The Final Reckoning

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Tom looked over at Rebecca. She was as shell-shocked as he was.

‘I'm sorry about the way this meeting has been arranged. Not my usual style. Not my usual style at all.’

Tom was too stunned to speak. To see this man, in this context, talking like this – it was dizzying.

‘I never actually met your father, Rebecca. Though our paths crossed. I wonder if he knew that. I'm not sure.’

The accent was even stronger than Tom remembered it. Did he usually soften it? Why was he allowing its cadences of Eastern Europe to be heard now? Was he making some point? Remember who I am.

‘We're getting ahead of ourselves. We need to set some ground rules. We need to talk about the terms of this meeting.’

Again, Tom felt the ire boil inside him. First this man was talking about how things had been ‘arranged’ and now this – as if Rebecca and Tom were taking part in a routine New York business appointment, the slot in the diary mutually agreed.

Tom wanted to scream about abduction, about involuntary sedation, about the thousand violations of basic human rights law and international standards that this ‘meeting’ represented. He wanted to be the angry lawyer he had once been, warning his antagonist of the depth of the shit he had waded into. But he couldn't bring himself to say any of it to this man simply because of who he was. All he could manage was to squeeze out the words: ‘This will destroy you.’

And at that the man gave a slight nod, the same rueful, thoughtful gesture Tom had seen him give on TV interviews going back – what? – forty years. Anyone who watched Newsnight or Nightline or who had ever opened a serious newspaper would have recognised it. It was the expression of the man who had, at different times, served as education minister, foreign minister and even prime minister of his country. And even though he was well past eighty years old, the career of this veteran politician – one of the best-known statesmen in the world – was not over.

Now Tom was facing him across this room, just a few yards apart. He was staring at the President of the State of Israel.