The Final Reckoning (10 page)

The adviser asked for a private room. This was not their office and they had to tread carefully. Inside UN Plaza even still or sparkling was a political choice. They could pull rank, of course, demand whatever they wanted. But in a delicate matter like this, it was not a good idea. It would only draw attention.

There were only two of them in there now, the adviser made sure of that. Still, he wished his boss had listened to him and waited till they got back to the hotel to have this conversation. It was far too risky. Perhaps the bugs of foreign intelligence agencies posed no great danger, but they were at least vulnerable to the eavesdropping ears of their own side.

There were telephones here, used for conference calls no doubt. How could the adviser be certain they were not set on speakerphone, either by accident or design? Perhaps there was some kind of intercom system. Or maybe the head of mission
here had established a taping system, so that his own meetings could be recorded. Plenty of ambassadors to the United Nations and elsewhere had done that. Hell, even his own boss, back when he was foreign minister, used to do that.

‘Has it happened?’ his boss asked, in that trademark baritone.

‘Yes. They sent people in a couple of hours ago. It's done.’

‘Did they find anything?’

‘So far, nothing.’

‘Nothing? Come on.’

‘They took some papers, a couple of documents, a computer with a few files which they're examining. But, so far, none of it seems to relate to the, er—’ His throat was dry. He was struggling to find the words. He wished his boss had kept him out of this operation. If they were back home, he knew he would have done. He'd have relied on his chief of staff, the man who had been with him since the beginning. But here in New York the boss's team had been pared down. The only one he trusted to get this done was him. The adviser tried to finish his sentence. ‘They have no bearing on this issue.’

‘Damn,’ the boss said quietly, his eyes faraway. ‘I thought this had gone away decades ago. I mean it, decades ago. I'm old now, but still it comes back. Even in death, he's come back to haunt me. He did it once before and he's doing it again. Gershon Matzkin, the man who comes back from the dead.’

Tom's next move was one he had learned from his mother. He went into the kitchen, sidestepping the pile of cutlery and shattered crockery on the floor, and put the kettle on. Eleven years in the States had not muted his appreciation of the value of a cup of tea in moments of crisis.

He was looking for an unbroken mug when his cellphone rang. Henning. Tom glanced upward at the ceiling: too near, Rebecca would hear everything. He headed downstairs, rolling a cigarette – an excuse to stand on the pavement outside – and answered. ‘Hi Henning.’

‘Too early to ask what you got?’

‘I've got good news and bad news.’

‘Bad news first, please: I like to have something to look forward to.’

‘Bad news is, Gerald Merton was not just your average old man. He was a Holocaust survivor.’

‘Good God.’

‘A hero in fact. As a boy he went from ghetto
to ghetto, under cover, warning the Jews what was about to happen.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I know. Not good.’

‘Especially for me.’

Tom had thought of that: the horror of a German legal counsel defending the UN for killing a Jewish victim of the Nazis.

‘Don't tell anyone else, OK? Not yet.’

‘Sure.’

‘I think I need to hear the good news.’

Tom was watching a man across the street, also talking into his phone. Was there something odd about the way he was pacing?

‘Merton may not have been just an elderly tourist. He had a gun concealed in his hotel room. A polymer-framed revolver, apparently designed to escape detection. Seems he got it from a Russian arms dealer in New York, regular supplier to Terror Incorporated.’

‘So you want me to claim we didn't make a mistake at all? That we got the right guy?’

‘I think it could fly,’ said Tom.

‘No way. Not with his history. Court of public opinion, mate. That's where we'd lose this case before we'd said a bloody word. No one's going to believe some geriatric posed a threat to anyone, no matter what you found in the hotel room.’

‘It was an assassin's gun, Henning.’

‘I don't care: circumstantial. What's the link with the arms dealer?’

‘His number was on Merton's phone.’

‘Also circumstantial. Back to Plan A, Tom: pay the daughter whatever she wants and come back home.’

‘She's rejected that out of hand. Says it's blood money. She wants an apology from the SG, in person. Which I've obviously declined.’

Henning let out a sigh. ‘Can't you turn on the legendary Byrne charm? I've never known a woman refuse you anything.’

‘Somehow I don't think that's going to work.’ Tom heard the slight wobble in his own voice. ‘She's not like that. She's a very, I don't know, unusual—’

‘Don't tell me you've gone and fallen for the grieving daughter.’

‘Henning—’

‘You have! You're becoming one of those death row lawyers who end up knobbing the widow! Tom, just wrap this up and come back.’

‘Seriously, Henning. I need to work out why Merton was in New York. If he was up to no good, we can see off any legal claim against us. The UN would be completely in the clear.’

‘Look, Tom. You'll still get your fee, if that's what's worrying you.’

‘No, I'm just trying to do what's best for the UN.’

‘Long time since you've talked like that, Tom. Do you really think she'd sue?’

Tom remembered Rebecca's tirade of a few
minutes earlier.
After that, I'll make sure you're prosecuted for murder and robbery.
She hadn't meant it; it had been an outburst. But it would do. ‘She's been making threats, yes.’

‘All right, then. Do what you have to do. But I stress: my overwhelming preference is that you close this thing down. It's the bloody GA this week, remember. I don't have time for another headache.’

Tom went back inside, concluding, not for the first time, that Henning Munchau was the most perceptive man he knew.

He returned to making tea, carefully carrying the two warm mugs upstairs. In the doorway he watched Rebecca replacing chipped and broken picture frames onto the shelf, a cellphone cradled to her ear. She was speaking softly.

‘I know, it's just terrible to see your little girl like this. But please, try to believe me when I tell you that this is only an infection and we can beat it. And once we have, she'll be well enough for the transplant operation.’ Her gaze flicked over Tom. She took the mug he offered and carried on speaking. ‘That's right. We've had the typing back from Anna's brother and he's a ten-antigen HLA match. Sorry, Mrs Reid, that means your son's the perfect donor. We just need to get Anna through this infection and … that's OK. You call whenever you need. Goodbye, Mrs Reid.’

After she had disconnected, he gestured towards
the photographs. ‘You should leave that alone,’ he said as gently as he could. ‘For the police.’

‘I'm not going to call the police.’

He tried to hide his relief: the last thing he needed was for this burglary to become public knowledge. If Rebecca Merton had assumed the UN was behind this break-in, there'd be a thousand online conspiracy nutcases ready to jump to the same conclusion. ‘Why not?’

She looked right at him, the green clarity of her irises so bright it was hard not to look away. He had a sudden flashback to the Marvel comics of his youth – an addiction which lasted a good two years – and to Cyclops of the X-Men, the mutant superhero who could fire devastating ‘optic blasts’ from his eyes. Did Rebecca Merton have some similarly mystical power, a gaze that could instantly paralyse any man caught in its path?

‘In the last twenty-four hours,’ she said quietly. ‘I've discovered that my father has died a violent death, shot down in cold blood. My home has been burgled and I've surrendered my father's life story – which I've spent my life guarding with great privacy – because it was clearly the only way to persuade you that my father was not some kind of terrorist.’ The volume was louder now, the face redder. ‘Do you think I can cope with a whole lot more people traipsing all over my home, asking me more questions and more questions and MORE FUCKING QUESTIONS!’

At that, she hurled her mug, still full of tea,
across the room so that it hit the wall. There was silence, the two of them watching the hot liquid streak down.

‘Listen, Rebecca—’

‘No, you listen to me.’

Something in her voice made him freeze.

‘You said you wanted to cut a deal, so let's cut a deal.’

‘About the financial contribution, I understand—’

‘I don't want your money, I want your help. It was you – the people you work for – that started all this and now you're going to damn well help get me through it.’

‘I'm listening.’

‘I want to find out the truth of what happened to my father in New York and what it has to do with all this.’ She gestured at the detritus of the room. ‘I can't do that alone. But you're a lawyer, you've got the UN behind you. You know how these things work. I want you to help me.’

‘Deal,’ he said. ‘But no police means we'll have to do this ourselves. We have to start at the beginning. Can you see anything missing?’

They looked around, surveying afresh a room in which every last item had been either displaced or smashed. She caught his eye, both of them thinking the same thing, when the hint of that wonky smile appeared around her lips. He noticed it and smiled back. The absurdity of his question
now hung in the air – asking a passenger on the Titanic if he noticed anything out of place – and at last she released a laugh, a laugh powered not by humour or joy but their opposites, by tension and grief coiled up for too long.

The sound coming from her changed. She tried to cover her face, but he could see a tear falling down her cheek. He stepped forward, hesitated a moment, then put his hand on her arm and drew her towards him. She let her head rest for a moment on his chest and in that instant every one of his nerve endings felt as if it were on fire.

But then, just as suddenly, she sprang back, dabbed her eyes and signalled that the moment had vanished. ‘Let's get on with it.’

She started methodically, in the far left corner of the room, picking up books not to replace them but to divine a pattern. She would try to work out which areas had interested the thieves; only then could she begin to deduce why. Tom watched her, noting the concentration engraved on her face. He imagined her as a child, sharp and studious, running to bring home happy news of A grades to a father whose own childhood had been consumed by darkness and evil. She hadn't said so explicitly, but Tom was sure Rebecca Merton had been an only child, the bond with her father almost supernaturally intense.

After a few minutes, she moved back to the desk, working now with greater intensity. Tom watched her head to a specific drawer. As she bent
over, he was engulfed by a new surge of desire, like a wave breaking over his head.

She tugged at the drawer and it moved easily. She looked up, as if a hunch had been confirmed. ‘The lock's been broken,’ she said.

‘What was in there?’

‘My father's papers.’

‘What kind of papers?’

‘Legal documents, bank details, things he wanted me to look after. In case…’

Tom stepped closer, examining the desk: a mug of pens, a photograph of Rebecca and another woman sitting on a rock on some sun-drenched beach taken, Tom guessed, about ten years earlier. A rectangle on the wooden desk, marked out by dust, was darker than the rest: from the dimensions, Tom could see what it meant. The monitor, unplugged and useless was still there, but the computer had been taken.

He turned to tell Rebecca, now trying to reassemble the contents of a filing cabinet, when he saw something straight ahead of him, pinned to the corkboard above the desk, that made him start. Two words, filling a single sheet of A4. There was no mistaking it: though clearly scribbled in haste, they were written in the same hand as the notebook he had read that afternoon. The message read simply ‘Remember Kadish’.

‘What's this?’

Rebecca glanced up and for a moment looked utterly startled.

Tom shuddered. ‘Was this not here before? Has this been pinned up just now?’

‘Oh no, it was here before,’ Rebecca replied softly. ‘It's something my father wrote a while ago. He's reminding me to say the memorial prayer for my mother.’

‘For your mother?’

‘Yes. She died six years ago. My father was always very insistent that we do the prayers on the anniversary of her death. That's the name of the Jewish prayer for a dead loved one.’

No wonder she had looked so shaken: that simple piece of paper must have looked like a message from the grave, Gerald Merton pleading to be remembered.

In the silence, pregnant with poignancy, she didn't hear the dull vibration of Tom's BlackBerry, tucked inside his jacket pocket. He waited till she had turned back to the bookshelves to pull the device out and watch the screen light up. It was a message from Jay Sherrill and it consisted of only a single line:

Prints on gun match Merton's.

‘Thanks for seeing me, Commissioner.’

‘No need to thank me. Me who asked you to report direct to this office.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So what you got, Sherrill?’

‘Progress, sir. And in an unexpected direction.’

‘Usually say “shoot”. Not quite right in this context, I grant you. Why don't you go ahead?’

‘The starting assumption yesterday morning was that Gerald Merton was an innocent old man, a tragic case of mistaken identity.’

‘That's right.’

‘Well, some of our early findings shed doubt on that basic assumption.’

‘Do they indeed?’

‘Yes, sir they do. The first alert Intel Division had was a meet-up at the premises of an arms dealer—’

‘The Russian.’

‘Yes. His phone number appears on the
cellphone of Gerald Merton. Second, an overnight search of the deceased's hotel room has produced a weapon, a polymer-framed revolver, with steel inserts, Russian made.’

‘Hitman's friend.’

‘Precisely, sir. Serious calibre. It was secreted in the room at the Tudor Hotel where Mr Merton was registered. And third, the gun has Merton's fingerprints on it, sir. All over it.’

Riley sat back in his chair, testing its recline mechanism to the full. He did not break eye contact with the detective. He was assessing him, like a head teacher weighing up a bright pupil. ‘That's all fascinatin', Sherrill. Really is. Anyone else in NYPD know about this?’

‘No, sir. You asked that I report only to you.’

‘Good work, Sherrill. Let's keep it that way.’ He let his seat spring forward, then he leaned forward some more. ‘How'd your interview with the Watch Commander go?’

Sherrill went back to his notes, flicking through to the right page. He hadn't expected this. The Watch Commander's testimony had been wholly predictable, nothing compared to what Sherrill had found on Merton. Why had the Commissioner not reacted to what was clearly the biggest news here?

‘Watch Commander Touré reported that a phone call had come to him from his liaison at the NYPD, suggesting a heightened state of vigilance in respect of a man wearing dark black coat, woollen hat and—’

‘And when'd this come through?’

‘At approximately 8.49am, sir.’

‘And when was the shooting?’

‘8.51am, sir.’

‘Now, what do you notice about those two times, Detective?’

‘They are two minutes apart, sir.’

‘My, that Harvard education is worth every cent! Exactly, Mr Sherrill. Exactly! Which tells us what?’

‘Well, it could be a coincid—’

‘No coincidences in police work, Mr Sherrill. It tells us there was
live
intelligence, that's what it tells us.’

‘You mean that someone had seen the suspect approaching the United Nations building?’

‘That's exactly what I mean. Now, what was the precise wording of the message received by the Watch Commander at the UN?’

Jay Sherrill turned one more page of his notebook. He looked back up at the Commissioner. ‘It was an urgent warning, sir. Urging UN to be on the lookout for a possible terror suspect.’

‘Urgent, you say. Almost as if they knew he was on his way.’

‘But that makes no sense, sir.’

‘And why's that, Mr Sherrill? Why does it make no sense?’ Riley was leaning back again. He was enjoying himself.

‘Because anybody who actually
saw
Gerald Merton would have seen that he was, in fact, a
very old man. The very opposite of a terror suspect.’

‘You'd think so, wouldn't you, Mr Sherrill? You and I would certainly have done that, wouldn't we?’

Now it was the detective's turn to study the face of his boss. Slowly, out of the darkness, a picture was emerging, a glimpse of what might be in the Commissioner's head. He didn't yet fully comprehend what his boss was after, but now, at last, he had an inkling of it. Whatever else, it was not a simple resolution of the killing of Gerald Merton.

‘What do you want me to do, Commissioner?’

‘An excellent question, Detective. I want you to find out who exactly fed that urgent advisory to Watch Command at the UN and on what basis they gave it. Because a crucial mistake was made in this case, the mistake that led that unlucky Belgian policeman—’

‘Portuguese.’

‘Whatever. It led an unlucky, terrified cop to make a fatal error. We need to find the
precise
source of that original error. I want to know which part of the law enforcement apparatus of this city—’

‘But it may not have been a mistake, sir. The gun, the fingerprints—’

Riley held up his right palm, in a gesture of hush. ‘All in good time, Mr Sherrill. All in good time.’