Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

Tom got up from the slashed remnant of a chair he had been sitting on and moved across to her. When he placed his hands on her shoulders, she leaned into him, welcoming his touch.

‘Look, we know it didn't happen. Everyone would know about it if it had. We know that Plan B happened because Plan A failed. The key question is, why did it fail? What happened?’

Aron went to meet this young scientist, Eliezer was his name, who took the note as if he were a pharmacist handling a prescription. He read it quickly, glanced up at Aron, then looked back at the note and read it again, and again. At last he said, ‘This will take some time. You will hear from me when it's ready.’

I don't know what Aron did in the days of waiting. I like to imagine that he wandered around the country that was then taking shape. I like to picture him on the beach in Tel Aviv, holding an ice-cream cone. Or buying a falafel from one of the corner kiosks in Jaffa. Or running his hand along the pale-gold stones of ancient Jerusalem. But such things would have been a distraction from the work in hand. He would not have been able to allow himself joy and delight while others had suffered such pain, at least not until that pain had been avenged. Above all, I suspect he would have been frightened: frightened that if he let in even an hour of comfort, a few minutes of happiness, then his resolve would weaken. His will would soften and he would be unable to go ahead with the mass slaughter of Tochnit Aleph.

So I assume he spent his time in further meetings with the leaders of the Jewish state-in-waiting, still wearing the dark suit and white shirt of Europe. It's not just the character of the man that leads me to this assumption. It's also my knowledge of what happened next.

Perhaps a fortnight passed and Aron met again with Eliezer. The young chemist handed him the canisters filled with toxin, steel flasks cased in a protective netting. They could pass for camping equipment: Aron would be able to take them back to Europe in his rucksack.

He had arranged his passage with the men of the Jewish underground. He needed their help because he had entered Palestine illegally: he had none of the requisite papers to get past the British guards at the ports and board a ship. The underground told him of the British transport ships that sailed from Haifa. He could be smuggled onto one of those, with forged papers suggesting he was one of the Free Polish soldiers who were knocking around Palestine at the time.

I can see Aron on his voyage, alone with his notebook, planning and scribbling while the other men drank or sang. I picture him drafting his place in Jewish mythology: he would be the slayer of the Germans, the avenger of the Jews. He now had the deathly potion in his bag. I was in Nuremberg, ready to pour the lethal liquid into the water supply for that city. Manik would do the same in Munich. Tochnit Aleph would soon transform itself from a plan into one of the landmark events in history.

The journey was nearly over, the ship about to dock in Toulon, France, when Aron heard the noise from above, the footsteps and the barked inquiries as British MPs, military policemen, boarded the ship. Did he have the instinct in the pit of his stomach that told him what they were there for? Did he know, as they rattled down the stairs to the lower decks, that they were after him? I bet he did. Did he reach for the rucksack? What did he do with the canisters?

They dragged him off the ship without explanation and later sent him back to Egypt, to a cell in Alexandria. Eventually they transferred him to jails in Palestine, including Jerusalem. Aron – our leader who had ducked and bobbed for five long years, escaping the clutches of the Nazis, who had dashed down ghetto side streets and hidden himself in hollowed-out tree stumps in the forests, who had never been caught by anyone – was now a prisoner.

The British interviewed him but their questions were vague, unfocussed. He came to the conclusion that they knew little about him or about Tochnit Aleph, that they had not picked him up on their own evidence but on a tip-off, suggesting that Aron posed some kind of security threat. But who was the source?

I know the question gnawed away at him through those endless days and nights he spent alone, whether in a dank British prison cell in Jerusalem or held, like a captive knight, in an old Crusader fort in Acre. He would have assumed that he had been betrayed, that the informant was someone he had once trusted. He would have drawn up lists in his head of all those who knew of Tochnit Aleph – the elder who had given his blessing; the young chemist; the most senior underground leaders he had met in those last weeks. What might they have revealed? Had they blabbed to the British inadvertently or had it been deliberate? If on purpose, why? Why would any Jewish patriot have sabotaged this audacious attempt at justice?

Or had the British received their information from somewhere else entirely? Tochnit Aleph was, after all, a plan to kill a million Germans. It was Germany that stood to benefit most directly from Aron's arrest. Was it even possible that the British would collude with the enemy…? No. Surely, it was unimaginable.

We – Rosa, Manik and me, even the DIN commanders – knew nothing of this, of course. We were simply waiting for Aron to return to Europe with the poison. Finally, a messenger arrived with a note that Aron had somehow smuggled out. It said simply, ‘Arrested. Proceed with Plan B.’

‘But if it didn't happen, what's the connection with everything that's been going on? Why would they be killing Henry Goldman or smashing up my flat? It doesn't make any sense.’

Tom wished he had an answer for her, but she was right. Each time they approached what promised to be a solution, the whole conundrum only seemed to get more complicated. It was clear their pursuers were after something and this – the secret Plan A – surely had to be it. In a way, they had been proved right: the evidence, probably the only remaining evidence in the world, had been hidden here, bound and taped inside the painting. There couldn't be anything else, some other secret concealed in this flat: every inch of the place had been probed and examined, if not by the thugs themselves then by Tom and Rebecca. Plan A was surely it. This must be the secret their enemy was striving so hard to suppress. Why else had they killed Goldman, if not to prevent him revealing it?

And yet, it lacked all logic. Plan A had not happened. There had been no mass poisoning of Germany's major cities. It was a pipe-dream from sixty years ago. How could it possibly matter now?

Unless they had been looking in the wrong place. Unless he, Tom, had been making everything too complicated. ‘Lets go back to basics,’ he said, pacing. ‘Your father was obviously after someone in New York. Whoever that person is reckons your father had evidence against him. That maybe your father had a list of names – like that list that came to your flat, except up to date, consisting solely of Nazis who are still alive. Maybe the person in New York knows he's on this current list. He needs to have that document. And that's why he was so frightened of Goldman talking. Because this person, this old Nazi, suspects Goldman had the list too.’

They had reversed positions, Rebecca now perching against the ex-sofa. ‘So this won't stop until we find that list.’

‘If there is such a list. There might not be. Let's face it, Rebecca. If we haven't found it yet, where's it going to be? It probably doesn't exist.’

‘Not any more.’

‘What's that?’

‘Not any more. Years ago, you could draw up lists of ex-Nazis who were still alive. You could fill a phone book with them. But there are hardly any left now. Everyone's too bloody old.’