Diplomatic Immunity (18 page)

“Wha you want?” he snaps, facing me.

“We’re doing a survey in this area—”

“No, no.” He waves both hands at me. “Go. Finish.”

“Could I speak to the owner?”

“Speak to nobody. I am the owner.”

“Your investors?”

He blinks vigorously behind his eyeglasses, then shoots a mouthful of Chinese to the youth behind the counter. The young man stands up straight now, alert, and looks me over. The kid is small, but I have the impression that beneath the counter his hands are reaching for some hidden weapon. He has a chance to redeem himself. Whitey, I sense, is about to be thrown out on his ear.

“Go,” Kwok says to me. Not polite, and not a request.

Then I hear a metallic clang beneath the counter. The kid looks down to his hidden hands, then back up to me. His eyes are glazed. I realize that he is tripping, that this probably is a very wise moment for me to make my exit. So, sidling past the ticket booth, I dip my head at Kwok, then depart quickly.

“Yo!” Mike shouts as I hit the street. He beckons me from the corner. “Anything?” he asks when I join him.

“The place is a fleabag. If Po Lin sunk a million bucks into it, he’s lost his dough.” I dab at my face with a handkerchief. “Oh, yeah, and did I mention I nearly got my head kicked in?”

“Like that.”

“Yeah. Like that.”

When I tell him about Theater Kwok’s unduly aggressive response to my mere presence and few queries, Mike turns thoughtful.

“Dry Goods Kwok wasn’t much better,” he tells me.

“You got nothing?”

“Zip.”

We look at each other. We have wasted almost two hours on this excursion.

“You go on back,” Mike says at last. “I’ll be along in a while.”

Mike gazes back down the street toward the Kwok brothers’ establishments; he has a certain glint in his eye. The last time I saw that glint he was removing a doped-up protester from the UN North Lawn. The protester was wielding a bottle. Mike’s hand had to be stitched up later, but the protester was hospitalized for a week.

“Mike.” He faces me, and I say, “Don’t give Patrick any reason to take your balls off.” When he smiles, I touch his lapel. “Or mine.”

He nods and backs away from me down the sidewalk. As he turns in to the passing stream of pedestrians, I hear him whistling the first plaintive bars of “Blue Moon.”

19

“D
ID SHE SAY WHAT SHE WANTED?
”
“Just that she wanted to see you,” Elizabeth, my secretary, replies, taking another bite from her pastry and chewing as she speaks. “Some guard brought her upstairs. He said she was Toshio’s sister.” She shrugs; she wants me to know that she is not to blame for this deviation from regular security procedure. A Brit, at least fifty pounds overweight, groomed like a bag lady, Elizabeth is, at forty-three years of age, resentfully unmarried. This could be her personal motto. I am not to blame.

Now I lean through the door to look down the hall to where Moriko Hatanaka is standing outside Toshio’s locked office. She has a large scroll that looks like a map tucked beneath her arm, and she appears to be reading the keep-out message that has been taped to her brother’s office door.

“How long’s she been waiting?”

“Few minutes.” Elizabeth goes on to inform me around a mouthful of pastry that I have had two calls from Jennifer Dale; apparently I have been expected over at USUN for an hour. “And this one’s been calling too,” she says, holding up her notepad for me to read. J. Martinez. Juan. I instruct Elizabeth to call Jennifer, let her know I have been delayed, then I gather myself a moment before stepping out into the hall.

Moriko smiles sadly as she takes my hand. An awkward moment, I’m not quite sure what to say to her. But then, recalling just how much I grew to dislike the endlessly repeated assurances of sympathy after Sarah’s death, I simply return Moriko’s sad smile and guide her into my office.

“Can I get you something? Coffee?”

“This won’t take that long. I know you are busy.”

She is, I am relieved to see, in control of herself. Her makeup has been meticulously applied, her gray skirt and jacket are both crisply pressed. Only her eyes give any hint of the depth of her sorrow. All other outward signs of grief have been temporarily erased. A gutsy lady.

“I want to make the arrangements,” she tells me, “for Toshio’s body.”

Propping myself against the desk, I fold my arms. “You don’t have to deal with that immediately. Give it a few days.”

“Toshio wanted his body returned to Japan.”

I nod. I tell her that shouldn’t be a problem.

She offers to bring me a copy of Toshio’s will to prove that this was Toshio’s wish, but I wave the offer aside. If Moriko says that’s what Toshio wanted, I believe her; besides, she is next of kin. And in truth I am not really surprised by this last wish of Toshio’s. For all his internationalist credentials, Toshio remained at the core very deeply Japanese. Falling leaves return to their roots. The old saw.

“It’ll take us a few days to arrange.” Reaching for a pad and pen, I inquire if she has anyone lined up to handle things at the Japanese end.

“There is a funeral parlor.”

Pen poised, I ask for the name. When Moriko hesitates, I look up. “Are you really sure you want to do this now?”

She smiles. “I was just going to say that the Japanese consulate has offered to do all this for me.”

“At the Japanese end.”

“Here too. Everything.”

I take a moment with that. “The consulate offered to fly Toshio’s body to Japan? To make all the arrangements?”

“When they called, they said that would be easiest. I came here only to see when you could let them take Toshio.” She looks down. “His body.”

When they called. They said.
“They approached you?”

She nods again.

“When did they call?”

“This morning.” Moriko looks at me askance now, suddenly aware that something is going on that she has missed. Is still missing. “I agreed to let them arrange everything. Won’t that be all right?”

“And they asked you to come up here.”

“Yes.”

“To hurry up the release of the body.”

“They said it would help.”

I drop my gaze. These goddamn people. The Japanese Foreign Ministry. Asahaki. Whoever else is behind this cheap and tactless ploy. Even grief, the loss of a dearly loved brother, has not put Moriko off limits. They want Toshio’s body removed from UNHQ, my investigation closed; and though Moriko does not know it, they have attempted to use her as the emotional lever to prize her brother loose. At last I raise my eyes.

“I’ll make sure the body’s released to the Japanese consulate as soon as that’s possible, Moriko. But despite what they may have led you to believe, that’s unlikely to happen before the weekend. More likely sometime next week.”

“Not sooner?”

“I can’t.”

She is clearly disappointed, but she knows I would not be refusing her request without good reason. In the end she makes no objection, simply bows her head in acceptance. And then she seems to remember the scroll that she has been holding all this time. She takes it from under her arm.

“This is something Toshio did,” she tells me, tugging at the red ribbon, unrolling the thing. “He did it Monday night. I thought there would be somewhere here at the UN to hang it. As a memory.”

“A picture?”

“Calligraphy.”

A hobby, as I now recall, of Toshio’s. Four vertical lines of kanji in thick black ink trail down the fibrous handmade-paper scroll. When I glance at Moriko, she gives me an impromptu translation.

“‘Just like the grass in the wind, the same now are the hopes and plans of the ancient generals.’”

“Bashō” I say.

Moriko turns to me in amazement. And I am more than a little surprised myself. Crossing to the shelf behind my desk, I pull down a thin volume.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
By Bashō. Rejoining Moriko, I search for the page.

“We went to Toshio’s apartment Tuesday morning. This book was on his bedside table.” Locating the page, I open it out next to the scroll. “It’s the same poem he’s marked here, isn’t it?”

Moriko inspects the page in the book. After a second she nods. “But that is not Toshio’s writing.” She indicates the purple ink jottings in the book.

I flip back to the flyleaf and show her the kanji there. She translates again.

“‘Two men may disagree yet not be enemies.’” She points. “And there is a date. July this year. It is a gift to Toshio.”

“Who from?”

Her finger slides down the kanji. “Bunzo Asahaki.”

My head rises. A gift from Bunzo Asahaki to Toshio. I do not get this at all.

“And it was Ambassador Asahaki who asked Toshio to write this,” Moriko remarks, puzzled, touching the calligraphy on the scroll.

I look at her. “Monday night?”

She nods. No big thing.

“Monday night where?” I ask her.

“At the Society,” she says. The Japan Society. “The ambassador was our guest of honor. He opened the Kurosawa festival for us.”

Oh, God. How in the world did we miss this? Taking the note from my pocket
—I will see you tonight—
I hold it up by the kanji in the flyleaf. She squints; she remembers the unsigned note I showed her yesterday. And I do not even have to ask her my question.

“The same handwriting,” she says. “The note is from Ambassador Asahaki.”

Taking the scroll from Moriko, I lay it by the Bashō on my desk. Then I clasp her shoulders and ease her into a chair. “Monday night. Whatever you can remember. Anything you heard Toshio and Asahaki say to each other. Anything they did. This could be a huge help to us, Moriko.”

Perplexed by my intensity, she frowns. “If I knew it was so important—”

“Just remember now. Whatever you can.”

She thinks a moment. “Ambassador Asahaki was late,” she says. “He didn’t stay long. He spoke with Toshio five minutes, not more.”

“Did they argue?”

She drops her gaze, trying to recall. “No. They were just talking. I remember I was annoyed at Toshio. We needed the ambassador to make the opening speech for the festival. Instead, he was talking with my brother.”

“You didn’t overhear anything?”

When she shakes her head apologetically, I gesture to the scroll. I ask her what that was all about.

“After the ambassador opened the festival, I asked Toshio to do some calligraphy. To hang in the lobby during the festival. Toshio was always happy to do that, he liked to make a show. When Toshio asked everyone what he should write, the ambassador made a suggestion.”

“That poem?”

She nods. I fetch the book and open it at the flyleaf.
Two men may disagree yet not be enemies.
I speak the words aloud.

“Does that mean anything to you, Moriko?” I gesture to the scroll. “Any of this?”

“Ambassador Asahaki’s family is well known in Japan. An old military family. Toshio did not like these kind of people. The Japanese military. Never.” Not news by now. Not after the campaign Toshio was running against the Japanese seat. Moriko looks down at the kanji on the flyleaf. “Here I think the ambassador was asking Toshio for less hate. Disagreement, yes. But not enemies.”

Back in July, I think. When they were already at loggerheads over the Japanese seat on the Council, when Toshio knew about the Special Committee fraud but before he had conclusively pinned it on Asahaki.

“And on Monday night?” I ask, nodding to the scroll.

“You must see,” says Moriko, evidently surprised by my failure to connect the dots.

But frankly I do not see. While she has made the deduction instinctively, to me the barrier of an alien culture remains impenetrable. Two grown men exchanging poems is not a social act with which I can claim any acquaintance. At last Moriko spells it out for me.

“On Monday night Toshio wrote out this poem the ambassador suggested to him. The same poem from that book.”

She sees that I am still lost, still floundering.

“On Monday night,” she says, “Toshio accepted what Ambassador Asahaki wrote in July. ‘Two men may disagree yet not be enemies.’” She lays a hand on the scroll. “On Monday night,” Moriko tells me, choosing her words carefully, “Toshio and Ambassador Asahaki became ‘not enemies.’”

Jennifer Dale is mad at me. It isn’t just that the marine guard from the lobby has brought me upstairs, clearly under orders; there are other signs too. Like the look I get now from Jennifer’s young personal assistant as he walks me to her office. He opens the door and announces me, then quickly retreats.

“You have a report for me?” Jennifer asks tightly as I enter. She carries on editing the page on her desk, her ire permeating the air around her.

“Verbal,” I offer, closing the door at my back.

“Fine.” She moves on to the next page in the stack. “Written copy by eight tonight.”

“Jennifer.”

“If it’s an excuse, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Hey,” I say softly. When she finally raises her eyes from her work, I make the sign with my hands: time-out.

She considers me a moment, then takes off her reading glasses, stylish lozenge-shaped steel frames, and eases her head back. With one hand she massages her neck. “What am I meant to do, Sam? Wag my tail?”

Leaning onto her forearms, she studies her glasses contemplatively. I know how she feels. Since last night at the Waldorf we seem to have been traveling a steadily downward slope, an uncomfortable journey that neither of us wanted and which is apparently not over yet. The interplay of our professional lives has turned serious, the playful frisson of the past few months sliding into real friction. I direct my gaze to the State Department eagle on the wall; the pair of crossed U.S. flags, banners half unfurled.

“The ambassador doesn’t believe you’re cooperating with us fully,” she says. “And I agree with him.”

“We’re doing our best to be cooperative within the bounds of our own responsibilities.”

She pulls a face: bullshit.

Bending forward, I press a finger down on her desk. “When we needed to cross into U.S. territory, I called you, Jennifer.”

“I’m not an answering service. You don’t just dump your message on me, then go off and do what you like. That’s not how this was meant to work.”

An unguarded remark, not like Jennifer. Which suggests that the numbers for tomorrow’s vote might not be looking too good, that Bruckner is not too happy. She glances from her desk to the door, trying to focus on something other than me.

“No?” I say. “So how was it meant to work? You keep tabs on what we’re doing, then interfere when we look like we’re screwing up Bruckner’s plans?”

“I don’t have the time,” she mutters. She puts on her glasses, pulls a blank sheet onto her blotter, then uncaps a pen. “The ambassador wants to know what you’ve been up to. And I need to know how often you intend to flit in and out of U.S. jurisdiction.”

“I’ve just had Toshio’s sister up in my office.”

“Mmm?”

“Your friends at the Japanese consulate sent her over. A grieving woman. Just to hurry up the release of Toshio’s body.”

“Did it work?”

“No.”

“Pity,” she says.

She is even madder than I thought. But I am not exactly overjoyed with how this is going either, so I forgo any attempt at explanation. I simply take Pascal Nyeri’s letter from my briefcase and hand it to her as I make my request.

“We need access to the financial records of these companies.” The companies from Marie Lefebre’s list.

Curious now, Jennifer reads the letter, then glances up. “Is this anything to do with the dirt Hatanaka was throwing at Ambassador Asahaki?”

“Is our request for assistance granted or denied?”

“It’s under consideration,” she decides, finishing the letter. She chews it over a second, then jots a note to herself. “Maybe when you’re a little more forthcoming as to why you need the information, I’ll reach a decision. Now, what were you doing in Chinatown?”

“Secretariat business.”

“Not funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

She swears beneath her breath.

“Are you mad at me personally, Jennifer? Or just at the job I’m doing?”

“There’s a difference?”

“You seemed to think so last night.”

“Don’t give me that.” Rising suddenly, she shoves back her chair and snatches her purse from the desk. “I’ve been waiting for you nearly two hours. Ten minutes ago I got a call from Stephen saying he couldn’t pick up Ben like he’s arranged. So here I am, the vote tomorrow, Bruckner going crazy, and I have to go explain to Ben why his father’s not taking him to the movies like he promised. Believe me, Sam. Between you and Stephen, the man thing is not big with me right now.” Moving toward the door, she adds, “And you better reconsider how cooperative you’re being, or this arrangement is terminated. I’ll redirect you to the Headquarters Committee.”