The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(68)
24
Najwa stepped inside the front door of 6F, a small two-bedroom that smelled faintly of perfume and flowers. The scuffed parquet slats creaked underfoot. The air was still, undisturbed. She looked around with interest, quickly reassessing her opinion of the apartment’s owner. To the right was an outdated kitchen with a stove and orange Formica cupboards that dated back to the 1960s. A fridge buzzed and gurgled in the corner. To the left, a small dark corridor led to the living room on one side, and two bedrooms on the other. Najwa told herself the intrusion was for a good cause, to find out the truth about Schneidermann’s death. She had not broken in. The neighbor had given her a key. But she felt like an invader as she stepped into the kitchen.
Madam Non’s froideur was doubtless the best defense against a horde of pushy, demanding, wiseass reporters. But away from the UN building, she was very human indeed. A piece of homemade fruit cake was drying out on a serving plate. Daffodils wilted in a vase. Several pictures of Francine and a teenage boy were pinned on a corkboard. There did not seem to be an adult man in their lives. A brass bowl held a pile of receipts, and Najwa flicked through the scraps of paper. There were several from the Café Port-au-Prince. She grabbed one and put in her pocket.
She stepped out of the kitchen and walked down the corridor into the living area. The room was neat and tidy but lacking natural light, with gloomy, old-fashioned furniture. A framed photograph of Francine shaking hands with Fareed Hussein stood on top of a dark, heavy sideboard. Most of one wall was taken up with bookshelves. Najwa scanned the contents: a mix of romantic novels, Central and South American poetry volumes, and several books on international relations and the role of the UN. She needed a book to show to Joel Greenberg, and her glance fell on a work she knew, an interminably dull academic history of peacekeeping operations. She grabbed it and had just placed it on the sideboard when she heard the door open, and two voices. Neither belonged to Joel Greenberg.
*
A dozen blocks south, Fareed Hussein stood by his desk in his bedroom, staring through the window down onto the patio and garden. His arms, back, legs—everywhere, it seemed—ached. There was no fool like an old fool, he well knew. And he was both. He raised his fingers to his nose: perfume, sweat, a sharp female tang, salty and metallic. The girl’s demands were incessant in bed—and, increasingly, out of it.
His wife, Zeinab, seemed to have lost interest in sex more than a decade ago, and anyway he had not seen her for months, since she returned last fall to Pakistan. He had long thought that his sex drive had been sublimated into his privileged place on the global A-list. Security Council intrigues; cosy tête-à-têtes at the White House, Ten Downing Street, the Kremlin, and the élysée Palace; the VIP list at Hollywood receptions; a place-card at the most sought after dinners in Davos. But he was wrong about his libido, and he had been pleasantly surprised at his performance, even if it had been aided by the small blue miracle pills. Still, it was with distinct relief that he had said goodbye to her an hour ago. This affair, fling, seduction, call it what you will, had been a mistake. He would end it as soon as the KZX reception tonight was out of the way. He could not afford any kind of scene there. Or here, for that matter.
Like the Secretariat Building, the grand townhouse at Number 2 Sutton Place was a snake pit of gossip, intrigue, and backbiting. Word had doubtless already leaked about her overnight stays, and nobody was fooled by the rumpled sheets in the guest bedroom. Built in 1921 for a daughter of J. P. Morgan, the fourteen-thousand-square-foot building was five stories tall, built around an imposing wooden staircase that seemed to have been transplanted from an English stately home. The residence had recently been redecorated by an expensive Park Avenue interior design firm, the $3 million bill setting off a firestorm among the right-wing media until a Silicon Valley software billionaire picked it up, in exchange for a lifetime guarantee of invitations to the SG’s most exclusive dinners and receptions.
Hussein rested his hand on the corner of his desk, wincing when something small and hard pressed into his palm. He looked down to see a tiny red and black USB stick. He picked it up and examined it. It did not look familiar. Where had it come from? Perhaps Roxana left it behind, he thought momentarily. He would call her and ask, but later. This morning, especially, he needed to be alone for a while. He put the memory stick back on his desk and looked down at the garden again.
The patio appeared cool and tranquil, its spotless gray flagstones almost shining in the midmorning sun. A small circular table, covered with a thick white tablecloth, was set for a late breakfast. In the center was a white vase holding a single red rose. The sides of the terrace were lined with bushes and trees, and a lush lawn reached from the end of the patio to the end of the garden. Hussein watched one of the three gardeners prune the rose bushes, suddenly back on the terrace of his father’s house in Delhi—before the deluge and the bloodletting, when the family was whole.
Roxana’s early morning demands usually made him hungry. But today he had no appetite. The pain, the memories, did not dim with time. On the contrary, as the years passed they seemed to be stronger, more vivid, more real.
*
Omar would have been seventy-four today. Perhaps he was. It was the not knowing that was the worst. He could have been killed in the crush, the blood frenzy. Or he may have lived, hiding until the madness wore itself out and then been taken in by another family, adopting another name, forgetting his history. He might even have a family of his own, children, grandchildren. Hussein would never know. Hussein clenched his fingers, digging them so hard into his palm that he winced. Could he have held on harder to his brother’s hand?