Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

‘You see-’ He was about to speak but stopped himself, giving a smile that was as brief as a wince. ‘But this is to take the greatest risk of all. This is often how it is in politics. The only way of preventing a revelation is to make the revelation yourself. But maybe this is crazy.’

‘What's crazy?’ It was Tom, his voice no longer confrontational. The same voice he had used when counselling very senior members of the UN bureaucracy, including the Secretary-General. Outsiders had no idea of the extent to which aides to the highest ranking politicians served as counsellors, surrogate spouses, paid best friends.

‘What I'm about to do. Having worked so hard to ensure you don't have a certain item of information, I'm about to give it to you. But I can see no other way.’

‘No other way of doing what?’ Tom felt as if he was hitting his stride now.

‘Of being sure there's no other evidence. If it's just you, your word based on what you hear from me now, today, then it's nothing. I will deny it and the press will learn that you are simply not credible witnesses – for reasons I don't think we need to repeat. But I need to know if there's something else. This is what I have always needed to know. Every day any member of DIN was alive, I needed to know it. Now that Gershon is gone, I want this thing to be over. I want to sleep for more than three hours at night.’

‘So you need to ask us what we know.’

The old man nodded.

‘OK,’ Rebecca said. ‘Ask.’

The President examined his fingernails which, Tom couldn't help but notice, were in perfect condition. And it wasn't just his nails. His suit hung impeccably; the shirt was pressed exactly. How this elegant statesman, welcomed into every chancellery in Europe, must have hated the notion of a stain, hovering somewhere in the great ‘out there’, waiting to spill all over his reputation.

At last he spoke, the reluctance making the slightest downward twist to his lips. ‘What do you know about Tochnit Aleph?’

Tom tried to make a calculation, to work through his options, but he kept colliding with a wall of fog. His brain felt soupy, still thick from sleep and sedative. It was easier when he simply had to listen to and prompt the President, but this was different. Now he needed to think fast, for his sake and, more important, for Rebecca's.

The word Tochnit had thrown him, but Aleph was now familiar enough for him to work it out. He had guessed there would be a Hebrew expression for Plan A and this had to be it. So this was the aspect of DIN's work that had given this man sixty years of sleepless nights.

If they said nothing, who knew what extra punishment he could inflict on them? He had already shown what he was prepared to do. To defy him could spell calamity; he would surely find a way to make them speak.

And yet, to say what they knew was to give away whatever leverage they currently held. At this moment, the President needed something from them: once he had it, what other protection would they have? He had already confessed his yearning to be the only man in the world with this secret knowledge: once he was sure of that, he would rest easy. If Tom and Rebecca told him what they knew, he would have every incentive to ensure they went the way of Gershon Matzkin and Aron, DIN's leader, or at least the way of Sid Steiner, their memories obliterated. How would the President achieve that? Tom had no idea. But that he would be prepared to do whatever it took, he had no doubt.

His heart was beginning to thump. He needed to think of another way. He somehow had to make the old man believe Tom and Rebecca were speaking the truth, that they were saying all they knew, and yet supply him with an incentive for keeping both of them alive.

‘We've seen the papers,’ Tom said.

‘What papers?’

‘The blueprints. The blueprints of the city waterworks. Of Munich, Weimar, Hamburg, Nuremberg and Wannsee.’

‘So you know.’

‘We know.’

‘And you know about me?’

Tom stared hard. He didn't want to go for an outright bluff: no one would be better at sniffing out bullshit than a veteran politician; bullshit was their most traded commodity. But Tom wanted at least to keep the old man guessing.

‘Do the papers point to me in any way?’

‘I think that if someone knew what they were looking for, they could work it out.’ He had crossed the border into the danger zone, the land of the lie.

‘That's what I supposed. And where are these papers now?’

‘I think you can understand why we'd be reluctant to tell you that.’

The President assessed the faces of the two people before him. He lingered over Rebecca and then directed his next sentence to her. ‘I think you need to hear what happened. Then perhaps you'll see this differently.’

Tom exhaled silently. This is what he had wanted: for the President to start spilling.

‘I was not a member of DIN. I was not even in Europe during… during those times. I left Russia in 1936. I got out in time. I came to Palestine: to be a pioneer. Our aim was to create the Ivri , the Hebrew. A wholly new Jew. Strong, a worker, a soldier: no more cowering, no more passivity in the face of our enemies. We used to say that all that awaited the Jews of Europe was death.’ He dipped his head. 'We had no idea how right we were.

‘So I arrived in Palestine as a teenager. I went to university there: I studied chemistry. And of course, I joined the youth movements and before I knew it, I was elected to this and then that. I was a politician even then. But I learned from the best. People don't realize this about me. They call me arrogant, but they don't understand I was always a student of great men. I showed them only humility and respect. Which is why they trusted me. Including him.’

Tom raised a quizzical eyebrow, a gesture he immediately regretted. He should have pretended to know.

But the President had passed the point of no return; he was not about to stop the flow now. ‘The professor at Rehovot: the man who had brought us to the Promised Land. Imagine it, the Moses who had led the Jewish movement for a homeland. He had returned to his laboratory and I was one of his students. So what do you think I said when he asked me to make up this mixture? What would you have said? Would you have denied him? I was a child, in my early twenties. Of course I said yes.’

The fog was beginning to clear. Tom could see Rebecca was sitting stiff and upright. ‘So you made up the poison.’

‘What can I say? That I was only obeying orders? As you know, that line of defence is rather discredited.’

The air in the room was heavy; Tom could feel it pressing down on him. He spoke: ‘Did you know what it was for?’

The President gave him a smile. ‘It would be nice to say I didn't. But it would be nonsense. What else could such a request be for? The note from the professor was clear. “Give this man a toxin that has no colour and no smell, and yet will not lose its power in water.” What else could it be? And the volume! Only an idiot would not have realized that this was designed for a mass water supply. And it was Aron who bore the note. Even if you had never heard of DIN, everyone knew about him. He was the hero of the Jewish resistance, one of the few who had emerged from the fire. You only had to look at that cadaver of a face to know what business he had with me and my poisons.’

‘But you did it.’

‘I did it.’

‘And this is your great secret.’

The old man took a sip from the glass of water that sat on the table between them, until now untouched. 'Not just my secret. Think of the State of Israel. There are many in the world who hate my country, who believe its very existence is a crime. Imagine what they would do with this information: that the founders of the state – including the man who is today the country's president – were ready to cause so much death. Would we ever recover?