The Final Reckoning (13 page)

‘For you and your wife, of course. We will wait for her to come back and you can die together. Though, as you know thanks to Dr Heim, it may take some time.’

With mammoth effort, Dorfman pulled himself upright. His eyes were fierce with fear. I noticed a patch of damp spreading across the Nazi's trousers; he had soiled himself.

He began to beg. At first he pleaded for both their lives, his wife's and his, repeating his offer
of money until he could see it was futile. He promised he could give more names, if only he had more time. Eventually, I heard what I was waiting to hear. ‘Take me, but not her. And allow me to die like a man.’

He wanted the revolver, but I refused: too noisy. Instead, I opened my bag and pulled out a long rope. Our source had told me there were ceiling beams in this hotel and that the height was good enough.

I, a Jew, handed him, a Nazi, the rope. I positioned a chair. I watched as Dorfman made the noose around his neck then tied it, and I kept watching as he tightened it. My gaze did not waver when he kicked away the chair: I watched his weight fall. I showed no expression as SS Lieutenant Joschka Dorfman of the Ninth Fort gasped, his body convulsing in the last spasms of life, until his legs were swinging, as dumb and fleshy as the hams on Puerto Street.

Quietly, I holstered my gun, gathered up my things, including a bag which now contained a range of unused weapons, including a spare revolver – but certainly no syringes or petrol – and closed the door of room 212 softly behind me.

‘Rebecca, I'm afraid there's no other way to understand it. Don't you see the pattern?’

They were standing next to each other, their arms just touching, poring over the papers spread out on the table.

‘For every date stamp on a passport, there's a cutting. Look.’

Methodically, Tom set out the pile of newspaper clippings alongside the passports. There was one from Liberation in late 1952. He translated, falteringly, out loud: ‘Detectives in Les Halles are seeking witnesses who may be able to help them with information about the death on Tuesday evening of a man apparently hit by a speeding car and flung onto the railings of a Metro station. Police said the man's injuries suggested he had been hit at top speed …’ In neat handwriting, a hand Tom recognized, a short sentence had been pencilled in the margin:
SS Captain Fritz Kramer, Birkenau.

And there it was: a stamp in Gerald Merton's
British passport establishing that he had flown into Orly airport two days earlier and left the day after the reported accident.

Next, a news report of a corpse found hanging in a Rio suburb later that same year. Tom checked the date and, sure enough, ‘Fernando Matutes’ had arrived in Brazil four days before the hanging and had left the same day. The passport showed he had travelled direct from Brazil to Argentina, just in time, it seemed, for the mysterious road traffic accident which would strike two days later – the newspaper account of which had been carefully preserved in this same box.

An explosion in an apartment building in Lille, a botched operation in a Munich hospital: each time, Tom could find a passport stamp that coincided. There were reports of men killed in car accidents, some of them only months apart. One was found dead in a gutter. The pencilled note identified him as
Hans Stuckart, Ministry of Interior.
An account from 1953 reported police bafflement after a driver was burned alive, his car having suffered a rare steering failure which sent it spinning across the highway. The handwritten note added that the deceased was
Otto Betz, deported Jews of France.

Now Rebecca was working through the cuttings herself, rapidly turning them over, one after another, in date order. After the first set from 1945 and 1946, they jumped to 1952, then paused again
before the final item, which dated from the early 1960s in the
Winnipeg Free Press.
It reported the death of an Estonian immigrant, found hanged in his home. The police were looking for no one else. In pencil, the suicide was identified as
Alexander Laak, commandant of the Jägala concentration camp in Estonia.

Silently, Tom tucked each news story into a passport, inserting it alongside the page where there was a matching stamp. By the end he had done that for nearly three quarters of the news reports; all that was left was the small pile of German items from 1945.

‘Rebecca, what languages did your father speak?’

‘Lots,’ she said quietly, staring down at the table. ‘German, Russian. French, I think. Maybe Spanish.’

A sentence from the notebook surfaced.
My sisters and I went to the school and I discovered that I was good at learning languages. The teacher said I had an ear for it.

Tom didn't know what to say. First the shooting in New York and now this: the father Rebecca thought she knew had been killed twice over.

She fell into a chair, biting her lip so hard he thought it might bleed.

He dragged his gaze away. ‘Look, Rebecca, this is—’

‘Don't say anything.’

‘I don't know what else we—’

‘I need time to think.’

Tom retreated, clearing up the items from the table and putting them back.

At last, Rebecca stood, picked up her father's box and strode over to Julian. Tom watched her hand it back to him, and then ask for what appeared to be a favour. Julian scribbled down a number, kissed her on the cheek and said goodbye. Tom ran after her as she went out the door and onto the street, feeling like a dog on a lead.

‘Where are we going now?’

‘To see the one man who might know the truth about my father.’

The convenience stores and fast food restaurants rapidly gave way to the sparkle of steel and glass. As they passed by the Gherkin, another London landmark that had sprouted in Tom's absence, Hackney receded and the glistening towers of Canary Wharf became visible.

‘You drive,’ Rebecca had said as they walked away from the Kingsland Law Centre. ‘I want to think.’ And she had sat there in the passenger seat, her face grim with determination.

In a court of law, Tom could have just about constructed an argument that all the evidence they had uncovered was circumstantial, that there was no ironclad proof connecting Gershon Matzkin to any one of the killings, let alone all of them. Most had been recorded as suicides or road traffic accidents; there was nothing that could establish beyond doubt that foul play had occurred. And even if it had, young Gershon might have served as only a minor accomplice,
perhaps a lookout. There was no proof that he was a killer.

And yet, neither he nor Rebecca doubted that Gershon Matzkin had been an assassin. Who else would keep a score-sheet, a roll call of war criminals, their names crossed out on the occasion of their deaths, but the man responsible? This, surely, was the record of his labours, maintained with pride. (It was something Tom's friends in the criminal lawyer fraternity had told him often undid felons: sheer professional pride, the desire to be credited for one's work. One way or another, consciously or otherwise, they had wanted their endeavours to be recognized. It was a basic human impulse.)

As they drove on, Tom began to see everything slip into place. Of course Gershon had always eschewed publicity, refusing to address seminars or be interviewed for oral history archives: he could not dare risk his story slipping into public view. No wonder those last few pages of the notebook had been torn out. Carried away by the equally human desire to shape the narrative of one's own life, he must have begun to set down his story in full – only to realize that what he had written amounted to a confession of serial murder. Tom could picture him realizing his error, frantically tearing out the incriminating sheets of paper, shredding or burning them, until their remarkable reminiscences were once more consigned to oblivion.

He thought back to the corpse he had seen little more than twenty-four hours ago in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, how he had been struck by the toned muscle, the body of a strong man who had fought to keep his shape. Now that strength made sense. He had been a human weapon, deployed to hit back at those who had nearly wiped out his entire people. He had chosen to do what the Jews had barely been able to do when it counted: to fight back. Of course he had to be strong. He needed to be a Samson, with enough muscle in his arms to smite every last one of the Jews' murderous enemies. This man had been their avenging angel.

Tom's phone rang. ‘It's in my pocket,’ he said, his eyes on the road. ‘Take it out, but don't answer it. Just tell me who it is.’

Rebecca reached across, trying to find the opening in his jacket, her fingers brushing against him. There were layers of clothes between them, but still the sensation sent a charge through him. He gripped the steering wheel tight.

‘Unknown caller,’ she said.

He took the phone from her and pressed the green button. ‘Tom Byrne.’

‘Tom, how you doin'?’

‘Who is this?’

‘A very satisfied customer, that's who.’

‘Oh, Mr Fantoni. Nice of you to call.’ He could hear himself enunciating more clearly, ramping up his Englishness. It was a cheap tactic, but the
high-paying clients seemed to like it. ‘As it happens, I'm in London just now. I wonder if—’

‘Look, this won't take a minute. We were real happy with the job you did for us: the sale's gone through. My father's very pleased.’

‘I'm glad.’

‘So pleased, he wants you to work on another big job we have here. Similar time scale.’

‘Well, we could meet next week and—’

‘Too late. We need this done right away. I'll book you a first class ticket on the next flight out of there.’

‘Unfortunately—’

‘We'll pay triple rates, Mr Byrne. What can I tell you, my father likes what you do.’

Triple.
That would be a quarter of a million dollars for no more than a fortnight's work. He shot a glance at Rebecca, her face in profile as she gazed out of the window. Just that brief sight of her was enough to send a surge into his chest.

‘You know what, Mr Fantoni. I'd love to, I really would. But I'm on a case here in London I cannot abandon. I hope—’

The voice on the phone adopted a stage Italian accent. ‘I make-a an offer you can't-a refuse!’ The accent disappeared; the tone became chilly. ‘You're making a mistake, Mr Byrne.’

In the silence, Tom felt his throat dry. ‘I'm sorry. It's just bad timing.’

‘I hope you don't regret it.’

‘I hope not, too.’

Tom passed the phone back to Rebecca, hoping she had not heard Fantoni's booming, mugging voice. She gave no hint that she had. He would try to put Fantoni out of his mind for the time being, call when he got back to New York, hope he could smooth things over. For now, he had to focus on this case. Should the contents of Merton's secret box affect his advice to Henning? Could the UN argue that the man they had killed was himself a proven killer? Hardly. Those deaths had taken place five decades ago; the trail of evidence would be frozen, let alone cold. If the UN tried to mitigate its error, its crime, in killing an unarmed seventy-seven-year-old by claiming he had, back in the 1950s and 1960s, been some kind of hitman, it would probably backfire. The organization would sound unhinged. The press corps would demand hard evidence, beyond a ropey shoebox containing a few crumbling press clippings. They probably wouldn't even get to that stage. They would ask the question that had been throbbing in Tom's mind ever since they had opened that dusty container: What does any of this have to do with the United Nations?

The instant he had decoded the fading evidence of that box, he had tried to come up with an answer. Is that what had taken Gerald Merton to the UN, one last assignment, one last Nazi to kill? Decades back, the Secretary-General from Austria, Kurt Waldheim, had been exposed as having lied about his military service in the Wehrmacht,
glossing over his knowledge of Nazi war crimes – an affair which older hands in the UN bureaucracy still recalled with a shudder. But that was in the 1980s. There was no one who could possibly fit that bill now, no one old enough for a start. He thought about Paavo Viren, the new Secretary-General. Now in his late sixties, he would have been a toddler during wartime. Besides, he was Finnish; the country had stayed out of the Nazis' clutches. Tom vaguely remembered reading a profile of the SG after his appointment, noting his cleric father's long-time record, out in the Finnish sticks somewhere, as a preacher of tolerance and peace. He cast his mind over the rest of the UN staff, but couldn't think of anyone who came into the right age range.

On the other hand, it was General Assembly week: the place was teeming with representatives of every country, each bringing large delegations in tow …

They found a parking space and while Rebecca fumbled for change for the meter, Tom stepped a few paces away and dialled Henning's number. They were in Canary Wharf now, an area that Tom had never visited. Back when he lived in London, Docklands had still been largely desolate and empty, a wasteland dotted with the odd overpriced apartment and served by a Toytown light railway. People spoke of it as a kind of Siberia, a place remote from the hubbub of ‘real’ London. Now, it seemed, all that had changed. The tower
blocks that had once lain empty were brimming with offices, with new, taller buildings arising like spirits from the swamp. The area had built-up a serious high-rise skyline, something London had always lacked. And it oozed money.

‘Munchau.’

‘Hi Henning, it's Tom.’

‘You've either fucked her or she's just filed suit. Which is it?’

‘Neither.’

‘OK, I give up.’

‘Henning, I won't bore you with all the details, but there's some information I could use.’

‘Bore me.’

Tom looked over at Rebecca, now placing the pay and display ticket in the front windscreen. ‘It's just a hunch at the moment, nothing more.’

‘Don't really have time for hunches, mate. At the risk of repeating myself, General Assembly, General Assembly, General Assembly.’

‘That's what I'm thinking about too. Could you get someone in the OLC to compile a list of every official either in New York for the GA already or due to arrive this week who's aged seventy or above?’

‘Are we still on the hitman theory?’

Tom paused. ‘It's a bit difficult to explain right now.’

‘Oh, she's with you! Why didn't you say? Is she really, unbelievably gorgeous?’

‘Thanks, Henning. I appreciate it.’

‘All right, I'll see what we can get. Seventy? That's the cut-off?’

Tom did his sums once again: even seventy was pretty young, anyone below that age would have been a baby. Still, best to err on the side of caution. ‘Yes. Seventy. Heads of government, foreign ministers, ambassadors, obviously. But anyone else: aides, translators, anyone coming in for the week.’

‘What about the entire UN staff, while we're at it?’

‘Actually, that's not a bad idea. Start with—’

‘Tom, I was joking.’

He hung up and hurried to catch up with Rebecca, already walking towards the offices of Roderick Jones &
?
Partners, one of the grander City law firms that had moved into Canary Wharf in the late 1990s. The recently retired senior partner was Julian Goldman's father, Henry. But, Julian had told them with a roll of his eyes, Goldman
père
couldn't quite make the break, so spent at least two days a week in the office, nominally as a ‘consultant’ to his erstwhile colleagues but, Julian had implied, more accurately because he didn't have anything else to do.

The moment they walked into the lobby, Tom smiled to himself: just seeing it instantly gave him the measure of the young man they had left behind in Hackney. A steel-and-glass affair, it had a vast atrium, tall enough to house an impressive, if vaguely absurd, indoor tree. The marble floor
stretched for acres before reaching a white desk as wide as a Politburo platform, with not one, but three different receptionists, each equipped with a telephone headset. It was a textbook example of the paradox of corporate relations: the easiest way to impress clients was to show them just how profligate you were with their money.

What options had that left poor Julian Goldman? Born on the top of the mountain, where else could he go but down? He had clearly turned his back on Daddy's riches and gone the ethical route, opening his battered legal aid practice in deepest Hackney on a street which probably lay in the direct shadow of his father's corporate palace. Julian's career would be a rebuke to Henry Goldman; he would be a lawyer driven not by money but by conscience. Tom smiled to himself at the predictability of it all. While men from Tom's background were striving with each sinew to climb up the prestige ladder, the likes of Julian Goldman were in a hurry to slide down.

When they stepped out of the lift, Henry Goldman was waiting for them. He stretched his arms open to embrace Rebecca, but clumsily, as if handling a new-fangled device he had not yet mastered. He shook Tom's hand, then ushered them both into a conference room more plushly furnished than even the grandest meeting place in the United Nations.

‘Rebecca, I was so sorry to hear of your news. We all were.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘My father always said your father was his best friend.’

‘That's true. I think my father regarded Gerald as a kind of younger brother.’ A wounded expression briefly flitted across his face. ‘Maybe even another son.’

‘I presume he told you things. As his lawyer.’

At that, Goldman stretched out his legs and smoothed a hand over his tie. Tom recognized the colours of the Garrick Club.

‘You've come here from Julian's office, you say? You know the key,’ Goldman paused,
‘materials
are kept there now.’

‘I know,’ said Rebecca. ‘I've just seen them.’

‘I see.’

The lawyer got to his feet and began to pace away from the table, towards the window. The light was fading; Canary Wharf was beginning to glitter in the twilight. ‘I cannot claim to be wholly surprised by this turn of events. No matter what we tell our clients, it's a simple truth that nothing can stay secret forever. Isn't that right, Mr Byrne?’

Tom was barely paying attention. He had not got past the clipped English accent, straight out of a Kenneth More movie.
This
was the son of a Holocaust survivor, underground fighter and forest partisan; this stuffed-shirt in a Garrick Club tie? He should have been used to it by now, having spent the last decade in the ultimate city of immigrants, but this seemed such an extreme case.
Perhaps this is what people meant when they talked of becoming ‘more English than the English’.

Rebecca didn't give Tom time to answer. ‘Can you tell us what you know?’

Tom fought the urge to inhale sharply. What an elementary blunder: there would be no mistaking Rebecca Merton for a lawyer.
Let the guy warm up.

‘I did know that one day this would come out. But, for some reason, I always suspected it would be Julian who would discover it and confront me over it.’

‘Can you tell me—’

Tom gritted his teeth, worried that she would scare Goldman off. But he needn't have worried: Henry Goldman simply talked over Rebecca.

‘Of course my father knew it all and he brought me into his confidence on some of the key aspects. I will not deny that it became a source of great tension between us, especially when I was a younger man first reading jurisprudence at Cambridge and, later, as an articled clerk and so on. I imagined Julian and I would re-run some of those arguments, with my son in the role of my father.’

Tom asked his first question. ‘And has Julian ever confronted you about this?’

‘No. It makes me wonder if perhaps he has not worked it out. But it's hardly Fermat's Last Theorem is it, Mr Byrne? Once that box is opened,
it is a matter of adding two and two to reach a round and clear four.’