Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

Tom flicked through the next few pages, scanning for anything which might shed light on the circumstances of Merton's death more than sixty years later.

… I had somehow found my way back to Kaunas, or at least the forests outside. I met up with the handful of resistance fighters who had survived. Their uniform was no uniform: perhaps a coat stolen from a Russian, boots taken off a Lithuanian, a gun bought from some Polish black marketeer. I joined them and we did what we could, blowing up a bridge here, derailing a train there. We killed the enemy in ones and twos. On a very good day, tens.

Tom skipped to the next page.

…It was in the forest that I met my Rosa. She was older than me, but I was an old man no matter my age. To be a Jew in Europe in those years was to be old in the world…

… Rosa had met someone who survived the Ninth Fort. They said that the Nazis had not even needed to press-gang the local Lithuanian boys to take part in the mass killings: they had volunteered eagerly, including, of course, the Wolf. They all wanted to take a turn, firing bullets into the backs of naked Jews. Rosa told me the ghetto was finally cleared on July 8 1944. The last Jews to survive were sent off to Dachau. ‘There is no point going back to Kaunas,’ she told me. ‘There is nobody there. They are all dead.’

There was a space on the page, as if to denote the passage of time. Good, thought Tom: after the war.

Those of us who had survived were the only ones who understood each other. We could look into each other's eyes and see the same darkness. We wandered across Europe, looking for each other. Those of us who could not forget what we had seen. Those of us who were determined to-

The facing page was blank. Tom turned it, only for it to come loose in his hand. He looked up, hoping Rebecca had not seen him damage the book she had hugged like a baby. He wedged it back in, but as he did, he noticed the next page and the one after that also came loose. He held up the book, to examine the binding.

He could see what had happened. He remembered the same problem with his childhood exercise books: tear out one page from the front and a corresponding page from the back would come loose. It always happened where a book was bound down the middle. To be sure, he followed the page he was reading, to see if its other half was intact. It wasn't. Indeed, each of the last five or six sheets was ragged along its edge. Several pages of this notebook were missing, ripped out.

He read again the last line of Gerald Merton's testimony. There was nothing that came after it, just a sentence as elusive as the man himself.

Somehow we found each other… those of us who were determined to-

The adviser asked for a private room. This was not their office and they had to tread carefully. Inside UN Plaza even still or sparkling was a political choice. They could pull rank, of course, demand whatever they wanted. But in a delicate matter like this, it was not a good idea. It would only draw attention.

There were only two of them in there now, the adviser made sure of that. Still, he wished his boss had listened to him and waited till they got back to the hotel to have this conversation. It was far too risky. Perhaps the bugs of foreign intelligence agencies posed no great danger, but they were at least vulnerable to the eavesdropping ears of their own side.

There were telephones here, used for conference calls no doubt. How could the adviser be certain they were not set on speakerphone, either by accident or design? Perhaps there was some kind of intercom system. Or maybe the head of mission here had established a taping system, so that his own meetings could be recorded. Plenty of ambassadors to the United Nations and elsewhere had done that. Hell, even his own boss, back when he was foreign minister, used to do that.

‘Has it happened?’ his boss asked, in that trademark baritone.

‘Yes. They sent people in a couple of hours ago. It's done.’

‘Did they find anything?’

‘So far, nothing.’

‘Nothing? Come on.’

‘They took some papers, a couple of documents, a computer with a few files which they're examining. But, so far, none of it seems to relate to the, er-’ His throat was dry. He was struggling to find the words. He wished his boss had kept him out of this operation. If they were back home, he knew he would have done. He'd have relied on his chief of staff, the man who had been with him since the beginning. But here in New York the boss's team had been pared down. The only one he trusted to get this done was him. The adviser tried to finish his sentence. ‘They have no bearing on this issue.’

‘Damn,’ the boss said quietly, his eyes faraway. ‘I thought this had gone away decades ago. I mean it, decades ago. I'm old now, but still it comes back. Even in death, he's come back to haunt me. He did it once before and he's doing it again. Gershon Matzkin, the man who comes back from the dead.’

Tom's next move was one he had learned from his mother. He went into the kitchen, sidestepping the pile of cutlery and shattered crockery on the floor, and put the kettle on. Eleven years in the States had not muted his appreciation of the value of a cup of tea in moments of crisis.

He was looking for an unbroken mug when his cellphone rang. Henning. Tom glanced upward at the ceiling: too near, Rebecca would hear everything. He headed downstairs, rolling a cigarette – an excuse to stand on the pavement outside – and answered. ‘Hi Henning.’

‘Too early to ask what you got?’

‘I've got good news and bad news.’

‘Bad news first, please: I like to have something to look forward to.’

‘Bad news is, Gerald Merton was not just your average old man. He was a Holocaust survivor.’

‘Good God.’

‘A hero in fact. As a boy he went from ghetto to ghetto, under cover, warning the Jews what was about to happen.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I know. Not good.’

‘Especially for me.’

Tom had thought of that: the horror of a German legal counsel defending the UN for killing a Jewish victim of the Nazis.

‘Don't tell anyone else, OK? Not yet.’

‘Sure.’

‘I think I need to hear the good news.’

Tom was watching a man across the street, also talking into his phone. Was there something odd about the way he was pacing?

‘Merton may not have been just an elderly tourist. He had a gun concealed in his hotel room. A polymer-framed revolver, apparently designed to escape detection. Seems he got it from a Russian arms dealer in New York, regular supplier to Terror Incorporated.’

‘So you want me to claim we didn't make a mistake at all? That we got the right guy?’

‘I think it could fly,’ said Tom.

‘No way. Not with his history. Court of public opinion, mate. That's where we'd lose this case before we'd said a bloody word. No one's going to believe some geriatric posed a threat to anyone, no matter what you found in the hotel room.’

‘It was an assassin's gun, Henning.’

‘I don't care: circumstantial. What's the link with the arms dealer?’

‘His number was on Merton's phone.’

‘Also circumstantial. Back to Plan A, Tom: pay the daughter whatever she wants and come back home.’

‘She's rejected that out of hand. Says it's blood money. She wants an apology from the SG, in person. Which I've obviously declined.’

Henning let out a sigh. ‘Can't you turn on the legendary Byrne charm? I've never known a woman refuse you anything.’

‘Somehow I don't think that's going to work.’ Tom heard the slight wobble in his own voice. ‘She's not like that. She's a very, I don't know, unusual-’