Yael closed her eyes and concentrated as hard as she could, summoning the memories with every one of her senses: the hotel’s crisp cotton bedsheets smooth against her back, the pillow firm under her bottom, the taste of the champagne chilling in the ice bucket, the sound of his voice whispering in her ear, the smell of his lemon cologne.
The door opened and Mahesh Kapoor walked in. The storage room in the basement was small and empty. The walls and floor were bare gray concrete. One narrow, high window looked out onto the sidewalk. Yael sat in the middle, her ankles tied to a chair with nylon ropes, her hands bound behind her.
Kapoor walked over to her and slowly stroked her head—a familiar heavy, black, old-fashioned cell phone in his hand. “Yael, Yael. What are we to do with you? And this?” he said, his voice full of regret, picking up a strand of her hair. “You know I always loved your long hair.”
Yael said, “It will grow back.”
Kapoor shook his head sadly. “I don’t think so. Not this time.”
“Where is Jasna?”
Kapoor smiled. “In a better place than you are.”
Yael’s eyes opened wide in alarm. “You didn’t—”
“Of course not,” Kapoor interrupted, frowning. She is being questioned by the UN police, after which she will be handed over to the Swiss authorities.”
“And Olivia?” She looked straight at him. “Why did you kill her?”
He stepped back, puzzled. “I didn’t kill her. I don’t know what you are talking about.”
Yael wriggled on the chair, moving her hands. She felt the rope around her right wrist slip slightly. “Olivia was my friend. She was so happy to have met someone. She was already half in love with you. And what a horrible way to die.”
Kapoor looked genuinely confused. “I really don’t know what you mean. The preliminary findings of the UN investigation point toward suicide. She was lonely, she had no family, she knew that big changes were coming at the SG’s office, and she would probably not be part of them. It was true that we had met a couple of times for dinner. But that was for work. She built a fantasy around that. It was very sad.”
He walked back to the chair and lifted Yael’s chin with the antenna of the cell phone. Yael flinched. “Don’t worry. It’s not switched on. Yet. But if there is a killer in this room, I don’t think it’s me.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Yael as she carefully slid her wrists back and forth. She could feel the rope slackening further. If she could bend her index finger and squeeze it under the knot she might be able to undo it.
“Kandahar,” Kapoor said confidently. “And Sharif Iqbal, your translator.”
Yael willed herself to be strong now. Her personal life and her past did not matter. Getting out of here with what she had learned did. Because Kapoor knew exactly what he was doing. They had discussed what happened in Kandahar for hours in the bedroom of the UN Millennium Hotel, over and over again. He knew every detail: that one night, cold, lonely, and frightened in a village controlled by the Taliban, Yael had climbed into Sharif’s tent and into his sleeping bag. Sharif had immediately fallen in love with her, announced their forthcoming wedding to his family, and had started making preparations until Yael had gently explained that she could not marry him.
Sharif had been devastated. His father was furious. Sharif had begged her to go through with the ceremony just for form’s sake, and then she could go back to Kabul or New York or wherever she wanted and they need never see each other again. She could still see him—his eyes as green as emeralds, glistening with tears—pleading with her to spare him and his family the humiliation. She only had to pretend for an evening.
Just one evening, for the sake of his and the family’s honor. “Then, Miss Yael, you will be free,” she could still hear him saying. “Miss Yael, I am begging you, do not do this to us. You will be gone soon, but we have to live here.”
That was six years ago, when she was full of certainty, self-righteousness, and politically correct ideas about women’s rights and the need to modernize Afghanistan. She refused to go through with the wedding, although she easily could have. Sharif disappeared and she and Joe-Don returned to Kandahar. There, several days later, one of her contacts in the Taliban told her that Sharif had gone through the martyrdom ceremony and had planned to target the bazaar just before Friday prayers, when the Old City would be the most crowded.
Yael looked Kapoor in the eye. “I didn’t kill Sharif.”
He held her gaze. “No, you did not. You didn’t have the courage to pull the trigger. But you arranged it.”
“Yes, I did. I told the people who needed to know that he was wired with enough explosives to blow half the bazaar sky high. I told them where and when he would approach the city. There was no other way. I saved dozens of lives.”
Kapoor walked nearer to her. “None of which would ever have been at risk if you had not seduced a naïve young man with no experience with women at all, let alone Western ones. Just because you were lonely and scared. You used your status and your power for your own selfish pleasure with no thought of how it would turn his life upside down.”
Kapoor was completely correct. “I know. And there is not a day goes by that I don’t think about that and live with the consequences.”
“And then you took a life, didn’t you? One growing inside you.”
She forced herself to feel no emotions. “Yes, I did that as well. Sharif’s child.”
Her right index finger was almost free. “But I have never pushed anyone off a balcony thirty-eight floors up.”
“And neither have I.”
“Heshi . . . can I ask you a personal question?” Yael held his gaze, her eyes wide with curiosity, her mouth slightly open. He nodded.
“Did you . . . like Olivia?”
He shrugged. “She was quite interesting company, but she was nothing much to look at. Even with all the money she spent on clothes.” He walked around to the back of the chair and yanked the ropes much tighter. “Sorry. A good try though.”
Yael grabbed his fingers. “But you did like me, Heshi, when we were together. Didn’t you? It was not just an office thing? It meant something?” she said, rubbing her fingers up and down against his.
He squeezed her hand, let it go, and stood at her side, gently stroking her neck. “Yael, what a question. Of course it did. I will always treasure our time together. It will be the most wonderful memorial of you—although, unfortunately, a private one.”
His fingers were warm and dry on her neck as they slid up and down, caressing her skin behind her ear, where she loved to be touched. Yael closed her eyes and sighed, willing herself back into the double room at the Millennium Hotel, and her excited anticipation as she readied herself for him.
She opened her eyes. Her breath was thick in her throat now, her nipples stiffening against her shirt. Mahesh was staring at the outlines of her breasts, straining against the soft fabric. “Look what you are doing to me. Heshi . . . please. Kiss me. Kiss me like you used to,” she pleaded, her voice thick and husky.
Yael willed Kapoor closer, sensing his arousal. She opened her mouth wider, breathing faster, her tongue between her lips, feeling the wetness between her legs. She leaned toward him, her face raised in supplication. “Heshi, please, nobody made me come like you did . . .”
Kapoor smiled as though the compliment was no less than his due and moved his head toward hers.
The fashion and celebrity journalists jumped out of their seats and ran toward the front as Hobo walked in, wearing a long purple African robe and a matching turban. He shook hands with Fareed Hussein and Reinhardt Daintner and kissed Lucy Tremlett on both cheeks. Tremlett walked around the front desk and stood next to Hobo, and held his hand. The room erupted in a blaze of camera flashes as dozens of photographers and television camera crews surged forward, elbowing each other out of the way.
The first mud bomb hit Henrik Schneidermann on the side of the head. He looked puzzled, shocked, then fearful to discover that he was drenched with thick yellow sludge. The second smacked into Fareed Hussein’s shoulder, and the third landed on the desk in front of Reinhardt Daintner, covering his gray silk suit with muck.
Sami and Jonathan turned to look up at the balcony, from where the bombs were coming. The African journalists were not just journalists, it seemed. They lowered a long banner: “Stop the Coltan Plundering: African Resources for African People.”
There were a dozen of them leaning over the balcony shouting and raining down projectiles. The camera crews and photographers turned simultaneously and directed their lenses toward the upper floor. Hussein and Daintner cowered under the table. Hobo and Lucy Tremlett rushed toward the door. As they opened it a mud bomb exploded over their heads, spattering them with the thick goo.
Sami and Jonathan looked up toward the balcony. A pretty young Indian woman held a megaphone, shouting, “If you want coltan, then here it is. Dig it out like the miners do.”
She took careful aim at Fareed Hussein and lobbed a mud bomb under the table. It hit a leg and burst over the secretary-general. UN police officers were now rushing into the Council Chamber and the balcony.
Sami and Jonathan watched as two UN policemen grabbed the young woman and frog-marched her away.
Sami turned to Jonathan. “Isn’t she . . .”
Jonathan nodded. “She certainly is.”
They both grinned and high-fived. “Story.”