Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

When had her deception begun? Was it the moment he confronted her with evidence of Gerald Merton's meeting with the Russian and the discovery of an assassin's weapon? That was when she had thrust the notebook in his hand, telling him to read it in full. At the time, he'd assumed that had been aimed at making Tom and the UN back off from accusing Merton of being a hitman. But she had torn out the crucial pages: she was playing a game even then.

And the robbery? That was surely when she understood that this went way beyond her and her father and that she would need some serious help. Who better than a man who knew only those parts of the story she chose to reveal to him – a man backed by the heft of the UN and with the ability to bring her face to face with her ultimate target?

‘How many others know about this wild story of yours?’ Paavo Viren stepped back and raised himself to his full height, trying to take command of the room. His accent was somewhere between Scandinavian and international diplomat, that peculiar brand of English as global lingua franca , all traces of geography flattened out.

‘I've not told anybody,’ Rebecca said. ‘Tom worked it out for himself. Like I said, this is between you and me.’ And she turned to glare at Tom, her eyes imploring him to back off.

Viren spoke again. ‘Since Mr Byrne is here, perhaps you can explain to him what it is exactly that you want. Because I am still unclear.’

Rebecca leaned closer towards him. ‘I want you to tell me the truth. That's all you have to do. After all these years, it's too late for anything else. But the victims deserve that. They deserve at least that.’

‘You want me to start confessing to you, in this chapel?’ He gave a snort of mockery. ‘Are you some kind of priest?’

‘I've told you, we have the evidence. There is a photograph of you, herding Jews to their deaths in the Ninth Fort. No one noticed it before because no one knew your face, at least no one who cared. But now people care very much.’

‘I know this photograph.’ He paused then let his mouth widen into a joyless smile. ‘That surprises you, yes? Of course, I have seen it. Perhaps there is a vague resemblance, but nothing more than that. The idea that this would count as evidence is laughable. You're too young to remember the Demanjuk trial, Ms Merton. But perhaps you, Mr Byrne, remember it?’

Viren turned to Tom. It was a familiar manoeuvre, the attempt to co-opt the minor opponent, in order to isolate the major one. He wanted Tom to side with him against Rebecca.

‘I remember it.’

‘They called him Ivan the Terrible. Some car worker in Ohio.’ He pronounced the name as if it were an exotic, fairytale place, separating each syllable: O-hi-O. ‘All because of a photograph of him as a young man. Even the court in Israel could not convict him. A case of mistaken identity, that was the final judgement. And the Demanjuk photograph was of an adult. This picture you have is of a boy, a teenage boy. People's looks change so much between this age and adulthood. You don't have “evidence”. You have a baseless accusation.’

‘So why don't you walk out?’ It was Tom, standing in the shadows.

‘What?’

‘If this is all baseless nonsense, why are you still here? You've been talking to Rebecca Merton for-’ Tom made a show of checking his watch, ‘quite a while. If this was all slanderous rubbish, you'd have walked out by now. You'd have summoned your aides. Henning Munchau would be here, drafting a writ of slander. You'd have called Security. But I'm looking around and I don't see anybody here. Now why would that be?’

Viren lifted his chin, as if making a more thorough assessment of Tom Byrne. ‘I'm trying to be humane to Ms Merton. She's clearly a lady in some dist-’

‘Really? Or is it because you don't want anybody else, not even a security guard, to hear what she has to say?’

The SG began to pace, half-turning his back on Rebecca. The movement made her flinch. For the first time, Tom wondered whether the man was armed in some way – an absurd thought, he realized, as soon as he had formulated it. Even so, Rebecca had been brave confronting him alone like this. He was not young, that was true, but he was not frail; he could have overwhelmed her, he could have-

‘Do you know how old I am?’

The question hung in the air. The longer it lingered, the more it made Tom feel unsteady. The physical resemblance in the photograph had been so striking, he had not even considered basic matters like age and chronology. Now, though, his memory spooled back to the way he had come across the picture: the discovery of the name ‘Kadish’, the search in the photographer's online archive for an image that might connect to Gershon's story, then finding one that seemed to make sense of everything, right down to the word ‘March’ in the caption. A snapshot that showed at last why Gerald Merton had embarked on a final mission to New York, to the steps of the United Nations headquarters.

But perhaps Tom had made an elementary error: perhaps he had seen what he had wanted to see. Police officers did it all the time, following a pattern of apparent evidence to a conclusion that fitted their first assumptions. It was a universal, human failing; we are suggestible creatures. How else did optical illusions work, except by relying on the eye's habit of seeing what it expected rather than what was actually there?

Rebecca broke the silence. ‘Your official biography says you're sixty-eight.’

‘Good, Ms Merton. You have done your homework. My biography says I am sixty-eight because I am sixty-eight. And how's your mental arithmetic? Because mine is quite good and it says that I was five years old when the war ended. Five! We can agree that the man in your photograph was more than five years old, yes?’ The smile again, this time with more enthusiasm.

‘You lied about your age.’

‘What, for all these years? Do I look seventy-eight to you?’

Rebecca shot back. ‘My father didn't look his age either. He was fit and strong. He could have passed for sixty-eight too.’

Tom could feel his knees weakening. What if Rebecca was wrong? What if Gershon Matzkin had got it wrong? There had been no DIN organization any more, just an elderly, lonely Gerald Merton at home, probably scouring the internet, struck by the physical similarity of a newly public figure to a hated face in an ancient photograph. They were making a terrible mistake.

But Rebecca had not budged. Instead she was standing even closer to Viren, examining him as if he were one of her patients.

‘Oh, there's no hiding that, though, is there, Mr Secretary-General? That line around the ear always gives it away. You've had some work done here, I can tell.’

‘So what? A little cosmetic surgery is nothing to be ashamed of in this day and age. Just ask the prime minister of Italy. Human vanity is no crime, Dr Merton.’ Then, as if he could sense Tom wavering: ‘Besides, and this you must know already, I am not Lithuanian. I am Finnish, for heaven's sake. I served as the foreign minister of that country. I am the wrong age and the wrong nationality – which means you have the wrong man.’

Tom looked down at his feet. He would need all his lawyerly skills to resolve this situation. He would have to offer an apology, explaining that both he and Rebecca Merton had been under extreme stress, and that they withdrew their accusation, undertaking never to repeat it. None of this would be put in writing, lest such a document itself, even in refuting the charge, be taken as grounds for suspicion. And Dr Merton would waive any claims for compensation for the death of her father. Tom would sketch out the broad terms to the SG now, then work out the detail with Henning later.