officers looked, they could see no one.
The noise soon got much louder. Less than ninety seconds after the shooting, the first of forty NYPD squad cars converged on UN Plaza, their lights flashing, their sirens wailing: this was the ‘surge’ they had practised nearly a dozen times since 9/11, the full might of the New York Police Department rapidly converging on a single spot. Several cars disgorged SWAT teams, the men, their flesh buttressed in Kevlar, armed with assault rifles, charging forward like GIs storming a Normandy beach. Soon they ringed the entire UN perimeter, their guns trained on the terrified men and women within.
First Avenue was free of traffic now, thanks to the NYPD officers armed with 50mm machine guns who had sealed the road from both north and south, 30th Street all the way to 59th. The UN headquarters now sat in the centre of a ‘sterile zone’ thirty blocks long. Since First Avenue was a main artery for the eastern half of Manhattan, New York City was about to seize up.
In the air, four NYPD Agusta A119 helicopters equipped with high-resolution, thermal-imaging ‘super-spy’ cameras now hovered, together policing an impromptu no-fly zone over the entire area. At the same time, on the East River, police launches took off from their bases in Throgs Neck, Brooklyn and along the Queens shoreline. No one would be able to enter or escape the United Nations compound by air or by water.
Not much later, the NYPD's Chief of Detectives arrived with his own lights and sirens. To his pleasure, he had got there ahead of Charles ‘Chuck’ Riley, the Police Commissioner, whose motorcade and motorcycle outriders pulled up a few moments later. Both nodded with satisfaction as they observed a lockdown utterly complete. As their aides would brief reporters for the rest of the day, there had been a suspected terror attack on one of the city's ‘high value targets’ and New York had responded ‘with swift and deadly force’.
But as they stepped out of their cars and shook hands with each other, the two men instantly saw the nature of their problem. They could approach the now-locked steel gate of the UN but go no further. They had reached the limit of the NYPD's authority, the very boundary of United States sovereignty. They were able to look into the eyes of the two men on the door, one a policeman from Montenegro, the other from Belgium. The Commissioner was sure he could see their hands trembling.
Inside, on the thirty-fourth floor, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs heard the fire alarm before he heard anything else. Henning Munchau leapt to his feet. He checked his outer office: nobody there, too early. He called down to front desk security but the phone just rang and rang. He checked his window, wondering for a moment if he was about to see a 747 steaming through the air, larger and lower than it should be, about to pierce the glass skin of the UN headquarters, killing the eight thousand people who worked within as well as a good number of the world's heads of government.
It was only then that his deputy, a Brazilian, rushed in, the blood absent from his face. He struggled to speak, and not just because he was out of breath. ‘Henning, I think you need to come right away.’
Eighteen minutes after Felipe Tavares had fired his fatal shot, Henning Munchau was standing close to the lifeless body that had still not been touched, save for the waterproof cape placed over it. The rain was still coming down.
At his side stood the Under-Secretary-General for Safety and Security, stunned into silence. Both had just received an instant briefing, giving them the roughest outline of what had happened. Munchau saw the discotheque of lights that now ringed the UN compound and the small army of NYPD men that surrounded it and felt like the inhabitant of a medieval castle on the first day of a siege.
And now he could see, standing on the other side of the railings, a face he recognized, one rarely off the front page of the city papers, the man they called ‘The Commish’. This was one legal conference that would have to take place outside, on foot and in the rain.
‘Commissioner, I am Henning Munchau, chief lawyer of the United Nations.’
‘Good to meet ya, Henning,’ the Commissioner said, his face and tone conveying nothing of the sort. ‘We appear to have a situation.’
‘We do.’
‘We cannot enter these premises and respond to this incident unless you formally request that we do so.’ The language was officialese, the accent down-home Southern.
‘Looks like you've already responded in quite a big way, Commissioner.’ Though German, Munchau spoke his eerily fluent English with a hint of Australian, both accent and idiom, the legacy, so UN legend had it, of his service in the UN mission in East Timor.
Riley shrugged. ‘We cannot enter the compound without your consent. And I'm assuming you don't have the resources to handle a terrorist incident.’
Henning tried to hide his relief. It meant the NYPD had not yet heard about the dead man. That would give him time.
‘You're quite right,’ Munchau said, struck by the strangeness of speaking through metal railings in the rain, like an outdoor prison visit. He envied the Commissioner his umbrella. ‘But I think we need to agree some terms.’
The policeman smiled wanly. ‘Go ahead.’
‘The NYPD come in but only at the request and at the discretion of the United Nations.’
‘No discretion. Once you let us in, it's our investigation. All or nothing.’
‘Fine, but none of this.’ He gestured towards the SWAT teams, their guns cocked. ‘This is not the UN way. This is not Kabul.’ Munchau saw Riley bristle, so he went further. ‘This is not Baghdad.’
‘OK, minimal show of force.’
‘I'm talking one or two armed men only, to accompany your detectives.’
‘Done.’
‘And your investigation to be shadowed at all times by a representative of the UN.’
‘A representative?’
‘A lawyer. From my team.’
‘A lawyer? For Christ's—’
‘Those are the conditions.’
Munchau saw the Commissioner weigh it up, knowing he could hardly refuse. A suspected terror attack in New York, the NYPD had to be involved. ‘The Commish’ couldn't go on television saying that the department was sitting this one out, whatever the explanation. Munchau knew that: Riley would want to be on the air within the hour, reassuring New Yorkers that he had it all under control.
Now a black limo pulled up, with a whole new battalion of lights and sirens. Behind it were two satellite TV trucks, clearly given special permission to come through. The Mayor had arrived.
‘OK,’ the Commissioner said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘I accept.’
Munchau offered his hand through the railings and the policeman took it hurriedly. Munchau nodded to the UN guard on the gate, who fumbled with the lock until it opened.
Watching the TV reporter heading his way, Munchau made a point of raising his voice to declare, ‘Mr Commissioner, welcome to the United Nations.’
It
