“The time I did,” I tell Juan now, “the sum total of my incarceration, it was seven hours. And I wasn’t in jail, it was a police holding cell.”
Juan smiles and asks me what happened.
“Then can we get on with this?” I ask, indicating the laptop.
He nods. He has obviously heard some embellished version of this from Rachel, so the sooner I put him straight, the better. This is one story I do not want doing the rounds in any version other than my own. I just stick to the facts. I keep it brief. Sarah and some med school friends, I tell him, had organized a march on the mayor’s office in protest of the mayor’s fervent headline-seeking support for the death penalty. At Sarah’s urging, and with a degree of naïveté that is inexplicable to anyone who has not spent years buried alone in books working toward a doctorate, I agreed to join the march against my boss’s boss. The one march I have ever attended in my entire life. When we got to the City Hall steps the TV cameras and the cops were waiting. The day was hot. The mayor would not allow a representative of the medical students to go inside and present a petition. The invective directed at the police line became unnecessarily abusive, and when one student threw a placard that struck a cop, the senior officer present took the opportunity to make a random arrest.
“You,” says Juan, grinning broadly.
“Me,” I concede.
“So you broke the law because of something you believed in. No death penalty.”
“I didn’t break the law.”
When he continues to smile, I redirect his attention to the laptop PC.
“Mostly it’s just junk,” he says, turning back to it. “Like Toshio’s not really dead, he’s been abducted by aliens and the UN’s covering it up. Seriously. These Net-heads, you gotta wonder sometimes.” Then someone calls Juan’s name. He leans back and answers “Yo” through the door. Glancing out, I see one of Juan’s colleagues from downstairs. “Roommate,” Juan tells me. He navigates his way onto the Internet site, then leaves it with me and goes out to see his friend.
The information on the Internet message board is just as Juan indicated, mostly junk; but scattered amid the junk are several items that give me pause. One of the NGOers Mike has interviewed, for example, has evidently taped the whole interview and posted a transcript here for general view. And there are several pieces speculating on reasons for Asahaki’s sudden disappearance back to Japan; these are being treated skeptically; dismissive remarks about conspiracy theorists abound.
Finally I lean back and look out. Juan and his roommate are consulting over at the Ping-Pong table out of earshot. Young men with a cause. I cannot risk them returning while I am in the UN travel files, so I fold my arms and force myself to wait.
My time in jail, I think. Seven hours’ custody and the whole course of my life was changed. When I went back to work at the D.A.’s office the next day, I was ostracized. Everyone took their lead from the deputy D.A., Randal White. An attorney of the old school, he had an atavistic adhesion to the death penalty as a cornerstone of justice. He took my unintended visit to the police holding cells as a personal affront. For a month I endured every kind of petty abuse that can be inflicted around an office. My work mysteriously disappeared. My opinion was drawn out as a target for mockery. My desk was relocated daily. In short, every childish form of retribution Randal White could dream up. And I endured all that because I believed that it could not last, that the storm would eventually pass. In the end, I did not wait to find out. I resigned the day I overheard Randal White wondering aloud to a young paralegal if it might not be amusing to wait till I went to the john, then go and spit in my coffee. A few months later I joined the UN. And Randal White is now the chief prosecuting attorney, one of the most respected lawyers in the State of New York.
Juan reappears in the doorway with his friend and introduces us. This other kid, Garth, is also twenty-something, wiry like Juan but shorter. He takes a book from Juan’s shelf and heads back downstairs. Juan wanders out into the apartment.
“Just the three of you,” I call through the open door. “You, Garth, and Rachel?”
“Yeah. I only got the kitchen and bathroom fixed up over the summer. Garth moved in sometime last month.” Crossing to another cubicle, he pushes open the door. It is the bathroom: a shower and a toilet. “It’s a big enough place,” Juan tells me, closing the door behind him. “Three’s fine.”
I turn to the PC, quickly typing in a command, then my own password.
“I heard there was a press conference,” Juan calls, his voice muffled. “Was it the usual, or did someone say something worth hearing?”
“The Tunku offered us a few words.”
“That guy.” Juan laughs. “He thinks we’re like his new best friends or something. He thinks Lighthouse has got some kind of pull with Greenpeace. He wants to block this resolution they’re pushing, anti-logging in the rain forest. He says if we help him, the Malaysian government’s gonna give us a freebie office lease in Kuala Lumpur.” He laughs again at the Tunku’s hamfisted maneuvering.
The PC screen finally changes. I am out of UN Travel now and into Accounts; here I will be able to confirm which UN department authorized Toshio’s irregular swing through Geneva and Basel. My money is on Internal Oversight. This I really should have been told. I cannot believe it has been kept from me. What stupid bureaucratic game is Dieter Rasmussen playing here? Clearly he never told Pascal. But Patrick? Thinking about it winds me up further; my fingers pound like hammers on the keys.
“If you want to get out of the system,” Juan calls, “double-click escape.”
Punching the final key, I wait, staring at the screen. Hot fury simmers in my chest. But the moment the screen comes up, my righteous, soaring anger comes crashing violently back to earth. The departmental authorization code for Toshio’s trip, the letters and numbers in the top left-hand corner, they are not the ones I expected to see. Not IO, for Internal Oversight; but LA, for Legal Affairs. And the authorizing name is not Dieter Rasmussen’s.
“Found anything?” Juan calls from the bathroom.
I stare at the screen, rocked into silence.
Then the john flushes, the bathroom door opens, and I reach out and double-click the escape key. Immediately the screen goes blank.
A moment later, Juan rejoins me. “Any use to you?” He nods at the PC.
I nod distractedly, still staring at the point on the screen where the authorizing name appeared. Shock seems to have seared the letters to my retina: S. Windrush.
21
“LISTEN UP!”MIKE CRIES OVER NOISE IN THE ROOM.“Here it is.”
He stands in front of the senior uniformed Security people, clipboard in hand, and talks them through the duty roster for the night. The General Assembly session is the worst time of year for everyone here. Delegates are never where they should be; scores of national secret services endlessly scream for reports on how their people are being protected; belligerent journalists continually breach security at the worst times and in all the worst possible places. And this evening, of course, there is another matter that Mike’s officers want to raise: What progress has been made in the investigation of the death of Toshio Hatanaka?
“Sam’s running it,” Mike answers when the inevitable question finally comes. He gestures over their heads to where he has just caught sight of me by the door. “It’s early days. What I can say is, anybody pointing a finger right now knows diddly-squat. That right, Sam?”
A few of the guards turn around, so I nod as firmly as I can.
But the tired eyes linger; there is an air of weary resignation here. Bitter experience has taught these people not to put much faith in the half-truths that trickle down to them from the upper floors of the Secretariat. What they know for a fact is that the senior Secretariat bureaucrats and the delegates generally treat them like bellhops, not security professionals, and now that these same high-handed pols are pointing the finger at them as responsible for Toshio’s death, their understandable response i
s an aggrieved closing of ranks.
“Bullshit,” someone mutters.
I pretend not to have heard, but Mike glowers darkly. He consults his clipboard again.
“Anybody hears anything, anything at all might give us a lead on Hatanaka, I wanna hear it. Not tomorrow. Not when-I-get-a-minute.” He levels his pen at them. “You know, I know.”
“Glad someone does,” comes a lone voice. Grim laughter ripples through the room; even Mike manages a tight smile. When he dismisses them, they go filing out the door like a team of NBA rejects about to meet the Lakers.
“Not good?” I say when they’re gone.
Mike comes over to the door. “Morale gets any lower, they’ll be sending someone to the frigging ILO.” The International Labor Organization. I take this as a joke at first, but Mike isn’t smiling. “Some young idiots are actually talking about a strike,” he says.
“How were the Kwoks?”
“Oh, yeah.” Mike nods as we go down the hall. “They sent you a present.”
“A present.”
“Yeah.”
“What kind?”
“Just a second,” he says, turning in to the Surveillance Room.
Banks of screens line one wall, black-and-white pictures from security cameras positioned within the UN buildings and grounds. Two guards are monitoring the monitors, the remains of a family-sized pizza sitting on the desk between them. Beside the pizza lie several empty foam cups; there are candy wrappers on the floor by the trash can. Mike leans on the console, one eye on the monitors, and receives the senior guard’s impromptu report: The General Assembly broke up early, the guard thinks the Assembly president looked badly hungover; the Third and Sixth Committees are still sitting, word from the door guards is they’re expecting a ten P.M. finish; the grounds and the Secretariat building are quiet, as they should be, and the dwindling band of Free Tibet protesters across First Avenue has stopped beating the peace drum. Another day winding down.
Mike spends a few moments just shooting the breeze then, making sure these guys feel like they’re part of the team. Appreciated. There isn’t one window in this room; a ten-hour shift here, five days a week, cannot be anybody’s idea of a good time. As Mike pushes off the console to leave, the guard says, “And Weyland had visitors.”
Mike stops.
The guard flicks a switch and points to a monitor. The scene that appears is pre-taped; the time flashing in the bottom right-hand corner is from two hours ago.
Weyland, down in the cafeteria, is approached by two men in suits. He stands, barring their way to the kitchen and the coolroom where Toshio’s body lies. Neither of the two visitors looks pleased. One of them is the Tunku. The other one, Patrick O’Conner. After a brief exchange, Patrick and the Tunku retreat.
The guard flips a switch, the tape freeze-frames.
“Just those two,” the guard tells Mike. “We radioed down to Weyland. He said it wasn’t a problem.” He points to another monitor, the cafeteria again, real time. Weyland sits alone, reading a magazine.
Mike chucks the guard’s shoulder, makes some ribald remark, then under the cover of the guard’s laughter he leads me out to the hall.
“Patrick mention to you he wanted another look at the body?” Mike asks, his brow furrowing as we go down the hall to his office.
I shake my head.
“The Tunku?” he says.
The Tunku, I tell him, hardly needs my approval if he has a direct line open to Patrick. Besides, as chairman of the UNHQ Committee, the Tunku can roam pretty much where he likes. Mike sucks on his teeth. He asks me again about Patrick’s reaction when I mentioned the bugs in Toshio’s apartment. And I give him the same answer. Extreme anger.
“This is Patrick,” I remind Mike. “He can’t help sticking his nose in. If he’s not doing something himself, it’s not being done right.”
“Well, he’s sticking his nose in too damn far. Now I’m hearing he’s been interviewing some of those NGO bozos we had in, like he’s checking up on what I’m doing. He’s screwing around. I don’t like it, I’m telling you.”
He goes in to his office. I go in after him and close the door.
“Toshio didn’t have any business in Geneva,” I say. “He just went through Geneva on his way to Basel.”
Mike stops, one hand on his desk, and looks back at me. “Basel?”
I use his PC to log on to the Secretariat system. Then I take him through the Travel and Accounts files, pointing out everything that Juan showed me. Mike receives all this in silence.
“LA,” I tell him finally, clicking onto the authorization. “Legal Affairs. We authorized Toshio’s trip.”
Mike lays a finger on the screen: S. Windrush.
“You.”
“No, Mike, not me.” I explain the different access levels in the Legal Affairs software, the electronic hierarchy. “And I didn’t put my name in there, so that leaves Patrick.”
“He knew Toshio went to Basel?”
“More than that. Patrick authorized the goddamned trip.”
Mike looks at me. We have discussed Toshio’s supposed journey to Geneva at least twice in Patrick’s presence. And Patrick never said one single word about Basel.
“So what’s in Basel?” Mike asks me.
I have no idea. Every UN agency in Switzerland that I am aware of is based in Geneva.
Mike ponders a moment. “Patrick got any reason he might wanna screw you?”
“I don’t know about screwing me. But he’s desperate for me to issue a clean bill of health on Asahaki. Clear him of any suspicion of involvement in the fraud.”
“Which clears him of any suspicion in the murder.”
“That’s Patrick’s take on it.” I remind Mike of my summons to the Security Council side chamber this morning. “That’s what they all want. The whole perm five. Asahaki back here lobbying for the Japanese seat. But Patrick especially. He needs that Yes vote to save his ass up on thirty-eight.”
“And you told Patrick to go jump.”
“I told him that if Asahaki comes back, I’d question the man.”
Mike studies the PC screen. S. Windrush.
“Patrick’s telling Eckhardt you’re letting personal stuff screw up your judgment.” Eckhardt, Mike’s boss. “Personal stuff, meaning that girlfriend of yours.”
Jennifer. Sighing, I squeeze the bridge of my nose. Patrick, it seems, remains determined to apply pressure on me from every angle possible. I ask Mike what Eckhardt said to Patrick in reply.
“Eckhardt said he’d tell me. So he told me.” Mike shrugs. “Bunch of crap. I wasn’t even gonna mention it.”
He wasn’t going to, but now he has.
“I’ve kept everything with Jennifer strictly on the level, Mike.”
He studies my name on the screen. The authorization. Finally he pushes back from his desk and beckons me into the small side room off his office, where pieces of outdated security equipment are piled untidily on leaning shelves. Walkie-talkies the size of bricks. Ear-phones the size of saucers. The only modern equipment is the video recorder and the TV, and Mike pulls up a chair in front of them.
“We got something from the Kwoks,” he says. “Don’t ask me what, but it’s something.”
“Do you think Patrick’s trying to screw me?”
“One thing at a time, okay? What big palooka was it dragged me down Chinatown anyway?” He pushes a tape into the VCR. “Here’s the story. When you left me, I went back there. Had coffee in a place next to the dry goods shop, thinking it over. While I’m sitting there, I saw maybe five old fellas come and go from the Jade Moon Theater. Not staying long, coupla minutes, then out. They go in with nothing, come out with a bag full of Christ knows what. Spot the clue. Next old guy comes along, he’s about eighty, when he comes out, I follow him.”
I raise a brow. I ask Mike if I really want to hear the rest.
“He volunteered an item from his bag.” Mike points to the VCR. “This tape.”
When he hi
ts the button the screen flickers.
Orchestral music rises, and there’s a shot of footlights and a red-curtained stage. As the music crescendos, the title comes up: Dance the Dance. Beneath this, Chinese subtitles. Then the red curtain rises. Mike grunts in disgust; my own instinct, I admit, is to laugh out loud. There are six men onstage, three jock types, big and beefy, and three others as slender as reeds. It is some kind of ballet, the three big guys dressed as men, the other three as women, but not one of them is wearing a stitch from the waist down. The effect as they pirouette and leap around the stage is bizarrely comical; they appear to be taking themselves absolutely seriously, as if they really can dance, which they patently cannot.
“What’s this got to do with Po Lin?”
“Watch.”
A few moments later the dancers are shuffling together, forming a boy-girl-boy line center stage. Each “girl” bends and takes hold of the buttocks of the “boy” in front. Behind each “girl” a “boy” moves into position. The orchestra plays on. We get close-ups now of several well-oiled pink erections.
“Okay, I get the picture.”
“It gets better,” Mike says.
I press the button and the screen goes blank. “Po Lin was investing the stolen money in the gay porn industry?”
Mike flips out the tape and we wander back to his office. “When I found out what kinda stuff old Theater Kwok was selling, I went back to see him. We had a talk. Once he got it through his thick head I wasn’t there to put him outta business but I could if I wanted to, he talked a little. He wouldn’t tell me anything about the business, his investors, where he gets the porn, like that. But he says he never heard of any Wang Po Lin.”
“You bought that?”
Mike flips open his wallet and hands me the mug shot of Po Lin from our Security files. “This guy,” Mike says, tapping the mug shot, “this guy is someone Kwok knows.”
Diplomatic Immunity Page 20
