Free The Washington Stratagem by Adam LeBor Page A

stubbed it out. She lit the candles, blew them out, then lit them again. This was ridiculous, she told herself. She was behaving like a teenager. She walked over to the door and picked up a clutch of envelopes she had placed on the small standing table. The doorman had handed Yael her mail the previous evening and she had not bothered to check them. A heavy cream envelope was stamped with the frank of the Israel mission to the UN. She opened it: an invitation to a dinner for the visiting Israeli foreign minister in two weeks. It was the latest in a recent surge of invitations to receptions, cocktails, dinners. Why now?
    When Yael had first started working for the UN, the Israelis had deluged her with invitations. But she had deliberately stayed away from the mission on Second Avenue, didn’t even know anyone who worked there. Eventually, the invitations stopped. There must a reason for this latest charm offensive, she thought, and put the dinner invitation to one side as she leafed through the rest of the mail. A white envelope had been hand-delivered. Her name was written on the front, and there was no return address.
    She was about to open the envelope when her telephone rang. The screen displayed “Unknown number.”
    Yael put the envelope down and pressed the green button. “Who is this?”
    “Hi, this is Manuel Garcia. I am calling from the Al Jazeera UN bureau. We would like to get your comments on some footage we have that appears to show—”
    “How did you get this number?”
    “Is this Yael Azoulay?” Garcia asked.
    She hung up.
    She walked over to the picture window and stared at the Hudson River, unsettled now. The lights glimmered in the apartment blocks on the other side, shimmering in the dark water. What footage? And where was he? She lay down on her bed and looked resolutely at the ceiling, determined not to look at her watch. And no, she would not call. He knew where she was; he had a mobile telephone and her number. Perhaps he had been delayed. Perhaps there had been a flood or a fire in the subway.
    Her mobile phone beeped again. She grabbed the phone. A text message declared, “Bon Appetit :-)” The message was from Isis Franklin, an American woman in her midforties who was head of public diplomacy at the US mission to the UN. Yael and Isis had met in Kandahar five years earlier while Yael was on mission. Yael was then a frequent visitor to Afghanistan. Isis was working for USAID, the American government aid organization, organizing literacy programs for young Afghan women. The expatriate bubble in Afghanistan was almost as macho and sexist as the country itself: a world of soldiers and spies, mercenaries and military contractors, “fixers” and the dubious hangers-on that were attracted to every war zone. Yael had dubbed them the “Oakleys,” after the brand of wraparound sunglasses the men inevitably wore. The two women had naturally gravitated to each other. They spent time together, hanging out in the UN compound, chatting, because there was nowhere else for them to go in the evenings. The television room was usually full of soldiers watching soccer games or action films. A social trip into town was out of the question. The pressure-cooker world of Afghan expatriate life—the stress, danger, and isolation—accelerated their friendship. After a while, Yael and Isis became close. After Kandahar the two women lost touch, but now that Isis was in New York, she and Yael quickly fired up their friendship again. Perhaps because she worked for the State Department, rather than the UN, Isis did not try and manipulate Yael or extract information to use for her personal advantage. Instead they talked about their families, men, relationships, and their lack of them. Yael had started to confide in Isis, at least about personal issues. She had told her about her date tonight. Isis’s eyes had lit up with excitement at the prospect of what she called an “in-house” romance. Yael thought about