“When’s this?” he asks.
On the screen the members of the Security Council are trooping into the side chamber. There is a date and a time in the top left-hand corner.
“Lemtov’s just gotten the word from the Tunku that Rachel’s gone,” I tell Mike. “This is when Lemtov asked for a recess in the side chamber.”
Mike grunts and watches the screen.
“Outside the side chamber now,” I say, locating the visual as the scene changes to a guard by a door and an empty corridor. I point to the time on the screen: a few minutes after the previous footage in the Security Council. “You’re still in Surveillance,” I tell him. “I’ve gone to help Rachel run.”
On the screen the side-chamber door opens and Ambassador Froissart comes out. Mike nods, remembering. “He went to the can.”
We watch as Froissart passes beneath three different cameras. Then another figure appears, a woman holding out a microphone.
“Journalists,” Mike comments quietly. “Man can’t even take a leak in peace.”
Froissart appears to give the journalist the brush-off, then he disappears into the men’s rest room. And to Mike’s surprise my edited tape stays with the journalist. Marie Lefebre. Mike turns to me, puzzled.
“Watch,” I say, touching the screen.
He does, silent for the next two minutes. We see Marie send a message from her pager; then she hurries along the corridors, down the escalators to the public concourse. Then down another floor to the basement. At last she enters the UN bookshop, where she crouches unnoticed and takes the envelope from her purse. When she places the envelope behind a row of books, Mike’s head goes back. His glance shoots from me back to the screen. After a moment Marie goes hurrying out of the bookshop. The tape jumps, fast-forwards, and when it slows again we see Pascal arrive. He goes straight to where Marie deposited the envelope, reaches behind the row of books, collects the envelope, then leaves.
“Fuck.” Mike frowns. And then recalls the contents of the blood-encrusted envelope down at the morgue. “The French passport?”
I hold a finger up: Wait.
We watch the final scenes play out. Pascal hurries up the stairs, tries not to alert the guards by running. He gets himself to the exit as fast as he can. And then he is out. Striding fast. And suddenly, right behind him, I appear. When I grab Pascal’s arm, the video freeze-frames.
“You saw what happened after that,” I tell Mike.
“That woman,” he says, facing me. “The journalist.”
“Marie Lefebre.”
“She was like, what, the go-between or something? Between Nyeri and the French fucking ambassador?”
I incline my head. Gesturing to the VCR, I ask Mike if he would like to view it all again. He declines the offer, then takes a quiet moment with himself, refiguring the whole sequence of events. He asks me, finally, where Lemtov fits in.
“He doesn’t.” Ejecting the videotape, I return to my desk and lock it away in the bottom drawer. Then I clasp my hands together on the blotter. “Lemtov had nothing to do with Toshio’s murder. And it wasn’t Lemtov who was using Pascal to fool around with the paperwork. It was the French.”
“So why’d Lemtov frame Rachel?”
“Because he thought I was framing him. I mean, see it from his side. He’d defrauded UN funds, he was laundering money big-time, but what were we chasing? We were looking for Toshio’s murderer. Lemtov was guilty of plenty. That’s why he wanted me off his back, that’s why he used Rachel. But he didn’t know a damn thing about Toshio’s murder.”
“Plus, you threatened him. Like I told you not to.”
I open one hand, acknowledging the error. Mike looks at me askance.
“And this all came to you in a dream or something? You had a vision the French ambassador did it, so you went and checked the tapes?”
I remind him about the French passport. After finding that on Pascal’s body, it was really just a matter of working backward.
“Seem to recall you volunteered to go identify the body only after you already looked at the surveillance tapes,” he says.
“Remember the missing pink file? The one Pascal returned to Toshio’s office? Soon as I saw it I knew it was wrong.”
“You guessed straight off Nyeri spiked it?”
“It was all those figures on Po Lin’s investments again. Company names. Details we’d seen before. Even Jade Moon got another mention. The Kwok brothers.”
Mike lifts his head. “Whoa back. Nyeri spiked Hatanaka’s report with information we already had?”
“And do you recall where we got that information?”
Mike pauses, remembering what I told him. My source was a journalist. Then he glances back at the VCR.
“Not her,” he says. “Please.”
“Marie Lefebre. The very same.”
“That trip down to Chinatown?”
“We were wasting our time. Just like she meant us to.”
Mike rests his forehead in his hand a moment. The realization of just how wide of the mark our investigation remained throughout has hit him hard in his professional pride.
“All those investments of Po Lin’s?”
“Total crap.” Rising from my chair, I come around and prop my butt against the desk. I fold my arms. “The French must have picked up on Po Lin’s connection with Jade Moon from the Brits. Probably the Lefebre woman again. The French made up some numbers, then pointed us at Po Lin and the Kwoks. They knew that’d stir up trouble, at least keep us busy. They wanted to direct us away from Asahaki and Lemtov because both those trails touched Pascal.”
Mike considers that. “You figure that’s why Lady Nicola told you what she’d been up to with the Kwoks.”
“Right. It was like she said, she considered the Po Lin business closed. She figured I wouldn’t lay off till I knew, so she told me.”
“So the Brits were just innocent bystanders.”
I make a sound. The confirmation of Po Lin’s execution came through this morning. “Innocent bystanders” hardly seems an appropriate judgment on the Brits.
Mike thinks some more, not quite sure where this leaves us. He returns to the fact he has a handle on. “Nyeri did it, yeah? He was the one whacked Hatanaka.”
“What I said to Pascal out on the North Lawn yesterday, what you heard on the tape. Everything about him wanting something more, a better life, well, that was right. But it wasn’t Lemtov who offered him a better life, I got that wrong. It was her. Marie Lefebre.”
“Come on. You’re guessing.”
“I’ve spoken to the super in her apartment building. Pascal was a regular nighttime visitor at Marie’s for the last three months.”
Mike’s hand drops. He looks at me.
“That’s the key,” I tell him, unfolding my arms, bracing them on the desk. “Our man from Internal Oversight was conducting an affair with Marie Lefebre, a French journalist. Only she wasn’t just a journalist. She was also an agent of the French Foreign Ministry.”
“She was screwing Nyeri?”
I bow my head. She was screwing Pascal Nyeri, I agree.
“And somehow,” I say, “she got to know what Pascal was working on, his investigation with Hatanaka. Or maybe that’s why she moved in on him in the first place. Anyway, somewhere along the way she makes her big suggestion to Pascal. Point the evidence of the Special Committee fraud at Asahaki.”
“Why?” says Mike. But in the next moment he gets it. “The Council seat?”
“Right. The Council seat. Blacken Asahaki’s name, screw Japan’s chances at the vote, and no change on the Council. What France always wanted, despite public statements to the contrary.”
Mike shakes his head in disgust at the intrigue. “Jesus.”
“My guess is that’s all they planned. A dirty trick, Asahaki’s reputation destroyed, roughhouse politics, but everyone still walking at the end of it. Only something happened they hadn’t figured on. The FBI report. Toshio suddenly had a whole pile of dirt
on Lemtov. And Patrick was pushing him to confirm it, at least take another look at Lemtov. Toshio must have wondered, naturally, why Pascal hadn’t found anything like that earlier. So Toshio went back and checked Pascal’s work, everything that Pascal had been feeding him. And he would have found that Pascal had been feeding him some lies.”
“He confronted Nyeri?”
“He must have. Only Toshio would have thought the same as I did, that Pascal was covering for Lemtov. He wouldn’t have seen that Lemtov’s crime, the fraud, was being used by a third party to frame Asahaki. And Pascal would have told Marie that Toshio was onto him. After that, what choice did the French have? They couldn’t afford to have it come out, what dirty game they’d been playing. So they dug themselves in deeper. The French government supplied the heroin, that’s why it was so pure. It wasn’t from the street. And having Pascal murder Toshio didn’t just get Toshio out of the picture. It gave them another crime to pin on Asahaki.”
Mike looks at me sideways.
“That’s where we came in,” I say. “Pascal called Legal Affairs within hours of our finding the body. He wasn’t just being helpful. He wanted to make sure we had Asahaki right there at the top of our list of suspects. As long as we kept the pressure on Asahaki, we were doing what the French wanted. Keeping him out of Turtle Bay while they undermined the pro-Japanese vote.”
“You’ve really nutted this out, haven’t you?”
The evidence was all there, I tell him. I tell him it wasn’t so hard to figure out once Marie Lefebre’s role became clear.
“So it’s pretty much how you called it yesterday,” Mike says. “Only with Nyeri working for the French, not Lemtov.”
Pretty much, I agree sadly. But the reason for Toshio’s murder, Pascal’s motive, I was way out there too. Not even close. When I say so, Mike brushes the remark aside.
“Nyeri did it for what he could get out of it. Money. Passport. Comes to the same thing, don’t it? A new life? Like you said.”
But Mike’s world-weary assessment, I am sure, is way off beam here. He did not know Pascal as I knew him; or Marie Lefebre, if it comes to that.
“I don’t think Pascal committed a murder just for a French passport.”
“For the woman?”
“Not for the woman either.” Moving away from my desk, I wander over to the bookshelves, the wall of documents, and trail a finger idly across the spines. Law of the Sea. The Protection of Intellectual Copyright. Security Council Resolutions. Nothing, frankly, that a truly civilized man would want to waste his time reading. Nothing, for example, by Voltaire. “I think they must have threatened him.”
Mike scoffs.
“Not at first,” I say. “The woman, the promise of a passport, that was probably enough to get Pascal to fool around with the numbers. But once he’d done that, the French had him. One call to Patrick—hey, look what this Nyeri’s been up to—Pascal would have been out. Fired. A one-way ticket back to the Cameroon, maybe even prosecuted and into the slammer. Not so much a new life, more like a disastrous end to the one he already had.”
“You’re justifying the guy? He killed Hatanaka, for chrissake, we’re meant to feel sorry for him?”
I turn and focus on the USUN building across the street. Justifying, is that what I’m doing? Pascal, whatever his motives, murdered Toshio Hatanaka. But does that fact stand alone? To what degree do a man’s circumstances mitigate his crime? Isn’t that one of the oldest and deepest questions of jurisprudence? To discover what moral difference lies between the man who steals to feed his family and the man who simply steals. Never forgive, or always. Isn’t it between these two extremes that the fraternity of lawyers does daily courtroom battle? Now I ask myself if I would really wish to plant my feet beneath the defendant’s table on this case, to rise and claim extenuation for my client. Pascal Nyeri was tricked. He was threatened, Judge. Consider his life. He really had no choice.
Mike does not believe that. And in my heart of hearts, I guess, neither do I.
Though I cannot defend what Pascal did, I can still feel for him. I can understand the ardor of his desire, not just for Marie but for his own dreams, and I can see the web in which he was trapped, in the end fatally. I can see all that, empathize deeply, because I, too, passed through Marie Lefebre’s bed. I, too, committed a crime, one for which no court will ever condemn me. An inexpungible crime of the heart.
In truth, maybe that is what I am trying to justify here. The unjustifiable. Not Pascal Nyeri’s actions but my own.
“Not to feel sorry for him.” I face Mike again, raising a hand vaguely. My voice trails off. “Understanding?”
“Like all the great understanding he gave Hatanaka? Come on. He got what he deserved. Eye for an eye. Right there in the good book.”
But in the good book there are other lessons too, like forgiveness and mercy. Now, however, does not seem the appropriate moment for me to be quoting Scripture, so I let it pass. I glance at my watch. I tell Mike that I’m due downstairs in five minutes. Rachel has come in to return her UN uniform; her brief career as a guide at Turtle Bay is over. But Mike isn’t done yet.
“Lemtov wasn’t involved in the murder, but you’re letting him take the fall for it?”
“That’s right,” I admit.
“All that ‘he should never have been here’ crap. That’s what you meant, yeah? Lemtov should never have been here, so you’re helping him leave.” He thinks a moment. “You were worried that Bureau report wasn’t gonna be enough. Worried the SG might just tick Lemtov off, tell him to change his ways, let him stay. But this way, implicated in Toshio’s murder, he’s out for sure.”
“Lemtov’s not even going to be charged, Mike. But with his diplomatic cover removed, the Bureau can take a real shot at him. He’ll be dodging extradition orders for the rest of his life. For the Special Committee fraud he gets nothing. He won’t be jailed. He’s just out.”
“For a crime he didn’t commit.”
“You’re justifying the man?”
Mike doesn’t smile. He says, “That’s not you, Sam. Me? Sure. I don’t care too much how a guy like Lemtov gets nailed so long as it happens. But you?” He pauses, then alights more quickly than I would have hoped on the answer. “Payback, right? For what he put Rachel through.”
I bow my head, then raise my eyes. I ask Mike if he has any other questions.
“The Lefebre woman. Where can I find her?”
“She’s gone.”
“Address?”
“Gone gone. Back to Paris.”
Consulting my calendar, I find the number, the same one I tried earlier this morning, then I dial Marie’s apartment. I put her answering machine message on the speaker for Mike. Marie’s voice is calm and businesslike. She says that she has been temporarily reassigned to the Agence France-Presse head office in Paris, that she can be contacted there. She gives a number and then the same message is repeated in French. After that there is a long beep. When I hang up, Mike stares at the phone a long while.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference if she’d stayed, Mike. With Pascal dead, there’s no way we could have proven anything. The most we could have done was withdraw her press accreditation. Now we don’t even have to bother.” Opening my arms, I attempt a smile. “At last,” I say, “someone ran.”
But Mike’s face does not move. Letting Lemtov take the fall for a crime of which he is innocent, that Mike can live with. But this evasion of retribution by Marie Lefebre strikes at Mike’s deep sense of justice. He was assigned to bring Toshio’s murderer to book, and he has failed.
“Cunt,” he says at last.
I pocket my pen. I take my jacket from the back of the chair. And while he is still trying to digest what he has learned, trying to reconcile himself to the highly unsatisfactory outcome, I make a few consolatory suggestions. The French Foreign Ministry, I say, has lost a key intelligence asset here at UNHQ, there is absolutely no chance Marie Lefebre will risk coming back. And though Ambassador Fro
issart cannot be touched with what we have—that apparently innocent meeting with Marie by the side chamber—I tell Mike that over the coming weeks the two of us can figure some way to let Froissart know what we know. Maybe we can make him jumpy enough to follow Marie Lefebre’s example and beat a voluntary withdrawal back to Paris.
In response to these somewhat hopeful remarks, Mike simply pulls a face. He doesn’t swallow one word of it.
“At least we can try.”
“So when was I gonna hear about this?” He gestures to the VCR, then the phone on my desk. “Sometime soon?” He raises a brow. “Sometime never?”
“I didn’t think it would help. I wasn’t sure you would have wanted to know.”
“Wrong. Both counts.”
Unable to hold his gaze, I pull on my jacket and I ask him what he intends to do now.
“You mean about Lemtov?”
About all of it, I say.
He takes a few seconds with himself, then faces me squarely. “You’ve told me everything, right? No more rabbits outa goddamn hats. No more French passports in dead guys’ pockets.”
I shake my head.
“If that’s everything,” he says reluctantly, “I don’t see that we have a choice. We just let it play out. Lemtov takes the fall, the woman stays gone.” Then his look becomes penetrating, unwavering, as if some deep instinct for suspicion has been stirred. “That is everything?” he says levelly.
If there was ever a moment to confess all, to wipe the slate clean, this is it. But what price a clean slate, an unsullied conscience? If I told Mike, as a friend, what really happened between Marie Lefebre and me, how could Mike Jardine, deputy head of Security, ignore that information? Me, a senior figure from UN Legal, wrapped in the amorous embrace of a French spy, my one-night stand with her sandwiched between the deaths of Toshio Hatanaka and Pascal Nyeri. Maybe I could convince him that I was the innocent dupe, but even if I could, where would that leave Mike? How exactly would my confession assist the cause of truth? Mike would be left wrestling with his own conscience, wondering whether he should do his duty and report me to Eckhardt and Patrick. And all the while, of course, cursing me for putting him in such an impossible position, for not keeping my mouth shut. But here in my office, his eyes narrowing, he sees none of that.
Diplomatic Immunity Page 41
