The Final Reckoning

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Most of the pieces that appeared were in German, starting with a news story from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung when Munchau's appointment at the UN was announced and several others from the specialist legal press. In English there was an interview with New World, the magazine of the United Nations Association in Britain, and a diary item from the New York Observer, noting Munchau's legal summons to the Manhattan magistrate for failure to pay a parking fine. Not what Tom was looking for.

He put his head in his hands. He knew there was something else he wasn't remembering. Think. Think.

Tom closed his eyes trying to visualize the office of the legal counsel, plush with an outer area containing two secretaries and a window view over the East River. There was a sign on Henning's door. He had gone past it a thousand times without ever looking at it properly. Slowly it formed, in his mind's eye, the lettering taking shape. There it was: W. Henning Munchau.

W.

Now it came back to him, both of them in the queue to leave Dili, East Timor waiting for their papers to be checked and approved. They had swapped documents, so that Henning could examine Tom's passport photo and mock him on his visible decline.

‘Once so handsome. What went wrong, eh, Tommy?’

Tom had seen nothing that provided counter-ammunition in Munchau's photograph: the man had barely seemed to age. But he had seen his colleague's full name for the first time.

‘Ah, we have a Kaiser in our midst, no less. Pray silence, Mein Herren, for Kaiser Wilhelm Henning Munchau.’

Henning had shut him up. Tom hadn't questioned that at the time. He was getting leery, there were people around. But now, replaying that memory in his head, Tom wondered if Henning had suddenly lost his smile for a different reason.

He retyped the name into the computer.

Once again, the first two entries were in German. They seemed to be from formal legal gazettes with Henning's name in among a long list of others: probably the announcement of various awards and promotions.

Tom decided to narrow it down. Not allowing himself to stop, lest he change his mind, he reentered the name into the search field – Wilhelm Henning Munchau - this time adding one more word: Nazi.

It took the machine less than a second to scour the world and find the sentence Tom had dreaded. But there it was, the first few words of an entry intelligible even in the opening list of results. It came from a website attached to the Department of History at the University of Maryland.

Captain Wilhelm Henning Munchau, 1898-1975; served in the SS's Totenkopfverbände or Death's Head units; received suspended sentence from West German court in 1966 for service at Theriesenstadt (Terezin).

Tom followed the link on the word ‘Totenkopfverbände’. It took him to the website of something called the Museum of Tolerance. There was a definition: SS Units who guarded concentration camps. On the right collar of their uniform they wore the death's head symbol, from which they took their name. They became an elite unit within the elite SS.

Tom scanned to the end of the entry.

… they were put in charge of killing Jews and partisans.

Now he pushed back his chair and reached, instinctively, for the pouch of tobacco in his inside pocket. If there was anywhere left in London you could get away with smoking, surely it was in a hole like this. With one hand, his eye still on the screen, he rolled himself a cigarette and put it between his lips. Even this sensation, before he had lit a match, felt like a hit of soothing nicotine.

Jesus Christ. What part of his brain had not thought of this earlier? Had he suppressed the very thought of it? It had been under his nose. The minute he had opened Gershon Matzkin's journal, he should have at least considered it. Everyone else would have. He'd been despatched to shut down the case of an aged Nazi-hunter by – guess who – a German! You didn't have to be filled with prejudice to see the connection, just common sense. Why had he been so stupid? He had allowed his personal affection for Henning to cloud his judgment. It had obscured the most obvious line of enquiry. His friendship had barred his synapses from even twitching at the possible interest a German diplomat might have in suppressing the Nazi past. Or perhaps it was that Tom no longer even saw Henning as German, but rather as some internationalized quasi-Australian.

His mind sprinted ahead, trying to keep up with the implications. Surely it meant that Henning had tricked him by sending him on this mission. He had claimed to know nothing of Gerald Merton but he had known everything that mattered, starting with the old man's motive.

But that was the least of it. The chief legal counsel of the UN had somehow masterminded an intelligence operation in a foreign capital, able to track down – and trash – the homes of both Gerald Merton and his daughter, to say nothing of eaves-dropping on, then murdering, Henry Goldman. How would Munchau possibly have such power? Unless he was part of something much bigger.

At first Tom had felt a slight sense of disappointment. Specifically, disappointment in Gershon Matzkin. He had expected more of him. It seemed beneath him to have travelled to New York simply to track down the son or, more likely, grandson of a Nazi war criminal. Tom had, despite himself, sympathized with DIN's determination to hunt down the guilty men, but this – visiting the sins of the fathers on their children and grandchildren – was impossible to defend. The only way it could make sense was if this was not simply about Henning Munchau and his Nazi grandfather, but something in which the UN lawyer – Tom's old boss and great friend – was just a minor player.

He turned to Rebecca, expecting her to be looking over his shoulder, reading the potted history of Munchau Snr that still glowed on the screen. But Rebecca wasn't looking at his terminal. She was looking at her own. And her face was white.

‘What is it?’

She simply pointed at the display, open to her Facebook page. She indicated the Friends column down the left hand side.

‘I don't understand,’ Tom said, once again aware not only that Rebecca was ten years younger than him but that the latest wave of the internet revolution had mostly passed him by. Everyone else might have been forming social networks but these days his own personal community consisted of the models he dated, the Mafia men he worked for and the British-born tailor he had discovered on Spring Street: and none of those relationships happened online.

Rebecca made a few key strokes, going back several pages. Tom was distracted: he had spotted a new customer.

‘See this guy here?’ She was pointing at a square filled not with a photograph but with a question mark. ‘He asked to friend me earlier.’

‘To friend you?’

‘It's a Facebook thing. Anyway, I said yes.’ She saw Tom's look of disbelief. ‘Lots of people were getting in touch, mainly to send condolences about Dad. It just seemed easier to say yes to everyone.’

Tom was looking again at the new arrival. Something about him was familiar.

‘Look at these status updates.’

Tom looked down at the list. Jay…is dining in York – again. Zoe… can't wait till she gets off work so she can have a stiff drink. His eye went off the screen and back to the man, now sitting at the end of the row. White, iPod headphones nestled by his collar.

Rebecca's finger took Tom back to the list of status lines on the Facebook page, directing him to one five lines down. ‘That's him.’

Richard needs to meet Rebecca urgently – so he can explain everything that's going on.