Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  “Ah-ha,” she says again.

  So now I get it. A smart aleck.

  “Miss Yomoto, this isn’t a joke.” I beckon Weyland; he steps up and walks beside me, giving the Yomoto woman a clear view of the uniform. “We didn’t just happen to be passing. We came here to speak to you. And you could make this easier by stepping aside for a few minutes and talking to us.”

  She throws back her head and laughs and skips away from us. A kook, all right. But more than that, a real pain in the ass. Weyland nods up ahead to the Waldorf. A TV broadcast truck has pulled up at the curb; some guy is on the roof connecting the satellite dish. I walk on fast, catching up with Yomoto, who is now immediately behind the coffin. She pretends not to notice my arrival. The leaflets disappear from her hand like cards for a croupier, left and right. I bend and speak into her ear as we walk.

  “Here’s your choice, Miss Yomoto. You step aside with me now, or your friends up front will be hearing exactly how it is you fund your life of outrage.”

  She darts a surprised glance at me.

  “Chemicals at the Hawaiian seaside. Should make some impression, shall we see?”

  I tap the nearest pallbearer on the shoulder. He turns awkwardly, still holding on to the coffin. And then Yomoto reacts. She stops in her tracks and watches the coffin move away from us toward the Waldorf. Then she turns to give me a mouthful, but before she can do that, Weyland wraps his huge hands around her biceps and effortlessly guides her through the pedestrians into the relative privacy of a doorway.

  “Get off!” She pulls away, rubbing her arm when Weyland releases her. He stands with his back to the sidewalk, penning her in the doorway. “Whatta you want?” she says. “So I was at the thing Monday, whatta you gonna do, arrest me? Who are you?”

  I take out my wallet and show her my United Nations ID.

  “So?” She looks up at me belligerently.

  “Were you invited?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who invited you?”

  “It wasn’t a personal invitation. Can I go now?”

  “Why were you there?”

  “Look, I was there, whatta you want? Everyone was there, a few of us gate-crashed the thing. I don’t see that it’s any big deal. What are you gonna do, send us a bill?”

  “Who did you speak to?”

  She laughs. Not the kook laugh but a real one, low and short. She leans out past Weyland and hands someone a leaflet. Weyland turns her back into the door.

  “Miss Yomoto,” I say, “if you can’t be a little more cooperative, I’m not going to waste any more time. I’m going to talk to your friends, and they’re going to know how your family makes its money. How you can afford to swan around to protests in the middle of the week and not worry about your job. I’m not saying this again. Who did you speak to?”

  “I don’t know.” When I turn away, she clutches my arm. “No, I mean seriously, I don’t know. It was full. I spoke to lots of people, I don’t know who most of them were. NGOs. Secretariat people.”

  I look straight at her. “Special Envoy Hatanaka?”

  She nods.

  “What did you discuss?”

  Her eyes go from me to Weyland. “He never asked me to leave,” she says, referring to Toshio. She is still talking about the gate-crashing thing.

  At the Waldorf the protest seems to be getting into its stride. The chanting is loud now, the placards raised, everyone joining in. The coffin is making its way up to the Waldorf entrance. I repeat my question.

  “We didn’t discuss anything,” she says. “I just told him what I thought about all the refugees and things.”

  “You didn’t discuss the vote on the Council seat?”

  “Why would I?” She frowns. “He did Afghanistan, yeah?”

  It takes me a second to understand. Suzi Yomoto is no Juan Martinez. She is so self-absorbed, so directed at her own personal mission that the real political game is totally outside her field of view. Toshio’s campaign against the Japanese seat has quite simply passed her by. He did Afghanistan.

  “How well did you know him?”

  “I didn’t. I just met him Monday night, we spoke for a couple of minutes, that’s it.”

  “You were never at his apartment?”

  She shakes her head. By now she really does seem perplexed by the questions. It could be a front, but I have an uneasy feeling that it isn’t.

  “Did you see where Toshio went when he left you?” I ask her. “Who he spoke to?”

  She peers at me. “Hey, didn’t you guys put out some statement saying he died of natural causes?”

  Suddenly a siren sounds on the street; all three of us turn to see an NYPD van race by. It stops near the Waldorf and about a dozen armed cops pile out. In fact, they are more than just armed, they’re wearing helmets and bulletproof vests. Half of them stay out with the placard-waving protesters, the other half go charging into the Waldorf lobby, where the coffin and its pallbearers have disappeared. Several wild-eyed youths run past, pulling kerchiefs up from their necks to cover their faces as they close on the Waldorf. The protest has evidently been more meticulously planned than it first seemed. The TV cameraman is going in after the cops and the coffin.

  Yomoto dives out of the doorway. Before I can even react, Weyland has her by her cloak collar. He hauls her back and plants her against the door.

  “You can get your ass busted later. Just now Mr. Windrush is talking to you.”

  She says something to him in Japanese; it does not sound too polite. Now I reach into my jacket pocket.

  “Can you translate this for me, Miss Yomoto?”

  I open the note we found in Toshio’s mailbox. She glances down at the note, then back up.

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “Is it yours?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “You never left this at Toshio’s apartment? You never had an appointment with him Monday night?”

  She looks from Weyland back to me. She smirks. “You can’t really be the best the UN’s got.”

  “Listen—”

  “Oh, screw off. I never knew Hatanaka. I was never at his apartment. And I never had any damn appointment with him Monday or any other damn day. Now, if you don’t let me go, I’m going to report this as harassment.” She looks at Weyland, her brow creasing. “What authority have you got here anyway?”

  When I tell her I will be needing a handwriting sample from her, she flicks the note in my hand and laughs. More a hoot really.

  “Could be tough. I don’t write kanji. I can’t read Japanese.”

  “You just said something in Japanese.”

  “Oh, I can swear in Japanese fine. I can even speak a little. But I can’t read or write it.” Her smile is smug. She realizes now just as I do that we have made a mistake here, that we have gotten the wrong person. She really did not know Toshio. The note is not hers. “And if you don’t let me go now, I’m gonna call the cops.”

  I look down at my feet, then up at Weyland. His eyelids droop sadly. Finally I nod and he steps aside and Suzi Yomoto bolts out past us up the street. If she hurries, she might still be in time to get herself arrested.

  17

  JUST DOWN FROM THE SECURITY COUNCIL CHAMBER THERE is a room set aside for press conferences. A sterile gray space lined with chairs, it has a small podium up front and behind that a giant UN plaque decorating the wall. When I arrive, this room is packed, the chairs all taken, people standing crammed in the aisles, the journalists up front crouching to give the cameramen at the rear a clear view. And there are more than the usual journalists here. Senior figures from the Secretariat stand discreetly in the audience, most from Political Affairs, but these are far outnumbered by the General Assembly delegates who have abandoned the tedium of yet another plenary speech on the evils of capitalism and come down here to catch up on life in the real world. Lady Nicola, center stage on the podium, is fielding questions. My eyes sweep the room for Patrick. After the dead end with Suzi Yomoto
, I simply cannot put this off any longer.

  “I reiterate what I have already said,” Lady Nicola says now. “This isn’t a question that has been put to the Council.”

  “But it’s true, isn’t it,” her inquisitor presses, “that Japan has revived its claim on the Spratlys?”

  Oh, Lord, I think. Already. Word of the Japanese statement must have leaked. How long now before my own name gets a dishonorable and very public mention?

  “Is it?” Lady Nicola lifts a brow in gentle mockery of the questioner. “Your contact with the Japanese prime minister would appear to be more intimate than mine,” she tells him.

  Normally this verbal backhander would be greeted with amusement by the assembled company of professional cynics. Today it does not go down well at all. Someone not far from me hisses softly.

  I finally locate Patrick sitting to one side of the podium, a forefinger crooked over his chin, a study of intense thoughtfulness. But the crush of bodies is too thick for me to get to him without attracting attention, so I have to wait. And now the Tunku—the chairman of the UNHQ Committee, the guy who screwed up any chance of proper forensics down in the basement—gets to his feet. A general groan runs over the room. The Tunku smiles left and right, then proceeds to read from a prepared statement. Some people near the doors make their escape; evidently they have better things to do than listen to yet another state-of-the-world address from Tunku Rahman Kabir.

  Unfortunately I really do need to see Patrick. So I steel myself.

  The Tunku touches all the usual high spots: Zionism, neocolonialism, the exploitation of the poorer nations by what he refers to as “the grotesquely overdeveloped countries of the world.” Then he departs from the prepared text to give us further reflections on various weighty matters of the day, till eventually a burly South African journalist intervenes, shouting at the Tunku to ask his question and sit down. This is greeted by applause. The Tunku’s wrinkled face puckers.

  “What is the truth of this matter, then?” he continues rhetorically. “I ask you. Is the General Assembly not the parliament of man? But we can see here what is the practice of unaccountable power in the Security Council, that the General Assembly is not informed of what is taking place not only in the world, but here”—he points theatrically at the floor—“yes, here in the United Nations itself, which, as we know, was established for the swords to be beaten into plowshares, as the saying goes, and to defeat the scourge of war.”

  “Mr. Ambassador—” Lady Nicola puts in wearily.

  “Yes, yes.” The Tunku flourishes a hand. “And so when is the General Assembly to be informed of what is being done in the matter of the death of the special envoy? And other such questions, such as why the General Assembly Committee is not receiving proper cooperation from the Secretariat? And what is the true situation with Japanese intentions to the Spratlys, which every international legal expert has stated in black and white belong to Malaysia?” So concludes the Malaysian ambassador.

  Across the room the journalists are talking to one another, some of them laughing openly at the Tunku’s performance. Lady Nicola repeats the agreed public line on Toshio’s death: assumed natural causes, all questions to the Secretariat. But the Tunku is not listening. His oration over, he is heading for the door, the Malaysian delegation trailing after him studying the carpet.

  In the general shuffling of chairs I raise a hand and catch Patrick’s eye. He tips his head left, to the exit.

  “Bloody man,” he says when I join him in the side corridor. He screws up his face at the memory of the Tunku’s display.

  Gesturing back to the room, I ask him why the press conference was called anyway. Publicity on this is surely the last thing we need.

  “Journalists got wind of that note from the Japs,” he tells me. “Bruckner wanted Lady Nicola to slap the whole thing down before it turned into a story.”

  “You think it worked?”

  “Christ knows.” He turns on his heel. “So what are you after? Come to explain what got into you down in the side chamber?”

  My failure to bend to the Big Five, I see, still rankles. I tell him about the blank I have drawn with Suzi Yomoto: She did not leave the note at Toshio’s apartment yesterday. And then I return to the subject of my early-morning visit to the Portland Trust Bank with Pascal. I am trying to get Patrick to give me some hint as to what was going on with him and Toshio. He hears me out in silence.

  “Pascal doesn’t know why Toshio went back there Friday,” I conclude.

  Patrick regards me from the corner of his eye. “You’re still mad at me, aren’t you? Just because Hatanaka was investigating this stuff and you weren’t told.”

  “Pascal showed me all the evidence you had on Asahaki. And he told me when you had it too.”

  “So?” Patrick veers aside, disappearing into the john.

  But I have no intention of letting him off the hook that easy. Going in after him, I stoop and check beneath the two stall doors. Both empty. Patrick unzips at the urinal.

  “You had that stuff three weeks back, Patrick. It’s not just that you didn’t tell me. You sat on it. Deliberately kept it from me. You knew it was a fraud, and you sat on it to protect Asahaki’s butt. And last night you told me there was nothing concrete against Asahaki, that you’d only just heard. You lied to me.”

  “That’s one interpretation.”

  “You want the Japanese to get this seat. You want it so bad you don’t care if I find anything, do you? Maybe you might even prefer that.”

  Patrick studies the wall above the urinal. Then, rezipping his fly, he informs me that I am going about this all wrong.

  “Well, I’m open to suggestions.”

  “Look,” he says, turning and stepping up to me. “You think I don’t have enough worries without you jumping on my back? How about you get off your fucking high horse and get on with your job. Properly. How I tell you to. Can you do that?”

  Our faces are inches apart. His aftershave smells like musk.

  “You mean, now that I’ve got the blindfold off?”

  His eyes narrow. Just do your job, he mutters, crossing to the basin, flicking a hand toward the door.

  But I don’t leave. I stand and watch him. At last he pauses, one hand resting on the soap dispenser button. He regards my reflection in the basin mirror. “So are you going to spit it out, what’s really eating you?”

  Mike will not like this, I think. Then I speak.

  “The phones in Toshio’s apartment were bugged. Our security people are missing some bugs of the same make. And this morning I had an intruder at my apartment. When I walked in on him, he was busy with my phone. Planting or removing the same kind of bug we found at Toshio’s.”

  Patrick makes a sound.

  “I just thought you should know that.”

  He sticks his tongue into his cheek, his color rising as he continues to consider me in the mirror. Then he rinses his hands and puts them under the dryer. When he finally faces me, his look is severe. “You went to Hatanaka’s apartment yesterday. And you waited twenty-four hours to tell me it was bugged? And you had this intruder at your place, what, six hours ago? What did you think I meant when I told you to keep me posted?”

  “I’m keeping you posted now.”

  “The fuck you are.”

  “Would you prefer I took all this to Lady Nicola?”

  He lowers his brow.

  “Or the Security Council?” I say.

  “Don’t play the smart ass. You had the rules from the start. Keep me informed. Instead of that, it turns out you’ve been dicking me around. You expect me to put up with that?” He points. “Now, just get yourself off Asahaki’s case. You get back to heel.”

  I wince. Back to heel, as I recall, is a command that masters use with their wayward dogs. Most of my illusions about Patrick have long since dissolved, but this one—that he regards me as a colleague, that he genuinely respects my opinion—this one has always been a great consolation to me, a personal
reward for Sisyphean labors. But now I wonder. The thousand times we have disagreed and subsequently reached what I thought was a mutual compromise, the flexibility I have shown—did he take these all along for signs of weakness? Back to heel. God, I am furious. With him. With me.

  Turning my head, I back away toward the door. “If Ambassador Asahaki returns, the second he gets back, I’m going to question him. When you next speak to him, you might want to tell him that.”

  “Sam,” Patrick says, his eyes widening as he realizes he has overplayed his hand. “Sam!” he calls, but I take one more step back and nod stiffly as the door swings shut between us.

  The journalists are pouring from the conference room down the hall, their session with Lady Nicola finally over. I skirt around them, seething. Back to heel. Back to goddamn heel.

  “You did not ask Lady Nicola about the Special Committee.”

  Startled, I turn my head sharply. That journalist, Marie Lefebre, has fallen in step beside me. She taps her handbag.

  “No microphone,” she says, smiling.

  We are well clear of the other journalists; no one has heard her mention the Special Committee.

  “What questions were you expecting?” I ask.

  “Oh, you could have asked, for example, if Mr. Hatanaka was doing an investigation into the Special Committee’s activities.”

  I keep walking. I show no surprise. “Where’d you get that, Miss Lefebre?”

  “Marie.”

  When I stop, she stops. “Where’d you get that, Marie?”

  She waves a hand loosely. She gives me a phrase in French.

  “If you’re trying to get some half-baked story confirmed,” I warn her, “try someone else.”

  “It is already confirmed.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “You do not believe me?”

  I turn away, intent on extracting myself from this conversation. Then her next remark slams through me like a thousand volts.

  “Now I need only the full information on the fraud,” she says.

  She nods good-bye and walks right on past me, going through the door that leads up to the press box in the Security Council chamber side wall. And I stand flatfooted a second. This I really and truly do not need now. If she broadcasts the story, whatever part of it she has, all hell is liable to break loose. Guys like the Tunku, with some justification, will accuse the Secretariat of conspiracy to hide the truth. They will push for the General Assembly to override the Secretariat and take control of the investigation into Toshio’s death, and if that happens, the whole thing will turn political. Any chance of actually finding out what occurred in the basement Monday night will disappear beneath a storm of paperwork, subcommittees, and bloc votes, Toshio’s death becoming just one more bargaining chip in the endless puerile games of the Assembly.