Diplomatic Immunity (33 page)

I nod curtly.

“Well, we wanted him shut out, closed down. Only our lawyers couldn’t figure a way to bring the hammer down on the guy.”

“You’re too modest, Mr. Nagoya,” says Jennifer, and for the first time I sense her coolness toward him. She does not like this guy. “Mr. Nagoya and his team,” she tells me, “didn’t pay quite the attention they should have to their legal advice. The evidence they gathered against Lemtov is tainted.”

I look at her. She nods to the report. “It’s unusable.”

“It’s evidence,” says Nagoya.

“Not in court. Not a snowball’s chance in hell,” says Jennifer. “A phone tap at the Russian mission. At least three breaking and enterings. Mail tampering.”

“A guy like that,” Nagoya asserts, “it wasn’t easy.”

Jennifer addresses me. “At the end of July the FBI took what they knew to State.” The U.S. Department of State. “Washington dumped it on us.”

I turn that over. At the end of July Pascal was still scratching around the Special Committee paperwork, trying to figure out if it was Asahaki, Po Lin, or Lemtov who had misappropriated the UN money.

“And you just sat on it?”

“I went through the report half a dozen times,” she says. “If there’d been just one piece of evidence that wasn’t tainted—”

Nagoya snorts and turns his head.

“Three weeks ago I decided it was hopeless,” Jennifer says. “I recommended to the ambassador that the report should be passed to UN Legal Affairs. Bruckner gave it to O’Conner.”

Silence for a moment as I take this in. “Three weeks ago Patrick had this?”

“Count them. Twenty-one days.”

“I never saw it.”

“Obviously.”

We look at each other.

“Yesterday in the side chamber,” she says, “who did you think I was talking about?”

Understanding dawns, and I groan out loud. Not who I thought: not Patrick O’Conner. It was Lemtov she was accusing me of protecting.

“You weren’t exactly clear.”

“What was I meant to do, point at Lemtov and say ‘Arrest that man’?”

I put up a hand. The recriminations can wait, we still have Rachel’s handover to deal with. I grab the FBI report and beckon Jennifer as I turn to leave her office. “Not you,” I tell Nagoya when he attempts to join us. Jennifer instructs Nagoya to stay put, then follows me out.

“What feedback have you been getting from Patrick?” I ask, steering her to the elevators.

“Zero. Just like I told you Wednesday.”

Wednesday. When she summoned me to her office, when she was so pissed off with me and made that threat I never really understood. Last warning. Now, too late, I get it.

“You’ve been pushing Patrick all this time?”

“Like pushing string,” she says despairingly. “We gave him the Bureau report to use as a lever. Something to help him get Lemtov’s UN accreditation withdrawn. He kept telling us he was working on it. Then the Security Council vote was closing in. I guess we let the Lemtov thing slide. The next thing we know, Hatanaka’s dead, Asahaki’s back in Tokyo, and everyone’s speculating on some connection.” We get into the waiting elevator, I push the ground-floor button. “God,” she says, “Bruckner hit the roof. Then you let it slip that Hatanaka’s been investigating this fraud in the UNDCP Special Committee.”

“Of which Lemtov and Asahaki were both members,” I say.

“We knew one of them was a big-time crook. You knew it too, at least Patrick did. But instead of concentrating on Lemtov, you seemed to have it in for Asahaki. And that time you were wasting in Chinatown, what was that about?”

“So you guessed from the start that Lemtov was behind Toshio’s murder.”

“Not from the start. But when you mentioned the fraud, Hatanaka investigating that UNDCP Committee, well, come on. But it was only a guess, it still is. And we couldn’t do a damn thing about it anyway, our hands were tied.”

I make a sound. She knows what I’m thinking, how much her silence has cost.

“The moment I saw those statements this morning,” she says, “as soon as I was told what they wanted to do with Rachel, I called you.”

I lift my eyes to the elevator ceiling and clap a hand on my neck. Jesus, diplomacy. Everyone with his own little secret; everyone putting one over on the next guy, frightened the next guy’s putting one over on him. All so busy with the big game that they fail to notice a man like Lemtov among them. Their hands were tied. By which Jennifer means that they could not risk upsetting the Russians because the Russians with their permanent seat on the Security Council could have vetoed the ascension of the Japanese. International affairs, I think, shaking my head. Global politics, how goddamn grand.

“I couldn’t discuss it with you,” says Jennifer. “I gave Bruckner my word.”

I had, of course, assumed as much by now. And as a lawyer I guess I can even understand it. The USUN legal counsel could not be involved in this. However guilty Lemtov might be, if the Russians discovered that Jennifer had been acting hand in glove with the Secretariat, preparing a case against him, it could poison
U.S.-Russian relations at the UN for a generation. If the Russians ever asked her straight out if she’d ever discussed it with anyone in the Secretariat, she had to be able to look them in the eye and tell them no. The moral high ground. High ground that Jennifer surrendered the moment she called me this morning.

We alight from the elevator and move toward the front door. “How long can you delay the Homicide people?” I ask her.

“An hour. Maybe two. They’re due here any minute.”

While Jennifer keys in the code to unlock the front door, I look through the glass to UNHQ across the avenue. The guards are raising the last flags, the pale dawn light colors everything gray. Down in the basement, Rachel will be waking. Maybe Mike and Weyland are already telling her what the Headquarters Committee—what Lemtov—has done.

“I can have Bruckner phone Patrick,” Jennifer offers.

“No.”

“Won’t that help?”

“It won’t help me break Lemtov’s hold over the Headquarters Committee,” I tell her as she opens the door for me. Clutching the FBI report to my chest, I hurry out past her. “Delay Homicide as long as you can.”

“What are you going to do?” she calls after me.

I hit the sidewalk, then jog across First Avenue without looking back. The guards at the guardhouse greet me, say good morning. I lift my hand and jog on by. What am I going to do? Not so much a plan as the only option left open to me, a last desperate hope. I am going to try to free my daughter. I am going to try to use what I now know to dislodge Lemtov. My last hope is to make Lemtov run.

35

R
ACHEL HAS HEARD, I SEE THAT AT ONCE
.
SHE IS
wearing no makeup, her face is pale, and her red-rimmed eyes are bloodshot. She has on a baggy gray sweater, my old baseball cap, blue jeans, and sneakers, and she is holding a crumpled tissue in one hand. Weyland looks at me sympathetically as I cross to Rachel’s bunk and sit down beside her. For her sake, I try to smile reassuringly; my arm goes around her shoulders and I mumble the platitudes. I’m here. You’re okay.

“Eckhardt and the Tunku been down,” Weyland tells me. “They told Rachel the situation, gave her those statements.” He points to Rachel’s pillow, where a few loose, crumpled pages lie scattered. “I called Mike. He’s coming on down.”

“I didn’t tell them anything, Dad.” Easing away from me, Rachel wipes her eyes.

“You’ve read them?” I ask, nodding at the statements.

“It’s lies. All of it.” Tears gather.

“It doesn’t matter, Rache. Hey,” I say softly, “it’ll be okay.”

“No it won’t.”

I lay a hand on her knee, speechless.

“I’ve been telling Rachel,” Weyland says to me, “maybe it’s better like this, you know. U.S. justice. She’ll be better off outta here, could be.”

But Weyland is an ex–NYPD cop. He has seen too much of U.S. justice to be able to put any real conviction in his voice; his remarks leave an unintentionally somber air.

“Why are they saying this stuff?” Picking up one of the statements, Rachel tosses it aside, then sweeps all the statements off her bunk onto the floor. She hauls her legs onto the bunk, grips her ankles in her hands, and presses her heels against her butt. Her head lolls back against the wall. “This fucking place,” she says bitterly.

She is not referring to this room. She is referring to this whole place, the United Nations and all its members and functionaries. We are marshaled together beneath my daughter’s scorn.

“Did Jennifer get you?” she says. Then, seeing my surprise, she slides a hand beneath her pillow and brings out my cell phone. “She couldn’t get you at home. When she got through to me I gave her the number you called me from last night.” She hands me the phone. “Here,” she says.

I take the thing and pocket it, lips clamped tight. Then Mike arrives and takes in the scene: Rachel on the bunk with me, and Weyland, elbows resting on his knees, leaning toward us like a third member of the family.

“You’ve seen these?” Mike says to me, holding up what I guess must be another copied set of statements.

I squeeze Rachel’s shoulder. Hang in there, I tell her, then I lead Mike back out into the hall.

“So what did you say to the guy?” Mike turns on me the moment we’re alone. He is more than just unhappy, I see now; he is very pissed off. “Yesterday at the Russian mission. I told you, go careful. Tread easy. Jesus, didn’t you get the idea down at Brighton fucking Beach? Lemtov’s not a guy you go messing with.” He waves the statements at me; he obviously has no doubt who is behind them.

“Maybe I pushed him too hard.”

“That’s not what you told me yesterday.” Mike screws up his face. “You threatened him, right? Like I told you not to.” My look is all the answer he needs. “Get ahold of your girlfriend,” he advises. “Fast.”

I thrust the FBI report into Mike’s hands. “Lemtov’s been laundering money on a grand scale. The Bureau has known about it for months, and I got this courtesy of Jennifer.”

Mike looks from me down to the report, swearing softly. As he turns to the introduction, I guide him away from Rachel’s holding room.

“Remember that surveillance from the Sixteenth Precinct?”

Mike nods, thumbing the pages of the report, trying to wrap his mind around this, trying to see how it fits. I can see it’s a struggle.

“Here’s another one,” I tell him. “The guy who put that report together is the same guy who broke into my apartment.” Mike’s head rises quickly. “Agent Nagoya,” I say. “The FBI. And he was the one over at Pascal’s when I crashed my car.”

Mike thinks a moment. “The phone tap at Hatanaka’s?”

“Agent Nagoya.”

“Fuck.”

“It gets worse.” I point to the report in his hands. “That stuff is useless.” When I explain that the FBI has broken every rule in the book in order to obtain their evidence, Mike groans in dismay. “Here’s the kicker,” I tell him. “Patrick had it three weeks ago.”

Mike stares at me.

“I never saw it, Mike. I swear. Jennifer never told me. And neither did Patrick. It went from the Bureau to USUN. Bruckner gave it to Patrick three weeks ago, the first I heard was this morning.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

“USUN figured Patrick would get Lemtov’s diplomatic accreditation withdrawn.”

“And Patrick just sat on it?”

“Apparently.”

“That money-laundering conference in Basel,” he says, looking down at the report. “Lemtov and goddamn Patrick.”

We stop by the giant double doors of plate glass. On the far side, tourists wander from the souvenir shop laden with UN T-shirts and coffee mugs, then cross to the bookshop. A gang of schoolkids swarms past, clutching postcards and heading for the UN post office booth, a tiny and somewhat preposterous emblem of UNHQ’s territorial independence. Immediately to the front of us through the doors, a UN guard seems to be explaining to a couple of senior citizens that the cafeteria behind him is temporarily closed.

“Remember Patrick’s reaction Tuesday morning?”

Mike nods. “No forensics team. Suicide.”

“Later on I thought maybe he was covering for Asahaki. But look at it this way. Patrick knew Toshio and Pascal were going through some accounts down at the Portland Trust Bank. And this report—which Patrick had mid-August—this makes it plain that nearly twenty million bucks went into Lemtov’s account there. BB7. The same account the defrauded UN money disappeared into.”

“You said that account was Asahaki’s.”

“Maybe Lemtov and Asahaki both had access, that’s not important. The point is, what if Patrick really was involved with Lemtov.”

“He would have told Lemtov about the report.”

“And he would have told him what Toshio was doing. Lemtov knew the kind of guy Toshio was. He would have been more worried about Toshio than he was about the FBI. If Toshio could prove the defrauded UN money went into BB7, Toshio could eventually subpoena the account details. Legitimate access. Once that happened, Lemtov wouldn’t just have his UN accreditation withdrawn, the Bureau would have legally solid evidence they could use against him too. Lemtov wouldn’t have let that happen, he would have dealt with it. Not necessarily how Patrick intended.”

“So Lemtov had Toshio murdered, then just hung around here?” Mike is not so sure that I’ve got this right.

“Listen.” Taking Mike’s arm, I turn him back down the hall. “In less than two hours Rachel’s going to be charged with murder. We can’t afford to wait till we’ve crossed all the t’s. We’ve got what we’ve got. Now we just have to use it.”

He gives me a sideways look. We, he says.

“I need your help, Mike. You and Weyland both.”

“We can’t release her.”

“I don’t want you to.”

He grunts in surprise.

“If you release her now, she either stays in the UN grounds and gets picked up by Eckhardt and handed over to the NYPD, or she leaves the UN grounds and becomes a fugitive. Releasing her now won’t help. I want her moved, Mike. Get Weyland to take her across to the Secretariat building, the conference rooms, anywhere around the grounds, but move her.”

“That’s doable,” he concedes, “but what’s the point?”

“If Lemtov hears Rachel’s been released, that some real evidence has turned up on the real people behind Hatanaka’s murder—”

“He’s not gonna buy that from you.”

“He’s not going to hear it from me.”

We stop outside Rachel’s room, B29. I take the FBI report from Mike. “I’m going to dump this on Patrick. Along with the news that you’ve released Rachel. If Patrick comes down here with Lemtov to check, she can’t be here.”

Mike turns that over. “Patrick tells Lemtov, plus word’s out on the Bureau report—that’s gonna rattle Lemtov’s cage, make him disappear?”

When I nod, Mike squints. He does not like it.

I point west, in the direction of USUN. “The Homicide cops are probably in Jennifer’s office. So unless you’ve got a better idea right now, this is it.”

Mike considers it a second. Then, shaking his head, he shoulders open Rachel’s door, and while he goes and instructs Weyland to retune the walkie-talkie and get ready to move, I squat down by Rachel. I rest a hand on her knee.

“We’re going to try to flush out the guy behind those,” I tell her, indicating the crumpled statements on the floor. “It won’t be easy, but we’re going to try.”

“You know who it is?”

“We’re not sure. Maybe. What matters is, you stick with Weyland. Do what he tells you. Go where he says.”

“They’re letting me go?”

“Not yet.” I glance over my shoulder. Mike has finished with Weyland; he signals to me with a jerk of his head toward the door.

Squeezing Rachel’s knee, I stand. And when she looks up at me, I see that her red-rimmed eyes have taken on a quickened light of hope. But a hope that has not displaced her fear.

“I have to go, Rache.” She nods apprehensively. Before I can say more, Mike takes my elbow and guides me out the door.

In the elevator I hit the button for thirty-five, Patrick’s floor. Mike reaches past me and hits the button for his own floor.

“You’re a schmuck,” he tells me.

I face him.

“You’ve forgotten Brighton Beach?” he says. “You don’t speak to these guys without some backup.”

“This isn’t Brighton Beach.”

“Go tell that to Hatanaka.”

“I haven’t got time to round up a damn posse, Mike.”

“I am the damn posse,” he says. “And when this thing’s over, we’re gonna be needing some kind of evidence. You ain’t going anywhere till we got you wired.”