The Reykjavik Assignment

by Adam LeBor

  Yael watched herself appear onscreen, with her hair wild, her face scratched and sweaty as she breathed heavily. “My name is Yael Azoulay. I work for the United Nations,” she said to the camera, which spun around to show a man in his thirties sitting on the floor of a washroom. He was bruised and bleeding, his clothes were torn, and he was panting. His ankles were bound together with a white plastic tie, his hands cuffed over a water pipe.

  Yael’s voice returned. “This is Cyrus Jones. He works for a black-ops department of the US government known as the DoD, the Department of Deniable. He is somehow connected to the Prometheus Group, which is trading illegally with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Cyrus Jones tried to kill me today on the Staten Island Ferry.”

  The camera shakily zoomed in on Jones’s face so that it filled the screen. His eyes blazed with hatred and fury. The birthmark on his neck pulsed so strongly it seemed to be alive.

  “This film will be uploaded to a secure server. If anything happens to me it will be posted on YouTube. Remember: Cyrus Jones. Clarence Clairborne. The Prometheus Group. The Department of Deniable.”

  Yael watched the clip until the end, closed the window, and logged out. She picked up a notebook from the coffee table and drew a triangle on a sheet of paper. She wrote Prometheus on one side and DoD on the other. At the top of the triangle she wrote Efrat Global Solutions, adding KZX? next to Prometheus. She understood that Prometheus, EGS, and the DoD all wanted a new war in the Middle East; Prometheus and EGS because it would be the most spectacular bonanza yet for the military-industrial complex, bringing in billions of dollars’ worth of contracts. The Department of Deniable needed a new war, because without one there was no reason for it to exist. The renditioners, the waterboarders, the interrogators, the prisoner freezers, and rectal feeders, the legion of half-crazed ex–Special Forces soldiers who could never function in civilian society, had nowhere else to go.

  But what was the KZX connection? KZX was the world’s largest media conglomerate. The German firm had bought up newspapers and television and radio stations across eastern Europe on the cheap after the collapse of Communism, before expanding into Russia, India, and Brazil. But the firm had several other interests. KZX’s pharmaceutical division was less well known but was extremely powerful on the global drugs market. That part of the company dated back to the 1930s and had recently been embroiled in a scandal in eastern Europe. There were reports that KZX scientists had attempted to produce a genetically engineered drug to reduce the fertility of Romany women, even that the science used dated back to Nazi experiments during the Second World War.* The furor had faded away after KZX announced a deluge of scholarships and endowments for Romany students and organizations.

  But KZX was still aggressively seeking new pharmaceutical markets and opportunities. Yael had recently heard that company officials had secretly met with a Taliban leader in Doha, Qatar, to discuss plans for large-scale cultivation of hashish across Afghanistan, as more and more countries legalized its possession. For KZX, as well as Prometheus and EGS, instability also meant opportunity. Freshwater had made no secret of her dislike of international corporations and her plan to limit their global reach. It would certainly suit KZX for Freshwater to be out of the way, and have another, more pliant and amenable president in the White House.

  And now there was a new addition to the mix: Eli and his friends. Masters’s resignation and the ever-louder questions about the privatization of UN security and peacekeeping were all just temporary setbacks, to be expected when the stakes were this high. Prometheus, EGS, KZX, and the DoD would never give up. Nor would Eli. And she knew sooner or later, Eli and his gang would try and take her. But forewarned was forearmed, especially when she knew precisely how they operated.

  Yael picked up her iPad, connected it to her speaker system, and opened a sound file. Then she sat down on the floor in a half-lotus position, breathing slowly and deeply through her nose as she began to zone out.

  *

  Clarence Clairborne glanced briefly at his wounded hand. The bandage was clean but his palm was throbbing. He could feel his pulse under the Band-Aid, his blood pressure rising before the phone call.

  He looked at the two framed photographs on the corner of his desk. A family of four, half of it now reduced to two sheets of printed paper. A tall boy—with sandy hair, freckles, and a winning smile—held a soccer ball and stared out from one frame. Clarence Clairborne IV. The memories were hardwired into his brain, and no amount of bourbon could erase them. Waving good-bye to his son as the limousine rolled out of the driveway to Ronald Reagan National Airport and the Prometheus Group’s waiting executive jet; the phone call apologizing for missing his son’s birthday party, with fulsome promises of the time they would soon spend together; sitting on the airplane telling himself that yes, he had locked the liquor cabinet. Most of all, he remembered the phone call he received when the airplane had landed. The cabinet had not been locked. His son had gotten drunk and drowned in the swimming pool. His wife had never recovered, and he had given up trying to reach for her through the fog of gin and tranquilizers.

  A plump, pretty teenager looked out from the second frame, smiling shyly at the camera. But Emmeline Clairborne was no longer Daddy’s girl. She was someone else’s girl, living on Sanchez Street in San Francisco. With Abby. Her partner. He could barely vocalize the word, even in his head. But he was still Emmy’s father. He glanced at his watch. It was six o’clock in the evening in California. They should be home by now, back from the school for children with special needs where they worked. Clairborne took a deep breath, picked up the phone on his desk, felt his cut hand throb even harder, and punched in a number. He heard the ringing, imagined the sound echoing across the kitchen. Emmy and Abby had bought the apartment for $200,000 under market value. The realtor had told them it was an emergency sale and they had to move quickly to complete the purchase. They did. Neither she nor Abby had any idea that Clairborne had flown to San Francisco, chosen the place, and paid the realtor the extra $200,000, plus another $5,000 in cash to keep his mouth shut and make sure Clairborne’s daughter got to buy the apartment.

  “Hello, this is Abby,” said a female voice.

  “This is Clarence Clairborne,” he said, the receiver slippery in his palm.

  “Mr. Clairborne, hello,” said Abby politely. She paused. Clairborne could visualize her looking at Emmeline, the stern shake of his daughter’s head. “She’s not here, Mr. Clairborne.”

  Clairborne forced a smile to keep the desperation from his voice. “That’s fine, Abby. Actually, I wanted to talk to you. Congratulations on your promotion. You are now director of the school?”

  “Thank you. Yes. I am.” Abby was wary.

  “You may know that the Prometheus Group has a charitable foundation. We would like to make a substantial donation to the school, to be used as you see fit.”

  Abby did not hesitate. “No thank you, Mr. Clairborne.”

  The line went dead. A few seconds later the phone rang again. Clairborne pressed the speakerphone button. “Your visitor is here, Mr. Clairborne,” said Samantha.

  * See: The Budapest Protocol

  12

  She is sitting on the beach where Jaffa meets Tel Aviv. The rhythm of the waves as they break is soporific. Her eyes are closed. The sun is pleasantly warm on her face, the sea breeze cooling. The water swirls around her toes, the undertow pulling gently at the sand beneath her feet.

  *

  Yael felt calm—transported, as she intended, to a conscious state somewhere between sleeping and waking.

  Eli’s voice boomed around the apartment. Traffic roared. Sirens wailed. Handheld radios hissed and crackled.

  She focused on her breathing, feeling the flow of air in and out, in and out. After two minutes, the cacophony stopped as suddenly as it started. Five minutes later it erupted again, for another ninety seconds, then stopped. Yael opened her eyes and checked her pulse. Fifty-five. She was ready.

  *

 
; Ten minutes later, Yael devoured her sandwich in three bites. Ordering in was always an option in Manhattan—the restaurant flyers scattered across the coffee table offered Thai, Italian, Korean, Mexican, sushi, and any number of regional Chinese cuisines—but that would have taken at least another thirty minutes, so a search at the very back of her kitchen cupboard had produced a packet of crispbread, a tin of sardines, and a jar of chili-flavored olives: enough for an instant, if makeshift, supper. There were two more sandwiches on her plate. They were surprisingly tasty for a slung-together meal. Or perhaps the wine had sharpened her hunger. In any event, her appetite had returned and her mind was clear as she sat at her dining table.

  She picked up a postcard with a Turkish stamp, featuring a catamaran racing across the Bosporus, one of its two rudders out of the water. There was no message written on the back, but there didn’t need to be. Next to the postcard lay a rectangle of thick white card, embossed with gold lettering. The invitation had arrived with a covering letter, personally signed by Daintner in his capacity as corporate communications director.

  She read the first few lines:

  Ms. Yael Azoulay and partner are kindly requested to attend the opening reception of the new KZX School of International Development at Columbia University.

  Partner. She smiled, wryly. Actually having a date would be an event of note. She picked up the postcard of the catamaran again.

  A lock of hair, so black it almost shines, falls over his head. “Shalom, Ms. Azoulay. Welcome to Istanbul.”

  For a second she imagined herself walking into the KZX reception accompanied by Yusuf Celmiz. It was a pleasant vision. Yael had spent three days in his company in Istanbul, and it had been a roller-coaster ride. They’d met when he kidnapped her at gunpoint and knocked her out with a stun dart, admittedly to save her from becoming a victim of some very nasty people; hidden her in a cemetery—where his relatives were buried—that belonged to the Dönme, a hybrid Jewish-Muslim sect whose members were known as “ships with two rudders”; billeted her in a safe house belonging to his employer, the Turkish intelligence service, also known as Milli İstihbarat Tekilatı; had a furious row with his boss over her, then somehow persuaded said boss to provide Yael with an MIT identity card and a three-dimensional, computer-generated model of the Istanbul bazaar.

  But Yusuf was in Istanbul, and she was here.

  So, would she go? Yes, she would. She had no desire whatsoever to enjoy KZX’s hospitality or drink their champagne. But she did want to gather intelligence about the firm and its relationship with the UN and other players in the nonprofit world, within which KZX was seeking to remodel itself as a generous, responsible corporate citizen. With patience, sufficient funds, and enough opinion-formers on the payroll, even the dirtiest reputation can eventually be cleansed. The framework was well established: endow a university chair, or establish a memorial library or a research institute, or all three. Best of all was to start a whole new charity requiring a legion of well-paid staff, ideally drawn from the children and friends of the key philanthropic players. Personal connections were crucial, oiled with exclusive dinners, receptions, weekend retreats to luxury hotels. This was Daintner’s world, where he operated with skill and expertise. She had half-expected to see the Prometheus Group’s name on the invitation as well. The firm’s charitable foundation was making slow but steady inroads but was still running into resistance. For now at least, the world of New York philanthropy, no matter how money-hungry, would draw the line at Clairborne’s donations. But that too, could quickly change.

  Yael knew that a second, exclusive dinner was planned later on Saturday evening, around 9:30 p.m. Fareed Hussein would be the keynote speaker, but this was a private affair for just a couple of dozen people. Yael had not been invited, but she did not need to be physically present to know what was going on.

  She looked down at the coffee table. A single olive had rolled onto the edge of her plate. She ate it, picked up the plate, and walked back into the kitchen. There she spooned finely ground coffee into a small brass pot with a long, thin handle, added water, and then placed it on the stove. She lit the burner, stirring the water until it bubbled and began to rise. The smell of burned grounds filled the room. Yael switched off the gas and watched the thick liquid fall back into the pot. She put it and a cup the size of a large thimble on a tray and returned to the living room.

  Yael’s mobile phone beeped, the sign that a text message had arrived. The number was unfamiliar but it started with +90, the code for Turkey, followed by 697, which she knew was a restricted mobile network. Only one person she knew had access to that network. She smiled, glanced again at the postcard of the catamaran.

  She read the text message and her smile vanished.

  *

  Najwa slowly took out the envelope from her purse. It was long and thin, a standard letter envelope available in any Staples or Office Depot. She held it with her thumb and forefinger. Nothing was written on the front, so she held it up to the desk lamp. The backlight showed a folded piece of paper inside. She gently shook the envelope and examined the seal. No powder, white or any other color, had spilled out.

  She was being paranoid, she knew. Printed anonymous tips, to avoid a cybertrail, were increasingly common. Two months ago somebody had slid a printout of an e-mail, from the private account of a senior Department of Peacekeeping official to a diamond dealer in Antwerp, under the office door. The DPKO official had been using UN flights to smuggle out diamonds from African war zones, thus allowing them to be reclassified as “non-conflict diamonds,” and Najwa had broken the story. The DPKO official, a cousin of the minister of interior of Ghana, had been shifted sideways to the Department of Information. And promoted.

  She gingerly opened the envelope and removed a single sheet of paper, folded twice. She unfolded it to reveal a photograph of a slender middle-aged man, bald, with a carefully trimmed beard. He wore a white collarless shirt and, over it, a gray suit jacket. Two words were written across the top of the image:

  Salim Massoud

  Salim Massoud. But who was he? She looked again at the photograph, taking in details of his appearance. Then Najwa opened up her saved browser window. Abbas Velavi’s widow appeared, her features frozen in grief. Najwa moved the cursor back until the frame showed five seconds remaining and clicked play.

  “The visitor was bald. He had a neat beard and wore fine black leather gloves. He did not take them off all the time he was here. He said he had a skin condition.”

  Najwa took a photograph of the printout with her iPhone, encrypted the image file, and e-mailed it to a secure server she used to back up sensitive material. What was the message here? It seemed to be that someone called Salim Massoud had killed Abbas Velavi. And there was something more, another connection that was niggling at her.

  Under the pile of papers on her desk was a red plastic folder. The Dying for Coltan file was thick with clippings and printouts about KZX and the Bonnet Group. Many had been added since the film was broadcast last winter. She flicked through the articles until she found the printout she was looking for, from the website of Corporationsentry. The German anticapitalist campaign organization noted that KZX’s pharmaceutical division still held the patents on a number of deadly toxins that had been developed under the Nazis. One of the poisons, according to the article, triggered cardiac arrest and then dissolved into body tissue, leaving no trace.

  Najwa opened the browser on her computer, set the search result filter to “ALL LANGUAGES,” and typed in “KZX chemical weapons.” The screen filled with links, many of them in Farsi, the Iranian language, including a number of gruesome pictures of dead, blistered bodies from the Iran-Iraq War that lasted from 1980 to 1988. Saddam Hussein’s regime had used chemical weapons with abandon, not just against enemy soldiers but also against civilians, killing thousands in a gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988. The twentieth anniversary of the Halabja attack had triggered a new burst of media interest. Several reports, f
rom both the German and international media, detailed how KZX had supplied Baghdad with ingredients and technology that could be used to make chemical weapons during the 1980s. The company strongly denied claims that it had facilitated the mass slaughter of the Hussein regime; Reinhardt Daintner, KZX’s head of communications, was quoted in every story, stonewalling and denying. The chemicals and equipment had been supplied solely for use in industrial and manufacturing processes for pesticides.

  Najwa thought for a moment, opened a new window, and typed in “KZX poison.” The screen instantly displayed URLs for articles and television reports about environmental damage in Africa, South America, and Cambodia, where KZX had substantial investments. She clicked through the reports, lingering on a teenage boy’s account of his fourteen-hour workday mining coltan in Congo. Buried in the long list of links was a brief 2013 article from Levant Monitor, a subscription-only website that specialized in intelligence about the Middle East. The website, based in Washington, DC, was run by several former US intelligence operatives, and was well respected. Its material was unsourced, but always accurate.

  Najwa nodded as she started to read. This was what she had been looking for. Hafiz Bakshari, an Iranian defector granted asylum in the United States, claimed that he had been working on a secret Iranian government program to develop a substance that would trigger a massive cardiac arrest in the victim, then break up inside the body within a few hours so it could not be detected. The poison could be administered by drops to food and drink, by spray, injection, or even by touch. Brief contact with the victim’s skin was sufficient to transfer the toxin. Bakshari said that the poison had been used on prisoners in Iranian jails who were already under death sentences, and he also admitted that he had met a German scientist who was working with the Iranians on the program to monitor the results. Bakshari could not remember the scientist’s name, but one night over dinner the scientist let slip that he had formerly worked for KZX’s research department.