The Washington Stratagem (12 page)

Joe-Don pulled out his mobile telephone and showed her a photograph of a tall, balding man standing in the concourse of Union Station. “Is the guy?” he asked.

Yael nodded. “That’s the one. How did you get…?” Realization dawned.

“You were good. But not good enough.”

Yael poked his arm, playfully, but with an edge. “I wish you would stop shadowing me.”

“I’ll stop when you realize I’m there.”

“So who is he?”

“Colin Duncan. Ex-cop, DC vice squad. There was a scandal about him and a teenage hooker. She killed herself. Nothing was ever proven but he left the force and joined Prometheus’s security department.” Joe-Don slid the phone into his pocket. “My tech guy will strip it clean. Mr. Duncan won’t need it anymore.”

“Why not?”

“I got a call from a friend of mine in the DC police this morning. They found him floating facedown in the Potomac.”

Yael walked into Fareed Hussein’s office to see Caroline Masters behind his desk, sitting in his chair. The deputy SG stood up and greeted her with a hug, a broad grin, and an air kiss on each cheek. Masters smelled of Shalimar perfume and face powder, a trace of which she left on Yael’s right cheek. Yael resisted the urge to wipe her skin clean.

Masters picked up a file from the desk and walked across the room, to the corner where Yael had sat on Monday with the SG and Braithwaite. She gestured for Yael to join her there.

Yael followed her and sat down. She was puzzled and perturbed. Masters was not usually the hugging type. And what was she doing here, anyway?

“Where’s Fareed?” Yael asked. “We had an appointment, now, at one o’clock.”

Masters leaned forward, her face creased in concern. “Fareed isn’t feeling well. He sends his apologies. There is no need to worry. He is resting. He has fully briefed me on this meeting.”

Yael watched Masters closely as she replied. “I saw him yesterday. And I spoke to Fareed this morning. He had just finished a tennis game. He sounded fine.”

The warmth in Masters’s voice dropped by a notch. “As I said, Yael, Fareed sends his apologies. He is OK now, but he just had a blackout during his lunch. He is at home, with his doctors. He is exhausted.” She waved her right hand around the room. “The maintenance department is fixing the heating in my office, so I thought it would be easier to meet in here. Would you like some coffee or tea?”

Yael nodded, processing both the news about the SG and its delivery. The hand waving was an unsubtle marking of territory. Masters was trying to keep her voice light and casual, but Yael sensed the brittleness underneath, her powerful hunger for ownership of the space. “Tea, please. Shall I help?” she asked, glancing at the kettle and coffee machine in the corner.

Masters looked puzzled for a moment until she realized that Yael was expecting them to make their own drinks, as Fareed often did. Masters shook her head and buzzed through to Hussein’s secretary. “Grace, can we have some tea for Yael and coffee for me, please.”

Masters’s BlackBerry beeped to announce the arrival of a message. She picked up the phone and looked at the screen. “Will you excuse me for a moment, Yael, I have to deal with this.”

Yael nodded and checked out the familiar surroundings while Masters rapidly tapped the tiny keyboard. At first the SG’s office seemed the same as ever, but the scene nagged at her. Something was different. More than one thing, Yael soon realized. The photograph of Rina was no longer on the SG’s desk. Nor was the picture of his brother Omar. The framed half postcard of the Taj Mahal was gone. A frame of dust on the opposite wall marked the space where the photograph of Lucy Tremlett used to hang. Yael looked again at the coffee machine in the corner of the room. Even that corner looked different, she realized. Hussein drank his coffee thick and black. The jar of his special blend of Ethiopian beans had vanished. So had Yael’s jar of “Builder’s Brew.”

Masters was making a very bold power play, a declaration of war in all but name. She must feel very certain of her ground, thought Yael. When Hussein heard about her takeover of his office, he would surely try to sideline her, then slowly ease her out of the organization. Assuming, that is, that he was in a position to do so. But what if he was not? What if he really was ill? Hussein said he was not suffering from blackouts. Masters said he was. Somebody was lying. Yael’s money was on Masters.

Yael and Caroline Masters had known each other since their graduate student days at Columbia University. They had been friendly, although not close. At fifty-two, Masters was sixteen years older than Yael. She had worked as a journalist in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Central America, then for a human rights organization in Latin America, before returning to college as a mature student. Yael remembered her as outspoken and idealistic, a liberal interventionist, but one who believed that change had to come from within the system. After graduating with a doctorate in humanitarian law, Masters had joined the State Department.

Her career progression had been steady—she served as cultural attaché in Bogotá and political second secretary in Delhi before rising to first secretary in Berlin three years ago. This was an important post. The first secretary was responsible for analyzing and advising on German and European politics, so Masters had considerable influence over the ambassador, an elderly State Department veteran about to retire. Masters had also spent three months on a placement at the KZX Corporation, working in their newly formed Office for Social Responsibility. In every posting, Masters had been accompanied by Didier, her French partner of two decades. Didier described himself as a human rights activist but never worked for any well-known organizations and seemed to have no source of income. He and Masters had never married, or even been engaged. Masters had once told Yael, while they were both students at Columbia, that she did not care about the lack of a ring on her finger, and that what mattered was mutual commitment, not bits of jewelry. Yael did not tell Masters that Didier had asked her out for coffee at least six times, undaunted by her repeated refusals, but she sensed that Masters already knew this.

Masters had been appointed deputy SG six months earlier. It was a surprise, both because of her comparative lack of UN experience and because she was an American. The post was seen as a comfortable sinecure, usually given to a woman from the developing world to demonstrate the UN’s commitment to diversity and women’s rights. Hussein, Yael knew, was not happy about Masters’s arrival, but there was nothing he could do and anyway they both believed he had little to worry about. The deputy SG had little input into policy-making, and no deputy SG had ever made the jump to the office on the thirty-eighth floor. Until now, it seemed.

The drinks arrived, brought in by Grace Olewanda, a statuesque Congolese woman dressed in a green and gold traditional African outfit. Grace’s disapproval of the interloper on her territory was almost tangible.

Masters thanked Grace and poured herself a coffee. Yael eyed Masters’s folder on the table and poured three times more milk into her tea than usual.

“As you can imagine, Yael, there have been several high-level discussions about how to proceed after the news coverage yesterday and today.” Masters fidgeted in her chair and brushed her bob of blond hair away from her face several times as she spoke.

Yael shrugged, picking up the signals of Masters’s unease. “I spoke to Fareed—he seemed fine about it. We have been here before. It will all blow over in a day or so.”

Masters’s BlackBerry beeped again. She looked at the screen. “It seems Fareed is on sick leave as of today. The doctors are worried about his blackouts. They have prescribed complete rest for at least two weeks. You are the first to know, so please keep it to yourself,” she said, her voice tight now.

Yael sipped her tea. “And the Istanbul Summit? It’s Wednesday today. The summit opens next Thursday, in eight days. The presidents and the delegations start arriving on the Monday. Nobody knows more about the planning than Fareed.”

Masters stiffened. “The preparations will continue. With or without Fareed. As you know, I have been closely involved since the idea was first conceptualized.”

Yael sat up straight, on full alert now. Masters had attended several meetings in place of Fareed but had not been closely involved in the planning or agenda. Now Fareed was out of the picture—for whatever reasons—and Masters was taking over. “Why are we here, Caroline?”

“To discuss your future.”

“Go on,” said Yael, her eye still on Masters’s folder.

The sniper is a Bedouin, thin and dark. He looks through the telescopic sight. He prepares to take the shot, his movements fluid but precise
.

She places her hand on his rifle barrel and gently eases it downward. The sniper tenses, his expression angry, and turns to his commanding officer. The lieutenant is young, barely in his twenties, but this is a young people’s army; compulsory national service starts at eighteen
.

The lieutenant looks at her. He is nervous, jittery. There will be little credit for him if she succeeds. If she does not, he will take the blame. But these are his orders, to obey her. He hands her the wire clippers
.

She thanks him and holds his gaze, her green eyes almost hypnotic
.

“Five minutes,” he says
.

“Fifteen,” she replies
.

“Ten.”

She nods and walks out
.

Masters continued talking. “The…
events
at the Millennium Hotel, and subsequently in Geneva, took place while you were suspended from the UN. In addition, it is no secret that many of us have long been doubtful about the usefulness of your work for Fareed. The Goma Development Zone fiasco is a prime example. With the help of the corporate world, the UN could have brought stability and ended the world’s longest-running humanitarian disaster.”

Yael almost spat out her tea. “How? With the help of Jean-Pierre Hakizimani? He helped kill eight hundred thousand people. Most of them by hand. Including my brother. And he was planning another mass slaughter. With the help of some senior people in this house.”

Masters looked grave as she spoke. “With hindsight, yes, it was a mistake to involve Hakizimani. It had never been our intention to let killers completely escape justice. But this is the real world, Yael. Sometimes we have to shake hands with the devil, for the greater good. You, more than most people, know that.” She paused. “Yael, we are all so very sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine how painful it must be, especially when your personal life and your work responsibilities become mixed up. Some wounds don’t heal, even after twenty years.”

Yael sat up straight, on full alert now, damping down her anger. Masters was provoking her, implying that Yael was not thinking straight, because of the murder of her brother. She would not respond. But she would remember this moment, that Masters had used David, and his death, as part of an office powerplay.

Yael put her cup down. “What now?”

Masters needlessly rearranged the papers on the table. “While I recognize your contribution to the planning of the Istanbul Summit, clearly, you can have no further involvement of any kind in such a high-profile event.”

Yael’s voice was calm. “Without me, there would be no Istanbul Summit. It took months of work to get the P5 ambassadors into the same room, let alone agree on an agenda.”

“That is my decision and it is final.”

Yael sat back and regarded Masters. She had aged well. She wore a blue Donna Karan fitted jacket and knee-length skirt—Yael had the same outfit in black in her wardrobe—and a cream silk blouse with a simple gold necklace. The overall effect was elegant but feminine. The pretty, determined journalist was now a handsome career woman, with well-defined features, intelligent blue eyes, and the remnants of a tan from a winter skiing trip to Switzerland. Only the two deep lines running from her nose to her mouth and the crinkled skin around her eyes hinted at her age. Masters had once been close to President Freshwater, who had spoken of her as a protégé, a potential secretary of state.

“You were the first one in, weren’t you?” asked Yael.

Masters looked puzzled. “To where?”

“Srebrenica, after it fell. I was only a teenager but remember reading your article in the
Washington Post
. ‘A Harvest of Corpses.’ That was the headline. That kind of reporting stays with you. And you wrote an op-ed as well. A blistering attack on the UN and on Fareed Hussein. ‘A place without shame,’ you said. And now you are running it.”

Masters looked down, away from Yael’s gaze. Her hand shook slightly as she put her papers down. “That was the past. We are here to talk about your future. There are three options.”

Yael sensed ambivalence, even a hint of guilt. A picture of Clairborne, furious, slapping the arm of his chair, flashed into her mind. Provoking him had been fruitful. Normally Yael would not use the tactic she was about to, but Masters had broken the rules by bringing in David. So she too would go for the jugular.

“Let’s do that, Caroline, but before we start—guess who I saw on the subway last week?”

After a month in Berlin, Didier had suddenly dumped Masters and set up home with a Danish anticapitalist protestor twenty years his junior. Soon after that, Masters was seen in the company of Reinhardt Daintner, the charismatic head of communications for KZX. The US embassy began to organize more receptions for businesspeople. There was less talk of democracy and human rights in the developing world, and more of the need for “market-based solutions.” Masters and Daintner became a fixture at the city’s power soirees. The whispers that Masters was running her own version of US foreign policy became ever louder. Some even said that Daintner was running the show, manipulating Masters to further the interests of KZX.

But in the perpetual internal State Department struggle between idealism and commercial interests, Masters had powerful allies who, like her, wanted a closer relationship with global corporations, especially American ones. After Didier left, Masters threw herself into her work. She wrote a paper, now famous in UN and government circles, that argued for a new partnership between development agencies and international corporations, with the UN leading the way.