coming in. Whatâs this about?â
Najwa moved nearer. âOlivia is dead. It happened this morning, here in the building.â
Sami started with surprise and opened his mouth to speak when Najwaâs iPhone trilled. She looked at the number. âSorry, Sami, I have to take this,â she said, and walked out.
He watched Najwa depart. How did she know that? And was it true? There was no reason for her to make it up. Sami knew and had liked Olivia, and felt genuine sadness at the prospect of her death. But his reporterâs instincts crept up, and he put his feelings aside. A few beers a couple of months ago with one of the buildingâs telephone technicians had elicited the information that all UN voice mail boxes had an override code. The seven-figure number accessed any voice mail up to assistant-secretary-general level and allowed the listener to hear the messages. A hundred-dollar bill had bought him the code.
If Olivia were dead, UN security and who knows who else would be monitoring her telephone line. By calling to ask for her heâd probably just alerted them to his interest. But Internet telephone calls werenât placed through a telephone number and could not be traced. He logged into Skype on his laptop, brought up the call record console, and dialed Oliviaâs number. When he heard her voice he pressed the record button, moved his cursor to the applicationâs keypad, and tapped out the seven-digit code.
Five
Y ael said good-bye to Bonnet and walked into the inner sanctum. The SGâs suite encompassed the entire width of the 38th floor of the Secretariat building and a good part of its length. The back windows looked out over the East River, the Queens shoreline, and an enormous billboard for Pepsi-Cola. The front windows had a breathtaking view of Manhattan, its skyscrapers glinting silver in the morning sunshine. The walls of the office were decorated with pictures of the SG shaking hands with various world officials and the presidents of the P5, as well as numerous actors and pop stars who had been made honorary UN ambassadors, Hussein being notorious for his love of glamour and celebrity. The SG was sitting at his gargantuan black desk, made from environmentally certified Brazilian hardwood. A small leather sofa, a coffee table, and two leather armchairs stood on the other side of the room. That was where the SG usually met with his trusted confidants in a more relaxed atmosphere. Sometimes he even insisted on making tea and coffee himself in the en-suite kitchen and bringing it to the gatherings.
Yael moved to sit down on the sofa. The SG shook his head. He beckoned her to one of the chairs in front of his desk. The seat was hard and positioned just low enough so that she had to look up at him. The desk was bare apart from a small pile of documents and papers and two silver-framed photographs. One showed a smiling Indian boy about five years old, the other a pretty young Indian woman in a graduation gown. Yael saw that her memo to Hussein was on top of the papers, together with a copy of that dayâs New York Times .
The eighth secretary-general of the United Nations was Indian, the son of a Muslim father and Hindu mother. Born in Delhi in 1940 to an upper-class family and educated by private English teachers, Hussein still used the idioms of the 1930s and 1940s, an affectation that he carefully cultivated. The familyâs mixed heritage meant they were targeted by extremists on both sides during partition in 1947. Hussein and his parents fled in the violence, and lost everything they owned. A photo of his younger brother Omar sat on his desk next to a framed half of a postcard of the Taj Mahal that had been torn in two. The brothers had pledged to keep their halves for life if they were ever separated.
Omar had been ripped away in the chaos at the Delhi railway station and never heard from again. The family had resettled in London, where Fareed Hussein studied
Najwa moved nearer. âOlivia is dead. It happened this morning, here in the building.â
Sami started with surprise and opened his mouth to speak when Najwaâs iPhone trilled. She looked at the number. âSorry, Sami, I have to take this,â she said, and walked out.
He watched Najwa depart. How did she know that? And was it true? There was no reason for her to make it up. Sami knew and had liked Olivia, and felt genuine sadness at the prospect of her death. But his reporterâs instincts crept up, and he put his feelings aside. A few beers a couple of months ago with one of the buildingâs telephone technicians had elicited the information that all UN voice mail boxes had an override code. The seven-figure number accessed any voice mail up to assistant-secretary-general level and allowed the listener to hear the messages. A hundred-dollar bill had bought him the code.
If Olivia were dead, UN security and who knows who else would be monitoring her telephone line. By calling to ask for her heâd probably just alerted them to his interest. But Internet telephone calls werenât placed through a telephone number and could not be traced. He logged into Skype on his laptop, brought up the call record console, and dialed Oliviaâs number. When he heard her voice he pressed the record button, moved his cursor to the applicationâs keypad, and tapped out the seven-digit code.
Five
Y ael said good-bye to Bonnet and walked into the inner sanctum. The SGâs suite encompassed the entire width of the 38th floor of the Secretariat building and a good part of its length. The back windows looked out over the East River, the Queens shoreline, and an enormous billboard for Pepsi-Cola. The front windows had a breathtaking view of Manhattan, its skyscrapers glinting silver in the morning sunshine. The walls of the office were decorated with pictures of the SG shaking hands with various world officials and the presidents of the P5, as well as numerous actors and pop stars who had been made honorary UN ambassadors, Hussein being notorious for his love of glamour and celebrity. The SG was sitting at his gargantuan black desk, made from environmentally certified Brazilian hardwood. A small leather sofa, a coffee table, and two leather armchairs stood on the other side of the room. That was where the SG usually met with his trusted confidants in a more relaxed atmosphere. Sometimes he even insisted on making tea and coffee himself in the en-suite kitchen and bringing it to the gatherings.
Yael moved to sit down on the sofa. The SG shook his head. He beckoned her to one of the chairs in front of his desk. The seat was hard and positioned just low enough so that she had to look up at him. The desk was bare apart from a small pile of documents and papers and two silver-framed photographs. One showed a smiling Indian boy about five years old, the other a pretty young Indian woman in a graduation gown. Yael saw that her memo to Hussein was on top of the papers, together with a copy of that dayâs New York Times .
The eighth secretary-general of the United Nations was Indian, the son of a Muslim father and Hindu mother. Born in Delhi in 1940 to an upper-class family and educated by private English teachers, Hussein still used the idioms of the 1930s and 1940s, an affectation that he carefully cultivated. The familyâs mixed heritage meant they were targeted by extremists on both sides during partition in 1947. Hussein and his parents fled in the violence, and lost everything they owned. A photo of his younger brother Omar sat on his desk next to a framed half of a postcard of the Taj Mahal that had been torn in two. The brothers had pledged to keep their halves for life if they were ever separated.
Omar had been ripped away in the chaos at the Delhi railway station and never heard from again. The family had resettled in London, where Fareed Hussein studied
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