The Washington Stratagem

by Adam LeBor

  Fareed Hussein had noticed Yael’s skill set while she was on mission in Afghanistan. There she had negotiated a deal between US troops and the Taliban. American soldiers, disguised as locals, would guard the Taliban’s opium fields, in exchange for the Taliban guaranteeing the safety of a new gas pipeline from central Asia. Hussein soon made her his protégé, which instantly brought her far more enemies than allies. Hussein gave her increasingly challenging assignments and she had thrived. Her UN ID card said she was political adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Her actual job, as the SG’s special negotiator, did not officially exist. She had brokered ceasefires from Gaza to Darfur; negotiated the release of hostages in Baghdad and Algeria; set the terms for corporations wishing to invest in the developing world. The men—they were nearly always men—with whom she dealt looked askance at Yael when she first walked into the room. But if she spoke for Fareed Hussein, she spoke for the P5. On a good day, she was the most powerful woman on the planet. But she still woke up alone every morning.

  She walked over to the sideboard. A clutch of framed photographs stood on the surface. The largest, in solid silver, showed David, standing by his UN Jeep on the outskirts of Vukovar during the Croatian War in the winter of 1993, soon after he started working for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. David had been a good-looking young man: tall, broad shouldered, with wavy black hair and green eyes. The sight of her brother still made Yael’s stomach lurch. David had been killed in April 1994 in Kigali, at the start of the genocide in Rwanda. Despite their desperate, repeated calls for help to the UN peacekeepers stationed nearby, David and eight other UN workers were hacked to death by a mob wielding machetes. An internal report had exonerated the UN, including Fareed Hussein, then the head of the Peacekeeping Department. Instead it blamed communications breakdowns, uncertainty over the peacekeepers’ mandate, and interference from the P5 and the Security Council. Yael was sixteen and living with her father in London when David was killed. She had been left utterly bereft by her brother’s death.

  Yael believed the UN report was a whitewash. She would never give up her quest to find out why her brother had died, and who was responsible. Hussein had brushed off her attempts to find out more, especially when she asked him about his movements for the day of the killings. She had discovered that Hussein’s schedule from that week had mysteriously gone missing from the UN archives. There seemed to be no written records of his meetings and telephone calls. Yael knew from the look in Hussein’s eyes and the way his body stiffened when pressed, that he knew more, perhaps much more, than he had so far revealed. He had given Yael the photograph of her brother after the coltan-KZX-Bonnet scandal, when Yael was reinstated to her job. She had been uncertain whether to accept the gift, but eventually took it home.

  Yael picked up the photograph and stared at her brother and his UN vehicle. Was it just a present from the SG, she wondered, or something more, perhaps even a symbol of atonement? She picked up a ring sitting on top of a small, painted ceramic dish. It was a wide band of white gold that David had bought in the Jaffa flea market. He had let her wear the ring on “loan,” as he said with a smile, but they both knew the loan was open-ended. Yael stared at the Arabic calligraphy that flowed around the ring, a declaration of love from a husband to his wife. She placed it on the second finger of her right hand. Twenty years on from his death, the ache inside her, the longing to see her brother, had barely faded.

  Another photograph showed Yael’s sister, Noa, surrounded by eight children. Noa had married a yeshiva student while on a visit to Israel and was now blissfully living in a settlement outside Jerusalem. The two sisters were divided by thousands of miles and very different politics. But Noa, Yael knew, had always been there for her and always would be. Her sister had both hands on the shoulders of one young boy, the tallest in the group. Noa was pushing him forward, as though showcasing him.

  Yael turned away and paced around the room. She could not believe how nervous she felt. Not because of the two men who had been following her. This was a different kind of nervousness to that which she had felt at the Prometheus Group: the kind she had not felt since she was a teenager, about to go out on her first date with Eli Harrari, the school heartthrob. He had taken her to the cinema, to see Thelma and Louise. They had held hands and she had cried at the end. They went to a café on Dizengoff Street afterward, to eat ice cream, and then down to Tel Aviv beach to watch the waves. Eli Harrari. Her first love. They were together for almost five years, had trained together, lived together in a crummy one-room apartment in south Tel Aviv.

  She had thought about marrying him. Until the day when she knew she would resign and return to the United States. She had tried to persuade him to come with her. Eli had laughed in her face. “You should be proud, not ashamed, of what you have done,” he had said. They were the elite, chosen to serve their country. A country at war, with enemies who did not stick to any kind of rules. This was a rough neighborhood, not a cricket match. “He was a child,” she had replied. Fourteen years old. Eli had shrugged. It was regrettable—that was the word he had used—but they needed to move on, not focus on the casualties. The casualties. Sometimes she woke at dawn, scared that she too had become one.

  Yael had built a wall around herself. She could never discuss the real nature of her work, and certainly not with another UN member of staff. At first she had been invited to her colleagues’ birthdays and celebrations and parties, but as her career progressed she found such occasions increasingly awkward. Everyone was intrigued about what she actually did. The Secretariat Building was a hothouse of gossip and intrigue. They wanted details. Yael didn’t want to lie and she didn’t want to stonewall. So in the end it seemed easier just to refuse the invitations, which dried up anyway. She became used to being alone, or meeting her needs through dead-end flings. But now, she realized, she did not want to grab brief solace in a tent on a mountain in Afghanistan, or even a suite booked for the afternoon in a five-star hotel in Manhattan. She did not want to be alone anymore. She wanted to trust someone.

  She walked into her bedroom and checked herself again in the mirror. Her shoulder-length auburn hair was gathered up in a ponytail. She wore a black dress, fitted but not too tight, with a scoop neck that showcased her slim figure, a single strand of her grandmother’s pearls, and black sandals. A light, clear lip gloss accentuated her wide, sensual mouth; a subtle application of mascara highlighted her green eyes. She grimaced at herself in a parody of a smile and moved her face nearer the mirror, turning from side to side. The lines around her eyes and mouth seemed slightly deeper. She looked closer. Shadows, she told herself, a trick of the light.

  Satisfied, more or less, with what she saw, she walked out and picked up the ice bucket holding the white wine. She poured some into a glass, lifted it to her mouth, then put it back down. She could wait, and she would wait. She checked the food again. Her signature dish of maqluba—a spicy mix of chicken, rice, and vegetables—was cooked and keeping warm in the oven under a lid to stop it drying out; the salads were in their bowls in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap and ready to go. She took the bottle of champagne out of the freezer, checked it was cold enough, and placed it in the fridge door. Maqluba meant “upside down” in Arabic, and the flipping of the pot over a serving plate to display the dish the right side up was always a moment of great theater.

  She grabbed a packet of Marlboro Lights on the sideboard. She usually only smoked on missions abroad. Cigarettes were a useful icebreaker, before negotiations began. She lit one, took a drag, then immediately stubbed it out. She lit the candles, blew them out, then lit them again. This was ridiculous, she told herself. She was behaving like a teenager. She walked over to the door and picked up a clutch of envelopes she had placed on the small standing table. The doorman had handed Yael her mail the previous evening and she had not bothered to check them. A heavy cream envelope was stamped with the frank of the Israel mission to the UN. She opened it: an invitation to a dinner for t
he visiting Israeli foreign minister in two weeks. It was the latest in a recent surge of invitations to receptions, cocktails, dinners. Why now?

  When Yael had first started working for the UN, the Israelis had deluged her with invitations. But she had deliberately stayed away from the mission on Second Avenue, didn’t even know anyone who worked there. Eventually, the invitations stopped. There must a reason for this latest charm offensive, she thought, and put the dinner invitation to one side as she leafed through the rest of the mail. A white envelope had been hand-delivered. Her name was written on the front, and there was no return address.

  She was about to open the envelope when her telephone rang. The screen displayed “Unknown number.”

  Yael put the envelope down and pressed the green button. “Who is this?”

  “Hi, this is Manuel Garcia. I am calling from the Al Jazeera UN bureau. We would like to get your comments on some footage we have that appears to show—”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “Is this Yael Azoulay?” Garcia asked.

  She hung up.

  She walked over to the picture window and stared at the Hudson River, unsettled now. The lights glimmered in the apartment blocks on the other side, shimmering in the dark water. What footage? And where was he? She lay down on her bed and looked resolutely at the ceiling, determined not to look at her watch. And no, she would not call. He knew where she was; he had a mobile telephone and her number. Perhaps he had been delayed. Perhaps there had been a flood or a fire in the subway.

  Her mobile phone beeped again. She grabbed the phone. A text message declared, “Bon Appetit :-)” The message was from Isis Franklin, an American woman in her midforties who was head of public diplomacy at the US mission to the UN. Yael and Isis had met in Kandahar five years earlier while Yael was on mission. Yael was then a frequent visitor to Afghanistan. Isis was working for USAID, the American government aid organization, organizing literacy programs for young Afghan women. The expatriate bubble in Afghanistan was almost as macho and sexist as the country itself: a world of soldiers and spies, mercenaries and military contractors, “fixers” and the dubious hangers-on that were attracted to every war zone. Yael had dubbed them the “Oakleys,” after the brand of wraparound sunglasses the men inevitably wore. The two women had naturally gravitated to each other. They spent time together, hanging out in the UN compound, chatting, because there was nowhere else for them to go in the evenings. The television room was usually full of soldiers watching soccer games or action films. A social trip into town was out of the question. The pressure-cooker world of Afghan expatriate life—the stress, danger, and isolation—accelerated their friendship. After a while, Yael and Isis became close. After Kandahar the two women lost touch, but now that Isis was in New York, she and Yael quickly fired up their friendship again. Perhaps because she worked for the State Department, rather than the UN, Isis did not try and manipulate Yael or extract information to use for her personal advantage. Instead they talked about their families, men, relationships, and their lack of them. Yael had started to confide in Isis, at least about personal issues. She had told her about her date tonight. Isis’s eyes had lit up with excitement at the prospect of what she called an “in-house” romance. Yael thought about calling her, but it was too embarrassing to admit he had not arrived yet. Instead she typed a quick thanks and sent it. She and Isis were due to have lunch soon anyway to dissect the evening, although Yael was starting to suspect that it would be a very short conversation.

  She looked at her watch again, promising herself it was the last time. It was 8:00 p.m. He was half an hour late, and not a word of apology. She walked into the lounge, sat down, and switched on the television news, pensive now. She went through the local channels first—there were no floods or fires on the subway—then checked CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Manuel Garcia had unsettled her. Her number was restricted. Apart from UN colleagues, and Isis, only Sami had it. How had Al Jazeera got it?

  Yael changed channels to Al Jazeera. The screen showed a scene of carnage in Afghanistan. The blackened wreckage of a car was scattered across the dirt road: melted, burnt lumps of metal, shreds of upholstery, a section of steering wheel. Three twisted, charred figures lay by a nearby drainage ditch.

  Najwa’s voice said, “Afghan officials have reacted with fury to the refusal of US authorities to investigate after a car traveling to the UN compound in Kandahar was hit in a drone strike in January this year. Four civilians were killed, all members of the same family, including a two-year-old boy. The boy, Babur Hamid, was taken to a US military hospital with severe burns but never regained consciousness and died the next day. Thus far, no US official has been called to account for any civilian deaths caused by drone strikes. The Afghan president has demanded to see the so-called Black File, the classified record of all drone strikes, including operational planning and debriefings. A US government spokesman expressed regret at the loss of life, but said he was unable to comment on matters of national security.”

  Najwa continued talking. “Coming up next… a Millennium mystery. What is Yael Azoulay, the secret envoy for the United Nations, doing in a New York hotel apparently posing as an escort? Stay with us, after the break.”

  Yael sat transfixed, all thought of her dinner date gone. She walked over to the ice bucket, poured herself a large glass of white wine, and sat down again in front of the television. A series of advertisements—investments in Qatar, Rolex watches, holidays in Oman—dragged on.

  Eventually the program returned to the studio.

  The video footage showed a slim woman wearing a cap and wraparound raincoat walking down a hotel corridor. The film stopped. The camera angle switched around.

  Yael’s face filled the screen.

  Clarence Clairborne sat back, screwed his eyes closed, and breathed deeply. He tried to remember his private prayer session with Eugene Packard early that morning and the strength it had given him, but all he could think of was his Emmy, and her, what was the word… partner.

  The two of them, together. Waking up together. Going to sleep together. The things they did at night before they went to sleep. He shook his head to make the visions go away and opened his eyes. He looked at the telephone on his desk, dreading what he knew was about to come. What was the matter with him? He was a confidant of presidents, an A-list DC power broker, a regular on the Forbes rich list.

  Clairborne held out his fingers. They trembled slightly. Was he nervous because of the call he was going to make, or because of his visitor yesterday? How much did they really know?

  He willed himself to pick up the handset. It slid out from his palm and landed with a crash on the wooden edge of his desk. He placed it back in the holder and took a fresh monogrammed handkerchief from the pile in the drawer of his desk. He first wiped his forehead, then his meaty palms, one after the other, sat back, and closed his eyes.

  He is lying on his bunk at Da Nang Air Base, an envelope in his hand. The air is thick and humid, heavy with the stink of fuel, the roar of airplanes and helicopters landing and taking off. The tinny sound of the Everly Brothers leaks from a radio nearby.

  It is 1971 and he is twenty-one years old, an accomplished veteran of combat patrols, and already a lieutenant, popular and respected for the care with which he treats his men’s lives. The letter had arrived that morning—he was to receive a Silver Star for bravery while rescuing his sergeant under heavy fire. The medal means nothing to him. He signed up at the age of seventeen, lying about his age. A childhood spent hunting with his father had given him an easy familiarity with weapons and he proved a natural soldier. He won several awards for marksmanship and trained as a sniper.

  A messenger arrives. A visitor is waiting for him in the office of Colonel Hewson, his commanding officer. He shrugs, gets up, brushes himself down, and walks across the base.

  The visitor, a tall, rangy American with a midwestern accent, dressed in civilian clothes, introduces himself as Mr. Smith. Colonel Hewson lea
ves. Mr. Smith chats with him for a while, subtly drawing out his feelings about the war. He quickly guesses that “Mr. Smith” is from the CIA. Clairborne is a soldier, with a grunt’s natural suspicion of spies, but Mr. Smith was easy to talk to and nobody had ever asked him what he thought about being in battle, taking life, and seeing men die around him. Before he realizes what he is saying, he admits that he feels hidebound by the rules of war and the Geneva conventions. America would never win in Vietnam with one hand tied behind its back, he declares. Then he stops talking, fearful that he has said too much.

  Mr. Smith smiles. The two men talk some more, now about Alabama, sports, and music. After a few minutes Colonel Hewson returns. He looks at Mr. Smith, who nods. Clairborne has a choice, said Colonel Hewson. He was a much-valued officer and could stay under his command, or he could go with Mr. Smith.