“The vote’s over,” I say, rising. I tell Patrick that I’m going up to get Rachel.
“Not yet you’re not. You’re wanted in the side chamber.” Patrick gestures to the far exit through which Bruckner and Lady Nicola are disappearing. The French ambassador, Froissart, hurries to join them. “And when you’re done explaining yourself and your cockass investigation to them, you can come upstairs and explain yourself to me.”
“Give Mike the word, he’ll have Weyland let Rachel go.”
Patrick turns. “This is the word, Mike. You release the Windrush girl before this bastard comes to my office and I’ll have you fired.” With this final shot, Patrick pivots on his heel and goes.
“Man’s full of shit,” Mike remarks quietly. “Once he’s cooled down, he’ll let her go. Probably be out before you’re even finished in the side chamber.” He bundles together the files, handing me the one on the money laundering conference in Basel. “You take this. I’ll dump the rest in the library.” Then his eyes focus on something behind me, and I turn.
Lemtov. He is descending the steps to the main floor, deep in conversation with the wizened but irrepressible figure of the Tunku. The Tunku, the chairman of the UNHQ Committee, Turtle Bay’s number-one troublemaker and pain in the neck. They remain locked in private discussion as they veer toward the exit. Lemtov and the Tunku. Not a combination I care for, and judging by his expression, neither does Mike.
“She’ll be out by the time you’re done,” he says, hitching files beneath his arm. Then, moving off into the stream of delegates, he tosses me a few even more improbable words of encouragement. “Give ’em hell.”
29
A
SMOKY FOG IS BUILDING FAST WHEN I ARRIVE
IN THE
Security Council side chamber. I close the door behind me, then turn. The faces that greet me along either side of the table are grave. The perm five ambassadors again, each with one sidekick apiece. Lemtov is here. Jennifer is backup for Bruckner. Judging by the looks I am getting, this is not intended to be any kind of genial inquiry. When I nod to Lady Nicola, trusting in some human connection from that quarter at least, I receive a distinctly flinty stare. She gestures to the empty seat at the end of the table.
“When you’re ready, Mr. Windrush.”
Oh, Lord, I think. The air seems to thicken, as if the collective anger gathered in the room has found its true focus. I draw up the chair and brace myself. My role here is now clear to me. I am the whipping boy.
“Are you going to tell us,” asks Froissart, gesturing with his cigarette, the smoke swirling upward, “that Ambassador Asahaki murdered Special Envoy Hatanaka?”
“I don’t know that,” I reply.
He moans. Cheap theatrics.
“It might help,” I tell him evenly, “if Ambassador Asahaki could find the time to come and see me now that he’s returned.”
“Your investigation has been incompetent.”
“I don’t accept your judgment.”
“I am not alone, Monsieur Windrush.” Froissart casts a glance around the table. No one disagrees. Then he slides into French, making general remarks on my ineptitude, and I feel my temperature start to rise. When he utters the word
imbécile,
it soars.
“What?” I rock forward in my chair, unable to contain myself.
Lady Nicola intervenes. “The Council has a number of questions to put to you. Ample opportunity will be given for you to explain yourself, I do assure you.”
Alone of the faces at the table, Jennifer keeps her gaze averted. Her forehead rests in one hand as she doodles in her notepad.
Walk out, I think. Walk out, go and get Rachel, then leave. Here I am in the Security Council side chamber, international diplomacy’s holy of holies, a place in the service of which I have spent the better part of my career, and it is not respect I feel but something more like disgust. Lemtov I would not trust with a nickel. Chou En represents a regime that has probably had one of his own closest colleagues summarily executed. Bruckner is here at the UN solely because it might launch him as a serious gubernatorial contender, and Froissart has the usual Gallic chip on his shoulder about his country’s steadily declining role in global affairs. To top it all, Lady Nicola has sensed the mood and seems content to preside over whatever drubbing the others wish to inflict upon me.
Rise, I think. Depart this Kafkaesque temple.
But, of course, I do not. Because I know that if I get up now and leave, that would finish the investigation; without my involvement, all support for a proper inquiry into Toshio’s death would wither. The truth would never be uncovered. Most of them would be only too pleased to let Patrick draw a line under the whole mess with a verdict of suicide; at least one of them, I think, would be hugely relieved. But I do not intend to let Patrick do that. Forced back on the hard core of myself, the bedrock of my being, I find that Patrick was right all along: My essential self really has just stepped off the
Mayflower.
Like the Founding Fathers, I remain, in spite of every kind of assault on my faith, a believer, a seeker after that new world where truth and justice will finally prevail. A place where eighteen-year-old girls are not used as hostages, where the murder of a good man is not just an inconvenient political fact but an act of sacrilege fit to make the heavens weep. I want what I wanted when I first came to Turtle Bay: the dream of the sages, a fair and just world. And I see now what I guess Toshio always knew, that the path leading through the Security Council side chamber simply will not get us there.
That is why I do not rise and leave. Why I fold my arms and remain silent while Chou En, the Chinese ambassador, picks up where Froissart left off, venting his spleen.
After a few minutes of battering from the Sino-French tag team, with the occasional intervention from the Brits in the guise of Lady Nicola, Lemtov leans his bulk forward. With his superior command of the English language, he has evidently been delegated by his ambassador to deliver the kicking I am to receive from Mother Russia. Lemtov rests both forearms on the table.
“Is it true you have been investigating Wang Po Lin?”
“Among others.”
“And you have found?”
“It’s been inconclusive,” I say, surprised at this turn.
Chou En cocks his head, not sure that he likes this either. But Lemtov gives him no chance to interrupt.
“Is it true there is evidence Po Lin was defrauding the United Nations?”
An earthquake hits. The heavy pine table jolts sideways as Chou En lurches to his feet, pointing across the table at Lemtov and denouncing him in ripely abusive English. Untroubled, Lemtov glances at me and lifts a brow: It is just as he told me. Po Lin has definitely gone to the wall. When Lady Nicola finally convinces Chou En to sit down, she attempts to placate the man by offering him another free shot at me. He waves the offer aside and sits there brooding. So Lady Nicola turns to Bruckner.
“Mr. Ambassador?”
Bruckner touches Jennifer’s arm and nods in my direction. She lifts her eyes from her pad, pursing her lips.
No, I think. Please, no.
She does hesitate, I must give her that. Jennifer Dale hesitates. But only a second, then she straightens the papers in front of her, steels herself, and faces me. All my internal organs seem to clench. I have a sudden memory of Myra Barclay, a student at Columbia who was playing state’s witness when Professor Cranbourne invited Jennifer to do the cross. Myra ended the session in tears and dropped out of law the next week. Cranbourne gave Jennifer a distinction.
“Mr. Windrush,” Jennifer starts right in, “we’re not satisfied your investigation has been pressed with proper vigor or with due consideration to the circumstances. Would you like to comment on that?”
“No.”
“You saw the vote?”
“Yes.”
“No comment at all?”
“No.”
“Don’t you think the Secretariat owes the Japanese delegation an apology?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Ap-ol-o-gy,” she mouths slowly, a touch of heavy-handed sarcasm appreciated by Froissart, who smiles.
Setting my jaw tightly, I ask Jennifer, “Apology for what?”
“You’re not a fool, Mr. Windrush.”
“I’m beginning to wonder.”
Jennifer’s eyes flicker down, the only sign she recognizes my remark as personal. No one else seems to notice.
“Unsubstantiated allegations were made by you people against Ambassador Asahaki,” she continues. “Serious allegations. And you refused him proper right of reply.”
“That’s not true. I invited the ambassador to answer some questions. His reply was to get on the next plane out to Tokyo. That was his choice, not mine.”
“You believe that he was treated fairly?”
“Under the circumstances.”
“No regrets?”
“I regret that he chose to leave, if that’s what you mean.”
She fixes me with a look. “It wasn’t.”
Hard and pushy. Never give a sucker an even break. Her inquisitorial method has not changed since college days, a realization that brings a brief, baleful smile to my face.
“The situation amuses you, Mr. Windrush?”
At this cheap shot, our eyes lock. At last she glances down at her papers.
“You haven’t established any connection whatsoever between Hatanaka’s death and this fraud you’re alleging Ambassador Asahaki perpetrated, have you?”
“Alleging,” I interrupt, “on the basis of sound material proof.”
“Which the Security Council hasn’t seen.”
“The Security Council isn’t a court of law.” I turn to the other faces at the table, aware that I am dealing with very large and touchy egos here. Aware that some measure of deference has to be paid. “Look, I’m not claiming we’ve been perfect, but considering the situation we were placed in, we haven’t done too badly. My job, the way I see it, is to find Hatanaka’s murderer. It isn’t my job to keep the entire General Assembly happy. Find Toshio’s murderer—that’s my job. That’s what I’m trying to do. And I’m doing it the best I can, and I don’t think I should have to apologize for that.”
The expressions around the table remain grim. After the debacle of the vote, no one here is in any kind of mood for a reasoned debate.
“So you’re unrepentant,” Jennifer presses.
I tell her, in carefully measured tones, that I don’t believe I have anything to be repentant about.
“As usual, the Secretariat can do no wrong?”
“As usual, Ms. Dale, the Secretariat has an extremely difficult task to carry out with extremely limited resources at its disposal.”
She looks at me as if she is sighting me down a gun barrel. “If you’re not up to the job, maybe you should consider stepping aside.”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t.” Then I ask her—and by implication everyone else at the table—if she has forgotten Article 100 of the UN Charter. “Or don’t you think that applies here? You think you have some special immunity?”
“Mr. Windrush—”
I speak right over her, quoting from memory. “‘Each member of the United Nations undertakes to respect the exclusively international character of the responsibilities of the Secretary-General and the staff and not seek to influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities.’ Each member,” I repeat. “And last time I looked, the U.S.A. was still a member. Despite not paying this year’s dues.”
A low blow that makes Bruckner wince. The Russian ambassador smiles into his notes, but Lady Nicola immediately zeroes in on the quote.
“You’re not suggesting that the Security Council has acted improperly.”
Exactly what I am doing, of course. Contrary to their Charter obligations, they are attempting to lean on me. But I have been a Turtle Bay bureaucrat long enough to recognize a line being drawn in the sand.
“I’m not suggesting that at all. I was just pointing out that this whole thing hasn’t been easy. It’s been extremely difficult. Difficult for everyone.”
Partially appeased, Lady Nicola nods as if I have made a concession. But Jennifer just shuffles her papers. I cannot be the only one who hears her mutter “Crap.”
Then Jennifer lifts her head. “You’re so interested in Article 100, Mr. Windrush, do you happen to recall the first paragraph?” Before I can respond, she reads it aloud from her notepad. “‘In the performance of their duties the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receive instructions from any government or any other authority external to the Organization. They shall refrain from any action which might reflect on their position as international officials responsible only to the Organization.’”
“I’m familiar with it,” I say, thinking: She had that prepared, where is this going now?
“Really. You surprise me.”
But Article 100 is drummed into everyone in the Secretariat, a big thou-shalt-not of our world. The surprise would be if I didn’t know it, and I say so.
“What surprised me was your cheek,” she says.
Bruckner dips his head in agreement; he seems pleased with how his protégée is sticking it to me. I am stung, naturally, but more than that, bewildered. Cheek?
“You’re familiar with it,” says Jennifer. “Presumably you understand what it means. Yet you sit there—your investigation, frankly, a shambles, the necessary reform of this Council comprehensively wrecked—and you have the cheek to quote Article 100 at us? After the investigation you’ve led? I’m surprised you’re willing to own up to even a passing acquaintance with that particular paragraph of the Charter, Mr. Windrush.”
Her look now is direct and accusatory. My gut suddenly contracts, my pulse races. Because at last I have gotten the unspoken message. She is telling me that my position has been compromised, and she is right, it has. By Patrick O’Conner. By the pressure he has applied on me through Rachel’s detention. But isn’t what Patrick wanted—Asahaki’s return—what she wanted too? And how in the world does she know what’s been going on between me and Patrick?
“Can you honestly say the Secretariat has handled this investigation impartially?” she asks me.
“Yes.” As if I could say anything else.
“Full and fair use has been made of all the information that came into your hands?”
“Yes.”
“No base left untouched?”
“I don’t see what you’re driving at.”
“Then let me enlighten you.” She clasps her hands together on the table. All eyes are turned to her now; the persistence and aggression of Jennifer’s attack on me seems to have surprised everyone except Bruckner. They summoned me here to vent their spleen, to kick the dog, but Jennifer has upped the ante. If I did not know better, I would say that she is gunning for my career. “Have you omitted,” she asks me, “a proper investigation of any suspect in your inquiry because you thought such a proper investigation might be impolitic?”
The air seems solid. My mouth, for a moment, refuses to open. Without naming names, she has found a way to ask me if I have soft-pedaled a part of my inquiry. And I have, the part that led to Patrick. Confronted by my boss, she is accusing me of acting contrary to the spirit of the Charter, she is saying that I intentionally stepped off the gas.
“I beg your pardon?” she says, touching her ear.
God is my witness, I have never hit a woman. Sometimes I argued with Sarah but nothing more than the occasional spats of a marriage, disagreements passing as suddenly as they flared. With Rachel my arguments these past few years have often been loud, but the real heat on these occasions has always been directed at me. But what I am feeling at this moment is something way different. I am not just angry. The blood sings in my ears, my eyes close. My daughter is a hostage. And this woman I made love to less than forty-eight hours ago is turning me on a spit, roasting me in front of this select audience for the crime of not opening fire on the man who has my daughter in his power. I see it there in my head: I hit Jennifer Dale hard.