Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  Jennifer Dale is mad at me. It isn’t just that the marine guard from the lobby has brought me upstairs, clearly under orders; there are other signs too. Like the look I get now from Jennifer’s young personal assistant as he walks me to her office. He opens the door and announces me, then quickly retreats.

  “You have a report for me?” Jennifer asks tightly as I enter. She carries on editing the page on her desk, her ire permeating the air around her.

  “Verbal,” I offer, closing the door at my back.

  “Fine.” She moves on to the next page in the stack. “Written copy by eight tonight.”

  “Jennifer.”

  “If it’s an excuse, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Hey,” I say softly. When she finally raises her eyes from her work, I make the sign with my hands: time-out.

  She considers me a moment, then takes off her reading glasses, stylish lozenge-shaped steel frames, and eases her head back. With one hand she massages her neck. “What am I meant to do, Sam? Wag my tail?”

  Leaning onto her forearms, she studies her glasses contemplatively. I know how she feels. Since last night at the Waldorf we seem to have been traveling a steadily downward slope, an uncomfortable journey that neither of us wanted and which is apparently not over yet. The interplay of our professional lives has turned serious, the playful frisson of the past few months sliding into real friction. I direct my gaze to the State Department eagle on the wall; the pair of crossed U.S. flags, banners half unfurled.

  “The ambassador doesn’t believe you’re cooperating with us fully,” she says. “And I agree with him.”

  “We’re doing our best to be cooperative within the bounds of our own responsibilities.”

  She pulls a face: bullshit.

  Bending forward, I press a finger down on her desk. “When we needed to cross into U.S. territory, I called you, Jennifer.”

  “I’m not an answering service. You don’t just dump your message on me, then go off and do what you like. That’s not how this was meant to work.”

  An unguarded remark, not like Jennifer. Which suggests that the numbers for tomorrow’s vote might not be looking too good, that Bruckner is not too happy. She glances from her desk to the door, trying to focus on something other than me.

  “No?” I say. “So how was it meant to work? You keep tabs on what we’re doing, then interfere when we look like we’re screwing up Bruckner’s plans?”

  “I don’t have the time,” she mutters. She puts on her glasses, pulls a blank sheet onto her blotter, then uncaps a pen. “The ambassador wants to know what you’ve been up to. And I need to know how often you intend to flit in and out of U.S. jurisdiction.”

  “I’ve just had Toshio’s sister up in my office.”

  “Mmm?”

  “Your friends at the Japanese consulate sent her over. A grieving woman. Just to hurry up the release of Toshio’s body.”

  “Did it work?”

  “No.”

  “Pity,” she says.

  She is even madder than I thought. But I am not exactly overjoyed with how this is going either, so I forgo any attempt at explanation. I simply take Pascal Nyeri’s letter from my briefcase and hand it to her as I make my request.

  “We need access to the financial records of these companies.” The companies from Marie Lefebre’s list.

  Curious now, Jennifer reads the letter, then glances up. “Is this anything to do with the dirt Hatanaka was throwing at Ambassador Asahaki?”

  “Is our request for assistance granted or denied?”

  “It’s under consideration,” she decides, finishing the letter. She chews it over a second, then jots a note to herself. “Maybe when you’re a little more forthcoming as to why you need the information, I’ll reach a decision. Now, what were you doing in Chinatown?”

  “Secretariat business.”

  “Not funny.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  She swears beneath her breath.

  “Are you mad at me personally, Jennifer? Or just at the job I’m doing?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “You seemed to think so last night.”

  “Don’t give me that.” Rising suddenly, she shoves back her chair and snatches her purse from the desk. “I’ve been waiting for you nearly two hours. Ten minutes ago I got a call from Stephen saying he couldn’t pick up Ben like he’s arranged. So here I am, the vote tomorrow, Bruckner going crazy, and I have to go explain to Ben why his father’s not taking him to the movies like he promised. Believe me, Sam. Between you and Stephen, the man thing is not big with me right now.” Moving toward the door, she adds, “And you better reconsider how cooperative you’re being, or this arrangement is terminated. I’ll redirect you to the Headquarters Committee.”

  I step back and lean against the door. “I want this to be over as much as you do. But when it’s over, I’d like to be able to say I didn’t regret anything I’d done. And that means not compromising myself. Not for anyone.”

  “You want to keep it professional,” she says.

  When I nod, she comes and stands right in front of me. She puts her face up close. “So when was the last time you felt you had the right to hold the USUN legal counsel confined against her will in her own damn office?”

  “Listen—”

  “Get out of my way.”

  “Jennifer.”

  “Get out of my goddamn way.” Grabbing the door handle, she tugs sharply; the door strikes my back and I shuffle aside awkwardly as she pushes out past me. She gives Pascal’s letter to her PA along with some instructions. Then she pivots, stalking past me to the elevators. We ride down together, the silence between us as solid as ice. On the ground floor the receptionist buzzes us through the reinforced plate-glass door to the lobby, where the U.S. marine guard comes to attention and salutes us out into the street. Still not a word.

  “Pax,” I say as we hit the sidewalk. “So I was out of line. I didn’t mean to do that, I was angry.”

  “You guys are on notice,” she says, turning on me fiercely. “The Secretariat gets its act together now, or we’re not going to even try to hold the line against Congress. If Capitol Hill wants to withhold this year’s UN dues, that’s fine by us. State won’t lift a finger to stop them. If O’Conner wants to play games, see how he likes this one.”

  “No one’s playing games here.”

  “Last warning, Sam.” She peels away to the left, repeating over her shoulder, “Last warning.”

  Stunned by the threat, I watch her retreating back. The U.S. is responsible for one-quarter of the UN’s annual budget. And Jennifer, if I understand her correctly, is saying that the State Department, which has always fought in the UN’s corner on this vital matter, will now let Congress do what it is always threatening to do and block the necessary appropriation. When he hears this, Patrick is going to flip. And not just Patrick, the entire thirty-eighth floor will come down on me like a ton of bricks. Jennifer turns in to East Forty-fifth; I set off after her, my briefcase slapping against my leg.

  She has disappeared inside the building before I can catch her. I stop, in two minds now about whether to follow her in. By the entrance there is a sandbox, red and yellow plastic toys lying scattered in the sand. Monkey bars. On the glass wall the gold lettering says INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL KINDERGARTEN. And inside I can see a dozen or more kids sitting cross-legged on cushions arranged in a circle, clapping in time with their teacher. The smaller kids don’t seem to have the hang of it; they just clap and watch the others in a vaguely puzzled kind of way. Asians. Africans. Europeans. It looks like one of those cornball posters the PR people scattered all over the Secretariat building during the UN Year of the Child.

  Then Jennifer appears amid the circle of children. Still showing the strain of our encounter, she directs a smile at the teacher that is small and tight. Then she crouches, opens her arms, and a kid gets up off his cushion and rushes her. Ben, her son. He flops into her arms, laughing, and
her expression is instantly transformed; she is momentarily radiant. All her worries—me, Bruckner, the vote—sloughed off in the sudden escape she feels at this touch from her boy. But only for a moment. Then she frowns, her brow creasing again as she takes Ben aside to talk. No Stephen. No promised trip to the movies.

  Right then the teacher notices me looking in from the street. She rises, giving me a very direct look: I am not a father she recognizes. Before she can come out and confront me, or worse, ask Jennifer if I have anything to do with Ben, I turn on my heel and walk. But down at the corner on First, I pause and glance across to the USUN steps where Jennifer rounded on me. In some bafflement now, I recall what she said: If O’Conner wants to play games. A bureaucrat of international justice, I stand here bemused. Then I look back over my shoulder.

  What in hell did she mean, “Last warning”?

  20

  “SMOKY, SMOKY, SMOKY,”WHISPERS SOME DREADLOCKED WEIRDO OUT side the local bodega. When he opens his palm to display his ready-rolled wares, I walk right on by to the No Name bar across the street. The bar is closed; a metal roll-up door covered in hellish Technicolor graffiti has been pulled down to shield the front door and window. The roll-up door is secured with a heavy padlock to a piece of iron embedded in the sidewalk. But the door beneath the Lighthouse sign a few yards down is wide open, the sweet, cloying odor of burning incense drifting out invisibly. An unexpected memory surges. Me with Sarah, naked, entwined on a pile of beanbags. A Bowie record on the player.

  “Hi,” says Juan Martinez when I enter.

  The others gathered around his desk, all about Juan’s age, turn and look me over. Middle-aged, in a suit. The enemy.

  “Hi,” I say, feeling like one of those college lecturers we used to laugh at, the guys who thought smoking dope with students somehow kept them hip. “You’ve got something for me?”

  “It’s upstairs.” Juan directs a thumb to the ceiling, then gestures to his young colleagues. “You mind if I just finish this?”

  I shoot him a look: Make it quick. While they conclude their discussion, some dispute about which member of the UN’s Third Committee, Human Rights, is likely to give them a hearing tonight, I take a slow turn around the open-plan office. Half a dozen desks, PCs, filing cabinets, and a coffee machine at the back. Plastered over the walls are the inevitable posters from a hundred NGO causes. From a recent Lighthouse campaign, black-and-white shots of dark alleys and empty syringes, tables of statistics, charts that show the increase in numbers of heroin addicts in various countries. These, depressingly, look like a great bull-run on the Dow. A corkboard alongside is covered with Polaroids that have been pinned up in anarchic profusion. Kids. Kids partying. Juan, recognizable in his white linen suit, is in many of the shots. In one he’s been caught in close-up, staring at a can of Bud, clearly bombed out of his mind. In another, two lily-white butts protrude from the windows of an old Chevy, a mooning that appears to have taken place outside the No Name bar. Next to the Chevy three girls have been caught, hands raised, soaking wet and dancing, the dark shading of their nipples visible through their clinging white T-shirts. Kids, I think. But then, something about that girl on the left. I lean closer, squinting. Rachel?

  “Let’s go,” says Juan, coming over. Mistaking my expression, he touches some Lighthouse poster as he goes by. “That’s not the worst of it either. Sad.”

  Upstairs, my daughter’s new home is laid out open-plan like the office below. But here there is a kitchenette at one end, a dining table with a Ping-Pong net slung across its center, and a couple of sofas that appear to have lost their legs. At each of the four corners of the place, cubicles have been partitioned off with plywood, the ply graffiti’d in the same hellish style as the roll-up door outside the No Name bar. From the ceiling a giant wagon wheel hangs parallel with the floor, four bare lightbulbs dangling from it like mutant jellyfish tendrils. Juan leads me in, apologizing for the evident disorder. It occurs to me now that Rachel might not welcome this unannounced visit.

  “Rachel in?”

  “Got called back to work,” Juan tells me. “All the guides, everyone down in Public Information, they’re back there answering more questions.”

  “I thought she did that with you this morning.”

  “That was about the NGO bash. Now they’re talking to anyone working down at basement level. The bookshop, the cafeteria, all that. Down there’s where they found the body, yeah?”

  I nod, preparing to turn any further questions aside. But Juan doesn’t pursue the line.

  “Hey, you wanna see her room?” Shoving open the door to one of the corner cubicles, he wanders straight in. “She’s made it real nice.”

  Curiosity defeats me, I put my head in. A mess. Just like her room at home. The closet door stands ajar, and the bed, piled with clothes, is unmade. Juan draws my attention to the abstract design on the walls. Stripes and circles.

  “She did that last week. Took her only a couple of hours.”

  Looks like it, I think, but I keep the thought to myself.

  Withdrawing my head, I ask, “So what have you got to show me?”

  “In here.” Juan wanders out by me and into another corner cubicle. This one must be Juan’s room; there’s a guitar case on the bed and a picture of his parents on the dresser. His father, José, I met when I put Sarah on the plane to the camp in Abatan. And I met Juan’s mother a few months later at the memorial concert that Juan put together. Rachel tells me that Mrs. Martinez has hit the bottle in a big way since then, in and out of clinics all the time. But in the picture on the dresser she looks a lot like her son. Young and full of life. “It’ll take me a minute to get it on-screen,” Juan says, switching on his PC. He pushes his guitar case along the bed, inviting me to sit down. “So what have you guys found?” he asks, tapping at the keyboard. “Any luck with that hypocrite whatshername, Yomoto?”

  Smiling at the artless inquiry, I explain that our investigation is a confidential matter, not an item for public debate.

  “You got a debate anyway,” Juan says simply.

  I look at him.

  “Internet,” he tells me. “It’s on all the NGO message boards, everyone’s putting up any information they’ve got. Theories on what happened to Mr. Hatanaka. Comparing notes, like.” At this piece of news, I groan. Juan finishes working the keyboard. “I’ll show you after this,” he says, swiveling the PC screen to face me. “Here.”

  I lean forward from the bed. And when I understand what I’m looking at, I raise my brow.

  “You see where he went last week?” says Juan.

  “I see you’ve just broken the law.” He has hacked into the Secretariat computer system. The travel files. “Where’d you get the password?”

  “Everybody’s got it.” He waves a hand breezily. Ignoring my stern look of disapproval, he points to the screen. We are looking at the Secretariat travel billings for last week. I could have checked here myself, but after Mike confirmed with Swissair that Toshio actually used his ticket both ways, I didn’t bother. It seemed like there was nothing more to learn.

  “He went to Geneva last week,” says Juan.

  “That’s not news.”

  “It was news to me. He told me he was going to California.”

  I miss a beat. “San Diego?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A sick relative?”

  Juan regards me curiously. “He lied to you too?”

  I shrug the question off. Unlike Pascal Nyeri or Juan, I was not seeing enough of Toshio lately to need an explanation for those few days’ absence. But this reconfirmation of Toshio’s deliberate deceit is nonetheless troubling. I ask Juan what he makes of it.

  “Him lying? I dunno. He was always so straight with me. With everyone. I guess it doesn’t seem right somehow.” Juan pushes the mouse around; the cursor moves on the screen. “Anyway, that’s what made me check this out. I mean, what was he doing in Geneva that he had to lie about?”

  “You could have given me this o
n the phone.”

  “Yeah,” he admits, disappointed that his revelation is not quite as revelatory as he’d hoped. Then he points to the screen again. “But I wasn’t so sure about this.”

  Another flight: Geneva-Basel round trip. An unnamed passenger.

  “I tried to trace what he was doing in Geneva,” Juan tells me. “I figured visiting some UN agency. A conference or something. I kept drawing a blank, so I checked the accommodation billings. Nothing in Geneva. He didn’t stay in Geneva. Turns out he stayed overnight in Basel.”

  I make a sound. Juan is pleased.

  “That’s news, right?”

  I look at the Geneva-Basel-Geneva flight on the screen and the blank space where the name of the traveling Secretariat staffer is normally entered. Juan blithely admits that he has had the Lighthouse’s best hacker bust into the Swissair records to confirm that the trip took place. And it did. The airline records confirm that Toshio was the passenger.

  “The only time he spent in Geneva was an hour at the airport,” Juan says.

  Toshio lied to Juan and Pascal. And by leaving his name off the Basel flight billing, Toshio apparently intended to deceive anyone at the Secretariat who wanted to check on where he’d been. Why?

  “You wanna see the Internet site?” Juan offers, producing a laptop from beneath the desk and plugging it in.

  “You could be prosecuted. Hacking into the UN records. Swissair. That’s breaking the law.”

  “We just peeked. Nobody changed nothing, I swear.” When his glance slides across to me, there is the hint of a smile. “Anyway, it’s not something they’d put me in jail for.”

  I recognize the allusion immediately. And before I can move the conversation, Juan comes right out with it. “Rachel says you did some time. You know. Like when you were young.”

  “She misled you.”

  “Uh-huh,” he says.

  When I was young. In fact, I was twenty-five years old and working at my first job as an assistant in the D.A.’s office. It was years before I was able to laugh about it with Sarah and Rachel, the incident becoming a cozily familiar piece of Windrush family folklore. Rachel and her mother kidding me about my criminal proclivities, reminding me of all the time I spent in jail.