Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

When Tom had sat in the cafe around the corner from Rebecca's flat, reading the faded pages of Merton's journal, he had tried to picture the cruelty of this Wolf, the smiling, teenage sadist who had asked for the pleasure of punishing Gershon's sister, Hannah, for the crime of smuggling a crust of bread. He had stripped off the clothes of a girl his own age, beaten her with a truncheon, then forced himself inside her. Hannah was wounded. Not just her face, which was no longer hers. But her soul.

So this was why Gershon had broken his own rule, ending his retirement from the work of DIN. The Wolf was a special case, a personal score to settle. What had the torn pages, concealed in Rebecca's pen, said? A long time ago, I made another promise, a promise to a young woman just as full of life and of beauty as you are today. I never thought I would have the chance to honour my word to her. I thought it was too late.

No more than a boy, Gershon must have promised his older sister that he would avenge her, that he would, one day, make the Wolf pay for what he had done. Somehow he had kept alive the memory of that single act of brutality, even amidst all the killing and carnage he was to witness in the weeks and months and years that followed. He had seen such horrors, yet this one act had burned inside him.

Rebecca was peering intensely at Viren's forearm. Tom was trying to work out the expression on her face. Finally she spoke, uttering words that seemed to suck the air out of the room.

‘There is no scar.’

He tried to remember what this feeling was like and the comparison, when it came to him, was a surprise. But the combination of anxiety and anticipated relief – the sense that while he was about to endure something painful and risky, things would be better afterwards – was indeed similar. Jay Sherrill felt now just as he had when he first stepped into the office of the therapist who had counselled him after the death of his brother. Now, as then, he had concluded that the very act of taking action had to be better than enduring another anguished, unending night.

It was good that he had had so little time to prepare. He had contacted Henning Munchau late last night, asking to see him urgently. He didn't like going over Tom Byrne's head, but he had little choice: he hadn't been able to get hold of Byrne since yesterday lunchtime.

Munchau had seemed reluctant to take his call. Maybe he didn't like to undermine Byrne: more likely, he wanted arm's length deniability on the whole Gerald Merton business. Doubtless that was why he had contracted out the case to a lawyer who had left the UN more than a year ago. ‘I'll see what I can do,’ was the most Munchau had promised. Besides, he had no reason to bother with Sherrill: by now he would have had word from the DA's office that there were to be no charges in the Merton case. No crime had been committed; the UN was off the hook.

And then a call from Munchau twenty minutes ago, saying that a window in his schedule had suddenly opened up. If Jay could be in UN Plaza in the next fifteen minutes, they could have coffee in the delegates' lounge.

‘Sorry to spring that on you like that,’ the German said, in an accent Sherrill struggled to place. Was it European or Australian?

‘Not at all. Just glad you could make the time.’

‘Unusual situation. Secretary General just asked me to clear an hour of his schedule, which suddenly gave me an hour I didn't have.’

‘Right.’

‘He's meeting Rebecca Merton, as it happens. One on one.’

‘She's in New York?’

‘Didn't Byrne tell you? They flew in together.’

‘So he's alive then.’

Munchau arched an eyebrow.

‘It's just I've had no word from him for twenty-four hours. Despite multiple messages.’

‘That's Tom for you. So: what can I do for you?’

‘This conversation is strictly confidential, yes?’

‘If you want it to be.’

‘Well, my career – which is probably over – might depend on it.’

‘What's on your mind, Detective?’

‘Two days ago I had a meeting with the head of the NYPD Intelligence Division.’

‘With Stephen Lake?’

‘Yes.’

‘I'm listening.’

‘He said something I barely noticed at the time, but which I can't quite figure out.’

‘What was it?’

‘It could have been a simple slip of the tongue…’

‘Detective?’

‘He said,’ Sherrill read from his notebook, ‘“We may have had our eye on the UN for a while, with evidence of a ticking time-bomb over there”.’

‘He said that?’

‘“Or we may not.”’

‘Are you saying that the intel division knew there was a terror threat to the UN and didn't pass it on?’

‘No, sir, I'm not. That's what I thought it meant too. But listen to the exact wording. Lake didn't say a “a ticking time-bomb on its way to the UN” or “a bomb aimed at the UN”. He said “a bomb over there”.’

‘As if it were already here.’

‘Exactly.’

Henning looked around, watching delegates chat and smoke. ‘But NYPD wouldn't sit by and let this place be blown up. It would be their fuck-up, apart from anything else.’

‘I agree, Dr Munchau. Which is why I think he didn't mean it literally. He was using the phrase metaphorically.’

‘So intel knows something about this place that counts as a time-bomb.’

‘Something that could destroy the UN, yes, sir. That's what I suspect.’

The look of recognition and then alarm that spread across Henning Munchau's face meant that when he silently got to his feet, Jay Sherrill knew he had no option but to follow.

‘What do you mean there's no scar?’ Tom instinctively loosened his grip.

Now Viren spoke. ‘Good. I'm glad this farce is over. I should, of course, report you-’

Rebecca cut him off. ‘Or rather there is not the obvious scar.’

The Secretary-General tried to shake himself free. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You see,’ Rebecca said, pointing at the pale skin of his forearm, ‘there is no line there. But, unluckily for you, plastic surgery was not able to do then what it can do now.’

‘You're talking nonsense.’

‘Back then, when they did skin grafts like this one, to cover up a scar, they couldn't help but leave a mark around the edges, where the new skin was placed. It's like the outline of a patch sewn on a suit. See it? Right here.’ She was being unnervingly calm.

‘So what if I did have a skin graft? It was for a burn I had twenty years ago.’

‘Was it?’

‘Yes. It was an, an, an accident. At home. With a stove.’

‘Well, that's very odd. Because, in fact, the marks you have on your skin in this area are clear signs of stretching. And the only way you could have got those is if you had a skin graft when you were young, when your skin was still growing. And you weren't growing twenty years ago, Mr Viren, were you?’

At that, Viren shook Tom off, so that he was now inches away from Rebecca. He raised his hand, high so that it was level with his ear, and it was about to come down on Rebecca when Tom grabbed him around the middle, a crude wrestling move that left the older man's fist flailing in the air.

And then Viren let out a shriek.

Tom's view was obscured at first by the body of the man he was restraining, but now he could see the source of his alarm. Rebecca had produced from somewhere, a sleeve or a pocket, a hypodermic syringe. She was now raising it into the air, at eyelevel, so that she could test it against the light.

Tom gasped. ‘Rebecca, what the hell are you doing?’

She ignored him, addressing only the Secretary-General. ‘Your great misfortune is that I'm a doctor. I know about scar tissue and skin grafts – and I also know about poisons. This one, for example, is odourless, clear and instantly effective. I don't know how painful it is but, given its source, I'm an optimist. Which means I hope it's very painful.’