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 To the right was an outdated kitchen with a stove and orange Formica cupboards that dated back to the 1960s.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 good-bye 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?
Hussein rarely spoke of Omar. His memoir was the only time he had discussed his brother and his disappearance. But people were speaking—he sensed, he knew—about his other secrets. Justifiable at the time, every decision taken left a dark residue that over the years turned into a brittle carapace of guilt and shame. One that could—would, he thought—eventually crack and shatter, taking his reputation along with it. He stared at the indents in the skin of his hand, the same hand that had briefly grasped Yael’s brother’s arm when he departed for Kigali.
Hussein sat down by his desk, glanced at the photograph in the silver frame, a copy of the one in his office. It was almost too painful to look at. He had one arm around Zeinab’s shoulder and the other around Rina’s, on the day of her graduation. All three were smiling happily. Now his wife was gone. His daughter would not communicate with him, other than to denounce him on social media. All he had left was his name and his future legacy. And the means of their destruction. That, at least, was secure, securely stored in the steel filing cabinet built into the left-hand side of his desk, protected by a biometric lock.
He picked up the red and black USB stick. He was about to call Roxana to ask if it was hers when older, more cautious habits kicked in.
Who else had access to his bedroom? The room was kept locked when he was not there. Only the housekeeper, Evangelina, a Filipina in her fifties, had a key. She had worked in the residence for more than twenty years, was the very soul of discretion, and was approaching retirement. And as far as he knew Evangelina’s computer skills did not extend much beyond e-mail.
He turned the USB stick over in his hand. It was tiny, barely larger than his thumbnail. He still found it difficult to believe how much data could be stored on such a miniscule object. But how had it got here? Unknown objects should not be appearing on his private desk at his home. He trusted Evangelina completely, but somebody could have forced her to leave the memory stick on his desk. Or maybe someone had broken into the house. In theory, that was impossible. But complete security was never possible. Random strangers still managed to wander into the private areas of the White House, supposedly one of the world’s most secure buildings.
There was one way to find out what this was about. And even if the memory stick was Roxana’s, it would do no harm to find out what she was up to. He slid it into the port on his laptop. A folder containing two icons appeared on the desktop, one labeled “Rwanda” and the other “Srebrenica.”
His finger trembled as it hovered over the track pad. He waited a second, slid the cursor onto the first icon, exhaled hard, and clicked.
A PDF of a scanned UN internal report opened up:
ULTRA CONFIDENTIAL: REPORT INTO THE DEATHS OF NINE UN WORKERS IN KIGALI ON APRIL 10 1994.
He already knew what was in the second file without having to open it. He clicked on the icon anyway. A second PDF opened up:
ULTRA CONFIDENTIAL: AN ACCOUNT OF A MEETING WITH THE BOSNIAN SERB LEADERSHIP ON MARCH 25 1995.
For several seconds he could not breathe. He forced himself to inhale, exhale, take control. He placed his elbows on his desk and sat with his head in his hands for several minutes, waiting until the thoughts whirling through his brain began to calm. In a way, he felt a kind of relief. He had feared—known—for a long time that this day was coming. All trace of the two documents had supposedly been removed from the UN archives in New York, Geneva, and Nairobi. The company that Hussein hired, at great personal expense, assured him it had recovered the originals and all extant copies. Efrat Global Solution’s corporate security division had a rock-solid reputation for accomplishing sensitive, illegal operations. But Hussein knew that while the past could be rewritten, spun, reconfigured, it could never be completely wiped. Every cover-up left traces, hints that led to a trail.
He would have to contact EGS. The situation was manageable, he told himself. He had been through worse. Perhaps Yael would help. Then he glanced again at the Rwanda document, remembered what it contained. Yael would not help this time.
*
Najwa looked around Francine’s living room, seeking a hiding place, but saw none. The voices were louder now, one male and one female. Both sounded familiar, the female voice especially so. Their speech was clipped as they moved around the kitchen—the woman was giving orders—and Najwa sensed their tense aggression. They were looking for something; opening drawers and cupboards, swiftly rifling through the contents then closing them, careful not to leave a sign that they had been there. She had no doubt that she was in danger.
Under the bed? That would be the best option. The only one, in fact. Until they looked there. But she would deal with that if and when it happened. Najwa quickly pulled her sports shoes off and cat-stepped into the bedroom, praying that the parquet would not give her away. It was a small room, and painted a faint shade of pink. A faded kilim took up most of the floor. A large window, diagonally bisected by a rusty fire escape, looked out onto the back of the neighboring apartment blocks. She could see a middle-aged man chopping vegetables in his kitchen. He turned and saw her, his knife raised in midair. Then she glanced at the bed. It was a twin. With two drawers underneath.
A large stand-alone antique closet stood in the corner of the room. The two voices sounded nearer so Najwa stepped inside it, pressing herself against the soft rows of dresses and jackets. She slowly pulled the door closed, her hand on its edge, hoping it would slide into place and stay shut. It swung open. Najwa closed it again. It opened again. There was no handle on the inside, and the voices were getting closer. There was a large crack across the door panel, so she hooked a fingernail inside the gap and managed to draw the door shut. Part of the room was visible through the crack.
Then they were in the room.
Najwa’s eyes opened wide.
“It could be anywhere,” said Nero.
“I know. Keep looking. How long will the CCTV be down?”
“Another three minutes. Then we have to …”
A loud knock at the door interrupted him. “Hey, that’s way over five minutes,” exclaimed Joel Greenberg. “What’s going on in there? Who’s there with you? It sounds like a herd of elephants. I have another spare key. I’m coming in.”
Najwa watched Nero yank open the window and climb out on to the fire escape, Roxana following immediately behind him.
*
Ten minutes later, Najwa was standing on the corner of Fifty-Ninth and Second Avenue, the hair on the back of her neck slowly rising up. Her skin prickled, as though she was about to start a fever. At first she thought it was leftover adrenaline from her adventure in Francine’s apartment, but this felt different. She was used to attracting gazes, mostly of men, sometimes of women, and this was not the same; she sensed a strange field of dark energy around her.
She looked around, taking in what seemed to be a typical Saturday morning. The sidewalks were crowded with pedestrians, the road hummed with traffic. Two women, who looked like students, headed toward the subway station at Lexington and Fifty-Ninth, loudly discussing the previous night’s party. A stooped elderly man, in sports shoes and a blue hooded top, walked a small dog on an extendable leash. A middle-aged black woman trudged along Second Avenue, weighed down with brown paper grocery bags. To Najwa at least, none of them looked remotely suspicious. There was no sign of Roxana, or Nero.
She stepped away from the road and started walking through a small square toward the Roosevelt Island Tramway. Tramway was a misnomer; Najwa was educated in Europe, where trams ran along rails embedded into the ground, and this was a cable car, with glass walls in a steel frame painted a bright, jolly red. From a terminal on the shore of the East River, it soared above Manhattan to Roosevelt Island, a long spit of land forty blocks long and 260 yards wide. The Tramway ran parallel with the Queensboro Bridge, which connected Manhattan with the island and then, on the far side of the river, Queens.
A row of benches lined either side of the open space. Najwa sat down in the middle of a bench on the right-hand side and looked around, she hoped not too obviously. A small circular rose garden stood in the middle, surrounded by gray stone tiles. On the facing row of benches sat a young woman. She had short blond hair, pale skin, and wore a black Geox jacket and blue Nike running shoes, with transparent bubble soles. Najwa had just bought the same shoes as part of her latest fitness plan. Three benches away, on Najwa’s right side, was a well-groomed woman in her fifties, with short brown hair. She wore a blue woolen coat and was reading the New York Times. There was a large Gucci bag at her feet, a few inches of denim showing among the shopping.
Both women had been here when Najwa sat down. So why was the hair on the back of her neck still standing up? Najwa trusted her instincts, which so far had never failed her. She took out her phone, switched to the front camera, held it up, and smiled, as though she was about to take a selfie. The screen showed a thickset man wearing badly fitting jeans and a black leather jacket, walking into the square. He sat down one bench behind Najwa, glanced at her, and nodded. Her eyes widened in surprise. The legendary Joe-Don Pabst. What was he doing here? Najwa was about to turn around and ask when he subtly shook his head. She quickly returned her phone to her purse.
As soon as Nero and Roxana climbed out of Francine’s bedroom, Najwa had walked to the front door. There she found an indignant and by now very suspicious Joel Greenberg. He was about to call the police, but Najwa managed to talk him out of that idea. The NYPD descending was the last thing she needed. She placated Greenberg by promising, her hand on his arm, her eyes on his, to call as soon as she had any news of Francine. It was a promise she intended to keep.
Now she reached into her pocket and took out the crumpled receipt she had taken from Francine’s kitchen. The top read: Café Port-au-Prince. It was a bill for $42.95: two entrees, desserts, and coffees. Najwa had already located the place on Google Maps and found the name of the owner, Carlotta. The café was on Roosevelt Island, ten minutes’ walk from the terminal on the other side. She glanced sideways at Joe-Don. He was absorbed in his cigarette, watching the tramcar rise up over Fifty-Ninth Street, slide swiftly along the black lines of cables, and head out into space.
Najwa stood up, crossed the plaza, and started up the stairs that led to the tramway entrance. She glanced around, reassured to see Joe-Don take a last drag on his cigarette, drop the stub on the floor, crush it with his foot, and walk after her.