Diplomatic Immunity by Grant Sutherland Read Free Book Online Page A

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