The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(28)
“The same way that you exchanged stolen UN aid supplies with the Serbs in exchange for guns and ammunition.”
Kapitanovic made a minute adjustment to the rifle’s sight. “That’s the Balkans. We knew them. They were our neighbors. We fed them. They armed us. As long as we didn’t attack their position, they left us alone.”
Stein put his mug down. “Balkans, Middle East, we were all once part of the same empire. We know the Islamists. They are our neighbors. We don’t attack them and they don’t attack us. Our border with Syria is quiet, considering. We both share a common enemy: Hezbollah. The Islamists already are at war with Hezbollah. Israel soon will be. Again. People I know keep a very close eye on Hezbollah. That information is valuable to the Islamists. So we trade information with the Islamists, and”—he glanced at Kapitanovic—“occasionally, more than that.”
The Bosnian thought for several seconds. “Why did you bring me here? You could arrange a mugging, a street robbery that went wrong. A hit and run. You don’t need me.”
“No, I don’t. But you deserve justice.”
“Maybe. What else do you want?”
Stein passed the Bosnian a photograph. It showed the tanned face of a man in his early fifties, with hazel eyes and an erect bearing.
11
Yael grabbed her iPad from the coffee table, sat back on the sofa, and flicked through her archive of stories about the UN until she found the one she wanted, dated ten days earlier.
TURMOIL CONTINUES AT UNITED NATIONS
Fareed Hussein Returns, Deputy Resigns, Detained US Diplomat “Used UN Connections” to Adopt Afghan Child
By SAMI BOUSTANI
UNITED NATIONS—Fareed Hussein, the secretary-general of the United Nations, returned to his post Monday after being absent for almost two weeks on medical leave. Mr. Hussein, who had been suffering from fainting attacks, declared himself “fully recovered.”
Yael speed-read the report until she reached the key paragraph.
Confidential UN emails newly obtained by the New York Times reveal that, as early as a year ago, Ms. Masters was negotiating a pilot scheme with Clarence Clairborne, chairman and owner of the Prometheus Group, to supply security services for the Istanbul Summit. The emails detail how Prometheus was working behind the scenes with the world’s largest private military contractor Efrat Global Solutions, which is owned by Menachem Stein.
If successful, the contract, referred to in the emails as the “Washington Stratagem,” would set the precedent for a wholesale privatization of UN security, and potentially international peacekeeping, a market worth billions of dollars annually.
The story had been published on the day of Henrik Schneidermann’s memorial service, nine days ago. Caroline Masters had been Yael’s former classmate at Columbia University, enrolling in graduate school after working as a journalist in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Central America. After graduating she joined the State Department, where she was known as a liberal interventionist, but also a realist—until she was posted to Berlin as a commercial attaché. A growing friendship with Reinhardt Daintner, head of communications at the KZX Corporation, had led to a three-month placement at KZX’s new Office of Social Responsibility. During that time she became a passionate advocate of privatization, a cause that she continued to champion at the UN. The previous month, she had essentially mounted a coup, sidelining secretary-general Fareed Hussein by spreading untrue rumors of his declining health. One of her first agenda items in her brief reign as acting secretary-general had been demoting Yael to run the Trusteeship Council, a dead-end position overseeing UN business in former colonies.
But now Masters was gone. Hussein was back in his office on the thirty-eighth floor. So was Yael, in hers. Yael knew all about the “confidential emails obtained by the New York Times” because she had sent them anonymously to Sami, although he had no idea of her role.
Yael picked up her wine glass, raised it to her lips, then put it back down without drinking. She needed a clear head for this. Sami was a great reporter. He understood the importance of details, but could see the big picture and its ramifications. But he only had part of the story. The Prometheus file, now locked in a safe in the SG’s office, detailed how Clairborne and the Prometheus Group were doing business with Nuristan Holdings, an Iranian company that operated as a front for the Revolutionary Guard. Clairborne and his company had survived the fallout from the Istanbul Summit, but they could not survive the publication of the Prometheus file.
Sami had not yet made the connection between Prometheus, Efrat Global Solutions, and the DoD, the Department of Deniable, the most secret arm of the US government, whose operatives carried out wet-work missions of which no records were kept. Sami did not know the extent of what Clairborne, the Iranians, and the DoD had planned. But Yael did.
*
She is standing on the Emin?nü waterfront, watching the police launch bounce across the waves. It is a perfect spring morning. The sun is warm on her face, the breeze scented with the smell of the sea. The V-shaped hull cuts through the water like a scythe at harvest time, pale spray fountaining in its wake.
The Turkish policemen grimace as they drag the dead man into the boat. His back is crisscrossed by deep welts, their ruffled edges bleached white by the water. His arms and shoulders are dotted with semicircular rows of tiny puncture marks, each two or three inches long. The commander shakes his head in disgust. He covers the body with a gray blanket, gently smoothing the fabric as though tucking a child into bed.