Yael tried to put her emotions aside as she walked into the Council Chamber. She felt curiously pleased to see familiar faces, somehow even felt reassured that Sami, Jonathan Beaufort, and Najwa were here. Their presence was a reminder that several extremely able reporters were also on the trail of KZX and the Bonnet Group. But it was a bittersweet encounter, reminding her of her old life and of her growing feelings for Sami before his story wrecked her life.
Yael stopped and looked around at the familiar surroundings. The Council Chamber was not the largest room in the Palais des Nations—that honor was held by the Assembly Hall, which could hold two thousand people. But it was an elegant and atmospheric space that retained a powerful sense of history. The dropped ceiling and the cream stone walls at the rear and the sides were lined with giant frescoes donated by the Second Spanish Republic in the 1930s. They showed the themes so beloved of the United Nations: toiling laborers, scientists, artists, and more gun barrels. A balcony curved around the width of the room. Long before Rwanda and Srebrenica, the League of Nations had struggled in this very room to save Abyssinia, as Ethiopia was then known, while the country was pounded by Mussolini’s air force, its inhabitants bombed and gassed. Haile Selassie, Ethiopia’s emperor himself, had come here to plead for help—in vain.
Jasna paused in the middle of the chamber, standing in front of the salmon-pink curtains that extended almost from the floor to the ceiling. She looked at Yael, interrupting her reverie. “You know those journalists outside?”
Yael smiled wryly. “In another life.”
“And you want it back?”
“I don’t know,” said Yael. She walked over to Jasna and stood next to her, playing with the curtain. “I want to sleep in my own bed.”
“With the curly-haired boy? He could be quite handsome if he smartened himself up.”
Yael flushed. “Is it that obvious?”
Jasna smiled kindly. “Let’s get to work.”
The UN-KZX Institute for International Development was spread out over six rooms in the east wing of the Palais. During the 1930s they had housed the financial department of the League of Nations. Until recently they were home to the Geneva office of the Organizing Committee of the Week of Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples Affected by Global Warming. The committee’s members had gladly agreed for themselves, their families, and their workplaces to be relocated to New York at the UN’s expense to make way for the new institute.
Yael left Jasna at the elevator and walked down the corridor on her own to the director’s office at the end. The plan was that Jasna, who had a good reason to be in the area this early, would wait by the elevator and cover her, pretending to check the state of the place, while she kept watch on the elevator and the nearby staircase. Meanwhile, Yael would search the office. Jasna had given her the key.
If anyone appeared, Jasna would delay him or her as long as possible with questions about cleaning and office maintenance for the new setup, and she would surreptitiously send Yael a text from her mobile phone in her coat pocket. Yael would immediately leave. Even if the institute’s staff came in as early as 8:00 a.m.—which in her experience with the UN was highly unlikely—Yael should have well over an hour to find the evidence. And most of them would probably be at the press conference, basking in the media limelight, not in their offices.
That was the theory, assuming she was in the right city to start with. Yael could still hear Hakizimani’s answer when she had asked him if the war plan would be directed from the UN’s New York headquarters. “Of course not,” he had sneered. “Why do you think they have set up the development institute? There are too many journalists poking around the UN in New York, but who cares about those endless meetings in Switzerland? Nobody.”
He could have been lying, Yael supposed, but it was unlikely. She could spot liars, and she remembered the pleasure he had taken in telling her what he knew. Something as secret and complicated as this, involving the UN secretary-general, the DPA, KZX, the Bonnet Group, and, she guessed, Efrat Global Solutions, must be set out in detail somewhere. Probably only three or four people would be cleared to see the master plan. But it had to exist, because otherwise it would be impossible to coordinate so many different actors spread across three continents on a precise timetable. The plan would almost certainly not be on a networked computer or a machine with access to the Internet. It might be on an encrypted document stored on an “air-gapped”—stand-alone—machine, or a data stick. It was also possible that it did not even exist in electronic form because any digital version would be a security risk. Maybe there would only be a hard copy on paper.
The rest of her life hinged on the next hour, she realized. If she brought out the evidence of the conspiracy, she would be a heroine. If she did not and were caught, she would be arrested and extradited back to New York to stand trial for the murder of Hakizimani—not to mention all the other stuff about traveling on a dead woman’s passport—and would spend the rest of her life in prison. She felt the walls of the corridor closing in on her as she walked toward the director’s office. The voice in her head was back. It spoke each time she went on a mission. Incredulous and laughing at her arrogance, it was talking now, a familiar monologue. Look at you, it said: a wastrel, hardly any friends, estranged from your mother, cut off from your father, no man, no children, a nomad who doesn’t even know what country to call home, an orphan in all but name. Who are you to think you can do anything?
She knew not to argue back. Instead she stopped for a moment and leaned back against the wall, emptying her mind, clenching and unclenching her fists, and slowing her breathing. The voice grew tired and small and then faded away.
Yael slipped the key in the office lock. She took the key out and carefully pushed the dark, heavy wood panel. The door smoothly opened and she gingerly looked inside. It was a large and elegant office, the kind of workplace she would like to have herself, with a highly polished wooden floor and huge windows looking out on the park and Lake Geneva. A Persian silk carpet with an intricate peacock pattern hung on the wall. The office had obviously been newly decorated. It smelled of paint and coffee from the machine bubbling in the corner.
A tall, well-built man with a soldier’s posture was standing at the window with his back to her, reading a document. He turned around and looked Yael up and down.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle. I am the director here. How can I help you?” asked Charles Bonnet.
Yael betrayed nothing of the shock she felt at the sight of the Frenchman. Not only was the office not empty, but its sole occupant was someone with whom she had worked for years, someone who knew her face, voice, and mannerisms. But she also knew Bonnet. She smiled engagingly, holding his gaze. Under his savoir-faire she sensed suspicion, alarm, defensiveness, and strong sexual interest.
She was wearing slim-cut jeans, knee-high boots, and a tight black polo shirt under her new leather jacket, and she could feel his eyes roaming up and down her body. Yael slowly walked toward him, breathing in, making sure to raise her breasts as she pointed at his desk. It was a heavy, old-fashioned wooden thing that doubtless dated back to the League of Nations itself, with two small chests of drawers on either side and a large green square of baize in the middle. The desk was empty apart from a legal pad and a brass penholder filled with pens emblazoned with the KZX and UN logos.
Yael pointed at the penholder and gestured at the notepad as if to say, “May I?”
Bonnet frowned at first, then nodded, watching her now with amusement and growing interest, she sensed. Whatever this was about, she imagined him thinking, she was no threat.
Yael wrote on the paper:
My name is Claudia Lopez. I work for Tip-Top Office Services. We clean this part of the Palais. This is a beautiful office. You must be very important. I am mute. Sorry.
Yael handed the note to Bonnet. He quickly read it and smiled at her with the grin that he imagined was boyishly charming. For a moment she almost wished she were back in the DPKO operations room, refusing yet another dinner invitation. Another part of her was quelling her rising fear that Bonnet would recognize her. But the only thing that could give her away was her voice. People saw what they wanted to: the trick, as any magician could tell you, was to keep the audience plausibly diverted. The silk handkerchiefs that materialized from behind an ear, the coin in a palm—they had either been there all the time or hidden in plain view. As long as Bonnet was interested in Claudia Lopez, and he seemed to be, Yael Azoulay should be safe. But how was she going to get the war plan now? And where was it?
Bonnet walked around behind his desk and sat down. He put the document he was holding on the green baize square. Yael quickly read the heading: “Report on the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo.” It was the document that she had read on the airplane from Paris to Kinshasa when she had flown out to meet Hakizimani. Bonnet saw her glance at the report. He put it in the right-hand drawer of his desk and turned the key in the lock. He then slid the paper on which Yael had written toward him, took out a pen and wrote, There is no need to apologize. Would you like some coffee?
Yael down sat on the edge of his desk, pulled the paper toward her, and wrote, I can hear fine. You can talk to me, but I cannot reply. And yes please.
Bonnet walked over to the coffee machine and poured two cups. He walked back toward her, holding a cup of coffee balanced on a saucer in each hand, and smiled at her.
“I am sorry we don’t have any British builder’s tea,” he said.