The Geneva Option Read online

  Dedication

  For Kati

  Epigraph

  Most blessed among women is Yael

  Judges V, the Song of Deborah, verse 24.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Goma and New York

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Geneva

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgments

  This book is dedicated to my wife, Kati. She and our children, Danny and Hannah, provided all the love, energy, and inspiration a writer could wish for, and more. My special thanks go to Elizabeth Sheinkman, my brilliant agent at William Morris Endeavor. Her belief in The Geneva Option, and in Yael Azoulay, never wavered. But a novel also needs an ardent editor or two: Claire Wachtel at HarperCollins in New York and Lynn Gaspard at Telegram were enthusiastic overseers, encouraging, excising, and skillfully honing where needed. Thanks also to Matthew Patin for his diligent copy editing, to Elizabeth Perrella for keeping the show on the road, to Michael Correy for his elegant design, and to Jo Rodgers, who guided me through the geography of New York bar culture.

  The seed for The Geneva Option was planted in July 1992 when I flew into besieged Sarajevo on a United Nations airplane while on assignment for The Times of London. The memories of my time in the former Yugoslavia, and the friendships I made there, are as vital as ever. I am grateful to John Kulka, formerly of Yale University Press, who commissioned and published Complicity with Evil, my nonfiction work about the United Nations’ response to genocide and to Robert Baldock at YUP in London. Special thanks to Andrew Tuck, Steve Bloomfield, and Tyler Brûlé of Monocle magazine, who have sent me to all sorts of interesting places, assignments that helped inspire this book. My thanks also go to my colleagues at the Economist—Fiammetta Rocco, Emily Bobrow, and Lucy Farmer for providing me with thrillers to review; and to Edward Lucas, John Peet, Tom Nuttall, and the late, much missed Peter David. Over the years, I have met and interviewed numerous senior UN officials and diplomats. Many prefer to remain anonymous but I am especially grateful to Michael Williams, David Harland, the late Richard Holbrooke, Samir Sanbar, Mo Sacirbey, Mukesh Kapila, David Hannay, and Diego Arria for sharing their insight, as did James Bone, a veteran former UN correspondent.

  In New York there are no hosts more gracious and welcoming than Peter Green, Bob Green, and Babette Audant. Peter also generously shared his expert knowledge of the United Nations and guided me through the intricacies of life in Manhattan. Sam Loewenberg was an enthusiastic guide to Geneva at night and showed me parts of the city that tourists do not usually get to see. In Budapest Erik D’Amato provided me with welcome company and a room of my own that proved the most creative of incubators. Olen Steinhauer, Michael Miller, and Andrew Miller cast an expert eye over the manuscript. George Szirtes and Charles Cumming helped along the way. Justin Leighton and Roger Boyes were there when needed with advice and encouragement while Joshua Freeman kept my website updated. Alan Furst has always been a source of inspiration. I am especially grateful to Laura Longrigg, my former agent, who helped me get this far. My mother, Brenda LeBor, gave me an artist’s eye for detail and my brother Jason has always been there for me. My late and very much missed father, Maurice LeBor, always encouraged my writing career and would have been thrilled to see this book.

  In September 2012 I took an early draft of The Geneva Option to an Arvon residential writing course at Totleigh Barton. I benefited greatly from the feedback of my fellow students and our tutors Andrew Miller and Monique Roffey, while Oliver Meek and Claire Berliner were warm and welcoming hosts. Special thanks to Annika Savill, my former colleague at The Independent, who first encouraged me to become a foreign correspondent, for her insight and wisdom over the years. When inspiration flagged, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Harold Budd, and the Cocteau Twins set synapses crackling once more. Csaba Toldi at Anahita Yoga helped keep me in shape. Last, but by no means least, a tip of the hat to my good friend Z., a deft guide to the world of shadows.

  Prologue

  The wind rose and fell through the airshaft, roaring so loudly it seemed the building was breathing.

  Olivia de Souza held her right hand out over the void. Her fingers were steady as she felt the draft rush up against her palm, whisking the smoke from her cigarette away. She loved the still of the early morning, standing on the narrow maintenance balcony, staring into the darkness below, where dust and secrets gathered. The United Nations secretary-general’s staff meeting started in two hours, at 9:00 a.m. Until then, this was her special time, shared with no one.

  But today her sanctuary on the 38th floor brought her no peace. She picked a sliver of rust off the railing, flicked it over the edge, and watched it vanish, her lips pressed tight with worry. She had sat up half the night, lighting one cigarette after another and staring into the gray haze as she turned things over and over in her mind. She had to talk to somebody, but there was only one person she could trust—a colleague, perhaps even a friend now, who was on mission but due back tomorrow. She could wait one more day.

  Like many middle-aged women working in the Secretariat building, Olivia was a UN widow. After twenty years she was still addicted to the adrenaline rush, the glamour, and proximity to power, and all for the cause of humanity’s greater good. She would have liked to have been a diplomat herself and, of course, to have had a family of her own. But there were few enough opportunities for an orphan from the slums of Managua. She had made her choices and a good life for herself. Even her detractors, the ones who whispered to each other that the world’s most powerful diplomat should have his affairs arranged by someone more, as they said, “presentable,” than a short, dark, Nicaraguan spinster, admitted she was loyal, dedicated, and supremely efficient.

  A light switched on and off in one of the rooms nearby and she turned around to look. Who was wandering around the 38th floor at this time in the morning, she wondered. It must be one of the cleaners. Nobody else from the SG’s office came in this early. He had not continued his Korean predecessor’s habit of starting the workday at 8:00 a.m.

  The building itself was slowly waking up. Olivia shivered and pulled her coat around her as the heating system hissed and sputtered. The UN’s New York headquarters was of pensionable age and showing it. Condensation dripped off
the inner windows, which were crusted with decades’ worth of dirt. The airshaft’s panels were peeling away, revealing gray slabs of asbestos underneath. The concrete was fissured with tiny cracks. The balcony gently vibrated as the service lift stopped and she stepped away from the edge. A notice on the low railing declared, “Maintenance Staff Only: Do Not Gather or Loiter.”

  She stifled a yawn and tried to put her worries aside, thinking instead about her dinner date last night, the second in a week, and how hopeful his eyes had looked as his hand slid across the table to hers. It had been a long time, such a very long time. He had asked her to keep their rendezvous secret for now, which made it even more romantic. What did he see in her when he could have his pick of his department, if not the building? He even promised to come to the Latino orphanage on 155th Street with her this weekend to help deliver toys and food. His fingers were long and slim, and it was all she could do not to grip them as hard as she could.

  The door to the balcony opened. Olivia turned, smiling with pleasure and surprise, her heart pounding at the sight of him.

  He stared at her, his eyes alive with excitement as he walked toward her. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  She trembled like a teenager on a first date. “Me too.”

  “I am so happy to see you,” he said, his voice warm and reassuring. He moved closer, and she breathed in the familiar smell of his lemon cologne.

  Her smile wilted as she began to ask, “But how did you know I—”

  “Shhh,” he said, and she felt the latex glove hard against her lips.

  He slammed her against the railing, his hand clamped over her mouth. She jammed the burning cigarette end into the base of his neck. He gasped and gritted his teeth with the pain, knocking her hand away and trying to punch her in the stomach. She swerved sideways and the blow glanced off her rib cage as she flailed wildly at his face, raking her nails across the base of his neck, jabbing at his eyes.

  She kicked his shin, digging her heel into the bone and scraping it hard down his leg. He yelped in pain, swore, and she felt his grip loosen. She slipped out from under him and tried to grab the door but he snatched her arm again and held his hand flat against her face, pushing her hard against the railing with his body. He gripped her wrists together with one hand, grunting as he forced his weight on her and clamped her mouth and nose shut with his thumb and forefinger, twisting the cartilage, bending her backward at the waist. The metal bar of the railing dug into her spine and the pain lanced like knives through her.

  The sky spun, the walls rushed back and forth, and the terror soared inside her. She tried to cry out but she could barely breathe. He worked diligently until suddenly she was flying, and there was nothing left to fight against.

  Goma and New York

  One

  Yael Azoulay tapped her pencil on the cover of the blue plastic file and slid it across the coffee table. “Game over, Professor,” she said.

  Jean-Pierre Hakizimani smiled and picked up the bottle of Johnnie Walker Gold Label whisky. “And if I say otherwise?”

  Yael slowly shook her head. “There is no otherwise.”

  Hakizimani poured himself a generous measure and picked up the folder. He glanced at the United Nations logo on the cover and opened the file, flipping through the pages as though examining an essay by an especially tiresome student. He slowly tore the sheets into pieces, dropped the shreds into an overflowing ashtray, and reached for the heavy silver cigarette lighter on the table in front of him. He pressed the lighter gently and touched the flame to the scraps. The papers began to burn.

  Yael leaned forward, picked up the bottle and upended it over the ashtray. The flames smoked and sputtered. The tawny liquid slopped over the sides, the ash and cigarette ends swirling in the puddle as it spread over the table. The stink of alcohol filled the room. Yael put the whisky back down. She picked out a scrap—sodden, charred at the edges, and emblazoned with the logo of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. She placed it in front of him. She then extracted another piece from the wet mess on which Hakizimani’s photograph and the word “genocide” were clearly visible.

  “Shall I continue?” she asked.

  “What do you want?” he said, his voice bored.

  “You to stop.”

  “Stop what? Smoking cigarettes? Wasting my time in meetings like this?”

  Yael spoke clearly and methodically, as though to an errant child. The puddle had spread to the edge of the table and began to drip over the side, taking the ash and cigarette ends with it.

  “You stop killing Tutsis. You stop your raids into Rwanda. You disband the Rwandan Liberation Front, send your Hutu militiamen home, and close your bases in Congo. You sign a peace treaty with Rwanda and the new government here. You surrender to the UN tribunal.”

  Hakizimani laughed. “Absurd. Go back to New York or wherever you came from.”

  “Prison, or a life on the run, Professor. You choose.”

  “That does not sound like much of a choice,” he said.

  She pulled the chair close and looked into his eyes. They were a startling shade of turquoise. “It’s more than your victims had.”

  “That’s true,” he said, smiling.

  He raised his glass to her and proffered the bottle. What Yael wanted most of all was not whisky, but some fresh air. Even with the windows open, the presidential suite at the Hotel Goma smelled of bodies, stale tobacco smoke, and the half-eaten plate of goat curry sitting on the room-service trolley. The new Italian furniture was pockmarked with cigarette burns. The air conditioner rattled and shook to very little effect. The sweat ran in rivulets down her back and down her forehead, into her eyes. A fan stood on the floor, slowly churning the fumes.

  Yael wiped her face, nodded, and the president of the Rwandan Liberation Front passed her the bottle. She poured herself a small measure. She had read Hakizimani’s UN file so often that she knew every line by heart: born in 1955 to two schoolteachers, educated by Belgian nuns in a Catholic school in Kigali, a scholarship to the Sorbonne to study medicine, a master’s degree from Harvard, and then marriage to a daughter of Rwanda’s most powerful Hutu dynasty. This former chairman of the medical school at Kigali University in the Rwandan capital had once been marked out by London, Paris, and Washington, DC, as one of the new generation of African leaders, a generation that would lead the continent to stability, prosperity, and open markets for the world’s multinationals.

  By early 1994 Hakizimani was minister of health—until a car bomb in Kigali killed his wife and three children. He had decided to walk to work that day and lent them the car to go shopping. Tutsi extremists had been blamed, but nobody had ever been charged with the crime. The genocide started two weeks later, although the planeloads of machetes had been ordered from China long before. In three months the government’s militias had slaughtered 800,000 of their Tutsi countrymen, most of them by hand, along with any voices of Hutu moderation.

  Hakizimani was the ideologue of slaughter, the Goebbels of Rwanda, whose theory of “Hutu Power” demanded the complete extermination of the Tutsis. He had broadcast on the state station day after day, hour after hour, urging his compatriots to stamp on, squash, kill, and exterminate the “cockroaches.” He had even used his medical expertise to give instructions on how to slash the femoral artery in the upper thigh so that the Genocidaires could conserve their energy and dispatch their victims with a single blow.

  Hakizimani looked at Yael and shrugged. “Why would I surrender to anybody? I am quite safe here in Goma,” he said, clinking his glass against hers. “À votre santé.”

  Yael nodded. “Thank you. And to yours. For now, maybe, yes, you are safe in eastern Congo. But nothing is forever, especially in Africa. The new government will make sure of that.”

  He stared hard at her. “There are no elections due here for three years.”
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  Yael held his gaze as she spoke, her legs resting against the brown leather bag on the floor between her feet. “There will be a new government in Congo in three months, Professor.”

  She paused and sipped her whisky. “It will not be your friend. ”

  Yael had waited a long time for this moment, to meet the man dubbed “The Butcher of Kigali.” Reading his file was one thing. To see him in the flesh, quite another. Unusual for a Hutu, Hakizimani was tall and slim, like his Tutsi enemies. His face was narrow, almost triangular. Dressed in a black corduroy jacket, blue shirt, and jeans, and wearing designer rectangular metal-framed glasses, he still looked like a university professor. Yael had been worried that her emotions would betray her. A memory flashed through her mind: she was seven years old in Central Park, sitting on her big brother David’s shoulders, giggling loudly as he pretended to be a giant, striding between the trees. She looked at Hakizimani’s throat: soft, exposed, in easy reach. She gripped her pencil and mentally measured the distance across the table. The pencil’s point was sharp against her skin. Her heart started thumping. She silently calmed herself and controlled her breathing. Not now. Not here.

  Yael’s face and voice showed nothing of what she felt inside. She was calm and in control, a professional UN official on a delicate assignment. She opened her hand and let the pencil fall on the table. She leaned toward Hakizimani, her manner confiding. “Professor, please, face reality. You are wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for genocide. All UN member states are required to arrest you on sight. Your capture is merely a matter of time. You can no longer travel. You have to live in the jungle. Your friend, General Akunda, also thought he was invulnerable. He is now in a cell in The Hague. His indictment was sealed, so he was quite surprised to be arrested while he was buying chocolates in Brussels for his wives.”