The Geneva Option

by Adam LeBor

  “A credit as associate producer is best of all. Especially for a newspaper reporter with no television experience,” said Najwa, raising her eyebrows and looking straight at him.

  Sami had grown up around Arab women. He knew when to surrender. He opened a window on his laptop, quickly typed on the keyboard, and pressed a button. A page spilled out of the printer marked in large bold type—HIGHLY RESTRICTED: SG EYES ONLY. GOMA/HAKIZIMANI—followed by three more sheets.

  Najwa stared hungrily at the papers. Sami said, “This program will happen?”

  She nodded determinedly. “Sami, habibi, we are not in the souk. Yes. I give you my word.”

  He handed her the papers. She scanned them briskly, her eyes shining with excitement. “Thank you. Now I have something for you. Call extension 7068.”

  Sami picked up his telephone and pressed the number. “Olivia de Souza. It’s on voice mail.”

  “Now call the SG’s office and ask for her. Ask when she will be back.”

  Sami followed her instructions. He listened and put the handset down. “They say she is not available. They don’t know when she is coming in. What’s this about?”

  Najwa moved nearer. “Olivia is dead. It happened this morning, here in the building.”

  Sami started with surprise and opened his mouth to speak when Najwa’s iPhone trilled. She looked at the number. “Sorry, Sami, I have to take this,” she said, and walked out.

  He watched Najwa depart. How did she know that? And was it true? There was no reason for her to make it up. Sami knew and had liked Olivia, and felt genuine sadness at the prospect of her death. But his reporter’s instincts crept up, and he put his feelings aside. A few beers a couple of months ago with one of the building’s telephone technicians had elicited the information that all UN voice mail boxes had an override code. The seven-figure number accessed any voice mail up to assistant-secretary-general level and allowed the listener to hear the messages. A hundred-dollar bill had bought him the code.

  If Olivia were dead, UN security and who knows who else would be monitoring her telephone line. By calling to ask for her he’d probably just alerted them to his interest. But Internet telephone calls weren’t placed through a telephone number and could not be traced. He logged into Skype on his laptop, brought up the call record console, and dialed Olivia’s number. When he heard her voice he pressed the record button, moved his cursor to the application’s keypad, and tapped out the seven-digit code.

  Five

  Yael said good-bye to Bonnet and walked into the inner sanctum. The SG’s suite encompassed the entire width of the 38th floor of the Secretariat building and a good part of its length. The back windows looked out over the East River, the Queens shoreline, and an enormous billboard for Pepsi-Cola. The front windows had a breathtaking view of Manhattan, its skyscrapers glinting silver in the morning sunshine. The walls of the office were decorated with pictures of the SG shaking hands with various world officials and the presidents of the P5, as well as numerous actors and pop stars who had been made honorary UN ambassadors, Hussein being notorious for his love of glamour and celebrity. The SG was sitting at his gargantuan black desk, made from environmentally certified Brazilian hardwood. A small leather sofa, a coffee table, and two leather armchairs stood on the other side of the room. That was where the SG usually met with his trusted confidants in a more relaxed atmosphere. Sometimes he even insisted on making tea and coffee himself in the en-suite kitchen and bringing it to the gatherings.

  Yael moved to sit down on the sofa. The SG shook his head. He beckoned her to one of the chairs in front of his desk. The seat was hard and positioned just low enough so that she had to look up at him. The desk was bare apart from a small pile of documents and papers and two silver-framed photographs. One showed a smiling Indian boy about five years old, the other a pretty young Indian woman in a graduation gown. Yael saw that her memo to Hussein was on top of the papers, together with a copy of that day’s New York Times.

  The eighth secretary-general of the United Nations was Indian, the son of a Muslim father and Hindu mother. Born in Delhi in 1940 to an upper-class family and educated by private English teachers, Hussein still used the idioms of the 1930s and 1940s, an affectation that he carefully cultivated. The family’s mixed heritage meant they were targeted by extremists on both sides during partition in 1947. Hussein and his parents fled in the violence, and lost everything they owned. A photo of his younger brother Omar sat on his desk next to a framed half of a postcard of the Taj Mahal that had been torn in two. The brothers had pledged to keep their halves for life if they were ever separated.

  Omar had been ripped away in the chaos at the Delhi railway station and never heard from again. The family had resettled in London, where Fareed Hussein studied at the London School of Economics and worked as an investment banker before moving to Frankfurt and New York. His appointment as finance director of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had surprised many. The fact that he had no experience with the UN or indeed any humanitarian, development, or public-policy organization caused considerable resentment. But one by one his opponents had retired or been put out to pasture, and Hussein had climbed steadily up the ladder, moving from finance to policymaking and an assistant-secretary-general position in the Department of Political Affairs. Even by UN standards he was notorious for being an arch-conciliator, whose main concern was keeping the P5 ambassadors happy. So as Yugoslavia collapsed into war, and Rwanda slid toward genocide in the early 1990s, the P5 judged Hussein to be the perfect candidate for chief of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, even though he had no military or peacekeeping expertise, and they ensured he got the post.

  “Yael, what a pleasure to see you,” Hussein said, his voice brittle and terse. “Terribly sorry to keep you waiting so long. I’m rather overloaded at the moment. And you must be so very tired after your long journey. When did you get home?”

  She sat for a few seconds, trying to disentangle the emotions she could feel coming off Hussein in waves. A febrile indignation, even anger, but it somehow felt manufactured. There was no passion. And an undercurrent of something else, uncertainty, even foreboding.

  Yael said, “Fifty-five minutes ago. As you know. Your office called me. They said you urgently needed to see me.”

  Hussein nodded, steepling his hands as he spoke. “Indeed I do. I received your memo.”

  “Good. Because we really need to talk about Hakizimani.”

  Hussein looked down at his desk and slid the newspaper toward her. “We do. It seems the New York Times also received your memo.”

  Yael slid the newspaper back across Hussein’s desk. “I had nothing to do with the story in the New York Times. And you know that,” she said, keeping steady eye contact.

  The SG briefly held her gaze, flushed, and looked down. He picked up the newspaper, and held it in his hand. “I find that rather hard to believe. Allow me to read you an extract from the article: ‘General Jean-Pierre Hakizimani is one of the world’s most wanted men, a mass murderer of the first order, who has been indicted by the UN’s own tribunal for Rwanda. Yet we have cut a deal with this killer and are allowing him to escape justice for tawdry reasons of realpolitik and commercial interests.’ That is an accurate quote from your memo to me?”

  Yael nodded at Hussein’s question. “Yes, that is an accurate quote from my memo to you, but so what? That doesn’t mean I sent it,” she said, momentarily distracted by a large new photograph on the wall of Hussein and the willowy blond actress Lucy Tremlett surrounded by smiling, barefoot children in a refugee camp in Darfur. Tremlett’s recent Oscar win made her a hot property in Hollywood, and her law degree from Cambridge added a little gravitas to her celebrity. Hussein had just appointed her ambassador-at-large for UNICEF.

  Yael continued: “The question is how did the New York Times get the memo? It was encrypted and sent to you personally. Nobody else co
uld have seen it. Nobody else could even open it.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “Maybe you leaked it yourself.”

  Hussein shook his head and spoke softly, his voice full of regret. “Yael, I can only say how disappointed I am that it has come to this, that after all our years together, you seek to resolve your differences with us, not in person but through the news media. ”

  Your differences with us. The words echoed in her brain. Any hope that she could salvage the situation died. Her UN career was now over, she realized, but she kept control over her emotions. “Why would I do that?” she asked, her voice calm and reasonable.

  Hussein said, “Because, as you say, you are disgusted by this deal. By leaking it to the New York Times, you put the arrangement in jeopardy.”

  “Hakizimani should be in prison. Instead he is booked into a suite at the Millennium UN Plaza.” The Plaza, a five-star palace of luxury, was a block away from the UN complex on First Avenue and was the favored billet of VIPs, diplomats, and visiting officials. It even had its own tennis court.

  Hussein nodded. “Indeed he is. The price of peace and saving future lives means that sometimes, bad men go free. You have personally ensured that bad men went free in Iraq, Gaza, Darfur . . . shall I go on? But always for the greater good. As indeed is the case here. Why are you so vexed about Hakizimani?”

  Hussein’s reply hit home, angering her. The words were out before Yael could stop them. “Because you let Rwanda happen!” But even as she spoke, she admitted to herself that she was just trying to provoke him. Hussein’s complicity had very little to do with the real reason for her obsession with the Rwandan warlord.

  Hussein stiffened and his eyes glittered with anger. Rwanda, genocide, and the DPKO’s actions—or lack thereof—during the slaughter were currently the most sensitive topics on the 38th floor. At first, Hussein had dismissed his own peacekeepers’ increasingly frantic reports of the mounting slaughter in the spring of 1994. When the evidence, in the form of piles of mutilated corpses, was broadcast on CNN and the BBC, the DPKO refused repeated requests by the Canadian UN battalion in Kigali to intervene and open fire on the Genocidaires—even after the massacre at the Belgian Mission School. Hussein later blamed the P5 for prevaricating and preventing him from authorizing effective action against the Genocidaires. That autumn he was awarded the Légion d’honneur by France for services to world peace.

  The principle of nonintervention was firmly established. The UN’s neutrality was now more important than the lives of those it was supposedly protecting. The following July Dutch peacekeepers had handed over almost eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys to the Bosnian Serb army after the fall of Srebrenica. The UN commander even forced almost two hundred terrified civilians out of the UN base where they had taken refuge, into the waiting arms of the Bosnian Serbs to be slaughtered. All this time Hussein was on holiday in the Seychelles, as a guest of its president. By the time he returned to New York more than eight thousand prisoners were dead.

  But backed by the P5, Hussein rode out the storm and refused the calls for his resignation. He continued his slow and steady advance, never confronting, but always bending and flowing with the wishes of the great powers. Hussein’s commitment to the ideals of the UN was unshakable, he explained to visiting officials, and was he himself not proof of the possibilities of coexistence between different religions and cultures?

  Hussein was a survivor and had not risen to the SG’s position by being provoked. His eyes were cold, but his voice was calm. “This is the United Nations, Yael. It is a diplomatic arena, neutral and impartial. It is not a private army on call for the world’s humanitarians. Nobody ‘let anything happen’ in Rwanda. It was a terrible confluence of events. Personalizing it does not help anyone, least of all those trying to understand how this house may learn from the tragedy. The DPKO was completely exonerated in the UN’s own commission of inquiry. Once again your predilection for emotional outbursts shows your lack of professional judgment.”

  Yael looked away and read the message scrawled on the photograph of Hussein and Lucy Tremlett. The SG had his arm around her shoulder and was grinning excitedly. The big, loopy letters read, “Fareed, thanks for everything. We are doing so much good. Lucy, XXX.”

  Yael closed her eyes and tried to control her rising anger. Hussein was right. She was being unprofessional, too sensitive, and not sufficiently impartial. She was not neutral enough. But she had already lost her job. She felt her emotions surge through her like a physical force. “Either you or one of your staff leaked the memo. They will be furious in Kigali about this. I am sure that the prosecutor for the Rwanda War Crimes Tribunal is already drafting a statement condemning the deal. And so he should.”

  Yael watched the SG stand up and walk over to the window. He was stooped and moved slowly. His clothes, all of which were handmade, were hanging off him. She thought he had aged five years in as many weeks. What was going on? Olivia had told her several times how worried she was about him. Was he sick? Hussein looked out over the East River. A helicopter flew by, on its way to the 34th Street heliport.

  He said, “The facts are these: Firstly, it seems the prosecutor for the Rwanda tribunal has been tampering with evidence. He has been suspended on full pay while an independent investigation proceeds into how the tribunal is working. It may be connected to the scandal at the International Criminal Court. It will almost certainly affect Hakizimani’s indictment. And secondly, there is no evidence of any deal. Only a memo to me from a junior UN employee.”

  Yael jumped out of her seat and strode over to the window. “What? The evidence of the deal with Hakizimani is your instructions to me. I did precisely what you told me to.”

  “Do you have something in writing?” Hussein asked, calmly.

  Yael was incredulous. “Something in writing? No, of course not. You never put your instructions in writing. You explained that to me when I started this job. The evidence of your instructions is that they are working. The UN military observers are already reporting that the RLF is pulling back and disarming. A day after I met with Hakizimani. And when did I become a junior UN employee?” she demanded, her voice tight with anger. “Was I a junior employee in Kabul when I arranged for American defense contractors to secretly guard the Taliban’s poppy fields in exchange for them not blowing up President Freshwater’s new gas pipeline?

  She stood so close to Hussein that she could smell his coconut hair lotion. “Or maybe I was a junior employee in Baghdad, handing over a suitcase full of used hundred-dollar bills to the Shiite insurgents in exchange for your nephew, who, despite being twenty-one years old and fresh out of college with no experience whatsoever, had somehow landed a senior job with the UN Development Program, and who had refused to attend his security training, and whose driver, a father of three, was killed when he was kidnapped? And as for the Rwanda prosecutor, you know as well as I do that he is one of the most honest, hardworking people you could ever meet.”

  “Apparently not. Anyway, he is not your concern this morning.”

  “Where is Olivia?” Yael demanded.

  Hussein returned to his desk. “No longer with us,” he said, his voice reverential.

  Yael stood in front of him, her arms folded. “Has she been sacked as well?”

  Hussein shook his head slowly. “A tragic accident. Truly tragic.”

  She stared at Hussein, the hollow feeling in her stomach spreading rapidly. “What are you talking about?”

  “Olivia was in the habit of smoking on the maintenance balcony on the 38th floor every morning. Such practices are strictly forbidden. Some time ago I instructed the health and safety department to post notices on each one, reminding staff of this. The health and safety of UN staff has always been of the utmost priority for me. The notices were put up, just two weeks ago.”

  Yael nodded impatiently. “And?”

  “The railing was loose an
d she slipped over.”

  Six

  Yael sat back down, trying to absorb the news that Olivia was dead. Shock, then a wave of sadness coursed through her. She and Olivia had spoken just a couple of days ago and made plans for a dinner at Le Perigord, an upmarket French restaurant a few blocks away, to catch up and gossip. Olivia was not yet a close friend but could have become one. She was fun, vivacious, and, unlike most at the UN, could be trusted to keep a secret.

  Yael tried to put her sadness aside. Olivia was dead. Someone had leaked her memo and she was about to be sacked. Too much had happened this morning. Think. “When?”

  “Yesterday morning,” Hussein said.

  “When did Dubois start work?”

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “Who decided that Olivia’s replacement would be reassigned from the French foreign ministry?”

  “We, the UN, did. France is a founding member and sits on the Security Council.”

  “And you had Dubois all lined up and ready to go. How convenient.”

  Hussein picked up a photograph of a young woman from his desk and stared at it. “The best memorial Olivia could have is for us to build on the fine work she did for us and carry on our mission. We plan to launch a scholarship in her name.”

  “Wonderful. Why isn’t this in the news? I did not see anything in the New York Times.”

  “Thankfully, there are some people working in this house who can keep confidences when necessary. We will release the information this afternoon.”

  Yael ignored his sarcasm. Something did not fit here. Beneath Hussein’s bluster she felt uncertainty. “When is Olivia’s funeral?”

  “Next week.”

  “I will see you there.”

  “Unfortunately not.”

  “Olivia worked for you for ten years, died here, and you aren’t going to her funeral?”

  “I will be at the summit on global warming and sea-change levels. As I said, the best memorial for her is to build on her achievements.”