Diplomatic Immunity Read Online Free PDF Page A

ago Patrick told me to speak to him. And now here he is, a corpse.
    “He got family here?” Mike asks.
    A sister, I answer readily. Moriko. Occasionally I went to Toshio’s apartment for dinner; Moriko was often there.
    “He wasn’t married?”
    When I shake my head, Mike drops the wallet on the chair, then crouches to close Toshio’s blank eyes. Go get Patrick, he tells me.
    But I linger a moment. And a strange thought comes to me then, quite distinctly. This is how it was, I think. This is just how it was three years ago on a hillside in Afghanistan, with Toshio standing by a corpse. How did he feel? I wonder. The first impact over, the natural revulsion overcome, how was it for Toshio Hatanaka? Was he stunned? Stricken with grief? Or did he feel as I do now, overwhelmingly grateful simply to be standing here, alive? I never asked him. One more piece of the tragedy I will never know or understand: how it touched him. How Toshio felt when he stood there on a barren hillside in Afghanistan, ankle-deep in snow, over the dead and mutilated body of my wife.

3
    “S UICIDE, ” PATRICK O ’ CONNER SAYS AS WE STEP OUTSIDE. “Right?”
    The remark is so unexpected that I balk, but Patrick continues on over to the giant metal sculpture of a pistol, its barrel knotted, a gift to the UN from the people of Luxembourg. When I join him by the sculpture, he has both hands braced on the pedestal.
    “You heard Mike,” I say.
    “I heard him.”
    “He thinks it’s murder.”
    But Patrick doesn’t seem to hear me, and when I say his name, he simply lifts his head and takes a few deep breaths of air. His jowls hang heavy and there are tension lines across his brow that could signal the onset of a migraine. He stares past me across the North Lawn.
    After getting him away from the Assembly Hall I took Patrick down to the basement, where we’ve just spent ten minutes with Mike. Mike told Patrick the same thing he told me. That he thinks it’s murder. That we need a forensics team. Patrick’s response was to ask me to accompany him outside, a request for which I admit I am grateful. Unlike Mike, neither one of us seems to have the kind of cast-iron stomach needed to think straight in the presence of a corpse, but Patrick’s look now, as he stares out over the lawn, is not so much one of shock as dismay. He is pondering the effect of Toshio’s death on the vote. And after reflecting on Patrick’s opening remark, I wonder if perhaps I might be missing something here.
    “Why suicide?” I ask.
    “Because it fits.”
    “That’s not how Mike sees it.”
    Patrick looks at me. “What about you? How do you see it?”
    I state the obvious, that I’m no expert but that Mike’s judgment seems fair. Toshio was no user, I say.
    “User, my ass.” Patrick pushes away from the pedestal and I follow him across the terrace, down the steps and onto the graveled path across the lawn. Usually this area is crawling with tourists. Today, thankfully, they’ve been kept out because of the opening. “Jardine’s just guessing what was in the syringe,” he says, thinking out loud. “He’s guessing some kinda dope. Someone set it up to look like Hatanaka was injecting. Accidental overdose.”
    “You don’t buy that?”
    “Whoever did it would end up on the tapes. Who’s that stupid?” The security tapes, he means. There are cameras on all the basement corridors; Mike has just gone to check the tapes from last night. “Suicide fits,” Patrick says again. “Coulda been anything in that syringe. Straight in the vein, some poison, be as good a way to do it as any.”
    We toss the idea back and forth a minute; Patrick seems absolutely convinced he is right. And the idea is not outrageous, God knows. Toshio spent his career visiting parts of the world most people catch only in glimpses from the safety of their armchairs on the TV nightly news. Sarajevo. Sierra Leone. East Timor. More recently Kabul. Sometimes as a special rapporteur