Yael lay back in the thermal lake and closed her eyes, breathing in the sulfurous tang of the mineral-rich water. The night air was cool but the Blue Lagoon was the temperature of a warm bath. She could feel her muscles relaxing, the tension draining away. She checked the clock mounted on the outside wall of the lake’s glass-walled café: it was well after ten. He would be here any minute. She waved at Joe-Don, who was sitting by the door, nursing a Diet Coke and watching her carefully.
Yael and her bodyguard had gone straight to the Blue Lagoon from the Hilton. The thirty-mile journey usually took around forty minutes by road. The helicopter that brought them both, and her security escorts, had made it in less than half that time. Two members of the Viking Squad stood on the wooden walkway that ran around the lake, one on Yael’s right and the other on her left, machine pistols across their chest. A third stood on an arched bridge, ten yards away, that connected the wooden jetties jutting out into the lagoon. The crackle of their radios drifted through the night.
The water was a milky indigo and thick wisps of white steam floated above the surface. The lamps around the edge were a soft golden color in the dark. Islands of black, jagged lava jutted out from the water, their bases ringed by white mineral deposits. Shadowed mountains soared in the distance.
Yael had the place to herself. The Blue Lagoon had been cleared for her arrival. She closed her eyes for a few moments, rerunning her conversation with the SG in her head. She too had played a game with someone’s life, exploiting and manipulating a lonely young woman. But nobody had died, and a father and a daughter were now talking to each other again. And Rina Hussein was not the only daughter seeking a reckoning with her father.
Yael felt his presence nearby before she saw him, naked apart from a pair of swimming trunks, walking along the wooden bridge towards the Viking Squad policeman. The policeman held his arm out for a second, looked at the new arrival, then stepped aside.
Yael watched Menachem Stein walk to the end of the bridge, onto to the nearby jetty. He placed a small black bag on the wooden walkway and made his way down the steps. She felt her body stiffen as he slid into the water.
“Hello, Yael,” he said.
She stared ahead, did not reply.
“Mazel Tov, congratulations. That was good work today.”
“You’re late,” she replied, sliding away.
“Slichah, sorry. You only had to wait a few minutes.”
“Much more than that,” she said, half to herself.
She looked up at the sky. A passenger jet slowly descended to Keflavik airport, its wing lights blinking in the dark. “Still, I suppose I should thank you.”
“For what?”
“Istanbul. Shooting Eli’s gun out of his hand, when he was chasing me across the roof.”
“It was a tricky shot. I didn’t want to kill him.”
“Maybe you should have. It would have saved me a lot of time and trouble.”
Stein leaned back and stretched in the water. A seagull flew low, cawing loudly, wheeled sharply to the right, then soared away.
He cupped some water, let it drain over his head. “I like this place. It reminds me of the Dead Sea. But I never liked Eli. Even less when I saw him threaten you.”
“Was that you in New York? The photographs in Joe-Don’s mailbox?”
“Of course. A father needs to keep an eye on his daughter. Even if she won’t talk to him.”
Part of her was pleased by the news, but she would never admit it. “Michael Ortega?”
“Ortega was originally recruited by Clairborne. Then I turned him, to keep an eye on Clairborne. And then to watch you. Thanks for getting him the job as a doorman. That made my life easier.”
“How long has this been going on? Your paternal surveillance operation?” Yael asked as she stared at Stein. This was the first time she had seen or spoken to her father in eight years. His hair was grayer, the crows’-feet around his eyes deeper, his features more worn, sharper. He looked calm, but Yael sensed the emotions spinning underneath, his hunger to reconnect, flowing like a charge through the water. Not yet, Aba, you are going to have to work much harder.
“Long enough.”
Yael asked, “Who else is working for you?”
Stein looked at his daughter, amusement glinting in his eyes. “Guess.”
An idea flashed into Yael’s mind, one so outlandish it seemed too ridiculous to even vocalize the name. She did so, anyway. “Roxana?”
“From day one. We told her what she needed to know to advance her career. She told us what we were interested in.”
“Which was?”
“You, mainly.”
Yael stretched her arms and legs out, let them float on the water. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Roxana gave a dinner for some of the UN press corps. All she wanted to talk about was me, or so I heard.”
“How else am I supposed to find out how my daughter is?”
Yael looked down, determined not to smile. “And Fareed?”
Stein laughed. “Fareed works for Fareed. But he is always ready to trade.”
“Did you kill Schneidermann, so Roxana could be promoted and get you more inside information?
Stein stopped smiling. “Of course not. That was the Iranians. Who do you think I am?”
“I know who you are. I don’t know what you are.”
Yael lay back and stared at the sky. Stars glittered, thin points of light on a black velvet backdrop. The warm water was soothing. The exhaustion was rolling over her in waves. Part of her, a large part, just wanted to close her eyes and drift off to sleep. But she had so many more questions. “Eli said Mossad placed me in the UN. That they had dirt on Fareed and blackmailed him to give me a job and promote me. That’s why they wanted me to come home. So they could debrief me. I’ve been working for them for years without even knowing it. Is that true?”
“It’s part of the truth. One version.”
“Tell me yours.”
Stein turned towards Yael as he spoke. “We had copies of the Rwanda and Srebrenica documents. We let Fareed know and also that we would be happy if your UN career progressed. He agreed with us. But what you did, what you achieved, you did on your own. Tel Aviv would not be happier if you landed at Ben Gurion and told them everything you knew. But they weren’t about to kidnap you. Nobody is going to kidnap you while I am around. Eli set up a rogue operation to bring you back. Nice work, by the way. Ortega was supposed to catch up with you much earlier. But you did very well on your own.”
Yael turned to him, then looked away, damping down the emotions bubbling inside her. First she needed to understand, then she could shout, scream, cry, or do whatever it was she felt like doing.
“Who is this ‘we’ and ‘us’?” she asked.
“We have a lot to talk about. I’ll get to that.”
Stein moved closer. Yael pushed him away, feeling him flinch. “No. We don’t. I read the classified files about you. Everywhere where there is violence, conflict, every squalid little war, you are there, providing advice, arms, intelligence, and other ‘services.’” Her voice rose with her emotions. “Profiting from all the death and destruction. Kosovo. Darfur. Congo. Syria.”
Stein remained calm. “Is that why you wouldn’t talk to me for so long?”
“Is that why Mom left you?”
“In part. But when she eventually agreed to hear what I have to say, she started thinking about coming back. At least she and I are talking now.”
Yael felt her father’s eyes on her, brought her feelings under control. She needed answers. Getting emotional would not bring them. “Who. Is. We?”
Stein dipped his head under the water for a moment, floated on his back before he answered. “We is a small group of current and former politicians, industrialists, business people, diplomats, and others who know that sometimes you need to take shortcuts.”
“What kind of shortcuts?”
“Necessary ones. To sidestep the system. To get the job done.” He turned to Yael. “You know about that, I think.”
“Tell me some names. Who?”
Stein slowly shook his head. “I cannot do that.”
Suddenly Yael was back in her childhood bedroom in their New York apartment, listening to a babel of languages. “The ones who visited Aleph. You and Mom told me they were clients. But they were your backers.”
Stein nodded. “They were both. Aleph started as a research outfit, then we realized that we could act with the information that we had. But we needed a new operation. We couldn’t just launch ourselves like white knights, ready to save the world.”
“Which was Efrat Global Solutions?”
“Exactly.”
“So Efrat, which had its long and bloody fingers in almost every war zone in the world, was really a force for good, working behind the scenes to save lives.”
Stein smiled. “Yes.”
“Mom tried to tell me the same thing, when I saw her in New York. Do you really expect me to believe that?”
“It’s a lot to process, I understand.”
Yael did not answer, swam out into the lake. Stein remained at the side. The water was very buoyant and she floated on her back for a while, staring at the sky, picking out the constellations, listening to the seabirds squawk. A torrent of questions tumbled through her mind. She sorted them into a list.
Her father was leaning against the wooden jetty, his body floating in the water, watching her as she swam back.
Yael positioned herself a couple of yards away and began to speak.
“Kosovo in 1998. You supplied military advisers and intelligence to the Serbs.”
“We had people on the ground, yes. They fed us back information. It was passed to NATO. The NATO bombing started, the ethnic cleansing ended. Hundreds of thousands of people went home. Alive. Kosovo is now an independent state.”
“Iraq. You worked with Saddam Hussein, through a front company.”
“Same story. We only operated in Kurdistan. We gathered information, supplied disinformation to Saddam. Kurdistan is now a de facto independent state. The only success story of that war.”
“Darfur. Your operatives liaised with the Janjaweed, the regime’s militia.”
“We were tasked by the Pentagon with intelligence gathering. We could get in where they could not. At that time, eight or nine years ago, there was serious planning going on for western intervention. But it didn’t happen.”
“Either way, Efrat made plenty of money. It profited from the wars and the killing and the destruction.”
Stein rested his hand on Yael’s shoulder. She flinched for a second. Stein said, “Yes, it did. That is the world in which we live.”
Yael brushed Stein’s hand off. “Congo—KZX and the Bonnet Group? The coltan plot? You were distributing weapons.”
“They were duds.”
“What?”
“Old, rusty AK-47s. They didn’t work. Was there a genocide in Congo?”
“No.”
“Why not? Because you were alerted.”
“By Fareed.”
“And who instructed him to do that?”
Yael closed her eyes for a moment, slid back under the water. The wind had picked up now, was blowing hard and cold. Her father had told Fareed to leak the sound file about the planned attack on the Tutsi refugee camp so she could stop it? It was too much to think about. “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I am prepared to believe something of what you claim. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I tried. You wouldn’t take my calls. You didn’t reply to my e-mails or letters.”
“You brought Kapitanovic here so he could kill Akerman.”
“I did, yes.”
“You facilitated a murder.”
Stein stared out over the water. Small waves were breaking the surface. “Akerman had facilitated many more. He was a dead man walking. Kapitanovic had been waiting a long time. It was much worse than you know. Akerman was on the Bosnian Serbs’ payroll. He had been since the start of the siege. He used to tip the Serbs off when the Muslim soldiers’ raiding parties broke out. He had blood on his hands. He’s no loss.”
“And Bonnet?”
Stein’s face darkened. “Charles Bonnet, more than anyone else, is responsible for the death of David. I don’t know what he told you. He was in operational command. Sure, Fareed dreamed it up, a cock-eyed scheme. But Bonnet was tasked with making it happen. Every step of the way. He was working for the DGSE, the French intelligence service, and they knew better than anyone the kind of slaughter that was planned.”
“Who was on the roof in New York?”
“Me and Kapitanovic. I was the spotter. He took the shot.”
“He missed.”
“Only thanks to you.”
“Why didn’t he fire again? Bonnet was still in range, lying on the ground. Kapitanovic had a laser scope. He couldn’t miss.”
“There still was a risk.”
“Of what?”
“Hitting my daughter.”
“The car bomb in DC. The police got a tip-off. Was that you?”
Stein tipped more water over his head, did not reply.
Yael leaned back and exhaled slowly, watching the steam float. “How does Mom know Reinhardt Daintner?”
Stein started with surprise. “What?”
“I saw them at the Columbia reception. He had his hand on her arm. They looked very comfortable in each other’s company.”
“KZX was a client of ours, once. Barbara handled their account.”
“A client or one of your backers?”
“Does it matter?”
Yael waited before she replied. She was no longer sure that she knew the answer. “What do you want, Aba?”
Stein stretched out his arm and picked up the black waterproof bag from the wooden walkway. He took out a thin brass nameplate. “Remember this?”
Yael nodded, suddenly back in her parents’ office, when her family was whole.
Stein handed the nameplate to her. “It’s time to come home.”