The Righteous Men (2006)

by Sam Bourne

  ‘No, I definitely—’ Will stopped himself. After the Rebbe fiasco, there was nothing he knew for definite. He thought he had heard the arrival of a new person in the room, the rustling of paper and a row — but he had not seen that. He might have just got it wrong.

  ‘So what did Yosef Yitzhok — we’ll call him YY, it’ll save time. What did YY say to you outside?’

  ‘He apologized for what had happened inside. At the time I thought that was bullshit and I ignored it. But maybe that was his way of telling me he disagreed with what was happening. Maybe he’s a dissenter! Perhaps he can help. You know, from the inside.’

  ‘Will, I know you’re stressed out but we really have to keep it cool and calm. This is not the movies. Just tell me what he actually said.’

  ‘OK, so there’s the apology. And then there’s this stuff about my work. ‘If you want to know what’s going on, look to your work.’

  ‘Hmm.’ TC began pacing, stopping by a painting she had done of the Chrysler Building apparently melting in the twilight rain. ‘So he’s seen your story in the paper; he knows what you do. It’s possible he didn’t know that until that moment.’

  ‘I thought you said they knew the moment they emailed me.’

  ‘That’s true. They knew. The rabbi and whichever one of his techie helpers sent you the email knew. But this guy might not be inner circle. It may have been news to him.’

  ‘So it’s possible that he was steaming in there, warning them that I was a reporter and could make trouble.’

  ‘It’s possible. But something about it doesn’t feel right. If he’s in the room, he must be trusted enough to know what’s going on. It must be something else. But OK, let’s say you’re right. He doesn’t like what’s happening and so he breaks Shabbat to tell you urgently that you must not give up. Why would he do it in code? You know, foot runs?’

  ‘Just in case someone read it over his shoulder. Or saw it in his “Sent messages”.’

  ‘All right. I’ll buy that. And I suppose the thing he said to you last night — “look to your work” — is related. Perhaps he’s telling you to do what you do in your work: to keep looking, keep asking questions.’

  ‘I reckon that’s it. Don’t stop, keep probing.’

  ‘Good. So that’s what it is. OK.’ Will could see she was only partly persuaded. ‘What do you want to do now? Are you going to reply?’

  Will had not even thought of that, but she was right. He should just hit Reply, send a message of his own and see what happened. Who are you? That might scare YY off. What do you want me to do? He needed to get this right. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think I need some coffee.’ She flicked on the machine and, clearly out of habit, flicked on the radio at the same time. It was big, old-fashioned and splattered with paint; a builder’s radio. Except hers was not programmed to KROC or Kiss FM, but WNYC, New York’s public radio channel.

  Will fell back into the sofa, willing himself to have a brainwave. He had to think of something that would end this ordeal. Beth had now spent a night as a captive. God only knew where she was and in what conditions. He had seen how hard these men could be, nearly freezing him into unconsciousness. What pain were they inflicting on Beth? What strange rules would allow them to hurt a woman who, they admitted, had done nothing wrong. He imagined how frightened she was. Think, he urged himself. Think! But he just stared at the cell phone, bearing its message of bland, coded encouragement — Don’t stop — and at the BlackBerry which had, so far, brought only bad news. One in each hand, they yielded nothing.

  The radio was burbling with a signature tune, announcing the top of a new hour. Will looked at his watch: 9am.

  ‘Good morning, this is Weekend Edition. The President promises a new initiative in the Middle East. The Southern Baptist conference gets underway with a promise to make war on what it calls “Hollywood sleaze”. And in London, more revelations on the scandal of the year…

  Will spaced out for most of it, but he caught the latest on Gavin Curtis. It turned out that the red-faced cleric Will had seen on TV the other night was right: Curtis had been siphoning off colossal amounts of public money. Not just millions, which would have made him fantastically rich, but hundreds of millions at a time. Apparently the money had been diverted into a numbered account in Zurich. The humble Chancellor Curtis, riding around the British capital in a modest sedan car, had made himself one of the richest men in the world.

  In his current mood, Will found even this news depressing. It was confirmation on a grander scale of everything the last twenty-four hours had been saying. You could trust no one; everyone was up to no good. Then, as if to reproach himself, he thought of Howard Macrae and Pat Baxter. They had both done something good — but they were the exceptions.

  ‘Will, listen.’

  TC had turned the volume all the way up. Will recognized the voice: WNYC’s anchor, giving the local news.

  ‘Interpol have made a rare trip to Brooklyn this morning, with the mainly Hassidic neighbourhood of Crown Heights the scene.

  Officials from the NYPD say they are working with police from Thailand on a murder inquiry. NYPD spokesperson Lisa Roderiguet says the case relates to the discovery in the Hassidic sect’s Bangkok centre of the body of a leading Thai businessman. He’d been missing for several days, believed kidnapped. The rabbi in charge of the Bangkok centre is now under arrest and the Thai authorities requested, via Interpol, that the NYPD investigate the world headquarters of the Hassidic movement, here in New York, to further their inquiries.

  ‘The weather: in Manhattan, another chilly day …’

  TC looked pale. ‘I need to get out of here,’ she said suddenly. She seemed choked, claustrophobic. She moved across the room, picking up essentials — purse, phone — until Will realized this was not a negotiation. They were leaving.

  Watching her frightened him. There was no mistaking TC’s reaction: she thought Beth had either been murdered or was about to be. He had not realized it, but TC’s earlier calmness, almost insouciance, had been a comfort as well as an irritant. Now, with TC slamming the steel concertina door of the elevator after her, jabbing the buttons to make the damn thing go faster, he was robbed of that illusion. He felt his palms grow damp: while he had been dicking around playing amateur sleuth, his beloved Beth, his partner in life, might have been strangled or drowned or shot … His eyes closed in dread. More than yesterday, less than tomorrow.

  They were outside, TC grabbing him by the wrist, not so much walking alongside him as leading him, like a mother escorting a reluctant child to nursery. ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re going to play them at their own game. See how they like it.’

  They had only walked a couple of blocks when she strode into NetZone, an internet cafe which actually served coffee.

  There were copies of The New York Times, including the Sunday magazine and Arts and Leisure section, traditionally released twenty-four hours in advance, piled up invitingly by the fashionably shabby arm chairs. The Internet Hot Spot on Eastern Parkway felt very far away.

  TC was not here to sip cappuccino. She was on a mission, first handing cash over and then planting Will at a free terminal.

  ‘OK, log on.’

  Will suddenly remembered what going out with TC had been like. He had always felt as if he were somehow the junior partner and she the person in charge. He used to think that was because she was the native New Yorker while he was the outsider, that he deferred to her because she knew her way around what was for him a foreign land. But he had been in America for six years now and she was still at it. He realized TC was plain bossy. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about this first. What exactly are you suggesting I do?’

  ‘Log on to your email and I’ll show you.’

  ‘Why do we have to do this here? Why don’t we just use the BlackBerry?’

  ‘Because I can’t think using my thumbs. Now come on.

  Log on.’

  He relen
ted, typing in the string of letters that enabled Times staffers to access their email remotely. Name, password and he was in: his inbox. There were no surprises, just the same list of messages he had already seen on his BlackBerry.

  ‘Where’s the last message from the kidnappers?’

  Will scrolled down until he found it, the string of garble in the ‘name’ field and the subject: Beth. He opened it, seeing the unblinking words anew.

  WE DO NOT WANT MONEY

  The news from Thailand made this sentence look positively cruel. If it was not money they were after, what motivated them: the simple, sick pleasure of killing? Will could feel his blood rising, in anger — and desperation.

  ‘OK, hit Reply.’

  Will did as he was told, before TC nudged him aside and shared the seat with him, so that their bodies touched from their knees to their shoulders. She grabbed the keyboard and began two-finger typing furiously.

  I am on to you. I know you must be guilty of what happened in Bangkok because I know you are doing the same here in New York. I plan to go to the police and tell them what I know. That will implicate you in at least two very serious crimes, to say nothing of your assault and false imprisonment of me. You have till nine pm tonight to give me my wife back. Otherwise I talk.

  Will read the words twice over, stopping once to look at TC whose face stayed fixed on the computer screen. Her profile was just inches away from his, a minute diamond stud sparkling in her nose. He had seen this face from this angle so many times before; it seemed strange not to be kissing it.

  ‘Christ,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s pretty strong.’ He wondered if it was too explicit, mentioning his treatment the previous night. He remembered a slew of recent trials, in the US and in Britain, where journalists’ emails had been produced. What would they make of this one, issuing direct threats and proposing obstruction of justice — and all from a New York Times address? Fuck it, was all he could think. His wife was in dire danger; anything was permitted. TC’s note was sharp and hit the target directly. He was about to press Send when something caught his eye.

  ‘Why till nine pm? Why’s that the deadline?’

  ‘They might not read this till after the Sabbath is finished; we’ve got to give them time to reply.’

  The insanity of the situation had not faded with time. The notion of pious killers, happy to murder but queasy about turning on a computer before the appointed hour was too bizarre for Will to get used to. TC had explained that the Sabbath did not officially conclude until a specific minute on Saturday evening. Nothing so imprecise as ‘sunset’ or ‘once it’s dark’. It was 7.42pm. If you did not have a watch, you could check by looking outside your window: tradition held that once you could see three stars, you knew the Sabbath was over and the normal working week had resumed.

  Will had no idea how the Hassidim would respond. TC had moved so fast, her desire for action meshing perfectly with his fury at the kidnappers who, he now knew, were capable of murder, that he had barely thought through the consequences of what they had just done. Surely these were strange, unpredictable people; who knew how they would react? Will’s tone of angry defiance might push them over the edge: they could decide this was provocation enough to finish Beth off. They could kill her and it would be his fault — for following the whim of, of all people, his ex-girlfriend. He imagined the pain of future years, learning to live with such a weight of guilt.

  And yet, what had he got to lose? Playing nice had brought no results. He had to get their attention, force them to realize that there would be a price to pay for killing Beth. This email told them they needed his silence — and that they should spare her life to buy it.

  Besides, it felt good to be fighting back. He recalled how he had felt the previous evening, when he immersed himself in the warm water of the pre-sabbath mikve as Sandy stood close by. He had been ashamed of his nakedness, his willingness to strip himself bare to ingratiate himself with men whom he should have fought as enemies. Well, now he was clothed and pulling himself up to his full height and taking them on. With this message, he was fighting for his wife and acting like a man.

  He pressed Send.

  ‘Good,’ said TC, giving Will’s thigh a firm squeeze. ‘Good job.’

  TC’s elation was infectious; for Will it translated into relief. He had done something at last; he had made his move.

  The urge to fall into one of the cafe’s roomy armchairs was strong; Will was exhausted. But TC was already chivvying him to get up and out. She was not just edgy, Will realized; she was making a calculation. Of course. TC was worried that Will himself could be a target for the Hassidim. If she had had her initial doubts, now she was convinced: the men of Crown Heights were not to be messed around. It was the news from Bangkok that converted her. Once a sceptic, she was now a believer.

  As they left, Will’s mobile stirred. He waited till they were outside before he even looked at it: DadHome. Poor guy, he’d been calling for hours and Will had not sent him so much as a text message.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Thank God for that. Oh Will, I’ve been worried sick.’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m exhausted, but I’m OK.’

  ‘What the hell’s been happening? I’ve wanted so much to call the police, but didn’t dare until you and I at least had a chance to talk. Really, Will, I was this close — but I held off.

  It’s such a relief to hear your voice.’

  ‘You haven’t told anyone have you? Dad?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t. But I’ve wanted to. Just tell me, have you heard from Beth?’

  ‘No. But I know where she is and I know who’s got her.’

  TC was gesturing at Will’s phone, then wagging her finger across her face like a school mistress. Will got the message.

  ‘Dad, maybe we should talk about this when I’m on a landline. Can I call you later?’

  ‘No, you have to tell me now! I’m going out of my mind here. Where is she?’

  ‘She’s in New York. She’s in Brooklyn.’

  Will instantly regretted his revelation. Cell phones were notoriously leaky: he knew that much from the scanners on the Metro desk, where police radio transmissions were easier to get than NPR. For those who knew how, plucking cellular calls out of the air was a breeze.

  ‘But, Dad, I’m serious. There can be no vigilante rescue attempts here. No calls to the police commissioner who you knew at Yale. I mean it: that would truly fuck everything up and could cost Beth her life.’ His voice was wobbling. Will could not tell if he was about to scream at his father or break down and cry. ‘Promise me, Dad. You’re not going to do anything. Promise.’

  His father gave a reply but Will could not hear it. A word went missing, drowned out by the sound of a beep on the line.

  ‘OK, Dad, I’m going to say goodbye. We’ll speak later.’

  There was no time for niceties; he needed his father off the line so he could take this incoming call.

  Will pressed the buttons as. fast as he could, his thumbs trembling with tiredness, but there was no call. The beep he had heard had announced instead the arrival of a text message.

  Will could feel TC leaning on his upper arm, straining to see his phone as they stood together on the street.

  ‘Read message?’ the phone asked dumbly. Of course I want to read it, idiot! Will hit the Yes button, but found the keypad was locked. Damn. More buttons to press, forcing him to go the long way around, choosing text messages then his inbox, then a long wait while the display promised that it was ‘opening folder’. Finally, the message appeared: five words, short, simple — and utterly mysterious.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Saturday, 11.37am, Manhattan

  2 down: Moses to Bond

  Now that TC had broken the code, this message was not baffling — he knew it would be solved within a few moments — but it was frightening. This string of nonsense might be about to tell him anything. What if one of those words translated as Beth?

  TC
grabbed the phone and began punching numbers, only to stop suddenly. ‘2 could be A or B or C. But the only alternative for “down” is “down”. It must be a different system.’

  ‘It’s a crossword clue.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘2 Down. You know, 4 Across, 3 Down. It’s a crossword clue.’

  ‘All right. So what’s moses to bond? It implies some sort of motion: we’re meant to take Moses to Bond somehow. But what the hell is Bond anyway?’

  ‘James Bond? Could be a number. You know, 007.’ TC looked blank. ‘Maybe it’s two down from seven. Which would be five.’

  ‘Which could be the five books of Moses. But that’s not much of a clue. Listen, I’m cold.’ They were still standing on the street. ‘There.’ She pointed at a McDonalds.

  With a bacon breakfast bun in one hand and a pencil in the other, TC was scribbling — combinations of letters and numbers.

  ‘What about Bond Street?’ said Will, pacing around her.

  ‘Take Moses to Bond Street?’

  TC looked up at Will, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘OK, OK.’

  ‘Let’s think this through,’ she said, scoring a long line through everything she had written down. ‘What did you say in your reply to him?’ Will, his mouth now full, froze just as his hands were about to claw a clump of fries. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I meant to. I was about to. But then we heard the news from Bangkok and everything got forgotten.’

  Will was almost waiting for TC to pick him up on that lapse into what she used to call the cowardly passive. ‘Everything got forgotten,’ was the cowardly way of saying that Will himself had forgotten. (TC coined the term in honour of an old flatmate who, despairing at the state of the kitchen they shared, but too meek to accuse TC directly, announced, ‘Dishes have been left.’ Hence, and thereafter, the cowardly passive.) That thought brought back a memory Will had not dredged up for years: the alternative grammar he and TC had devised to reflect the way language was really used, the way emotions really worked. There was, of course, the passive aggressive and, Will’s favourite, the past too-perfect, deployed by those consumed with nostalgia. The pressure caused by gift-giving, particularly pronounced at Christmas, was, inevitably, present tension. We must have been so obnoxious, thought Will now, reconstructing in his mind the world of smart-aleck, private jokes that he and TC had once inhabited together.