Diplomatic Immunity (8 page)

Fearing Patrick’s imminent return, I finally butt in on the conversation.

“Mr. Ambassador, would it be possible to arrange a time for me and maybe one of our security people to come and speak with you?”

He grunts.

“This afternoon?” I suggest.

He shakes his head emphatically. Patrick, I would have to concede now, had a point. I just don’t carry sufficient weight to warrant a guy like Asahaki putting himself out for me. But still hoping for something useful from this encounter, I bring out the note Mike found in Toshio’s mailbox. Asahaki has already turned aside, talking with one of his minions. I show the note to the other and ask him for a translation. He frowns. He is not sure if he should help me. Then he looks over my shoulder and I turn to find Patrick bearing down on me. He does not look pleased. He jerks his head toward the door, indicating that it is time for me to leave.

As I repocket the note, the Japanese confer intently. Patrick arrives at my side and gives me a long, hard look from the corner of his eye. Then, before I can make my exit, the youngest of Asahaki’s colleagues steps up to Patrick and bows. A deep bow. Patrick, unlike me, is Secretariat top-drawer.

“Ambassador Asahaki,” says the young man, rising, “respectfully request the body of Toshio Hatanaka.”

Patrick cannot hide his surprise. “The body?”

“Yes. Ambassador Asahaki respectfully request the body.”

“That might be difficult.”

“Impossible.” I correct Patrick beneath my breath.

But to my amazement, Patrick appears to actually give the idea some thought. “Where would the body go?”

“It must be returned to Japan.”

“Mike won’t buy that,” I blurt out.

“Excuse us,” says Patrick, then, taking me by the elbow, he walks me over to the wall. We stand beneath the latest statesmanlike portrait of the SG. “What is this?” Patrick hisses. “You want to give me a few pointers, tell me how to do my job?”

“This is way out of whack, Patrick. You know it is. They want the body back in Japan? Just like that? Come on. They just want this whole problem out of the way during the buildup to the vote.”

“Of course they want it out of the way. Where do you think we are here, grade school?”

“Toshio was murdered.”

Patrick touches his forehead. For chrissake, he mutters.

“Patrick, you can’t seriously think it’s all right for them to take the body. What happens if we give it to them? Say they take it back to Japan, say the vote goes fine, they win their seat on the Council. You don’t think some pretty uncomfortable questions are going to be asked when it gets out what we did? That we just played along with the Japanese because they asked us to? We’ll be crucified.”

Now Patrick glances over to Asahaki. “What the fuck did you say to them?”

“Nothing. I asked Asahaki if Mike and I could speak with him later. Ask him some questions.”

Patrick faces me. “You dopey shit.”

Directing my gaze to the SG’s portrait over Patrick’s shoulder, I count my way slowly toward ten. At five, Patrick leans close.

“So they don’t get the body. But when we get back over there”—he tosses his head—“I need you to do something for me.” He taps a finger lightly on my lapel. “Keep your fucking mouth shut. Not one more word.”

We rejoin the Japanese. Patrick tells Asahaki as diplomatically as he can that it is not legally possible for us to hand over Toshio Hatanaka’s body. Not yet. But Patrick assures them that we will hand it over as soon as we can. Asahaki speaks with one of his minions.

Patrick gestures toward the SG’s dining room. “He’s waiting for us,” he says, referring to the SG, trying to move on. But when Patrick takes a step in the direction of the dining room, the Japanese stand firm.

That same young guy who spoke earlier speaks again. “Ambassador Asahaki regrets he is unable to attend the meeting with the Secretary-General.”

Patrick faces Asahaki. “Unable?”

Asahaki remains silent, aloof. Unable, the young man repeats.

Then, without the courtesy of a parting nod, Asahaki turns his back on Patrick; he retreats with his colleagues down the corridor. A deliberate and very pointed snub. When they disappear from sight, Patrick turns on me.

“You.” He holds up a hand, cutting off my protest. “I don’t want to hear it. You’ve got the body. You’ve got the investigation you wanted. But if you speak to another ambassador about this without clearing it with me first, in fact, if you do anything on this without clearing it with me first—”

“I’ve got the picture.”

“You’d better have.”

We look at each other.

“I want to speak to Moriko Hatanaka, Toshio’s sister.”

“She an ambassador?” Patrick shoots back.

It is going to be quite a while, I see, before I am forgiven for screwing things up with Asahaki.

“Oh, go on.” Patrick waves a hand, banishing me from the thirty-eighth floor, dismissing me from his sight.

But I have a question. “What did you think I said to Asahaki?”

Patrick waves that dismissive wave again, then turns sharply and retreats to the safety of the SG’s dining room. I study the door behind which Patrick has just disappeared. Something is not right. If I had not been present when Asahaki made that request for the return of Toshio’s body to Japan, Patrick, I am certain, would have given it very serious consideration. Possibly even complied. And the same question comes to me now as came to me earlier this morning when Patrick gave his wildly premature verdict of suicide. The question that comes to me is why.

9

“S
HE HASN
’
T BEEN TOLD YET?
”
MIKE ASKS, GLANCING
across the passenger seat at me. “Those assholes, the Tunku and his buddies, they all know, but no one’s told the sister?” When I redirect his attention to the street up ahead, he swerves around some maintenance workers, then turns to me again.

So I give him a two-minute rundown on the state of play. Mei Tan, Toshio’s secretary, contacted the Japan Society, where Toshio’s sister, Moriko, works. Moriko was not there. Her colleagues informed us that she was over at the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, arranging to borrow pieces for a forthcoming Japan Society exhibition. They gave Mei Tan the number of Moriko’s cell phone, but the phone seemed to be temporarily disconnected. I instructed Mei Tan to keep trying.

“And then I came to get you.”

“So maybe this Moriko knows, maybe she doesn’t?”

I nod. Mike breathes out a long breath.

“When we get to this gallery,” he tells me, “there’s no way I’m going in first.”

We swing left, cruising past a banged-up Pontiac; loose newspaper sheets go scudding up from the gutter. We have had the note we found in Toshio’s mailbox translated; it says,
I will see you tonight.
Nothing else. No date and no name. The translator told us it looked like something someone had just scribbled quickly, which leaves us with some obvious questions like who and why. Given the entry in Toshio’s calendar, Moriko seems the most likely candidate. Something we’ll be able to clear up with her, provided, of course, she’s in any state to talk once we’ve broken the news.

“Oh, yeah,” says Mike. “Did I say about those bugs from his apartment?”

I look at him. He knows that he hasn’t.

“Funny thing,” he says. “They’re the same make as ours.”

Ours? I ask.

“UNHQ Extra Security.”

I have, naturally, heard of this secret cabal, but from Patrick, not Mike. And from Patrick only infrequently, oblique references from which I was meant to infer my peripheral position in the organizational power scheme. UNHQ Extra Security, from what I understand, is a tripartite body involving only Patrick O’Conner, UN Security, and the SG. It keeps tabs on a very small number of delegations and delegates perceived to be a security threat to UNHQ. Just the crazies. People who in a sane world would be committed to an asylum or a jail instead of representing their countries at the parliament of man.

Mike’s gaze remains fixed on the road, but he looks uncomfortable. My guess is that he has turned over the information for quite some while before telling me.

“The same make?”

“Right.”

“Rare?”

He screws up his face. “Standard issue for every law enforcement agency in the U.S. From the Bureau on down.”

Then why, I ask him, has he stuck his neck out to tell me?

“I checked our inventory. Then I checked Security’s requisitions book. See if any of our guys had something on.”

“Any luck?”

“Now, there’s a question.” He glances at me. “Remember how many bugs we found at Hatanaka’s place?”

“Three.”

“Three.” He holds up three fingers from the steering wheel. “And how many bugs at Extra Security do you guess I found missing? Missing, unaccounted for, not signed through the book.”

“Three?” I venture.

“No,” he says, lowering one finger. “Two. Two missing.”

We sweep left past the local cash-and-carry. Two bugs missing, three bugs found. I state the obvious. Those numbers don’t add up.

“No, sir.”

“Someone stole two and supplemented them with one of their own?”

A screwup in the records, Mike suggests, is the most likely answer. The Extra Security team apparently has a deliberately distant acquaintanceship with the regular procedures. He is not saying the bugs came from UN Security, and he is not saying they did not. Something to chew on, Mike adds.

“Greek area,” he remarks then, circling a finger above the steering wheel, and like a guide on some strange urban safari, he singles out the finer points of decay. This is one aspect of the city, I confess, that I have never gotten used to even after living in the place for more than twenty years. Among the Turtle Bay cynics there is a constant stream of jokes about it, the divisions of New York City as a microcosm for the divisions of the world. Question: How do we solve the Chinese problem? Answer: Bomb Mott Street. Question: How do we put a stop to economic migration? Answer: Close the Brooklyn Bridge.

Mike’s mental map of the city seems to be drawn on these ethnic divisions. He is the perfect guide to such urban mysteries as where a Korean shopkeeper will do a thriving business in this great city and where he is very likely to have his life’s work and savings burned to the ground. He talks of these things so casually that I’m sure they must appear to him as facts on a level with the borders between nations. But for a son of Cyrus, Kansas, the splintering of the American people, the sectioning off of quasi-independent urban territories filled with mutual loathing, cannot help but feel a little strange. And it is not lost on me that Mike’s patter, as he drives, has cut off any further questioning from me on the subject of the bugs.

The museum is some kind of converted industrial building: cinder block painted dark chocolate, the name Isamu Noguchi an artful scrawl across the banners flapping loosely from poles high up the wall. We park by the entrance, and Mike points me in ahead of him. While he pretends to check out the postcards and leaflets, I ask at the front desk for Moriko. They direct me to another part of the museum. I look back to Mike; he folds his arms and turns his head. I am on my own.

The area where I eventually find Moriko is more like a garden than a room; the place is walled but open to the sky. A few sculptured stone pieces, Oriental abstract, are visible beneath long, waving palm fronds. Moriko is there by herself. A clipboard propped on one knee, she is crouching to examine a polished sphere of granite by the wall. Touching the stone, she makes a note. And I know at once that Mei Tan has not yet reached her. Her brother is dead and Moriko has not heard.

I take a moment with myself. Then I speak.

“Moriko?”

She looks up and takes a moment to recognize me in these unfamiliar surroundings.

“Sam?” she says, rising.

As I move toward her, she faces me squarely, and curious now, with friendly surprise, she offers me her hand. “Sam,” she says again, and she smiles.

“You wait much longer,” says Mike, taking in the situation at a glance when he comes up from the basement, “they’ll be closing the gates.”

He has joined me outside on the terrace, where I have been lingering for the past quarter hour. At the far end of the North Lawn, settled in the relative privacy and seclusion of the Eleanor Roosevelt memorial bench, Moriko Hatanaka sits alone. Since coming out from seeing her brother’s body, she has not moved from that place, and though I told Mike I was going to ask her our questions, I haven’t yet had the heart to intrude on Moriko’s grief. She sits absolutely still there, weeping.

“You want me to do it?” Mike asks me.

I tell him that I’ve just been giving her some time, that I’ll go down and speak with her now, but I make no immediate move to do that. We watch her a while longer, a lonely figure partially obscured by the trees.

“Seems like they were close. She could have something. You sure you don’t want me?” Mike gestures toward her.

No, I tell him again. Waving a hand back to the building, I suggest that Dr. Patel might have his report ready by now, then I descend the steps to the lawn.

Moriko doesn’t even glance at me when I join her, and after a moment she raises her handkerchief to her eyes. Barely an hour since we found her at the museum, and she seems to have aged years. Her shoulders are hunched, her head bowed. Most of her makeup is now on her handkerchief, and her cheeks glow moist and red. There are lines around her mouth; her eyes seem swollen.

Words, I think. What can anyone possibly say?

“Moriko. I am so sorry.”

She wipes her eyes and nods with an incongruous formality.

“You don’t have to stay here.”

“Your friend,” she tells me haltingly, “he said that I could help.”

Mike. Before I intervened, he had actually started quizzing her in the car on our way here from the museum.

“It’s possible. You might be able to pin down a few things.”

She makes a fist around her handkerchief. “I want to help.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it just now?”

She nods firmly, but I am not convinced. She looks dreadful.

“Okay, Moriko. But if you want to cut it short, go home, just say the word.” Leaning forward, I rest my elbows on my knees and clasp my hands. God, this really is so damn hard. I collect my thoughts a moment.

“There was an entry in Toshio’s calendar for last night. The Japan Society, seven-thirty. We don’t know if he got there.”

“He was there.”

“You wouldn’t know when he arrived or when he left?”

“Seven-thirty he came.”

“You’re certain?”

Moriko nods without hesitation. She explains that an exhibition was being opened, she was taking tickets at the door. Toshio was the first guest to arrive.

“Did he stay long?”

“Before nine, he left.”

“How long before?”

Moriko stares at the ivy that has begun a slow encroachment up the base of the carved slab in front of us. Eleanor Roosevelt’s memorial. She trawls her memories of last night.

“We were screening a movie,” she says finally. “Kurosawa. It started at nine. Toshio had left his briefcase in my office. He came and picked it up while the others were going in to the screening.”

“So just a few minutes before nine. That’s when he left.”

Moriko nods. She asks me if that helps us.

“Right now anything helps. Did Toshio say where he was going?”

“There was a function. The NGOs?” She casts a hand toward the UN buildings. “He said he was coming here.”

“Not home first?”

She shakes her head.

“Were you around his place at all yesterday?”

“No.”

I take out the note we found in Toshio’s mailbox. I ask if it means anything to her.

“‘I will see you tonight,’” she translates.

“Not your note?”

She shakes her head, she is obviously lost.

“Did he have a particular reason to go to the NGO function?” I ask, repocketing the note. “Anyone he mentioned he wanted to see?”

“He didn’t want to go. He was very tired. Always this last year, so tired.” She lowers her eyes; tears well again, and she raises her handkerchief. She really is not up to this. “What your friend thinks. Drugs. That is not Toshio.”

“That isn’t what Mike thinks. It’s not what any of us thinks, but we had to ask. How we found Toshio, the way it was laid out down there, Mike just had to ask you.”

“Toshio did not kill himself. He did not.”

An emphatic protest. So emphatic that for a second my lawyer’s reflex takes over. I find myself considering the possibility that Patrick’s initial theory—suicide—might be correct after all. But then, where is the missing pink file?

“Did Toshio give you anything for safekeeping recently, Moriko? Some papers or maybe a file?”

She shakes her head again.

Too much to hope for. But at least now we have a decent fix on one part of Toshio’s movements last night. Once Mike’s surveillance guys have finished running through the security tapes, we should have some idea of when Toshio arrived at the NGO function. The walk from the Japan Society premises on East Forty-seventh across to UNHQ takes less than five minutes. So if Toshio arrived much later than nine, it will mean he went somewhere else first. Around nine and he probably made his trip direct. A picture is at last taking shape.

“This might seem a little strange, but did Toshio ever give you any indication that he thought he was being watched?”

Moriko squints. “Here?”

“Anywhere. I mean, he never mentioned anything about surveillance, did he? Or any fears he had about anything he was doing?”

Moriko is silent.

“Had anyone threatened him?” I ask straight out.

“About his work, what he did, what he saw, those things—he never talked to me. You know, he was my big brother. He always thought he must look after me. Even now.” Her face tightens. A professional woman in her early sixties, married with grown children, grandchildren even, she remained a kid in the eyes of her brother. The strange and lifelong currents of a family. “I told him my problems. Always. He never wanted to bother me with his. To make me worry.”

“Outside of his work.” I gesture vaguely. “Was there anything—”

“All Toshio’s life was his work. You know how he was. Once a month he would come to dinner with my family. Sometimes to the Society. The rest, every day, it was his work. His whole life.” Her head drops, she covers her face. An unexpected chord. Regret. For Toshio’s all-absorbing commitment to his work, for the thousand daily sacrifices he made, and the lack, in the end, of any real private life of his own.

“Was he lonely?” I ask, a question that never crossed my mind when Toshio was alive.

“Sometimes, I think.” Moriko presses her handkerchief to her cheek. “I think he would have liked a family. A family of his own. With my sons he was always so good when they were boys.” She puts out her hand, indicating the height of her sons as children. And then memory takes hold. She tells me about Toshio and her sons; it seems she needs to do that, so I don’t interrupt her. Toshio, she says, was a favorite uncle. In the years when Moriko’s husband, a Texan, was frequently away on business, working his way up the ladder in the accounting firm he now runs, Toshio filled in, taking the boys to ball games, supervising excursions into the city. Happy times. Fond memories that quickly become too much for Moriko. She drops her head and presses her hands to her face again. “Oh, Toshio. Toshio,” she says, and when I lay an arm across her shoulders, she leans in to me, a gray-haired woman weeping as inconsolably as a child.

Sarah, I think. It comes on me that suddenly, some deep and painful echo tolling like a bell. Three years a widower and yet now my eyes moisten. I blink back tears. Sarah, I think, my wife.