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 Tjörnin, 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.
Yael looked down at the row of framed pictures on the railing that showcased the avian varieties. Who knew bird-watching could be so engrossing? A whooper swan glided across the water, its long white neck regally straight. A short and stubby greylag goose bobbed past, its beady black eyes looking from side to side. A mallard watched her warily from the stone bank, its green head tucked into its curved body. The sun suddenly emerged and the lake shimmered. The breeze faded away. The air was cool and fresh.
She was a long way from Jaffa. But part of her was still walking down Yefet Street, knowing that Eli was watching. Khamis, she later learned, was really called Mahmoud, and he was not from Jaffa. There had been signs: Arabs from Jaffa were usually fluent in Hebrew, their Arabic inflected with slang from neighboring Tel Aviv, and he could not speak Hebrew properly. At times he seemed not to know his way around the backstreets. This was because he was from Gaza, Eli had revealed. He had infiltrated Israel and was part of a Hamas cell that planned to kidnap Yael and hold her hostage in exchange for several high-ranking political prisoners. So he told her. Then, at least, she had believed Eli.
A small part of Eli’s story was true. Mahmoud really was from Gaza, she’d eventually discovered. The rest was a lie. He was gay and had fled to Israel, the only country in the region where it was possible to live freely as a homosexual. But there was a price for admittance: in Gaza they called it collaboration, and in Tel Aviv they called it cooperation. Mahmoud was to make himself useful in training exercises. Word soon trickled back to the refugee camps, and Hamas issued a death sentence. Mahmoud refused to carry on working with Eli. He hanged himself in his prison cell the night before he was to be sent back.
Yael watched the mallard uncurl its neck, admiring the bird’s smooth confidence as it slid into the water and paddled out into the lake. She was prepared: a Nokia burner was taped above her ankle inside her right boot. Two pairs of plastic cuffs were jammed down the side of the left. She knew what Eli would use and she had taken the antidote in the hotel. She did not feel nervous. Rather, she felt a calm certainty that Reykjavik would be where she finished her business with Eli. For good.
Her mind drifted back to the meeting with Magnus and Karin. Then she remembered what had been nagging at her. The portly man with the silver hair, the head of the Iranian delegation. An inch of skin by his right eyebrow, puckered and scarred. She had seen that scar before. She took out her phone and called up Joe-Don’s number. Nothing happened. Joe-Don did not know she was out by the lake. She had told him she needed a nap for an hour before they headed to Bessastadir, and he had believed her, more or less. She had slipped the DO NOT DISTURB sign on her door and snuck out of the back entrance of the hotel. He would be furious, she knew, especially after the shooting at Columbia University.
She looked down. There were no bars on the network connection indicator. She tried again. Still nothing. There was no point trying to use it. Something was blocking the signal. It was starting.
An insect bit her neck. She raised her hand to swat it away.
“Hello, Motek,” said a familiar voice behind her.
Yael wheeled around and her legs gave way.
*
Three miles away, Fareed Hussein paced back and forth across the presidential suite at the Hilton Reykjavik Nordica, his face twisted in anger as he gripped a sheaf of papers.
“How?” he demanded. “How could you allow that—that fiasco—to happen?”
“I resent that,” said Roxana, her eyes glittering dangerously. “It was not a fiasco. Everything was fine until the last question.”
Hussein sat down by the desk, pointing the papers at Roxana like a weapon. “Exactly. The last question. How did that Icelandic journalist know about Akerman’s documents?”
He stared at Roxana. He had never seen her like this before. She was rattled, disheveled, her hair in disarray. She even smelled different, a heavy application of Zest barely disguising yesterday’s sweat.
Roxana shrugged. “Information leaks. We cannot always stop it. Akerman is news. He’s shot dead outside your front door, then it turns out he was drinking and backslapping with Bosnian Serbs while they were taking the Muslim prisoners away to be shot.” She paused, ran her fingers through her hair, to no noticeable effect. “On your watch. While you were running peacekeeping. Here’s a heads-up, Fareed. This story has legs. Twenty-year-old legs, reanimated. It’s a zombie. And I cannot control it.”
Hussein’s anger seemed to suddenly evaporate, and with it, his self-confidence. His shoulders slumped, his face gray and lined under the bright lights of the hotel room. “So what should I do?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On how many more unexploded mines there are, waiting to go off. I cannot plan your media strategy if you don’t tell what’s waiting out there, in the archives. Or not in the archives.”
Hussein looked around the presidential suite while he gathered his thoughts. The suite covered a thousand square feet, with a bedroom at one end and kitchen dining area at the other. It was a symphony in shades of white: walls, curtains, furniture, ceiling. Even the painting on the wall was a shade of white. The floor was dark polished wood, covered with pale rugs. The sofas and armchairs at least were a soft shade of brown.
He walked over to the glass wall that looked out across the city to Reykjavik bay and all the way to Mount Esja. He watched a six-deck cruise ship slowly pull out of the harbor, a large part of him wishing he was on board. He could tell her, he supposed. Tell her that two documents existed. One put on the record his catastrophic failure to intervene in Rwanda, to even save the UN aid workers. Another recorded that a year later, he had tried to make a second deal behind the scenes, this time with the Bosnian Serbs, again to protect the UN’s neutrality. And how, just, like in Rwanda, the Bosnian deal too had gone horribly wrong.
Hussein returned to the sofa, switched on the flat-screen television and flipped through the news channels. Akerman’s death and the files that had gone missing from the UN archives were being discussed on the BBC, Euronews, CNN, MSNBC, every news channel that he tried. He put down the remote control, picked up the list of accredited journalists and flicked through it. Roxana had spent a good part of the flight over memorizing the names and faces of reporters that she would allow to ask a question. All of them were earnest environmental reporters, completely uninterested in Akerman, Bonnet, Srebrenica, and Rwanda. “This Icelandic reporter, Rafnhildur,” he asked. “Who is she? Does she have an agenda?”
Roxana shook her head. “I am as surprised as you are. I met with her first thing this morning at seven thirty, before breakfast. I suggested a softball question about the summit putting Iceland on the map that I guaranteed that you would answer. I hinted strongly that if it went well, she could have an exclusive interview with you at the end of today about the summit. She agreed!”
Hussein sank back on the sofa, exhaled slowly. Another summit, another bland, luxurious hotel room. There would not be many more, he sensed. His time on the thirty-eighth floor was coming to an end.
The murder of a UN official, his personal envoy, outside his front door, was a very clear message. He personally did not fear assassination. There was no point. It was impossible to completely protect a dignitary from a determined killer. But he did fear the destruction of everything for which he had worked, his good name and future legacy. Reykjavik was supposed to be the pinnacle of his career. The Istanbul Summit had failed. Its vast multilateral agenda—bringing peace across the Middle East—had always been overambitious. But Reykjavik, he knew, could work. A straightforward reconciliation between two enemies whose maneuvers threatened to bring the world to the brink of war, all under the aegis of the UN. A major step toward world peace. This was to be his legacy, not the catastrophes of his time as head of peacekeeping, but now events were spinning out of control. Maybe he should give Rafnhildur that interview. Just hand over the two documents, give her the scoop of a lifetime, then sit back and watch the deluge, ending this misery of uncertainty.
But the two documents were not the worst of it. They could probably be explained away; blame shifted onto his subordinates, the wavering P5, most of all, the member states’ pusillanimity. If the USA, Britain, France, any of the P5, had really wanted to prevent the genocides in Rwanda and at Srebrenica, they would have. A few battalions of ground troops in Kigali; a wave of air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs—these were all that was needed. Either way, the media storm would eventually pass. Two UN reports had officially exonerated him. The SG was supposed to execute policy, not make it—although the reality was different. The worst of it was the recording. The recording where he had discussed—permitted, authorized—the death of five hundred people. That could not be explained away. The recording at least, remained secret.
Meanwhile, he had to make a choice, a choice that could not be finessed, side-stepped, or delegated. It was his, and his alone.
Yael had told him of Rina’s offer—her demand—on the flight to Reykjavik. He had lost his brother. His wife had left him. His only child had disowned him. Even Yael had not been able to get Rina back—until now, when she would reconcile but only on her terms: release the two documents about Rwanda and Srebrenica. So which would he sacrifice? His good name or his daughter?
The choice, he sensed, was being made for him. The ghosts that haunted the thirty-eighth floor, the whole of the Secretariat Building, were coming to life. The Tutsi families slaughtered at the Hutu checkpoints, the Bosnian men and boys lined up in a field, they were all rolling down the corridors, calling his name, demanding a reckoning. But why here, of all places?
Hussein said, “An Icelandic political reporter is suddenly up to speed on the inner workings of the UN archive? Who prepped her?”
“James Beaufort, maybe. Or Najwa. I will find out,” said Roxana.
Hussein held his head in one hand, rubbing his eyes with the other. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I have done what I could. I will resign on our return to New York.”
“No, Fareed! You will not. You will stay in office, until you hear otherwise.”
He looked at her with amazement. “Who are you, to threaten me? And what with?”
Roxana took out a small blue digital recorder from her pocket and pressed play.
Charles Bonnet’s voice said, “We need at least five hundred. That will have maximum impact.”
Hussein heard himself reply. “No, no, that is unnecessary. It’s far too much. A couple of hundred at most would be sufficient for our purposes. Less would suffice. Even a few dozen.”
*
Yael surfaced slowly, rotating through her senses, one by one, focusing on keeping her breathing deep and even, her limbs soft and relaxed. She was sitting in a car being driven carefully, no sudden acceleration or stops. Nothing to draw the attention of the police. Her hands, tied together with a plastic cuff, rested on her lap. The thin band cut into her skin. She moved her feet, subtly, and realized they were unbound. Her fingers, too, responded.
There were two voices in the car, Eli’s and a woman’s. Yael opened her eyes a tiny fraction for a second. The car was a gray four-door Ford family sedan, well used, with sagging blue upholstery. A good choice, unobtrusive. The woman was driving. She had straw-blond hair and wore a black parka. Eli was sitting next to her, close enough to Yael that she could smell his Issey Miyake cologne.
“Now what?” asked the woman.
As soon as she spoke, Yael remembered her. Michal. She had had short black hair when she joined a year after Yael. She completed the course, then had never been seen again on operations. Until now. Which meant one thing: Kidon.
Eli continued speaking. “We go ahead as planned. Everything is in place. Once the operation is completed the United States will immediately start mobilizing to attack Iran. There will be an official declaration of war. Bombing will start in a few hours. And we go home. Mission accomplished.”
“And Motek here?”
“Home, debrief.”
“And then?”
“She will have several options. None of them involve working for the UN. Or ever leaving Israel again.”
“It will be a long download,” said Michal, laughing.
“Twelve years’ worth,” said Eli.
Michal glanced at Yael in the mirror. “Are you sure she’s not awake?”
Eli reached back and opened Yael’s right eye. She did not flinch, kept her breathing rhythmic. She glimpsed the outskirts of Reykjavik. The streets had turned from picturesque to drab. They were passing through a housing estate: gray box dwellings, each with a patch of green in front.
Two seconds later Eli let go of her eyelid. The housing estate disappeared. Eli continued talking. “Absolutely. It’s a knockout for at least eight hours. The next time she wakes up it will be somewhere over the Mediterranean.”
*
Salim Massoud watched Clarence Clairborne come into focus on his computer screen.
“Sobh bekheir, old friend. You are looking older,” said Clairborne.
Massoud smiled. “That’s the plan.”
Clairborne stared at his computer. “Silver hair suits you. But you may need to lose a little weight.”
Massoud reached inside his mouth and removed two pieces of rubber. “Better?”
“Much. The girl?”
“Like a moth to a flame. Exactly as the Israeli predicted. Out of the way and on her way home, for good.”
“The statement of responsibility is written?” asked Clairborne.
“Yes. Jaysh al-Arbaeen has long arms.”
Clairborne frowned. “One thing I am worried about.”
“Speak freely, please.”
“Menachem Stein.”
*
Yael made tiny fluttering movements with her eyelids, as though as she was dreaming. It was enough to allow her to see inside the car and get a glimpse of the outside. They had turned off onto a side road a little while ago.
Eli had her iPhone in his hand and was flicking through the menus. Michal was focused on her driving. The road was empty, flanked on both sides by grass shoulders. Yael flexed her fingers, felt the plastic cuff bite her wrist. Eli whipped around.
She dived forward and yanked the hand brake up.