The Final Reckoning (30 page)

‘This is the second mistake my aides would warn me about.’ He paused to turn around and face them. 'I say “would” because, of course, they know nothing of this. Not the real reason. I have kept it from them, the way I have kept it from everyone. My family, my friends. My country. My aides – the team out there – think only what I have told them: that you hold information that compromises the security of our country.

‘The problem is, I don't know if that's true or not.’ He cocked his head to one side, a gesture designed to show he was about to correct himself. ‘Of course, I know that you know nothing that directly threatens Israeli security. But I don't know if you know something else. Something that threatens me. And therefore threatens my country.’

Tom felt a wave of exhaustion coming over him. ‘What are you talking about?’

'I knew Gershon Matzkin was still alive. I'd
always known it. I'd been keeping an eye on him: I had people who could do that for me. And I waited. I waited for the day I'd hear he had been hospitalized, or had fallen ill. But the day never came. I thought about it more often than I like to admit. I'm not proud of this. Maybe a few days would go by when I didn't think about it. But never as much as a week. Especially in the last few years, when he was the last one left.

‘Aron, the leader, he died long ago. Such a strong man, such a hero. He didn't even reach seventy. What's his name – Steiner – he lost his mind years ago. I knew he couldn't hurt me. But Gershon was still fit. He still had everything up here.’ He tapped the side of his head. 'I hope I don't offend you, Dr Merton, if I tell you that I was, in a way, waiting for your father to die. Not out of cruelty, please don't misunderstand me. Out of worry. Out of an old man's anxiety. I needed
relief
, you see. I needed to know that I had outlived him. I have spent all these years needing to live in a world where no one knew our secret but me. Because then it wouldn't be a secret any more, would it? The memory would have gone. I would be free.

‘But not while Gershon was alive. Not while he carried our story in his head. And then Monday happened. I was here, in New York, for the General Assembly. And I hear that name, on the local cable news. “A British man has been killed on the steps of the UN. He has been identified as Gerald
Merton.” Can you imagine what was going through my mind? My hands were trembling.’ He held up his right hand, giving it an exaggerated wobble. 'I wondered who would want Gershon dead. They were saying it was an accident, but I didn't believe it. Gershon always took care of himself. All those killings – I'm sorry, those executions – and never once did he let anyone get near him. Others from DIN were not so skilful, but Gershon was different. It's not an accident that he lived the longest. He was the best.

‘But then I began to get queasy. Why was he in New York? Could he have started,’ he paused, unsure what word to use, ‘work again? Who could he possibly be after? He must have known I would be here. Was it me he wanted to see? And then my hands trembled some more. Had Gershon come to New York to kill me?’

Tom wanted to interrupt, to ask what motive Gershon Matzkin would possibly have had to murder the President of the State of Israel, a fellow Jew, a comrade, it seemed, from the secret crusade that was DIN. But he bit his lip: this torrent of words from the old man would eventually explain everything. He just had to let it gush out.

‘You see—’ He was about to speak but stopped himself, giving a smile that was as brief as a wince. ‘But this is to take the greatest risk of all. This is often how it is in politics. The only way of preventing a revelation is to make the revelation yourself. But maybe this is crazy.’

‘What's crazy?’ It was Tom, his voice no longer confrontational. The same voice he had used when counselling very senior members of the UN bureaucracy, including the Secretary-General. Outsiders had no idea of the extent to which aides to the highest ranking politicians served as counsellors, surrogate spouses, paid best friends.

‘What I'm about to do. Having worked so hard to ensure you don't have a certain item of information, I'm about to give it to you. But I can see no other way.’

‘No other way of doing what?’ Tom felt as if he was hitting his stride now.

‘Of being sure there's no other evidence. If it's just you, your word based on what you hear from me now, today, then it's nothing. I will deny it and the press will learn that you are simply not credible witnesses – for reasons I don't think we need to repeat. But I need to know if there's something else. This is what I have always needed to know. Every day any member of DIN was alive, I needed to know it. Now that Gershon is gone, I want this thing to be over. I want to sleep for more than three hours at night.’

‘So you need to ask us what we know.’

The old man nodded.

‘OK,’ Rebecca said. ‘Ask.’

The President examined his fingernails which, Tom couldn't help but notice, were in perfect condition. And it wasn't just his nails. His suit hung impeccably; the shirt was pressed exactly.
How this elegant statesman, welcomed into every chancellery in Europe, must have hated the notion of a stain, hovering somewhere in the great ‘out there’, waiting to spill all over his reputation.

At last he spoke, the reluctance making the slightest downward twist to his lips. ‘What do you know about Tochnit Aleph?’

Tom tried to make a calculation, to work through his options, but he kept colliding with a wall of fog. His brain felt soupy, still thick from sleep and sedative. It was easier when he simply had to listen to and prompt the President, but this was different. Now he needed to think fast, for his sake and, more important, for Rebecca's.

The word
Tochnit
had thrown him, but
Aleph
was now familiar enough for him to work it out. He had guessed there would be a Hebrew expression for Plan A and this had to be it. So this was the aspect of DIN's work that had given this man sixty years of sleepless nights.

If they said nothing, who knew what extra punishment he could inflict on them? He had already shown what he was prepared to do. To defy him could spell calamity; he would surely find a way to make them speak.

And yet, to say what they knew was to give away whatever leverage they currently held. At this
moment, the President needed something from them: once he had it, what other protection would they have? He had already confessed his yearning to be the only man in the world with this secret knowledge: once he was sure of that, he would rest easy. If Tom and Rebecca told him what they knew, he would have every incentive to ensure they went the way of Gershon Matzkin and Aron, DIN's leader, or at least the way of Sid Steiner, their memories obliterated. How would the President achieve that? Tom had no idea. But that he would be prepared to do whatever it took, he had no doubt.

His heart was beginning to thump. He needed to think of another way. He somehow had to make the old man believe Tom and Rebecca were speaking the truth, that they were saying all they knew, and yet supply him with an incentive for keeping both of them alive.

‘We've seen the papers,’ Tom said.

‘What papers?’

‘The blueprints. The blueprints of the city waterworks. Of Munich, Weimar, Hamburg, Nuremberg and Wannsee.’

‘So you know.’

‘We know.’

‘And you know about me?’

Tom stared hard. He didn't want to go for an outright bluff: no one would be better at sniffing out bullshit than a veteran politician; bullshit was their most traded commodity. But Tom wanted at least to keep the old man guessing.

‘Do the papers point to me in any way?’

‘I think that if someone knew what they were looking for, they could work it out.’ He had crossed the border into the danger zone, the land of the lie.

‘That's what I supposed. And where are these papers now?’

‘I think you can understand why we'd be reluctant to tell you that.’

The President assessed the faces of the two people before him. He lingered over Rebecca and then directed his next sentence to her. ‘I think you need to hear what happened. Then perhaps you'll see this differently.’

Tom exhaled silently. This is what he had wanted: for the President to start spilling.

‘I was not a member of DIN. I was not even in Europe during … during those times. I left Russia in 1936. I got out in time. I came to Palestine: to be a pioneer. Our aim was to create the
Ivri
, the Hebrew. A wholly new Jew. Strong, a worker, a soldier: no more cowering, no more passivity in the face of our enemies. We used to say that all that awaited the Jews of Europe was death.’ He dipped his head. 'We had no idea how right we were.

‘So I arrived in Palestine as a teenager. I went to university there: I studied chemistry. And of course, I joined the youth movements and before I knew it, I was elected to this and then that. I was a politician even then. But I learned from the
best. People don't realize this about me. They call me arrogant, but they don't understand I was always a student of great men. I showed them only humility and respect. Which is why they trusted me. Including him.’

Tom raised a quizzical eyebrow, a gesture he immediately regretted. He should have pretended to know.

But the President had passed the point of no return; he was not about to stop the flow now. ‘The professor at Rehovot: the man who had brought us to the Promised Land. Imagine it, the Moses who had led the Jewish movement for a homeland. He had returned to his laboratory and I was one of his students. So what do you think I said when he asked me to make up this mixture? What would you have said? Would you have denied him? I was a child, in my early twenties. Of course I said yes.’

The fog was beginning to clear. Tom could see Rebecca was sitting stiff and upright. ‘So you made up the poison.’

‘What can I say? That I was only obeying orders? As you know, that line of defence is rather discredited.’

The air in the room was heavy; Tom could feel it pressing down on him. He spoke: ‘Did you know what it was for?’

The President gave him a smile. ‘It would be nice to say I didn't. But it would be nonsense. What else could such a request be for? The note
from the professor was clear. “Give this man a toxin that has no colour and no smell, and yet will not lose its power in water.” What else could it be? And the volume! Only an idiot would not have realized that this was designed for a mass water supply. And it was Aron who bore the note. Even if you had never heard of DIN, everyone knew about him. He was the hero of the Jewish resistance, one of the few who had emerged from the fire. You only had to look at that cadaver of a face to know what business he had with me and my poisons.’

‘But you did it.’

‘I did it.’

‘And this is your great secret.’

The old man took a sip from the glass of water that sat on the table between them, until now untouched. 'Not just my secret. Think of the State of Israel. There are many in the world who hate my country, who believe its very existence is a crime. Imagine what they would do with this information: that the founders of the state – including the man who is today the country's president – were ready to cause so much death. Would we ever recover?

‘But I do not deny there are personal considerations here. I don't know how much you know of my career, Mr Byrne. I am the advocate of peace and reconciliation. I am the man who has preached putting war and violence behind us. I have been garlanded in every capital, in Bonn and
Berlin especially. I am the holder of the
Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz
, the first non-German ever to be awarded that title. My honorary rank is Kommandeur. Try to imagine what happens to that reputation if now, more than sixty years later, the world finds out that I was an accomplice to an attempt at mass murder. You've seen those blueprints, both of you. You know what Tochnit Aleph would have meant. Death at the turn of a tap. To a million people. Not just Nazis, but children and women, too. Random, senseless killing.’

Rebecca leaned forward: ‘Why didn't it happen?’

‘For the reason I've just said. In the end, cooler heads prevailed. The leadership in Palestine realized that Tochnit Aleph would be a disaster for the Jewish people: we would no longer be the victims of the greatest crime in human history. We would be guilty of mass murder. Tochnit Aleph would have destroyed our moral advantage. And, remember, this was 1945: the moral high ground was the only ground we had.’

Rebecca spoke again: ‘Did the leadership order DIN to call off the operation?’

The old man stretched, his first sign of fatigue. ‘It wasn't quite as simple as that. DIN was a movement that had the highest righteousness on its side: it spoke for the six million. What were a few politicians in Tel Aviv next to that?’

‘So how did they stop it?’

‘Aron was on a boat leaving Palestine, on his
way back to Europe with three canisters of my poison in his bag. British military police boarded the ship and arrested him. Threw him into solitary confinement.’

‘Somebody had tipped off the British authorities?’

‘That's right.’

‘Do you know who that was?’

‘Of course I know.’ He paused and took another sip of water. Then he looked back at Tom and Rebecca with an expression of mock puzzlement. ‘It was me.’

Rebecca was ashen. ‘Why? Why on earth would you have done that?’

Tom could see strain on Rebecca's face, draining it of colour. She was visibly struggling to make sense of what they were hearing. Each revelation had shaken up the kaleidoscope and then, just as it was resettling into a new picture she could understand, it was thrown into chaos all over again.

‘I've asked myself that same question. Many times.’ The President fixed Rebecca with a steady gaze. Tom noticed his eyes were reddening around the edges. ‘I knew the leaders were desperate to stop Aron. But they didn't know where he was or how to get to him. No one did. Then he contacted me, at the last minute. He was in a hurry: he had a question about storage of the poison. Was he meant to keep it cold, in the dark? We met and he let slip that he was leaving the next day. We knew he was going by
British transport ship. So the British had to watch the port only for that single day. It was easy.’

‘I still don't understand why.’

The old man let out a deep sigh. ‘My disease. I suppose that's the answer. My disease.’

‘What disease?’ Rebecca's doctor voice.

‘The same disease I've always had.’ He paused, as if they were expected to know the answer. After a few moments of silence, he filled the space.
‘Ambition.
I knew that the very highest echelons were determined to stop Aron and they couldn't do it. And then, thanks to me, they could. Within a few weeks, I was out of that laboratory, appointed as a personal adviser to the old man. The man who became my country's first leader. Funny, we all called him the old man. But I am now much older than he was. Anyway, I've been at the top ever since.’

Tom was struck by the man's honesty. Self-criticism was not usually politicians' strength and this went much further.

‘All right,’ Tom said, aware he was interrupting a conversation between the two of them. ‘Why don't you just tell the world what you've told us? You're the man who stopped Tochnit Aleph. That should win you a few more prizes.’

‘Oh, the world would be delighted, I agree. I could be a hero. Except the world is not Israel, Mr Byrne. In Israel, Aron of the Ghetto is a hero. And not some passing idol either. I mean a
gever
, a hero on a Biblical scale. He is the man who
defended the Jews against their greatest enemy. He will be remembered in thousands of years, like Judah Maccabee or the boy David who slew Goliath. His name is already a legend in my country. Jews around the world read his poetry. Against him, I am an ant. A politician, cutting deals. And that's before they know what I know. And what you now know. That I betrayed him. The great Aron of the Ghetto. And to the British! The hated imperial masters, who shut the gates of Palestine in our hour of mortal peril!’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘I think the question is, what are
we
going to do? We all need an exit strategy.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ It was Rebecca.

‘It means, my dear, that we need a way out. You need to leave here safely, with a guarantee that you will not be troubled by any of this again.’ He let the words hang in the air a while, so that Tom and Rebecca could weigh them. They sounded emollient and reasonable, until you stepped back – and realized they were a threat.

He went on. ‘And I need a guarantee that what you know, what we have discussed here, will never be made public. That you will take this secret to your grave.’

At last, thought Tom: a negotiation. Some lawyers did nothing else. Tom had not been one of them, not when he started. But at the UN there had always been a bit of bargaining involved in
the job, even if it was a departmental tussle within the UN. He had once had to resolve a dispute over a Pacific island – in truth a glorified rock, smaller than the average New Yorker's bathroom – claimed by two rival, and slightly larger, islands. It was an arcane and hair-splitting dispute but it had ended in a negotiation. Besides, his work over the last few months, including for the Fantoni family, had been nothing but deals.

Tom sat up stiffly, an attempt to establish some authority in the room. His mind was revving. He had planned for this moment, but only over the last few minutes. He would have to improvise. ‘OK. We each know what we want and what we have. You will give Rebecca safe passage back to London. Once there, she'll arrange to give you the papers that you want. They will be originals. Once you have them, you will know that there is no more hard evidence of what happened. No evidence of your role.’

‘Except what's in your heads.’

‘Yes. But how likely are we to use that? Why, realistically, would we want to cause trouble? Now that we know what you can do to us.’ This was the first move.

The President rubbed his chin, then began a slight rocking motion, forwards and backwards, like a family patriarch on the porch, taking his time. Tom decided to press the point, see if he could close the deal.

‘If you can inject us with anaesthetic just off
bloody Regent Street, then you can inject us with something worse.’ He watched the old man. ‘We have no interest in causing you embarrassment.’

‘And in return?’

‘You let us have our lives back. You call off your thugs and give back our passports and wallets.’

‘And you will give me back those papers.’

‘They will be yours. And so long as nothing happens to us, no one will ever see them.’

This was the second move, the one Tom hoped would be decisive.

‘What does that mean?’

‘It means that I have already made an electronic copy of those papers and scanned them into a website. A dormant website, programmed to stay dormant so long as I log in, with my password, every seven days. If for some reason I don't log in – say, I've been incapacitated in some way – then the site goes live. And sends an email alert to a few chosen addresses. [email protected] would be one. Editor@JerusalemPost might be another. Oh, and we wouldn't want to leave out the BBC or CNN.’ Tom looked over at Rebecca. Her eyes were wide; she looked startled.

The President spoke again, his pitch now rising. ‘You've done this?’

Tom nodded, a bead of sweat forming on his upper lip. ‘We spent a lot of time at that internet cafe, as I'm sure your friends have told you.’

‘How dare you?’ The old man examined both
faces then, with effort, hauled himself upright. ‘What if something goes wrong with this website, what if it accidentally—’

‘No need for you to worry about that. It's secure. Just so long as nothing happens to us.’

The President was pale, unsure what to say. Rebecca leaned forward, as if keen to exploit this moment of weakness. ‘I have one more condition.’

Tom swivelled round and glared at her:
Don't ruin this.

She ignored him. ‘In return for keeping what you have told us safe and secret, in return for keeping that website dormant, I want you to use your influence to get me a meeting. With the Secretary-General of the United Nations.’

‘Oh, for God's sake, Rebecca—’ Tom couldn't help himself. What the hell was she playing at, risking the wrath of a man who had already proved he would stop at nothing to get his own way, and for what?

With a half-smile, which Tom interpreted as sheer disbelief at the cheek of the woman, the President held up a hand to silence him. ‘Tell me again. What is it you want?’

‘What Rebecca is trying to—’

‘I asked the lady myself, Mr Byrne.’ She had gone too far, Tom was certain of it. Any moment now the President would summon the heavies to come in and close this problem down once and for all.

Rebecca spoke again. ‘What I want is for you to get me a meeting with the Secretary-General. I want him to look me in the eye and admit what the UN did to my father. Then this nightmare can be over. My father did not survive all that he survived to be treated like this, as if he were nothing.’ Her voice was cracking. ‘Dirt on someone's shoe.’

‘I understand,’ the President said quietly. ‘Dr Merton, I truly understand.’

Suddenly, as if snapping himself out of a trance, he turned to Tom and shook his hand, giving him no chance to refuse the gesture. ‘I am prepared to accept these terms. I will contact the Secretary-General's office right away. And so long as you come to no harm, this internet site of yours will remain locked. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And it stays locked and hidden even after my death: my future reputation matters to me just as much, you know. I can make arrangements that will hold after I'm gone. If that information is ever released, our agreement will be void. There will be people ready to act on that fact.’

‘I understand.’

‘Good. And now I would like to have a private word of remembrance with Dr Merton.’

He headed for the doorway: Tom wondered if he was about to usher Rebecca into the outer suite. Was he going to ask her to pray with him? But he gestured for her to stay behind, leaving
Tom and Rebecca alone. Neither dared speak, fearing the old man would come back at any moment. He was gone for no more than twenty seconds, no doubt preparing his aides for the departure of his two ‘guests’.

When the President came back, he immediately placed an arm over Rebecca's shoulder, guiding her towards the window. Tom could only see their backs but he could hear the old man muttering something in a language he guessed was Hebrew: judging by Rebecca's low nod of response, it was probably a word of condolence for her father, perhaps even a memorial prayer. The President then removed his arm so that he could face Rebecca directly, clasping her hands in a double-handshake, the kind of showy gesture politicians saved for the special occasion. Tom was sure he had seen this very man do just that at the signing of a peace treaty a couple of decades earlier. There were more inaudible words of farewell, then the door opened and Tom and Rebecca were shown out – leaving the eighty-four-year-old President of the State of Israel gazing out of the window, quite alone.