by Adam LeBor
“Thanks for the drink. It was really fun. Let’s do it again soon,” Roxana said, her voice brisk and businesslike now, before giving him a chaste peck on the cheek.
“Anytime,” he said, wondering why he bothered to repeat the lie. He watched her walk over to the bar and greet a dark-haired man in his late twenties with an enthusiastic kiss on the mouth. Sami sat back down and slowly stirred his drink, the air in the booth still charged with Roxana’s energy. He was a liar—the story about dissatisfaction with Schneidermann was a complete fiction—and a thief. But he had the envelope.
Yael put the sticky paper back on the table. She sat back and watched a tugboat chugging along the Hudson river, the reflection of its lights glimmering on the waves. They were mocking her now, telling her they were watching, had been inside her flat. But Yael did not feel scared. She had Joe-Don and she had something else. She picked up a quarter from the table, reached under her chair, and levered up a loose strip of parquet floor. The wood came away easily to reveal a narrow, deep cavity. She pulled out a small, heavy package wrapped in oilcloth. She unraveled the covering and weighed the pistol in her hand: an M9, US Army standard issue. Safety catch on, one round chambered.
Yael stood with her feet apart and her legs slightly bowed, held the pistol in both hands, and sighted on an imaginary enemy. No, she was not scared, but she was angry, with a cold rage that coursed through her. Memories of Olivia ran through her head: laughing so loudly at Le Perigord that the maître d’ had asked them, as politely as possible, to please be quieter; sharing a pack of throat-searing Lebanese cigarettes on the balcony on the 38th floor; swapping gossip about Charles Bonnet’s latest “intern,” every one of whom looked like a model from Vogue. They had killed her friend, and now she would take her revenge, not just for Olivia, but for David—indeed for all the other victims sacrificed, with her help, on the holy altar of realpolitik.
Yael put the gun down. She needed to be calm and smart, not hyped up and lashing out. She plugged her iPod into the speaker stand and Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing” filled the room. She switched off the light, poured herself some more red wine, lit a scented candle, and sat on her bed. She drank most of the glass just a little too fast, and the walls began to soften and blur. Van Morrison’s throaty voice soared and fell, and she felt the familiar, welcome sliding. She lay back, smoking contemplatively, staring at the gray wisps as they rose toward the cracked paint on the ceiling. She pulled slowly on the gold hoop high on the side of her right ear and closed her eyes. The pain was mild at first. Waves of red and gold swirled and exploded, vanished and dissolved.
She was dancing on a snow-capped mountain, the earth cold and hard beneath her feet, the sky a sheet of solid turquoise, and the air so pure it hurt to breathe; she was sitting astride him, drenched with sweat, his body wiry beneath her as she shuddered in her orgasm. She twisted the hoop harder until she gasped with the pain, and she could see his face as though he were in the room with her: the handsomest man in Kandahar, in Afghanistan, in the whole world—skin the color of milky coffee, eyes like green laser beams, and a smile that made her knees wobble.
She rocked and gasped, the pain and pleasure fusing as the music coursed through her body. He beckoned her toward him, his eyes locked onto hers, and the hunger surged through her. He smelled of cinnamon and dust, coffee and sunshine, and his body was warm and hard. A hand slid between her legs, her back arched, and the pleasure rippled up and down; he was above her, he was inside her, and the wave built and built until it broke and she shuddered and moaned.
The music stopped and Yael lay still for a while, the sadness lighter but no less poignant. Her eyes were wet, she realized, and she wiped them dry. She glanced over at her shoulder bag on the kitchen table. A cream envelope was sticking out of the side pocket, addressed to her by hand, with no return address. She had picked the letter up from the doorman when she returned home. Yael opened the envelope. The letter inside was written in a flowing, elegant hand on thick paper; the script looked familiar. She scanned the letter: “My dear Yael,” it began.
Sami took a long swig from the bottle of Brooklyn Lager and switched off his television at the end of the CNN 9:00 p.m. news show. He looked around his studio apartment on 9th Street in the East Village. It was cramped, dark, and musty. Sami had lived there for nearly two years but still had not properly unpacked his stuff. Half the room was filled with boxes of books and papers, many of them spilling out on to the floor. He kept telling himself that this was only a temporary accommodation, not worth sorting out. But at $1,500 a month it was supercheap by Manhattan standards, mainly because it belonged to his uncle, who had not used it since the 1980s. The walls were a faded cream, the floor covered with an orange acrylic carpet, and the hot water spat brown in the bathroom, but the most depressing thing was the twin bed in the corner. How could he bring a girl back here?
Still, he thought, tipping the bottle of lager up to get the last drops, that was at least a theoretical question for now. Roxana Voiculescu. What an operator. His second strikeout after Yael. But if the women thing was not going well, at least work was. The UN-KZX agreement was a huge story. He grabbed his laptop. The Department of Safety and Security, usually one of the more obscure parts of the UN, suddenly looked a whole lot more interesting.
He clicked on the DSS’s website. Like every UN department, the DSS was run by an under-secretary-general. A USG was an immensely powerful position, and usually the peak of a UN career. The DSS had a new USG: Hakim Yundala. Sami stared at Yundala’s photograph. He was African—short, muscular, with a wide face and small red-flecked eyes, and immensely pleased with himself. It was coming back now: Yundala was a former chief of police in Kinshasa, in charge of the investigation into the death of Aristide Belimba, the country’s foremost investigative journalist, who specialized in tracking coltan shipments. He had been found locked in his car, with a rubber tube leading from his exhaust pipe to the window.
Yundala had quickly declared that the reporter had committed suicide, and was promptly promoted to interior minister. His UN appointment had caused vocal protests from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and a demonstration by Congolese exiles outside the UN building. That protest, Sami now remembered, had been led by Rina Hussein, the SG’s daughter—just like today’s protest had been. Schneidermann, the SG’s spokesman, had dismissed the objections, proclaiming that Yundala’s appointment was proof of the SG’s and the UN’s commitment to global diversity. There was more: a three-line press release announced the SG’s appointment of two new members to the Senior Management Group, the most powerful cabal of UN officials: Hakim Yundala and Charles Bonnet.
Sami put his laptop down, sat back, and picked up the blue envelope on the coffee table. There were two sheets inside, and he read them carefully once more.
Thirteen
Yael sat in a half-lotus on her bed, warmed by the midday sunshine. She had woken a couple of hours earlier. She still felt muggy-headed from the previous night’s wine and cigarettes, and she was increasingly apprehensive about the evening. She had read through Hakizimani’s UN file again, but something kept bothering her. The only time the Rwandan had shown his human side in Goma was when he pulled out the worn, plastic-covered photo of his three daughters. His face had twisted in genuine anguish. Yael could feel his grief, still raw after so many years. But there was something else, she sensed, a different emotion threaded into his sorrow.
The more she thought about the car bomb the less sense it made. Why would the Tutsi leadership, knowing by then that the Hutu government was preparing for civil war, if not a mass extermination, blow up the minister of health’s car? If they wanted to assassinate someone, then it should have been the prime minister or the whole cabinet at once. The minister of health was not a major power broker, although Hakizimani soon became one of the most important Hutu leaders and a key architect of the genocide. It puzzled her, but the answer, if there were one, woul
d eventually materialize of its own accord.
She walked over to the kitchen table and checked the blueprints of the 12th floor of the Millennium Plaza. Suite 3017 was the last room, at the end of the corridor, next to a fire exit staircase. Joe-Don had thought of everything, or so she hoped. Olivia’s letter lay open on the table. She had reread it several times that morning, unsure when she had woken up if she had dreamed it, or if it really did exist.
But there it was, Olivia’s careful, sloping handwriting, in dark blue ink, just as the nuns at the orphanage in Managua had taught her:
My dear Yael,
I very much hope that you will never read this. We always laughed about the P5 and who knows who else bugging our rooms and the SG’s offices and they doubtless are. But I fear that now something much worse is happening, so if anything happens to me, I have arranged for this to be delivered to you by hand.
You know how worried I have been lately; the SG has been losing weight, his hand shakes, and he is irritable. It’s my job to organize his diary, and usually I know where he is and what he is doing every minute of the day. Now hours, sometimes the whole day goes by and I have no idea what’s going on, except that he is in closed-door meetings, out of the office, or unavailable. Other weird things are happening: e-mails disappear from my computer, and those I send don’t always arrive. The other day I saw a document move across my desktop from one side of the monitor to another—but when I called the IT security department they just laughed and told me I had an overactive imagination.
Last night I knew I did not. I went in to the SG’s office, and he was fast asleep at his desk. The figure “500” had been written on his pad several times and then crossed out with line upon line, vertically and horizontally, as though he were trying to gouge the numbers out of the paper. He was muttering, and his right hand was clenched so tightly the knuckles were white. He sat up with his eyes wide open. He stared at me, his eyes almost bulging out of their sockets, as though I was some kind of terrifying monster. But he was in a deep dream and did not see me. He cried out and dropped his head again.
The telephone rang, on his private line, the one even I cannot connect calls to. The SG murmured something but kept sleeping. You know I am under strict instructions never to touch that telephone, the “hotline” as we always used to joke. But after two or three rings I could not resist. I picked it up and said hello. Nobody answered. The line went dead immediately. I checked the SG once more. He was still asleep, so I pressed the last number redial. A woman answered and said, ”Menachem Stein’s office.”
I hung up right away. I knew that woman’s voice. She has called me several times before, asking for the SG. She always refuses to say who she is, only that it is a private and personal matter. I think I have made a terrible mistake. I am sure the UN security department monitors the SG’s line, and who knows who else is listening in. Then it got even worse. The telephone rang. It must have been Stein’s office calling back to check who was calling them.
I didn’t know what to do. If I let it ring it would wake the SG. If I answered it again, I would have to say something. I picked up the handset, very carefully, but I was so nervous that I dropped it. It made such a crash that the SG woke up. He asked me what I was doing there and I made up some story about checking his schedule for tomorrow, but I could see he did not believe me. Yael, why is the SG getting calls from Efrat Global Solutions? We have the DPKO for all our military operations. We can call on the P5 if we need intelligence. The UN has never used private military contractors.
Now my phone rings and there is nobody there. I feel someone is watching me. I have a creepy feeling on the back of my neck. My doorman told me that people have been snooping around, asking when I get home in the evenings so they can deliver a package. When he asked them for some ID they just walked off.
Yael, I wish you were here. I wish I were not writing this letter. I hope you never read it.
Your friend,
Olivia
Yael made herself some builder’s brew tea and stood by the window overlooking the Hudson River, cradling the cup in both hands. Olivia’s letter had triggered a vortex of emotions: sadness at her friend’s death, anger at the manner of it, and a powerful curiosity. Other feelings, stirred up by the mention of Menachem Stein, she boxed away, at least for now. At first she had thought Olivia was “[email protected],” but presumably she would have said so in this, her final letter. For now, the identity of “afriend” could wait.
Yael grabbed her laptop and played the sound file again, listening to Hussein’s feeble arguments to have less than five hundred, as though human life was a commodity to be bought, sold, and bargained for; Janet Rembaugh’s cynical justification of the deaths at Srebrenica, Charles Bonnet, and the mysterious Austrian pushing the SG until he agreed to Hakizimani’s involvement and settled on the final figure. She pressed the stop button and watched an NYPD police boat roar down the middle of the waterway, sending a double spray of water in its wake.
Her mobile telephone beeped several times, interrupting her reverie. She picked up the handset: a text message from a blocked number. Part of her—a large part, if she were honest with herself—hoped that Joe-Don would call or text to tell her that the plan was off, at least for tonight. She had checked her mobile for messages a dozen times in the last two hours. Now, the screen declared, “Yr cuz OK to meet 2nite J.”
She picked up the photograph of her and her brother David in Central Park and studied it for a long time.
Sami frowned as he tried to open his office door for the third time, juggling his coffee and newspaper in one hand and the key in the other. The lock jammed, squeaked, and finally opened. He stepped inside and his irritation evaporated. The cracked window had been replaced. He pressed the light switch. The room was instantly illuminated by a large halogen lamp, complete with a dimmer switch, and blissfully silent. The floor was clean, the bins emptied, and the dirty marks gone from the walls, which had been freshly painted. What was going on? Had the 38th floor decided to court him with new office fittings in exchange for more sympathetic coverage? And when had the work been done?
Sami had returned to his office soon after ten last night with the envelope he had taken from Roxana’s bag. He planned to scan the papers, copy the digital files onto a memory stick, and e-mail them to his online backup service. He was not comfortable bringing the papers back to the UN building, but he could hardly hand Roxana’s documents over to the nearest copy shop. Nor did he trust the nearby internet cafés. Unfortunately, the New York Times scanner was broken. It had been for a month, he remembered as he futilely jabbed the On button, but he had not bothered to get it fixed.
And then he remembered that at 10:30 p.m. the security guards changed shift. The night exit regulations were much stricter. He would have to pass through the security at the entrance tent to get out, empty his pockets, and possibly even his bag. The guards might even frisk him. Rather than risk an inspection, Sami decided to hide Roxana’s papers in the middle of a two-hundred-page UN report and lock it in his filing cabinet. Two vodka cocktails and a beer chaser were not helping him to think clearly. It was only on the way home that he realized he could have stayed there and simply taken pictures of the papers with his digital camera. By then it was too late. He would really draw attention to himself if he went back again.
Sami sat at his desk, put his coffee down, and unfolded that day’s edition of the Times. He had made the front page again, although still “below the fold”: “Turmoil Continues at UN: A Secretary Dies; An Envoy Sent Away.” The big piece he was working on would make the top half, he was sure of that, if not the splash. Sami stared at the photograph of Yael next to his story: she was huddled in a conclave with Fareed Hussein at a refugee camp in East Timor, her hair piled up behind her head in a ponytail, looking very capable.
He quickly turned the page. A story datelined Washington, DC, caught his attention: “President F
reshwater Calls for Senate Hearing on Private Military Contractors.” The White House wanted an inquiry into the growing role of PMCS, their legal liability, and full disclosure of all contracts with all US government agencies. Guards from Efrat Global Solutions had been accused of killing more than a dozen demonstrators in Dubai, where the company had just been hired to train the United Arab Emirates’ fledgling army. EGS denied everything and promised full cooperation with the UAE’s authorities. The reporter noted that the allegations came at a bad time for EGS. The intelligence world was awash with rumors that the company was about to sign the largest contract in history for providing worldwide military and security services for an as yet unknown client. EGS was founded by Menachem Stein, a former brigadier-general in the Israeli army. Stein resigned from the military under unclear circumstances almost twenty years ago, after leading a mission of undercover commandos in Nablus. A firefight had erupted in the bazaar and had left six civilians dead, including several teenagers who had been shot in the back. The Israelis claimed they had been killed by Palestinian militants. The Palestinians blamed the Israelis. No one was ever charged over the deaths.
Stein now ran one of the world’s largest and most profitable private military contractors. Its website boasted that it specialized in “bringing stability to the world’s most unstable areas.” EGS was active in every conflict zone in the world and had just opened a new regional headquarters in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, the article noted. Human-rights groups accused EGS operatives of a litany of crimes including smuggling, rape, torture, murder, and even running a network of secret prisons. EGS denied all the claims but refused to cooperate with human-rights investigators. Several world leaders, including President Freshwater, were now calling for international regulation of private military contractors.
The hairs rose on the back of Sami’s neck. He sat back and put his feet on the desk, thinking hard. EGS. Olivia’s voice mail messages. He picked up the telephone and called office management. Yuri answered. Sami thanked him for the work.
