The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(21)
After that, Braithwaite started to send Yael out into the field. She was so successful that Fareed Hussein poached her and made her his “special adviser,” giving her an inside seat at some of the world’s most sensitive diplomatic negotiations and the opportunity to broker deals herself. In Kabul, she arranged for US troops to guard the Taliban’s poppy fields in exchange for the Afghan militants’ promise to not blow up a new gas pipeline. In Ramallah, she persuaded the Palestinians to refrain from declaring an independent state in exchange for observer status at the UN and relaxed controls at dozens of Israeli checkpoints in the occupied West Bank. In Baghdad she had even managed to free Hussein’s nephew, a twenty-one-year-old college graduate with no experience who landed a senior job with the UN and had been promptly kidnapped by Shiite insurgents.
All of her colleagues were intrigued and wanted to know more. A few were supportive, many jealous, but she couldn’t tell them what she was doing, or where she was sent, and she didn’t want to lie to them. So she stopped socializing. The invitations slowed, then eventually dried up. She missed the company, of course, but her job meant she was on the road much of the time anyway. The pace of life in New York was so frenetic, with people booking nights out weeks in advance, that it was almost impossible for her to arrange a social event. She rarely knew where she would be in two days’ time, let alone in two weeks.
Yael glanced at the television. A photograph of the UN building covered most of the screen, with a smaller studio feed of Roger Richardson, CNN’s UN correspondent, in the top right-hand corner. A caption ran along the bottom: Senior UN official convicted of sexual assault “likely to be released soon” say law-enforcement sources. She sat up straight, her maudlin mood gone. Richardson, a tall New Yorker with a dry sense of humor, was a veteran of the UN press corps. Yael always enjoyed his company when they met at receptions. But he was as sharp as he was amiable. Who was he referring to? As soon as Yael asked herself the question she knew the answer. There was only one candidate.
She returned to the sofa, sat down, and turned up the volume as the camera switched back to the studio.
The anchor, a striking African woman in her early thirties, looked puzzled as she spoke. “But the evidence seemed rock solid, Roger. There is a sound recording, on the Internet. Charles Bonnet’s voice is clear, threatening Thanh Ly and her family unless she does as he asks. That clinched the case and got him a sentence of fifteen years for aggravated sexual assault.”
Lately the network had been eclipsed by Al-Jazeera, which was pouring resources into both its Arabic and English-language services, but Yael still had an affection for the pioneer of continuous news coverage. After almost twenty years on the UN beat, Richardson also had excellent sources, Yael knew. She had occasionally leaked snippets of information to him herself.
Richardson nodded, but looked puzzled. “Yes, Aisha. It’s definitely an unexpected turn of events. But my sources in law enforcement are saying Bonnet’s lawyers have been pushing hard to make a case that the sound file was faked and that Thanh Ly was lying. Of course there are also diplomatic implications here.”
Now displayed on the screen was a photograph of a handsome man in his early fifties, with an erect bearing, hazel eyes, and a tanned face.
The sound file was not faked. Yael had given Thanh the digital microrecorder herself. But Bonnet had powerful friends, and she’d always known it was unlikely he would serve his full sentence.
Richardson continued. “We know there have been several high-level meetings between French officials and the Department of Justice lately, supposedly about cooperation against money-laundering and terrorism. We know the US is especially concerned about Islamists in Mali and Algeria, two former French colonies. Perhaps another item was quietly slipped onto the agenda.”
“It’s starting to look that way. What does Ms. Ly have to say?”
“So far, nothing. She resigned from the UN and returned home to Paris.”
“The plot thickens.” The anchor looked at the camera as she spoke. “Ms. Ly, if by any chance you are watching this and want to tell your side of the story, do be in touch. We would love to hear from you. Meanwhile, tell us more about Charles Bonnet and his background, Roger.”
“The Bonnet Group, the family firm, is one of the largest and most influential companies in France. It has substantial holdings in Africa and excellent links to the political establishment. Charles Bonnet spent time in the French Foreign Legion, and worked at the Bonnet Group headquarters in Geneva before joining the UN just over twenty years ago. He had a successful career and was most recently a very senior UN official, the Special Representative for Africa. But that particular appointment caused uproar among human rights groups.”
Richardson paused for a moment.
“Why?” asked the anchor.
“They claimed that the Bonnet Group had used child labor in its coltan mines in Congo. Coltan is the world’s most important mineral, vital for computers and mobile phones. The company strongly denied the allegations. Shortly afterwards, the Bonnet Group, together with the KZX Corporation, a German conglomerate, donated $5 million to UNICEF, the UN’s children’s charity. The controversy faded away. Bonnet kept his UN job.”
“Tell us more about the man himself, Roger.”
Richardson nodded. “Bonnet was also a desk officer at the Department of Peacekeeping during the genocide in Rwanda and as you know, Aisha, Rwanda was the greatest catastrophe in the UN’s history. Eight hundred thousand people were killed in the genocide, including nine UN aid workers in the capital Kigali, after headquarters in New York failed to respond to their calls for help. There have been many …”—he paused—“theories about why that particular massacre, of the UN staff, happened.”