The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(27)

Najwa circled his name several times with her pen on the sheet of paper. Abbas Velavi, a healthy man in his forties with no history of heart trouble, suddenly dies from a massive heart attack. Henrik Schneidermann, a healthy man in his thirties with no history of heart trouble, suddenly dies from a massive heart attack. Both men lived and died in New York. It could be a coincidence. More than eight million people lived in the city. Two loosely connected people, out of eight million, suddenly dying of the same cause a year apart was certainly possible. But Najwa’s instincts told her this was not a coincidence.

She would have to talk to Sami about Velavi. Journalists always knew more about their stories than they used in, or got into, print. Sometimes the additional information could not be sufficiently verified, or it was bounced back by the lawyers. But that did not mean it wasn’t true. Bakri had dropped his hint for a reason. Najwa was confident she would find out why.

And then she realized.

She was scribbling Velavi killing—test run? when her pen ran out of ink. There was another in her purse so she slipped her hand inside, rummaging amid the jumble of lipsticks, makeup palette, tampons, chewing gum, and packets of tissues. Her fingers finally touched a plastic cylinder that was too thin to be a lipstick. She pulled out a ballpoint pen, her hand brushing against a sheet of paper. She looked down and saw a white envelope.

*

Fifteen blocks north and just over half a mile west, on the corner of Third Avenue and East Fifty-Seventh, in the kitchen of a cramped two-room apartment, Menachem Stein handed Armin Kapitanovic a long, narrow wooden case covered in black leather.

The two men stood in the kitchen. Two half-drunk mugs of instant coffee slowly cooled on the small wooden table, its surface scarred by cigarette burns. A curling 2009 calendar hung from a nail in the wall. Ten floors up, the nighttime traffic roar seeped through the open window and the East River was just visible through the murky glass.

Kapitanovic put the case on the table, opened the lid, took out a wooden stock with a trigger, a long, thin barrel, and a scope. His hands moved swiftly. Less than a minute later, he held a Dragunov sniper rifle.

Kapitanovic sat down at the table, holding the rifle between his legs, pointing upward. “How long till he is out?”

Stein looked at his watch. “Probably about twenty minutes. Once the meeting is over and he gets ready to leave the residence I will get a call on this,” he said, holding up an old Nokia candy-bar mobile phone.

“A call from who?”

Stein smiled. “Does it matter? Three rings and the caller will hang up. Then you go up to the roof. It’s an easy shot.”

“Not at night.”

“The front of the house is well lit. There are street lamps.”

Kapitanovic ran his finger down the barrel of the Dragunov. “It won’t bring them back.”

“No. It won’t. But it will be a kind of justice. And a warning to others.”

Kapitanovic stared ahead, suddenly far away. “Justice? Or murder?”

Stein sat down. “Tell me what happened.”

The Bosnian spoke quietly. “I was working as an interpreter for the Dutch UN troops in Srebrenica. After the town fell, it was total chaos, panic everywhere. The Bosnian Serbs separated the women and girls from the men and boys. They took the men and boys away. The women were hysterical, covering their sons with girls’ clothes, pulling them into the crowd. Everyone knew what was going to happen. The Dutch troops were supposed to protect us, to help us. Instead they helped the Bosnian Serbs. I hid them, my father, my brother, and my mother, in an office on the UN base.”

Kapitanovic’s voice trembled slightly. “Then the Dutchman came in, with a handful of his peacekeepers. I called New York, tried to speak to Fareed Hussein. He was in a meeting. Everyone was in a meeting. The Dutchman and the peacekeepers started going through every room, throwing everyone out. Eventually they found my family. We begged, offered money, everything we had. I could stay, he said. I had UN papers. My family did not. The Dutchman pushed them out of the base. I tried to follow them. My father pushed me back, as hard as he could.” Kapitanovic glanced down at his chest. “He bruised my ribs.”

“What could you have done?”

Kapitanovic gripped the Dragunov, his knuckles pink and white. “I had a pistol. I should have used it. My father and my brother were never seen again. They still haven’t found their bodies. My mother went with the women to Tuzla. She hanged herself. From a tree. The worst thing is …” Kapitanovic’s voice broke for a moment.

“Is what?” asked Stein, quietly.

“There was another family. Hiding in the quartermaster’s stock room. The Dutch troops never found them. They all survived. If I had hidden my family …”

Stein laid his hand on Kapitanovic’s arm. “If is a big word. The biggest.”

Kapitanovic closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply. “I have been waiting a long time for this day.”

He picked up the rifle and peered down the sight. “How did you get me out?” he asked, his voice steady now.

Stein took a sip of his coffee. “I made a trade. Information. First with the Turks, then with the Islamists.”

“The Turks I understand. A Turkish army truck from Suleyman Shah’s tomb back across the border, a flight from Istanbul to Montreal. But how does an Israeli do business with Islamists?”