Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

‘She's made you look a prick, Henning.’

‘Thanks a lot, that makes a big difference.’

Tom tried to placate his old friend. At least this way, there would be no publicity. He put his hand over the receiver and checked that Rebecca was happy for there to be no photographers. She nodded immediately, looking terrified at the very prospect of facing the media. ‘She agrees. We'll have no one there, no press, no advisers. Let's keep it simple, Henning – and leak-proof. By the time the media know about this meeting, it'll be over.’

Munchau told Tom the only reason he wasn't resisting this insane idea more strenuously was that he had been notified the previous day that the NYPD were dropping their inquiry into the Merton killing altogether. ‘Since it falls outside their jurisdiction, the DA says no prosecutable crime was committed.’

‘So the coast is clear?’

‘I suppose so. But I still want her to sign a comprehensive end-of-claim agreement. Can't have her throwing a meeting with the SG back in our face in some future civil action, claiming it as admission of liability. And a gag agreement, promising no publicity, no interviews, nothing.’

‘I'll draft something right away,’ Tom said, confirmed in his view that Henning was one of the best men the UN had, protective of the institution and its reputation even when the boss was cavalier. Tom felt a sting of guilt at how quickly he had doubted him.

‘I'm impressed,’ Rebecca was saying, swivelling her chair and alternating her gaze from the Chrysler building back to Tom. ‘You got it all worked out.’

‘Not quite everything.’

‘No?’

‘There's one thing I've never understood. Barely had a minute to think about it in London. But I still don't understand it.’

‘Don't understand what?’

‘The envelope that arrived at your flat. The list of names. I don't get who would have done it. It can't be the Israelis, or whoever was working for the Pres-’

There was a knock on the door. Henning.

Rebecca leapt up from the chair, re-adopted the expression of grieving daughter, and extended her hand.

Tom did the introductions and Henning got straight to the point, too professional to show that his teeth were gritted. ‘Dr Merton, the Secretary General is so appreciative of the gesture you've made in coming here that he has asked if he can see you right away, in accordance with the conditions I have discussed with Mr Byrne.’ He looked towards Tom, who nodded. ‘He has cleared his next two appointments.’ He raised his hand in a beckoning gesture.

‘Hold on,’ Rebecca said. She took a deep breath, then exhaled. ‘Can we just take a minute?’

‘Of course.’ Henning shot another look over at Tom. She's not going to start crying, is she?

Rebecca collected herself. ‘Mr Munchau, I'm not used to this sort of thing. Meetings with world leaders.’

Tom looked at the floor.

‘From what I hear, you're pretty well-connected. Quite something to have the president of the state of Israel in your corner.’

‘Still, I think I might find it intimidating to walk into the Secretary-General's office, with him sitting behind some giant desk. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I think so.’

‘Is it possible that we meet somewhere, I don't know, less grand? Somewhere a bit quieter?’

‘Of course, Dr Merton.’ Henning's diplomatic veneer was back in place. ‘I can think of a place that will be ideal, wholly suitable for an encounter of this gravity.’

‘I really appreciate it.’

She stood up and visibly girded herself, like a candidate about to give a speech. Tom stepped forward, ready to follow her out. But Rebecca raised a single palm to block his path.

‘Tom, you've helped me so much. But I think I need to do this on my own.’

Tom nodded and retreated. Henning gave him a brief smile, then ushered Rebecca out. ‘Don't worry, I'll bring her back,’ he mouthed with the tiniest gleam in his eye.

Tom watched them go, giving Rebecca an unseen nod of encouragement, then looked back around the office, trying to remember what it had been like when it was his. There had been even less decoration then than now. He had not stuck up any photographs or garlanded the shelves with bandanas picked up on visits to some exotic, ‘developing’ hell-holes, in the style favoured by colleagues down the corridor.

A leaden memory surfaced, like a hunk of rusting metal on the end of a fishing line. It was in this room that he used to do it. It was here that he would read the testimonies, one after another, detailing the most horrendous war crimes. Sure, the language was different each time. The place-names changed. But the story was always the same: the most blood-curdling human cruelty.

At first, he always reacted the same way: revulsion, anger, a terrible, weighty sadness. But after Rwanda, he could feel no longer. After all, those emotions had been roused to full alert when he served on the Rwanda tribunal and what good had it done? How many killers had they actually prosecuted and convicted? Twenty-six.

After that, he stopped reading the accounts. He would skip over the human testimony and just get to the bottom line figure. That's what he had done with the Darfur paperwork that had come into this office. He had trained his eye to skip over the eye-witness stuff, the individual case-studies, and just find the hard number at the bottom of the page. Why read it? He knew what savagery human beings were capable of. And, much worse, he knew that there was nothing that anyone – not even the sainted bloody United Nations – could do about it.

Tom needed to get on with drafting the agreement for Rebecca and Henning to sign. He sat at the desk and switched on the computer. It asked for a name and password: his old one didn't work. He smiled and remembered the ‘system administrator’ code Henning had taught him when they had once had to hack into the machine of a colleague who had gone on vacation without first sending them a draft text he had been working on. He tapped in the password – UThant , the name of a past Secretary-General – and so, thanks to the sentimentality of the United Nations IT department, he was in.

He opened up a Word document and had tapped out a first sentence when he hesitated. Another lesson from Henning: for anything truly confidential, don't use the internal UN system. Anyone could access anything. If Munchau's chief objective was the avoidance of publicity, it made no sense to risk a leak. He would draft a text by hand.

He reached into his inside pocket, but there was no pen. Perhaps it had been taken during his unconscious flight. Or left behind at the hospital.

There were no loose pens on the desk and the drawers were locked. He saw Rebecca's bag: she had left it behind on a chair, along with her coat.

Guiltily, he walked around to get it. He never liked so much as peering inside a woman's handbag: it felt too much like going through his mother's purse. He opened it quickly, saw a fountain pen and grabbed it. There was some paper in the laserprinter: he took a couple of sheets and prepared to write.

Agreement between he scratched without leaving a mark. He gave it a shake but still no ink would flow. He unscrewed the barrel and saw the explanation: there was no ink cartridge.

Perhaps it had become detached and fallen back into the barrel. Tom held it up to the light and saw that there was indeed something inside – but he knew instantly it was no cartridge.

At first he wondered if it was some kind of cigarette, perhaps even drugs. From what he'd heard in the presidential suite, it would be no surprise. Tom tapped the pen barrel on the surface of the desk and it popped out. Not a cigarette, but a neatly rolled sheet – perhaps two sheets – of paper.