Diplomatic Immunity

by Grant Sutherland

  As I move toward the terrace, Mike comes running from the building. He shouts at the guards holding Rachel. Bemused, they release her and she comes stumbling down the steps and across the lawn where I gather her in my arms. She clings to me, pressing her face into my chest while I stroke her hair and kiss her head. I keep telling her that it’s over. Up on the terrace, Jennifer confers with Mike.

  Then a guard behind us on the walkway shouts, “Move in now. Grab him!”

  Still holding Rachel, I turn.

  Pascal has been corralled. A semicircle of guards has trapped him against the low wall of the walkway. He can’t escape but he is clambering onto the low wall. Below him, a clear fifty-foot drop, is the FDR Drive. Beyond that, way too far to jump, the East River. Crouching, he holds on with both hands, and there is nothing distant about his look now. He is simply terrified, a guilty man at the mercy of fear. And what he fears is not the drop but capture. One guard, caught up in the moment, has drawn a gun.

  On the terrace Mike shouts, “Back off! Don’t shoot, for chrissake. Back off!”

  But the guards, totally focused on Pascal, don’t seem to hear.

  Clamping a hand to the back of Rachel’s head, I keep her face pressed against my chest. But I can’t take my own eyes off the scene. It is the awful inevitability, the dreadful certainty of what is about to happen that is so sickeningly mesmerizing. As if the moves are somehow preordained.

  The guard with the drawn gun takes one step forward. And Pascal rears back. Rears back and overbalances. His hands are suddenly clutching air, his arms flailing skyward. The other guards seem to freeze. Pascal’s head swivels. Wild-eyed, he looks down, sees the FDR Drive, instinctively straightens one leg and reaches back for the wall, and then he is suspended a moment, poised against gravity, against time. Suddenly he twists in the air, his body jackknifing, falling, his arms reaching skyward again as he disappears soundlessly behind the wall.

  The silence seems to go on forever.

  And then down on the FDR Drive there is the scream of braking tires, the sudden blare of a horn, and the bang and the long, slow crunch of crumpling metal.

  42

  PANDEMONIUM. A WOMAN, SOME TOURIST UP ON THE terrace, begins to scream. The guards rush to the walkway wall and look over, shouting at one another, shouting down to the Drive, where a whole chorus of horns is suddenly blaring. Then Mike goes running past me to the walkway, calling back over his shoulder to Jennifer, telling her to get an ambulance down there fast.

  Rachel lifts her face from my chest and looks around, startled as a deer.

  More tourists emerge onto the terrace, drawn by the screaming woman. One guy tries to calm her; another is pointing to the walkway, shouting in Spanish as a crowd gathers.

  Rachel looks up at me, says “Dad?” and I quickly wrap an arm around her shoulders and steer her across the North Lawn, away from the commotion, the raised voices, and the gathering rush of people. I keep telling her that it’s all right, that everything’s okay, but my legs seem to be moving of their own volition. The picture of Pascal momentarily suspended in the air is seared like a lightning flash onto my mind’s eye. When we reach the tree-screened privacy of the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial, I ease Rachel onto the bench. Then I sit down beside her. My legs are trembling. The voices over on the walkway are distant now, Mike’s bawling voice the only one I can really make out. Close the area, he cries. He shouts for the guards to get the tourists out.

  “What happened?” says Rachel.

  I draw her to me. She hunkers down close. I stroke her hair, and after a moment she lies down on the bench and rests her head on my thigh. A squirrel forages through the ground ivy, rustling the fallen leaves near my feet. And though I watch the squirrel, it is Pascal I still see. His final words that I hear.

  What happened? I think.

  And the alarming truth is that I am suddenly not sure I know.

  Pascal Nyeri has been killed. By the fall, by the first or second car that went careering over his body. It hardly matters. Fifteen minutes after the event you can still hear the sirens down there on the Drive, police and ambulance men sorting out the wreckage. The North Lawn and the whole terrace area have been cleared of tourists; there is a line of UN guards ushering the last sightseers from the concourse straight out to First Avenue. The tourists crane their necks to where some guards and gawking delegates lean against the low wall, looking down ghoulishly to the mayhem on the Drive. Two TV news choppers are buzzing like dragonflies out over the East River, filming the chaos, something dramatic to lead tonight’s broadcast. Just near the bench Mike and Jennifer are standing together with the attorney from the D.A.’s office, three heads bowed over the tape recorder I have given them, listening to the final scene of Pascal’s short life. The sound quality is surprisingly good; I can hear my own voice quite clearly.

  Matate, so Mike has told me, was caught over at the East Forty-third Street exit. Apparently he could not wait to relate his side of the story. And everything Matate has confessed squares with what Pascal told me, right down to the payment of five hundred dollars. Matate denies any part in Toshio’s murder. He says he told Pascal about the scheduled security camera shutdown in the basement Monday night. Pascal talked to him about it several times that weekend, confirmed that it was definitely happening, but beyond that Matate claims to know nothing.

  Matate’s admission, coupled with the tape and with Pascal’s reaction when I accused him outright, should be enough. Rachel, God willing, should walk away free. And yet my relief in the aftermath is not exultant. The last minute of Pascal’s life, my accusation, his attempted escape, the silent fall—all of it keeps playing over in my mind. Shock has printed it there indelibly. Could I have handled it differently? Better? Did he really have to die?

  “Sam,” Mike says now, and I touch Rachel’s shoulder as I rise from the bench. Mike and Jennifer have finished listening to the tape. When I join them, Mike is speaking into his two-way.

  “I’ll have to take a copy later,” Jennifer tells me, tapping the recorder. “Keep Rachel on the grounds here while we straighten it out with the D.A.’s office.”

  “No arrest?”

  She turns to the attorney, the Homicide cops’ legal escort. He looks down at Rachel on the bench and shakes his head. No arrest, he says. Once the D.A. is informed, the guy says he is sure that Rachel will be free. The guy bobs his head at me and Jennifer, then walks back toward the guardhouse.

  I look at Jennifer. I cannot quite believe that the ordeal is over. She places the recorder in my hand, then squeezes my arm.

  “I’m glad for you,” she says, glancing at Rachel. “For both of you.” She seems about to say more, but the attorney calls to her and she goes to join him. They head toward the guardhouse together.

  “Eckhardt’s bringing Patrick down,” Mike tells me, sliding the two-way onto his belt.

  “Lemtov?”

  “Still in the Council Chamber.”

  “He hasn’t run?”

  Mike drops his voice. “Lemtov’s a thirty-eighth-floor problem now. Leave it alone. You got Rachel outa this. Be happy.”

  Weyland comes ambling down the path, and when he reaches the bench, Rachel gets up and embraces him. She clasps his shoulder and he turns aside gingerly. It seems he has really done some damage there.

  I turn the tape recorder over in my hands. Then I give it to Mike. “Make some copies once you’ve played it for Patrick and Eckhardt.”

  “You’re not staying?”

  “Can you call your people in Surveillance, let them know I’m coming up there to review the tapes?”

  He nods, looking straight at me. He repeats his warning for me to leave it alone.

  I go have a quick word with Rachel, warning her not to leave the UN grounds till I say so. I thank Weyland and shake his hand. And as I move away across the lawn, Mike calls after me, “You wanna tell me what you gotta review?”

  I keep right on walking.

  After all the grief I have cau
sed them today, the surveillance guards are understandably not pleased to find that they are now expected to assist me. But Mike has given them their orders, so I am allocated a screen at the far end of the room while they track down the sections of the security tapes that I want to see. Video cartridges come sliding along the floor to me every few minutes. As I review each tape, I jot down the times from the bottom right-hand corner. I note the places where the events are occurring, carefully putting everything in sequence.

  It is an hour before I am done. Then I play it through tape by tape before kicking back and staring at the blank screen in front of me. I am silent. Numbed. The senior guard calls over to me from his console, asking what I want to see now.

  I shake my head. Nothing, I say.

  He gives some button a savage punch and a picture appears on the blank screen I am staring at. The Security Council Chamber. A live transmission.

  There they all are, the big guns of international diplomacy, the enforcers of the new world order, the self-selected elite. Only Bruckner, reading from a prepared statement, shows any sign of animation. Lemtov, Froissart, and Chou En, each wearing headphones, look bored, half asleep. Lady Nicola glances at her watch, then puts her hands to the small of her back and stretches. They will have heard by now that Pascal Nyeri is dead. Maybe they have already taken a second brief adjournment to the side chamber, which seems likely, but from their faces you would never know that anything untoward has occurred to disturb the morning’s deliberations.

  The presiding body of international affairs doing what it does best. Looking banal. Inviting the curious viewer to switch channels, to turn that curiosity someplace else.

  Then I hear Mike passing along the hall outside. He is talking to a guard, debating what to do with Matate. But for a while longer I sit thinking, staring at the screen. Finally I rise and go down to Mike’s office, where I find him alone, one phone to his ear, another ringing on his desk. He sees me and throws up a hand in despair as he carries on his conversation. With the local NYPD precinct captain, it seems, a man on the warpath about the disaster he is blaming Mike for causing down on the FDR Drive. I signal to Mike. He rolls his eyes and covers the mouthpiece with his hand.

  “If he wants,” I say, pointing to the phone, “I’ll go down and identify Nyeri’s body.”

  Mike nods, grateful right now for any help he can get. He scribbles an address on his memo pad, at the same time confirming with the precinct captain that he has the right morgue, that the place has not moved.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Mike tells the precinct captain. “I’m sending someone down there now.”

  Mike rolls his eyes again and cradles the phone beneath his chin as he tears the page from his memo pad. He gives me the address and carries on his conversation as I reverse out the door.

  43

  MARIE LEFEBRE FLIPS ASIDE THE PEEPHOLE COVER AND peers out, then the bolts go back, the chain jingles.

  “You did not buzz,” she rebukes me lightheartedly as she opens the door.

  In answer, I hold up the tape recorder. “I’ve got your big story.”

  Her glance flickers from the recorder back to me. “A joke?”

  “No joke.”

  She pushes a hand up into her hair and tilts her head to one side. Then slowly she smiles. Conspiratorial. She and I, two adults in the know. Stepping back into her kitchenette, she ushers me into her apartment where a strong smell of coffee fills the air; there is an espresso maker on the stove behind her, hissing steam. When Marie reaches for the recorder, I shield it with my body as I shuffle by her into the living room.

  Pour two cups, I say. I tell her that we can listen to the tape together.

  Marie looks at me with playful ferocity, but when I simply smile, she disappears into the kitchenette. “Pig,” she calls, laughing.

  Then I hear a cupboard open, the sound of crockery clattering. Placing the recorder upright at the center of the glass coffee table, I take a slow turn around the room. The collection in her CD rack is standard fare, classical and jazz, but her small bookcase contains a surprising mixture of French classics and contemporary romance. Judging by the wear on the spines, they have all, at some time, been read.

  “Will I get my job at Time?” she calls from the kitchenette.

  “You want to know if the story’s big enough?”

  “Oui.”

  “It’s big enough.”

  She laughs again, delighted. Farewell Radio France. “What was it, that call this morning about your daughter?”

  “She’s okay.”

  Marie appears with two tiny cups and saucers on a tray, which she places on the coffee table by the recorder. “How you left, so quickly—”

  “She’s okay,” I repeat, firmly cutting off any further inquiry in the direction of Rachel.

  Marie’s eyes shoot up. She has gotten the message. “So are you going to tell me this big story?” she asks.

  Leaning against the wall, I point to the tape recorder, suggesting that she might want to take some notes.

  She fetches a memo pad and a pen, then settles onto the sofa, her legs tucked beneath her. The pad rests on a thigh. When she glances across, her look is not exactly lascivious, but it holds out a certain promise. She reaches over and presses the play button, turns up the volume, then eases back onto the sofa. Her eyes are fixed on the recorder now.

  Silence, then the background hum of traffic down on the FDR Drive suddenly cuts in.

  “This is me and a guy from Internal Oversight,” I tell Marie. “This morning. We’re out by the walkway on the North Lawn.”

  Marie nods. And then, on the recorder, I speak.

  “So just how long have you been working for Yuri Lemtov?”

  Four times already this afternoon I have listened to it, heard myself say the words, yet now I cannot help the same bleak thought rising anew. Stupid, I think dismally. Sometimes I really am so goddamn stupid.

  At the mention of Lemtov, Marie’s eyebrows have risen. But when she looks up at me, I redirect her attention to the recorder, where the conversation continues. A very one-sided conversation. In fact, listening to it becomes progressively more painful for me, my own voice droning on, figuring, probing, and Pascal Nyeri hardly responding at all. Marie makes a sound of surprise from time to time, scribbling furiously. On the tray the two cups of coffee sit untouched.

  Finally I shove off the wall; I really do not want to hear any more of this. Telling Marie that I’m going to the bathroom, I pass by the kitchenette and enter her bedroom. The strong aroma of coffee is in here too, but beneath that, Marie’s sweet scent, an uncomfortable memory. At the sink I splash my hands and my face, then I flush the toilet before returning to the bedroom. The clock is right there on the bedside table. Checking the alarm setting and the time, I turn the clock over. The alarm has been switched off.

  When I reappear in the living room, Marie has stopped scribbling in her pad; she just stares at the recorder and listens. I do too, enduring another minute of it before my voice on the tape rises in pitch to deliver the final damning judgment.

  “Lemtov gave you the heroin, that syringe. Matate shut down the security camera for you. And you, Pascal, you killed Toshio.”

  I hit the stop button. For a few moments neither one of us speaks. I look at Marie, but her eyes remain on the recorder. At last she tosses her pen and pad onto the table, drops back onto the sofa, and exhales.

  “This Pascal, he is from Internal Oversight?”

  “He was.”

  Marie tilts her head to one side.

  “A few moments after that”—I point to the recorder—“he died.”

  Slowly she eases forward, swinging her feet out from beneath her, setting them on the floor. Her eyes have not left mine.

  “Trying to escape the guards,” I say. “He dropped onto the FDR Drive.”

  “He jumped?”

  “An accident.”

  Her look lingers, then her eyes return to the recorder. “So everything—the fraud,
Hatanaka’s murder—it was all Lemtov.”

  Concealed in my hand till now, I place the clock from her bedroom down by the coffee cups on the tray. No reaction from Marie.

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it,” I say.

  She gestures to the recorder. “This was this morning?”

  “Just a few hours ago. None of your colleagues called you?”

  “No.”

  I tell her to tune in to the evening news. They’ll have some great pictures.

  “Who else has heard this?” she asks, nodding to the recorder.

  “No other journalists. Just you.”

  At last she is unable to keep her eyes from wandering to the clock.

  “That was our deal, wasn’t it?” I say. “You kept what you knew about the fraud under your hat, I’d give you the big exclusive?” Tossing my head toward the phone, I ask her if she wants to call the people at Time. “You never know how long they’ll keep that job open. With what you’ve got now, maybe they’ll recognize how good you really are. Send you straight to the top. Editor in chief, Time magazine. Sound like something you could go for?”

  By now, of course, she is getting the idea that I have not come to pick up where we left off this morning. Not even to fulfill my side of the deal we made Wednesday. Pulling a slip from my breast pocket, I place it down by the clock. Timemagazine, it says. Editor, International Desk, and then a New York number.

  Marie considers it a moment, then turns her head as if she is baffled. By the number. By me.

  “You told me there was a job waiting for you at Time, Marie. You told me you just needed a big story to land it.”

  “Oui?”

  “I called them.” Bending, I touch the slip. “There’s no job. And they’ve never heard of you.”

  “Why did you call them?”

  “Is that really the point here?”

  “Why?” she demands, rising suddenly. This abrupt flare of anger I recognize for what it is, a practiced attitude, a screen behind which she can compose herself. I don’t intend to give her that opportunity.