The Final Reckoning

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

‘But if it didn't happen, what's the connection with everything that's been going on? Why would they be killing Henry Goldman or smashing up my flat? It doesn't make any sense.’

Tom wished he had an answer for her, but she was right. Each time they approached what promised to be a solution, the whole conundrum only seemed to get more complicated. It was clear their pursuers were after something and this – the secret Plan A – surely had to be it. In a way, they had been proved right: the evidence, probably the only remaining evidence in the world, had been hidden here, bound and taped inside the painting. There couldn't be anything else, some other secret concealed in this flat: every inch of the place had been probed and examined, if not by the thugs themselves then by Tom and Rebecca. Plan A was surely it. This must be the secret their enemy was striving so hard to suppress. Why else had they killed Goldman, if not to prevent him revealing it?

And yet, it lacked all logic. Plan A had not happened. There had been no mass poisoning of Germany's major cities. It was a pipe-dream from sixty years ago. How could it possibly matter now?

Unless they had been looking in the wrong place. Unless he, Tom, had been making everything too complicated. ‘Lets go back to basics,’ he said, pacing. ‘Your father was obviously after someone in New York. Whoever that person is reckons your father had evidence against him. That maybe your father had a list of names – like that list that came to your flat, except up to date, consisting solely of Nazis who are still alive. Maybe the person in New York knows he's on this current list. He needs to have that document. And that's why he was so frightened of Goldman talking. Because this person, this old Nazi, suspects Goldman had the list too.’

They had reversed positions, Rebecca now perching against the ex-sofa. ‘So this won't stop until we find that list.’

‘If there is such a list. There might not be. Let's face it, Rebecca. If we haven't found it yet, where's it going to be? It probably doesn't exist.’

‘Not any more.’

‘What's that?’

‘Not any more. Years ago, you could draw up lists of ex-Nazis who were still alive. You could fill a phone book with them. But there are hardly any left now. Everyone's too bloody old.’

‘Exactly. Which means whoever your father was after was just one person, one name he had kept in his head. I think the only way we're ever going to settle this is by finding out that name.’

‘How the hell are we going to do that?’

Tom was all but forming his reply, that he had no idea, when it struck him. Of course: what an elementary mistake. Too bloody old.

Tom quickly folded the blueprints and postcards back inside the picture frame – reckoning that since they had escaped detection there so far, there was probably no safer hiding place – and crudely taped the thing back together. ‘We're going.’

‘Where? I don't understand.’

‘Neither do I. Not yet. But I think we're about to.’