Entombed

36

"Ready to give up on this?" Mercer asked. "I know you'd rather be curled up at home with the crossword puzzle."

"Time to pull out that list of names again and see what kind of birds these ravens really are before we keep ruffling their feathers. C'mon, we've got places to go and people to see."

We were back in the car by nine and Lieutenant Peterson was beeping Mercer. He returned the call and gave me the news.

"Loo can't raise anyone over at the UN on a Sunday. Thinks we ought to drop in and start the ball rolling. You got his attention with this diplomatic mission connection to a suspect."

The Sunday-morning ride back through Central Park and over to the FDR Drive was quick. The February chill was powerful as we drove south along the East River. We passed under the Roosevelt Island tram cables, and I avoided glancing off to my left at the elegant remains of the old Blackwell Hospital site that sat on the island's southern tip-the scene of a case we had worked several years back.

Mercer turned off the highway at Forty-eighth Street and squared the block to come around in front of the vast complex that fronted on First Avenue. After the Second World War, when every large American city was competing to host the headquarters of a new international organization to replace the League of Nations, the deal was clinched for New York by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.'s gift of $8.5 million which allowed the purchase of seventeen prime acres of real estate in midtown Manhattan's Turtle Bay.

The United Nations opened for business in 1950 with the completion of the now familiar tall and sleek Secretariat Building-our destination this morning-followed later by the General Assembly and conference buildings.

As Mercer shut off the engine and stuck his laminated parking plaque in the car's windshield, we were both conscious of the fact that the UN, technically, was not within the jurisdiction of the United States. It had its own police force and post office, and operated with a unique set of rules and regulations.

Forty minutes later, passing through layer upon layer of internal security, we presented ourselves to the second assistant to the chief of protocol for the United States mission, the duty officer in charge on a quiet Sunday morning.

Ralph Barcher wanted to know more about our inquiry. Mercer told him only that we were at the preliminary stage of an investigation that was confidential, but might involve an employee or relative of someone assigned to the world peace organization. Barcher balked at the idea of releasing any information to us without permission from the protocol chief himself.

"Why don't you phone him?" I asked. "I'll be happy to explain what we need."

He looked at his watch and thought better of placing the call. "You know you can go to our website and get a listing and mission location for every member state," Barcher said, somewhat nervously.

"You can be sure we'll do that. But it's the home addresses and contacts that I want as well."

"Don't you understand the security issues we have when it comes to the release of that sort of personal data, Miss Cooper?"

"We'll be sensitive to those, of course. We represent the two most important law enforcement agencies in the city. We're not terrorists. Who's the chief?"

"Waxon. Darren Waxon."

"That must be a recent promotion. I did some work for him when he was the deputy, just six months ago," I said. "I can't imagine he won't be willing to help us."

My unit was frequently called for help in training the staff of foreign missions that came to this country with a myriad of clashing cultural values. We had stepped in to prosecute a tribal leader who had brought the horrific practice of female genital mutilation from his sub-Saharan hut to West 112th Street, counseled rape survivors attacked by opposition rebel troops in Eastern European civil wars, intercepted teens brought from Southeast Asia in juvenile sex slave practices, and handled domestic violence incidents for women from countries in which they were still treated as the property of their spouses, even though they were married to businessmen and not camel herders.

"I'm afraid that since you won't brief me on what you're going to do with these names, there'll be nothing Mr. Waxon can help you with either."

"Look, I can't tell you exactly what case we're working on, but you can see from our business cards we're both assigned to highly sensitive matters. We don't intend to embarrass anyone."

Barcher reexamined the cards we had handed to him.

"I suppose, Miss Cooper," he said flatly, "that you've given some thought to the concept of diplomatic immunity."

"You're really jumping the gun. To tell you the truth, that hadn't crossed my mind yet. I'm not even close to saying that you're going to hand us a crime suspect on a silver platter. We'd just like to make sure we don't ignore any possibilities."

Mercer tried to be helpful. "Maybe Ms. Cooper didn't make herself clear. We're not looking at any of your ambassadors here as a target. What we're doing might eliminate the chance of drawing your people into the investigation."

"What do you know about immunity, Detective Wallace?"

"Not much."

"It's an ancient principle of international law, sir. It dates from the early Greeks, who allowed messengers and envoys to travel freely through neighboring countries, so they weren't subject to punishment, even when they carried bad news."

"That was then," Mercer said.

It seemed so unnatural not to have Mike at my side. I smiled just thinking of his typical comeback. He probably would have told Mr. Barcher that the Greeks had left us a legacy of some other interesting habits, too.

"Same theory as today. Representatives of foreign government officials are exempted from the jurisdiction of local courts and authorities. They're allowed to operate under the laws of their own countries."

"That extends to their families, too?" Mercer asked.

Barcher bristled. "Diplomatic agents as well as their immediate families are immune from all criminal prosecution."

"Unless their home government waives that immunity, isn't that right?" I asked.

"Certainly. It's not a license to commit crimes. If you think you've got evidence to charge someone, the first step is that the State Department advises the proper government involved and requests a waiver to take the case to the proper court."

"How about diplomatic staff?" I asked, thinking that our perp might even be attached to a mission for some other purpose.

"Consular employees have less protection, Miss Cooper. They only get immunity for acts performed as part of their official duties."

"Well, I suggest you spend a bit of your spare time today getting together the list I asked for. I'll have a grand jury subpoena up here first thing tomorrow morning."

"I don't mean to be an obstructionist. There must be-well, as we'd say here-a more diplomatic way to go about this. If you're talking about some egregious criminal matter, you know we have had charges result in deportation in the past."

"That's a pretty unsuccessful solution, Mr. Barcher," I said. "When you deport a major felon, he's never brought to justice in our courts, there's no punishment for him here at all, and usually he works his way back over our borders in no time, if New York City is the place he wants to be."

He tried another route. "You know, one of the things we do here at Protocol is work with the injured, the aggrieved party to try to secure some kind of restitution for them."

"Money? For victims of violent crime?" Mercer asked. "You think that women who've been sexually assaulted are just looking for money? They want this bastard off the streets, Mr. Barcher, whoever he is. They want him behind bars. Now maybe our case will turn out to have nothing at all to do with the United Nations, but we're expecting your help."

Barcher walked to a file cabinet and opened the drawer, retrieving two copies of a document from a large stack. "One hundred ninety-one member states. I can't provide you with home addresses, but these are where their missions are located."

We walked to the elevator as we both scanned the alphabetical list, looking for names of African countries. I took out a pen to check the ones I recognized.

"Angola. That was Portuguese, I think. Not British," I said, thinking of Annika's comment about the perp's accented word. "Benin. What's that?"

"Used to be Dahomey back when you took geography. French West Africa."

"Botswana. Now that used to be under British influence," I said, marking the page. "Burkina Faso. Where the hell is that?"

"Upper Volta. Part of the French Union at one time."

"Burundi. I think that was German or Belgian." I said, buttoning my coat as the guard let us out of the building.

"Cameroon," Mercer said. "Check it off. That had both British and French divisions."

"This is going to take more manpower than I guessed. We're not even out of the C 's yet."

We got back into the car and Mercer called Lieutenant Peterson. "Alex will shoot a subpoena up to the chief of protocol in the morning. I can't say we were greeted with open arms here. You might put in a request for some backup from the Nineteenth Precinct. With any luck, we'll be knocking on a lot of doors tomorrow afternoon."

Mercer seemed attentive to Peterson's reply. Then he listened to something else the lieutenant had to say, grabbing the pen from my hand to write down an address.

"Here's our chance for that second chat with Emily's friend Teddy Kroon. Emily's child, the one she gave to her sister Sally to raise? She showed up on Kroon's doorstep an hour ago, trying to find out from him who her father is."