by Sam Bourne
‘No, I haven’t recorded anyone. But why would it be a problem—’
He suddenly felt himself jerked forward and then up, the darker, younger man at his left side apparently taking the lead. The pair of them had looped their arms under Will’s armpits and levered him upward, ensuring he did not turn around. Next, the dark man swung around to face him, avoiding Will’s eye while he first stretched Will’s arms up and out, then reached under his jacket, moving his hands over Will’s shirt, around his back and under his armpits. He was like a zealous airport security guard.
Of course. Recording device. They weren’t looking for a reporter’s Dictaphone. They were looking for a wire. They were worried that he was the police or the FBI. Of course they were: they were kidnappers and they feared Will was an undercover cop. The questions he had been asking, the snooping around with no warning.
‘No wire,’ the dark man was saying, in an accent that confirmed him as at least Middle Eastern if not Israeli.
‘But there is this.’ It was the redbeard, whose task during this two-man body search, which had continued up and down Will’s legs when it was not focused on his back, had been to examine the captive’s every pocket — including the one on the inside left of his jacket. His secrets offered little resistance: his Moleskine notebook always made a neat bulge in his left breast pocket. Redbeard took it out and offered it to the unseen hand behind. Will, shoved back down into his seat, could hear the pages being turned.
The blood seemed to drain from him. His mind rewound back to Sandy’s house, when his host urged him to leave his bag behind. And Will thought he was being so clever. He had left his bag behind all right — but only after he had slipped out his notebook and zipped his wallet into what he liked to think was a concealed compartment. He had not wanted Sara Leah prying. Now the book was in the Rebbe’s hands. What a fool!
Will girded himself for the explosion. The longer the silence lasted, punctuated only by the sound of turned pages, the slicker the moisture on Will’s palms.
His mind was racing, trying to remember what was in that book that might give him away. Luckily, he was not organized enough to have written his own name on the first page or anywhere else. Walton did that, a neat inscription on the cover of each pad he used. Some reporters even used those nerdy address labels. On that score at least, Will was saved by his own inefficiency.
But what about the reams of words inside, including the copious notes he had taken today, right here in Crown Heights? Maybe those would be OK; they would at least confirm his Tom Mitchell cover story. But had he not scribbled down all that computer stuff at Tom’s earlier? Surely he had written down something about the kidnappers’ email?
The seconds lurched by, like a record playing at the wrong, too-slow speed. A hope took root. Could it be that his bastard shorthand, his unique speedwriting scrawl, was about to rescue him? He had developed this hybrid non-system of note-taking first at Columbia and then at the Record. It worked for him, though he always feared the day he was asked to produce notes for the editor, or worse still a judge in court.
He imagined a defamation trial, turning on the accuracy of his written account of a conversation. He would need teams of graphologists to verify that he was as good as his words.
The upside, at least at this moment, was that Will knew his notes would be all but indecipherable.
‘You’ve broken our rules, Mr Mitchell. I don’t mean our rules, as in us, the people of Crown Heights. What do we matter in the great scheme of things? We are ants! But you’ve broken HaShem’s rules.’
A sentence surfaced that instant in Will’s head. Thou shalt not bear false witness. It was, Will realized, as if he was the mere recipient of the thought rather than its source, one of the ten commandments. He knew that Jews and Christians had those in common — and that was surely what the Rebbe had in mind. This was the preamble to an accusation of lying.
He was undone.
‘I think you know that we’re serious about these rules: no carrying on the Sabbath. No carrying. No wallets, no keys.
No notebooks.’
‘Yes.’
‘We take these rules very seriously, Tom. They apply to our guests as much as they apply to us. I’m sure you understand that. Yet here you are, with a notebook.’
‘Yes, but that’s the only thing I took. I left the rest of the stuff behind; I left my bag.’ Will was addressing a book case: his interrogator was behind him, his captors at his side.
‘Besides, I’m not Jewish. I didn’t think, you know, that these rules applied to me.’ That sounded much more lame out loud than it had in Will’s head. It sounded like schoolboy special pleading: the dog ate my homework. But it was the truth.
Sure, he should be respectful to others while he was in their community, but this was crazy. They could not be this angry about a Sabbath infraction, could they? He was almost relieved: if this was the charge, it meant the Rebbe had found nothing to pursue in the notebook.
‘You’re not Jewish?’
‘No, I told Sandy, Shimon that already. I’m not Jewish. I’m just a reporter.’
‘Now that surprises me. I’ve got to admit, that I did not expect.’
Will was baffled, but also distracted. Redbeard had vanished.
Will’s sole custodian was now this Israeli: he looked young.
The Times magazine had run a piece about the Israeli army only a couple of weeks back. With a half-memory of that as his source, Will knew that an Israeli man needed only to be aged twenty-one to have done a full three years in the Israel Defence Forces. God knows what he had learned there: this guy might look like a kid, but chances were he had steel in his veins. Why else had the Rebbe picked him to turn the screws on Will? He vaguely remembered from the same piece that many ultra-orthodox eighteen-year-olds were given exemption from army service so that they could devote their lives to studying the Torah. But not all of them: something told him this was one of the guys who swapped his prayer book for a rifle.
‘You know, Mr Mitchell — or should I call you Tom? — I’m not sure we’re making that much progress here. Something is missing from this encounter.’
There it was again, that sardonic, world-weary inflection, as if there was humour in every situation, even this one. Will could not get the measure of this man at all: his voice was warm, avuncular even. Yet the room was humid with menace and it was all coming from him, from behind Will’s back.
‘I propose that we relocate.’
Clearly he had given some kind of nod, because the Israeli swiftly placed a blindfold on Will; not like the childhood variety, where some light always leaks through, but a complete cover, one that seemed to choke the eyelids, stopping them breathing. He felt himself being yanked upward again, out of the chair. Except this time it was not for another standing search, but to be led away.
Will decided he would not panic. He would not give in to the feeling that, with each step, he was leaning into a dark, empty space, plunging off a cliff into an abyss. He would focus on the ground beneath his feet; each time he lifted one leg, he would remember how near the ground remained. Perhaps he should scrape his shoes along, to maintain constant contact? Maybe that was why you always saw handcuffed prisoners shuffling: it was not because they were depressed, but because they needed the reassurance that the earth was still there, right under their shoes.
He was aware of passing through another corridor, getting further away from the clamour of the synagogue which, Will realized, had begun to fade into a loud hubbub a while back.
He chided himself for not having noticed exactly when; that detail was surely important in tracking the Rebbe’s movements.
What was truly strange, though, was the feeling of dependency on the Israeli now gripping his right arm with painful force. Will was relying on him as a guide, aware that he must now look the way blind men always look: Stevie Wonder or Ray Charles, his head moving randomly, untethered to logic.
This man was his captor but, Will thought,
he was also his carer.
Now he felt the cold. They had moved outside, but only for a few steps. He heard the creak of a swing door, like a garden gate, and then felt the change of temperature. As if they were in an enclosed space, though not quite outdoors.
There was an echo.
‘No one likes this, I’m afraid, Mr Mitchell. Tom. But I’m going to have to take a look at you.’
It was in the next few seconds that Will decided that this was not some ghastly incident that would soon resolve itself, but actually something rather terrifying. until now, he had clung to the idea that this might be an error or even an ironic send-up of the interrogation scene from a thousand movies.
He had been hoping that it would all be revealed as a hideous mistake; or that, at least, he would soon know the identity of his inquisitor; or that he would make progress; or that this would simply stop. Now he felt sure these strange people who had stolen his wife were about to torture and kill him, probably in a way so sadistic as to chill the blood. Worse than that, and this thought turned his bowels to mush, they had doubtless already done whatever they were going to do, or worse, to Beth.
‘No!’ Will shouted, but it was too late. He felt his arms being pinned back while someone unbuckled his trousers.
There was a hand over his mouth, too. This could not be the work of the Israeli, all alone. But where were these extra hands coming from? Who did they belong to? And then, without warning, his underpants were down.
‘Stop.’ He heard the word and was shocked to discover the voice was not his own. The Rebbe had spoken. ‘You’re telling the truth. You’re not Jewish.’
Will could only guess what was happening: the Rebbe must have been standing in front of him, looking at his penis and concluding, rightly, that it was not circumcised.
‘You’re not Jewish,’ the Rebbe repeated. And then, to his assistant or assistants: ‘Cover him up.’ A pause. ‘Well, this is good news, Mr Mitchell. I now believe that you are not a federal agent or a law enforcement official. I suspected you were, prowling around with all your questions. But I know those people and, first, they would have had you wired and, second, they would have sent a Jew. Not only that, but they would have considered themselves very smart for doing that.
Oh, yes, regular geniuses for giving Agent Goldberg a call and saying “This is a job with your name on it.” That’s how they think. Send an Arab to infiltrate a Muslim terrorist gang, send a Jew to us. But you’re not a Jew, so you’re not working for them. That I now believe.’
Will’s trousers were back on, his belt was buckled up and he was off a hook if not the hook: he was not an undercover federal agent. All that combined to reduce the terror of a few moments ago. His body, the pounding of his heart, the moisture on his palms was at code orange, rather than red, where it had been seconds earlier.
‘You look relieved, Mr Mitchell. I’m glad. The trouble is, if you’re not a fed, you must be working for someone else. And that, I fear, is infinitely more serious.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Friday, 9.22pm, Crown Heights, Brooklyn
He did not have long to be confused. After the Rebbe had spoken, perhaps a beat passed before Will felt his back pushed forward, making him buckle at the waist. His arms were now gripped like levers, pushing his head and shoulders down and forward.
His nose felt it first, as it filled with water; then his scalp, as it shrank from the cold. His throat gurgled and gagged. He was choking and gasping at the same time.
Will’s head and neck had just been submerged in freezing cold water, the blindfold still on. He could feel his chest contract with the shock of it, his heart racing. He had been shoved with some force, in the darkness and therefore without warning, into that icy liquid. He was there for five or six seconds, his shoulders held down to prevent him coming up for air. It was long enough to fill his nostrils, for the water to travel down his sinuses and into his brain. Or that’s how it felt — like asphyxiation.
Once out, he gulped in air even as he coughed, a double reflex like vomiting. But then the hands were pushing again and he was under once more.
This time it was the temperature. His eyes seemed to shrivel in their sockets, recoiling from the cold; he was sure he could hear his whole system, veins, arteries and blood vessels, screaming with the trauma of the sudden radical change in temperature.
What was this? A pond? An icebox? The edge of a river? A toilet? The blindfold was soaked but not loosening; if anything it seemed now to be welding itself onto Will’s eyelids, sealed in by ice.
‘Now, Tom,’ the voice was saying, its timbre distorted by the frozen water in Will’s ears. ‘Shall we start talking honestly?’
By way of response, Will spat out a mouthful of the water, emptying himself for the next, inevitable dunk.
‘I believe this is your second time at the mikve today. You’re becoming a regular frummie, aren’t you Tom? And I’m sure Shimon Shmuel explained to you the purpose, the meaning of the mikve. This is a place of purification, a place of sanctification. We enter coated in the sins of our regular lives and emerge tahoor, pure. And in this state we are untainted by any sins, be they lies or deceits. Do you follow me, Tom?’
Will was now shivering. His shirt was soaked and he could feel rivulets of liquid chill running down his back and chest. His teeth were about to start chattering.
‘What I am saying is that I now insist on the truth. And if two or three dips in this outdoor mikve, filled only by purest rainwater, cannot find the truth in you then maybe four or five or six or seven submersions will. We are patient men. We will keep plunging you into that water until you deal with us plainly and straightforwardly. Do you understand?’
There must have been a silent nod, because down Will went again. The cold was now biting into him, seeping below his skin and into his bones. They too seemed to contract, as if they could hide from the cold by making themselves smaller.
‘Who do you work for, Tom? Who sent you here?’
‘I’m a journalist,’ was all Will could manage, in a voice he hardly recognized, querulous with cold.
‘You’ve said that, but who wants you here? Why are you here?’
I’ve told you.’
And down he went again, this time shoved so that his whole upper body was submerged. He felt the water travel below his waist, trickling into his shorts, spreading an icy damp around his groin.
He had no idea what to say. He wanted desperately for this to end, but what could he do? If he told the truth, he would endanger himself and Beth. The kidnappers had been clear: no involvement of the police. That surely extended to vigilante rescue missions as well. These were serious, violent people and he would be admitting he had defied their instructions.
He would also be confessing that he had indeed been lying. As for Beth, they had kidnapped her for some purpose — which he could not fathom — but one thing he knew: his presence here was not part of their plan. If they had not already done great harm to her, his appearance would all but guarantee it.
Yet to carry on insisting that he was Tom Mitchell seemed doomed. He could not give them any more information because there was no more; Mitchell was a fiction. On this the Rebbe’s instincts were right. Even if Will had the strength to withstand this weight, he would eventually crack because his story would crack: it had to. These were his thoughts as the weight on his hands and shoulders came again, plunging his body deep into the cold.
‘Enough,’ Will said. ‘No more.’
‘Maybe I need to explain a little about Judaism,’ the voice was saying as he was finally allowed back up for air.
He could hardly make out the words, so loud was the explosion generated by his own lungs as he gulped for oxygen.
‘Judaism holds the harshest possible view of murder. “Thou shalt not kill” is the sixth commandment. It means that murder is never allowed.’ There was a long pause, as if the Rebbe expected Will to react. Will could not; he was still drawing in loud, urgent breaths.
‘I don’t know if you’re familiar with one of our most famous teachings, Mr Mitchell. “To save a single life is to save the whole world.” Really, the whole world. That’s how much each life matters to HaShem. In each individual person is contained the whole world. Because we are all created in God’s image. This is the meaning behind the phrase “sanctity of life”, Mr Mitchell. Now it is a cliche. People just say it without even thinking. But what do those words really mean?’ The voice had a hint of the music he had heard before, back in the synagogue — that sing-song, up-and-down rhythm, by turns questioning and answering, all in a single monologue. ‘They mean that life is sacred, because it is part of the divine. To kill a human being is to kill an aspect of the Almighty. Which is why we are forbidden to kill. Except in the most exceptional circumstances.’
Will felt the cold bite deeper into his flesh.
‘Self-defence is the obvious example, but it is not the only one. You see, in Judaism we have a beautiful concept known as pikuach nefesh. This refers to the saving of a soul. Now, there is no more sacred duty than pikuach nefesh: almost anything is allowed if it will save a soul. Rabbis are often asked, “Can a Jew ever eat pork?” The answer is yes! Of course he can! If he is on a desert island and the only means to survive is to slay a pig and eat it, then not only is the Jew allowed to do that, he must do it! He must. It is a religious commandment: he must save his own life. Pikuach nefesh.
‘Let’s take a more difficult case.’ The man was speaking as if this was a tutorial at Balliol College, a one-to-one class with Will as his pupil. The fact that Will was kneeling, his hands now tied, his body drenched and frozen, barely broke his stride.
‘Would we be allowed to kill, if that would save a life? No. The rules of pikuach nefesh prohibit murder, idolatry and sexual immorality even to save a life. If someone tells you to commit murder, just to save your own skin, you cannot do it. But let’s say a known killer is on the loose. He is on his way to murder a family of innocents. We know that if we kill him, their lives will be saved. Is it right to kill in that situation? Yes, because such a man is what we call a rodef. If there is no other way to stop him, he can be killed with impunity.
