The Geneva Option (18 page)

T
he greasy smear was now a puddle and getting wider by the second. Mitchell dropped back a gear, eased the throttle back, and tried keep control, but the motorbike began to slide underneath him. The slick reached halfway across the road. He tried to steer into the skid but the bike flew out between his legs, flipped over to the side, and slid into the nearby ditch, its rear wheel spinning uselessly as the engine screamed in protest. Mitchell slammed onto the asphalt, rolling over and over as he skidded across the road.

He came to a stop in a ditch. He lay there for several seconds, then tried to sit up, but an agonizing pain lanced through his knee and up his back. He looked at his leg, twisted underneath him at an unnatural angle. The pain was excruciating. Mitchell reached for his telephone, his hand shaking, when he saw that the Land Cruiser had stopped just ahead of him. A man was walking toward him. He would help, he was sure. Mitchell looked up hopefully as something smashed into his helmet and everything went black.

Geneva

Eighteen

Y
ael handed her passport to the woman sitting on the other side of the shabby, brown wooden desk. She flicked slowly through the pages with interest. “Costa Rica,” she said, looking at Yael's photograph and then back at her. “I've never been there. I hear it's beautiful.”

Yael nodded. “You should. It is. We have everything: beaches, mountains, rain forests, jungle, wildlife.”

“So, Claudia Lopez, why did you leave paradise to come and work as a cleaner in Geneva?” she asked, looking at Yael quizzically.

“Paradise is now run by drug cartels. There are much better opportunities here. And much fewer gunmen. I am interested in international development. There are lots of NGOs and aid organizations here. Eventually I want to get a job with one. But for now cleaning seems a good way to start earning some money.”

The owner and manager of Tip-Top Office Services was an imposing bottle-blonde, a Serb somewhere in her late fifties, wearing light and skillfully applied makeup. She had a husky voice, cured by decades of smoking, high Slavic cheekbones, and penetrating green eyes under frameless half-moon glasses. Yael could see that Jasna had once been beautiful, and she was still striking. The firm's office was a small room behind a
tabac
on the Rue Pradier, in the backstreets near Geneva's central train station. In addition to Jasna's desk, it contained three creaking chairs; a computer with an old-fashioned monitor, an ancient keyboard and mouse; and a battered metal filing cabinet. The walls were once white but had darkened with age. The room smelled of coffee, cigarettes, and Chanel No. 5, which Jasna wore in abundance. Several white cigarette ends lay in a large glass ashtray, each ringed in pink lipstick.

“Of course you do,
draga
, darling. Everybody wants to work for an NGO. Is that why you came to me? Because of my contracts?”

“Partly. And also because I heard you pay decently, and on time.”

Jasna nodded, pleased to hear about her reputation. She picked up a packet of king-size Vogue cigarettes and offered it to Yael. “It's true. I do pay on time. Perhaps we can find something for you. But it's a big jump from cleaning a desk to sitting behind one. For that you need connections. And they are very hard to get.”

Yael took one of the long white cigarettes, nodding sagely. “How did you make yours?”

Jasna slid an ashtray across the table and lit Yael's cigarette before inhaling deeply on her own. “Someone helped me. A long time ago,” she said, looking into the distance. “You have experience cleaning?” she asked, suddenly businesslike. “We do need more staff. I have just been offered a contract for a new . . . ”—she paused and rummaged on her desk, picking up a letter with a large imposing letterhead—“ . . . institute. The UN-KZX Institute for International Development. Sounds very grand, doesn't it? It seems we don't have enough development institutes in Geneva,” she said ironically.

Yael looked around while Jasna spoke. The office's only decorations were a poster of Lake Geneva, a calendar with a picture of puppies for each month, and a mirror behind Jasna's chair. A framed photograph stood on each corner of her desk, among the piles of paperwork, newspapers, and thick manila files. The headquarters of Tip-Top Office Services reminded Yael of the office of every Balkan official she had ever dealt with. The real question was, how had this mom-and-pop ramshackle-looking operation ever won any lucrative cleaning contracts at the UN? In Yael's experience that demanded either a substantial bribe, high-level contacts, or usually, both. Of course, it was theoretically possible that Jasna simply did not waste company money on fancy office furniture and fittings, just made sure to undercut the competition's bids. Theoretically.

Jasna continued reading: “It's a corporate joint venture with the UN—the first. Fareed Hussein himself is coming to the opening with all the big ambassadors: German, French, American, Chinese, and lots from Africa. The guest of honor will be Desiree Yundala, the wife of Hakim Yundala, the head of the UN's security department. Says here that Mrs. Yundala was recently appointed the head of the Year of Africa Protocol and Preparation Committee. So you see,
draga
, if you want a nice job at the UN, you need to marry someone important,” Jasna said, smiling as she peered over the top of her glasses.

“The institute was originally supposed to be in a new building, but now they say the building is not ready yet, so the institute will work out of an annex at the Palais des Nations, the UN headquarters here. They want an early-morning shift, Monday to Friday, starting at 6:00 a.m. You will have to get up early, so you won't have much time for a social life. Or a boyfriend. You are a pretty girl. You do have a boyfriend, Claudia?”

There were no points for shyness where Jasna came from, especially from the womenfolk, and Yael answered confidently. “No. Do you?”

Jasna laughed—a deep, throaty sound that came from somewhere deep inside—and sat back, more relaxed now. Yael could feel her becoming more sympathetic. Yael leaned forward and held Jasna's eye. “I am not scared of hard work, Jasna. I tidied up after my brothers and sisters at home. I helped my mother. I know which end of a mop to hold.”

“That's more than my husband ever did.”

Yael decided she liked this woman. “Did?”

Jasna rolled her eyes, but Yael sensed the pain behind the bravado. “We came here in 1991 when the war started. I worked to build up the business but he refused to clean. It was woman's work, he said. A man's work, it turned out, was drinking with his cronies, smoking, and watching the war on Serbian television. After six months he went back to Belgrade. To fight for our homeland, he said, against the Ustasha in Croatia. But even that wasn't enough for him. Or maybe I wasn't. Once that war was over, he went again, to fight the Mujahideen in Bosnia.”

Jasna shook her head. “He was a fool. I never saw him again. Still, I can manage without a husband.” She picked up the photograph nearest her and swallowed hard. “But he took my son with him to Bosnia.”

Yael felt Jasna's grief radiate through the room. She looked at her questioningly.

Jasna shook her head, almost imperceptibly. She put the picture down and handed Yael's passport back to her, her hand shaking slightly as she fought to steady her voice. “And you? Student?”

Yael nodded. “Community college in New York. I want to take some more courses here. Maybe do a degree in economics.”

“Like my daughter. She is a lecturer in economics at the NYU,” said Jasna proudly, showing Yael the second photograph, one of a younger version of Jasna.

Yael caught sight of herself in the mirror behind Jasna's desk. Her auburn hair was now black, cut short and spiky; her eyes were dark brown, thanks to tinted contact lenses; and her skin was the color of light coffee, courtesy of a fifty-euro bottle of fake tan. Dressed in black jeans, blue sweater, tennis shoes, and a padded denim jacket, she looked like any of the many thousands of young internationals in Geneva. The ten-euro half-diopter reading glasses made her appear almost intellectual, she thought, although she still started with surprise each morning when she looked in the mirror.

Claudia Lopez had passed easily through immigration at Charles de Gaulle Airport two days ago, and there was no reason why she should not have. Claudia's passport was genuine, recently issued for a woman two years younger than Yael, although a thousand dollars handed across a desk by an old friend of Joe-Don's had ensured that Costa Rican officialdom had not yet caught up with the fact that Ms. Lopez had been killed in a car crash a year ago. Yael did not enjoy traveling under the name of a dead person, or mimicking her appearance, but recognized that she had little choice. She and Joe-Don had stayed overnight in Paris at a dingy hotel in Belleville, and the following morning he had purchased a well-used Peugeot 303 in cash for two thousand euros. They drove straight through the French-Swiss border, where, because it was lunchtime, there was not a guard in sight, just as Joe-Don had predicted.

Joe-Don had used the five-hour journey to give Yael a detailed tutorial in living off the grid. They would pay for everything with cash and never use debit cards, credit cards, or ATMs. (When Yael had asked where they would get the money, he had smiled knowingly, telling her not to worry about it.) They would keep Internet communications to the bare minimum, using both public terminals in different Internet cafés and TOR, a free anonymizing software that disguised their IP addresses, making them untraceable. They would communicate via pay phones or through text messages sent on disposable, prepaid cell phones. They would throw away the phones every couple of days, would stay in seedy hotels where nobody asked questions, and eat in cheap cafés or from supermarkets. They would blend in, be unremarkable. The Brits, he said, called it “Going Gray.” Yael had listened patiently, although she was already familiar with these precautions. The good news, he added, as they trundled along at a steady seventy miles an hour, was that gray and unremarkable did not necessarily have to mean drab. Yael did not have to look like a bag lady, Joe-Don said, handing her two thousand euros.

Geneva was stolid and Swiss, but with a strong French influence, and the city was more cosmopolitan than many knew. The older Genevois were neither friendly nor unfriendly, and well aware that the prosperity of their hometown—and prosperity was very important to them—rested largely on the internationals and their generous allowances and per diems. But the younger Swiss were open-minded and welcoming. The city was home to a vast and transitory population, many of them with large disposable incomes and time on their hands. They worked at the UN complex, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the CERN nuclear center, or the myriad aid organizations, think tanks, consultancies, and foreign diplomatic missions that added zest to the otherwise staid city.

Yael looked back at Jasna as she continued: “So with your interests and experience you would be perfect for this KZX place. Personally, I do not much like German companies. The Germans killed almost all of my family in the Belgrade air raids in 1941. But they pay well and on time too, so we cannot be choosy.”

She reached under a pile of newspapers and took out that day's edition of the
Financial Times
, tapping a story on the companies' page. “This is a good opportunity for us. KZX is going to merge with the Bonnet Group, it says here. KZX wants to launch its own range of mobile telephones, tablet computers, gaming consoles, and laptops. They are talking about setting up a joint headquarters here in Geneva.”

Yael silently processed this news. The Bonnet Group and KZX. The mining company and the media company. Together they would be unstoppable. They could corner the market in coltan and cut off the supplies to the competition. Nokia, Samsung, even Apple would all eventually go out of business.

Jasna looked at Yael. “I follow the news. Can you guess what I did before I came to Geneva?”

Yael shook her head. “Actress? Film star?”

Jasna smiled, pleased despite herself. “Flatterer. I was a professor of economics at Belgrade University.” She looked carefully at Yael. “Claudia Lopez, you remind me of someone. Have you been to Belgrade? Have we ever met?”

Yael shook her head and thought fast. Jasna did seem familiar, but she could not place her. Yael had been to Belgrade several times in the last few years on UN business as successive Serbian governments tried to assure the world that they were doing all they could to find and arrest General Ratko Mladic, then the world's most-wanted war criminal. Yael was sure she had not met Jasna among the procession of slick-suited functionaries with American accents and university degrees that Serbian governments produced to show the West that the country was on the right track.

Yael had also briefly visited the Serbian capital in early 1994 with her brother, David, when she was sixteen, while he worked for the UN refugee organization. And then she remembered that David had been severely disciplined for using UN vehicles to move Serbs stranded in newly independent Croatia across the front lines back to Serbia. What was the name of the town where they had been? Osijek. Yes, that was it. A grim place, freezing cold and frightening, where everyone had taken cover underground from the shellfire. The entire hospital had been moved into the basement. She remembered crying because the streets were full of dead dogs.

Jasna gave her a searching look, picked up a thick file, and weighed it in her hand. “This is all the paperwork we had to organize for one employee, and she is from Stockholm and has a work permit. I like you, Claudia, but with all respect to . . .
Costa Rica
,” she said, the faintest trace of sarcasm in her voice, “if you don't have a work permit I cannot help you. You do have a Swiss work permit?”

Yael shook her head. Holders of Costa Rican passports enjoyed visa-free travel to the Schengen Area of the European Union and Switzerland. Joe-Don had supplied Claudia's passport, but a Swiss work permit was beyond his reach, he had explained. They had already taken a risk entering the country with a machine-readable passport, but had had no option. The old-style version would have required a visa and would have drawn far more attention from the French border officials at the airport. A Swiss work permit would demand extensive background checks, financial references, and questions to the Costa Rican authorities. Use your charm, Joe-Don had replied, when Yael had asked how to get around this.

Jasna shrugged and put the file down. “No work permit means no work. It's very simple.”

So now what, Yael thought quickly, sensing Jasna's growing disbelief in her cover story. She had to get this job. Yael reached into her purse for her wallet. “Perhaps there is a way around this, Jasna,” she said, taking out several large denomination banknotes.

Jasna put up her hand. “Please, Claudia, or whatever your name is, do not insult me. This is Switzerland, not Central America. I don't know how it works in Costa Rica, but here the boss pays the employees, not the other way around.”