Tall and heavily built, he had suffered some sort of palsy in his fifties that had paralyzed one side of his face. It meant that his left profile was smiling and jovial, while the right side could appear almost cruel.
He had invited Daniela into a sitting room furnished in leather and dark wood and they sat at a small lamp-lit table. She was nervous about being alone with him. Not fearful, but wary of his intellect. Nilsen offered her tea. He had a special thermometer measuring the exact temperature of the water.
“Are you a connoisseur?” she asked.
“I’m a pedant.”
The tiny china cups looked as though they belonged in a dolls house. “You are probably wondering why I invited you here?”
“Yes.”
“I have a request-something that would require you changing your future plans. An audit must be done… a difficult one. Sensitive. After what happened with the Oil for Food program, nobody wants to be embarrassed again.”
“Iraq?”
“Is that a problem? Normally I wouldn’t bother to ask. I know you’re leaving us, but I thought I might be able to convince you to stay on for another few months.”
He smiled at her. A torn shred of tissue paper clung to his neck. It must be hard for him to shave, she thought. Strange seeing two faces in the mirror.
“I’m sure you’ve read some of the reports of waste in Iraq. I wish I could tell you that they are exaggerated. Nobody is sure of the true losses, but it will run into tens of billions.”
He had paused, letting the figure wash over Daniela.
“I find it quite ironic when people get worked up over Bernie Madoff and his Ponzi scheme. What he stole was chicken seed compared to what’s happened in Iraq.” He meant to say chicken feed, but she didn’t correct him.
“I met Madoff once or twice,” Nilsen said. “He used to have an apartment in this building where he kept his mistress. I always thought if he could cheat on his wife, he could cheat investors.”
Nilsen poured another cup of tea, using a silver strainer to capture the leaves.
“I was in Iraq a month after the invasion. George Bush had just declared mission accomplished and the US began airlifting planeloads of cash into Baghdad. That first payload was mainly small bills-fives and tens and ones-twenty million dollars in total, loaded on to a C-130 at Andrews Air Force Base and flown to Baghdad.
“Later airlifts had larger denominations-stacks of hundred-dollar bills packed into bricks and loaded on to pallets, forty in total, weighing thirty tons-the largest one-day shipment of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve. Twelve billion dollars in US banknotes were delivered to Iraq that first year. The aim was to hold the country together. Pay for basic services. Stop the country descending into chaos. The banks had been looted and the infrastructure destroyed. But once that money arrived, there was no oversight or control. I saw pay-offs in paper bags, pizza boxes and duffel bags. Cash was ferried around the city in private cars and funneled through middlemen, fixers, clerics and politicians. Fraud became another word for “business as usual.” At one point more than eight thousand security guards were drawing paychecks but only six hundred “warm bodies” could be found. Halliburton charged for forty-two thousand daily meals for soldiers but served only fourteen thousand of them.
“I was heading the UN team of auditors trying to keep track of the spending. We were supposed to be looking over the Americans’ shoulders, but they didn’t let us anywhere near the accounts. I remember a BBC reporter asking the Coalition Provisional Authority’s director of management and budget what had happened to all the cash airlifted to Baghdad. Do you know what he said?”
Daniela shook her head.
“He said he had no idea and didn’t think it was important. The journalist said, “But billions of dollars have disappeared without a trace.”
“Yes, but it is their billions-Iraqi money frozen in western bank accounts-so what difference does it make?”
Nilsen leaned back in his armchair, tired all of a sudden.
“Iraqis voted in elections in March but there still isn’t a government. When the politicians stop posturing they will need to know the state of the country’s finances. The UN wants to undertake an audit. That’s why I’m offering you a job.”
Cooling down after her ride, Daniela felt her nipples swell against the thinness of the nylon. The apartment was colder than she first imagined.
“Why me?” she asked.
“You understand the nature of the work… the sensitivities.”
“Is there opposition?”
Nilsen hesitated, choosing his words carefully. “The audit must be conducted within certain parameters.”
“What parameters?”
“The government of Iraq and the reconstruction agencies are not interested in the mistakes of the past. The audit will only cover the term of the previous government, from May twentieth 2006 up until the present,” explained Nilsen. “Any projects commenced prior to that date will be excluded.”
“Whom would I be answerable to?”
“Me.”
“Staff?”
“As many as you need-within reason.”
Daniela had felt a sense of displacement that shifted and separated inside her.
“I’m not really interested.”
“I can offer you five thousand a day or a guaranteed hundred thousand dollars if the job takes less than three weeks.”
Daniela tried not to react. People who tell you that money doesn’t matter are invariably the ones without large mortgages and credit card debts. Daniela liked nice things. Clothes. Art. Theatre. This was a month’s work for a year’s wages. Nilsen gave her two days to decide. She took two hours.
There is a knock. Glover slouches against the doorframe with his shirttail hanging out.
“Have I told you how much I hate this country?”
“Yes.”
“We need to replace one of the computers. A power surge fried the hard drive.”
“What about the surge protectors?”
“Toasted.”
“Did we lose anything?”
“No.”
Daniela motions him to her desk. “Have you ever heard of Jawad Stadium?”
“Nope.”
“It was rebuilt. The work was finished two years ago.” She points to the list of numbers on the black screen. New drainage. Covered stands. Changing rooms. Seating for forty-five thousand. Turf imported from Sweden.”
“Duplicate payments,” says Glover.
“Nearly forty-two million dollars.”
“Who was the contractor?”
“Bellwether Construction. Bahamas registered. It subcontracted the work to various Iraqi companies.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Put a call in to the US Embassy. Find out which of the Provisional Reconstruction Teams approved the rebuild.”
“I thought we weren’t supposed to go back any further than May twentieth 2006.”
“The dates aren’t clear on this one.”
Glover gives her a youthful grin, knowing she’s overstepping her authority.
“You want me to mention this to Jennings?”
“Not just yet.”
Jennings is the State Department’s “man on the ground” who has been complaining about the audit since day one. He calls Daniela regularly, offering to answer her questions and reminding her that “this is a war zone” and to “ignore the random,” whatever that means. He also seems to be laboring under the misapprehension that she works for the US and not the UN.
Glover pauses at the door.
“Hey, your friend called.”
“What friend?”
“He left his name.”
There is a pause. “Presumably you wrote it down.”
“It was Italian sounding.”
“Luca?”
“That may have been it. He said he’d call back.”
“Did he leave a number?”
“No.”
He disappears down the corridor and she can hear his Converse trainers squeaking on the tiles like blind kittens.