The Reykjavik Assignment

by Adam LeBor

  Thursday evening. Off-record, deep background conversation with Riyad Bakri. Bakri says death of Schneidermann reminded him of case of Abbas Velavi.

  Why?

  Bakri v. interested in Yael Azoulay—has he heard the rumors from the Palestinian delegation? What is Jaesh al-Arbaeen?

  Najwa opened up the anonymizing software that allowed her to connect to the Internet through an encrypted virtual private network. The VPN masked her computer’s IP address, the unique identifying number assigned to each device that connects to the Internet, then routed the connection through a series of encrypted servers around the world. In theory, she was now untraceable. She then opened her browser, which was set to Start Page, a free private search engine. Unlike other search engines, Start Page did not record any details of searches. Nor did it use cookies, those tiny bundles of data that identified users and marked when they logged into particular websites. The VPN and Start Page should, she hoped, be enough to secure her connection. All of Al-Jazeera’s staff took special precautions to keep their communications as private as possible. Whether or not Bakri worked for the Saudi Mukhabarat, the UN building was home to hundreds of spies—including, she suspected, a number of her colleagues.

  Najwa typed in “Abbas Velavi” into Start Page’s search box. The screen instantly filled with links to news stories and articles.

  She pulled up a story from the New York Times a year ago:

  IRANIAN OPPOSITION FIGURE FOUND DEAD

  By SAMI BOUSTANI

  A leading figure in the Iranian opposition was found dead at home in his apartment in midtown Manhattan, police said Monday.

  Abbas Velavi, 47, likely died of a massive heart attack, law enforcement sources said. The New York City Medical Examiner’s Office will determine the cause of death as the investigation continues.

  Mr. Velavi, who had lived in the United States since the mid-1980s, was known as an outspoken opponent of the Iranian regime. Opposition-supporting websites claimed that he had been murdered.

  The United States and Iran have no diplomatic relations, although Iran maintains a mission to the United Nations in New York. Calls and emails to Iran’s mission to the United Nations went unanswered.

  The remainder of the article detailed Velavi’s life as an opposition activist and previous threats against him. She flicked through the other links. There was little more factual material. Sami had written a short follow-up story reporting that the medical examiner had carried out an autopsy and determined that Velavi had died of natural causes. There was some shaky video footage on YouTube of a small demonstration by Iranian dissidents opposite the UN staff entrance on the corner of First Avenue and East Forty-Second Street. The protestors were holding up signs claiming that Velavi had been murdered. After that, the story had faded away from the mainstream media.

  What interested Najwa was a video interview with Velavi’s widow on an Iranian opposition website. She played the clip again.

  The camera showed a woman in her fifties, with short gray hair. Her face was deeply lined, but her voice was determined. The footage of was reasonable quality, but the frame wobbled slightly as though it had been filmed on a mobile phone.

  “What do you think happened to your husband?” asked a disembodied voice.

  “He was murdered.”

  “The autopsy said he died of a heart attack.”

  The woman snorted derisively. “He was perfectly healthy. He had just had his annual check-up. Why would he have a heart attack and die, out of nowhere? It was the visitor.”

  “Tell me about the visitor.”

  “He was here, sitting where you are. He said his name was Parvez. He had joined the opposition in Tehran and wanted to make contact here. But Abbas was suspicious of him. He was too smooth. Too confident. Abbas asked him some questions about people in Tehran. The visitor said he knew them.”

  “And?”

  “They didn’t exist. Abbas invented them.”

  “What else do you remember?”

  “The visitor was bald. He had a neat beard and wore fine black leather gloves. He did not take them off all the time he was here. He said he had a skin condition.”

  The woman’s voice cracked and she began to cry. “He killed my husband. I know it. A woman knows who killed her husband.”

  Najwa added “who is the visitor?” on the back of the SCI newsletter. Had Velavi been murdered? It was certainly possible. Tehran had long arms, great expertise, and no compunction about disposing of inconvenient enemies. But like every foreign intelligence service, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence would be very wary of conducting an assassination on American soil. They would make certain not to leave any tracks, for fear of blowback, which meant that if Velavi had been murdered, a lot of time and planning had gone into his killing. Why?

  Najwa circled his name several times with her pen on the sheet of paper. Abbas Velavi, a healthy man in his forties with no history of heart trouble, suddenly dies from a massive heart attack. Henrik Schneidermann, a healthy man in his thirties with no history of heart trouble, suddenly dies from a massive heart attack. Both men lived and died in New York. It could be a coincidence. More than eight million people lived in the city. Two loosely connected people, out of eight million, suddenly dying of the same cause a year apart was certainly possible. But Najwa’s instincts told her this was not a coincidence.

  She would have to talk to Sami about Velavi. Journalists always knew more about their stories than they used in, or got into, print. Sometimes the additional information could not be sufficiently verified, or it was bounced back by the lawyers. But that did not mean it wasn’t true. Bakri had dropped his hint for a reason. Najwa was confident she would find out why.

  And then she realized.

  She was scribbling Velavi killing—test run? when her pen ran out of ink. There was another in her purse so she slipped her hand inside, rummaging amid the jumble of lipsticks, makeup palette, tampons, chewing gum, and packets of tissues. Her fingers finally touched a plastic cylinder that was too thin to be a lipstick. She pulled out a ballpoint pen, her hand brushing against a sheet of paper. She looked down and saw a white envelope.

  *

  Fifteen blocks north and just over half a mile west, on the corner of Third Avenue and East Fifty-Seventh, in the kitchen of a cramped two-room apartment, Menachem Stein handed Armin Kapitanovic a long, narrow wooden case covered in black leather.

  The two men stood in the kitchen. Two half-drunk mugs of instant coffee slowly cooled on the small wooden table, its surface scarred by cigarette burns. A curling 2009 calendar hung from a nail in the wall. Ten floors up, the nighttime traffic roar seeped through the open window and the East River was just visible through the murky glass.

  Kapitanovic put the case on the table, opened the lid, took out a wooden stock with a trigger, a long, thin barrel, and a scope. His hands moved swiftly. Less than a minute later, he held a Dragunov sniper rifle.

  Kapitanovic sat down at the table, holding the rifle between his legs, pointing upward. “How long till he is out?”

  Stein looked at his watch. “Probably about twenty minutes. Once the meeting is over and he gets ready to leave the residence I will get a call on this,” he said, holding up an old Nokia candy-bar mobile phone.

  “A call from who?”

  Stein smiled. “Does it matter? Three rings and the caller will hang up. Then you go up to the roof. It’s an easy shot.”

  “Not at night.”

  “The front of the house is well lit. There are street lamps.”

  Kapitanovic ran his finger down the barrel of the Dragunov. “It won’t bring them back.”

  “No. It won’t. But it will be a kind of justice. And a warning to others.”

  Kapitanovic stared ahead, suddenly far away. “Justice? Or murder?”

  Stein sat down. “Tell me what happened.”

  The Bosnian spoke quietly. “I was working as an interpreter for the Dutch UN troops in Srebrenica. After the town fell
, it was total chaos, panic everywhere. The Bosnian Serbs separated the women and girls from the men and boys. They took the men and boys away. The women were hysterical, covering their sons with girls’ clothes, pulling them into the crowd. Everyone knew what was going to happen. The Dutch troops were supposed to protect us, to help us. Instead they helped the Bosnian Serbs. I hid them, my father, my brother, and my mother, in an office on the UN base.”

  Kapitanovic’s voice trembled slightly. “Then the Dutchman came in, with a handful of his peacekeepers. I called New York, tried to speak to Fareed Hussein. He was in a meeting. Everyone was in a meeting. The Dutchman and the peacekeepers started going through every room, throwing everyone out. Eventually they found my family. We begged, offered money, everything we had. I could stay, he said. I had UN papers. My family did not. The Dutchman pushed them out of the base. I tried to follow them. My father pushed me back, as hard as he could.” Kapitanovic glanced down at his chest. “He bruised my ribs.”

  “What could you have done?”

  Kapitanovic gripped the Dragunov, his knuckles pink and white. “I had a pistol. I should have used it. My father and my brother were never seen again. They still haven’t found their bodies. My mother went with the women to Tuzla. She hanged herself. From a tree. The worst thing is …” Kapitanovic’s voice broke for a moment.

  “Is what?” asked Stein, quietly.

  “There was another family. Hiding in the quartermaster’s stock room. The Dutch troops never found them. They all survived. If I had hidden my family …”

  Stein laid his hand on Kapitanovic’s arm. “If is a big word. The biggest.”

  Kapitanovic closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply. “I have been waiting a long time for this day.”

  He picked up the rifle and peered down the sight. “How did you get me out?” he asked, his voice steady now.

  Stein took a sip of his coffee. “I made a trade. Information. First with the Turks, then with the Islamists.”

  “The Turks I understand. A Turkish army truck from Suleyman Shah’s tomb back across the border, a flight from Istanbul to Montreal. But how does an Israeli do business with Islamists?”

  “The same way that you exchanged stolen UN aid supplies with the Serbs in exchange for guns and ammunition.”

  Kapitanovic made a minute adjustment to the rifle’s sight. “That’s the Balkans. We knew them. They were our neighbors. We fed them. They armed us. As long as we didn’t attack their position, they left us alone.”

  Stein put his mug down. “Balkans, Middle East, we were all once part of the same empire. We know the Islamists. They are our neighbors. We don’t attack them and they don’t attack us. Our border with Syria is quiet, considering. We both share a common enemy: Hezbollah. The Islamists already are at war with Hezbollah. Israel soon will be. Again. People I know keep a very close eye on Hezbollah. That information is valuable to the Islamists. So we trade information with the Islamists, and”—he glanced at Kapitanovic—“occasionally, more than that.”

  The Bosnian thought for several seconds. “Why did you bring me here? You could arrange a mugging, a street robbery that went wrong. A hit and run. You don’t need me.”

  “No, I don’t. But you deserve justice.”

  “Maybe. What else do you want?”

  Stein passed the Bosnian a photograph. It showed the tanned face of a man in his early fifties, with hazel eyes and an erect bearing.

  11

  Yael grabbed her iPad from the coffee table, sat back on the sofa, and flicked through her archive of stories about the UN until she found the one she wanted, dated ten days earlier.

  TURMOIL CONTINUES AT UNITED NATIONS

  Fareed Hussein Returns, Deputy Resigns, Detained US Diplomat “Used UN Connections” to Adopt Afghan Child

  By SAMI BOUSTANI

  UNITED NATIONS—Fareed Hussein, the secretary-general of the United Nations, returned to his post Monday after being absent for almost two weeks on medical leave. Mr. Hussein, who had been suffering from fainting attacks, declared himself “fully recovered.”

  Yael speed-read the report until she reached the key paragraph.

  Confidential UN emails newly obtained by the New York Times reveal that, as early as a year ago, Ms. Masters was negotiating a pilot scheme with Clarence Clairborne, chairman and owner of the Prometheus Group, to supply security services for the Istanbul Summit. The emails detail how Prometheus was working behind the scenes with the world’s largest private military contractor Efrat Global Solutions, which is owned by Menachem Stein.

  If successful, the contract, referred to in the emails as the “Washington Stratagem,” would set the precedent for a wholesale privatization of UN security, and potentially international peacekeeping, a market worth billions of dollars annually.

  The story had been published on the day of Henrik Schneidermann’s memorial service, nine days ago. Caroline Masters had been Yael’s former classmate at Columbia University, enrolling in graduate school after working as a journalist in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Central America. After graduating she joined the State Department, where she was known as a liberal interventionist, but also a realist—until she was posted to Berlin as a commercial attaché. A growing friendship with Reinhardt Daintner, head of communications at the KZX Corporation, had led to a three-month placement at KZX’s new Office of Social Responsibility. During that time she became a passionate advocate of privatization, a cause that she continued to champion at the UN. The previous month, she had essentially mounted a coup, sidelining secretary-general Fareed Hussein by spreading untrue rumors of his declining health. One of her first agenda items in her brief reign as acting secretary-general had been demoting Yael to run the Trusteeship Council, a dead-end position overseeing UN business in former colonies.

  But now Masters was gone. Hussein was back in his office on the thirty-eighth floor. So was Yael, in hers. Yael knew all about the “confidential emails obtained by the New York Times” because she had sent them anonymously to Sami, although he had no idea of her role.

  Yael picked up her wine glass, raised it to her lips, then put it back down without drinking. She needed a clear head for this. Sami was a great reporter. He understood the importance of details, but could see the big picture and its ramifications. But he only had part of the story. The Prometheus file, now locked in a safe in the SG’s office, detailed how Clairborne and the Prometheus Group were doing business with Nuristan Holdings, an Iranian company that operated as a front for the Revolutionary Guard. Clairborne and his company had survived the fallout from the Istanbul Summit, but they could not survive the publication of the Prometheus file.

  Sami had not yet made the connection between Prometheus, Efrat Global Solutions, and the DoD, the Department of Deniable, the most secret arm of the US government, whose operatives carried out wet-work missions of which no records were kept. Sami did not know the extent of what Clairborne, the Iranians, and the DoD had planned. But Yael did.

  *

  She is standing on the Eminönü waterfront, watching the police launch bounce across the waves. It is a perfect spring morning. The sun is warm on her face, the breeze scented with the smell of the sea. The V-shaped hull cuts through the water like a scythe at harvest time, pale spray fountaining in its wake.

  The Turkish policemen grimace as they drag the dead man into the boat. His back is crisscrossed by deep welts, their ruffled edges bleached white by the water. His arms and shoulders are dotted with semicircular rows of tiny puncture marks, each two or three inches long. The commander shakes his head in disgust. He covers the body with a gray blanket, gently smoothing the fabric as though tucking a child into bed.

  “We offered him a deal,” says the man standing at Yael’s side. He is wiry, muscled, in his mid-thirties. A long purple birthmark reaches from his left ear down the side of his neck.

  “Which was?”

  “Better than that,” he replies, gesturing at the police launch.

  “An orange j
umpsuit?”

  Cyrus Jones laughs. “Any color he wanted.”

  *

  Yael grimaced at the memory. She closed the window with Sami’s story, opened her anonymizing software program, and connected to her neighbor’s Wi-Fi network. His password was based on his birthday, which she had long ago remotely extracted from a file on his computer. Despite her caution she knew nothing was totally secure, especially in the age of Edward Snowden, but the NSA software on her iPad was as good as it got.

  She relaunched her web browser and typed a series of numbers and letters, interspersed with dots, into the address bar. The secure website had been set up for her by Joe-Don. A plain gray window appeared, asking for the password. The numeric code, which changed every day, was based on the first letters of the words in the headline of the lead story in that day’s New York Times. Each letter’s numeric value was based on its position in the alphabet—A being one, M thirteen, for example—and was then multiplied by that day’s date. The results were added together and the total was then divided by the number of pages in the newspaper’s national section. That final number was the password. Yael glanced at the news section of the newspaper on her coffee table. “Republicans Continue Push to Impeach President” was above the fold.

  She picked up her phone, opened the calculator application, and started work, jotting down each set of numbers on a notepad. After a minute or two she checked the last page of the newspaper’s national section, did the final calculation, and entered the result into the password field. A new window appeared. A series of folders appeared, including one holding the details of Eli’s missions. But now she wanted to check a folder marked with a video player logo. There were two files inside. She clicked on the first. It showed a bare, windowless concrete room. A wiry, well-muscled man stood naked from the waist up. His head was covered with a black hood, a dark smear was visible on the lower right side of his neck, and his legs were manacled. A dog ran around the room, barking and snarling. Yael watched the clip for the twenty seconds that it lasted, then closed the window. That file was freely available in the Internet. The second one was not.