Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  Mike nudges me, pointing to the bundle in my lap, the paperwork from the library. “Let’s see.”

  I glance around. All eyes are on the SG. “Lemtov attended a UN-sponsored conference in Basel three years back,” I whisper, sliding the ribbon from my bundle and passing four folders to Mike. “Somewhere in here we should find out which one. Maybe what else he was doing there.”

  “Basel,” says Mike. “Hatanaka’s trip?”

  I tap the files. Get started, I say.

  Fifteen minutes later the SG’s speech is still going, and Mike and I are still reading. Conferences. Preconference conferences. Postconference conferences. Conferences on climate change. Conferences on aid. I have attended more than a few of these talkfests over the years, but the number and range of the events listed in these files is utterly farcical. Beside me, Mike has been alternately snorting and groaning as he turns each page. Now there is applause and we look up to see the SG stepping back from the rostrum. The applause is sustained; everyone is relieved at the unaccustomed brevity of the address.

  “Praise the Lord,” Mike mutters, stretching his back.

  Then the president of the session, the guy who will oversee the mechanics of the vote, replaces the Secretary-General at the rostrum. We are not going to be spared. Within moments the president is launched on a speech of his own.

  “Anything?” Mike whispers.

  I shake my head. “You?”

  “Unh-unh.”

  The speech continues. We drop our heads into the files again.

  Psychoanalyzing the world, that’s how Sarah described the conferences I was sometimes called upon to attend, and over time I came to accept a solid kernel of truth in the phrase. Swarms of highly paid professionals gathering in five-star comfort to discuss the suffering patient’s latest symptoms, the cause of the moment—illiteracy, AIDS, refugees—swapping good intentions before picking up their ample paychecks and flying home. Having had a front row seat at this whole circus for years, I have grown weary of the endless prognostications of disaster, the act-now-or-the-world-ends-tomorrow brigade. But what I told Sarah, and what I still believe to be true, is that not every UN-sponsored conference is the same. Looking through the file spread open in my lap, I can see amid the welter of useless gatherings the occasional shining example of an event that was certainly worthwhile. A conference, for example, to establish the remit of the International Court of Human Rights. It did not, I notice, take place in Basel.

  Registering a change in the president’s tone, I lift my head. He is winding down. He concludes with a rousing admonition to the voting delegates, and a ripple of applause runs up through the Hall. And then silence. We have arrived.

  “Sam?” Mike whispers.

  I lift a hand sharply: wait. The one moment in my career when I will actually see history being made here. My one chance to see the parliament of man rise from its usual mundane and petty squabbles to make a decision that really matters. My gaze is riveted to the huge electronic display board suspended behind the rostrum. When the one hundred and eighty-five ambassadors have finished pressing their vote buttons, that is where the result will appear. Yes, no, or abstain.

  The president reads aloud the official proposal for the amendment of the Security Council’s composition, the inclusion of Japan as a permanent member. Then he calls for the vote. A rustle like wind over leaves passes up through the Hall as the ambassadors register their votes. Years of painstaking diplomacy telescoped into moments. Halfway up the Hall, angry voices suddenly rise; one of the African delegations has apparently seen their ambassador capriciously change their nation’s intended vote. From the rostrum the president calls them to order.

  “All votes registered,” he intones grandly. Then he turns to look up at the display board. And there the numbers suddenly appear.

  Yes—72

  No—79

  Abstain—34

  The Nos have it. The Japanese do not get a permanent Security Council seat.

  There is a second of silence.

  Then somebody, a lone voice, starts to cheer. Others join in, then there is applause. Half the delegates rise, embracing one another and punching their fists in the air, their faces lit by victory. The entire U.S. delegation remains seated. They are not talking to each other or to anyone else. Bruckner is staring at the voting board as if reading the announcement of his own political demise. Jennifer has her head in her hands. And down near the front, the Japanese have risen as one and are now making for the exit after their leader, Bunzo Asahaki. Unable to endure the public loss of face, he is going to skip the official declaration.

  Then my gaze falls on Patrick. Out of my line of sight till this moment, he has appeared from the far side of the podium. His face is set like stone. He stares up at the celebrating delegations as the president announces the official result. Immediately the SG descends from the platform and walks right by Patrick without even a glance in his direction. A snub that Patrick sees. His face glows with embarrassment and anger. He is hurt, I think. Patrick O’Conner is hurting and I am glad.

  “Sam,” says Mike, tugging at my sleeve. Then he shows me the stapled pages, what he has found. “This one was in Basel,” he tells me soberly. “And that’s him, yeah?” His finger stabs down on a name. Mr. Y. Lemtov, representative of the Russian Federation.

  “That’s him,” I agree.

  “And this one?” Mike’s finger moves down the list to another name. Mr. P. O’Conner.

  My head snaps back.

  “Here’s the good part,” says Mike, flipping to the title page.

  When I see it, my mouth opens, slack-jawed. Mike makes some wise-ass crack about thinking global, acting local. Then we sit amid the tumult of the post-vote celebrations and commiserations, two lonely travelers stranded by our own private shipwreck. We both stare at what Mike has found.

  Money Laundering, says the title. The International Perspective.

  A UN-sponsored conference attended by Yuri Lemtov and Patrick O’Conner.

  “Food for thought,” Mike comments dryly.

  Before I can even begin to collect my thoughts, Patrick himself appears right in front of us. Mike flips the file closed.

  “Happy now?” Patrick asks, leaning over me, his face still rosy with anger.

  “The vote’s over,” I say, rising. I tell Patrick that I’m going up to get Rachel.

  “Not yet you’re not. You’re wanted in the side chamber.” Patrick gestures to the far exit through which Bruckner and Lady Nicola are disappearing. The French ambassador, Froissart, hurries to join them. “And when you’re done explaining yourself and your cockass investigation to them, you can come upstairs and explain yourself to me.”

  “Give Mike the word, he’ll have Weyland let Rachel go.”

  Patrick turns. “This is the word, Mike. You release the Windrush girl before this bastard comes to my office and I’ll have you fired.” With this final shot, Patrick pivots on his heel and goes.

  “Man’s full of shit,” Mike remarks quietly. “Once he’s cooled down, he’ll let her go. Probably be out before you’re even finished in the side chamber.” He bundles together the files, handing me the one on the money laundering conference in Basel. “You take this. I’ll dump the rest in the library.” Then his eyes focus on something behind me, and I turn.

  Lemtov. He is descending the steps to the main floor, deep in conversation with the wizened but irrepressible figure of the Tunku. The Tunku, the chairman of the UNHQ Committee, Turtle Bay’s number-one troublemaker and pain in the neck. They remain locked in private discussion as they veer toward the exit. Lemtov and the Tunku. Not a combination I care for, and judging by his expression, neither does Mike.

  “She’ll be out by the time you’re done,” he says, hitching files beneath his arm. Then, moving off into the stream of delegates, he tosses me a few even more improbable words of encouragement. “Give ’em hell.”

  29

  A SMOKY FOG IS BUILDING FAST WHEN I ARRIVE IN THESec
urity Council side chamber. I close the door behind me, then turn. The faces that greet me along either side of the table are grave. The perm five ambassadors again, each with one sidekick apiece. Lemtov is here. Jennifer is backup for Bruckner. Judging by the looks I am getting, this is not intended to be any kind of genial inquiry. When I nod to Lady Nicola, trusting in some human connection from that quarter at least, I receive a distinctly flinty stare. She gestures to the empty seat at the end of the table.

  “When you’re ready, Mr. Windrush.”

  Oh, Lord, I think. The air seems to thicken, as if the collective anger gathered in the room has found its true focus. I draw up the chair and brace myself. My role here is now clear to me. I am the whipping boy.

  “Are you going to tell us,” asks Froissart, gesturing with his cigarette, the smoke swirling upward, “that Ambassador Asahaki murdered Special Envoy Hatanaka?”

  “I don’t know that,” I reply.

  He moans. Cheap theatrics.

  “It might help,” I tell him evenly, “if Ambassador Asahaki could find the time to come and see me now that he’s returned.”

  “Your investigation has been incompetent.”

  “I don’t accept your judgment.”

  “I am not alone, Monsieur Windrush.” Froissart casts a glance around the table. No one disagrees. Then he slides into French, making general remarks on my ineptitude, and I feel my temperature start to rise. When he utters the word imbécile, it soars.

  “What?” I rock forward in my chair, unable to contain myself.

  Lady Nicola intervenes. “The Council has a number of questions to put to you. Ample opportunity will be given for you to explain yourself, I do assure you.”

  Alone of the faces at the table, Jennifer keeps her gaze averted. Her forehead rests in one hand as she doodles in her notepad.

  Walk out, I think. Walk out, go and get Rachel, then leave. Here I am in the Security Council side chamber, international diplomacy’s holy of holies, a place in the service of which I have spent the better part of my career, and it is not respect I feel but something more like disgust. Lemtov I would not trust with a nickel. Chou En represents a regime that has probably had one of his own closest colleagues summarily executed. Bruckner is here at the UN solely because it might launch him as a serious gubernatorial contender, and Froissart has the usual Gallic chip on his shoulder about his country’s steadily declining role in global affairs. To top it all, Lady Nicola has sensed the mood and seems content to preside over whatever drubbing the others wish to inflict upon me.

  Rise, I think. Depart this Kafkaesque temple.

  But, of course, I do not. Because I know that if I get up now and leave, that would finish the investigation; without my involvement, all support for a proper inquiry into Toshio’s death would wither. The truth would never be uncovered. Most of them would be only too pleased to let Patrick draw a line under the whole mess with a verdict of suicide; at least one of them, I think, would be hugely relieved. But I do not intend to let Patrick do that. Forced back on the hard core of myself, the bedrock of my being, I find that Patrick was right all along: My essential self really has just stepped off the Mayflower. Like the Founding Fathers, I remain, in spite of every kind of assault on my faith, a believer, a seeker after that new world where truth and justice will finally prevail. A place where eighteen-year-old girls are not used as hostages, where the murder of a good man is not just an inconvenient political fact but an act of sacrilege fit to make the heavens weep. I want what I wanted when I first came to Turtle Bay: the dream of the sages, a fair and just world. And I see now what I guess Toshio always knew, that the path leading through the Security Council side chamber simply will not get us there.

  That is why I do not rise and leave. Why I fold my arms and remain silent while Chou En, the Chinese ambassador, picks up where Froissart left off, venting his spleen.

  After a few minutes of battering from the Sino-French tag team, with the occasional intervention from the Brits in the guise of Lady Nicola, Lemtov leans his bulk forward. With his superior command of the English language, he has evidently been delegated by his ambassador to deliver the kicking I am to receive from Mother Russia. Lemtov rests both forearms on the table.

  “Is it true you have been investigating Wang Po Lin?”

  “Among others.”

  “And you have found?”

  “It’s been inconclusive,” I say, surprised at this turn.

  Chou En cocks his head, not sure that he likes this either. But Lemtov gives him no chance to interrupt.

  “Is it true there is evidence Po Lin was defrauding the United Nations?”

  An earthquake hits. The heavy pine table jolts sideways as Chou En lurches to his feet, pointing across the table at Lemtov and denouncing him in ripely abusive English. Untroubled, Lemtov glances at me and lifts a brow: It is just as he told me. Po Lin has definitely gone to the wall. When Lady Nicola finally convinces Chou En to sit down, she attempts to placate the man by offering him another free shot at me. He waves the offer aside and sits there brooding. So Lady Nicola turns to Bruckner.

  “Mr. Ambassador?”

  Bruckner touches Jennifer’s arm and nods in my direction. She lifts her eyes from her pad, pursing her lips.

  No, I think. Please, no.

  She does hesitate, I must give her that. Jennifer Dale hesitates. But only a second, then she straightens the papers in front of her, steels herself, and faces me. All my internal organs seem to clench. I have a sudden memory of Myra Barclay, a student at Columbia who was playing state’s witness when Professor Cranbourne invited Jennifer to do the cross. Myra ended the session in tears and dropped out of law the next week. Cranbourne gave Jennifer a distinction.

  “Mr. Windrush,” Jennifer starts right in, “we’re not satisfied your investigation has been pressed with proper vigor or with due consideration to the circumstances. Would you like to comment on that?”

  “No.”

  “You saw the vote?”

  “Yes.”

  “No comment at all?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you think the Secretariat owes the Japanese delegation an apology?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Ap-ol-o-gy,” she mouths slowly, a touch of heavy-handed sarcasm appreciated by Froissart, who smiles.

  Setting my jaw tightly, I ask Jennifer, “Apology for what?”

  “You’re not a fool, Mr. Windrush.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder.”

  Jennifer’s eyes flicker down, the only sign she recognizes my remark as personal. No one else seems to notice.

  “Unsubstantiated allegations were made by you people against Ambassador Asahaki,” she continues. “Serious allegations. And you refused him proper right of reply.”

  “That’s not true. I invited the ambassador to answer some questions. His reply was to get on the next plane out to Tokyo. That was his choice, not mine.”

  “You believe that he was treated fairly?”

  “Under the circumstances.”

  “No regrets?”

  “I regret that he chose to leave, if that’s what you mean.”

  She fixes me with a look. “It wasn’t.”

  Hard and pushy. Never give a sucker an even break. Her inquisitorial method has not changed since college days, a realization that brings a brief, baleful smile to my face.

  “The situation amuses you, Mr. Windrush?”

  At this cheap shot, our eyes lock. At last she glances down at her papers.

  “You haven’t established any connection whatsoever between Hatanaka’s death and this fraud you’re alleging Ambassador Asahaki perpetrated, have you?”

  “Alleging,” I interrupt, “on the basis of sound material proof.”

  “Which the Security Council hasn’t seen.”

  “The Security Council isn’t a court of law.” I turn to the other faces at the table, aware that I am dealing with very large and touchy egos here. Aware that some measure of de
ference has to be paid. “Look, I’m not claiming we’ve been perfect, but considering the situation we were placed in, we haven’t done too badly. My job, the way I see it, is to find Hatanaka’s murderer. It isn’t my job to keep the entire General Assembly happy. Find Toshio’s murderer—that’s my job. That’s what I’m trying to do. And I’m doing it the best I can, and I don’t think I should have to apologize for that.”

  The expressions around the table remain grim. After the debacle of the vote, no one here is in any kind of mood for a reasoned debate.

  “So you’re unrepentant,” Jennifer presses.

  I tell her, in carefully measured tones, that I don’t believe I have anything to be repentant about.

  “As usual, the Secretariat can do no wrong?”

  “As usual, Ms. Dale, the Secretariat has an extremely difficult task to carry out with extremely limited resources at its disposal.”

  She looks at me as if she is sighting me down a gun barrel. “If you’re not up to the job, maybe you should consider stepping aside.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say.

  “You don’t?”

  “No, I don’t.” Then I ask her—and by implication everyone else at the table—if she has forgotten Article 100 of the UN Charter. “Or don’t you think that applies here? You think you have some special immunity?”