The Final Reckoning

CHAPTER FIVE

The cab driver shook his turbaned head, muttering that he would get as far as he could, but the road had been blocked for the last hour. ‘On the radio, they say something about terror attack. You here on 9/11?’

Tom handed him a ten dollar bill and got out at 39th Street, walking as far as he could. He could see the clutch of police cars, their red lights winking, and behind them the glare of TV bulbs already illuminating a jam of trucks bearing satellite dishes. In itself that was no surprise during General Assembly week. He assumed the Russian tsar was in town – no point calling him anything else – or any one of the usual procession of African, Central Asian and Middle Eastern despots in New York for the glory of a stroll up to the podium of the General Assembly when they were lucky not to be in the dock at the Hague.

But now he could see a city cop, a woman, turning people back from the first entry gate to UN Plaza. Along the railings, stretching for several blocks, apparently encircling the entire compound like a ribbon on a Christmas gift, was a continuous thread of yellow-and-black plastic tape: POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS.

He walked on, noticing how each successive entrance was blocked off. The gate used by the public was thronged by a pack of reporters, photographers and cameramen. Tom was tall enough to peer over their heads, to see, in the middle of the paved area in front of the security marquee, a small tent constructed from green tarpaulin. Around it fussed police officers, a single photographer and a forensic team in overalls, masks and white latex gloves.

He crossed the road, threading his way through the cars. Facing him was the concrete phallic symbol that was the Trump World Tower and a skyscraper decorated with a damp and limp German flag: Deutschland's mission to the UN. The Nations' Café was just next door.

He saw Henning Munchau immediately, earnestly studying the map-of-the-world pattern that decorated the vinyl table top. Funny how easily men of power could be diminished. Inside the UN, Munchau was a player who could stride through corridors, winning deferential nods of the head from everyone he passed. But take him out of the building and he was just another New York suit with a briefcase and thinning hair.

To Tom's surprise, Henning rose the moment they had made eye contact, leaving his coffee untouched. His eyes indicated the door: follow me. What the hell was going on?

Once outside, Henning raised his eyebrows, a gesture Tom took a second or two to understand. ‘Of course,’ he said finally. Munchau was one of those smokers who never carried his own cigarettes: he believed that if you didn't buy them, you didn't really smoke them. Tom reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a pouch of Drum rolling tobacco – one of the few constants in his life these last few years – inside which was a small blue envelope of cigarette papers, and in a few dexterous moves conjured a neat, thin stick which he passed to Henning. He did the same for himself, then lit them both with a single match.

‘Fuck, that's better,’ said Henning, his cheeks still sucked in, refusing to exhale the first drag. He looked hard at Tom, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘It's been a long time. You doing OK?’

‘Never better.’

‘That's good.’ Henning took another long drag. ‘Because you look like shit.’

Tom let out a laugh, which triggered a broad Henning grin, the smile that had made Tom instantly like the man when they first met all those years ago. That and the Munchau patois, flawless English with an Australian lilt and the earthy vocabulary to match. Tom had seen it take shape: they had served on the Australian-led East Timor mission together. Their friendship had been one legacy of that experience. That the Legal Counsel had become that rarest of creatures – a Hessen-born doctor of jurisprudence with a mouth like a Bondi surfer – was another.

‘So you don't miss the old place? Working for the family of nations and all that?’

‘No, I don't miss it. So, Henning, we're both busy guys. What is it you need?’

‘It's about this-’ he trailed off. ‘About what happened here this morning.’

‘Yeah, what is all this? I saw the police line and-’

‘You don't know? Christ, Tom, all those fat corporate fees and you can't afford a radio? A man was shot here about two hours ago, a suspected terrorist.’

‘OK.’

‘Not OK,’ said Henning. He exhaled a plume, then checked left and right. In a whisper, his eyes intent, he said, ‘Turns out we got the wrong guy.’

‘He wasn't a terrorist?’

‘Apparently we killed some pensioner in a woolly coat.’

‘What do you mean, “we”?’

‘Don't go blabbing a word about this, Tom. I'm serious, mate. Not a fucking word. Media don't know yet.’

‘Of course.’

‘The shooter was from our own bloody security force.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Jesus is right.’ Henning took a long, final drag, sucking the life out of the tiny, hand-rolled cigarette, then threw it to the ground. ‘Just unbelievable bad luck. NYPD Intelligence tipped us off about a suspect who'd been visiting an arms dealer. Dressed in thick black coat, black hat. Which just so happens to be what the old boy was wearing when he went out for his morning stroll.’

‘Bad luck all round then.’

Henning gave Tom a glare. ‘This, Tom, will be the biggest nightmare to hit this place since oil-for-fucking-food. Can you imagine what the Americans will do with this? Can you imagine tomorrow's New York Post? “Now the UN kills geriatrics on the streets of New York”.’

‘Picked the right week to do it.’

‘Oh yeah, when we've only got every world leader from the King of Prussia downwards here. Not exactly the start Viren wanted, is it? Imagine, the new Secretary-General spending his first General Assembly on his knees apologizing.’

‘He knows?’

‘That's where I called you from. For the last hour, we've been in the Situation Center with his Chef de Cabinet, all the USGs. Secretary-General wasn't there: he was getting his dick sucked at some society breakfast. The building's in complete lockdown. USGs are the only ones allowed out.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about.’

‘Oh no.’

‘Hear me out, Tom. I know you said you'd never work for us again. I understand that.’

‘Good. So you'll understand me when I say, “Nice to see you, Henning but I've got to go”.’

‘But this is not working for the UN.’

‘Who is it for, then?’

‘It's for me. Consider it a personal favour. I think I have the right to ask for that.’

Tom examined Henning's face. It was the one argument to which he had no response, the same unarguable fact which had made him desert the pleasures of Miranda/Marina and come straight here. It was true: Tom owed him everything. ‘What do you need?’

‘Turns out the one good thing about this situation is that the dead guy was British.’

‘Why's that good?’

‘Because the Brits are the only ones who won't go ape about the Yanks murdering one of your citizens. Inside America, it'll be the pinko faggot UN who fucked up. Everywhere else, it'll be America who gets the blame. Trigger-happy cowboys, all that. Not the British government, though. Your boys will bend over and bite it.’

Tom would have liked to argue, but he couldn't. He remembered the campaign to get British citizens released from Guantánamo. The British government had barely raised a peep in protest, lest it offend the Americans.

‘So? Was it an American who pulled the trigger?’

‘No. Portuguese. Name of Tavares.’

Tom digested this. ‘So what do you need me to do?’ He envisaged the complex documentation that would have to be filed on the occasion of a homicide on the international territory of the UN. He could see the jurisdictional issues looming. Who would do the investigation? The NYPD or the UN Security Force itself? Who would be in charge? Henning's answer surprised him.

‘First, I need you to shadow the NYPD guys on the case. They'll have seen the body by now: they'll know we screwed up. I need you over their shoulder. Just for this first day: I stuck my balls out, made a big deal of it, so I can't send out some novice to do it. It would make us look like pricks. Get a sense of what they're doing, then hand it over.’

‘And then?’

‘Then I need you to close this thing down, Tom. Make it go away. This is just too much of an embarrassment. We can't have the grieving family on television holding up pictures of Grandpa, wanting to send the bloody Secretary-General or fuck knows who else to jail. You need to go to England, find the family and do whatever it takes to make it go away. Put on the English accent, do the whole thing.’

‘I don't need to put on an English accent.’

‘Even better. Play the charming Brit and offer a gushing apology, massive compensation package, whatever they want. But no grandstanding, OK? No photo-ops with the Secretary-General or any of that bullshit. He's new. We can't have him associated with this.’

Tom took a drag of his own cigarette. He could see the politics clearly enough: his departure had left no Brits in the Office of the Legal Counsel. Plus it probably helped to have an outside lawyer do this: arms' length, so that the UN itself would be less tainted by whatever shabbiness Tom would have to resort to in order to get a result.

But it was hardly a top-flight legal assignment. He would not have to liaise with Foreign Office lawyers or diplomatic officials. He would probably have to deal with some London ambulance-chaser desperate to get his hands on a pot of UN cash. Bit of a waste of his CV: eleven years as an international lawyer with the UN and before that a legal resumé that included spells doing litigation in a City firm and three years as an academic at University College, London.

‘There are plenty of Brits around who could do this, Henning. Maybe not at the most senior level, but just below. Perfectly capable lawyers. Why me, Henning?’

‘Because you're a safe pair of hands.’

Tom raised an eyebrow: a lawyer who'd left the UN the way he had was not what you'd call a safe pair of hands. Come on, the eyebrow said, tell the truth.

‘OK, you're not a conventional safe pair of hands. But you're someone I can rely on.’

Tom made a face that said flattery wasn't going to work.

Henning sighed in resignation. ‘You know what they're like, the young lawyers here, Tom. Christ, we were both like that not so long ago. Full of idealistic bullshit about the UN as “the ultimate guarantor of human rights” and all that crap.’

‘So?’

‘So we don't need any of that now. We need someone who will do what needs to be done.’

‘You need a cynic.’

‘I need a realist. Besides, you're not afraid to put the rulebook to one side every now and then. This might be one of those times.’

Tom said nothing.

‘Above all, I know that you'll regard the interests of the United Nations as paramount.’ The hint of a smile playing around the corner of Henning's mouth gave that one away. He couldn't risk some British lawyer who might – how would one put it? – lose sight of his professional allegiances. Always a risk a Brit might give a call to his old pals at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, just to keep them in the loop. Lunch in Whitehall, a bit of chit-chat, no harm done. But there was no risk of that with Tom Byrne, graduate of Sheffield Grammar and the University of Manchester. He could be relied on not to betray the UN to his old boy network for one very simple reason: he didn't have an old boy network.

‘You know me: I'm a citizen of the world.’

‘I knew I could rely on you, Tom.’

‘You did a lot for me, Henning. I haven't forgotten.’

‘After this, we're even. Really. Which is not to say you won't be properly rewarded.’

‘Not the usual crappy UN rates?’

‘Separate budget for this, Tom. Emergency fund.’

‘So I'm to give the family whatever they want.’

‘Yep. Your job is to make sure that, after today, none of us ever hears another word about the dead old guy. When he gets buried, I want this whole thing buried with him.’