The Washington Stratagem (40 page)

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. Yael looked around. Ten yards to her right stood a young man in his twenties, wearing sunglasses, a woolen hat, a denim jacket, and jeans, looking in the window of a grocery shop. He was clean shaven but had a large mole by the side of his nose. A woman of similar age, also wearing sunglasses, stood on the other side of the street examining a selection of T-shirts. She had long brown hair and noticeably thin lips. She wore a navy down jacket, and black and pink Geox loafers.

Two policemen watched the crowds a few yards away. Yael walked up to the older officer. He had short gray hair and a pudgy face. He looked at Yael suspiciously, but she showed him her
MI·T
card and his demeanor changed instantly. She pointed at the man in the woolen hat and the woman with thin lips. The policeman barked out an order at his colleague. They split up, one running toward the man, the other toward the woman.

Yael’s heart was racing now. She knew she was heading into a trap. But she had no choice. And she was not completely unprepared. She continued walking, holding the small, round weight in her right hand inside her jacket pocket, feeling the pressure of the spring against her fingers.

She was fifty yards from the van when she slowed down. The sidewalk was crowded, the traffic almost stationary, despite the cacophony of horns blaring. A street seller stood nearby, rapidly scooping sugared nuts into brown paper bags. He caught her eye and proffered a bag.

Yael shook her head and kept moving forward, slowly, toward the van.

She knocked on the door.

Nothing happened.

She knocked again.

She stepped forward to check the front of the vehicle when a sharp pain shot down her back.

“Nice work,” said a familiar voice.

Yael froze, wincing as the barrel of the pistol pushed hard against her spine.

“But not nice enough, motek.”

Roxana Voiculescu leaned forward, her hands resting on the polished wood podium as she looked out at the rows of journalists. Salon three of the Osman Convention Center was jammed with hundreds of reporters and television and radio crews, from Albania to Zimbabwe, all scribbling furiously, taping or filming her every word. She was on a high, lapping up the attention. She had just finished a fifteen-minute talk about the summit, its schedule and agenda, and then fielded several dozen questions. She had ignored the New York–based UN press corps, who, she could see, were becoming increasingly irritated.

As satisfying as that was, Roxana knew she would have to work with them again once the summit was over and everyone was back in Turtle Bay. An official complaint from the UN Correspondents Association would make her life difficult. Murat Yilmaz, the correspondent for the Turkish news agency Anadolu, and the association’s president, had been trying to get her attention for some time. Finally, Roxana directed the hostess to hand Murat the microphone.

Murat frowned. “Roxana, I have looked through your schedule, but there are no press conferences planned with any of the delegations or their leaders. Will we have a chance to speak to any of the P5 presidents?”

She smiled broadly as she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Murat, but there will be no press conferences with any of the P5 presidents during the summit. We—and they—agreed that it is best if they are left alone to concentrate on the extremely valuable work they will be doing in the next few days. But I will be available to assist you, and as you can see, I will be hosting a daily press conference.”

Murat looked puzzled. “And Caroline Masters? Will the acting secretary-general be available?”

“Again, I’m sorry, Murat. But the acting SG will not be available.”

Murat continued, holding on to the microphone. “Then why have we come all the way to Istanbul, Roxana, if nobody will talk to us?”

The other journalists looked around and nodded to each other, their indignation almost tangible. Murat had said what everyone was thinking. Roxana sensed her control of the room starting to slip away.

She straightened her back, keeping her voice calm and well modulated. “As I said, all of you are welcome to talk to me, whenever you need or like. But the main reason to be here is to report on the most important diplomatic summit in recent history, Murat. Your voices, your reporting, will help ensure the summit’s success. My press team will do all they can to assist you. I should have mentioned that we will be supplying a steady stream of remarks that you can attribute to the various delegations, reflecting their views as the summit continues. Some of the remarks will be kept to within around a hundred characters so they will be ready for Twitter, with your own additions of course. The remarks will be available in all the official languages of the UN as well as Turkish. Please include the hashtag ‘UNIstanbul.’”

Murat shook his head, sat down, and passed the microphone back to one of the hostesses. Jonathan Beaufort jumped up and waved his hand. Roxana ignored him, looking out over the assembled journalists. But apart from the British reporter, there were no other journalists with further questions.

“Thank you all for your attention,” said Roxana as Jonathan walked over to one of the hostesses and politely asked for the microphone. “If that is all, I wish you all a very productive summit.”

“Actually, it’s not all,” said a loud British voice, suddenly booming through the speaker system. “I have some questions, questions shared by my colleagues from the
New York Times
and Al Jazeera.”

Roxana suddenly seemed discomfited. She gestured at the technicians, signaling that they should switch off the microphone. The technicians shrugged, pressed some buttons, and aimlessly moved a slider up and down. It only made Jonathan’s voice even louder.

“Where is Yael Azoulay, what is she doing in Istanbul when she is supposed to be running the Trusteeship Council, who tried to kidnap her, and why has the Interpol warrant for her arrest been rescinded?” he demanded.

“Hello, Eli,” said Yael. “Can I turn around?”

“Slowly.” He was standing so close she could feel his breath warm on her neck. He smelled of soap. “Hands out of your pockets and no sudden movements.”

“OK, I am taking my hands out of my pockets now, slowly, just as you asked.” She removed her right hand, feeling the weight in it, the spring pushing against her fingers. “But can you stop twisting the gun into my back, please?”

The door of the van opened. There were two more men inside, both in their twenties, dark and tough looking. “Shalom, Yael,” said one. “It’s time to come home.”

Eli stepped back and eased the pressure of the gun barrel a fraction. It was all she needed.

She stepped forward, dropped her head, and slammed the back of her skull into Eli’s face.

At the same time she threw the weight in her hand into the van.

The stun grenade exploded with a deafening roar. The two men inside pitched forward, facedown and unconscious.

Salon 3 was completely silent, waiting for Roxana’s reply. “Thank you, Jonathan, for your question. But if you could please check your schedule, you will see that this is a briefing about the agenda of the Istanbul Summit, not about the whereabouts of a single former UN official,” she said, her smile fading.

Jonathan drew himself up to his full six feet two inches. “This briefing,” he announced, like a professor beginning a lecture on a subject he knew inside out, “is about spoon-feeding us preprepared tidbits of information that you then expect us to tweet so that your hashtag trends. I’ve been to plenty of UN pressers in my time, but this is the first one where the spokesperson has actually asked us to actively spread Turtle Bay’s propaganda.”

The rows of journalists turned to each other, muttering and nodding. Roxana looked back and forth at the technicians, her face increasingly anxious. One raised his hands in supplication, mouthing his apologies.

Jonathan surveyed the room, sensing the rising wave of dissatisfaction and indignation rippling through his colleagues. He put the microphone down and turned to Sami and Najwa, his head close to theirs as he spoke softly and quickly. Their conversation was brief, only lasting a few seconds. Sami nodded, reluctantly. So did Najwa, but with much more enthusiasm.

Jonathan stood up again. “If anyone wants some nice color for their coverage of the summit instead of retweeting the UN’s handouts, President Freshwater will be shopping somewhere in the Grand Bazaar, five minutes’ walk from here”—he paused and looked at his watch—“in about ten minutes.”

Yael spun around on her right foot and ducked down under Eli’s gun arm. She slid her left arm under his right elbow, hooking his arm into a lock. With Eli trapped, she used his body weight to stabilize herself, pivoted leftward, and smashed her right elbow into his face. She grabbed the barrel of the pistol, twisted it, and pushed it outward, making sure she was out of the line of fire. She yanked the gun around, using her hips to put the full force of her body into the twist until Eli let go.

Yael slammed the gun barrel into Eli’s face. He staggered back, blood pouring from his nose.

She stepped backward, making sure to keep a distance, but keeping the gun trained on him.

He wiped his face, coughed, spat a long spout of blood, and advanced toward her.

“Stand back, Eli. I will shoot you.”

Eli laughed as he walked toward her. “I’m waiting, motek.”

Yael moved away, still pointing the gun at Eli, her finger on the trigger, aiming at his chest.

Eli continued walking. “You won’t shoot me. You can’t. Now give me the pistol. We can still get you out of here.”

Yael glanced behind her and backed into the door of a shop. It was a dark, narrow space, packed with bolts of brightly colored cloth piled up against brown walls.

The owner, a wizened old man in his seventies, took one look at her and scurried out.

Yael retreated farther until she stood in front of the counter, her gun still trained on the entrance.

Eli was framed in the doorway. “This is it, Yael. There is nowhere else to run. Come with me now. We can still get you out of here.”

“Get out, Eli.
Get out!
” Yael’s finger tightened on the trigger, trying to control the tremor in her hand.

Eli laughed and stepped toward her.

The underground shooting range is cold, noisy, and stinks of cordite
.

“Happy sixteenth birthday,” her father says, as he hands her the Glock 17
.

The weapon feels heavy in her hands, almost unreal
.

He shows her how to hold the gun. “Stand with your legs apart. Breathe steadily, aim at the heart, and squeeze the trigger slowly.”

She does as he says, points the gun at the paper target, and nervously presses the trigger. The Glock jumps in her hand
.

The shot goes wide and high, clipping the target’s shoulder
.

He gently guides the pistol down a fraction of an inch
.

She fires again. This time her shot hits the edge of the bull’s-eye
.

“Look, Aba!” she exclaims, her nervousness turning to excitement
.

She fires again and hits the center of the target
.

“Look, Aba!”

He nods, and his approval courses through her veins, a drug that she craves
.

She holds the gun steadily now. Her finger tightens and eases, tightens and eases
.

The shots start to bunch up in the center of the bull’s-eye
.

Look Aba, look, look, look
.

The back door of the fabric shop opened onto a large courtyard surrounded by three high walls. Offcuts of cloth were scattered across the ground, the bright yellows, reds, and blues a sodden mess after the morning rain. Wooden pallets were piled up in one corner; a colony of cats had taken over another. They meowed indignantly as Yael sprinted across their space.

Three Dumpsters stood against the far wall. The gap between the top of the Dumpster and the wall was about eight feet, she estimated. Yael jumped up on top of the center Dumpster, stood astride the lid to spread her weight, launched herself upward, and grabbed the top of the wall. The bricks had been covered with rough concrete, which scraped her fingers as she clambered upward.

Her shoulder muscles howled in protest as she dragged herself onto the ledge, swinging her body up behind her. She rolled over the top onto a large flat roof. Yael lay on her back for a moment, gasping for breath, ignoring the daggers shooting down from her neck, when a shadow fell across her.

“You should have fired at me, not at the wall,” said Eli, standing on the edge of the roof.

Yael sat up and reached around for the pistol. The weapon, now empty, was jammed into the waistband of her jeans, pressing against her spine.

She arched her back and yanked the gun out.

“None left. I counted.” Eli stepped toward her.

“Who needs bullets?” replied Yael, holding the gun like a hammer. She hurled it just to the side of Eli’s head. Just as she had anticipated, he swerved left. The gun hit him full in the face.

“
Ben zonah!
Son of a bitch,” he shouted as he toppled backward, landing with a crash.

Yael walked over to the edge and looked down. Eli was lying on the top of the Dumpster, unmoving.

Even now she had a strong urge to climb down and check that he was all right. But he had fallen straight. No blood seeped from his head, and his neck was not twisted. None of his limbs appeared to be broken or dislocated. He would live.

And in any case, she knew there would soon be a backup team on the spot, especially after her stun grenade.

The gunman quickly set up the sniper rifle on the roof of the apartment building. The call had come five minutes before: “The target is on the roof of the bazaar.”

The Dragunov was accurate to a range of about three-quarters of a mile. It fired a steel-jacketed bullet with an air pocket, steel core, and lead base, for what was known as “maximum terminal effect.” The target was about five hundred yards away but would soon be moving—and swiftly. It was going to be a difficult shot, but he felt confident.