The Geneva Option

by Adam LeBor

  Hakizimani lay still on his side, his eyes wide open and unmoving. A large damp patch spread out around his hips through his robe and onto the carpet. Yael shook him, gently at first, then harder. He did not move. She emptied the water jug over his head. He still did not respond. She stood for several seconds watching his chest, willing it in vain to rise and fall. She dipped her finger in the water and held it over his nose. No air moved over her wet skin. She looked around, trying to quell the panic rising inside her. She grabbed the box of pills on the coffee table and read the label: Digitalis, printed in large letters over a stylized picture of a human heart. She swallowed hard. Shit. Now what? She had got what she wanted, or what she thought she did. She looked at Hakizimani. His skin had already turned waxy, his face gray and hollow. She did not feel guilty at all. But now she needed to get out, immediately, and ten minutes earlier than they had planned.

  Yael quickly dressed, grabbed the photograph of Hakizimani’s daughters, wiped it clean, and placed it in his shirt pocket, paused, then took it out again and put it in her bag together with the photograph of her and David in Central Park. She grabbed her cell phone and rapidly pressed the redial button twice as she had been instructed. It was half-jammed into the keyboard and stuck after the first push. She heard a key move in the door. She had locked it and wedged a chair at an angle under the door handle. That was more than enough to deter a casual intruder but she doubted her defense would last more than a few seconds against the two guards. There were several loud thumps then the door creaked and began to splinter.

  She pressed the redial button again: nothing. Her heart was racing wildly now. She jabbed repeatedly at the touch pad but the button would not move. Something smashed into the door again. Yael ran down the corridor to the door. She stood behind it with the bottle of whisky in her right hand, the black handset in her left. But where the hell was Joe-Don? And why had the knocking suddenly stopped?

  Mitchell Gardiner leaned into the bend and opened the throttle as the BMW motorbike took the curve with solid, Teutonic confidence. His heart was racing with excitement—and not just from the thrill he always got of gunning the 750cc engine and feeling the bike’s power beneath him. He had just completed his first freelance job as a photographer for the most famous newspaper in the world. He could already see the credit under the photograph: “Mitchell Gardiner for the New York Times.” Perhaps he would get it framed. The bathroom would be the best place for it, he thought. That would show a suitable mix of pride and self-deprecation.

  It had been a good six weeks since he had shown his portfolio to the picture editor at the New York Times, at Sami Boustani’s suggestion. Sami was a cool guy, and he was looking forward to buying him a beer tonight to say thanks for the introduction. Perhaps they would use the photograph with one of Sami’s stories, so maybe their celebration could be a mutual one. The picture editor had been pleasant but noncommittal, telling him that budget cuts meant she was using fewer freelancers, although she liked his work and would keep his details on file. Mitchell had heard all this before and never expected to hear from her again.

  But how wrong he had been; his first assignment came out of the blue at 9:00 this evening, just as he was about to sit down and watch the football game. His wife, Suzanne, was already in bed, half-asleep, but he did not want to wake her with his excitement. She needed all the sleep she could get. He had even agreed over dinner—reluctantly, but with a twinge of pride at his newfound sense of responsibility—to sell the BMW and buy a car instead. His wife’s argument, that there was no room for a baby seat, was unanswerable.

  The job itself was straightforward: a night paparazzi shoot. Mitchell had to get pictures of two men boarding a private jet, without being seen, and pictures of the jet with the registration numbers. The airplane would be parked on a small, distant runway, in a corner of the airport that was visible from the road. Sami’s friend had told him the best place to hide himself.

  It was a cool, dry night as he set out, and the road was almost empty. Teterboro Airport was just over ten miles from Manhattan. Mitchell looked at the speedometer and eased back on the throttle: sixty miles an hour was a little fast for Redneck Avenue, the road that led from the airport through South Hackensack and onto the New Jersey Turnpike. He had not told Suzanne where he was going, just that he needed to go out on a job. She had touched his face sleepily and told him to drive carefully. He had kissed her warm, swelling stomach in return. He would stop by the corner store run by the Korean family on his way home and buy her a large bunch of flowers. She couldn’t drink alcohol, but they had to mark this evening with something.

  Mitchell had parked his motorcycle behind some trees and set up his gear there, hidden by their trunks. He could not use a flash, but a slow exposure with a tripod to steady the long lens worked fine. He had checked the shots in the camera’s back panel. An Indian man, whom he recognized as Fareed Hussein, and a tall, thin European with very pale blond hair. What was the UN secretary-general doing taking off from there at night with a white—very white—guy in a gray suit? It seemed like a great story. Mitchell guessed he would find out the details soon enough. His job was to take and deliver the pictures. He was so excited that he had even tried to e-mail the best shot to Sami, but the cell phone reception was terrible and the signal kept breaking. Mitchell had no idea if the file had gone through or not.

  Mitchell smiled again as he thought of Suzanne slumbering peacefully in their bed. There was nothing he loved to do more in the world than to slide in next to her and feel her wrap herself around him. Every yard behind was one nearer home, he told himself. Mitchell looked ahead as the road curved around again. A couple more miles and he’d be on the New Jersey Turnpike, then the George Washington Bridge, down through Manhattan with a quick stop for a drink with Sami, and onto the Brooklyn Bridge on his way home.

  He watched the taillights of the car that had just turned out in front of him and pulled back slightly to give it space. The vehicle, a Toyota Land Cruiser with tinted windows, was keeping a steady fifty-five miles an hour, five miles an hour over the limit—not enough to get the police’s attention, but, annoyingly, not enough to pull ahead.

  The car in front of him slowed suddenly, its brake lights glowing red. Mitchell looked at the road, part of which had turned black, his excitement rapidly turning to alarm. The Land Cruiser was leaking oil. A lot of oil.

  Joe-Don loitered on the corner of the corridor, checking his watch, opening and closing the Adidas bag—even though it was empty—and shaking his head, for all intents and purposes a keen tennis player who was exasperated by the tardiness of his partner. He touched the tiny earpiece inside his right ear. No signal yet. Alerted by the sound of the security guards’ first knocks on the door of suite 3017, he had wandered around the corner and watched from a distance as they questioned Yael. It was all over in a few seconds, she stepped back inside, and the two guards took up their position again, he saw with relief. She was OK—for now. He looked at his watch: 8:50. Time was getting very tight. The cameras would switch on again in ten minutes.

  But now he watched in alarm as the blond guard took out his mobile telephone and showed it to his partner, a look of surprise on his face. Joe-Don touched his right ear again. Still nothing. What was she doing? The shorter guard inserted the key card into the lock and pushed the door. It did not move. The guard turned to his colleague and shook his head. Both men stepped back and kicked the door so hard Joe-Don could hear the wood splinter.

  He sprinted down the corridor, a tiny gas canister in his hand, loudly shouting for help. Miguel ran alongside him, this time without his trolley, his apron flapping.

  They stopped in front of the door, breathless and panicky. The two guards stopped kicking the door and turned toward them, first puzzled, then angry.

  “Who the fuck are you? What do you want?” demanded the blond guard.

  “Please, come quickly. Someone has had a heart attack by the
elevator. You’re hotel security? You have medical training?” said Joe-Don, speaking rapidly, his eyes wide in alarm, surreptitiously taking in the state of the door.

  “I called the hotel doctor, but he needs help now,” said Miguel.

  The guards looked at each other. Joe-Don glanced at the blond guard’s smartphone. The screen showed Yael’s face. He sprayed both men in the face with the gas canister. They lunged at him in fury and he jumped back. The blond guard clenched and raised his fist as both men suddenly lurched forward, their mouths wide open, and crumpled onto the floor.

  Joe-Don knocked on the door: three short knocks in rapid succession followed by two more. It opened immediately. Yael said, “You took your time.”

  Sami sat in a wooden booth in a far corner in the back room of the bar, waiting for Mitchell Gardiner. It was just after 10:00 p.m. They were due to meet at Zone, a trendy microbrewery on the corner of Avenue A and East 7th Street, anytime between 10:00 and midnight. Zone was crowded with enough East Village hipsters to make it difficult to eavesdrop but was quiet enough to talk. Baba Maal played softly in the background, and the smell of spicy cooking wafted from the kitchen. He watched a thin blond girl with six rings in her left ear walk by, holding hands with a statuesque African woman. The bar was a short walk from his apartment, but was not his local. In fact, he realized, as he gloomily nursed a bottle of Zone’s own dark beer and picked listlessly at his “mini-mezze”—hummus, tehina, falafel and tabbouleh—he did not even have a local, where the bar staff knew who he was.

  But Sami did have a story. He opened the browser on his smartphone. His article was already on the website: “Refugees in Danger, Warns Rwandan Ambassador; Repeat of 1994 Genocide Feared.” Soon after the press conference, Henrik Schneidermann had issued a bland statement reaffirming the UN’s commitment to human rights and the Year of Africa. The ambassador’s claims would be properly investigated, he promised. But Sami knew that behind the scenes the SG had immediately ordered the DPKO into action. Sami’s peacekeeping contacts told him that Quentin Braithwaite had already redeployed a battalion of UN troops from their base up-country to Goma, dispatching them in a fleet of attack helicopters. The Congolese ambassador, Rose Yundala—Hakim Yundala’s younger sister—had been furious, and had issued a statement denouncing the Rwandan ambassador for what she called “unwanted, unwarranted, and unprecedented interference in Congo’s internal affairs.”

  The camp was now surrounded by armored personnel carriers and a ring of UN checkpoints. Braithwaite himself was flying to Goma tomorrow morning to supervise the reinforcements. Florence Munyakarana was all over the news bulletins as well, leading on the BBC and CNN, he saw, as he flicked through their websites. Whatever had been planned at Goma was now postponed for a long time, if not canceled, he thought. Sami read through his story again: Munyakarana really had said that if anyone was killed at Goma, Rwanda would hold the current leadership of the UN responsible. She had even issued a not-very-veiled threat to take Fareed Hussein to the International Criminal Court if any lives were lost. She must be very certain of her ground. The street-side press conference was unprecedented. In UN terms, this was a declaration of war. On one side, the humanitarians and the DPKO. On the other, the secretary-general’s office, and, presumably, Erin Rembaugh and the DPA.

  It was a straightforward news story, but his editors were now pressing hard for the longer, investigative piece. So what did he have exactly? The known knowns, as Donald Rumsfeld would say, were his research into Africa Child Rescue and its connections with KZX, the Bonnet Group, and Zeinab Hussein; the promotion of Hakim Yundala, the Congolese former minister of interior; and the SG’s mysterious trip to Geneva in a KZX private plane. The known unknowns were much more numerous: how Olivia had died; if she had been murdered, who had killed her and why; the significance of the messages left on her voice mail; who was the source for the claims of an attack on the refugee camp at Goma; who would want to attack it and why; and many more. The SG’s trip from Teterboro Airport was especially intriguing. Why was he flying on a KZX plane when he had his own? Mitchell had promised to call him as soon as he had the pictures. Where was he? Sami’s phone beeped several times. He looked down at the handset. A large data file was being sent. Would he accept? He pressed yes.

  The greasy smear was now a puddle and getting wider by the second. Mitchell dropped back a gear, eased the throttle back, and tried keep control, but the motorbike began to slide underneath him. The slick reached halfway across the road. He tried to steer into the skid but the bike flew out between his legs, flipped over to the side, and slid into the nearby ditch, its rear wheel spinning uselessly as the engine screamed in protest. Mitchell slammed onto the asphalt, rolling over and over as he skidded across the road.

  He came to a stop in a ditch. He lay there for several seconds, then tried to sit up, but an agonizing pain lanced through his knee and up his back. He looked at his leg, twisted underneath him at an unnatural angle. The pain was excruciating. Mitchell reached for his telephone, his hand shaking, when he saw that the Land Cruiser had stopped just ahead of him. A man was walking toward him. He would help, he was sure. Mitchell looked up hopefully as something smashed into his helmet and everything went black.

  Geneva

  Eighteen

  Yael handed her passport to the woman sitting on the other side of the shabby, brown wooden desk. She flicked slowly through the pages with interest. “Costa Rica,” she said, looking at Yael’s photograph and then back at her. “I’ve never been there. I hear it’s beautiful.”

  Yael nodded. “You should. It is. We have everything: beaches, mountains, rain forests, jungle, wildlife.”

  “So, Claudia Lopez, why did you leave paradise to come and work as a cleaner in Geneva?” she asked, looking at Yael quizzically.

  “Paradise is now run by drug cartels. There are much better opportunities here. And much fewer gunmen. I am interested in international development. There are lots of NGOs and aid organizations here. Eventually I want to get a job with one. But for now cleaning seems a good way to start earning some money.”

  The owner and manager of Tip-Top Office Services was an imposing bottle-blonde, a Serb somewhere in her late fifties, wearing light and skillfully applied makeup. She had a husky voice, cured by decades of smoking, high Slavic cheekbones, and penetrating green eyes under frameless half-moon glasses. Yael could see that Jasna had once been beautiful, and she was still striking. The firm’s office was a small room behind a tabac on the Rue Pradier, in the backstreets near Geneva’s central train station. In addition to Jasna’s desk, it contained three creaking chairs; a computer with an old-fashioned monitor, an ancient keyboard and mouse; and a battered metal filing cabinet. The walls were once white but had darkened with age. The room smelled of coffee, cigarettes, and Chanel No. 5, which Jasna wore in abundance. Several white cigarette ends lay in a large glass ashtray, each ringed in pink lipstick.

  “Of course you do, draga, darling. Everybody wants to work for an NGO. Is that why you came to me? Because of my contracts?”

  “Partly. And also because I heard you pay decently, and on time.”

  Jasna nodded, pleased to hear about her reputation. She picked up a packet of king-size Vogue cigarettes and offered it to Yael. “It’s true. I do pay on time. Perhaps we can find something for you. But it’s a big jump from cleaning a desk to sitting behind one. For that you need connections. And they are very hard to get.”

  Yael took one of the long white cigarettes, nodding sagely. “How did you make yours?”

  Jasna slid an ashtray across the table and lit Yael’s cigarette before inhaling deeply on her own. “Someone helped me. A long time ago,” she said, looking into the distance. “You have experience cleaning?” she asked, suddenly businesslike. “We do need more staff. I have just been offered a contract for a new . . . ”—she paused and rummaged on her desk, picking up a letter with a large imposing letterhead—“ .
. . institute. The UN-KZX Institute for International Development. Sounds very grand, doesn’t it? It seems we don’t have enough development institutes in Geneva,” she said ironically.

  Yael looked around while Jasna spoke. The office’s only decorations were a poster of Lake Geneva, a calendar with a picture of puppies for each month, and a mirror behind Jasna’s chair. A framed photograph stood on each corner of her desk, among the piles of paperwork, newspapers, and thick manila files. The headquarters of Tip-Top Office Services reminded Yael of the office of every Balkan official she had ever dealt with. The real question was, how had this mom-and-pop ramshackle-looking operation ever won any lucrative cleaning contracts at the UN? In Yael’s experience that demanded either a substantial bribe, high-level contacts, or usually, both. Of course, it was theoretically possible that Jasna simply did not waste company money on fancy office furniture and fittings, just made sure to undercut the competition’s bids. Theoretically.

  Jasna continued reading: “It’s a corporate joint venture with the UN—the first. Fareed Hussein himself is coming to the opening with all the big ambassadors: German, French, American, Chinese, and lots from Africa. The guest of honor will be Desiree Yundala, the wife of Hakim Yundala, the head of the UN’s security department. Says here that Mrs. Yundala was recently appointed the head of the Year of Africa Protocol and Preparation Committee. So you see, draga, if you want a nice job at the UN, you need to marry someone important,” Jasna said, smiling as she peered over the top of her glasses.

  “The institute was originally supposed to be in a new building, but now they say the building is not ready yet, so the institute will work out of an annex at the Palais des Nations, the UN headquarters here. They want an early-morning shift, Monday to Friday, starting at 6:00 a.m. You will have to get up early, so you won’t have much time for a social life. Or a boyfriend. You are a pretty girl. You do have a boyfriend, Claudia?”