio listened. He tried to understand. He made every effort to solve problems instead of dropping them into the black hole of UN bureaucracy. He did not hide behind the UN Charter. And there are frequent addenda to these notes asking to whom in the future the writer should apply for assistance at UNHQ.

  Though none of these tributes will ever make the headlines or the history books, they are a genuine and fitting testament to a life well lived. Toshio is gone and his absence really matters to those he left behind. I have brought a few of these notes along to show Moriko later, but for now I just watch in silence as a guy in white coveralls couples the trolley to his cart.