Diplomatic Immunity (40 page)

43

M
ARIE 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. Time
magazine,
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.

“Here’s another one. Between when Pascal left Toshio’s office and me starting that conversation with him on the North Lawn, there were about ten minutes. And when I saw him leaving Toshio’s office, he wasn’t panicked or scared. But by the time I caught him, he was running. Even before I started asking questions, he was a frightened man. How do you explain that?”

“You are asking me?”

“Matate and Pascal both ran. But Matate took the regular way out, he headed straight for East Forty-third. Pascal didn’t. He went for the public exit.”

She lifts a shoulder. Looks perplexed.

“No comment?”

“Only perhaps you are wrong,” she says, stooping to pick up the slip, the
Time
number, from the tray. “Like with this.” She folds the slip into a tight square and drops it onto the table.

“I’ve checked the surveillance tapes. I watched Pascal run through the building, what he did from when he got in the elevator on twenty-nine after leaving Toshio’s office.”

Marie picks up her notepad and pen and takes them over to her desk by the bookcase. She keeps her back turned to me.

“Just before he got to the Maintenance Room he received a message on his pager. That’s when he ran. He dived into that Maintenance Room like he’d just been hit with a thousand volts. But when he came out he didn’t make for the nearest exit with Matate. No, Pascal headed for the public exit. Because on his way to the public exit there was a place Pascal needed to go, wasn’t there, Marie? Something he needed to get.”

“Speculation I cannot use in my story.”

“The UN bookshop,” I say. “Pascal was in and out of there in fifteen seconds. He wasn’t there for the books.”

Marie comes back over and picks up her espresso. She takes a sip, then wrinkles her nose. Cold, she says, replacing her cup on the tray.

“Pascal went straight to one particular shelf,” I tell her, determined to see this through. “He stuck his hand down behind the books and brought out an envelope. Once he had it, he headed for the nearest exit. It’s all on the security tapes.”

“Should I make a note?”

“You put that envelope there.”

Marie bends to collect the tray and cups, an act of unconcerned domesticity.

“That’s on the security tapes too,” I say. “Just minutes before Pascal arrived in the bookshop. You were there. The same shelf. And you planted that envelope.” Taking the clock from the tray, I hold it up. “See that? Set for eight-thirty.” I turn the clock over. “And see this?”

She lifts a brow.

“It’s off. I didn’t sleep through the goddamn alarm. You never set it. Or if you did, you switched it off when you came back.”

She starts to turn from me. I chop a hand down hard on the tray and it crashes to the floor. Cups go flying, something breaks. Marie fixes her eyes on the coffee stain that has suddenly appeared on her ivory-white sofa.

“Leave,” she says.

I remain planted to the spot.

“Now,” she says, lifting her eyes.

“I went and identified Pascal’s body. They let me take a look at his personal effects. His passport. Things like that.”

Marie pivots, heading for her bedroom. Taking two strides, I grab a handful of her sweater and she screams and lashes at me with her heel. Then she jerks to one side, breaks my hold, and dashes into the bedroom. But when she tries to close the door behind her, I drop my shoulder and shove hard and she falls backward. I grab her shoulders, fling her down on the bed, and plant one knee on her stomach. She thrashes around, her nails rake my right hand, then I manage to clutch another handful of sweater and pin her down.

Her head goes back, her body arches, and she screams. Screams loud. In one sharp movement I cock my arm and bring it down hard, backhanding her across the mouth. Her head jerks sideways, her scream dies.

My body is poised over hers now, our chests are heaving. Then she looks at me. Looks at me hard. And in the next moment, I can hardly believe I am feeling it, she lifts her hips and grinds her pubic bone against my shin. Her eyes remain fixed on mine. My hand goes back and then stops. She tilts up her chin, waiting for the blow. Inviting the strike. I waver. And then, swearing, I shove away from her and step back from the bed.

“You know why you didn’t have to let me in from the street? Because I didn’t buzz you. I buzzed your super. He let me in.”

She stares at the ceiling. The skin around her mouth is turning red.

“You know, he’s got a serious thing about you.”

“Cochon,”
she says.

“Keeps an eye on you. Like when I was here last night, that kind of stuff he notices. Turns out he’s a big-time racist. I guess you knew that too.” I take the UN personnel photo of Pascal from my pocket and hold it up. She glances at it, then away. “Your super, the pig, he recognized it. Almost went crazy when I showed him.” I flick the photo onto the bed beside her. “Pascal Nyeri. He’s been a regular nighttime guest of yours for the past three months.”

“You are jealous already?”

“He’s dead,” I say, barely able to speak, my voice squeezed tight by the constriction of my throat. “The guy you’ve been screwing for the past three months is dead. He’s dead, and you knew that before I got here, and what do I find you doing? You’re brewing coffee, for chrissake.”

She sits up and straightens her hair. Then she reaches across to her bedside table, picks up a pack of cigarettes and taps it until a cigarette drops into her hand. She looks around for her lighter. But her calm is too studied to be natural. She is trying to recall, I guess, all the coaching she must have had in order to deal with this situation. Cover blown. The endgame.

“Pascal killed Toshio. But he didn’t do it for Lemtov. He did it for you, Marie. For you. For the French passport you offered him. His ticket to a new life. The life he’d been dreaming of since he was a kid. Paris. Culture.” In my mind’s eye I see the books by Pascal’s bedside in Harlem. Voltaire. Montaigne. “French civilization,” I say hoarsely. “He did it for you and your fucking country.”

Marie rolls and searches for her lighter in the other bedside drawer.

“You people never changed your policy, did you? When France finally gave in and agreed to let the Japanese seat go to a vote, Bruckner high-fiving it with everyone thinking he’d made the big breakthrough, that was all horseshit. Bruckner hadn’t changed your minds. You just let him believe he had. But you people never for one moment wanted Japan to get that seat. Your country doesn’t want a new world order. The old world order suits France just fine.”

“This is your fantasy.”

“You’re an agent of your country. You report to Froissart. And you used Pascal to murder Toshio.”

She turns and looks straight at me. She does not deny it. She does not say anything; she simply points to the door and waits for me to leave. She knows, of course, that there is not a snowflake’s chance in hell that I am going to let her back into UNHQ. I have already entered her name on the security blacklist, and as soon as I can I will be making sure that her press accreditation is permanently withdrawn. But I am pretty sure that now that she knows what I know, she will be removing herself from New York anyway. Two men are dead, and if I have figured it out, someone else might do the same. Her speedy departure is the best I can hope for too, hence my visit here. To let her know what I know. To get her gone. What evidence I have against her would not stand up in a court of law, but it is not only that. The fact is that my brief carnal sojourn with her last night, as Marie no doubt intended, has given her a weapon. If I make an accusation against the French, she will attribute any personal motive she pleases to my words. Froissart might even manage to drag Rachel back into the fray. And the thought of Rachel being flayed on the altar of my stupid indiscretion, the idea that my thoughtless action might have rendered her vulnerable again, is simply too painful to face.