Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

The President spoke again, his pitch now rising. ‘You've done this?’

Tom nodded, a bead of sweat forming on his upper lip. ‘We spent a lot of time at that internet cafe, as I'm sure your friends have told you.’

‘How dare you?’ The old man examined both faces then, with effort, hauled himself upright. ‘What if something goes wrong with this website, what if it accidentally-’

‘No need for you to worry about that. It's secure. Just so long as nothing happens to us.’

The President was pale, unsure what to say. Rebecca leaned forward, as if keen to exploit this moment of weakness. ‘I have one more condition.’

Tom swivelled round and glared at her: Don't ruin this.

She ignored him. ‘In return for keeping what you have told us safe and secret, in return for keeping that website dormant, I want you to use your influence to get me a meeting. With the Secretary-General of the United Nations.’

‘Oh, for God's sake, Rebecca-’ Tom couldn't help himself. What the hell was she playing at, risking the wrath of a man who had already proved he would stop at nothing to get his own way, and for what?

With a half-smile, which Tom interpreted as sheer disbelief at the cheek of the woman, the President held up a hand to silence him. ‘Tell me again. What is it you want?’

‘What Rebecca is trying to-’

‘I asked the lady myself, Mr Byrne.’ She had gone too far, Tom was certain of it. Any moment now the President would summon the heavies to come in and close this problem down once and for all.

Rebecca spoke again. ‘What I want is for you to get me a meeting with the Secretary-General. I want him to look me in the eye and admit what the UN did to my father. Then this nightmare can be over. My father did not survive all that he survived to be treated like this, as if he were nothing.’ Her voice was cracking. ‘Dirt on someone's shoe.’

‘I understand,’ the President said quietly. ‘Dr Merton, I truly understand.’

Suddenly, as if snapping himself out of a trance, he turned to Tom and shook his hand, giving him no chance to refuse the gesture. ‘I am prepared to accept these terms. I will contact the Secretary-General's office right away. And so long as you come to no harm, this internet site of yours will remain locked. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it stays locked and hidden even after my death: my future reputation matters to me just as much, you know. I can make arrangements that will hold after I'm gone. If that information is ever released, our agreement will be void. There will be people ready to act on that fact.’

‘I understand.’

‘Good. And now I would like to have a private word of remembrance with Dr Merton.’

He headed for the doorway: Tom wondered if he was about to usher Rebecca into the outer suite. Was he going to ask her to pray with him? But he gestured for her to stay behind, leaving Tom and Rebecca alone. Neither dared speak, fearing the old man would come back at any moment. He was gone for no more than twenty seconds, no doubt preparing his aides for the departure of his two ‘guests’.

When the President came back, he immediately placed an arm over Rebecca's shoulder, guiding her towards the window. Tom could only see their backs but he could hear the old man muttering something in a language he guessed was Hebrew: judging by Rebecca's low nod of response, it was probably a word of condolence for her father, perhaps even a memorial prayer. The President then removed his arm so that he could face Rebecca directly, clasping her hands in a double-handshake, the kind of showy gesture politicians saved for the special occasion. Tom was sure he had seen this very man do just that at the signing of a peace treaty a couple of decades earlier. There were more inaudible words of farewell, then the door opened and Tom and Rebecca were shown out – leaving the eighty-four-year-old President of the State of Israel gazing out of the window, quite alone.

They were in his old office. It had been Henning's idea: the new occupant was away, in Slovenia on some EU-related business, and the room was empty.

When it had been his, Tom had found it cramped and dull. The shelves were cast in grey metal, as was the desk. It had the utilitarian appearance of a foreman's cabin watching over the factory floor.

But now he wasn't looking at the furniture. Nor was he focusing on the fact that there were only two window panels for this cubicle, unlike the three to be found in the more senior offices at each end of this corridor. Now he was gazing outward, enjoying the generous and direct view of the Chrysler Building, easily his favourite New York landmark. Perhaps it was the simple relief that this strange ordeal was at last over; that he no longer had to look over his shoulder, no longer had to fear which flat was about to be ransacked, which old man was about to wind up dead. But he could not take his eyes off the view. To him, it shimmered.

Rebecca was behind the desk, sitting in a graphite chair far grander than the creaking, fake leather contraption he remembered.

‘All that time,’ he said at last. ‘We were looking in the wrong place.’

She gave the smallest frown, two lines in the space above the bridge of her nose.

‘I was thinking Nazis. That's all I could think. Once I read your father's journal, I was certain that the only people who would be doing this – smashing up the house, stalking us around London – would be some bunch of old war criminals. I never once thought of… his own side.’

‘Why would you have thought of it?’ She gave him a smile, one that warmed even this metallic room. ‘Anyway, even if you're not much of a detective, you're a helluva negotiator. That was quite a move you made.’

‘He gave us time to think. All that talking; it wasn't difficult to come up with something. We just had to give him a reason not to get rid of us once he got the papers.’

‘Oh, yes. The papers.’ She was still smiling. ‘What exactly are these mystery papers?’

Tom looked back at the window. ‘You know your trouble, Rebecca Merton? Too little faith.’ He turned back, so that he could face her. ‘We can choose. It could be the blueprints of the waterworks-’

‘But those have no link to him.’

'Not now, they don't. But it wouldn't be difficult for you to add a few words to that postcard, now would it? Some clever little play on a Biblical verse that happens to name our old friend. There must be plenty of characters in the Bible with the same name as him.

‘I'm not convinced. What's the other option?’

‘Your father's notebook. You could fake his writing, add a section about Plan A, explaining how the now-famous Mr X brewed up the potion. We hand over that page and the blueprints. Enough stuff to make him realize we weren't bluffing.’

‘Except we were-’

‘Ssshh.’ Tom placed a single finger across his lips. ‘All that matters is that getting rid of us is now less attractive than it was. Or getting rid of me. He wouldn't lay a glove on you: you're a “daughter of the Shoah”.’

Rebecca sat back in the chair. They had gone to the Nations' Café first, straight after they had been escorted out of the presidential suite at the UN Millennium Plaza hotel, from where Tom immediately phoned Henning. He wanted to break it gently, but it just splurged out: he and Rebecca had come on a hastily arranged trip to New York because the resourceful Dr Merton had made an end-run around the UN bureaucracy, deploying her own contacts to get her precious meeting with the Secretary-General.

‘I know,’ Henning had said. ‘I just got a call from the SG's political office.’ He was furious. ‘I'd won the battle on this, Tom. The SG had some ludicrous idea about meeting your Dr Merton and I got it blocked. And now I'm undermined by an intervention from the bloody Israelis. You've made me look a prick.’