The Reykjavik Assignment (Yael Azoulay #3)(89)
“It will have to wait until New York.” He picked up his messenger bag. “I’m going back to the hotel to write my story. Beaufort wants to meet for a coffee.”
Najwa put her cup down. “Beaufort?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
“Jonathan Beaufort. The correspondent for the Times of London. I believe you know him,” said Sami dryly.
“What does he want?”
“It’s not what he wants. It’s what he’s got.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “He says he has a lead that he really wants to talk about, maybe share the story.”
“A lead on what?”
“Akerman. Or Bonnet, I guess. Or both.”
Najwa stared at him. “Beaufort and you? Sharing?”
“What’s the big surprise? You and I used to share.”
Najwa was alarmed. “Used to?”
“Yes,” said Sami, looking at his watch. “Until I applied for a job.”
“I’ll talk to HR. Why would Beaufort share with you?”
She stared at Sami. He looked relaxed, in control. Was he playing her? She thought so. But now, after the shootings, there were so many rumors flying around the UN building and the press corps that it was best not to rule out anything, no matter how outlandish it sounded. Everyone sensed the web drawing more tightly around Fareed Hussein. His and Roxana’s blustering performance in the press conference would only fuel the fire. Neither had a decent answer to Rafnhildur’s question about Akerman’s records. They had kept looking at each other uncertainly, and eventually took refuge in a bromide about investigating the claim.
“It’s a swap,” said Sami. “I give him the Yael photo. He gives me what he’s got. He breaks his story first. I have my follow-up already written as soon as his goes online and vice-versa when I write the Yael story. Do you want in?”
“Of course.”
Sami handed her a mobile phone. A tiny microphone was attached to the handset by a thin black cable. “You clip this to your jacket, put the phone in the inside pocket. You call me as soon as you arrive at Bessastadir, and leave the line open.”
Najwa slowly stirred her coffee. “First you retweet and favorite my tweets. And you include my handle in all of your tweets. For ten minutes. Then you can use whatever you hear to send your own.”
Sami paused for a moment. “OK for the retweets and the favorites and your handle. But two minutes max. Then it’s open season.”
“Eight.”
“Four.”
“Six.”
Sami extended his hand across the table. “Deal.”
31
She is walking down Yefet Street, deep into Jaffa, far from the tourist shops and restaurants. She treads carefully on the cracked sidewalks, past the kebab stands, the car repair workshops, the drug dealers idling in the doorways. She turns right at the bakery, heading toward the dilapidated villas overlooking the beach. It is a bright autumn afternoon, still warm enough for bathers. The sunshine sparkles on the waves, the air carries the smell of salt. A boy, twelve or thirteen, leads a foal across the sand, its hooves leaving delicate, precise imprints.
She is on the way to meet a new friend. Khamis is an Arab Israeli, a postgraduate student at Tel Aviv University, studying the 1948 war. A handsome, quiet man with long eyelashes, he is already captivated by the beautiful, wide-eyed American student newly arrived in Israel and yearning for justice for the Palestinians, whose hands keep brushing against him. He wants to take her to his favorite hummus restaurant.
She glances up and down the road. She has been to Jaffa many times, but never this far south, into the rundown side streets. A gang of teenagers sits on a low wall, smoking, whistling, and cat-calling when they see her. A car drives past, missing her by inches, Arab music blaring from the windows. The acrid smell of hashish mixes with the scent of the sea.
Eli’s words echo in her head. “You won’t see us. But we see you, wherever you are. Don’t worry. We are watching.”
*
Yael stood at the railing on the bank of Lake Tj?rnin, watching the seabirds soar and swoop. The lake was in the heart of downtown Reykjavik, just a few minutes’ walk from the Hotel Borg. The shore was lined with large, detached houses painted in bright colors, their reflections shimmering on water the color of gunmetal. The sky was a patchwork of clouds, daubs of white on a vast gray canvas. The wind gusted back and forth, sending gentle waves lapping at the shore.
Seabirds and swans hopped along the cobbles of the path, chirping and cawing. Yael had only been in the country a few hours, but she was already captivated. She had been to many remote places, ones that could only be reached by propeller planes landing on airstrips hewn from the jungle. Keflavik International Airport was like any other—slick, modern, full of shops. But the landscape, almost lunar in its rawness, was not. The road into Reykjavik wound through great fields of black lava. There were no trees or bushes; the sole vegetation seemed to be a hardy orange-brown grass. Iceland was part of the modern world, with mobile phones, American hotel chains, bearded baristas, and high-speed Internet, yet still there was something elemental about the place, almost primeval. A reminder that the daily squabbles and struggles of human existence—all the striving, intrigue, plots, and cabals—were ultimately pointless and irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was the planet itself, a chunk of rock spinning through space.