The Geneva Option

by Adam LeBor

  Sami scratched his chin. “So where is the money coming from?”

  “I told you, from a group of businessmen who want to support the UN.”

  “Can you give me some names? Or some of the firms’ details?”

  “I am not currently authorized to release that information. Now if you don’t have any more questions,” Schneidermann said, walking toward the door.

  “Just one, if you don’t mind.”

  The spokesman nodded, not bothering to hide his exasperation.

  “Last month a company called Moabi Holdings Limited was registered in Kinshasa. One of the shareholders, who owns 15 percent, is called Zeinab Hussein. So is the SG’s wife. Is it the same person?”

  Schneidermann turned bright red. “Please send any further questions to me by e-mail. Thank you,” he said as he opened the door and ushered Sami out of his office.

  Yael sat on the bench off Battery Park overlooking the river, tucked her purple and orange scarves into her coat, and pulled her legs high up to her chest. She hugged them tightly as she watched the sun set over the Jersey City skyline. Wall Street’s skyscrapers loomed behind her, and the Statue of Liberty loomed in the distance over the water. The water lapped steadily at the edge of the boardwalk that marked the southernmost tip of Manhattan. The tide’s calm, steady rhythm was soporific, and she felt herself relaxing as she breathed the fresh, salt-tanged air.

  It helped that Joe-Don Pabst was sitting next to her. Joe-Don had sloping shoulders and the physique of an athlete whose outer layer had softened but who still had hard-packed muscle at the core. His thick gray hair was cut close, his small pale-blue eyes looked out of a pink, fleshy face, and his fingers were thick and callused. Dressed in a thick, blue woolen hat, black leather jacket, and workman’s boots, a rough canvas bag over one shoulder, he looked like he was about to man a picket line at the docks and set about strikebreakers with a baseball bat.

  But his squat, almost simian build belied a sharp and nuanced intelligence and an instinct for danger that was legendary at the UN. Joe-Don was a taciturn US Special Forces veteran in his midfifties. Born in Minnesota, he had worked for the UN’s Department of Safety and Security for more than a decade, serving in every crisis and war zone where the UN had staff. For the last few years he had been Yael’s bodyguard. He had saved Yael’s life in Baghdad and Kandahar when insurgents had tried to kidnap her, and he had taken a bullet in his leg when he threw himself on top of her during a firefight in Gaza between Fatah and Hamas gunmen.

  Yet despite the many dangers they had shared, and long sleepless nights marooned in numerous war zones, Yael knew very little about Joe-Don’s past, except that he had worked as an instructor at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, and had spent much time in Central America during the late 1980s and 1990s. But he refused to elaborate.

  Joe-Don’s blunt manner and total lack of interest in self-promotion had made him numerous enemies at the UN. So had his repeated warnings that the UN compound in Baghdad was not properly secured. A long memo in 2003 to Fareed Hussein, then under-secretary-general of the Department of Political Affairs, outlined how the site needed blast walls, shatterproof windows, properly manned checkpoints at staggered perimeters, and zigzagged approach roads. Hussein had never replied to Joe-Don’s memo. When a suicide bomber smashed his truck through in 2004, blowing away a whole side of the building and killing twenty-three people, Joe-Don was immediately fired for “dereliction of duty.” When he’d protested, and produced written records of his warnings that the compound was vulnerable to precisely this kind of attack, he was taken off staff and made an adviser with reduced security clearance. After repeated public protests by the American ambassador—and more discreet reminders that the United States paid 25 percent of the UN’s operating budget—Joe-Don was reinstated, although at a lower pay grade. Still, Washington had made it clear that Joe-Don was not to be fired. He still had carte blanche to roam wherever he liked in any UN building or mission around the world.

  Joe-Don handed Yael the afternoon edition of the New York Post: “UN Aide in Death Plunge Horror,” the headline screamed. Olivia’s friendly face peered out from the front page.

  Yael felt her stomach turn as she scanned the newspaper. She asked, “How?”

  Joe-Don looked at her and nodded. “Murdered. I am sorry. I know she was your friend.”

  “Who did it?”

  “I don’t know. The killer knew where and when she would be alone. Perhaps someone she knew and trusted. She fought. The railings are full of scratch marks.”

  Yael folded the newspaper and put it in her bag. “Why?”

  Joe-Don sat silently before he spoke. “I don’t know that either.” He turned to Yael. “Anything you want to tell me?” he asked laconically.

  Should she tell him about the sound file, she wondered? She trusted Joe-Don absolutely. He had taken a bullet for her. But she also knew him. He would tell her she was in danger, demand she leave her apartment, change her identity, move to Toronto, who knows what.

  Yael watched the Staten Island Ferry slide into the South Pier terminal, the waves slapping against its sides. “No. Nothing. How’s this month’s haul?” she asked lightly, wondering if Joe-Don would believe her.

  His look told her that he did not, but he did not reply. He reached back into his bag and took out a small metal box. He opened the lid and showed her the tangle of wires and tiny metal cubes, spheres, and discs. “The P5, Israel, India, Brazil, and a new one,” he said, pulling out a black pinhead with three silver tendrils trailing from it.

  He held the bug up to the light and turned it this way and that before handing it to Yael. “France, or maybe Germany. Definitely European.”

  “Where was it?” she asked, examining the tiny device.

  “In the electricity socket by your bed. So perhaps it was the French.”

  She sighed and handed it back. “How long will they carry on?”

  “It depends on what you do next.”

  Yael looked at him with a mix of affection and determination.

  Joe-Don frowned. “I thought we settled this in Goma.”

  Yael watched a skateboarder clatter by, white wires trailing from his ears as he sped past. “I said I would think about what you said. I did and now I have made up my mind.”

  He stared hard at her and she held his gaze. Yael knew he would give in to her.

  Joe-Don shook his head, exasperated, and put his hand in his trouser pocket. He leaned back and rummaged around until he had found what he was looking for: a small memory stick.

  He then took out a thick A4 envelope from his shoulder bag. He handed Yael the envelope and the memory stick. “As requested: the hotel blueprints. And the contents of your filing cabinet.”

  Joe-Don reached back into his bag and took out two Nokia mobile telephones, weighing them in his hands. “Pre-paids, both charged and untraceable. Don’t use any of them for more than three days. Then throw them away or, better still, take the ferry and drop them out there,” he said, lifting his head toward the ocean.

  He handed Yael the handsets. “Now a reminder about security. Mobile telephones are personal-tracking and listening devices. Any handset you carry records both your location to within a hundred square yards, often much less, and the period of time you spent there. That information is available to anyone who can access the phone company’s records. Any handset can be turned into a long-range microphone without your knowledge, even if it is switched off. If you carry one with you, take the battery out—even if you just go to the corner shop—except when you need to talk. Take the batteries out at home as well. Take the batteries out when you throw the handsets away. Text messages are safer than talking. Or use public telephones and not the one nearest to your house. I will bring you an encrypted phone in a few days. Be careful when you use it. Encrypted calls are logged by the network providers. They set
off alarms. Or just stay at home. Or communicate by carrier pigeon. Or cuneiform tablets. Or go on vacation until you forget the whole idea?”

  Yael laughed and put the cell phones in her bag. A memory from the hotel in Goma flashed through her mind: Hakizimani leaning back, confidently dismissing the report of the massacre at the Belgian Mission School, sending the ashtray flying across the room. She stopped smiling. “You know I cannot do that.”

  Joe-Don sat staring out to sea. “Maybe Hussein is right. And Erin Rembaugh. It is all a ‘numbers game.’ Peace in eastern Congo would save tens of thousands of lives. Hakizimani can make it happen.”

  Yael turned instantly toward him. How did he know?

  He looked at her. “I am responsible for your security.”

  She glared back. “Is there anything you don’t know about me?”

  “Yes. Why you insist on doing this. And who sent you the sound file. Come on,” he said, and they walked down to the edge of the boardwalk.

  She watched a seagull dive toward the water. “When does Hakizimani arrive?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Yael looked at Joe-Don in surprise. “So soon? I thought it was next week.”

  “The SG’s gone into overdrive. The negotiations are to start as soon as possible. Hakizimani is booked into the Millennium Plaza under the name of Patrice Lumumba.”

  Yael smiled. “Are you sure?”

  Joe-Don nodded. “Absolutely. Hakizimani insisted. Rembaugh was pissed at him, but couldn’t do anything about it. Mr. Lumumba has agreed to everything. You did a good job.”

  “Did I?” She looked at him expectantly. “I haven’t finished.” The seagull stopped its dive, wheeled sharply, and hovered above the water.

  Joe-Don took out a third phone: black, larger, and much more old-fashioned.

  Yael asked, “You are not backing out?”

  Joe looked unhappy. “No, I am not. If you insist on going through with this.”

  “I do.”

  “You understand the consequences?”

  “Yes.”

  Yael drew closer to him and spoke for a couple of minutes, outlining her plans. She looked at him, a question in her eyes. He nodded and handed her the black mobile telephone.

  Yael turned it in her hand. “It’s heavy.”

  “It does the job.”

  The seagull plunged, then soared upward, a flash of silver in its beak. Yael said, “That’s all I need.”

  Eleven

  Sami sat in front of his computer screen and pressed the delete button again. The highlighted copy instantly vanished. He reached for the bar of dark chocolate on his desk and snapped a large chunk off. Perhaps the cocoa and sugar buzz might kick-start his article about Olivia, because nothing else seemed to be working.

  Sami had never had to write about someone he knew personally, let alone someone who had died so horribly. His mind kept drifting back to a UN press trip to Darfur, Sudan’s war-ravaged western province, a trip that Olivia had also been part of. Journalists were supposed to be like doctors, dealing professionally and capably with the human tragedies they witnessed. But the basic formula was simple: more misery equaled more columns in the newspaper. Still, it was his job to report accurately what he saw, so that policymakers could make better-informed decisions and so that the public could apply pressure to their leaders to do something. But even reporters were human, at least most of them, and it was impossible to remain unaffected by what he had witnessed. Especially when the UN and the press stayed in the best hotels enjoying multiple-course dinners and the hospitality of local dignitaries, while victims languished in tents nearby.

  Sami had sat on the ground in a plastic UN shelter, across from a mother, perhaps in her forties, and her two teenage daughters, as they picked listlessly at some porridge in yellow plastic bowls. The mother recounted how she had watched the Janjaweed, the murderous government militia, execute her husband and fourteen-year-old son. The Janjaweed had dropped their bodies down the village well to poison the water supply so that nobody could return to the ethnically cleansed area. The mother had been raped.

  Still deeply traumatized by their loss, they did not really understand who Sami was, and why he was asking so many questions. He realized after a few minutes that they thought he was a UN official. Even so, he asked for more and more details, knowing their terrible story would get plenty of space in the newspaper the next day. When the interview was over, and he stood up to leave, the mother was crying. She whispered, “Help us.” Sami passed their names to someone he knew at the State Department. The mother and daughters were eventually granted asylum in the United States and now lived in Arizona. But Sami’s sense of shame had never left him.

  He chewed the chocolate slowly and stared hard at his screen. He had two articles to work on: a straightforward news story about Olivia’s death and Yael’s sacking, and a much longer, investigative piece about Africa Child Rescue and its links with the secretary-general and the upper reaches of the UN’s management. The investigation, Olivia’s voice mails, and the Kinshasa connection would make an explosive story. But one that needed the careful digging and cross-checking that would take a couple of days.

  Sami had liked Olivia: she was bright, funny, and helpful, and had given him several useful snippets of information. Suddenly, his fingers started typing, almost of their own accord. His editors would get a proper account of her life, which was what she deserved. “With her penchant for designer shoes, matching nail varnish, and stylish jewelry, Olivia de Souza was a flash of welcome color in an organization notorious for its legions of gray bureaucrats,” he started. Sami wrote fluently about Olivia’s decades of service to the UN and several personal anecdotes about his encounters with her. He added a few lines at the end about Henrik Schneidermann’s statement about Yael and ended on the spokesman’s claim that she was suspected of “inappropriate personal behavior with a UN employee in Afghanistan.”

  His fingers hovered over the keyboard. Sami had heard several rumors about Yael in Kandahar, most of which seemed to boil down to the fact that on one or more occasions she may have slept with her interpreter. That was her business, he decided, ignoring the sudden pang of jealousy. There was some other stuff as well, much darker, but impossible to pin down, unless she decided to really confide in him. Judging by their brief encounter that morning in Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, that did not seem very likely. And UN rumors were a long way from any kind of proof.

  The telephone rang and Sami smiled as he answered. “Hi, Sami,” a female voice said. “It’s Roxana.”

  Yael sat down on the sofa, kicked off her shoes, and poured herself a large glass of red wine. She put her feet on the coffee table, picked up the articles she had printed out earlier that day, and began to read them again. The Bonnet Group was now the most powerful industrial conglomerate in France. Its leaders were confidants of presidents and prime ministers, its local managers often more powerful than cabinet members. Numerous stories reported on allegations of corruption and bribery—handsome bribes supposedly paid to African politicians and warlords. Several investigations reported details of child labor in its mineral mines, but nothing ever seemed to stick. The company rarely denied the reports. Instead it promised to investigate, paid copious compensation—most of which was diverted by middlemen on the way—and funded new schools and clinics. The company kept on expanding, its reach and power growing.

  The shortest article was the most interesting. A news story in the Washington Post briefly reported that Chantal Richard, the glamorous new female French prime minister, was in Washington, DC, meeting various American officials, including Marc Rosenheim, President Freshwater’s secretary of state. Ms. Richard was accompanied by a handful of French businessmen, including Henri Bonnet, elderly father of Charles, the not-so-charming UN official.

  Yael put the file down and switched on the television to CNN. It was just after 8:00 p.m. and
the start of the primetime talk show Tonight with Trevor. Trevor was Trevor Johnson, a British former editor of a tabloid newspaper whose idea of a tough question to his celebrity interviewees was “How do you manage your busy schedule?”

  To her surprise the program opened with long, panning shots of a UN refugee camp somewhere in Africa: women and children huddled in plastic shelters, families queuing for food handouts, and doctors weighing pitifully small children, their bellies swollen from malnutrition.

  Yael realized that she knew where this was and had actually been there a couple of days before: the UN camp outside Goma, recently swelled by new waves of Tutsi refugees fleeing Hakizimani’s militiamen.

  The camera switched back to the studio and Johnson with his guests: Lucy Tremlett, the actress whose picture Yael had seen in the SG’s office, and a tall, thin man in a gray suit. Tremlett looked fresh-faced, even radiant in a simple pink T-shirt and jeans. The man had white-blond hair and was so pale he looked like he would blend into the studio’s white wall.

  “War, famine, drought. All familiar, heartrending scenes from Goma, in eastern Congo, in the very heart of Africa,” intoned Johnson gravely. “But pictures like this will soon be history if Lucy Tremlett has her way. Hollywood’s hottest property has a new role, and it’s far more challenging than anything the crankiest director could ever throw at her. Lucy, tell us about that, before I introduce our other guests.”

  The camera zoomed in on Tremlett’s heart-shaped face, blue eyes, and sleek strawberry-blond hair. Yael peered at the screen. How did she do that? No spots, wrinkles, or flaws of any kind. Her hair glowed with vitality. There was barely a dusting of powder on her radiant skin.

  The actress smiled warmly at the camera. “Thank you, Trevor. As you probably know, last year Fareed Hussein, the secretary-general of the United Nations, asked me to serve as an ambassador for UNICEF, and I was very pleased to accept. It’s an honor and a privilege.”

  The camera showed a series of stills of Tremlett with Hussein in Afghanistan, Congo, and Sudan as she spoke. “I have been to places that I would never have visited and seen things I could never have imagined happening in the twenty-first century. It’s only when those of us living comfortable lives with enough food, clothes, and running water realize that we are the lucky ones, that most of the world does not live like that, that anything will change,” she said passionately. “And we are going to do just that: provide housing, education, water, jobs, and training. UNICEF and the UN are very excited to be working together with a new charity, Africa Child Rescue.”