5
“Z
ERO POINTS FOR FUCKING SECURITY,
”
MIKE MUTTERS WHEN
I join him in Toshio’s office. He gestures to the door behind me. “Wasn’t even locked.”
“Does Patrick know you’re up here?”
Mike shrugs; the answer, I presume, is no. Then he starts apologizing for accidentally spilling the beans to Rachel, but I wave that off, explaining that I’ve told her to keep it quiet. Mike accepts that with a rueful nod, then we stand a moment, contemplating our surroundings.
“I’ve already had a quick look around,” I admit, lifting my chin toward the desk and shelves.
“Yeah? For what?”
“Suicide note.”
“No joy?”
When I turn my head, Mike’s eyes sweep the room. “Don’t tell me. Suicide’s Patrick’s theory, right?”
When I concede that it is, Mike grunts. Between him and Patrick the chemistry has always been bad, any contact between them abrasive. And Mike does not seem in the least inclined to put whatever differences they have aside in order to deal more effectively with this disaster.
“Patrick tell you to leave the door unlocked?”
“I left it like I found it, Mike. It was unlocked when I came in, I left it like that when I went out. Nothing to do with Patrick.”
He steps a little farther into the room. In size the office isn’t much different from mine, and the same shelves are stacked with books and files. But there are no family photos on the desk and there isn’t even a poster to break those blank expanses of white wall that aren’t covered by shelving. There are no windows either; that more than anything gives the room a cramped, somewhat claustrophobic feel. This isn’t, frankly, the kind of place in which you would expect a UN special envoy to spend his working day. And in truth, though Toshio has had this office for at least five years, it was never more than a convenient base to him; unlike everyone else on this floor, he has never spent much time at his desk. My own impression of this room when I first saw it some years back was that it was ostentatiously austere for someone so senior. Over the years, however, I have come to see that Toshio’s indifference to the trappings of power was absolutely sincere and not, as more than one resident cynic believed, a calculated front that concealed a vaulting ambition.
Mike’s eyes run over the piles of paper, the notebooks, and the other everyday jumble on the desktop.
“So whadda we seeing here?” he asks me.
Nothing out of the ordinary, I tell him. It looks just like always: Toshio’s innate tidiness and sense of order fighting a losing battle against the workload overflowing his optimistically small in box.
“Like always?”
Nodding, I thumb through the tray. Mike asks me how often I come in here.
“When Toshio’s around? Once or twice a day.”
“Work?”
“Mostly.” Toshio, I explain, got VIP treatment from my department. Normally the requests for legal opinions that come to me are matters of no real importance. We have scores of lawyers in UN Legal Affairs, yet I still find myself signing off on proposed wordings of nonbinding agreements that will probably never even make it to the peripheral committee meetings for which they are putatively intended. But the legal problems of UN envoys I have always taken seriously, handled personally whenever I could. Out getting their hands dirty in the world, dealing with intractable problems of large and deadly consequence, they need our help, a need that is often all too real.
Mike starts rifling through Toshio’s desk drawers. “I took another look at that grille downstairs. No way someone used it. Dust all the way back in the chute, and it’s too small.”
“So if it’s murder, whoever we’re looking for came through the door?”
“If?” says Mike.
I ask him about the security tapes. What are the chances, I wonder, that Toshio’s murderer knew he wasn’t being recorded?
“I got someone out trying to round up the maintenance crew, three guys. I’ll be interviewing them soon as they come in.”
“Do we know who had keys to the basement rooms?”
“Apart from the guards?” Mike shakes his head no. “Any good reason you can think of Hatanaka was down there anyway?”
I admit that I can’t. Mike goes back to the papers in the drawer.
“Whoever left the body there locked the door,” he says. “So whoever left him there had a key. If Hatanaka didn’t have regular business down in the basement—”
“He didn’t.”
“Okay. So our man didn’t steal the key from Hatanaka.”
“The guy had his own key?”
“Seems like.”
Mike closes the top drawer, crouching to open the next. When I came in here earlier, I checked what I thought were the most likely places for a suicide note: desktop, drawers, the corkboard where a UNESCO calendar hangs askew. I even looked in the trash. Rather than go through all that again, it occurs to me that it might be useful to know what Toshio was working on. Mike nods at my suggestion and points at Toshio’s in box. So I settle myself in the chair and lift the whole pile of paperwork into my lap.
“What should we be looking for? Anything particular?”
“Nope,” Mike answers without glancing up.
We carry on our respective searches in silence.
Toshio Hatanaka did not have what you would call a regular working day. He was, as much as anyone can be within the confines of this hidebound institution, a free agent, someone to whom many of the usual bureaucratic rules and customs did not strictly apply. The paperwork I am studying now reflects that. There is a stack of memos from UNHCR, the UN High Commission for Refugees, relating to logistical problems in the field: tents that should be in Pakistan currently caught up in a dockers’ dispute in Singapore; field-workers wanting to know if they can still use the rehydration sachets for children with diarrhea, which arrived in Somalia three months late; an ongoing dispute with one of the aid agencies about joint use of telecommunications facilities, this one with an attached note from Toshio suggesting a senior figure in the agency who might be able to help. But free agent or not, Toshio’s official assignment with UNHCR ended over two years ago, and this evidence of just how much time he was devoting to matters beyond his current remit is unexpected. I find myself frowning. I flick through the rest of the memos, most of which, I am relieved to see, concern Afghanistan.
“Geneva,” Mike says suddenly. He pulls the stub of a plane ticket from the drawer and places it on the desk. He points to the date. “Last week.”
We study the details. Toshio Hatanaka evidently took a Swissair flight to Geneva at the beginning of last week, spent three days there, then returned.
Mike remarks that Geneva, as he remembers it, is a hell of a long way from Afghanistan.
“Could have been a routine meeting,” I suggest.
But Toshio, we both know, would have been working his butt off this past month just to prepare for the General Assembly session. Last week was not the time for a three-day meeting on the shores of Lake Geneva.
Mike pushes the ticket aside. “What have you got?”
When I show him the memos, he glances through them quickly. “Give it to me again,” he says, puzzled. “Hatanaka was special envoy to Afghanistan, right?”
“He was with UNHCR till two years back.” That, I explain, was a large part of the reason he ended up as special envoy to Afghanistan: Afghanistan has one of the worst refugee problems in the world.
“But it wasn’t his job, was it, refugees? Lookit this.” Mike flicks the memos. “Special envoy to Afghanistan? Where’d he find the time? The guy was doing everything but.”
There was some talk, I remark absently, that Toshio might make a run at the UNHCR’s top job, high commissioner for refugees.
A cynical weariness spreads over Mike’s face. “Ahh,” he says.
“Come on. He wasn’t like that, Mike, this was a dedicated guy.” I gesture to the memos. “If he thought he could help, he helped.”
“Dedicated.”
“Dedicated,” I say.
The desk offers up nothing more, so we turn and face the shelves. There are files, hundreds of them, not all of them labeled. Shaking his head, Mike goes out in search of Toshio’s secretary while I prop my ass against the desk and wait.
The last time I saw Toshio alive was yesterday morning. He was leaning against these same shelves, arms crossed, one shoulder against the files, trying hard to look relaxed. Half a lifetime he’d spent in the U.S., and he still couldn’t manage the trick. The effort it cost him was visible in every stiff angle of his body; I never saw a man look less relaxed or more Japanese. Now my eyes run down the shelves to the tatami on the floor. And I have to blink away a sudden vision of Toshio’s corpse.
A minute later Mike returns with Toshio’s secretary, Mei Tan, in tow.
“So where’d he keep this report?” he asks her as they enter.
Mei Tan looks relieved to see me. A Singaporean, she is something of an institution here on Floor Twenty-nine. She worked with my deputy, Gunther Franks, for years before promotion to Toshio’s office. Now she pushes her horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of her nose and tells us that she’s not sure about this. She says she would like some formal authority before allowing us into Mr. Hatanaka’s office.
“We’re already in the goddamn office,” Mike mutters, going to the far side of the desk.
Mei Tan turns to me. “You must speak with Mr. Hatanaka.”
“What report?” I ask her.
“Did he say for you to come in here?”
“Listen,” Mike breaks in impatiently, but I raise a hand.
“Mei Tan,” I say evenly, “we’re here because Patrick O’Conner sent us. If you need to call him to confirm that, go right ahead. We’ll wait.”
She considers that. You can see that the idea of risking Patrick O’Conner’s wrath does not appeal. And when I volunteer to take full responsibility for this, she finally gives up. She shrugs and gestures to Mike.
“I was telling him that Mr. Hatanaka was working on this report for the General Assembly. Like a five-year review. We’ve been working on it for months now. Is that what you’re looking for?”
Mike and I exchange a glance. This could be something.
“Let’s see it,” I say.
Mei Tan takes down a box from a shelf and places it on the desk. “Officially it’s for the Secretary-General and some of the committees.”
Which committees? Mike wants to know.
The Third Committee, she tells him: Human Rights. And the Fifth Committee: UN Administrative and Budgetary Affairs.
The report, when I open the box, is inches deep. The cover page says Afghanistan, Status Report, then the year and Toshio’s name and rank, special envoy. Turning to the chapter headings, I delve into the body of the thing.
“How long’s he been on this?” Mike asks Mei Tan.
“Writing?”
“Putting the whole thing together.”
“Since last year.”
“You were working with him the whole time?”
Nodding, she asks what it is we’re hoping to find, why we can’t speak to Mr. Hatanaka directly.
“When was this due to go upstairs?” I ask.
“Tomorrow.”
“It’s finished?”
She nods again, so I pull out the whole wedge of pages and lay them beside the empty box. This time I search the pages more carefully. According to the table of contents, Toshio has broken his report into four sections: the general report, then three detailed sections: one for the Third Committee, one for ECOSOC—the Economic and Social Council—and one for the Fifth Committee. This last section, clearly listed on the contents page, is missing.
“He must have taken it home,” Mei Tan says when I draw her attention to the omission. She screws up her face. “Actually, you really will have to ask Mr. Hatanaka about that. He was doing that section himself. He hasn’t let anyone else see it yet.”
I ask her if she has any idea what it might contain. Mei Tan shakes her head.
“He’s got this pink file he keeps it in,” she remarks, her eyes wandering over the desk, then up along the shelves. Edging past Mike, she checks the desk drawers. “No,” she concludes, completing her unsuccessful search for the missing pink file. “You’ll have to ask Mr. Hatanaka.”
If only, I think.
Then Mike casually inquires, “Where is he?”
There is no sign that Mei Tan finds the question strange. “Down at the opening, I guess. I haven’t seen him this morning.”
When Mike asks her where we can find Toshio after the opening, Mei Tan goes to fetch the appointment calendar. When she’s gone, we discuss the missing section of the report. Mike agrees that it’s odd but warns me not to get too hopeful. Odd, he tells me, is not the same thing as important, but he assures me that he will be taking another good look in Toshio’s briefcase down in the basement.
Mei Tan reenters with the calendar, an oversized book with a hard black cover. She flips it open and slides her finger down the page. Apart from three words at the top, “General Assembly opening,” the page is blank.
“Busy man,” Mike murmurs. Reaching across, he flicks back a few pages before Mei Tan can protest. Then he stabs a finger down. “What happened here?”
The dates are the first two days of Toshio’s excursion to Geneva. Across both pages the word
Canceled
has been scrawled over a list of appointments, and when Mike turns to the next page, it’s the same there too.
“The trip to Geneva a last-minute thing?” he asks her.
“Geneva?” she says.
We both look at her, then at each other. Mike picks up the ticket stub and indicates the matching dates and Toshio’s name on the ticket. Mei Tan studies it, becoming perplexed.
“This isn’t right,” she says finally, her brow puckering as she touches the ticket. “He wasn’t well then. Those three days Mr. Hatanaka stayed at home. He called me. Gastro or something, you ask him.”
“Who normally makes Mr. Hatanaka’s travel arrangements?”
“Me,” she says.
“Always?”
She nods, but there is a touch of hesitancy now, a flicker of doubt. The ticket. Our presence. These questions.
“Can’t you come back later and see Mr. Hatanaka?”
Mike asks her if she has her own key to this office. She shakes her head. Then he flicks forward through the calendar and stops at Monday. Yesterday. Half a dozen appointments. He trails a finger down the page and stops at Toshio’s penultimate appointment of the day: five-thirty
P.M.
Mike glances up at me to make sure I have registered the name: Patrick O’Conner.