The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(36)
*
Isis talking about the new information she’d said she had on why no peacekeepers were sent to save David and the other UN aid workers.
“I don’t want to get your hopes up. It’s all secondhand at this stage. I can’t confirm anything, yet. I will tell you more when I have something.”
*
Isis and Yael having lunch in the UN canteen, sharing the latest gossip about who was up and who was down, who was in and who was out. The two of them in the lounge at the UN base in Kandahar, watching DVDs of Friends and fending off advances from the “Oakleys,” as Yael had dubbed the legion of soldiers, spies, mercenaries, and military contractors who all seemed to wear that brand of wraparound sunglasses. Two women with similar jobs, backgrounds, and interests, enjoying each other’s company. Two women who were starting to trust each other, sharing confidences. Or were they? Perhaps Isis had sensed Yael’s craving for companionship. Perhaps she exploited it for her own ends, to draw out the information that Yael had, and that so many others wanted.
Had she and Isis ever really been friends?
Yael thought so. She hoped so. Surely her sixth sense would have alerted her if Isis had an agenda. All relationships were based on a degree of mutual exploitation; the only question was, how much? Lord knew Yael had used her looks, charm, and considerable skills of emotional manipulation often enough to get what she wanted. Yael didn’t remember Isis probing, or trying to extract secrets from her. So, yes. They had been friends.
But then there was the other Isis, the Isis in Istanbul calling her on the phone, taking advantage of Yael’s determination to find out why her brother died to lure her into Eli’s trap.
“Walk towards me. I’ll meet you on the corner, where Tigcilar turns onto Mercan Caddesi. We can talk in the van.”
*
The curse of Azoulay was as strong as ever, it seemed. It already reached from Kandahar to New York and was now looping back to Istanbul. Isis was its third victim. The second was Olivia de Souza. Olivia had been Fareed Hussein’s personal assistant. She and Yael had become friends, a relationship that was steadily deepening until last fall, when Mahesh Kapoor, Hussein’s chief of staff, had hurled Olivia off a balcony on the thirty-eighth floor of the UN’s New York headquarters. Kapoor was now in prison for murder. As for the first victim, his death, and its consequences, was the most painful of all.
Yael walked over to the large picture window. She lived in a good-sized one-bedroom apartment with thick walls, high ceilings, the noisiest water pipes on the Upper West Side, and a breathtaking view of the Hudson River, and had done so for more than a decade, moving in after her grandmother had passed away. Her grandmother had bequeathed it to her with two instructions: take care of the art deco furniture that she had brought from Budapest after the end of the Second World War, and start a family. Yael ran her finger over the surface of the sleek, curved dining table by the window. The furniture, at least, was in fine condition.
She rested her forehead on the window, the glass cool against her skin. The river shone black and silver. A speedboat swept past, bouncing on the water, its searchlight skittering across the water. The lights of the apartment blocks across the water in New Jersey were glowing in the distance, their reflections shimmering on the water’s surface. Would she also die alone, like Isis? Perhaps in a prison cell, or, more likely, here on West Eighty-First Street, a childless spinster who spent her weekends reading the New York Review of Books, going for epic walks in Central Park, having lunch at the long shared table in the cramped café at Zabar’s in the vain hope she sat next to or opposite someone decent-looking and interesting?
And if she did die childless, it would be partly her own fault. Her mind drifted back, to a night seven years ago, on assignment for the UN, stranded overnight in a remote village controlled by the Taliban, high in the Afghan mountains. A night of fear, freezing cold, and a colossal blunder. Sharif’s tent had been pitched next to hers. A snap decision, a walk of two steps and she was inside the tent, then soon inside his sleeping bag. Yael was the first woman he had slept with. Her interpreter had instantly fallen in love with her, announced that they would soon be married.
Yael walked back to the mirror above the sideboard. She pulled off her T-shirt, unclipped her bra, let it fall to the floor, cupped her breasts and released them. A little more give, perhaps, but they still sat high on her chest. She pulled at the skin over her cheeks, kneading it this way and that, then let go. It bounced back into place, but lately she noticed that the web of fine lines radiating from the corners of her eyes seemed more pronounced. She needed an eye cream, that was all. She piled her hair up, turned right and left, let it down again, as the memories poured through her head.
Yael had explained, as gently as she could to Sharif, that she could not marry him. He had been devastated, had begged her to just go through with the ceremony for the sake of his family’s honor. “Please, Miss Yael, just pretend, for one day,” he had pleaded, “then you can go back to New York and we never have to see each other again. One day, that’s all I ask. To spare us humiliation.” She had been twenty-nine, self-righteous and full of politically correct ideas about the need to modernize Afghanistan. She had refused. Sharif disappeared. Her contacts in the Taliban told Yael that he had completed the martyrdom ceremony. She made some calls, discovered his planned route, shared the information with one of her contacts. A sniper had shot Sharif dead on the road to the Kandahar bazaar. She had not pushed to find out any more details. Back in New York, she had discovered she was pregnant. Ten days later, after two appointments at a clinic, she was not.