Schneidermann looked away, ignoring her as he gathered up his papers. Najwa instantly turned to her cameraman and said, “The UN spokesman refuses to answer our questions.”
Jonathan Beaufort stood up. The room quietened. When Beaufort asked a question, everyone listened. “Mr. Schneidermann. Will the UN be calling in the NYPD or the FBI to investigate the death of Ms. de Souza? Or will you use the UN police? How does this death affect the UN's host-country agreement with the United States?” he demanded, referring to the complex treaty governing the UN's rules of extraterritoriality and its relations with the United States.
Schneidermann said, “As I said, I will not be taking any questions. A transcript of this press briefing will be available soon on the UN website.”
“Briefing? What briefing?” demanded Beaufort. “The SG's personal secretary fell thirty-eight floors down the middle of the building today. Did she jump? Was she pushed? You read out a prepared statement and you won't take questions. What kind of press briefing is this?”
“The UN kind,” one of the journalists said loudly.
The room erupted in laughter. Schneidermann's face flushed with anger. He fumbled with his folder and stood up, striding away from the posse of reporters following him out of the room.
Sami sat down and waited, doodling in his notebook as the remaining reporters packed up and drifted out. There was something Sami wanted to ask Schneidermann, but one to one, not in front of the press corps, all of whom had excellent antennae, and many of whose editors followed the
New York Times
' coverage. And certainly not in front of Jonathan Beaufort.
Y
ael boarded the almost empty train, sat down on the hard plastic bench, and subtly scoped the carriage. Sitting opposite her was a Chinese girl in her early twenties clutching a model's portfolio and dressed in an unseasonal short black dress and mini-denim jacket, her sleek black haircut into a geometric bob. A man in his midforties boarded the other end of the car just before the doors closed, and pulled out that day's
Wall Street Journal
as he sat down. Yael glanced up and down at him. He was tall, sallow-skinned, and had medium-length brown hair, slicked back with gel. He wore a white button-down shirt, navy tie, blue suit, and shiny black shoes. At first glance, another Identikit financier. But he had dark eyes, sharp cheekbones, and a pencil mustache that made him look a little like Johnny Depp. In fact, thought Yael, he was quite good-looking. Buy coltan, she half wanted to tell him, wondering what the commercial value of the information she held would be. Enormous, she guessed. Hakizimani was right. Peace in East Africa would trigger an economic boom.
Yael read the row of advertisements above the seats calling for passengers to enroll in community colleges, take protein supplements for a perfect physique, and call 1-800-ACCIDENT to sue for personal injury. In among the posters were three stanzas of verse, the latest offering in the city's “Poetry in Motion” campaign: “A Little Tooth” by Thomas Lux, about the birth of a daughter and her progress through life. Yael read through to the end:
“And you / your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue / nothing. You did, you loved, your feet / are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.” Something pulled inside her with an almost physical intensity as she finished the poem. There were days, and this was one, when she felt very alone.
Yael was the second child of three siblings. After the death of Yael's elder brother, David, nineteen years ago, her mother had suffered a nervous breakdown. She had recovered, reverted to her maiden name, and realized that she preferred women to men and moved in with her ex-therapist in Berkeley. Yael's mother had never been especially maternal, except where David was concerned. Time, distance, and the loss of David meant that contact was now reduced to a few cursory e-mails. Yael's younger sister, Noa, had discovered religion while visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem. An emissary from the Lubavitch sect of Judaism had persuaded her to come for a Shabbat dinner. Noa now lived in Ariel, a large settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and was happily married to a full-time student of the Torah with no apparent income. They had six children, twins on the way, and were blissfully happy. If Yael called Noa, she would receive an immediate and open invitation. But Noa knew little of Yael's world and understood even less. And flying off to Israel would not solve anything.
Yael had had no contact with her father for more than a decade. She had very much wanted him to be proud of her, but he had been furious when she'd accepted a job at the UN. Yael could still hear him shouting that the UN had already taken his son, and now he had to sacrifice his daughter as well? At first Yael had been conciliatory and regularly called and e-mailed him about her adventures and to reassure him that she was safe. But he had been increasingly cold and distant. The longer she worked at the UN, the more withdrawn and uncommunicative he became, especially as promotion followed promotion. It was hurtful, of course, but she was so busy in her work that there was little time to think about it.
Curiously, Yael's father had contacted her a few days before her vetting for top-level security clearance. They had gone out for dinner and he tried to persuade Yael to leave her job yet again. He claimed to be worried about her safety and once more invoked David's memory, which annoyed her and in turn made him angry. Underneath his anger, she thought she could sense an undercurrent of something very like fear. But of what? The evening had ended badly. The following week, once Yael had received her clearance, she typed her father's name into the peacekeeping department's classified database on a whim. What she had read still haunted her. She had not spoken to him since.
The train stopped at 59th Street, Columbus Circle, and the car began to fill up with the first early escapees from West Side offices. A tall, skinny man in his late twenties with a goatee sat down opposite. On days like these Yael still missed her elder brother intensely. She had looked up to him, of course, like every younger sister does, but theirs was a special kinship. She and David had talked about everything and shared their deepest hopes and fears. As their parents' marriage fractured and their nomadic lifestyles turned from exciting to exhausting, David had been the one constant on which she could rely: always there and always ready to listen.
Until he was no longer alive. Becoming that close to someone else again would have felt like a kind of betrayal, even though she knew that the last thing David would have wanted would be for her to withdraw from intimacy because of his death. Was that the real reason for her solitariness, she sometimes wondered, or was it just an excuse? Either way the result was the same. Memories flashed through her mind as the train creaked and rattled its path under Manhattan: trips to Zabar's for bagels and lox; mornings cycling around Central Park and ice creams on Bow Bridge; riding this very subway line, downtown to the West Village to watch Satantango, a seven-hour art film from Hungary and not falling asleep once; David's breathless confession to her over her birthday lunch at the Windows on the World Restaurant in the North Tower that he was gay.
The train trundled along through midtown, past Times Square at 42nd Street, Penn Station at 34th, and down into Greenwich Village.
Yael stood up at the Canal Street station. She planned to walk from here down through the financial district to South Ferry. The man in the blue suit with the pencil mustache was still seated, absorbed in his newspaper. Yael stepped off the train, dropped the shreds of her MetroCard into a nearby trashcan, and walked into the crowd.
S
ami waited until the other journalists had all left the press conference before walking to Schneidermann's office nearby. The spokesman's secretary, Francine de la Court, and her staff sat at their computers by the door, looking at him with barely disguised hostility. Only Roxana Voiculescu, Schneidermann's flirtatious Romanian deputy, gave him a welcoming smile.
“Yes?” asked de la Court. Schneidermann's gatekeeper was an immaculately dressed Haitian of a certain age, who had until recently worked as the SG's deputy protocol secretary until she had been replaced by a former Miss India.
“There's something I need to check with Mr. Schneidermann. Can I have a quick word?” Sami asked, smiling politely.
De la Court stared back, stony-faced. “The spokesman is busy.”
“Too busy to include the UN's viewpoint in a
New York Times
story about the UN? OK, I can report that,” he said, blithely. “And how do I spell your name?”
“Wait,” said de la Court. She picked up her telephone, punched out a number, and spoke in rapid French. Sami heard his name repeatedly mentioned.
De la Court stared at him. “He will see you. For two minutes.”
“Thanks,” said Sami.
As he walked over to Schneidermann's door, the spokesman appeared. “I am in a teleconference with Nairobi and Vienna, Sami. Is this urgent? We are not saying anything further about the tragic events of today.”
The two men stood in the corridor as Sami scratched his mop of dark curly hair and looked puzzled. “It's not about Olivia. Or Yael Azoulay.”
“Then how can I help?” asked Schneidermann, his voice brisk.
Sami gestured inside the spokesman's office. “Do we have to talk in the corridor?”
Schneidermann made a sour face and reluctantly ushered Sami inside.
Sami looked around the room. The spokesman's office was at least ten times the size of Sami's cubbyhole, with large windows overlooking the East River. Apart from a keyboard and flat-screen monitor, Schneidermann's desk was almost empty, as were the bookshelves and cork pin board. A large poster for Africa Child Rescue filled most of one wall. A screensaver showed a UN flag drifting back and forth across the monitor. A laser printer stood on a small stand in the corner of the room, blinking and whirring as it wound down, piles of stationery and different-colored envelopes carefully arranged next to it. Two sheets of freshly printed paper sat in the out-tray.
“Nice. How do I get an office like this?” asked Sami.
“Speak to the building manager. I am sure he will be happy to help,” Schneidermann said in a tone that implied this would be most unlikely. He sighed loudly. “Sami, I am very busy. What do you want?”
Sami pointed at the poster for Africa Child Rescue. “This charity that the SG is so keen on, Henrik. I'm kind of curious why the UN is endorsing it.”
“Because it is doing such good work. Rescuing children from a life of slavery in mineral mines. What better cause could there be?”
“None, of course. Butâ”
“So we are agreed then,” interrupted Schneidermann. He walked over to the printer, picked up the sheets from the tray, and glanced at them briefly. Sami could see that they seemed to be a travel itinerary of some kind. Schneidermann folded the papers and picked out a blue envelope, the color used for personal correspondence for the SG. He placed the papers in the envelope, closed it, and slid it into the breast pocket of his jacket.
Schneidermann said, “Perhaps we can even expect some supportive coverage in the
New York Times
of this important new initiative.”
Sami looked at him inquiringly. “You could, perhaps, if you could tell me a little more about it. Where is the charity's money coming from?”
“From people who believe in the ideals of the United Nations, Sami, and who understand the importance of its work,” replied Schneidermann, his voice clear that he did not include Sami in this august group.
Sami nodded slowly. “Isn't transparency one of those ideals?”
“Yes. And your point is?”
Sami scratched his chin. “So where is the money coming from?”
“I told you, from a group of businessmen who want to support the UN.”
“Can you give me some names? Or some of the firms' details?”
“I am not currently authorized to release that information. Now if you don't have any more questions,” Schneidermann said, walking toward the door.
“Just one, if you don't mind.”
The spokesman nodded, not bothering to hide his exasperation.
“Last month a company called Moabi Holdings Limited was registered in Kinshasa. One of the shareholders, who owns 15 percent, is called Zeinab Hussein. So is the SG's wife. Is it the same person?”
Schneidermann turned bright red. “Please send any further questions to me by e-mail. Thank you,” he said as he opened the door and ushered Sami out of his office.
Y
ael sat on the bench off Battery Park overlooking the river, tucked her purple and orange scarves into her coat, and pulled her legs high up to her chest. She hugged them tightly as she watched the sun set over the Jersey City skyline. Wall Street's skyscrapers loomed behind her, and the Statue of Liberty loomed in the distance over the water. The water lapped steadily at the edge of the boardwalk that marked the southernmost tip of Manhattan. The tide's calm, steady rhythm was soporific, and she felt herself relaxing as she breathed the fresh, salt-tanged air.
It helped that Joe-Don Pabst was sitting next to her. Joe-Don had sloping shoulders and the physique of an athlete whose outer layer had softened but who still had hard-packed muscle at the core. His thick gray hair was cut close, his small pale-blue eyes looked out of a pink, fleshy face, and his fingers were thick and callused. Dressed in a thick, blue woolen hat, black leather jacket, and workman's boots, a rough canvas bag over one shoulder, he looked like he was about to man a picket line at the docks and set about strikebreakers with a baseball bat.
But his squat, almost simian build belied a sharp and nuanced intelligence and an instinct for danger that was legendary at the UN. Joe-Don was a taciturn US Special Forces veteran in his midfifties. Born in Minnesota, he had worked for the UN's Department of Safety and Security for more than a decade, serving in every crisis and war zone where the UN had staff. For the last few years he had been Yael's bodyguard. He had saved Yael's life in Baghdad and Kandahar when insurgents had tried to kidnap her, and he had taken a bullet in his leg when he threw himself on top of her during a firefight in Gaza between Fatah and Hamas gunmen.
Yet despite the many dangers they had shared, and long sleepless nights marooned in numerous war zones, Yael knew very little about Joe-Don's past, except that he had worked as an instructor at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, and had spent much time in Central America during the late 1980s and 1990s. But he refused to elaborate.
Joe-Don's blunt manner and total lack of interest in self-promotion had made him numerous enemies at the UN. So had his repeated warnings that the UN compound in Baghdad was not properly secured. A long memo in 2003 to Fareed Hussein, then under-secretary-general of the Department of Political Affairs, outlined how the site needed blast walls, shatterproof windows, properly manned checkpoints at staggered perimeters, and zigzagged approach roads. Hussein had never replied to Joe-Don's memo. When a suicide bomber smashed his truck through in 2004, blowing away a whole side of the building and killing twenty-three people, Joe-Don was immediately fired for “dereliction of duty.” When he'd protested, and produced written records of his warnings that the compound was vulnerable to precisely this kind of attack, he was taken off staff and made an adviser with reduced security clearance. After repeated public protests by the American ambassadorâand more discreet reminders that the United States paid 25 percent of the UN's operating budgetâJoe-Don was reinstated, although at a lower pay grade. Still, Washington had made it clear that Joe-Don was not to be fired. He still had carte blanche to roam wherever he liked in any UN building or mission around the world.