The SUVs were emblazoned with aid organizations' colorful logos. The vehicles slowly inched forward, their giant radio antennae wobbling as they bumped over the slabs of dried lava that still coated the road after Mount Nyiragongo had erupted years earlier. Some days it took five minutes to cross, others five hours. Goma had grown rich on the aid industry and was a long way from the capital Kinshasa. Visas, letters of introduction, and government permissions counted for nothing here. Whisky, cigarettes, and US dollar large-denomination bills did.
Hakizimani spoke softly into her ear. “There it is. My homeland,” he said, gesturing at the frontier post. “Next time we will finish the job.”
Y
ael stepped away from the window. Hakizimani was beginning to take control. That was OK to a point, but now it was time for her to assert herself.
“Understand this, Professor, if nothing else,” she said, her voice cold now. “There will be no next time.” Only the deep lines around his eyes and the neatly trimmed black hair that was graying at the temple and sides showed his age. He could even be described as handsome, she thought. She softened her tone. “Professor, how long can you carry on living in the jungle? You are a graduate of the Sorbonne.”
He smirked. “Yes.”
“What exactly did they teach you there?”
They sat back down, facing each other across the table. Hakizimani lit a cigarette, leaned back, and let the smoke trail through his nostrils. It was a posture of confident superiority. “Do you know what my family name means?”
Yael shook her head.
“ âGod saves.' But God does not save. Hate saves. That is what I learned. The power of hate,” he said calmly.
Yael ignored the provocation and moved toward him, as if confiding some especially sensitive news. “Surrender, Professor, and you will take part in lengthyâvery lengthyâpeace negotiations under special UN license. You will live in five-star hotels. In Geneva or more likely, New York. It will be very pleasant. You will have a suite. Room service. A per diem. You can bring one or two advisers. A female secretary, some bodyguards. The negotiations will doubtless last several months, a year, perhaps more. Nobody will be in a hurry.”
“And after?” he asked, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
“You will be given a month's notice, and then you will be arrested and put on trial. The charge of genocide will be reduced to crimes against humanity. There will be insufficient evidence that you ordered all the slaughter to take place. There will be problems with showing a chain of direct command and control leading back to you. A charge of genocide is hard to prove. There needs to be evidence of intent to exterminate.”
“But that was our intent,” he replied, his voice matter of fact, as though ordering a pizza.
“It doesn't matter,” she said reassuringly. “There will be insufficient evidence. You will blame your subordinates, whose excesses you tried to rein in.”
“I did?” he said, raising his eyebrows. “That was good of me,
non
? And how long would I serve for being such a good man?”
Yael began to relax and poured him some more whisky. When the target party queried the personal cost of a hypothetical compliance scenario, it meant progress was being made. It was a small step from “what if” to “when.” She saw Hakizimani's body language change. He was leaning forward now, his hands resting together on the table with his fingers entwined. He was moving into her space, his eyes on her. That meant progress.
She held his gaze, subtly harmonized her breathing with his, and mimicked his posture, moving toward him before she spoke. Their hands were just a few inches apart. “You will be sentenced to six years. There will be an international outcry, demands for a retrial, new charges to be brought. CNN and the BBC will broadcast extensive footage of the 1994 genocide, Tutsi survivors will demonstrate in Paris and Brussels, Rwanda will threaten to remove its soldiers from UN peacekeeping operations, the talking heads and analysts will pontificate. The UN Human Rights Commission will convene an emergency session in Geneva. America and Britain will ensure that the Commission passes a resolution condemning your weak sentence. France will abstain and the African and Arab states will vote against the resolution. All this will last about thirty-six, perhaps forty-eight, hours, we estimate, before the news circus moves on. It will certainly continue for longer in Africa, but that doesn't really matter.”
Yael paused and raised her glass to his. They clinked and she drank the whisky, feeling its warmth trickle down inside her, willing the alcohol to wash away her resentment. The scenario she outlined had been carefully planned out and forecasted by the SG's staff, in conjunction with the P5, and was bound to be accurate. Everywhere elseâIraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, all the world's hellholesâhad so far followed the script drawn up in the SG's suite on the 38th floor of the UN building on First Avenue. Congo would be no different. What was it the UN and the P5 diplomats called these planning sessions? “Gaming”âthat was the word. Gaming the world.
Yael was thirty-five years old and had worked for the United Nations for twelve years. She had brokered ceasefires in East Timor and Darfur, charmed Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, and sweet-talked Shia insurgents in Iraq. She had once persuaded a teenage suicide bomber, caught by the Israelis at the Rafah/Gaza checkpoint, to disarm his bomb and surrender. But she had started as an administrative assistant in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, ensuring that officials' reports and briefings followed the departmental line, were properly written in grammatical English, and were distributed on time to the relevant committees, department managers, and the Security Council.
This demanded more than a good command of English. Like every organization, the DPKO was riven by turf wars, but in this case the stakes were the highest of all: superpower interests demanding war or peace. Passions ran high on the 37th floor, where decisions were made to send troops to battle and sometimes, inevitably, to die. There was grief and recrimination, often bitter. Quentin Braithwaite, a former British army officer on reassignment from the Ministry of Defense, had soon noticed Yael's uncanny ability to defuse office departmental crises. Her sixth sense allowed her to see through to the heart of the matter and mediate between her UN colleagues, easing diplomatic tensions and even satisfying the honor of prickly male egos.
From there she had been promoted to the operations room, the department's nerve center, and soon started going out on field missions. In Afghanistan she caught the eye of Fareed Hussein, the secretary-general, who had made her his protégé, causing admiration and jealousy in equal measure among her colleagues. Her UN ID card said she was a political adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Her actual job had no title. Officially, it did not even exist. But it was known, where it needed to be, that she spoke for the SG, and that her word was as good as his. And that meant she also spoke for the P5, the permanent members of the UN Security Council: Britain, the United States, Russia, China, and France. She was the most powerful woman on the planet, as long as she stuck to the script. And once again, standing next to Hakizimani, she felt a familiar mix of triumph and self-disgust.
She heard her voice outlining the terms of the deal to Hakizimani, but the words seemed to come out on autopilot. “You will only serve half of your sentence because of your remorse and your good behavior. In a Western prisonâParis, if you like. You will have your own cell, with a shower and an internet connection. Day release after a year. After which, relocation to America, France, or wherever you want. You can remarry, start a new family. You will have a house, a car, school fees paid for your children. You may even be able to come back here, if the peace holds.”
Hakizimani nodded thoughtfully. “Anything else?”
Yael reached down, picked up the leather bag, and placed it on the coffee table. Hakizimani reached for it but she pulled it back, out of his reach. She opened the zip and allowed him to look inside. His eyes opened wide at what he saw.
“That will buy a lot of Gold Label,” said Yael, putting the bag back under the table.
A low rumbling sound filled the room as Yael stopped talking.
Hakizimani raised his head. “The volcano is angry. Show me your UN card, please.”
She reached into her pocket and handed it to him.
“Azoulay,” he said, frowning. “Where is your family from?”
“Córdoba.”
He looked at her face. “You are too tall and too pale for a Spaniard. And you have green eyes.”
“The Azoulays left Spain in 1492, on a boat to Salonika in Greece. They moved to Baghdad in the nineteenth century. My father was born there, but by then Jews were not welcome anymore. They left for Israel when my father was a child.”
“You were born in Israel?”
“No, in New York. My mother is American. Her family was Hungarian. They left after the war. My father met her in New York and moved there, but they divorced when I was twelve and he went back to Israel. I lived with my father for a while. Then I came back to New York and studied at Columbia.”
“And you speak?”
“English, Arabic, French, Spanish, and Hebrew. Some Hungarian.”
Hakizimani looked at Yael with interest. “A one-woman United Nations. How do you think of yourself?”
Yael smiled wryly. “As a human being.”
“Did you serve in the Israeli army?”
She nodded. “I did my military service, yes.”
“Which branch?”
“I was a PA to a general,” she replied smoothly, still surprised at how easily the lie came.
Hakizimani walked to the window and looked out over the lake. “I had three daughters.”
“Tell me about them,” said Yael. Everyone loved to talk about their family. The human connection was the best lubricant for difficult negotiations.
He took out his wallet and showed Yael a worn photograph, covered in sticky plastic film. Three bright and happy young faces grinned at the camera in their best dresses. “This is the only picture I have left. It was taken in March 1994 at Abigail's sixth birthday party. They were clever girls. Abigail wanted to be a teacher. Fleur was eight. Fleur wanted to be a doctor. Valentina was eleven. A real idealist. She wanted to work for the United Nations, to save the world. Like you. Valentina survived for a few hours. She would be thirty now. Perhaps I would be a grandfather.” He looked away, his face twisted in anguish.
Yael suddenly felt ashamed. “I am sorry for your loss.”
“So am I.” Hakizimani carefully returned the photograph to his wallet. “Do you know Menachem Stein?” he asked, composed once again.
She hesitated for a second before she answered. “No.”
He looked at her in surprise. “You work for the UN and you don't know the head of Efrat Global Solutions? Stein was a general in the Israeli army. A war hero. Now he runs the world's biggest private military contractor.”
“I said I don't know him. Not that I had never heard of him. Is he working for you?”
Hakizimani laughed. “You don't expect me to answer that. Come,” he said, standing up.
She followed him out of the room and down to the lobby, out into the landscaped gardens. Yael's tall, slim figure and long auburn hair immediately attracted the stares of a group of South African businessmen at the check-in desk. She ignored their shouted invitations for a drink. The air smelled of orchids and cut grass. She breathed deeply, relishing the breeze blowing in over the water as they walked down to the lakeside. A cormorant soared, wheeled, and dived, riding the air currents. Aid workers lay on sun loungers, soft drinks or cold beers in their hands. Uniformed hotel staff, all African, picked up cigarette butts, swept the paths, and watered the plants. A manicured lawn reached down to the beach, which was dotted with palm trees. Mount Nyiragongo loomed over the lake in the distance, spilling smoke and steam. The volcano had recently covered much of the city in lava. Most of it was still there. Locals even built their homes out of lava. The volcano could blow again at any moment.
They stood together. Hakizimani pulled out a pack of Marlboros and offered the box to Yael. She took a cigarette and he leaned over and lit it for her. His eyes were startling, like molten sapphire. She drew deeply on the cigarette, pulling the smoke into her lungs, feeling the instant nicotine buzz.
“So why the rush?” he asked. “I have been on the wanted list for years. Then the messages start arriving. Then the intermediaries, and now the envoy herself, in person.”
There were times to tell the truth, Yael knew. This was one of them. She said: “Coltan.”
He nodded. “
Bien sûr
. Give me your telephone please.”
Yael handed it to him. He cradled the shiny handset. “You know they use children to mine coltan? They are smallâthey can fit in confined spaces. They eat less. They are paid almost nothing. Some food perhaps. They often have no parents. What does it matter what happens to such children? Nobody knows if they are alive or dead. Sometimes the tunnels collapse, and the children cannot get out. But as long as you can call your friends, Yael, who cares?”
She did not reply. Everything he said was true. Coltan was the world's most coveted mineral, essential for mobile telephones and computers. Yael had read a seventy-page UN document on the plane from Paris to Kinshasa: “Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo.” The report had been commissioned by the Security Council a decade ago and was publicly available. It was a detailed, thorough account. It revealed the front companies that processed the mines' profits; the airlines whose rickety Soviet-era jets shipped the coltan out from remote landing strips in Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda; the warlords and businesspeople who organized the trade; the banks that facilitated it; and the role of Congo's neighbors and the shadowy international gangs who built their empires on the mineral.
The UN document had lain unread in ministries and company headquarters across the world.
Hakizimani handed Yael her telephone back. “Your proposal is interesting. But I have a better offer.”
“Which is?”
They reached the edge of the lake. She watched a white UN helicopter fly low overhead, deep into Congo, the roar of its rotor blades churning the lake.
Hakizimani smiled at her. “I always admired Yael. Your biblical namesake. The Hebrew spy who seduced Sisera, the enemy general, seven times, and lulled him to sleep. And rammed a tent peg through his head. You joined the UN to make the world a better place,
non?
”