The Geneva Option

by Adam LeBor

  “I am the bait. It’s you they are after.”

  Yael sat back, digesting this news. “Who was the American diplomat?”

  “Patrick Whiteman. A gift from Langley to watch our backs. He should have had someone to watch his back. More specifically, his front.”

  Yael put her hand on his. “Are you OK?”

  Joe-Don nodded slowly. “I’m fine.” She watched as he picked up his drink and took a sip. His hand was rock-steady.

  The growing sense of unease Yael had had since they arrived in Geneva now curdled into fear. Langley. Snipers. An American diplomat shot dead in broad daylight. But she and Joe-Don had been in life-threatening situations before. Yael knew not to persist; Joe-Don would share what information he thought necessary when he thought it necessary. The shooting explained why Joe-Don was dressed as an elderly blind man. But what was the Jasna connection?

  “Now listen up. This is our security situation, and it is not good,” Joe-Don said, his voice deadly serious, interrupting her thoughts. “We are hiding in a brothel in the red-light district of Geneva, with a hit team, the Geneva police department, and the city’s media on our tail. What do you have to tell me?”

  “A blue flag over every coltan mine,” said Yael.

  Joe-Don looked puzzled.

  Yael leaned forward, her voice animated. “It’s simple once you think it through. KZX and the Bonnet Group plan to merge. KZX is going into the electronics business, making mobile telephones, laptops, and tablet computers. For that they need coltan. The Bonnet Group is the biggest mining company in Africa, especially in Congo. But they need to take control of the territory—complete control. The Goma Development Zone is the pilot project. It sets a precedent and establishes a beachhead. The key point is that the UN—Hussein actually—has agreed that KZX security staff will be allowed to control the perimeters and entry and exit. Once they control the territory and access to it they control everything. It will be a KZX colony. Of course Quentin Braithwaite is completely opposed to this. So they need to get rid of him. You know about the plan for Hutus wearing UN uniforms to kill five hundred people at the Goma camp in order to discredit the DPKO. That didn’t work because someone leaked it. But they will think of something else.”

  Joe-Don listened carefully as she spoke. “So what now?”

  Yael looked down and stroked the cat. The soft warmth of the animal against her was curiously comforting. “When I was in Goma, Hakizimani asked me if I knew Menachem Stein.”

  Joe-Don put his glass down, completely alert now. “And you said?”

  “No, of course. But this would fit his M.O. Perfectly. And Olivia wrote in her letter that Stein had been calling Fareed Hussein on his private line. I am sure that is why she was killed, because she knew that the UN was secretly working with Efrat Global Solutions. You remember what EGS did in Brazil in Amazonia?”

  Joe-Don nodded. “Peaceful protests by the indigenous people against ranchers and loggers get international attention. EGS steps in to ‘help’—help being weapons and basic military training. A few ranchers and loggers get shot. The federal police and the army move the indigenous people out, the loggers and ranchers move in, and Americans can still eat their hamburgers.”

  “Exactly. Maybe there is a similar plan for central Africa. EGS arms the Hutus against the Tutsis and the Tutsis against the Hutus. Burn some villages, kill the women and children. Congo explodes. The UN sends peacekeepers. KZX is there to help, as a good corporate citizen,” Yael said, looking down. The cat turned around on her lap so she could scratch his expansive stomach. “The deaths mount up, Fareed Hussein explains how the UN’s resources are overstretched and KZX has offered to take on some security duties. Maybe even with EGS. The UN troops are redeployed to some other crisis zone. The Goma Development Zone becomes the Eastern Congo Development Zone becomes the Great Lakes Development Zone and on and on. And there you have it, a blue flag over every coltan mine.”

  Joe-Don sat silently for several seconds before he spoke. “Not with President Freshwater in office. If Congo becomes a bloodbath, she will push for US troops to intervene.”

  Yael leaned forward to take the coffee. “Which is why, I guess, there is all this talk now of impeaching her.” The cat meowed indignantly and leapt off her lap. Yael had something else she wanted to ask. She had been intrigued by Joe-Don and Jasna’s body language when they walked in to the bar.

  Yael looked at Joe-Don and sipped her coffee. “So how do you know Jasna?”

  “We met in Yugoslavia during the war,” said Joe-Don, his voice bland.

  Yael nodded slowly, a smile playing on her lips. “You know each other well?”

  “Well enough,” said Joe-Don, looking into his whisky and swirling the amber liquid around, his craggy face suddenly softening.

  Yael looked at him carefully. “You are blushing. I’ve never seen you blush before. Well, well . . .”

  He looked up at her, a mixture of nostalgia and regret in his eyes. “Love in the war zone. It happens. But she was married, and I am not the domestic type. David introduced us. He brought her and her kids across the front lines in his UN Jeep, together with two other families. You were there, in the Hotel Hyatt in Belgrade.”

  A memory flashed through her mind, as intense as if it had happened yesterday. She was sixteen years old and watching CNN in the hotel room when the concierge called to say her brother had arrived. She took the elevator downstairs into the wide, modern foyer with the glass front and revolving door. It was crowded with the usual mix of aid workers, journalists, UN officials, and large, watchful men who sat there all day smoking and drinking coffee. David had just pulled up in front of the hotel. His car was covered in mud and the windows were filthy. She ran out to see him. She put her finger in a small hole in the door by the driver’s seat. There was another one under the window and two more over the wheel arch. One window was missing completely, apart from the jagged shards still in the door. Three women emerged from the Jeep, followed by six children and two teenagers. David climbed out of the car, another toddler in his arms. A powerful, familiar longing pulled inside her. Yes, she had been to Belgrade.

  She sipped her whisky, slower this time. “And Stella?”

  “She is Jasna’s cousin. You know what that means in the Balkans. We are part of the family now. Stella also rents out rooms by the hour as I am sure you have noticed. The local police chief is one of her regular clients. Apparently he likes to go to bed with three or four girls at once. Must be quite a party. He is due in later. So we are unlikely to be raided, at least tonight.”

  Yael nodded thoughtfully. Obviously Joe-Don had helped Jasna get her cleaning contracts with the UN.

  “Do you also know Stella well?” she asked lightly, her eyes dancing with amusement.

  Joe-Don tried not to smile. He shook his head. “No. Now stop prying.”

  “OK. But, seriously, if you knew Jasna for twenty years, and you knew she would help, then why did I have to pretend to be Claudia Lopez?”

  Joe-Don stared hard at her. “Because you are Claudia Lopez, and if you don’t believe it nobody else will. This is as serious as it gets. A man was shot dead next to me a few hours ago by a professional sniper. A rogue unit of State Department intelligence officers are on our trail. Erin Rembaugh and Marc Rosenheim are trying to bring down President Freshwater. These people don’t want to talk to you. They want to kill you. So you had better remember that—and who you are— tomorrow morning. Especially if you run into any trouble. When is your birthday, Claudia?”

  “February 2, 1978.”

  “Mother’s maiden name?”

  “Gomez. Maria Gomez.”

  “She must miss you.”

  “No. She passed away five years ago. But my father, Rodrigo does, and so does my little sister, Albertine.”

  Joe-Don looked up at the television and turned the volume up. The reporter, an e
xcitable brunette in her twenties, was standing in front of the manicured hedge at the Place Jean-Marteau. The square had been sealed off with police tape. Armed officers stood on each corner and sirens wailed in the background. The screen showed the same picture of Joe-Don in his dark-blond wig and tortoiseshell glasses, then switched back to the crime scene. The reporter continued breathlessly that such a murder was unprecedented in Geneva.

  The report was interrupted by an urgent news flash. A picture of President Freshwater flashed up on the screen. Joe-Don immediately changed channels to CNN. The news banner along the bottom of the screen announced, “President Freshwater’s husband, Jorge, killed in a skiing accident . . . more follows as it comes in . . .” The channel’s White House correspondent, a veteran reporter in his sixties, was standing outside the White House talking to the camera. “All we know at this stage is that the president’s husband was killed this afternoon while skiing off-piste in Aspen. It seems that there was something wrong with one of his bindings, and he lost control and hit a tree.’

  Joe-Don pressed the remote control and turned the volume down. He turned to Yael. “I think we have one or two days at the most.”

  “And tomorrow? Where will you be?” asked Yael, anxiety gnawing inside her again.

  “Not inside. But . . . around.”

  “Good. Can I ask you something else?”

  He gave Yael a taciturn nod.

  “Who is the girl in the picture?” asked Yael, softly. “The one you carry in your wallet?”

  Joe-Don stared at Yael. “Have you been going through my stuff?”

  Yael shook her head. “No, of course not. It fell off the nightstand at the Hotel Imperial. I picked it up and put it back.”

  Joe-Don closed his eyes for a couple of seconds. “Rosemary Irene Pabst. My daughter.”

  Yael sat silent, stunned. Joe-Don had never mentioned a daughter. She had no idea that he had ever had a family. “What? Why didn’t you tell me? Where is she? I’d love to see her.”

  He poured himself some more whisky. “So would I. I told her mother that those initials were bad karma but she wouldn’t listen.” Joe-Don looked at Yael and his features softened slightly. “She was just a few years older than you.”

  “Was?” asked Yael, quietly.

  Joe-Don stared into the distance. “Rosie was a real idealist. She lived in a village in Guatemala and worked for an aid organization that helped the peasants and villagers build cooperatives—agriculture, weaving. That kind of stuff. She called it “empowering.” But not everybody wanted the peasants to be empowered. I heard from my contacts in the police and the army that an attack was planned. I warned her to get out. Repeatedly. But Rosie was stubborn. Daddy’s girl, I guess. She would not listen. She said nobody would hurt an American citizen. I tried to get the police to hold off, to wait at least for a couple of days so I could get her out. They refused. So I drove there myself, through the night.”

  He paused and swallowed hard. Yael looked at him, the question unspoken.

  Joe-Don swirled the whisky in his glass, shook his head, and put the drink down, untouched. “They came in at dawn. By helicopter. We buried her there.”

  Yael felt his grief fill the room, the grief and the guilt of a parent who had failed a child. And beyond that, something more—a kind of anguish.

  “How did you know the army and police commanders?” asked Yael.

  “Because I trained them,” he said, his voice a whisper.

  Twenty-Five

  Azem Lusha, the proprietor of the Hotel Imperial, was fed up. His difficulties had started a couple of days ago when the man who called himself Wilson Smith had arrived with the girl, Claudia Lopez. Mr. Smith wanted to pay in cash—lots of cash—for a room with no registration. Of course it was tempting, but Lusha had said, reluctantly, that it was too risky. He could lose his license, and then where would he be? You know how the Swiss are, he explained, rules had to be followed, or there would be consequences.

  Mr. Smith said there would indeed be consequences—if he did not get a room. Life would become very complicated for both Mr. Lusha and his business associates from his homeland in Kosovo, who had claimed asylum under false pretenses. Mr. Smith even knew the name of his home village. Lusha knew other men who had eyes like that and they scared him. So he took the money and kept quiet. The girl had checked out yesterday. He didn’t care. The room was paid for in advance.

  But now there was this second American waking him up at six o’clock in the morning with some idiotic story about a missing daughter. He was tall, so bald his head shone, and his ears stuck out. Why did these people keep bothering him? The man handed Lusha several photographs.

  Lusha looked at the pictures and shook his head. Fuck his mother, what was going on here? He was running a hotel, not a missing-persons bureau. “No,” he said. “Not here.”

  This was true, he told himself. Nobody that looked like these two had stayed here. The man had dark blond hair and big brown glasses. The girl had short black hair and trendy glasses, nothing like this one in the photograph. “Sorry, but I am very busy,” he said, scratching his potbelly. “I must get the breakfast ready. And my television is broken. I must organize the repair.”

  The bald man reached for his wallet, pulled out a five-hundred-franc note, and laid it on the reception counter. “Take your time. Just look at the faces. The eyes, the mouths, and the noses. Ignore the hair and the clothes. Did anyone that looked like these two stay here?” The American moved the money nearer, across the counter toward Azem’s fingers.

  Lusha licked his lips, staring hard at the pictures. Of course it was them. And why else would this American be here with this idiotic story? “I’m not sure . . . perhaps in the upstairs room. There was a couple there. The man was older. But I don’t want to wake up the other guests so early . . .”

  The American pulled out two more five-hundred-franc notes and placed them next to the rest of the money. “Could I see the room? She is our only daughter. Her mother is distraught. We really need to find her . . .”

  He nodded and reached for the money, swiftly pocketing it with one hand. “Room 506,” he said, handing a key to the American.

  The gun barrel was pushing into the base of Herve’s throat. It was cold and hard and hurt so much that it was difficult to breathe. He coughed, swallowed, and tried as best as he could not to tremble and to control his fear. The soldier holding the weapon was younger than he was, no more than twelve or thirteen. His uniform was so new it was still stiff and was hanging off his thin shoulders. His green beret, with the ECLF badge—four metal letters over a map of eastern Congo—was sliding off his head. But the boy held his AK-47 with confidence, staring down the barrel, his head tilted to the side, like an experienced marksman, unblinking. Herve had seen plenty of young fighters with eyes like his: utterly vacant.

  It was just after 6:00 a.m, and the dawn mist still hung in the air like white tendrils. The birds were singing, and Herve could hear Radio Kivu playing in the soldiers’ wooden hut, next to the checkpoint. It was new and freshly painted, unlike the usual ramshackle barricades that the militias set up. A fresh breeze ruffled the leaves of the palm trees at the side of the road, and he saw a lizard scamper across the red mud. Herve’s fear was mixed with a terrible sadness and disappointment. They had almost made it. Herve could see the blue flag, the sandbags, and the white UN vehicles two hundred yards up the road. He could even smell the Dutch troops’ morning coffee and the thin cheroots they smoked.

  As soon as he left the school hall Herve had rushed home. He had gathered his mother, Violetta; younger brother, Henri; and his little sister, Grace, and explained what he had seen. They had packed and gone straight to Evelyn’s mother’s house. She didn’t need persuading; Hermione woke up her two young sons, and they quickly packed some clothes, their few valuables, and some fruit and water. Herve led the two women and four children out of the vi
llage and straight into the forest. The lights were still blazing in the school hall, and they could hear the men shouting and cheering. They walked through the night toward the UN camp at Goma, sticking to a path that Herve knew the coltan smugglers used. He had no intention of using the main road. They had told the children that they were having a big adventure, and they had to keep silent or they would lose the game. They had stared at him, tired and confused, half-puzzled and half-knowing that this was not a game at all. But none of them had cried or complained.

  Just as they were coming out of the forest, a few hundred yards from the UN checkpoint, they had run into an ECLF patrol. The soldiers took them back to the militia checkpoint, where they were all now held at gunpoint. The checkpoint commander was a Tutsi—tall, thin, and suspicious, with two fingers missing from his left hand. He ordered the boy soldier to lower his gun and demanded Herve’s and the others’ papers. They produced their documents.

  He idly read them and placed them in his pocket. “Well, well. Look what the new day brings. Genocidaires. How much money did you steal from us when you weren’t killing us? Empty your bags and your pockets,” he snapped.

  Herve looked at his mother and Hermione. It was useless to protest. He felt sick with fear and shame. He had done this. He had brought them to this place. He had wanted to save his and Evelyn’s family. Instead he brought them into terrible danger. The two women looked resigned and placed their nylon bags on the table. Grace began to cry. The commander stroked her head, but she only cried louder. He rifled through the clothes, throwing them aside until the bag was empty and they lay in the mud. The women then opened their pockets to show they were empty.

  The Tutsi commander laughed and jammed his hand between Herve’s mother’s legs. She gasped, her face twisting in pain. Herve moved to help her, but the boy soldier hit him with his rifle butt in his leg. Herve cried out and his leg gave way underneath him. The commander put his hand up his mother’s skirt, and Herve held back tears of humiliation as he struggled to stand up. The commander rummaged around under the fabric and pulled out a rolled-up wad of bank notes. Hermione and her sons looked terrified. Two more ECLF soldiers appeared and cocked their guns, pointing them at Hermione and her sons. The two boys started trembling, and two puddles appeared at their feet.