Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

Sure, it was unusual: a suspected terrorist aged seventy-seven. But, hey, these guys were crazy. Children had been used as suicide bombers, women, too, even pregnant ones. Why couldn't Gerald Merton have been the first pensioner accelerating his entry to paradise? He might not have been wearing an explosive belt when he was shot, but Tom could argue that Merton's stroll to the UN had been a reconnaissance mission, timing the walk from the Tudor Hotel to UN Plaza to see what obstacles he encountered, work out how far he could get before he was stopped. He was probably planning to return the very next day, strapped into a bomb supplied by the Russian.

Motive would be the big problem. Most likely Merton had been promised a cash payment for the family he would leave behind. After all, what cause could this old man have believed in so passionately that he was ready to wreak havoc in the headquarters of the United Nations?

Tom reached for his notebook, looking again at the bare details he had gleaned from Allen. A date of birth as far into the past as Tom's dead father's. Place of birth: Kaunas, Lithuania.

Maybe that was the key fact. He'd read magazine stories about the rise and rise of the Eastern European mafia for years now. This ‘Gerald Merton’ could have been one of them, recently arrived in the UK and either an elderly godfather himself or, more likely, a jobbing assassin paid to whack somebody at the UN.

Still, the UN would need more evidence than a single number on a mobile phone to justify the gunning down of an elderly man. And the place to get it was London.

The TV screen on the train announced that Paddington was approaching. He remembered from his last visit the giant screens at railway stations, usually carrying a twenty-four-hour news channel. There were screens on the sides of buses now, even at bus stops. Cameras on every corner too, many more in London than you'd ever get away with in New York. George Orwell got more right than he realized.

At Paddington he took a cab. There was no time to check in to the hotel or catch some sleep, however tempting. He needed to see Merton's daughter as soon as possible, before the entire membership of the Amalgamated Union of Lefty Lawyers and America Bashers had descended on her doorstep, offering to put her father's face onto posters in every student bedroom in the land. He could imagine their excitement at the prospect. The protests against the Met's shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes had been lively enough, but in that case the target had only been the humble Metropolitan Police. So long as they could make New York, and therefore America, the bad guy, the death of Gerald Merton offered much richer pickings. Tom knew these people, he knew how their minds worked. He knew only too well.

He was just a short distance away now from Merton's daughter's address, watching as people closed their front doors and headed for work. Most of the buildings were old Georgian houses divided into flats. He had imagined her living in a tidy suburban semi, with a husband and at least a couple of kids. But this was not that kind of neighbourhood. He was in Clerkenwell, the residential pocket just east of the sleaze and grime of King's Cross.

As the cab turned into her street he saw immediately which house was hers. People were emerging from a front door with baleful expressions: making an early morning condolence call. He paid the driver, jumped out and headed in their direction. As he came closer, they looked up at him with the nodding half-smile of acknowledgement that strangers reserve for each other on these occasions. He didn't need to press the buzzer: the door was open.

He hadn't quite planned for the presence of other people. From the hallway he could hear voices on the stairs, saying goodbye. He headed up.

For a second, he was confused. In front of him were two women in an embrace, one of them sobbing loudly, the other, taller woman, offering comfort. Yet he felt certain that this calm, tearless woman was the daughter of Gerald Merton. It was her eyes that confirmed it. They were as striking as the ones that had stared back at him on the mortuary slab in New York less than twenty-four hours earlier.

‘Hello,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘I'm so sorry to come unannounced like this. My name is Tom Byrne and I'm from the United Nations.’

She fixed the extraordinary eyes upon him, then said in a clear and penetrating voice. ‘I think you'd better leave.’

Taken aback, it took Tom several seconds to realize that she was not speaking to him, but to her departing guests.

‘You call us if you need anything, Rebecca,’ said the husband, who Tom guessed was roughly her age, in his early thirties. The wife tried to say something too, but the eyes welled again and she shook her head in defeat.

Throughout Tom kept his gaze on Rebecca, who was standing tall and straight-backed in this wobbling, sobbing huddle. Everything about her was striking, nothing was moderate. Her hair was a deep, dark black; her nose was not short or button-neat, like the Vogue and Elle girls he dated in New York. Instead it was strong and, somehow, proud. Most arresting were those eyes of clearest green: not the same colour as her father's, but with the same shining brilliance. They seemed to burn not with the grief he had been expecting but with something altogether more controlled. He found that he could not look away from her.

‘You can come in here,’ she said.

He followed her into a room whose clutter he rapidly tried to interpret. The polished wood floors, the battered, and tiny, TV in the corner were predictable enough: urban bohemian. The books surprised him. Not the first couple of shelves of fiction, contemporary novels alongside Flaubert, Eliot and Hardy, but the rest: they seemed to be journals of some kind. He took a glance at the rest of the flat. No sign yet of another person. No sign of a man.

She sat down in a plain wooden chair, gesturing for him to take the more comfortable couch opposite.

He was about to speak when a phone rang: hers, a mobile. She looked at the display and answered it without hesitation.

‘Not at all: I said you could call. What's happening?’ She began nodding as she received what appeared to be a staccato burst of information. ‘She's hypotensive now, you say? Despite good gram-negative coverage? Poor girl, this is the last thing she needs. Remember, she's been treated for AML. I'd make sure she's on Vancomycin and call intensive care to let them know she may need pressors. And, Dr Haining? Keep me posted.’

Tom looked back at the shelves, packed with what he could now see was an apparently full set of the Journal of Paediatric Oncology. He waited for her to close the clamshell phone and began, his opening line now duly revised. ‘Dr Merton. You know why I'm here. I've flown into New York this morning because of a grave mistake.’

‘London. You're in London.’ She showed him a brief glimpse of a smile. It was crooked, the teeth sharp between full lips. He worried that he was staring. He could feel his pulse quicken.

‘Sorry. London. Yes.’ He tried to collect himself, to handle this like any other meeting. Remember your objectives: placate this woman without anything resembling an admission of liability. ‘The Secretary-General of the United Nations asked me to come here as soon as this tragedy occurred to convey his personal sorrow and regret at what happened to your father. He speaks for the entire-’

‘You can save the speech.’ She was staring right at him, her eyes dry. ‘I don't need a speech.’

He had planned on her breaking down, needing comfort and solace. Or else hurling abuse at him in a righteous fury. This was not in the plan. ‘There's no speech.’ Tom lifted his hands away from his briefcase.