The Geneva Option

by Adam LeBor

  The bald man smashed against the right-side passenger window frame, bounced off the windshield, and slammed back into his seat. He shook his head, blinked several times, and reached for his gun.

  Yael jumped forward and jabbed him in the neck with the stun gun. He roared in pain and fury, but the prong slipped against his shirt as the car continued sliding across the road.

  He reared up and aimed a left hook at her head. She grabbed his wrist, pulled him toward her, and tried to punch him in the throat, but her fist only glanced off his neck.

  The car bumped over the step that divided the road from the lakeside cycle path.

  The bald man lunged at her again. She dodged sideways.

  The car hit a tree, spun around again, skidded over the sodden sidewalk, slammed into the low stone wall at the edge of the lake, and finally stopped.

  Yael felt her head smash into the door frame, and the world went black for several seconds. She opened her eyes and the bald man was reaching for her.

  She pushed back and kicked him in the face, breaking his nose. He fell backward, blood trickling from his nostrils.

  She yanked on the door handle and kicked the door with all her strength. It still would not open. She climbed through the shattered window, ignoring the pain as the slivers of broken glass ripped her clothes and cut into her skin.

  Yael stumbled out of the car and sprinted across the sidewalk onto the jetée. It was several meters wide, flanked on one side by rocks and on the other by small boats that bobbed in the water. A metal balustrade ran down the middle. The sky had turned the color of gunmetal, the rain was pouring, and the wind was blowing in hard from the lake.

  Yael was drenched in seconds as the wet gusts hit her. Sirens sounded in the distance. The concrete was wet and slippery underfoot. Her left leg slid out from under her, but she grabbed the metal handrail and rapidly corrected herself.

  The bald man ran after her. She weaved from side to side, her breath raw in her throat, as the crack of the bullets echoed over the water. Her sodden clothes clung to her, slowing her down as she ran along the jetée, rock chips flying all around her.

  The sirens wailed louder, and now she could hear the sound of a motorcycle engine. A few yards ahead was a staircase, one side of a short bridge that rose over the lake for ten meters or so. She ran up the stairs, taking three at a time, and dashed along the concrete and back down the stairs on the other side. She stepped off the side of the jetée. The water was only a meter deep but it was freezing, burning into her cuts and wounds with a cold fire.

  Yael crouched under the bridge, shivering violently as she searched for a loose rock.

  The bald man ran down the stairs. She looked up as he stopped in front of her and scanned the jetée ahead. Her hand closed around a large, smooth stone.

  She jumped back onto the path behind him and slammed the rock into the side of his head. He pitched forward instantly, swinging his gun around as he fell. He fired several times.

  Yael leapt sideways as the bullets smashed into the walkway. Suddenly she spun around as though lifted by a giant hand and landed facedown on the path, scraping her face along the rough concrete. The adrenaline was pumping so hard she was oblivious to the bullet that had hit her.

  The bald man got up and staggered toward her, blood gushing from the cut in the side of his head and from his shattered nose. He wiped his face and raised the gun again.

  Yael jumped to the right, grabbed the gun barrel, and yanked it sideways. The bullets hammered into the concrete, bouncing in every direction, sending a fresh spray of rock chips against her legs.

  Yael whirled around and punched him in the throat.

  He slammed his fist into her shoulder. She collapsed.

  She fell to the floor, slid backward along the wet concrete, and kicked him as hard as she could in the back of his knee. He went down on top of her.

  They rolled off the jetée into the water. He landed under her.

  She sat up, clamped his pelvis between her legs, and forced his head down with both hands, ignoring the freezing cold and the agony consuming the whole left side of her body.

  The water erupted around them. His feet thrashed and an arm reached for her, flailed wildly, and fell back.

  The fury surged through her and her breathing turned harsh and ragged. She was sitting on David’s shoulders, laughing as he strode through Central Park, and her fingers were steel talons.

  A foot broke the surface, kicked up, and then sank.

  She raised her head to the sky, taking in great gulps of air, the rain pouring down her face, the blood seeping red then pink from her shoulder as it ran down her arm into the water. Her legs were a vise.

  The churning slowed. She felt her fingers digging into his flesh, his hands grasping at her clothes, gripping her jacket, and then falling away. The bald man kicked once, twice, feeble twitches now. The water calmed and became still.

  Yael let go. She stood up and staggered out of the lake to see the motorcyclist maneuver his red Yamaha down the steps. The rider jumped off at the bottom, ignoring the spinning wheels and screaming engine.

  He took in the sight of Yael: sodden, bloodied, wild-eyed. Police sirens howled loudly nearby. A helicopter flew low overhead, its blades sending waves across the water.

  The bald man floated facedown in the lake. A crimson pool spread out at Yael’s feet. She looked at her hands, staring at her fingers as though they belonged to someone else. She shivered violently and her legs began to shake.

  Joe-Don took off his helmet and walked toward her.

  “You took your time,” said Yael—and passed out.

  Thirty-Two

  UN to Hold Inquiry into Links with KZX and Bonnet Group; Senior Official Charged with Murder; Marc Rosenheim Arrested

  By Sami Boustani and Najwa al-Sameera (Special to the New York Times)

  NEW YORK—Fareed Hussein, the secretary-general of the United Nations, yesterday announced a wide-ranging inquiry into the role of UN peacekeepers and other officials in Congo and the collapse of the much-heralded UN-KZX Goma Development Zone in the east of the war-torn country. The investigation will focus on the role of the German corporation and its former business partner, the Paris-based Bonnet Group. The two firms are accused of planning a regional ethnic war that would allow them to take control of the region’s supply of coltan, a mineral vital for mobile telephones and computers. Several senior UN officials are implicated in the conspiracy, said officials inside the organization.

  Mr. Hussein announced at a press conference that the new probe, to be headed by Quentin Braithwaite, the head of peacekeeping, would be the most rigorous in the international organization’s history. “We will leave no stone unturned in our determination to find out how the United Nations, the very embodiment of the world’s humanitarian ideals, could have been hijacked by two multinational corporations for their own aims. This was an act of unprecedented cynicism and can never be repeated.” Recent events in and around Goma only highlighted the need for the Year of Africa, Mr. Hussein said, although its launch had been postponed for some time to give the international organization enough time to reassess its priorities and capabilities.

  Mr. Hussein’s distancing of the UN from the German corporation and the Bonnet Group is an abrupt turnaround. As recently as last week, speaking at a press conference in Geneva, Mr. Hussein was an outspoken advocate of what he called “a new and necessary partnership between the UN and international corporations, one heralding the start of a new era in aid and development work, combining the UN’s humanitarian expertise with KZX’s business knowhow.” The press conference descended into chaos after activists, including Mr. Hussein’s daughter Rina, pelted the podium with mud bombs filled with the river sludge that contains coltan.

  The fate of the development zone was sealed after the discovery of a document that appears to reveal a detailed and long-t
erm plan to ignite an ethnic conflict across central Africa. The plan involved renegade UN and State Department officials, together with KZX, the Bonnet Group, and Efrat Global Solutions, the world’s largest private military contractor, distributing weapons to politically volatile areas. Company officials would then either carry out atrocities themselves or encourage locals to, thus triggering a cycle of war and revenge. The fighting would then prompt the deployment of UN peacekeepers, working in concert with KZX security staff. Once the region had stabilized, the UN troops would be withdrawn, leaving KZX in control of the mineral-rich areas.

  The detailed plan was inside a publicly available UN report on the exploitation of Congo’s resources but concealed through a technique known as “digital steganography.” Steganography involves the covert embedding of extra data on digital files such as photographs, sound files, or documents. The data is invisible but can be recovered with a password. The technique is increasingly popular because it does not demand encryption, which acts as a red flag and can bring the attention of the authorities. The war plan for Africa was embedded in a PDF document.

  Photographs taken in the village of Kimanda, ten kilometers from Goma, obtained by the New York Times, show Stephan Mannheim, a senior KZX official, and Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former colonel in the Israeli army, handing out weapons to local men. Colonel Ben-Ami is a director of Efrat Global Solutions, which is owned by Menachem Stein, also a former Israeli military man. The firm could not be reached for comment, and a spokesman did not return calls left on his voice mail.

  Reinhardt Daintner, head of communications at KZX, said in a written statement, “KZX is one of the world’s most socially responsible companies. We are shocked and saddened to hear of the involvement of Mr. Mannheim in these recent events and emphasize that he was acting in a private capacity. We deeply regret the cancellation of the Goma Development Zone project, which we still believe offers a pioneering model that can take corporate social responsibility to a new level.”

  British actress Lucy Tremlett and musician Hobo, who were both closely associated with the Goma Development Zone plan, could not be reached for comment.

  Despite his formerly strong support for the KZX development zone project, Mr. Hussein is almost certain to survive the scandal, say diplomats. The secretary-general’s four-year term ends in six months but is likely to be extended to a second term. There is little support among the Permanent Five members of the Security Council for replacing him. “Hussein is a known quantity, and that is the most important thing for us,” said one official who is not permitted to speak on this topic on the record. The official hinted that Mr. Hussein’s personal involvement with KZX and the Bonnet Group, which has not yet been fully clarified, could give the superpowers useful leverage over him.

  Yael read to the end of the lengthy article and then put the newspaper down, feeling annoyed and unsettled. Not because of Sami’s revelations about the KZX-UN-EGS conspiracy, all of which, by now, she knew. What else were he and Najwa sharing apart from a byline? Especially when she saw a mention near the article flagging an hour-long investigative documentary, now in production and airing later that month on Al-Jazeera: “Dying for Coltan: How the UN Was Almost Hijacked,” presented by Najwa and coproduced by Sami.

  The rest of Sami’s article detailed how the arrests were coming thick and fast. UN officials were leaking that Olivia had been killed because she had discovered the links between the DPA and Efrat Global Solutions. An employee of EGS had inadvertently left a message on Olivia’s voice mail. Mahesh Kapoor had been charged with her murder. Hussein had canceled his diplomatic immunity. Judges had refused bail because he was considered a flight risk. Marc Rosenheim was being held in custody while federal prosecutors decided whether to charge him with treason, abuse of office, corruption, or all three. So was Charles Bonnet, who was facing several years in prison for aggravated sexual assault. The tape of his threats to Thanh Ly was already circulating on the Internet. Hakim Yundala had resigned as head of the UN’s security office and returned to Kinshasa. He had been taken off the airplane in handcuffs and was charged with the murder of numerous Congolese activists and journalists. His sister had been sacked as Congo’s ambassador to the UN and had returned home to face charges of corruption and embezzlement. Zeinab Hussein, the SG’s wife, had returned home to her relatives in Karachi, suffering from stress.

  Talks were underway with Columbia University for the Olivia de Souza Chair in Development Studies. An offer of endowment from KZX and the Bonnet Group had been regretfully declined. Erin Rembaugh had been killed in a hit-and-run outside her townhouse in Greenwich, Connecticut. Police were looking for the driver, but there were no leads. Mitchell Gardiner, the photographer who had been attacked after taking pictures of Fareed Hussein at Teterboro Airport, was recovering steadily and had been offered a staff position at the paper.

  Yael looked around the reception area. Her shoulder was aching, a dull pain that pulsed up and down her left side. The bullet, a .22-caliber, had ricocheted off the walkway and lodged in her shoulder muscle without hitting any arteries or major nerves. Had the bald man used a .45-caliber it would have been a different story. Yael had stayed in hospital for a week, before traveling back to New York. Her shoulder was bandaged up, and she faced several months of physiotherapy. No Budokan for a while—that was certain.

  So now what? The last time she was on the 38th floor, she had been taken by the bony-faced Frenchwoman to a hot and airless room down an obscure corridor.

  This time she was waiting in the VIP reception lounge: an enormous and comfortable room with new modern furniture, pastel-shaded walls decorated with photographs of African wildlife, jugs of iced water, fresh orange juice, bagels, cookies, and a shiny chrome and black coffee machine in the corner that could supply a branch of Starbucks. All very nice, but what did Hussein want with her? Yael could still see him snapping the pencil in his hands just before she left, as she thought then, never to step foot inside the building again. Still, she had a couple of questions she wanted to ask him. He was unlikely to answer either of them, she thought, but however he responded would tell her something.

  The door opened and Hussein’s new diary secretary walked in. She was a tall and buxom African woman, wearing traditional dress—a long green and gold fitted skirt, a top, and a headdress—and had a dazzling smile. She ushered Yael into Hussein’s office and closed the door.

  The secretary-general was standing at the window, looking out onto the East River. Autumn was sliding into winter, and the sky was gray and overcast. He turned around and walked over to greet Yael. His eyes shone; he had put on several pounds and positively radiated health and energy. His stoop had gone, she noticed, as had all the KZX posters, although the signed photograph of Lucy Tremlett was still there.

  “How are you, my dear Yael,” Hussein asked, his voice warm and sincere. “I was so sorry to hear about the events in Geneva. Are you recovering well? Are the doctors looking after you properly?”

  Yael nodded warily.

  Hussein continued: “I very much missed you and your counsel during these tumultuous days.” He smiled mischievously. “Although I understand that you also played a most important role in ensuring the good guys won in the end. And I do like your new hair. Very stylish.”

  Yael had to stop herself from responding in kind. Hussein was charm itself, utterly confident, she sensed, as though he had recently suffered a debilitating fever, but was now calm, rested, and well on the road to recovery. He gently took her arm and guided her to the leather sofa in the corner of the room where he sat down next to her.

  “Would you like some tea or coffee? Or perhaps something stronger? It’s almost lunchtime,” he said, glancing at his watch. “We have plenty of time.”

  Yael shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m fine. Where’s Yvette Dubois?”

  Hussein inclined his head sheepishly, like a schoolboy caught stealing biscuits. “Working for the Fren
ch Forestry Commission. But we are not here to talk about her.”

  “Then why are we here?” she asked, her voice businesslike.

  Hussein smiled benignly at her. “Yael, I have some excellent news for you, which gives me great personal pleasure to impart. You may remember that when we last met I said that an internal review was examining your recent work for us.”

  Yael sat back and looked at Hussein in wonder. He was as friendly as if they had just met that morning in the UN staff canteen. Her wrecked career, the betrayal, the threats, the extreme danger she had been in, being shot—it seemed none of this had happened. And if it had, then it no longer mattered.

  She said, “What I remember is a lot of false accusations, smears, and talk about dangerous non-state actors with long arms—and snapping pencils.”

  Hussein continued smiling and talking as though Yael had not said anything. “Yael, I am thrilled to tell you that the internal review has cleared you of all those unwarranted allegations. I am also assured by people who know about these things that there will not be any charges or difficulties resulting from recent . . . events, thanks to your status as a UN employee, which brings diplomatic immunity. I cannot tell you how pleased I am about this. You must know that whatever transpired, I never lost my faith in you.”

  Suddenly everything was clear. She was so surprised that for a moment she could not speak.

  Hussein pounced, sensing her confusion. He stood up and helped her up, taking her arm. “Come with me, please, Yael. I have something to show you.”

  Hussein led her through his office and down the corridor. The walls were lined with UN staff and officials. As soon as they saw Yael they started clapping, slowly at first, then in a wave of applause. Several actually cheered and shouted, “Welcome back!”