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someone else. And for a moment I consider doing just that. Sorry. Too busy. Try one of the junior legal officers from the department. But even as I consider this polite but firm refusal, I realize that I am not going to get that choice. Because this is not some draft proposal for an obscure UN committee, the kind of thing I delegate daily by the truckload down the line. This is murder at the UN. Toshio Hatanaka, everybody’s favorite special envoy. And Mike wants me on it. And Patrick knows he has to do something. After fourteen years of practice, I can protect my bureaucratic butt as well as the next guy, but this just isn’t one of those things I can safely palm off, watch explode in someone else’s lap. Patrick is nodding to himself now, coming around to Mike’s suggestion. A weight like lead settles in my bones. The legal point guard in the investigation of Toshio Hatanaka’s death has just been selected.
    Mike gets a call on his walkie-talkie; apparently Dr. Patel, the resident UNHQ medic, is waiting for Mike down in the basement.
    “Patel?” Patrick is appalled.
    “If you won’t let a real forensics team in,” says Mike, “Patel’s what you got.” Patel, needless to say, is a guy you wouldn’t trust with any medical instrument more sophisticated than a thermometer. He does the occasional routine medical checkup, hands out aspirin, and spends the rest of his time sleeping in the sanatorium. Moving away from us, Mike calls over his shoulder that Eckhardt should be down in the basement any minute. “If you got a problem treating this as a homicide, come down and tell him.”
    The moment Mike is out of earshot, Patrick turns to me. “Check Hatanaka’s office. If there’s a note, bring it straight to me. Don’t show Jardine. Or Eckhardt.”
    I repeat my opinion that there will be no note, that like Mike, I do not believe Toshio has committed suicide. But Patrick is not listening.
    “If there’s nothing there, go check his apartment. And see if you can’t do something about Jardine. Settle him down. If he thinks he’s going to have no problems running a homicide investigation in this place, he’s just plain wrong. And I don’t want to be picking up the pieces, cleaning up after him just because he’s too bloody gung ho to listen to reason.”
    “He’s a professional.”
    “He’s your mate,” says Patrick. “And I’m telling you to settle him down.”
    Today’s second big edict. Speak to Hatanaka. Settle Mike down. Inside, we part at the escalators, Patrick giving me a few final instructions before heading grim-faced toward the Assembly Hall to inform the Secretary-General of the tragedy. I break into a jog down the corridor, hurrying to Toshio’s office in the Secretariat building, feeling suddenly light-headed and nauseated, but glad to be moving, relieved to have something to do, something to think about other than the shocking sight in the basement. I am going upstairs to carry out my instructions: to look for a note that I do not believe exists. Twenty-nine floors up to Toshio’s office. Thirty floors clear of the corpse.

4
    A F TER SEARCHING TOSHIO ’ S OFFICE FOR FIVE MINUTES AND finding nothing that remotely resembles a suicide note, I retreat three doors along and across the passage to my own office and close the door.
    The shelves in here are jammed with books and papers and files. At least once a week somebody will come to me checking up on the whys and wherefores of the Headquarters Agreement, generally the maintenance managers, who deal with things like the electricity and water we buy from the State of New York. So that booklet, though I almost know its contents by heart, is close at hand. But the
Geneva Convention on Diplomatic Privileges
is buried deep somewhere among the rest, and I twist my neck to read the vertical labels on the spines.
    Gathering information and writing reports, you will learn from the PR handouts, is the work that takes place in the Secretariat