Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

The more Tom read of Gerald Merton's life story, the more he found himself thinking about Rebecca. How ironic that a woman who seemed to bubble and throb with life, as if she were keeping the lid on an almost volcanic vitality, should have emerged from a world choking with death. She was even named for a grandmother who had hanged herself.

He tried to focus on his task, the job of work Henning Munchau had asked him to do. There was no denying it: the bind from which he was meant to extricate the UN was only getting tighter. They had not only killed a survivor of the Holocaust but apparently one of its heroes: the young boy who, in disguise, had travelled across occupied Europe carrying word of the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews.

And Tom had accused him of being a suicide bomber. Thank God he had kept to himself his earlier intuition: that old man Merton, birthplace Kaunas, was some kind of Baltic war criminal who had sought post-war asylum in the UK. He had been as stupid as the German and Lithuanian guards young Matzkin had dodged again and again: he had seen the blue eyes and the uncircumcised penis of that corpse on the pathologist's slab and he had never once considered that he might have been looking at a Jew.

His phone rang; a New York number. If it were Henning, he would explain the depth of the trouble they were in and suggest he needed more time. This was going to require diplomatic footwork of great dexterity if it were not to turn into a grave blow to the reputation of the United Nations.

‘Tom? It's Jay Sherrill. I have some news.’

‘OK.’

‘That New York number we saw on the cellphone? Belongs to the Russian, to the arms dealer.’

‘Really? Wow.’

‘I know. Incredible, isn't it? That's not all. Overnight I had a team do a deep search of Merton's hotel room, unscrewing floorboards, the works. They found something hidden in a wall cavity in the bathroom, just by the extractor fan. Very professionally concealed.’

‘What is it?’

‘A state-of-the-art, compact, plastic-build revolver. Russian. ·357 Magnum calibre. A gun specially designed and marketed to escape detection by security scanners. All you have to conceal are the steel inserts and the bullets; the gun-frame itself gets through unnoticed. Ballistics have examined it. Get this: apparently it's the weapon of choice in the assassin community.’ Tom could hear Sherrill's amusement at his own joke.

‘Hold on, Detective.’ There was the beep of a call waiting. Tom looked at the display: a London number he didn't recognize.

‘Tom Byrne? It's Rebecca Merton. You need to come here right now. Do you hear me? RIGHT NOW!’

‘I want to go to the funeral.’

‘I can see the case for that, Secretary-General.’

‘So you think it's a good idea? I'm glad, Munchau. My political staff say it would be unwise.’

‘Why do they say that, sir?’

‘Gowers here says it could be seen as an admission of liability. I said that was a legal point, not a political one. Which is why I was so keen to see you. If you see no legal problem, then we can go ahead. You're the boss.’

At that, the Secretary-General dipped his head in a small, courtly nod as if to say, ‘over to you’. The Time magazine profile had been right: ‘the world's top diplomat has world-class charm’. He embodied everything people liked about the Nordics: wholly professional, yet without Teutonic efficiency; informal, without American over-familiarity; progressive, without Latin fervour. The magazine had said that, just as some argued the Olympics should always be in Athens, so the world would be a better place if the top post at the UN was permanently in Nordic hands. The rotation system wouldn't allow such a thing, of course, but once Asia and Africa had had their turn, and a European seemed possible, then the long-standing foreign minister of Finland rapidly became the obvious choice. The Russians had been expected to object but, to everyone's surprise, they didn't and so Paavo Viren had glided into the post unopposed.

‘Why are you so keen to go, sir?’

‘I think it's the right thing to do. This man was killed on our soil, in our care. I think we have to take responsibility for that and make amends for it. Don't you?’

‘I can see that.’

‘You keep seeing things but not telling me what you think. Please Dr Munchau, give me your opinion.’

Before he had a chance, the Secretary-General's Chef de Cabinet leaned forward to speak. The three of them, plus a note-taker, were in the SG's private office, arranged on the two couches which he had installed within days of his arrival: the essential tools of diplomacy, he had called them.

‘While you think on that, Dr Munchau,’ the Chef de Cabinet began, ‘let me just game out some of the scenarios here. Best case is the SG flies to London, has a handshake and photo-op with Merton's daughter, and that draws a line under the whole episode. Worst case: he turns up for the funeral, gets spurned, maybe even faces protests and barracking and then we've magnified a problem into a larger crisis.’

‘All right, that's enough, Marti. We need to hear what the Legal Counsel thinks.’

‘Well, sir. Strictly speaking, there is no legally meaningful admission implied by your visiting the family. As you say, you are paying condolences simply because this terrible accident happened on our soil.’

‘Good.’

‘But.’

‘Ah, a but. In this building, there is always a but, no?’

‘Such a move will inevitably be seen as an act of contrition. Secretaries General ordinarily attend only the funerals of heads of government or heads of state. For you to go to London would be such an extraordinary gesture, it would imply we had something to apologize for.’

‘Well, we do.’

The Chef de Cabinet looked aghast; Henning Munchau smiled tolerantly. ‘That's not something we would want to say publicly, sir. Certainly not at this stage.’

‘Oh, for heaven's sake.’

‘I'm quite serious, sir. We cannot possibly make any kind of apology or statement of regret until we have all the facts. Which we don't yet have.’

‘We killed an innocent man!’

‘But, sir, the crucial point is that the UN guard did not know that at the time. The officer on duty seems to have believed the man in question posed an immediate threat to the life of our personnel. Which would make this a killing in self-defence.’

‘OK, so we apologize for that then. It was a genuine mistake, but we apologize for it. What's wrong with that?’

Henning shot a quick glance at the chef de cabinet, a look that said: ‘Christ, have we been saddled with a boy scout as Secretary-General?’

Detecting the dissent, the boss sat back. ‘Look, I'm not naïve. I see the risks. But you're not thinking politically. If I'm photographed with the widow, or daughter or whoever it is, showing humility, that makes me look good. Transparent, honest, human. A new approach from the new man at the UN. This could be wonderful PR.’

Over my dead body, thought Henning. ‘Sir, let me speak with my man in London. If he's managed to square the family, then your idea could be a very good one. I'll get in touch with him right away. I don't think he'll let us down.’

The front door was open, just as it had been earlier, but this time there were no other voices. He reached the landing where he had first met Rebecca Merton three hours earlier. Now all he could see was her back, as she surveyed the wreckage of her apartment.

The floor was covered with books, every shelf methodically emptied. Their pages had been flung open, their bindings ripped. On the wall hung frames denuded of pictures; posters and canvasses lay torn among broken glass.