The Geneva Option Read Online Free PDF

machine fueled by intrigue, lubricated by betrayal, staffed by spies, sycophants, a handful of idealists, and sinecured relatives of Third World potentates. And it leaked like the proverbial sieve.
    Sami looked like a bright but absentminded postgraduate student. Most days he wore a standard outfit of Gap khaki trousers, a long-sleeved shirt over a T-shirt, and sneakers. His mop of curly, dark-brown hair needed a trim, and his black eyes gleamed with intelligence and a ready smile. This façade served him well. The building was full of diplomats and UN officials who had been disarmed by Sami’s warm and apparently disorganized manner into revealing far more than they had ever intended.
    Official department spokespeople, employed to speak to the press, had four levels of attribution: on the record, meaning they could be quoted by name and so would say nothing quotable; as a “department source,” meaning they would open up a little, but only warily, because colleagues might trace the information back to them; as a “UN source,” when they would speak more freely, because that term encompassed about sixty thousand employees; or, every official’s favorite, “deep background,” which meant that the information could be reported but not attributed to anyone at the UN, even though it was obvious that it originated there. The really wily operators started a discussion with the words “I’m going to tell you this, but you cannot use it” as a means of simultaneously flattering the journalist and stopping information being printed. As soon as Sami heard that phrase he immediately stopped the conversation. Whichever level of sourcing they chose, rival factions and departments continuously briefed, leaked, and counterbriefed against each other.
    Had it always been like this? Sami wondered. Probably. Despite the burst of idealism that created the UN in 1945, countless wars and political disasters have ensued. Not even half of its 192 member states could be described as any kind of democracy. Many, especially from the developing world, were stuck in a 1960s mind-set, as though they were still fighting wars of liberation against their colonial overlords.
    Perhaps they still were. Certainly to walk into the Secretariat building was to enter a time capsule. The UN complex was a period piece, modernist and functional, and much of the décor and furniture still dated from the 1960s and 1970s. The walls were bedecked in peace murals, maps of the world (without borders, so as not to offend the squabbling member states), and pictures of doves being released. Ancient cultural artifacts were displayed in glass cases in every corner. Diplomats, sleek and cordial, prowled the corridors and bars, murmuring and plotting. It was like being stuck on the set of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
    And yet, despite all this, Sami still felt a thrill each morning when he crossed First Avenue and walked into the lobby, a feeling that he was walking in history’s footsteps. Here Nikita Khrushchev had banged his shoe on the podium, declaring to the United States, “We will bury you”; here the American and Russian ambassadors had debated and eventually defused the Cuban Missile Crisis; and here Colin Powell had demanded action against Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, triggering the 2003 invasion. Information, or rather, misinformation, had triggered the Iraq War, and information, not money, was the UN’s most valuable currency. Every exchange was a transaction. The building manager, a surly Russian called Yuri, had twice dropped unsubtle hints to Sami about his reporting. Yuri had not exactly said that brighter articles would get him a brighter office, but the message had been clear enough. After today Sami would probably be moved to a desk in the corridor.
    A loud buzzing filled the room again, interrupting his thoughts. The neon tube flickered violently. He threw an apple core at the light. It