by Adam LeBor
Yael turned around to see Hussein watching her. She could feel the emotions running through him: affection, comfort in her presence, guilt. He asked, “Would you like something to drink, to eat?”
“Tea, please.”
“Tea for two. Coming right up,” he replied as he walked the length of the suite to the kitchen area.
Yael strolled around, taking the measure of the place while Hussein made the drinks. Yael had stayed in hotels around the world, often in very comfortable conditions. But this was probably the largest and most luxurious hotel room she had ever stepped inside. It was certainly the whitest. She stepped inside the bathroom. A large Jacuzzi sat in the center. She quickly checked the shelves: one toothbrush, no women’s cosmetics on display.
She walked out, sat back on the sofa. Now, at last, it was just her and the SG. President Freshwater had gone straight to Keflavik airport and would be halfway to Washington, DC, by now. Kermanzade was on her way back to Tehran. Eli was under arrest. Michal was in the hospital under armed guard. After the death of Salim Massoud, the remaining Iranians had surrendered and were in custody. As for Sami and Najwa, well, yes, Sami and Najwa. An Icelandic journalist had already tweeted a photograph of the two journalists embracing and kissing in the Kaldi café, which had instantly gone viral. Yael felt a twinge of jealousy, sure, perhaps of both of them, to her slight surprise. But overall, she was pleased. Najwa was a better prospect for Sami than she ever would be, especially now that she was a journalistic superstar. And lately, someone else was much on Yael’s mind.
The SG reappeared with a tray. She watched him pour the drinks, glancing at her uncertainly. She took her tea, then handed him her iPhone. A text message was displayed on the screen.
He read the message, leaned back, exhaled loudly, closed his eyes for several seconds. “Who sent you this?”
“That doesn’t matter. Is it true? Did you let my brother die?”
Hussein looked at Yael, started to speak, stopped, looked away. He picked up his teacup and saucer. The white china rattled. A trickle of liquid slopped over the side. He put the cup and saucer back down, not just his hand but his whole body trembling slightly.
Yael sipped her drink and waited.
Hussein sat up. “I don’t know whose idea it was. Maybe it was Bonnet’s, maybe the French foreign ministry, maybe it was mine. It just seemed to appear out of the discussions, the telegrams and the confidential cables and then suddenly it was part of the consensus, the solution, the thing that we all needed to do. The … the … plan …”
“Which was what, exactly?” asked Yael. She put her drink down, pulled her legs up underneath her and leaned back on the sofa. She felt oddly calm and composed.
Hussein closed his eyes, swallowed and started talking. The words poured out.
“David”—he looked again at Yael, guilt and shame written on his face—“and the other eight were supposed to be taken hostage by the Tutsis. Then there would be a rescue mission by French troops. That was Bonnet’s responsibility. He was the liaison with the French Ministry of Defense.”
“I know that,” said Yael. “Bonnet told me. But what came next? What was the point of it?”
Hussein paused, looked at the ceiling for a moment, continued talking. “Once the French rescued the nine UN staff, they would have boots on the ground. There would be some fighting, enough to justify more French troops, a full-scale intervention to back the Hutus. The Hutus were Francophones, the Tutsis favored Britain. Britain had Uganda, so France got Rwanda. That was the deal. The P5 agreed. That’s why nobody intervened to save David and the others. They were only supposed to be held for a day or two, then released. But the Hutus had their own ideas. They killed them. They had always planned to. Rwanda turned into a bloodbath, just as they wanted. Then everyone backed away.”
Yael’s stomach turned to ice. For a second she could not breathe. “So my brother, and the other eight UN workers, died because you, or someone, had a bright idea to gamble with their lives, then another eight hundred thousand innocent people were killed because the P5 were carving up Africa like a turkey at Christmas?”
Hussein looked away, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Yes.”
Yael fought to bring her emotions under control. Hussein was telling the truth, that much she knew. But not yet the whole truth. Her voice was level as she continued speaking. “You said this plan appeared and then somehow became part of the consensus. But that’s not entirely true, is it? You knew all along why David died. All these years. Every time I asked you, you dodged the question, changed the subject. But you knew, all along. Because it was you. It was your idea.”
Hussein could not look at her. “I … it was …”
“Fareed, please. Tell me the truth. The truth.”
“Yes. Yes.” Hussein was almost shouting now. “It was my idea. I drafted the secret memos. I persuaded the P5 and the other Security Council members.” He put his hands on his face, let out a cry of anguish. “Yael, I am so, so sorry.”
Yael wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “So am I.”
Hussein swallowed before he answered. “If it had worked …”
Yael picked up the tea tray, stood up, and hurled it against the picture window as hard as she could. The crockery exploded, shattering into jagged white fragments as the hot liquid spattered across the glass.
A pounding sounded on the door. Hussein jumped up, suddenly nimble, and walked quickly across the room. He opened the door. “It’s fine, we’re OK, really, just an accident, we’ll clear it up,” Yael heard him say.
Hussein turned around and returned to the sofa. He sat down and reached for her hand. She knocked it way, and sat at the other end of the sofa, tears coursing down her face. She picked up a napkin, blew her nose, sat for a few moments breathing deeply and slowly.
Hussein waited for several moments. “I’m so sorry. We gambled with their lives. And we all lost.”
Yael blew her nose before she replied. “Why didn’t you do something, shout and scream at the P5 to rescue them?”
“I did. I made call after call. I held emergency meetings with diplomats from every one of the countries on the Security Council. They all promised to contact their capitals, push for action, do everything they could.”
“Which was?”
“In the end, nothing.”
He stared at the window, a faraway look in his eyes as the tea slowly slid down the glass and dripped onto the floor. “After that, and Srebrenica, I realized that I couldn’t do these kind of deals. I don’t have the skills, or the stomach for it. But someone has to do this work.”
Hussein looked at Yael, paused for several seconds, continued speaking. “It took awhile, a decade or so, but eventually, I found someone. Who could operate behind the scenes. Who was much better at dealing with warlords and killers than I ever could be. Someone who could be trained, someone with enough steel to do the cold mathematics, the cost-benefit analyses: justice or peace? Arrest the killers or appoint them to run a government? And someone who reminded me, every day, of the human cost of the mistakes that I had made.”
Yael closed her eyes for a moment before she spoke, tried to put her emotions aside and think logically. She had come with a mission: to find out the truth about David’s death. So what had she learned? Of course the Rwanda plan for the UN staff had been Hussein’s idea. Nobody else would have the contacts and inside information to try and construct such an arrangement. She sensed from the first day she went to work for him that he was involved. Did she believe his claim, that he had met with all the Security Council ambassadors to try and rescue David and the other eight UN workers? There was no way of knowing. In the end there were no blacks or whites, just a sliding palette of shades of gray, of compromise and ambiguity.
And she knew all about that. When Hussein had chosen her to do the P5’s most secret work, the behind-the-scenes deals that kept superpower diplomacy rolling and the global corporations in business, she had readily accepted. She had loved
it, relished every moment. Warlords were transformed into statesmen. The inconvenient were sacrificed, victims went unavenged, all for the greater good. Because in the end, she could, she told herself, rationalize what she did. But some things could never be rationalized. She picked up her iPhone, called up a sound file, and pressed the play button.
FRENCH MAN: We need at least five hundred. That will have maximum impact.
HUSSEIN: No, no, that is unnecessary. It’s far too much. A couple of hundred at most would be sufficient for our purposes. Less would suffice. Even a few dozen.
She expected him to look shocked, or angry. Instead Hussein shrugged, recovering some of his confidence. “My dear Yael, talk is cheap. Did the war happen?”
“No.”
“Who stopped it?”
“Me, I guess.”
“Who do you think sent you the sound file?”
Hussein placed his palm on her hand. Yael looked down. One part of her wanted to slap his hand away, walk out of the room, and never see Fareed Hussein or anyone from the UN again. Another part wanted his reassurance.
“You did?”
Hussein nodded. “Yes, I did.”
“But you sacked me.”
“Only for a while. I had to let you run, on your own. And you did very well. You stopped a war. But that is all in the past now. I am resigning. Quentin Braithwaite will take over as acting SG until the P5 and the General Assembly agree on my successor. I will announce this at the press conference tonight. That is, if Roxana is still organizing it for me. Maybe she will resign as well.”
Yael smiled, despite herself. “Roxana? She isn’t going anywhere.”
“No. I think not. Your job will remain, no matter who replaces me. You will be promoted to undersecretary-general. You can continue in your present role or carve out a new one. You can do whatever you want. If you stay.”
“I’m thinking about that. Meanwhile, I would like you to do something for me. Something very much in your interest.”
“Which is?”
“You release the Rwanda and Srebrenica documents.”
The SG sat back. “How is that in my interest? They will destroy my reputation and any chance of a legacy.”
“I don’t think so. It was twenty years ago. Another world. You were just a civil servant, implementing policy, not making it.” Her voice was barbed. “You can blame the P5. Again.”
Hussein blushed, looked away.
Yael said, “Roxana can spin it for you—you will be a pioneer of transparency, facing up to the UN’s greatest failures.”
Hussein half-frowned, pondering this idea. “And I get?”
“Something you want more than anything.”
A pang of guilt shot through Yael. How well the SG had taught her. She watched, first comprehension, then the emotional hunger on his face.
Hussein asked, “Something or someone?”
“Someone. Do we have a deal?”
The SG nodded.
Yael said nothing, looked down at her iPhone, and pressed a button.
A few seconds later the suite’s phone rang. Hussein picked up the handset, listened for a few seconds.
“Reception,” he mouthed at Yael. “Thank you, but I am not receiving any visitors now. Please direct them to Grace Olewanda, my secretary, or Roxana Voiculescu if they are media interview requests. No, no visitors at all.”
He frowned, stopped speaking for a moment, blinked several times in surprise. “She says she is my what?” Hussein stared at the phone for several seconds, as if it was the first time he had seen such a device, a look of wonder spreading across his face. “OK. Tell the security detail and send her up.”
38
Yael lay back in the thermal lake and closed her eyes, breathing in the sulfurous tang of the mineral-rich water. The night air was cool but the Blue Lagoon was the temperature of a warm bath. She could feel her muscles relaxing, the tension draining away. She checked the clock mounted on the outside wall of the lake’s glass-walled café: it was well after ten. He would be here any minute. She waved at Joe-Don, who was sitting by the door, nursing a Diet Coke and watching her carefully.
Yael and her bodyguard had gone straight to the Blue Lagoon from the Hilton. The thirty-mile journey usually took around forty minutes by road. The helicopter that brought them both, and her security escorts, had made it in less than half that time. Two members of the Viking Squad stood on the wooden walkway that ran around the lake, one on Yael’s right and the other on her left, machine pistols across their chest. A third stood on an arched bridge, ten yards away, that connected the wooden jetties jutting out into the lagoon. The crackle of their radios drifted through the night.
The water was a milky indigo and thick wisps of white steam floated above the surface. The lamps around the edge were a soft golden color in the dark. Islands of black, jagged lava jutted out from the water, their bases ringed by white mineral deposits. Shadowed mountains soared in the distance.
Yael had the place to herself. The Blue Lagoon had been cleared for her arrival. She closed her eyes for a few moments, rerunning her conversation with the SG in her head. She too had played a game with someone’s life, exploiting and manipulating a lonely young woman. But nobody had died, and a father and a daughter were now talking to each other again. And Rina Hussein was not the only daughter seeking a reckoning with her father.
Yael felt his presence nearby before she saw him, naked apart from a pair of swimming trunks, walking along the wooden bridge towards the Viking Squad policeman. The policeman held his arm out for a second, looked at the new arrival, then stepped aside.
Yael watched Menachem Stein walk to the end of the bridge, onto to the nearby jetty. He placed a small black bag on the wooden walkway and made his way down the steps. She felt her body stiffen as he slid into the water.
“Hello, Yael,” he said.
She stared ahead, did not reply.
“Mazel Tov, congratulations. That was good work today.”
“You’re late,” she replied, sliding away.
“Slichah, sorry. You only had to wait a few minutes.”
“Much more than that,” she said, half to herself.
She looked up at the sky. A passenger jet slowly descended to Keflavik airport, its wing lights blinking in the dark. “Still, I suppose I should thank you.”
“For what?”
“Istanbul. Shooting Eli’s gun out of his hand, when he was chasing me across the roof.”
“It was a tricky shot. I didn’t want to kill him.”
“Maybe you should have. It would have saved me a lot of time and trouble.”
Stein leaned back and stretched in the water. A seagull flew low, cawing loudly, wheeled sharply to the right, then soared away.
He cupped some water, let it drain over his head. “I like this place. It reminds me of the Dead Sea. But I never liked Eli. Even less when I saw him threaten you.”
“Was that you in New York? The photographs in Joe-Don’s mailbox?”
“Of course. A father needs to keep an eye on his daughter. Even if she won’t talk to him.”
Part of her was pleased by the news, but she would never admit it. “Michael Ortega?”
“Ortega was originally recruited by Clairborne. Then I turned him, to keep an eye on Clairborne. And then to watch you. Thanks for getting him the job as a doorman. That made my life easier.”
“How long has this been going on? Your paternal surveillance operation?” Yael asked as she stared at Stein. This was the first time she had seen or spoken to her father in eight years. His hair was grayer, the crows’-feet around his eyes deeper, his features more worn, sharper. He looked calm, but Yael sensed the emotions spinning underneath, his hunger to reconnect, flowing like a charge through the water. Not yet, Aba, you are going to have to work much harder.
“Long enough.”
Yael asked, “Who else is working for you?”
Stein looked at his daughter, amusement glinting in his eyes. “Gues
s.”
An idea flashed into Yael’s mind, one so outlandish it seemed too ridiculous to even vocalize the name. She did so, anyway. “Roxana?”
“From day one. We told her what she needed to know to advance her career. She told us what we were interested in.”
“Which was?”
“You, mainly.”
Yael stretched her arms and legs out, let them float on the water. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Roxana gave a dinner for some of the UN press corps. All she wanted to talk about was me, or so I heard.”
“How else am I supposed to find out how my daughter is?”
Yael looked down, determined not to smile. “And Fareed?”
Stein laughed. “Fareed works for Fareed. But he is always ready to trade.”
“Did you kill Schneidermann, so Roxana could be promoted and get you more inside information?
Stein stopped smiling. “Of course not. That was the Iranians. Who do you think I am?”
“I know who you are. I don’t know what you are.”
Yael lay back and stared at the sky. Stars glittered, thin points of light on a black velvet backdrop. The warm water was soothing. The exhaustion was rolling over her in waves. Part of her, a large part, just wanted to close her eyes and drift off to sleep. But she had so many more questions. “Eli said Mossad placed me in the UN. That they had dirt on Fareed and blackmailed him to give me a job and promote me. That’s why they wanted me to come home. So they could debrief me. I’ve been working for them for years without even knowing it. Is that true?”
“It’s part of the truth. One version.”
“Tell me yours.”
Stein turned towards Yael as he spoke. “We had copies of the Rwanda and Srebrenica documents. We let Fareed know and also that we would be happy if your UN career progressed. He agreed with us. But what you did, what you achieved, you did on your own. Tel Aviv would not be happier if you landed at Ben Gurion and told them everything you knew. But they weren’t about to kidnap you. Nobody is going to kidnap you while I am around. Eli set up a rogue operation to bring you back. Nice work, by the way. Ortega was supposed to catch up with you much earlier. But you did very well on your own.”