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me.”
    “The Philippines. Argentina and Spain too, just the junior delegates.”
    “Excellent.”
    “You’re not interested, are you?”
    “Rachel.” Lifting my eyes, I tap the file with a finger. “Won’t the Philippines be missing you by now?”
    She informs me that she’s got another fifteen minutes. Then she flips her empty yogurt tub into the trash can, licks the spoon, and flips that too. She slumps back in her chair; she obviously has no intention of leaving.
    I could tell her, I think. Maybe I even should tell her. Sooner or later the news about Toshio will get out; sooner or later Rachel will have to know, wouldn’t it be better for her to hear it from me? But just now, as so often with Rachel these past three years, I simply cannot find the words. In the end I bow my head over the file and lose myself in the arcane region of the law that dictates the behavior of nations toward persons of credentialed diplomatic standing. On the page here it is clear as crystalline water. The rights of the individual, the responsibilities of the state. Totally clear. Completely transparent. But what happens, say, if the government of a country falls, revolutionaries seize power, and the U.S. embassy is besieged for over a year? What happens, say, if a diplomat from a rogue regime leans out of an embassy window in London and shoots a local police officer? What happens, say, if a UN special envoy is found murdered in the basement at UN headquarters? What happens, of course, is that politics takes over, and after years in UN Legal Affairs I have learned that politics has a way of turning the crystalline waters of the statute book into mud.
    “Juan says the Japanese won’t get onto the Council.”
    “Where’d he get that from?”
    “Around,” says Rachel.
    Around, I tell her, keeping my head down, is not normally considered to be a source of high repute. But it is so much a measure of how deeply this vote is affecting all of us that I find myself making a mental note of Juan’s opinion. Juan is Rachel’s new landlord and roommate, a twenty-four-year-old with a bee in his bonnet about the state of the world. A senior figure at Lighthouse, one of the increasingly numerous NGOs that have UN accreditation, Juan could possibly be picking up signals that we’re missing from some of the smaller delegations.
    “He’s not the only one saying it,” she says.
    “Mmm?”
    “The guys from the
Keisan Shimbun
think Hatanaka’s sunk it too,” Rachel asserts confidently.
    A sound rises from deep in my chest. After eighteen years, my daughter still has the most amazing capacity to surprise me. She has been giving Joe Public the tour and PR gloss for barely three months. And she got the job not because she was turned on by politics and diplomacy. Far from it. She got the job because for the first time in my career I stooped to pull a few strings. And here she is, I now discover, shooting the breeze with journalists from the leading Japanese business daily about who’s hot and who’s not in the world of big-time international diplomacy.
    “Rachel.” My hand traces a bewildered circle in the air, then I point to the door. “Out.”
    “You brought my stuff, yeah?”
    Her stuff. A suitcase full of clothes from home. It’s down in the trunk of my car. I told Rachel I’d drop it off at her new apartment tonight, but now I make a face.
    “Oh, Dad, you promised.”
    “What’s this, blackmail?”
    She smiles sweetly. It is not as cute at this moment as she thinks it is.
    “Okay, Rache. I’ll try. No promises.”
    “Great.”
    She goes to pick up her purse and blazer from behind the door. And this is the moment that Mike chooses to arrive. He puts his head in and speaks before I can stop him. “Hatanaka died about eight hours ago, way Patel sees it. I wouldn’t take that for gospel.”
    I wave a hand, my look is severe. His voice trails off. Then Rachel steps out from where she has been hidden from view; she has an arm in