by Adam LeBor
Yael grabbed the bottle of mineral water by the bed and took a long drink before she pressed the sound file’s play button again. The recording was clear and of high quality. There were four voices: Fareed Hussein, Charles Bonnet, Erin Rembaugh (the American head of the Department of Political Affairs), and a man she did not recognize (middle-aged, she thought, well-spoken, with a German or perhaps Austrian accent).
BONNET: We need at least five hundred. That will have maximum impact.
HUSSEIN: [sounding dismayed] No, no, that is unnecessary. It’s far too much. A couple of hundred at most would be sufficient for our purposes. Less would suffice. Even a few dozen.
REMBAUGH: [brisk and confident] We disagree, Mr. Secretary-General. Five hundred is really the absolute minimum, if this is going to work. More, ideally.
Yael was surprised to hear Rembaugh arguing for more of anything. Rembaugh was a lanky, unmarried Texan in her early fifties. A former deputy director of the CIA and influential member of the National Security Council under President Bush, she was not known as a humanitarian. The DPA was the most powerful and influential department of the UN, essentially an extension of the Permanent Five. Its reach extended everywhere, from the backroom diplomacy that carved up Security Council resolutions long before they were presented for discussion, to deciding which country’s cuisine would feature on the daily rota in the notably good UN staff cafés and restaurants.
The DPA was engaged in a perpetual turf war with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations. Peacekeeping had once been controlled by the DPA until the peacekeepers split off and formed their own empire. The DPKO was now the biggest department in the UN, with a staff of 130,000 in fifteen missions around the world and a budget nudging $8 billion—a UN standing army in all but name. The DPA had never forgiven its upstart child for going its own way. Rembaugh expended much energy trying to place her staff, almost all of whom were former or current American intelligence agents, inside local mission headquarters as “political advisers” reporting directly to her, rather than to the DPKO Operations Center on the 37th floor. So far, Quentin Braithwaite, the DPKO chief, had resisted.
HUSSEIN: [sounding even more doubtful] I am more and more inclined to stop the whole thing. I think—
BONNET: [interrupting] We understand, Mr. Secretary-General, that you have some doubts. We all do. That is only natural. Otherwise we would not be human. But you—all of us—need to think of the bigger picture. That will be our legacy—peace in Congo. Millions, not even born yet, will have a chance for a happy, productive life.
GERMAN VOICE: Yes, Mr. Secretary-General. That is what matters, surely. The bigger picture. How many people have died in the wars in Congo? Four million? Five? Nobody even knows, and, sadly, even fewer care. Now you have a chance to go down in history as the UN secretary-general who stopped the longest and bloodiest conflict since 1945. This is a small price to pay.
Yael pressed the pause button. What was a small price? To pay for what? And who was that talking? She rewound a few seconds. The man sounded both calm and supremely confident.
She pressed play: “ . . . a small price to pay.” Someone who had spent some time in the United States, someone who had studied or worked there. He was not a senior UN official, or at least not one she had ever met. She listened again, intently. It was a Viennese accent, with the telltale lilt of the Austrian capital.
HUSSEIN: But this . . . event goes against every founding principle of the UN.
REMBAUGH: [her voice cold and hard] Mr. Secretary-General, as you well know, there is a precedent for this. Srebrenica. You agreed that the Dutch peacekeepers would not defend the enclave. The Bosnian Serbs were allowed to capture Srebrenica in exchange for signing up to the Dayton Peace Accords.
HUSSEIN: [anguished] Capture the town, yes. Not massacre every man and boy.
REMBAUGH: Knowing the Bosnian Serbs’ history, after three years of war, that was entirely predictable. And indeed was predicted by your own UN military observers. Fareed [her voice softer now], you know as well as I do that it’s all a numbers game. It always has been and always will be. Eight thousand lost at Srebrenica to end the Bosnian war, which was about to set half of Europe ablaze and open the door to Al-Qaeda. Yes, it was horrible, for all of us. But how many lives were saved? Hundreds of thousands. And we brought peace to the Balkans, a peace that still holds. Believe me, Fareed, we all wish we did not have to do this. But it is the only way to clear the path to the peace accord. Like Charles says, we need to see the bigger picture here. Hakizimani has agreed to everything. His people on the ground are ready, as soon as they get the uniforms. But that deal simply will not happen under the current DPKO leadership. This is the only way to ensure the right people take control of the department. It’s a means to an end. He has to go.
HUSSEIN: Why not simply sack him? This is a high price to pay to rid the UN of one man.
BONNET: We, the world, will pay a much higher price if he stays. This is not about one man. Braithwaite not only has to go, he and his whole approach to peacekeeping must be completely discredited, together with his senior staff and as soon as possible. He can have no future in this house after what he has done to the DPKO. The department must be rebuilt, from the bottom up. Remember, Mr. Secretary-General, how he humiliated you in Bosnia, how he tramped on the most basic values of the United Nations. It was an outrage, an offense against our most important tenet: impartiality, no matter how extreme the provocation. He has UN soldiers actually fighting battles.
There were several seconds of silence. Yael could almost see Hussein nodding righteously to himself as he pondered Braithwaite’s damage to the sacred neutrality of the UN. Braithwaite had gained fame at home and notoriety at the UN headquarters while commanding a battalion of peacekeepers in Bosnia in the early 1990s during the Yugoslav wars. Bosnian Serb soldiers at a checkpoint outside Sarajevo had attempted to arrest the British officer together with a British Foreign Office minister and his SAS bodyguards as they crossed the front lines and passed into government-controlled territory.
The usual UN practice was to open negotiations, which would last hours and lead nowhere. Braithwaite simply drove his armored fighting vehicle through the checkpoint, smashing the barricade into pieces and scattering the Bosnian Serb troops in every direction. A furious Fareed Hussein had summoned the UN press corps to protest this violation of the UN’s neutrality. He described the incident as “reckless, foolhardy, and setting a dangerous precedent that would draw peacekeepers into the conflicts they were supposedly defusing.” Braithwaite had responded by inviting Hussein to visit Sarajevo for himself. The invitation was not taken up.
Backed by the French, Russians, and the Chinese, Hussein had fought hard to prevent Braithwaite’s appointment as peacekeeping chief, but for once London stood firm. UN peacekeepers around the world now shot back when attacked, with serious firepower. DPKO missions were equipped with satellite communications, high-tech weaponry including attack helicopters, and privileged access to NATO and US intelligence. There would be no Srebrenicas on his watch, Braithwaite declared, further infuriating Fareed Hussein.
Yael knew that the DPKO chief had made no secret of his contempt for the UN’s covert contacts with Hakizimani and the Rwandan Liberation Front, nor did he bother to disguise his distaste for Bonnet and Rembaugh. Unforum, a gossipy insider’s website, had even reported that Braithwaite had leaked what he knew of the UN’s contacts with the RLF to the Rwandan embassy. Braithwaite had declined to comment on the article.
The Rwandan ambassador, a former colleague of Hakizimani’s at Kigali University, who had lost sixty-seven relatives in the genocide, was at first disbelieving, then furious. She was demanding assurances that the RLF and the Genocidaires would have no role in any future regional peace agreements. At the same time, Braithwaite was also pushing for new rules of engagement for UN troops in the Goma region, allowing them to engage RLF troops on sight and to shoot to
kill. The pressure was on the SG and the 38th floor, from several directions.
REMBAUGH: Après Braithwaite, le déluge. We need to clean out the DPKO.
BONNET: Absolutely. And our friend in Goma?
REMBAUGH: [laughing] Just try and stop him. He was pushing for five or ten thousand. I told him that it would take too long. He assured me otherwise. We settled on five hundred. But he is crucial. He still has power because of 1994, but a younger generation is rising, snapping at his heels. Hakizimani is the only one that can hold this together. Our guys on the ground are clear: without him this will not work. His people will do what has to be done.
After Braithwaite had blocked Rembaugh’s move to take over DPKO field operations, she had simply stepped around him and built her own global empire. The DPA now ran what it called “Good Offices Missions” in the world’s most volatile and strategically important regions: Africa, Central and South Asia, and the Middle East. The GOMs were supposedly charged with conflict prevention, peace building, and post-conflict resolution, working in conjunction with the DPKO. In fact, their main purpose, as directed by Rembaugh, was not to promote peace but to fight a war—with the DPKO. Around the world, the GOMs were steadily slicing away at its mandates and power base until Rembaugh could take full political control of the peacekeeping empire. The new DPA GOM in Goma was one of the UN’s largest.
VIENNESE VOICE: [brusquely] Where and when?
REMBAUGH: At the Tutsi refugee camp outside Goma. And soon, while Hakizimani is in New York, negotiating the peace accord. That way he cannot be blamed.
BONNET: Are the uniforms ready?
REMBAUGH: [reassuringly] Everything is in place. They all have been distributed.
HUSSEIN: [plaintively] I am sure you all understand how difficult this is for me. I have devoted my whole life to the ideals of the United Nations—
AUSTRIAN VOICE: [interrupting] Mr. Secretary-General, we all appreciate your many years of hard work for the most noble of causes. But we need to know that this decision is made.
REMBAUGH: [conciliatory] Fareed, like Charles said, just keep the big picture in mind. You know it’s the right thing to do. History will vindicate us.
HUSSEIN: [reluctantly, after several seconds] Yes. The decision is made. We go ahead.
The sound file ended and Yael pressed the stop button. She had heard correctly. The UN secretary-general and two of his most senior officials—together with an unknown Austrian—were plotting to discredit the DPKO, force the resignation of Quentin Braithwaite, and return UN peacekeeping operations to the passive approach of the 1990s, which would allow the warlords to take over again. Five hundred people were about to die —because of the deal she had brokered with Hakizimani. She had instigated a massacre.
Nine
The special press conference was standing room only, the atmosphere electric. Hundreds of correspondents were accredited at the UN New York headquarters, and it seemed every one of them was here, all talking in a babel of languages. Sami heard French, Russian, Chinese, German, Portuguese, and Urdu, and that was just nearby. Rumors had swirled through the building all day: that the SG was about to resign, that his secretary had been found dead in his office, that Olivia had been murdered in a crime of passion.
Sami counted TV crews from Reuters, the BBC, Al-Jazeera, Bloomberg News, Associated Press, Russia Today, China’s Xinhua agency, and CNN in the first row of cameras, and there were two more rows behind them. A tangle of thick cables snaked across the floor. Sound men lined up their microphones on the long wooden desk, jostling for the best position, and correspondents directed their cameramen to get the best shots. Sami spotted Najwa bossing her crew around and caught her eye. She waved enthusiastically at him and he waved back.
Sami stood away from the crowd at the side of the room, browsing the Internet via his smartphone as he waited for the proceedings to start at 4:00 p.m. Jonathan Beaufort, the tall, languid, and extremely sharp correspondent for the Times of London wandered over. Beaufort, the doyen of the UN press corps, had been based there for more than two decades, outlasting several SGs. The Times of London, as the Americans referred to the newspaper, and the New York Times were fierce rivals, but the usual rules of engagement were that once a story was in print, details and contacts might be shared or, more often, exchanged.
He and Sami shook hands. “Sami, brilliant work. Well done,” said Beaufort. He leaned forward conspiratorially. “A copy of the Goma memo gets you lunch at the Delegates Dining Room,” he murmured. Aside from the SG’s private dining suite, the Delegates Dining Room had the best food in the UN building. Its excellent buffet and spectacular views of the East River and the Manhattan skyline ensured it was always crowded with gossiping diplomats. The eavesdropping was of a quality just as high as the cuisine.
Sami shook his head. “Sorry, Jonathan. No can do.”
Beaufort ran his hand through the hair flopping over his forehead. “I have some leads of my own. Trade? Cooperate? Nobody need know.”
Sami said regretfully, “Editor’s orders. Exclusive: a New York Times investigation.”
Beaufort grinned. He knew when to retreat. “Then let battle commence. May the best man win,” he said. Beaufort wandered off to talk to the new reporter from the France 24 news channel who, rumor had it, was the illegitimate daughter of the French president.
Henrik Schneidermann, the SG’s spokesman, walked in and sat down behind a brown wooden desk against a backdrop of dark blue curtains emblazoned with the UN emblem. The room quieted, and the rows of journalists sat down, suddenly still and attentive. Schneidermann was Belgian—pale, podgy, and earnest, with untidy blond hair that had notably thinned out since his appointment a few months earlier. He was a former UN correspondent, but his appointment had caused deep gloom among the press corps. Schneidermann had previously worked for an obscure news agency based in Paris covering development and public health issues. Most of its output was topped and tailed versions of UN press releases, hailing the organization’s latest success in combating hideous parasitical diseases.
Schneidermann tapped the microphone and the room fell silent. “I will read a statement from Fareed Hussein, the secretary-general. It concerns the events of today regarding two UN staff members: Olivia de Souza and Yael Azoulay. I will not take questions.”
Yael saved and printed out the story she had just read on the Economist website and poured herself some more tea. The builder’s brew was working nicely, clearing her head for a crash course in the Bonnet Group’s history, reach, and influence. The conglomerate had been founded in 1880 by Jean-Claude Bonnet, great-great-great grandfather of Charles, a miner from Brittany who found a rich seam of gold in what was now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From there the firm had expanded over the decades into transportation, coffee, silver and copper mining, and logging. Last year a scandal had erupted after a French Socialist MP produced documents that detailed how, during the war, the Bonnet Group had continued to trade with the Nazis through Swiss intermediaries in Geneva. The company had flatly denied the claims and stonewalled every attempt to investigate. The furor had eventually faded away, to be replaced with news of the Bonnet Group’s latest charitable projects.
The Economist noted that turnover in the Bonnet Group’s mining division, headquartered in Kinshasa, had more than doubled in the last two years. Several stories from the French press showed various members of the Bonnet family attending receptions and dinners at the Élysée Palace, the home of the French president.
Yael pulled off a piece of the sourdough loaf, slathered it with salmon and cream cheese mix, put six spicy olives on top, and chewed thoughtfully. A separate article in the Wall Street Journal noted that both the Bonnet Group and KZX had donated $5 million to UNICEF, the UN Childrens’ Fund. Henrik Schneidermann had fulsomely praised the firms as “socially responsible corporate citizens.” Yael added the printout to the growing pile of cuttings and article
s now spread over her kitchen table.
She picked up the tub of ice cream, walked over to her window, and looked out over the Hudson River. The sky was dark and gray, the water choppy and flowing fast. The ice cream was delicious, thick, and rich, but provided little comfort. She watched a ferryboat chug its way across to New Jersey, the anger, resentment, and sadness surging again inside her. The shoreline across the water was lined with apartment blocks, and a patchwork of lights glimmered in the afternoon gloom. Her apartment began to shrink and close in on her. And she had an appointment downtown. As far downtown as it was possible to go.
Yael filed away her research, put on her favorite winter coat (a dark-brown vintage 1940s single-breasted wraparound), and grabbed an orange cashmere scarf and her leather backpack. She tore a small piece of paper from her printouts and walked to the door. She scrunched the paper into a tiny ball, reached up, and pressed it against the door frame to hold it in place just as she carefully closed the door. The old-fashioned tells were still the best. If someone entered her flat while she was out the scrap of paper would fall to the floor. If Yael was the first to open the door she would see it tumble.
The wind blew in cold and hard from the west, buffeting her as soon as she stepped onto the sidewalk. Yael shivered as she walked up the two blocks from Riverside Drive, along 81st Street toward Broadway. Bertrand was standing at his stall on the corner, wearing three woolly hats at once with half a dozen brightly colored scarves draped around his neck—a walking advertisement for his wares. Whatever the weather, Bertrand was there, always with a smile, a rare permanent fixture in her transitory life.
Bertrand Ogimbo was a Congolese refugee—short, round, perpetually cheerful, and full of wonder that he and his children now lived in a country where nobody would burn down his home and kill what was left of his family for belonging to the wrong ethnic group.
Yael waved hello. Bertrand greeted her with a wide grin and open arms. He gestured for her to stop for a moment and immediately unwrapped a purple scarf from his shoulders and handed it to her. “Pour toi, chérie,” he said.
