The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(10)

“Shalom, Ms. Azoulay. Welcome to Istanbul.”

She smiled. She had finally met someone who really was tall, dark, and handsome, whose black hair fell over brown eyes shining with intelligence and good humor. And who, if she knew anything about men, liked her. But Yusuf Celmiz was five thousand miles away, so she had to work with what she had.

Yael took out her phone and reread the messages. First, hers, at 6:34 p.m.:

On my way. Forgot the wine. This time let’s drink it ?

Sami’s reply had come a couple of minutes later:

Great. Ice bucket or decanter? ?

In all the excitement of evading the tail, Yael had not got around to replying. And what should she answer? She could not turn up empty-handed, especially after telling Sami that she had returned home for the bottle. Yael looked at her watch: 7:35 p.m. Sami had told her to come over at 7:30 p.m., which meant 7:45 p.m. Where could she find some wine?

Zone, a hipster bar, was just a block away, on the corner of East Seventh Street and Avenue A. Maybe she could pick up something there. Or they could lend her a bottle. Another grin flickered across her face. Just four weeks ago, she had been there dancing with Najwa al-Sameera, the UN correspondent for Al-Jazeera. Hair flying, bodies swaying in time to the music, the two women had turned every head in the room. Sami had stared at her, entranced.

Then Yael remembered who else had been sitting at the bar, watching, and her smile vanished.

*

Michael Ortega walked through Riverside Park with Mr. Smith, waiting for him to speak. Mr. Smith was his second contact. The first, who had called himself Cyrus Jones, had been found in a car on the Lower East Side just over three weeks ago, shot through the head. Ortega read about his death in the New York Times. Ortega had asked Smith about the newspaper report. Jones had committed suicide, he had been told.

Ortega’s unease grew. Taking surreptitious photographs was one thing, dead men in cars quite another, and he wanted no part of that. He was no psychiatrist, but Jones had seemed one of the least likely people he knew to commit suicide. The man was totally motivated by his mission, even obsessed with Yael Azoulay. He could see why. He thought he might be becoming a little obsessed himself. She was beautiful and intelligent, but more than that, she was thoughtful and generous. One morning, when he had still been living under the memorial, he had woken to see her placing several boxes of food by his sleeping bag, together with a bottle of water. There had even been a Post-it wishing him Bon appetit. A job had opened up in the building after one of the doormen had died suddenly of a heart attack. Smith had told him to apply; there had been a lot of discussion at the tenants’ meeting about whether they should give a job to a homeless person, but he knew Yael’s argument, that he was a military veteran and deserved a second chance, had swung it.

After Jones died, Ortega had done some research in the darker reaches of the Internet. Several conspiracy websites claimed that Jones had worked for the most secret black-ops department of the US government, called the “Department of Deniable,” which officially did not exist. Ortega had heard rumors about the organization while in Iraq and Afghanistan, had seen the Special Forces and their contractor friends loading blindfolded prisoners into the C-130s at Bagram airport. But whatever the truth about the DoD, Jones had existed. And a video of him being held by Islamists in Syria still did, easily available on the Internet. Ortega had thought about transferring all his funds from Geneva to his New York bank account, taking out the cash and running as far away as possible. But he knew he would not get very far. He was in something much bigger than he was, and for now at least, there seemed no way out.

He glanced at Smith. “I won’t keep this job if you keep turning up like this. I need to be on duty. Doormen work the doors.”

“You won’t keep anything unless you do what you are told.”

“Which is?”

“First of all, to listen to me. There is going to be a power outage. The building’s CCTV will go down.”

“Why?”

“Because you have a job to do.”

“Which is what?”

Smith stopped walking and reached inside his pocket. He took out a small black metal box and opened it.

Ortega looked down. Inside was a tiny metal globule, barely bigger than a pinhead. Six short prongs, each as thin as a hair, pointed from it. Ortega shook his head. “Her apartment is swept once a week. They’ll find it.”

“Not this. It’s undetectable. Guaranteed.”

“How do I get inside? The apartment has a new security system. It’s cable-linked to the NYPD and the UN control center.”

“That’s why there will be a power outage.”

“There’s a backup power system.”

Smith shrugged. “Systems fail. We will do our job. Make sure you do yours.”

“And if I say no?”

Smith closed the box and turned to look at him, his tiny blue eyes glittering amid folds of red flesh. “I don’t think that word is in your vocabulary anymore.”

Ortega watched a young girl, nine or ten years old, whizz by on a pink Hello Kitty scooter, blond hair streaming, her laughter spilling across the park as her mother ran after her. He felt a familiar longing for the childhood he never had. “And if I go to the NYPD, say I am being blackmailed?”

Smith laughed, a rich baritone sound, revealing two rows of crooked yellow teeth. “Then the Internal Revenue Service will take an interest in transfer B789016 from Bank Bernard et Fils to account 897655 at Bay Area Bank, Oakland. And the IRS will then alert the Department of Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence that they have found a possible channel for money-laundering. And you, my friend, will no longer be living on the Upper West Side.”