Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  “Mr. Windrush—”

  I speak right over her, quoting from memory. “‘Each member of the United Nations undertakes to respect the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Secretary-General and the staff and not seek to influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities.’ Each member,” I repeat. “And last time I looked, the U.S.A. was still a member. Despite not paying this year’s dues.”

  A low blow that makes Bruckner wince. The Russian ambassador smiles into his notes, but Lady Nicola immediately zeroes in on the quote.

  “You’re not suggesting that the Security Council has acted improperly.”

  Exactly what I am doing, of course. Contrary to their Charter obligations, they are attempting to lean on me. But I have been a Turtle Bay bureaucrat long enough to recognize a line being drawn in the sand.

  “I’m not suggesting that at all. I was just pointing out that this whole thing hasn’t been easy. It’s been extremely difficult. Difficult for everyone.”

  Partially appeased, Lady Nicola nods as if I have made a concession. But Jennifer just shuffles her papers. I cannot be the only one who hears her mutter “Crap.”

  Then Jennifer lifts her head. “You’re so interested in Article 100, Mr. Windrush, do you happen to recall the first paragraph?” Before I can respond, she reads it aloud from her notepad. “‘In the performance of their duties the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or any other authority external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any action which might reflect on their position as international officials responsible only to the Organization.’”

  “I’m familiar with it,” I say, thinking: She had that prepared, where is this going now?

  “Really. You surprise me.”

  But Article 100 is drummed into everyone in the Secretariat, a big thou-shalt-not of our world. The surprise would be if I didn’t know it, and I say so.

  “What surprised me was your cheek,” she says.

  Bruckner dips his head in agreement; he seems pleased with how his protégée is sticking it to me. I am stung, naturally, but more than that, bewildered. Cheek?

  “You’re familiar with it,” says Jennifer. “Presumably you understand what it means. Yet you sit there—your investigation, frankly, a shambles, the necessary reform of this Council comprehensively wrecked—and you have the cheek to quote Article 100 at us? After the investigation you’ve led? I’m surprised you’re willing to own up to even a passing acquaintance with that particular paragraph of the Charter, Mr. Windrush.”

  Her look now is direct and accusatory. My gut suddenly contracts, my pulse races. Because at last I have gotten the unspoken message. She is telling me that my position has been compromised, and she is right, it has. By Patrick O’Conner. By the pressure he has applied on me through Rachel’s detention. But isn’t what Patrick wanted—Asahaki’s return—what she wanted too? And how in the world does she know what’s been going on between me and Patrick?

  “Can you honestly say the Secretariat has handled this investigation impartially?” she asks me.

  “Yes.” As if I could say anything else.

  “Full and fair use has been made of all the information that came into your hands?”

  “Yes.”

  “No base left untouched?”

  “I don’t see what you’re driving at.”

  “Then let me enlighten you.” She clasps her hands together on the table. All eyes are turned to her now; the persistence and aggression of Jennifer’s attack on me seems to have surprised everyone except Bruckner. They summoned me here to vent their spleen, to kick the dog, but Jennifer has upped the ante. If I did not know better, I would say that she is gunning for my career. “Have you omitted,” she asks me, “a proper investigation of any suspect in your inquiry because you thought such a proper investigation might be impolitic?”

  The air seems solid. My mouth, for a moment, refuses to open. Without naming names, she has found a way to ask me if I have soft-pedaled a part of my inquiry. And I have, the part that led to Patrick. Confronted by my boss, she is accusing me of acting contrary to the spirit of the Charter, she is saying that I intentionally stepped off the gas.

  “I beg your pardon?” she says, touching her ear.

  God is my witness, I have never hit a woman. Sometimes I argued with Sarah but nothing more than the occasional spats of a marriage, disagreements passing as suddenly as they flared. With Rachel my arguments these past few years have often been loud, but the real heat on these occasions has always been directed at me. But what I am feeling at this moment is something way different. I am not just angry. The blood sings in my ears, my eyes close. My daughter is a hostage. And this woman I made love to less than forty-eight hours ago is turning me on a spit, roasting me in front of this select audience for the crime of not opening fire on the man who has my daughter in his power. I see it there in my head: I hit Jennifer Dale hard.

  “No,” I say, finally opening my eyes.

  “You mean,” she says, placing her own lawyerly spin on my answer, “that you omitted a proper investigation of a suspect for some other reason?”

  “I mean that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, one of us doesn’t.”

  Her crack elicits a snort of assent from somewhere along the table. I feel, at this moment, about two inches tall.

  I am saved by a rap at the door. Alfonso Hernandez, the Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs, the SG’s new best friend since Patrick’s fall from grace, puts his head in and informs the perm five that the SG has invited them up to thirty-eight for drinks and an informal postmortem on the vote. The SG, he says, can receive them whenever they’re ready. When Lady Nicola thanks him, Alfonso glances at me: Patrick’s number two in strife with the Council. The prick shoots me a smile, then withdraws.

  “You’re excused, Mr. Windrush,” Lady Nicola tells me, rising. “But I trust we’ve been able to impress upon you the seriousness with which your investigation continues to be followed by the Council. Should we feel the need to call you in again, be assured we will.”

  She does not wait for a reply. There is a shuffling of chairs, everyone rising to their feet. Notepads are gathered up. Jackets buttoned as the ambassadors turn to consult their colleagues. I am painfully aware that I have been dismissed like some recalcitrant child. Jennifer studies an empty page in her pad; she doesn’t even raise her eyes as I slip quietly from my chair and out the door.

  Blank. My mind is blank as I stride from the side chamber, propelled solely by the urge to get as far away as possible from the place. Then the blankness is pierced by a single point of red light that explodes, and I see a thousand points of red light dancing before my eyes. How could she do that to me? And why? Just to keep Bruckner happy? Or was she trying to prove her mettle to me, to demonstrate that any personal connection between us will never stand in the way of her job? Before I know it I have blundered out into the glare of TV lights. A solid press of journalists sways forward, a jostling wall of microphones, voices calling for the perm five’s first public response to the vote. Questions shouted at me before they realize that I am, in fact, nobody. Turning on my heel, I head back the way I came. And rounding the next corner, I walk straight into Jennifer. She is waiting for Bruckner, who is farther back along the hall, having a quiet word with Lady Nicola, getting the spin worked out before they meet the press. I step past Jennifer, then turn and step back.

  “Thanks,” I tell her through clenched teeth.

  She makes a face. “You’re not the only one with a job to do, Sam.”

  “You humiliated me. What was that for, your job?”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “And you know what? You enjoyed it.”

  “Jesus Christ,” she murmurs, glancing back over her shoulder to Bruckner and Lady Nicola.

  “All that ‘you surprise me’ bullshit, don’t tell me Bruckner primed you with that.
That was you, Jennifer. Up there tap-dancing on my reputation. On me, for chrissake.”

  She faces me squarely. “You’ve been chasing your tail around New York for two days, Sam. Chasing your tail, wasting time, while the support for Japan has just crumbled. You saw the vote. Am I meant to be pleased?”

  “You can’t blame me for that.”

  “I can,” she says. “And I do.”

  I look down at the seaweed-green carpet. I chew my lip. “So. None of this is personal.”

  “You set the ground rules,” she reminds me, a reference to my little speech two nights back at the Waldorf. “It’s a bit late to be changing your mind.”

  “You used me, Jennifer. First to try to get a privileged peek at my investigation. And now”—I gesture toward the side chamber—“now to score some big points with your boss. And you’re telling me it’s not personal?”

  “Sam,” she says, reaching to lay a hand on my arm. “Listen.”

  But I am way past the listening stage. Shaking her hand off, I step up beside her. Bruckner and Lady Nicola are coming our way now, both eyeing us curiously. After the encounter in the side chamber, they are understandably surprised to see us together at all. Now I lean toward Jennifer, our shoulders almost touching. My whisper, when it comes, is low and surprisingly mean.

  “Next time you’re feeling lonely, you’ve got a big empty bed available, do everyone a favor.”

  When she looks up, I catch the glint of alarm in her eye. Then I say it. And I say it like I mean it, which at this moment I really do.

  “Go screw yourself.”

  She flinches. From a distance we are just two lawyers calmly debating our professional differences. Now I rest a hand on her shoulder and I nod.

  “Jennifer,” I say evenly. “Fuck you.”

  30

  BACK IN THE SECRETARIAT BUILDING I MAKE DIRECTLY for Room Seven and Rachel. In the hall a radio is droning, the sportscaster giving the results for some game in Baltimore. Weyland isn’t here, just that same kid, the young guard from the other day who was playing cards with Rachel. Right now he is alone in the hall, the droning radio at his feet.

  He looks up warily.

  “Rache?” I call, nudging open the door to Room Seven.

  “Gone,” says the kid.

  My gaze flickers over the room. The bunk is gone. On the table where Rachel’s toiletries—soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant—were neatly stacked, there is nothing. Everything has disappeared. My heart flutters. Patrick has freed her.

  “Gone where?” I ask, going back out into the hall. “Did she say she was going up to my office? Or home?”

  “She wasn’t going home, I think.”

  Reaching down, he turns off the radio. And when I inquire if Mike Jardine is anywhere nearby, the kid shakes his head and tells me he hasn’t seen Mr. Jardine all day.

  I take a moment with myself. Relief is too weak a word. And it’s not just Rachel either, because with Rachel free, I am suddenly released. If I wanted, I could now go public with Internal Oversight’s evidence against Asahaki. But after the discovery of Lemtov and Patrick’s joint attendance at that money laundering conference in Basel, I am loath to act too hastily. We seem to be missing something here, either not seeing it or not reading the facts we have correctly. More and more I am coming around to Mike’s view that the three Special Committee members are an extremely unlikely criminal troika. A double act between two of them? Maybe. But most plausible in my own mind is the notion that Lemtov, the politically adroit mover and shaker with the unsavory connections down at Brighton Beach, has manipulated Po Lin or Asahaki in some way that we have yet to fathom. Through Patrick? I wonder.

  Then I lift my head. What was it this kid said? “You haven’t seen Mike all day?”

  “No.” Registering my look, the kid adds tentatively, “That a problem?”

  “So who told Weyland that Rachel could go?” The kid doesn’t seem to get it, so I explain. “Weyland’s orders were to not let Rachel out of his sight. Not till he got the all clear from Mike.”

  “He hasn’t,” says the kid.

  Bemused, I glance into Room Seven, then back.

  “Weyland went with her,” he tells me, pointing down the hall. “Five minutes ago. I got no idea where they’re holding her now.” Where they’re holding her now. I sway unsteadily. His expression changes as he realizes at the same instant I do that we have had our wires badly crossed. “Oh,” he says, “you thought—”

  “Who came here?” I ask sharply, my stomach suddenly churning, relief splintering into alarm. “Who told Weyland to move her? O’Conner?”

  “No, Eckhardt.” Eckhardt, Mike’s boss, the head of UN Security. Weyland really had no choice. Then the kid adds, “Just Eckhardt and some old guy. No one said where they were going.”

  “What old guy?”

  He shakes his head, he didn’t catch the name. “I think I heard Eckhardt call him Mr. Ambassador. I wouldn’t swear to that, you know.”

  Mr. Ambassador. I grip the back of a chair to steady myself. Mr. fucking Ambassador.

  “You didn’t recognize him?”

  “Unh-unh.”

  “At all?”

  The kid tells me he has been working here only six weeks. “Like the big guys, Bruckner and those, I know them. But, God, there’s hundreds. One little old Asian guy, I mean, does anyone know who all these guys are?”

  A worm of fear suddenly moves in my throat. Chou En, the Chinese ambassador? Or Asahaki? Trying to stay calm, I ask the kid to describe this guy, the Asian ambassador.

  “Small,” he says, then thinks a second. “Gray hair. And his face.” He scrunches up his own face to show me. “You know, like a prune?”

  That is not Chou En. Or Asahaki. That is the guy I saw less than twenty minutes ago in whispered conference with Lemtov. A face like a prune. Or a walnut. The guy who came to move my captive daughter to new holding quarters was that poisonous little bastard the Tunku.

  The kid offers weakly, “I can try to find Mr. Jardine.”

  But Mike, I know, cannot help me here. Shoving off the wall, I go jogging down the hall to find Patrick.

  His door is open. In shirtsleeves, Patrick is facing the window, fiddling with his tie and shouting for his secretary as I go in.

  “Leila!” he calls. Glancing over his shoulder, he sees me and looks away swiftly. “Bloody woman. Give her my jacket to brush, she disappears.” His tie finally knotted, he faces me. “You’ll have to wait for your kick in the pants, I’m wanted upstairs.”

  “Where’s Rachel?”

  He strides across to the side door and leans through. “Leila, for chrissake!”

  “The vote’s over. There’s no reason for her to be detained here.”

  Patrick returns to his desk and does some unnecessary rearranging of papers and pens. He keeps his eyes down. Contrition. Regret. These are outside this man’s range of genuine feelings, but if I am not mistaken, there is a real hint of embarrassment now in Patrick’s demeanor.

  I step up to his desk. “The Tunku and Eckhardt showed up at Room Seven just now. After the vote. They moved Rachel.”

  “Mmm?”

  “I’d like to know where.” I lean on his desk, just my fingertips touching. “And I’d like to know why.”

  He holds my look a moment, then turns to the side door. If he calls for Leila, I will lose it. I will step around the desk and tear this man apart. But he turns back, smiling humorlessly.

  “You know what’s funny, Sam, what I can’t get over?” He thumbs his chest. “I put you on this thing. Me. Christ almighty, it would have been easier if I’d just slashed my own wrists, got it over with. The fucking mess you’ve made.”

  The mess I’ve made. For Rachel’s sake, I hold my tongue.

  Then Leila, Patrick’s willowy Indian secretary, comes in and hands Patrick his jacket. He pulls it on, instructing Leila to type up the memos from his Dictaphone. Picking up the vibe in the room, Leila raises one eyebrow at me in sympa
thy as she takes the Dictaphone and wordlessly departs.

  “What the hell have you been playing at, Patrick?”

  He brushes some invisible lint from his sleeve.

  “You tried to call Toshio’s murder a suicide when you knew it wasn’t. You kept me in the dark on Oversight’s investigation of Asahaki. Then you make my daughter a goddamn hostage, and now that the vote’s over, you’re still trying to hold her?”

  “It wasn’t me who screwed up the vote,” he remarks evasively and totally beside the point. He heads out the door; I catch up with him by the stairs.

  “Where’s Rachel?”

  “No idea.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He looks left to the elevator, then right to the stairs. He goes right, shouldering open the stairwell door. He is not pleased when I follow him.

  “You got an invitation?” An invitation, he means, from the SG. Patrick has evidently been summoned to the same informal gathering up on thirty-eight as the perm five ambassadors. When I arrive at thirty-eight, a guard will politely but firmly direct me back down.

  “I’ve got a good story,” I tell Patrick as we climb. “And if you don’t tell me where Rachel is, I’ll be telling that story to whoever wants to hear it.”

  “Me covering up for Asahaki? That’s your big story?”

  “Where’s Rachel?”

  “Well, you’ve got that one wrong too. Christ, what haven’t you got wrong?”

  “You detained her for no good reason. Just to yank on my chain. When the vote was over, she was meant to be released.”

  “I never said that.”

  I grab his arm, and he stops one step above me and looks back.

  “She had the opportunity and the motive,” he says, tugging his arm free. “And no one except you thinks her detention’s unreasonable.”

  “So what’s the Tunku, the goddamn deputy sheriff? Jesus Christ, Patrick. This is my kid. I’m not going to walk away from this. And why the hell did you bring the Tunku into this anyway?”

  “The short answer is, I didn’t.”