The Washington Stratagem (21 page)

The air in the room was musty. The single, narrow window was coated in grime so thick that the glass was almost opaque. A large green patch of mold reached from the floor halfway up the wall. The window resisted Yael’s first attempts to open it, but she finally yanked it loose. It looked out onto an inner courtyard, whose rough concrete walls were covered with wide aluminum pipes. The roar of air conditioners filled the office, and a small cloud of dust floated over Yael. She quickly closed the window, coughing, when there was a knock on the door. She opened it to see Quentin Braithwaite standing there.

“Good morning,” he said wryly, raising his eyebrows.

“Is it?” asked Yael, brushing the dust off her clothes. “Come in, please. Welcome to the Trusteeship Council.”

Braithwaite walked briskly inside, taking in his surroundings. “Congratulations.”

“For what?”

“For being still alive. And of course, on your promotion. I had no idea this part of the building even existed. You have two rooms. That’s a step up.” He looked out the window. “Don’t think much of the view, though.”

Braithwaite’s smile faded and his voice was tight. “Yael, we need to talk…”

Before he could finish his sentence Yael put her forefinger over her lips and traced a series of letters in the thick coating of dust on the desk—“NOT HERE—DHP IN 15”—before wiping the words away.

The Englishman nodded in understanding and left.

Before Yael met up with Braithwaite in a place where they could talk, she had something even more urgent on her agenda.

She opened the drafts folder on her smartphone, checked again that the connection was encrypted, selected an e-mail with several attachments, and scanned through them, carefully reading each PDF. She put the phone down, her face thoughtful as she considered her course of action. There would be no turning back, she knew. She ran her forefinger down the mold on the wall. It came away green.

She reached for her phone again and pressed “send.”

“Who is not coming?” asked Sami.

“Your breakfast date.”

“How do you know?”

“
A’raf
. I know.” Najwa stared at Sami. “You seem distracted. What’s up?”

Sami looked at her while he considered his response.
What’s up
, part of him wanted to say,
is that some very nasty people, apparently attached to an arm of the US government, are demanding that I betray someone I still care about, very much, even though there is no chance of fixing that relationship. And if I don’t, my family and I might be taking a one-way trip back to Gaza. Where they had been following me on my last trip and taking photographs
.
And, they know about my teenage cousin who disappeared after being taken into Israeli custody
. That’s what was up. Meanwhile, where was Schneidermann?

“Najwa, why are you here?” he asked.

“Why do you think? I am having breakfast.”

The waitress arrived with their orders.

“And here it is,” said Najwa, slipping her fork into the glistening pile of potatoes, pink with shreds of corned beef. “This is delicious. Really, the best in town. Would you like to try some?” she asked, sliding the plate across the table.

“No thanks, I’m fine with the oatmeal.” The smell of food was making his appetite return. Sami raised his spoon and was about to dip in when Najwa’s hand snapped around his wrist.

“I am not angry with you, Sami. Really, I am not. I am just…” She looked up at the grubby ceiling, as though searching for inspiration. “Disappointed. Yes, that is the word. I am disappointed.”

“Why?” asked Sami, his voice innocent. “We were great together on the program.” When Sami had checked his Twitter feed this morning, he saw Najwa had been tweeting about the Tribeca film festival until 3:00 a.m. It didn’t show. She was perfectly turned out. She wore a black cashmere turtleneck sweater and skillfully applied light makeup that accentuated her full mouth and black eyes, eyes that were now staring at him, with none of their usual friendly flirtatiousness.

Najwa stared at him. “Yes, we were. I was glad to invite you. But that was Tuesday night. Now it’s Thursday morning. I am not on your breakfast program, am I? It’s fine if you want to go your own way. Really. We don’t have to cooperate. But don’t sneak about behind my back.”

Najwa’s grip tightened and her black eyes glittered. “Be a man, and tell me yourself. Because I won’t run after you, or anyone else, Sami. Ever.”

Sami’s resolve melted away inside him. Ambassadors returned his calls, State Department officials met him for lunch, think tanks invited him to sit on panels to discuss important international policy issues. Only Najwa could make him feel like he was six years old, caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“By the way,” she continued, her voice lighter now, “I saw Jonathan Beaufort at the film festival. He invited me for dinner, again. I think I will say yes, this time.”

Sami looked at her, alarmed. “Don’t do that. Please.”

“Why not?” demanded Najwa, her grip on his wrist easing by a fraction.

It was time to surrender, he knew.

“I am sorry. I was going to tell you, really. But Schneidermann is really pissed at you because of that story you ran about him being eased out to make room for Roxana. There was no way he would have agreed to have breakfast with you. And where is he?”

Najwa released his wrist. She put her fork down. Her voice was soft. “At Mount Sinai hospital, in the intensive care ward.”

Sami was about to answer when his mobile phone beeped. He picked it up and read the header on the incoming e-mail: “A story for you.”

Najwa looked at him, her eyes wide and querying. Sami turned the phone to face her. She quickly read the e-mail header. “Open it, habibi.”

Yael sat on a bench at the entrance to Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, waiting for Braithwaite. The plaza, named for the second UN secretary-general, covered a whole block of East Forty-Seventh Street, between First and Second Avenues. It was a tranquil oasis in one of the busiest sections of town. Rows of trees ran down either side, lush and newly green, their long branches reaching toward each other as though trying to make a canopy over the gray stone pavement. Hanging baskets filled with flowers were fixed under the art nouveau streetlights. In front of the trees were lines of park benches. A café in a greenhouse stood on the corner of First Avenue; half a dozen tables and chairs set outside in the chilly spring sunshine for hardy customers. The café was a popular spot for diplomats and UN officials to meet contacts without having them go through the hassle of security to get into the UN building.

Yael leaned back for a moment. Her shoulder pulsed, her back throbbed, and a headache was starting at the base of her neck. She closed her eyes and there he was again, lying on the floor of the restroom on the Staten Island Ferry, blood seeping from his nose, her foot raised above his head as the brown mist floated in front of her eyes. A downward strike, a twist of her hips to put her body weight into the blow, and he would never bother her, or anyone else, again. Yesterday, she had stopped herself in time. But barely. Something was slipping inside her, she knew. On top of that she felt guilty about going to Beaker’s last night. She had carried out extensive anti-surveillance drills and was as sure as she could be that she had not been followed, or that if she had been, she had shaken them off. But it was impossible to be 100 percent certain. Merely knowing what was on the BlackBerry spyware put Beaker—and Lysette—in danger. On the other hand, she knew nobody else with Beaker’s skill set. And he could have said no. Except, she knew, he could not have, not when she was asking. Plus, there were Jones’s gun and silencer. Hidden safely away, she hoped.

Yael breathed deeply to stop her thoughts racing, and looked at the monument to Raoul Wallenberg on the island in the middle of First Avenue. Five black columns pointed to the sky, their edges ragged and twisted. At the base of one lay a briefcase, symbolizing unfinished business. When Yael was plagued with doubts about the deals she negotiated behind the scenes, she liked to come here and sit by the monument. It was stark, almost bleak, a reminder of the darkness and evil in which Wallenberg had worked. But it was also strangely calming, perhaps because without Wallenberg she would not be alive.

Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat posted to Budapest during the Second World War. Like Yael, he had dealt with the devil, in his case the thugs and murderers of the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian Nazis whose bloodlust exceeded even that of the SS. Wallenberg had saved tens of thousands of Jews, including Yael’s grandmother, Eva Weiss, whom he had plucked out of a line of Jews waiting to be deported or lined up on the banks of the Danube and shot, their bodies falling into the freezing waters. Wallenberg’s reward for his courage was to be taken away by the Soviets in January 1945 and disappear into the maw of the gulag. Mystery still surrounded his fate—and that of his fellow Swede Dag Hammarskjöld, for whom the plaza was named.

Hammarskjöld had died in a plane crash in 1961, while mediating between the government of Congo and the secessionists in the province of Katanga. There had been three official inquiries into his death, but none had finally determined the chain of events. It was widely believed across Africa, and much of the UN, that Hammarskjöld had been murdered to prevent Congo’s newly independent government from taking control of its rich resources, including coltan. The battle still raged, Yael thought, leaving a fresh trail of death and destruction. Coltan had made her into a killer, had almost triggered a new round of genocide in Africa, and should have brought down Fareed Hussein. A picture of Caroline Masters, sitting in the SG’s chair, flashed through her mind. Maybe it had.

Yael glanced at the bronze briefcase. She too had her share of unfinished business. Sometimes whole weeks went by, especially when she was on mission, when she didn’t think about him. And now he was back, embedded in her mind, as his genes were embedded in her body. The breakfast with Joe-Don yesterday at La Caridad had triggered the memories. Years had passed, but the anger, the sense of disillusionment, seemed as raw as ever.
How could you do those things?
she wanted to ask.
You raised us to be decent people, to have a moral compass, to do what was right
.
How?

But beyond her anger was another voice, quieter but no less insistent.

Look
, Aba.

She braces herself, leans back, and kicks the driver in the back of the head. The car spins out of control, hits a BMW, whirls around, and crashes into a low wall by the sidewalk. She smashes the window and clambers out, dazed, bloody, and sprints toward Lake Geneva
.

Look
,
Aba
.

The hand rises out of water so cold it sears her skin. She locks the bald man between her thighs, forces his head underneath the surface. He thrashes underneath her, his eyes on hers, first furious then pleading, her legs a vise, until the water becomes still
.

Look
,
Aba
.

She raises the lighter to the corner of the photograph of the three smiling girls. The plastic covering turns black, melts, and starts to smoke. Hakizimani’s face collapses as he pleas for her to stop
.

Look
,
Aba
,
look, look, look
….

Would she have burnt Hakizimani’s last picture of his dead daughters? She desperately hoped not. But the truth was, she didn’t know anymore.

Yael was so deep in her thoughts she barely noticed that someone had sat down next to her.

“Hey, stranger,” said a friendly female voice.

Yael turned to see Isis Franklin. She snapped out of her reverie, smiling with genuine pleasure at the sight of the American diplomat.

“You look like you were miles away. How
are
you? Full date update, please.”

“Nothing to report. There was no date. You saw Al Jazeera?”

Isis nodded, her hand resting on Yael’s arm. “Of course. A grade-A asshole.”

Yael saw Isis looking hard at the powder on her right cheek, which covered the marks from her fight with Cyrus Jones. She resisted the surprisingly strong urge to touch her face and check that the scratches were still disguised.

Yael gave Isis a wry smile. “Is he? He is a journalist. He was just doing his job. My mistake was to think he might put me first. He didn’t show for dinner. How could he, after that?”

Isis was indignant. “Sure, but no flowers, apology? Not even a call, or an e-mail?”

Yael shook her head. “Nope. No nothing. He is probably too embarrassed.”

“There’s no need for you to make excuses for him.”

No, there is not, thought Yael. So why was she? She must really be a glutton for punishment. “And you? Any tall, dark, and handsome diplomats on the horizon?”

“Nope. Just Istanbul, Istanbul, and more Istanbul. A week until it starts, four days of complete craziness; then normal life can resume. I hope.”

Born in Chicago, Isis was the daughter of an African American municipal official, a former radical who had been a founding member of the Black Panthers, and a Swiss violinist in the city’s orchestra. She was petite, handsome rather than pretty, with tawny skin, a high forehead, and long curly black hair that she wore tied back. Her eyes were her most striking feature. Large and brown, brimming with curiosity, they made even the most jaded diplomats temporarily lose their bearings. Forty-four, divorced, childless, she had worked for the State Department since she graduated with a master’s degree from Harvard.

Yael had heard the whispers, that Isis had been promoted to department head of the Public Diplomacy section because she was an old friend of President Freshwater. Both women had worked on the Rwanda desk at the State Department during the 1994 genocide. But to Yael Isis seemed smart and professional. Yael strongly sensed that there was much more to Isis beneath her bright and cordial exterior. She had seen Isis work a room, charged with a coiled energy, charming nuggets of information out of normally tight-lipped diplomats. During a reception for Turkey’s national day, Yael had gone to the bathroom and seen Isis urgently tapping away at her BlackBerry, so absorbed in her task she did not even notice Yael slide into a cubicle.