Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

‘Tom, how you doin'?’

‘Who is this?’

‘A very satisfied customer, that's who.’

‘Oh, Mr Fantoni. Nice of you to call.’ He could hear himself enunciating more clearly, ramping up his Englishness. It was a cheap tactic, but the high-paying clients seemed to like it. ‘As it happens, I'm in London just now. I wonder if-’

‘Look, this won't take a minute. We were real happy with the job you did for us: the sale's gone through. My father's very pleased.’

‘I'm glad.’

‘So pleased, he wants you to work on another big job we have here. Similar time scale.’

‘Well, we could meet next week and-’

‘Too late. We need this done right away. I'll book you a first class ticket on the next flight out of there.’

‘Unfortunately-’

‘We'll pay triple rates, Mr Byrne. What can I tell you, my father likes what you do.’

Triple. That would be a quarter of a million dollars for no more than a fortnight's work. He shot a glance at Rebecca, her face in profile as she gazed out of the window. Just that brief sight of her was enough to send a surge into his chest.

‘You know what, Mr Fantoni. I'd love to, I really would. But I'm on a case here in London I cannot abandon. I hope-’

The voice on the phone adopted a stage Italian accent. ‘I make-a an offer you can't-a refuse!’ The accent disappeared; the tone became chilly. ‘You're making a mistake, Mr Byrne.’

In the silence, Tom felt his throat dry. ‘I'm sorry. It's just bad timing.’

‘I hope you don't regret it.’

‘I hope not, too.’

Tom passed the phone back to Rebecca, hoping she had not heard Fantoni's booming, mugging voice. She gave no hint that she had. He would try to put Fantoni out of his mind for the time being, call when he got back to New York, hope he could smooth things over. For now, he had to focus on this case. Should the contents of Merton's secret box affect his advice to Henning? Could the UN argue that the man they had killed was himself a proven killer? Hardly. Those deaths had taken place five decades ago; the trail of evidence would be frozen, let alone cold. If the UN tried to mitigate its error, its crime, in killing an unarmed seventy-seven-year-old by claiming he had, back in the 1950s and 1960s, been some kind of hitman, it would probably backfire. The organization would sound unhinged. The press corps would demand hard evidence, beyond a ropey shoebox containing a few crumbling press clippings. They probably wouldn't even get to that stage. They would ask the question that had been throbbing in Tom's mind ever since they had opened that dusty container: What does any of this have to do with the United Nations?

The instant he had decoded the fading evidence of that box, he had tried to come up with an answer. Is that what had taken Gerald Merton to the UN, one last assignment, one last Nazi to kill? Decades back, the Secretary-General from Austria, Kurt Waldheim, had been exposed as having lied about his military service in the Wehrmacht, glossing over his knowledge of Nazi war crimes – an affair which older hands in the UN bureaucracy still recalled with a shudder. But that was in the 1980s. There was no one who could possibly fit that bill now, no one old enough for a start. He thought about Paavo Viren, the new Secretary-General. Now in his late sixties, he would have been a toddler during wartime. Besides, he was Finnish; the country had stayed out of the Nazis' clutches. Tom vaguely remembered reading a profile of the SG after his appointment, noting his cleric father's long-time record, out in the Finnish sticks somewhere, as a preacher of tolerance and peace. He cast his mind over the rest of the UN staff, but couldn't think of anyone who came into the right age range.

On the other hand, it was General Assembly week: the place was teeming with representatives of every country, each bringing large delegations in tow…

They found a parking space and while Rebecca fumbled for change for the meter, Tom stepped a few paces away and dialled Henning's number. They were in Canary Wharf now, an area that Tom had never visited. Back when he lived in London, Docklands had still been largely desolate and empty, a wasteland dotted with the odd overpriced apartment and served by a Toytown light railway. People spoke of it as a kind of Siberia, a place remote from the hubbub of ‘real’ London. Now, it seemed, all that had changed. The tower blocks that had once lain empty were brimming with offices, with new, taller buildings arising like spirits from the swamp. The area had built-up a serious high-rise skyline, something London had always lacked. And it oozed money.

‘Munchau.’

‘Hi Henning, it's Tom.’

‘You've either fucked her or she's just filed suit. Which is it?’

‘Neither.’

‘OK, I give up.’

‘Henning, I won't bore you with all the details, but there's some information I could use.’

‘Bore me.’

Tom looked over at Rebecca, now placing the pay and display ticket in the front windscreen. ‘It's just a hunch at the moment, nothing more.’

‘Don't really have time for hunches, mate. At the risk of repeating myself, General Assembly, General Assembly, General Assembly.’

‘That's what I'm thinking about too. Could you get someone in the OLC to compile a list of every official either in New York for the GA already or due to arrive this week who's aged seventy or above?’

‘Are we still on the hitman theory?’

Tom paused. ‘It's a bit difficult to explain right now.’

‘Oh, she's with you! Why didn't you say? Is she really, unbelievably gorgeous?’

‘Thanks, Henning. I appreciate it.’

‘All right, I'll see what we can get. Seventy? That's the cut-off?’

Tom did his sums once again: even seventy was pretty young, anyone below that age would have been a baby. Still, best to err on the side of caution. ‘Yes. Seventy. Heads of government, foreign ministers, ambassadors, obviously. But anyone else: aides, translators, anyone coming in for the week.’

‘What about the entire UN staff, while we're at it?’

‘Actually, that's not a bad idea. Start with-’

‘Tom, I was joking.’

He hung up and hurried to catch up with Rebecca, already walking towards the offices of Roderick Jones & ?Partners, one of the grander City law firms that had moved into Canary Wharf in the late 1990s. The recently retired senior partner was Julian Goldman's father, Henry. But, Julian had told them with a roll of his eyes, Goldman père couldn't quite make the break, so spent at least two days a week in the office, nominally as a ‘consultant’ to his erstwhile colleagues but, Julian had implied, more accurately because he didn't have anything else to do.

The moment they walked into the lobby, Tom smiled to himself: just seeing it instantly gave him the measure of the young man they had left behind in Hackney. A steel-and-glass affair, it had a vast atrium, tall enough to house an impressive, if vaguely absurd, indoor tree. The marble floor stretched for acres before reaching a white desk as wide as a Politburo platform, with not one, but three different receptionists, each equipped with a telephone headset. It was a textbook example of the paradox of corporate relations: the easiest way to impress clients was to show them just how profligate you were with their money.

What options had that left poor Julian Goldman? Born on the top of the mountain, where else could he go but down? He had clearly turned his back on Daddy's riches and gone the ethical route, opening his battered legal aid practice in deepest Hackney on a street which probably lay in the direct shadow of his father's corporate palace. Julian's career would be a rebuke to Henry Goldman; he would be a lawyer driven not by money but by conscience. Tom smiled to himself at the predictability of it all. While men from Tom's background were striving with each sinew to climb up the prestige ladder, the likes of Julian Goldman were in a hurry to slide down.