Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

‘But I do not deny there are personal considerations here. I don't know how much you know of my career, Mr Byrne. I am the advocate of peace and reconciliation. I am the man who has preached putting war and violence behind us. I have been garlanded in every capital, in Bonn and Berlin especially. I am the holder of the Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz , the first non-German ever to be awarded that title. My honorary rank is Kommandeur. Try to imagine what happens to that reputation if now, more than sixty years later, the world finds out that I was an accomplice to an attempt at mass murder. You've seen those blueprints, both of you. You know what Tochnit Aleph would have meant. Death at the turn of a tap. To a million people. Not just Nazis, but children and women, too. Random, senseless killing.’

Rebecca leaned forward: ‘Why didn't it happen?’

‘For the reason I've just said. In the end, cooler heads prevailed. The leadership in Palestine realized that Tochnit Aleph would be a disaster for the Jewish people: we would no longer be the victims of the greatest crime in human history. We would be guilty of mass murder. Tochnit Aleph would have destroyed our moral advantage. And, remember, this was 1945: the moral high ground was the only ground we had.’

Rebecca spoke again: ‘Did the leadership order DIN to call off the operation?’

The old man stretched, his first sign of fatigue. ‘It wasn't quite as simple as that. DIN was a movement that had the highest righteousness on its side: it spoke for the six million. What were a few politicians in Tel Aviv next to that?’

‘So how did they stop it?’

‘Aron was on a boat leaving Palestine, on his way back to Europe with three canisters of my poison in his bag. British military police boarded the ship and arrested him. Threw him into solitary confinement.’

‘Somebody had tipped off the British authorities?’

‘That's right.’

‘Do you know who that was?’

‘Of course I know.’ He paused and took another sip of water. Then he looked back at Tom and Rebecca with an expression of mock puzzlement. ‘It was me.’

Rebecca was ashen. ‘Why? Why on earth would you have done that?’

Tom could see strain on Rebecca's face, draining it of colour. She was visibly struggling to make sense of what they were hearing. Each revelation had shaken up the kaleidoscope and then, just as it was resettling into a new picture she could understand, it was thrown into chaos all over again.

‘I've asked myself that same question. Many times.’ The President fixed Rebecca with a steady gaze. Tom noticed his eyes were reddening around the edges. ‘I knew the leaders were desperate to stop Aron. But they didn't know where he was or how to get to him. No one did. Then he contacted me, at the last minute. He was in a hurry: he had a question about storage of the poison. Was he meant to keep it cold, in the dark? We met and he let slip that he was leaving the next day. We knew he was going by British transport ship. So the British had to watch the port only for that single day. It was easy.’

‘I still don't understand why.’

The old man let out a deep sigh. ‘My disease. I suppose that's the answer. My disease.’

‘What disease?’ Rebecca's doctor voice.

‘The same disease I've always had.’ He paused, as if they were expected to know the answer. After a few moments of silence, he filled the space. ‘Ambition. I knew that the very highest echelons were determined to stop Aron and they couldn't do it. And then, thanks to me, they could. Within a few weeks, I was out of that laboratory, appointed as a personal adviser to the old man. The man who became my country's first leader. Funny, we all called him the old man. But I am now much older than he was. Anyway, I've been at the top ever since.’

Tom was struck by the man's honesty. Self-criticism was not usually politicians' strength and this went much further.

‘All right,’ Tom said, aware he was interrupting a conversation between the two of them. ‘Why don't you just tell the world what you've told us? You're the man who stopped Tochnit Aleph. That should win you a few more prizes.’

‘Oh, the world would be delighted, I agree. I could be a hero. Except the world is not Israel, Mr Byrne. In Israel, Aron of the Ghetto is a hero. And not some passing idol either. I mean a gever , a hero on a Biblical scale. He is the man who defended the Jews against their greatest enemy. He will be remembered in thousands of years, like Judah Maccabee or the boy David who slew Goliath. His name is already a legend in my country. Jews around the world read his poetry. Against him, I am an ant. A politician, cutting deals. And that's before they know what I know. And what you now know. That I betrayed him. The great Aron of the Ghetto. And to the British! The hated imperial masters, who shut the gates of Palestine in our hour of mortal peril!’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I think the question is, what are we going to do? We all need an exit strategy.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ It was Rebecca.

‘It means, my dear, that we need a way out. You need to leave here safely, with a guarantee that you will not be troubled by any of this again.’ He let the words hang in the air a while, so that Tom and Rebecca could weigh them. They sounded emollient and reasonable, until you stepped back – and realized they were a threat.

He went on. ‘And I need a guarantee that what you know, what we have discussed here, will never be made public. That you will take this secret to your grave.’

At last, thought Tom: a negotiation. Some lawyers did nothing else. Tom had not been one of them, not when he started. But at the UN there had always been a bit of bargaining involved in the job, even if it was a departmental tussle within the UN. He had once had to resolve a dispute over a Pacific island – in truth a glorified rock, smaller than the average New Yorker's bathroom – claimed by two rival, and slightly larger, islands. It was an arcane and hair-splitting dispute but it had ended in a negotiation. Besides, his work over the last few months, including for the Fantoni family, had been nothing but deals.

Tom sat up stiffly, an attempt to establish some authority in the room. His mind was revving. He had planned for this moment, but only over the last few minutes. He would have to improvise. ‘OK. We each know what we want and what we have. You will give Rebecca safe passage back to London. Once there, she'll arrange to give you the papers that you want. They will be originals. Once you have them, you will know that there is no more hard evidence of what happened. No evidence of your role.’

‘Except what's in your heads.’

‘Yes. But how likely are we to use that? Why, realistically, would we want to cause trouble? Now that we know what you can do to us.’ This was the first move.

The President rubbed his chin, then began a slight rocking motion, forwards and backwards, like a family patriarch on the porch, taking his time. Tom decided to press the point, see if he could close the deal.

‘If you can inject us with anaesthetic just off bloody Regent Street, then you can inject us with something worse.’ He watched the old man. ‘We have no interest in causing you embarrassment.’

‘And in return?’

‘You let us have our lives back. You call off your thugs and give back our passports and wallets.’

‘And you will give me back those papers.’

‘They will be yours. And so long as nothing happens to us, no one will ever see them.’

This was the second move, the one Tom hoped would be decisive.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that I have already made an electronic copy of those papers and scanned them into a website. A dormant website, programmed to stay dormant so long as I log in, with my password, every seven days. If for some reason I don't log in – say, I've been incapacitated in some way – then the site goes live. And sends an email alert to a few chosen addresses. Editor@NewYorkTimes.com would be one. Editor@JerusalemPost might be another. Oh, and we wouldn't want to leave out the BBC or CNN.’ Tom looked over at Rebecca. Her eyes were wide; she looked startled.