The Geneva Option

by Adam LeBor

  Yael smiled and shook her head. She had more scarves, winter hats, and gloves than she could ever wear, which was Bertrand’s way of thanking her for using her contacts at the State Department to arrange for him, his wife, and surviving children to obtain US citizenship.

  Bertrand looked downcast and beckoned her nearer. Yael surrendered and walked over to him. Bertrand pointed at her orange scarf. Yael shrugged, took it off, and handed it to him.

  He held both scarves in one hand and with a few deft movements entwined them. He leaned forward, whispering in Yael’s ear as he draped it around her neck. “Down there, chérie, a block away, there is a taxi parked on the corner of West End Avenue. Nod if you can see it.”

  Yael did as he said. The cab had tinted windows.

  Bertrand continued in a low voice: “I see this car every day for a week now. Registration 7H35. It sits there or goes down 81st Street to your apartment building and waits there. I don’t like this car. I don’t like the kind of men I see around it. They bring back bad memories.”

  He stepped back and looked at Yael, handing her a mirror. “C’est belle, non?” Once again the smiling salesman.

  Yael nodded.The orange and the purple went very well, a dash of color against her brown coat. She reached into her pocket for her wallet, but Bertrand waved her away, with a warm smile and a warning look.

  Yael thought about what Bertrand had said as she walked down Broadway to the 79th Street subway station. It was just after 3:00 p.m., a good time to travel downtown. She loved the 1 train, which ran right through the island of Manhattan, starting at 215th Street and ending on Manhattan’s southernmost tip at South Ferry, against a spectacular backdrop of the Financial District’s skyscrapers. During rush hour, every car was packed solid with commuters. Now there was room to sit, breathe, even stretch her legs out.

  Yael also preferred traveling at this time because it was easier to notice if she was being followed. It certainly seemed her apartment was being watched. She walked down the narrow, grimy stairway, bought a new MetroCard with cash, swiped it, and stepped through the turnstile onto the platform. It was empty. As soon as she had started working for the SG she assumed—correctly, she quickly learned—that she would immediately become a person of interest to numerous intelligence services, especially those of the P5: the CIA, MI6, France’s DGSE, China’s MSS, and Russia’s FSB. She took it for granted that her access to high-level decision making and behind-the-scenes deals in war zones where the superpowers had economic interests meant that her telephones were tapped.

  She sat down on the wooden bench and loosened her coat. The 2 train express roared past, hurtling downtown, the passengers’ faces a blur. Condensation dripped down the cracked tiles, and a stale smell wafted up from a pool of stagnant water nearby. She took out a small Swiss Army knife from her bag and methodically cut her new MetroCard into small pieces.

  Yael’s cell phone was encrypted to military level. The encryption provided a degree of protection, for example, against Afghan warlords or Iraqi insurgents listening in, but she had no doubt that it had quickly been broken by the US National Security Agency and its foreign rivals. She didn’t enjoy the knowledge that somewhere in Beijing, Moscow, or London, a technician was sitting hunched over a computer screen, listening to her calls, but it didn’t bother her that much either. Her defense was transparency: she was a good soldier, obediently following the SG’s orders, which were the P5’s orders. There was nothing extra to discover; she was not negotiating secret deals or accommodations on the side. She did not take bribes, and she had little time for a private life.

  But she drew a line at microphones in her home. Thanks to Joe-Don Pabst, she knew her flat was bugged. Joe-Don visited once a month to sweep and debug the apartment. A fresh crop always appeared soon after, but at least they, whoever they were, knew that she knew. Now, though, her life had changed. She was on her own. She needed a telephone, and one that was not traceable—one of several items she would require if she were going to really do this.

  Her plan had two parts. The first part, about which she was certain, was to get information—the facts that would finally, after so many years, give her closure about the death of the person she had loved most in the world. It would be messy, difficult, and dangerous, but with skill and some luck she could probably pull it off in such a way that there would be no consequences. The second part, if she went ahead, was an act that was irrevocable. It would change her life forever. But a dark seed had been planted in her mind. Planted some time ago, she realized, and now, watered by the Hakizimani deal, it was germinating more rapidly than she could have imagined.

  An angry buzz filled the press conference as though a swarm of bees had suddenly been let loose. The journalists turned to each other, incredulous and indignant that Schneidermann would not take questions.

  The SG’s spokesman tapped the microphone again and the room fell silent. He held a piece of paper in his hand and read slowly in his tenor voice. “Fareed Hussein and all UN staff extend their deepest condolences to the family of Olivia de Souza. She was a loyal and hardworking colleague who devoted many years of her life to advancing the values of the UN, which we all hold so dear. She will be greatly missed.”

  He flipped the paper over and read from the second sheet. “Yael Azoulay, a political adviser to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is currently suspended on full pay, pending an investigation into a report in the New York Times that she leaked confidential and false information to that newspaper. The investigation will also look at claims of inappropriate personal behavior with local staff while on assignment in Afghanistan. Thank you.”

  The indignant clamor erupted afresh as the journalists shouted questions and demands for more information. Sami silently accessed a subscription-only database on his smartphone. Having obtained the information he needed, he watched the pack go into action, led this time, he could see, by Al-Jazeera.

  Najwa strode up to Schneidermann, her camerawoman behind her, with a very determined look on her face. She pushed her microphone toward Schneidermann. “Can you confirm that the UN made a secret deal with Jean-Pierre Hakizimani? Is the New York Times story true?”

  Schneidermann looked away, ignoring her as he gathered up his papers. Najwa instantly turned to her cameraman and said, “The UN spokesman refuses to answer our questions.”

  Jonathan Beaufort stood up. The room quietened. When Beaufort asked a question, everyone listened. “Mr. Schneidermann. Will the UN be calling in the NYPD or the FBI to investigate the death of Ms. de Souza? Or will you use the UN police? How does this death affect the UN’s host-country agreement with the United States?” he demanded, referring to the complex treaty governing the UN’s rules of extraterritoriality and its relations with the United States.

  Schneidermann said, “As I said, I will not be taking any questions. A transcript of this press briefing will be available soon on the UN website.”

  “Briefing? What briefing?” demanded Beaufort. “The SG’s personal secretary fell thirty-eight floors down the middle of the building today. Did she jump? Was she pushed? You read out a prepared statement and you won’t take questions. What kind of press briefing is this?”

  “The UN kind,” one of the journalists said loudly.

  The room erupted in laughter. Schneidermann’s face flushed with anger. He fumbled with his folder and stood up, striding away from the posse of reporters following him out of the room.

  Sami sat down and waited, doodling in his notebook as the remaining reporters packed up and drifted out. There was something Sami wanted to ask Schneidermann, but one to one, not in front of the press corps, all of whom had excellent antennae, and many of whose editors followed the New York Times’ coverage. And certainly not in front of Jonathan Beaufort.

  Ten

  Yael boarded the almost empty train, sat down on the hard plastic bench, and subtly scoped the carriage. Si
tting opposite her was a Chinese girl in her early twenties clutching a model’s portfolio and dressed in an unseasonal short black dress and mini-denim jacket, her sleek black haircut into a geometric bob. A man in his midforties boarded the other end of the car just before the doors closed, and pulled out that day’s Wall Street Journal as he sat down. Yael glanced up and down at him. He was tall, sallow-skinned, and had medium-length brown hair, slicked back with gel. He wore a white button-down shirt, navy tie, blue suit, and shiny black shoes. At first glance, another Identikit financier. But he had dark eyes, sharp cheekbones, and a pencil mustache that made him look a little like Johnny Depp. In fact, thought Yael, he was quite good-looking. Buy coltan, she half wanted to tell him, wondering what the commercial value of the information she held would be. Enormous, she guessed. Hakizimani was right. Peace in East Africa would trigger an economic boom.

  Yael read the row of advertisements above the seats calling for passengers to enroll in community colleges, take protein supplements for a perfect physique, and call 1-800-ACCIDENT to sue for personal injury. In among the posters were three stanzas of verse, the latest offering in the city’s “Poetry in Motion” campaign: “A Little Tooth” by Thomas Lux, about the birth of a daughter and her progress through life. Yael read through to the end:

  “And you / your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue / nothing. You did, you loved, your feet / are sore. It’s dusk. Your daughter’s tall.” Something pulled inside her with an almost physical intensity as she finished the poem. There were days, and this was one, when she felt very alone.

  Yael was the second child of three siblings. After the death of Yael’s elder brother, David, nineteen years ago, her mother had suffered a nervous breakdown. She had recovered, reverted to her maiden name, and realized that she preferred women to men and moved in with her ex-therapist in Berkeley. Yael’s mother had never been especially maternal, except where David was concerned. Time, distance, and the loss of David meant that contact was now reduced to a few cursory e-mails. Yael’s younger sister, Noa, had discovered religion while visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem. An emissary from the Lubavitch sect of Judaism had persuaded her to come for a Shabbat dinner. Noa now lived in Ariel, a large settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and was happily married to a full-time student of the Torah with no apparent income. They had six children, twins on the way, and were blissfully happy. If Yael called Noa, she would receive an immediate and open invitation. But Noa knew little of Yael’s world and understood even less. And flying off to Israel would not solve anything.

  Yael had had no contact with her father for more than a decade. She had very much wanted him to be proud of her, but he had been furious when she’d accepted a job at the UN. Yael could still hear him shouting that the UN had already taken his son, and now he had to sacrifice his daughter as well? At first Yael had been conciliatory and regularly called and e-mailed him about her adventures and to reassure him that she was safe. But he had been increasingly cold and distant. The longer she worked at the UN, the more withdrawn and uncommunicative he became, especially as promotion followed promotion. It was hurtful, of course, but she was so busy in her work that there was little time to think about it.

  Curiously, Yael’s father had contacted her a few days before her vetting for top-level security clearance. They had gone out for dinner and he tried to persuade Yael to leave her job yet again. He claimed to be worried about her safety and once more invoked David’s memory, which annoyed her and in turn made him angry. Underneath his anger, she thought she could sense an undercurrent of something very like fear. But of what? The evening had ended badly. The following week, once Yael had received her clearance, she typed her father’s name into the peacekeeping department’s classified database on a whim. What she had read still haunted her. She had not spoken to him since.

  The train stopped at 59th Street, Columbus Circle, and the car began to fill up with the first early escapees from West Side offices. A tall, skinny man in his late twenties with a goatee sat down opposite. On days like these Yael still missed her elder brother intensely. She had looked up to him, of course, like every younger sister does, but theirs was a special kinship. She and David had talked about everything and shared their deepest hopes and fears. As their parents’ marriage fractured and their nomadic lifestyles turned from exciting to exhausting, David had been the one constant on which she could rely: always there and always ready to listen.

  Until he was no longer alive. Becoming that close to someone else again would have felt like a kind of betrayal, even though she knew that the last thing David would have wanted would be for her to withdraw from intimacy because of his death. Was that the real reason for her solitariness, she sometimes wondered, or was it just an excuse? Either way the result was the same. Memories flashed through her mind as the train creaked and rattled its path under Manhattan: trips to Zabar’s for bagels and lox; mornings cycling around Central Park and ice creams on Bow Bridge; riding this very subway line, downtown to the West Village to watch Satantango, a seven-hour art film from Hungary and not falling asleep once; David’s breathless confession to her over her birthday lunch at the Windows on the World Restaurant in the North Tower that he was gay.

  The train trundled along through midtown, past Times Square at 42nd Street, Penn Station at 34th, and down into Greenwich Village.

  Yael stood up at the Canal Street station. She planned to walk from here down through the financial district to South Ferry. The man in the blue suit with the pencil mustache was still seated, absorbed in his newspaper. Yael stepped off the train, dropped the shreds of her MetroCard into a nearby trashcan, and walked into the crowd.

  Sami waited until the other journalists had all left the press conference before walking to Schneidermann’s office nearby. The spokesman’s secretary, Francine de la Court, and her staff sat at their computers by the door, looking at him with barely disguised hostility. Only Roxana Voiculescu, Schneidermann’s flirtatious Romanian deputy, gave him a welcoming smile.

  “Yes?” asked de la Court. Schneidermann’s gatekeeper was an immaculately dressed Haitian of a certain age, who had until recently worked as the SG’s deputy protocol secretary until she had been replaced by a former Miss India.

  “There’s something I need to check with Mr. Schneidermann. Can I have a quick word?” Sami asked, smiling politely.

  De la Court stared back, stony-faced. “The spokesman is busy.”

  “Too busy to include the UN’s viewpoint in a New York Times story about the UN? OK, I can report that,” he said, blithely. “And how do I spell your name?”

  “Wait,” said de la Court. She picked up her telephone, punched out a number, and spoke in rapid French. Sami heard his name repeatedly mentioned.

  De la Court stared at him. “He will see you. For two minutes.”

  “Thanks,” said Sami.

  As he walked over to Schneidermann’s door, the spokesman appeared. “I am in a teleconference with Nairobi and Vienna, Sami. Is this urgent? We are not saying anything further about the tragic events of today.”

  The two men stood in the corridor as Sami scratched his mop of dark curly hair and looked puzzled. “It’s not about Olivia. Or Yael Azoulay.”

  “Then how can I help?” asked Schneidermann, his voice brisk.

  Sami gestured inside the spokesman’s office. “Do we have to talk in the corridor?”

  Schneidermann made a sour face and reluctantly ushered Sami inside.

  Sami looked around the room. The spokesman’s office was at least ten times the size of Sami’s cubbyhole, with large windows overlooking the East River. Apart from a keyboard and flat-screen monitor, Schneidermann’s desk was almost empty, as were the bookshelves and cork pin board. A large poster for Africa Child Rescue filled most of one wall. A screensaver showed a UN flag drifting back and forth across the monitor. A laser printer stood on a small stand in the corner of the room, blinking an
d whirring as it wound down, piles of stationery and different-colored envelopes carefully arranged next to it. Two sheets of freshly printed paper sat in the out-tray.

  “Nice. How do I get an office like this?” asked Sami.

  “Speak to the building manager. I am sure he will be happy to help,” Schneidermann said in a tone that implied this would be most unlikely. He sighed loudly. “Sami, I am very busy. What do you want?”

  Sami pointed at the poster for Africa Child Rescue. “This charity that the SG is so keen on, Henrik. I’m kind of curious why the UN is endorsing it.”

  “Because it is doing such good work. Rescuing children from a life of slavery in mineral mines. What better cause could there be?”

  “None, of course. But—”

  “So we are agreed then,” interrupted Schneidermann. He walked over to the printer, picked up the sheets from the tray, and glanced at them briefly. Sami could see that they seemed to be a travel itinerary of some kind. Schneidermann folded the papers and picked out a blue envelope, the color used for personal correspondence for the SG. He placed the papers in the envelope, closed it, and slid it into the breast pocket of his jacket.

  Schneidermann said, “Perhaps we can even expect some supportive coverage in the New York Times of this important new initiative.”

  Sami looked at him inquiringly. “You could, perhaps, if you could tell me a little more about it. Where is the charity’s money coming from?”

  “From people who believe in the ideals of the United Nations, Sami, and who understand the importance of its work,” replied Schneidermann, his voice clear that he did not include Sami in this august group.

  Sami nodded slowly. “Isn’t transparency one of those ideals?”

  “Yes. And your point is?”