The Washington Stratagem (2 page)

The man in the gray jacket finally reappeared, talking on his mobile telephone. He looked at Hilawi and nodded.

Hilawi’s fear suddenly vanished, to be replaced by a dull resignation. He would not shout or make a spectacle of himself. He would go with dignity. He looked at the door. It had not closed properly behind the young couple. It rocked back and forth, just an inch or two.

“Here is your passport, Mr. Hilawi,” said the man in the gray jacket. “Enjoy your visit to Azerbaijan.”

He handed Hilawi his passport back and held out his arm. Hilawi shook his hand. His grip was strong and firm. The leather glove was soft and cool against Hilawi’s skin.

Hilawi walked forward. His hand was shaking and he struggled to open the rusty door. It sprang open and Hilawi stepped through.

Azerbaijan.

The smell of coffee, exhaust fumes, grilled meat. The sound of Turkish techno music. Women with their heads uncovered. The sun hard and bright against a turquoise sky.

Hilawi wanted to dance. Instead he walked a few yards to the Azerbaijani border post, which operated out of an old bus. He handed in his passport. The border guard glanced at the first couple of pages and stamped it immediately. The customs officers sat on an aluminum table nearby, smoking and drinking coffee. He looked at them but they ignored him.

Hilawi stepped away and stood still for a moment, breathing in the dusty air. He placed his hand on his chest, his palm tingling, hot and wet with sweat. His heart slowed down. Hilawi looked at the Lada driver and began to walk across the square.

The Lada driver put his newspaper down and nodded at Hilawi. He cracked and spat out a final seed and opened the door. Hilawi smiled with pleasure, the relief still coursing through him as he clambered into the car. The Lada was just as he had imagined. The springs poked the underside of his thighs. The inside smelled of tobacco and the last remnants of a fading air-freshener. There was even a newspaper on the backseat, that day’s issue of
Respublika
, an Azeri daily.

The driver put the car in gear and it lurched forward, bumping down the road. Hilawi sat back, picked up the newspaper, and scanned the headlines. Astara sped by, a blur of dun-colored buildings, hooting cars, children selling sweets and chewing gum. He read for a while but the letters began to shimmer and a roaring sound filled his ears.

Hilawi blinked several times and tried to focus.

The world spun and turned black.

Yael Azoulay walked briskly across the Prometheus Group’s lobby to the welcome desk, kitten heels clicking on the polished floor.

Tall vases of fresh orchids stood at either end of a long, curved slab of black granite, scenting the air with their heavy fragrance. A Gaggia coffee machine hissed and gurgled in the corner, wisps of steam curling around its burnished steel fittings. Yael was the only visitor. The receptionist, a sleek, well-preserved brunette in her midfifties, looked up from her computer screen. She regarded Yael with indignation, as though she was disturbing the sanctity of a cathedral.

Yael paused for a moment, and glanced swiftly at her watch before she spoke. “Please pass my apologies to Mr. Clairborne,” she said, her voice polite and regretful, the hint of annoyance barely detectable.

The receptionist’s face fell for a moment before she quickly fixed her professional smile in place. In all her fifteen years at the company nobody had ever walked away from an appointment with the chairman and CEO of the Prometheus Group. And it would be on her head.

“Ma’am, I can only apologize again. Mr. Clairborne certainly knows you are here and is expecting you,” she said, her voice emollient. She reached for the telephone. “Can I offer you a coffee, some water?”

“Thank you, but I have just received an urgent e-mail. I have to travel back to New York immediately. We’ll try again, next time,” said Yael as she started walking toward the door.

It was now 11:27 a.m. Her appointment had been for 11:00 a.m. She had arrived twenty minutes early. After reading that day’s editions of the
Washington Post
, the
Daily Beast
, and
Gawker.com
, it was time to put her iPad away and throw a grenade into the mix. Yael looked back to see the receptionist speaking on the telephone, her body hunched, her voice low and urgent.

Yael had almost reached the entrance when she heard someone call her name. She turned around to see a young woman striding quickly across the foyer toward her. Her blond hair was gathered into a tight bun and her bleached teeth gleamed under the artificial lighting.

“I’m
so
sorry for keeping you waiting; it’s been such a crazy morning,” she exclaimed. “Welcome to the Prometheus Group, Ms. Azoulay. I’m Samantha, Mr. Clairborne’s executive personal assistant. Mr. Clairborne is
really
looking forward to meeting you. Please let me know if I can do anything to make your experience here more comfortable or productive. Mr. Clairborne is ready for you now.”

Yael shook Samantha’s hand. It was cool and dry, her grip firm but not aggressive. She sensed Samantha instantly assessing the cut, season, and cost of her clothes. Samantha wore a fitted black Dior jacket with a cream trim and a matching skirt that showed off her shapely figure and Manolo Blahnik shoes. Yael had seen the Dior outfit in last month’s
Vogue
. She knew the shoes were Manolo Blahniks, because she had looked longingly at an identical pair in a shop window, but reluctantly decided that the $700 they cost would better be invested in her savings account, even though she had no idea what she was saving up for.

Yael let the empty words wash over her. Fareed Hussein’s many requests over the last few months for a meeting with Clarence Clairborne had been studiously ignored. One had even been leaked to the
Daily Beast
. “UN Secretary-General Pleads for Prometheus Face Time. Again,” the headline had read. As a last resort the SG had personally called an acquaintance who sat on the Prometheus board, asking him to intervene. Such a personal plea was a major admission of weakness, which indicated that Hussein’s position, and office, counted for little. Clairborne had softened, barely. He still refused to meet the SG, but had grudgingly agreed to see Yael for fifteen minutes. The website had run another story this morning on the SG. “Fareed Hussein Denies Claims of Ill-Health, Aims to Serve Full Term.” The article, which Yael had read on the train from New York, was an especially skillful construct. Most of the piece was taken up with speculation about Hussein looking increasingly tired, reports that he was suffering from blackouts, and two quotes from unnamed “Western diplomatic sources” expressing concern about his apparent ill-health. The denial, from Hussein’s spokesman, was buried at the bottom.

Yael suddenly felt dowdy in her Zara black trouser suit and white fitted shirt, both bought two summers ago. A loose button fell off her cuff and rolled across the floor. She reached down to pick it up and a jagged pain shot down her left side. She breathed in sharply and stood up. The button rolled away.

Samantha instantly leapt forward. Yael used the moment to quickly check that the small blue enamel UN brooch pinned on the lapel of her jacket was securely in place.

Samantha bounced back and handed the errant button to Yael. “Are you OK?” she asked. Her voice was full of concern but a triumphant half smile played on her lips.

“Thank you, I’m fine. Too much tennis,” said Yael, briskly.

The pain in her side faded but Yael’s unease grew. Clairborne had a legion of former cabinet members and corporate heavy hitters on his board, the best lawyers in the United States, and a virtually unlimited pot of money to keep them all loyal.

She had a single sheet of photocopied paper.

In Washington terms, the Prometheus Group was a curious hybrid. Its headquarters took up much of a block on K Street, the only address that counted when it came to the capital’s legion of lobbyists. The Prometheus Group was a lobbying firm, like its neighbors. It was renowned for its excellent connections to the Pentagon and the United States’ numerous intelligence agencies. But it was also a private equity company, specializing in asset management in the Middle East, Asia, and the developing world. Its new security division, providing corporate security and intelligence, was open only to select clients who were guaranteed anonymity. Their names were the subject of much fevered speculation in DC’s clubs and bars.

Prometheus claimed to have strong firewalls between its divisions to prevent messy conflicts of interest. But few believed the claims, especially in a town where so many had made fortunes from blurring the lines. Either way, the group’s shares had more than doubled in value over the last two years. Two investigative bloggers had tried to dig deeper into the company’s wealth and its military and intelligence connections, but their stories had not been followed up by the mainstream media. One of the bloggers was quickly outed, apparently, as a pedophile and had closed his site. The other was now working for Prometheus’s corporate liaison department.

Despite the flowers, the newspapers, and the coffee machine, the lobby was less welcoming than it seemed. The ceiling was studded with small black half domes, which concealed wide-angle CCTV cameras. A thick wall of reinforced glass ran across the front of the lobby. The only way in and out was through a circular steel-and-glass cubicle in the middle of the glass wall. For the cubicle doors to open, the doormen had to manually punch a code into a keypad. A heavy wooden door, at the back of the area, controlled access to the suites of offices. The doormen, both of whom had the build and posture of former soldiers, wore blue suits, white shirts, and navy ties emblazoned with “PG.” Two heavily built men, dressed in the same outfit, sat on the leather sofas at each end of the foyer. All had copies of the
Washington Post
on their laps. The four men seemed to be waiting for someone, but they did not pick up or read their newspapers.

One wall was covered with photographs of board members: two vice presidents, three former secretaries of state—one dating back to the Kissinger era—an equal number of former national security advisers, and at least a dozen former congressmen and senior diplomats, including two former US ambassadors to the United Nations. The latest addition to the board of the Prometheus Group was Eugene Packard, a hugely popular television evangelist.

Yael walked back across the lobby with Samantha. They stood by the wooden door, which was firmly closed. Yael watched with interest as Samantha rested her right palm on a small monitor mounted on the wall. There was a keypad above. The monitor lit up; Samantha covered the pad with her left hand and punched in a six-figure code. The keypad beeped once. Samantha then placed her right thumb in the center of the screen. It beeped again, the main door opened, and they rode the elevator together. It stopped at the twelfth floor but the door did not open. Samantha inserted a special key, embossed with the PG logo, into a narrow slot on the side of the cabin. The door slid aside, and they stepped into an anteroom. A slim Southeast Asian lady in her sixties, elegantly dressed in a green business suit, sat at her desk in front of a computer monitor, wearing a headset and microphone. She smiled at the two women and buzzed Clairborne, informing him that his visitor had arrived. The door to his office swung open.

“Ms. Az-ou-
lay
,” exclaimed Clairborne, stretching out the syllables of her surname in his Alabama accent as he bounded forward to greet her. “Thank you so much for making the time to visit with us today.”

Everything about Clarence Homer Lincoln Clairborne III was big. His shoulders, a reminder of his time as a linebacker on the University of Alabama football team; his hands, the flesh of which swelled around his wedding and college rings; his hair, a stiff helmet of red and gray, held in place by gel and spray; his face, burned mahogany on the deck of his oceangoing yacht and the golf course; his hand-tailored suit with its roomy, two-button jacket and deep lapels that could not conceal the epic swell of his stomach. Even his voice was big, booming across his office as he greeted Yael.

Clairborne ushered her to a corner, where two leather armchairs stood, identical to those in the reception area. A small side table stood between them, a jug of water and a large cigar box standing on it, its lid embossed with a large “PG.”

Yael sat down, the polished leather squeaking underneath. Her pulse quickened; her senses were on full alert as she scoped her surroundings, totally focused now. The parquet wooden floor was covered with an enormous single Persian rug, the walls wood paneled, while an old-fashioned desk with a rectangle of green leather on the writing surface took up most of one corner. Two photographs in silver frames, of a young woman and a teenage boy who looked like a youthful version of Clairborne, stood on its right-hand corner. The lighting was muted and the air smelled faintly of cigar smoke and fresh coffee. The most important signifier in any Washington office, Yael knew, was the occupant’s power wall. Company foyers showcased an array of formal portraits of the board members, while the CEO’s office usually had more relaxed shots, showing him glad-handing, eating, and drinking with the great and good. There was a hierarchy to decode: a snatched picture at an event with a DC rainmaker was lower on the totem pole than a common table at a charity dinner. Best of all was something
à deux
: just the two guys, enjoying themselves and shooting the breeze.

Yael had expected to see an array of casual pictures of Clairborne with the numerous VIPs whose official portraits filled the reception area. Instead there were just four photographs, separately displayed and all roughly the size of a sheet of printer paper—small by Washington standards. Three showed Clairborne playing golf with the last three former presidents. In each Clairborne had his arm around the president’s shoulders. The fourth, mounted away from the others, showed Clairborne shaking hands with Eugene Packard, the television evangelist. The chairman of the Prometheus Group, Yael understood, was subtler than he first appeared.