The Final Reckoning

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

‘What do you mean there's no scar?’ Tom instinctively loosened his grip.

Now Viren spoke. ‘Good. I'm glad this farce is over. I should, of course, report you-’

Rebecca cut him off. ‘Or rather there is not the obvious scar.’

The Secretary-General tried to shake himself free. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You see,’ Rebecca said, pointing at the pale skin of his forearm, ‘there is no line there. But, unluckily for you, plastic surgery was not able to do then what it can do now.’

‘You're talking nonsense.’

‘Back then, when they did skin grafts like this one, to cover up a scar, they couldn't help but leave a mark around the edges, where the new skin was placed. It's like the outline of a patch sewn on a suit. See it? Right here.’ She was being unnervingly calm.

‘So what if I did have a skin graft? It was for a burn I had twenty years ago.’

‘Was it?’

‘Yes. It was an, an, an accident. At home. With a stove.’

‘Well, that's very odd. Because, in fact, the marks you have on your skin in this area are clear signs of stretching. And the only way you could have got those is if you had a skin graft when you were young, when your skin was still growing. And you weren't growing twenty years ago, Mr Viren, were you?’

At that, Viren shook Tom off, so that he was now inches away from Rebecca. He raised his hand, high so that it was level with his ear, and it was about to come down on Rebecca when Tom grabbed him around the middle, a crude wrestling move that left the older man's fist flailing in the air.

And then Viren let out a shriek.

Tom's view was obscured at first by the body of the man he was restraining, but now he could see the source of his alarm. Rebecca had produced from somewhere, a sleeve or a pocket, a hypodermic syringe. She was now raising it into the air, at eyelevel, so that she could test it against the light.

Tom gasped. ‘Rebecca, what the hell are you doing?’

She ignored him, addressing only the Secretary-General. ‘Your great misfortune is that I'm a doctor. I know about scar tissue and skin grafts – and I also know about poisons. This one, for example, is odourless, clear and instantly effective. I don't know how painful it is but, given its source, I'm an optimist. Which means I hope it's very painful.’

‘Rebecca, where did you get that?’

‘Let's say it was a gift from someone we just met. A former comrade in DIN.’

In an instant, Tom pictured the lingering farewell he had witnessed between Rebecca and the Israeli president: how he had muttered to her in Hebrew, how he had held her hands in a double-grip, one that could easily have concealed the handover of, say, a needle and a measure of deadly fluid. Now I would like to have a private word of remembrance with Dr Merton, in honour of her father.

If Gerald Merton had been able to work out the truth of Paavo Viren's past, it would not have eluded Israeli intelligence. Once the President was reassured Merton had not been after him, and once he had heard Rebecca request her face-to-face meeting with the Secretary-General, it would have confirmed it: Viren had been DIN's last target. And what better way to assuage his guilt over Aron than to give DIN what it needed from him once again – a vial of deadly poison? Even if Rebecca had been caught, the President would have known that this young woman – a daughter of the Shoah and a daughter of the Avengers – would not have betrayed him. She would have been bound by the code of DIN.

Viren was making a half-hearted effort at writhing out of Tom's grip. But his eyes were only on Rebecca. ‘There must be a way we can resolve this. If you insist, we could have an independent review, to examine the claims you've-’

‘Oh no, I'm far too unreasonable for that. You see, your second great misfortune is that you picked the wrong people to murder and maim. You raped and nearly killed my aunt, Hannah Matzkin, who, thanks to you, I never met.’ She squeezed the syringe, holding it still as it squirted a brief jet of fluid. ‘And you took part, an eager part from what I hear, in the massacres at the Ninth Fort. I wonder if you remember any of the thousands of people you and your friends shot into those pits. My aunts were three of them.’

Tom was frozen, still holding the old man but doing so now out of sheer paralysis. He was watching Rebecca as if he were viewing events at a distance, played back on a video monitor. Perhaps it was the near-darkness of this room. More likely it was the shock of everything that had happened, everything he had heard, over the last few minutes. He seemed to be on some kind of delay, each new item of information taking a few seconds to register. Now though he realized that he had been co-opted into what was about to become an act of homicide – without even having a moment to consider it. He was restraining Paavo Viren, holding him down so that Rebecca could inject him with poison.

Yet he had not wanted to let Viren go. He wasn't sure about Rebecca's analysis of the scar tissue on his arm. But the old man's reaction had settled it. His tone had changed. He had stopped protesting his innocence and begun pleading for a deal. When innocent people were faced with punishment for a crime they did not commit, they did not start plea-bargaining: they insisted all the more loudly that they were innocent. It took time, often a long stretch of it, to grind down people's essential belief in fairness; only then were they ready to negotiate a compromise penalty for something they had not done.

Viren had required no such time. He had been ready to deal within a few seconds. Tom was an experienced enough lawyer to know that that – along with his failure to walk out as soon as Rebecca started making her charges, his unexplained decision to stay and listen – was not the action of an innocent man.

Tom was still holding Viren in place, frozen, as Rebecca carried on speaking.

‘You killed the wrong people, Mr Viren. You killed the family of Gershon Matzkin and he was not the kind of Jew you bargained for. He was one of the Jews who refused to die. He was one of the Jews who were determined that their blood be avenged. He was part of DIN, the movement whose Hebrew name means judgment. But it also stands for three words. Dam Israel Nokeam. “The blood of Israel will take vengeance”.’ She was speaking faster now, the urgency in her voice accelerating. She held the syringe vertically between her index and middle finger, as if it were a cocked weapon. ‘He was an avenger, Mr Viren – and I am his daughter.’

With that, Rebecca leaned forward and placed the tip of the needle on Viren's neck, expertly finding the jugular vein.

The certainty of that action, the finality of it, seemed to snap Tom out of his state of disconnection. Rebecca intuited immediately what he was about to do.

‘If you make any sudden movements now, Tom, the needle will go in. Really, even a slight jerk and Viren will be dead.’

Tom could see that she was right. His job now was to hold the SG stock-still – for his own sake.

Viren managed to squeeze out a few words. ‘What do you want from me? If you want to kill me, just kill me. Get it over with.’

‘Oh, but that wasn't your way of doing things, was it, Mr Viren? From what I understand, you and the men from the Lithuanian militia enjoyed the whole performance. Get the Jews to come to the collection point, packing all their bags as if they were off on a journey. Then a long wait. Then a long truck ride. Then another long wait. Then a march to the pits. Then watching the women undress, lining them up by pits you'd made the Jews dig for themselves. And then only a single bullet, so that – what, one in ten, one in five? – did not even die straightaway, but had to choke to death, buried alive under a pile of corpses. So don't start bleating about “getting it over with”. If this is trying your patience, Mr Viren then I don't apologize.’

Tom was wincing, watching Rebecca standing so close to the SG, her finger capping the plunger of the syringe as if it were a detonator.

‘My father would have done the job much faster, that's true. The way he'd worked it out, getting you on your own meant there would be no time to speak to you: he'd have had to kill you in a split-second. But that was not the normal DIN way.’

‘Rebecca, listen to me. You can't do this.’

‘Shut up, Tom.’

‘I mean it. This is not right. Not like this.’

She didn't take her eyes off Viren. ‘For DIN it was very important that the target know the identity of his executioners, to know that the Jews had sought justice. But I want something more. I want an admission. I want you to tell me the truth.’

Viren began to stammer. He could surely see that this woman would not be swayed by a confession into an offer of clemency; she had already made clear that she was going to kill him. Tom suspected that her father would have been more skilful, tricking his victims into believing they had an incentive to talk.

‘Listen to me, Rebecca. This can't work. You'll be caught. Even if people sympathize with you, you'll spend years in jail. Is that what your father would have wanted, to see his beloved daughter behind bars?’

‘I could get away.’

‘Come off it, Rebecca. Henning knows you're here. He'll be here soon. If he finds the Secretary-General dead, you'll be blamed.’

‘We'll say he had a heart attack.’

‘There'll be a needle mark. Bruises on his arms where I've held him. Please, Rebecca. Think what your father would say, the idea that the Nazis would destroy the life of another woman in the Matzkin family.’

Rebecca's eyes were on fire, two braziers of flame in the murk of this room. ‘How dare you talk to me about what my father would have wanted.’

Tom's arms were tiring from keeping his captive dead still. ‘Your father never got caught, Rebecca. None of them ever did. I bet that was important to them: that a Jew would not suffer again because of the Nazis, not even for one more day.’

‘I need to hear him say it, Tom.’ She was staring at him, hard. ‘There needs to be a reckoning.’

‘I understand.’ His voice softened. ‘But this is not the way.’

‘But I heard you in Goldman's office. Saying that DIN was right, that the law had always failed the victims. “The bigger the crime, the worse it is,” that's what you said. I remember it because I agreed with you. “There is no law,” you said, “just politics”. Remember?’

Tom found it unbalancing, to be reminded of his own words like this. It was true, he had said those things, angered by Goldman's pettifogging, pedantic deference to the law when he, Tom, had seen the law's failure again and again, in Rwanda and East Timor and God knows where else.

Yet at this moment, an elderly man in his grip, holding him still while a needle at his neck threatened his life, Tom could not stand by what he had said. The prospect of killing a man like this repelled him. Theory was one thing; the actual physical deed was quite another. This was not justice. It was everything the law was meant to stop: the descent into barbarism.

‘Rebecca. It can't be like this. DIN killed people because there was no other way. But you have evidence. You can take this to a court. There could be a trial.’

She made a snort, her head tilting back in mockery. Tom waited for Viren himself to say something, to agree that, yes, he would submit himself to a trial. His silence suggested he was as smart a politician as his reputation promised: he understood that if he endorsed any strategy of Tom's it would be the kiss of death. Rebecca would reject it.

‘You think they would ever put this man on trial?’ she said. 'They would come up with the same bullshit they always come up with. “He's too old. The evidence is cold. The witnesses are dead. The statute of limitations has passed. It didn't take place on our soil.” I've heard every argument in the book.

‘Even so, Rebecca, the alternative is to sink to their level. You won't be killing them; you'll be turning into them. Remember, Plan A? It didn't happen. In the end, the Jews couldn't do it.’ He sighed. ‘The law is all we've got, Rebecca. It's not perfect. Christ, I know that better than anyone. But it's all we've got.’

‘I need to end this.’ She was trembling now, her whole body shaking. ‘I've lived with this my whole life, Tom. Can you imagine that, knowing your own life is trivial compared to everything that happened? Can you imagine that? Of course you can't. No one can.’

In a brief change in the light, Tom could see there were tears slipping slowly down her cheeks. He wanted desperately to touch her.

‘Your life is not trivial. It matters.’

She said nothing.

‘Your life mattered to your father, Rebecca. He named you after his mother for a reason.’ He swallowed. ‘I think you were meant to be her second chance.’

She reeled back, her clenched hand finally coming away from Viren's neck. The old man now seized his opportunity, using all his strength to shake Tom off. As Tom fell backwards, he stumbled, hitting his head on the edge of one of the benches. He was stunned.

In that same instant, Viren lunged at Rebecca. He reached for her wrist, pulling it upward. She was still clasping the syringe, now terrified that the old man was about to turn the needle back on her. She let out a scream as he tugged at her arm.

The light in the room suddenly changed. Two men had come into the doorway, casting new shadows. Viren looked up to see Henning Munchau staring at him, his face aghast. The Secretary-General seemed frozen.

That moment of delay, of paralysis, was all Tom needed. He hauled himself up and surged forward, crashing into the space between Viren and Rebecca, pushing the pair apart. Rebecca staggered backwards, at last out of the old man's reach. But the needle was no longer in her hand.

Tom turned, only to find Viren coming at him, his eyes wild, clutching the syringe and aiming it directly at Tom's heart. Tom reached for Viren's wrist, but the old man had remarkable strength. Even in Tom's grip, he was pressing forward, the tip of the needle getting closer and closer until it was no more than an inch from Tom's chest.

With an almighty surge, Tom shoved Paavo Viren's wrist backward – listening to the roar of horror as the Secretary-General of the United Nations realized he had plunged the needle deep into the jugular vein of his own neck.