The Washington Stratagem (16 page)

Schneidermann felt quite pleased with himself, especially when he saw Roxana’s irritation at how well the press briefing had gone. Even she would have to report to Caroline Masters that it had been a bravura performance. He had deflected the difficult questions while being generous with information that was already in the public domain, thus confirming him in every UN correspondent’s mind as a typical functionary, which today at least had been his intention.

As Sami walked out, he returned Schneidermann’s nod of greeting. The UN spokesman’s mobile rang. He looked at the screen and saw it was the acting SG’s office. He did not want to speak to Caroline Masters now. He ignored the call, took out an old, obsolete Nokia phone, and quickly tapped out a message. A second later Sami’s mobile telephone beeped that an SMS had arrived.

A dozen blocks north of the Secretariat Building, just off East Fifty-Fourth Street, Fareed Hussein sat at his desk in his home office, his coffee cooling in front of him. Number 3 Sutton Place, the official residence of the secretary-general, was a five-story, fourteen-thousand-square-foot house built in 1921 for Anne Morgan, the daughter of J. P. Morgan, and later donated to the United Nations. Its centerpiece was a heavy dark wooden staircase that curved around the spine of the house, as though the mansion had been transplanted from the countryside to the Upper East Side. Hussein’s office on the third floor was decorated in a similar style to the other rooms: tasteful but bland, with the faux elegance of a five-star hotel. The walls were pale yellow, the floor polished hardwood. A small painting hung in the center of each wall: two of thoroughbred racehorses, two of New England in the autumn. The window looked over a small playground and the East River.

Hussein picked up the book on the top of the pile. As usual, the cracked spine fell open at page 162.

That day, August 15, 1947, is seared forever onto my memory. We left home early, around seven o’clock in the morning, nervous and excited, our bags packed and stowed in the trunk. Our parents told us it was just for a couple of weeks, until the situation calmed down again. Perhaps they even believed that. But we would never return to live in newly independent India.

The drive to the train station from our house usually took about fifteen minutes, but my parents had allowed for an hour. I was sitting on the backseat of our Morris Oxford with Omar and my mother. My father was in the front, next to Anwar, our driver.

We had gone about a mile or so when we heard the shouting. Anwar told us all to close the windows and check that the doors were locked. The mob surrounded us a few moments later. Anwar tried to reverse, but the crush of people was too thick. They were banging on the roof, screaming and howling like banshees, rocking the car back and forth. The rear windscreen cracked. They ripped the mirrors off.

Anwar said he would go out and try and calm them. My father protested, said we should wait, that the crowd would disperse and help would come.

Anwar smiled and opened the door. He stepped onto the road, his hands in the air to show he was not carrying a weapon. He began to speak. I can still see his lips moving through the car window. For a moment there was calm. Then the mob surged forward, as one. They punched, kicked, spat upon Anwar. He stumbled and fell. I could see dozens of legs, all swinging back and forth.

I pulled Omar toward me and covered his eyes. The seat turned warm and wet underneath us. My father was praying; my mother was crying. Anwar lay there, unmoving, a pool of crimson forming around his head.

The mob swirled around our car again. I remember how blue the sky was, a pale, light color, dotted with clouds of purest white. As blue as the flag, with the white emblem in the center, that fluttered from the hood of the car that was slowly driving toward us.

Hussein stopped reading and flicked through to the front of his memoir. He looked at the dedication: “In Memory of Anwar Hindi, 1915–1947,” and put the book down.

Hussein walked over to the window. The sky was overcast and the breeze was cold, blowing in from the East River. He watched a garbage scow chug upriver, toward Spanish Harlem and the Bronx, looked southward, toward the UN complex, then glanced at his watch: just after four o’clock. Schneidermann would be giving his press briefing. He would miss their chats. The Belgian was finding his feet, and had some increasingly good ideas about policies and how to better the UN’s press coverage. He had been thinking of promoting him, making Schneidermann a special adviser. But that was not going to happen, at least not for a while. What was the phrase that had been so popular in the 1960s? “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Today was Wednesday. It was hard to believe that just two days ago he had been sitting in his office with Yael and Braithwaite, discussing the Istanbul Summit and the Prometheus Group.

He was not suffering from blackouts. He had been getting ill, but from stress, his nerves stretched like violin strings, waiting for the next hint from Caroline Masters that he should miss a meeting, suddenly be unavailable. The threat was never spelled out, but then it didn’t need to be. A brief e-mail to Masters from a new hire in the UN’s archives, cc’d to Hussein, was enough. A file from the Department of Peacekeeping records, about eastern Bosnia in early July 1995, believed to have gone missing soon after the Srebrenica massacre, had just been relocated. Hussein knew it had gone missing because he had personally removed it from the archives. It was locked in his office safe, on the other side of the room. As far as he knew, there were no copies. So where had this one come from? Those papers, he knew, could destroy not just his career but also his reputation. There would be no charitable foundation once he retired, no library, no invitation to join the “Elders,” the team of gray-haired former statesmen, diplomats, and businessmen that jetted around the world, trying to do good. And all because he had followed his instructions. Just as he had always done, even as a child.

Hussein closed his eyes for a moment and rested his head against the window, overwhelmed by the memories.

The car is an American army surplus Jeep. A large blue and white UN emblem is painted on each door; two small UN flags flutter above the headlights. The crowd falls silent as the car draws nearer, wary of officialdom, worried now about what they have just done
.

A short, wiry Indian man steps out of the car. He carries no weapons and wears civilian clothes. He checks Anwar’s body, shakes his head, and walks over to the Hussein family car
.

One of the leaders of the mob stands in front of him, a bloody stave in his hand. “Muslim or Hindu?” he demands
.

The man looks up at him. “I work for the United Nations. We are neutral.”

The mob leader looks at the Jeep, then back at the UN official, frowning in puzzlement. “Muslim or Hindu?” he asks again
.

“Neutral,” says the UN official, calmly. “The UN does not take sides. It is neutral.”

The mob leader stands aside. The UN official walks over to the Hussein family’s car and quickly ushers them into his Jeep
.

Hussein lifted his head, turned, and looked at the photographs on his desk. His wife, Zeinab, looking glamorous at a reception for President Freshwater. Zeinab had been away for months. She said she was ashamed to show her face after the
New York Times
had reported that she had shares in a firm linked to the coltan scandal. Hussein had not tried very hard to persuade her to return. They had grown apart years before but stayed together for the sake of Hussein’s career. His daughter, Rina, in her graduation dress. Rina would not speak to him, kept denouncing him on Twitter to her 11,678 followers. He walked over and picked up the half postcard of the Taj Mahal. If he thought hard enough, he could still feel Omar’s tiny fingers entwined with his, hear his cry of fear as his hand was pulled away and he vanished into the chaos at Delhi Station. The guilt still gnawed at him, was especially bad on days like these. Why had they gotten on the train? He should have stayed, stayed to search for Omar. He could still see his father shouting, his mother almost hysterical. Hussein stared down at his fingers, the fingers that had failed to hold on to his little brother. He clenched his hand, digging his nails into his palms until his knuckles turned white.

There was a new photograph on his desk. This one he usually kept in his drawer at his UN office but at home there were no constraints. The picture had been taken earlier that year. It showed Hussein and Yael at a refugee camp in Jordan, after he had inaugurated a new UN education program. She wore combat trousers and a long-sleeved T-shirt, her hair covered under a head scarf as she crouched down, talking to a Syrian boy from Aleppo. She was one of the bravest and most talented people he had ever worked with. Despite their tangled, difficult history, in some ways they were a perfect match. Yael did not talk to her father. He did not talk to his daughter. They both filled part of the void in each other’s lives, he liked to think. Yael had only failed on one mission. He had asked her to make contact with Rina and try and fix his broken relationship with his daughter. The two women had met several times and enjoyed each other’s company. Until Yael had mentioned Rina’s father. Rina had walked out of the restaurant and never spoke to Yael again.

And Yael was right about Prometheus. The material Braithwaite had shown them yesterday, detailing the full extent of the links between the Prometheus Group and Iranian intelligence, was explosive. Up on the thirty-eighth floor, he had hesitated. There were subtle calculations to be made about such a move and its consequences. The view from Sutton Place, on sick leave for a nonexistent illness, however, was much clearer. Once the full Prometheus-Iran connection was public knowledge, Masters’s UN career would be over. So would all this nonsense about a role for corporations. He might even be able to persuade the Justice Department to look into criminal charges.

Hussein’s plan was simple enough. He just needed to make sure there were none of his fingerprints on it. He opened the drawer of his desk, took out a file of papers, and flicked through the sheets. He smiled. Everything was ready.

She is five minutes early, sitting down at a table reading
Haaretz,
when her telephone buzzes. She takes the call, listens, does not protest at the intrusion, argue with her new orders, for there is no point
.

Sarah arrives and greets her, smiling with pleasure
.

Yael’s face is blank. She says, “Who are you?”

“What a question. I am your cousin. We just spoke on the phone. What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know you. You are bothering me. That’s what wrong.”

“Is this some kind of joke? Because it’s not very funny.” Sarah reaches inside her bag and takes out a book, the new Amos Oz novel. “Here, you asked for this.”

Yael looks her in the eye. “I said, I don’t know you.” She pushes the book back across the table, ignoring the anguish tearing at her inside. “And I don’t want your book.”

Sarah’s open, trusting face twists in pain. She reaches for Yael’s hand. Yael instantly pulls it away. She sits back, her arms crossed, her eyes cold
.

“Why are you doing this?” asks Sarah, her voice cracking
.

Yael returns to her newspaper
.

Sarah stands up and walks away, tearful now
.

She watches Sarah go, willing herself not to cry
.

The ferry sounded its foghorn, a deep lowing that carried far over the water. The mournful sound matched Yael’s mood. The encounter on the boat had broken her concentration. The demons had gleefully marched back in, feeling quite at home. What a trail of destruction she left in her wake, she thought: dead bodies, wrecked relationships, stillborn love affairs, ruptured family connections. Her relationship with Sarah had never properly recovered. Yael had called her a couple of days later, to invite her for a coffee. Sarah had not answered her calls. Eventually, Yael had gone to her apartment, claiming complete ignorance of their previous encounter. Sarah had eventually agreed to meet her, but despite Yael’s best efforts they never regained the closeness they had enjoyed before.

And now Yael could add Miranda Napolitano to her list. The two women had worked together a decade or so ago, when Yael first joined the UN, and soon became friends. Miranda had been the PA to the head of peacekeeping. Bronx born and bred, Miranda had been taking night classes in international affairs at college when she had become pregnant. Under pressure from her Italian family, she had married her boyfriend and resigned. Although she and Yael had promised to stay in touch, they had eventually lost contact.

Miranda had proved surprisingly persistent when she sat down, or perhaps Yael was losing her touch. Miranda had explained that she was now a housewife, still married to her boyfriend, living on Staten Island. Miranda simply did not believe that Yael did not recognize her. Yael’s mask began to slip. She had ached to tell Miranda that she was right, to talk about old times and bring her up to date on the latest office gossip. Then Cyrus Jones had reappeared. Yael’s inner wavering evaporated. Her mask slid back into place. Miranda eventually gave up, annoyed and disbelieving, and went to sit somewhere else.

Yael watched Manhattan slide closer into view. The radio masts on the skyscrapers’ roofs blinked orange and their windows were a honeycomb of light in the gloomy dusk. The mist was thick now, trailing around the buildings, ghostly tendrils floating through the canyons of Wall Street onto the surface of water the color of gunmetal. Yael looked for the newly built Freedom Tower, which had replaced the Twin Towers destroyed on 9/11. A memory flashed into her mind: her fifteenth birthday lunch at the Windows on the World restaurant in the old World Trade Center with her brother David. He had told her he was gay. The news had not surprised her. She had long wondered why he never brought a girl home. She turned David’s ring around on her finger.