The Righteous Men (2006)

by Sam Bourne

  ‘This is Will Monroe. You asked me to call.’

  ‘Yes, Will, I did. First, let me apologize for what happened yesterday. A bad case of mistaken identity, partly compounded by the fact that you made the mistake of concealing your identity.’ Will wondered if he was meant to laugh at this little bit of wordplay. He did not. ‘I think it’s right that we talk about the current situation.’

  ‘You’re damn right we need to talk about it. You need to give me back my wife or else I will implicate you in a double murder.’

  ‘Now calm down, Mr Monroe.’

  ‘I’m not feeling very calm, Rabbi. Yesterday you nearly killed me and you have abducted my wife for no reason. The only reason I have not gone to the police so far is because of your threats to kill my wife. But now I can go to them and confirm your guilt in the Bangkok case by saying you have already performed a kidnap right here in New York city.

  If you kill her then, that will only compound your guilt.’ Will was pleased with how that had come out; it was more coherent than he had expected.

  ‘All right, I am going to make a deal with you. If you say nothing and talk to no one, we will do our best to keep Beth alive.’ Beth. It sounded strange coming from this baritone voice, whose timbre had only barely altered in the metallic compression of the phone.

  ‘What do you mean, “do our best”? Who else is there?

  You’ve done this, you should take responsibility for it. Either you will guarantee her safety or you won’t.’ That sentence, unplanned, prompted a thought, one he voiced out loud before it was fully formed in his own mind. ‘I want to speak to my wife.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I want to speak to her right now. I want to hear her voice.

  As proof that she is still … safe.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘I don’t care what you think. As I’m only too happy to explain to the police. I want to hear her voice.’

  ‘That will take some time.’

  ‘I’m calling you back in five minutes.’

  Will put the phone down and exhaled as if he had been holding his breath; the blood seemed to be pounding through his veins. His own firmness had taken him by surprise. And yet it had seemed to work; the rabbi had not refused.

  Will counted the minutes, staring at the second hand as it swept across the face of his watch. TC could say nothing.

  A minute passed, then two. Well felt an ache in his forehead; the muscles of his face had been tensed so long, they hurt. The top of the plastic pen he had been chewing came apart in his mouth.

  Four minutes gone. Will stood up and stretched, tilting his head toward one shoulder, then the next. It made a loud crack. He looked down at the phone and, four minutes and fifty five seconds after he had hung up, he redialled the number.

  ‘It’s Will Monroe. Let me speak to her.’

  There was no reply, just a series of clicking sounds, as if his call were being transferred. The sound of breath and then: ‘Will? Will, it’s Beth—’

  ‘Beth, thank God it’s you. Oh my love, are you OK? Are you hurt?’

  Silence, and then three more clicks. ‘Beth?’

  ‘I’m afraid I had to cut off the line. But now you have heard her voice; you know she is—’

  ‘For God’s sake, you barely gave us a second.’ Will smashed the table with his fist, making TC leap back in fright. He felt himself flood with emotion. For less than a second he had felt such relief, such joy: it was Beth’s voice, no mistaking it.

  Just the sound of it made him weak. And then it had disappeared, cut short before he had even had a chance to tell her he loved her.

  ‘I couldn’t risk any more time. I’m genuinely sorry. But I did what you asked: you have heard your wife’s voice.’

  ‘You have to promise me NOW that nothing is going to happen to her.’

  ‘I tried to explain this to you last night, Will. This is not entirely in our hands, not in mine, not in yours. Much bigger forces are in play. This is something mankind has feared for millennia.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘I cannot blame you for not understanding. Not many would, which is why we cannot explain this to the police, much as all of us might like to. They would certainly not understand. For some reason, HaShem has left this in our hands to resolve.’

  ‘How do I know you’re not tricking me to stay quiet? How do I know that you don’t plan to kill my wife the way you killed that man in Bangkok?’

  A pause. Then: ‘Ah, nothing grieves me more than what happened there. Every Jewish heart will cry out in despair at the pity of what happened there.’ He paused again. Will let the silence hang. Wait for the interviewee to fill the void … ‘I am going to take a risk, Mr Monroe. I hope you take it as it is meant, as a gesture of good faith on my part. I am going to let you into a secret which you could easily use against me. By revealing it to you, I will be showing a degree of trust in you. As a result I hope you will feel better able to trust me. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘What happened in Bangkok was an accident. It is true that we wanted to take Mr Samak into custody, just as we have with your wife, but we certainly had no intention of killing him. God forbid.’ TC had moved round to sit next to Will, pressing her ear against the back of his cell phone.

  ‘What we did not know, what we could not have known, was that Mr Samak had a weak heart. Such a strong man, but a terribly weak heart. The… steps we had to take to bring him into custody were, I’m afraid, more than he could take.’

  For a brief moment, Will thought like a journalist: he had wrung a confession from this man. Not of murder, perhaps, but of manslaughter. In a spasm of professional pride, Will guessed that, despite hours of intense questioning, New York’s finest had not yet achieved quite so good a result.

  ‘That is what happened, Mr Monroe and, though it will amaze you to hear it, I have only told you the truth in all our encounters so far. I repeat that I have taken a great risk in speaking so candidly. But something tells me you will take my gesture the right way and you will not spurn me. I have trusted you and now, I hope, you will trust me. Do it for your own reasons, Will. Do it because I have told you that I will do my best to keep your wife alive. But do it also because of what I told you yesterday and repeat again today: that an ancient story is unfolding here, threatening an outcome mankind has feared for thousands of years. Your wife matters to you, Mr Monroe, of course she does. But the world, the creation of the Almighty, matters to me.’

  Now the rabbi was leaving the silence, waiting for Will to fill it. He knew what was happening, but he could not help himself.

  ‘What are you asking me to do?’

  ‘To do nothing, Mr Monroe. Nothing at all. Just to stay out of this and to be patient. There are perhaps a couple of days left and then we will all know our fates. So even though you are desperate to see Beth again, I urge you to wait. No meddling, no amateur detective work. Just wait. I hope you will do what’s right, Will. Good night. And may God turn his face to shine upon all of us.’

  The phone clicked off. Will looked at TC, who seemed to be trembling with him.

  ‘It’s so strange to hear his voice,’ she was saying, in little more than a whisper. ‘After we’ve talked about him so much, I mean.’

  Will had scribbled the odd note while the rabbi was talking so that he and TC could deconstruct his meaning. But it was the tone that was most striking. If Will was briefing Harden on the conversation he had just had, that would be his headline. The rabbi had sounded conciliatory but something else, too — almost regretful.

  The silence was not allowed to last. The cell phone had another text to disgorge.

  A chain is no stronger than its weakest link

  And then a moment later:

  Safety in numbers. No more.

  Will read them out, pausing as TC demanded clarification of the location of the period in that sentence. There were two full st
ops, Will replied. Was he sure? He was sure. He was having trouble concentrating. He was hearing Beth’s voice, over and over: Will? Will, it’s Beth.

  ‘OK,’ TC was saying. ‘Let’s assume that he means what he says, that there will be no more. This is the full set.’

  In front of her, laid out on the table, were ten neat squares of paper, one message written on each.

  He who hesitates is lost

  He that knows nothing doubts nothing

  Opportunity seldom knocks twice

  A friend in need is a friend indeed

  To the victor the spoils

  Goodness is better than beauty

  A man is known by the company he keeps

  From little acorns mighty oaks grow

  A chain is no stronger than its weakest link

  Safety in numbers. No more.

  TC was glaring at them, her sketchbook on her lap, surveying the pattern she had arranged. The messages were in three groups. Encouragement, warnings, enigmas.

  TC now laid the pad onto the table, alongside the scraps of paper. It was almost dark with ink: she had filled the page. All over it were words or half-phrases crossed out, written backwards or in diagonals. She had written out the messages in every possible order, each time underlining the first letter of each line: attempting the acrostic. Will could see the results: HHOATGAFAS followed by a list of random variations using the same letters. All of them spelled gibberish.

  As if reading his mind, TC turned the page of her sketchbook to show the one underneath, its surface no less covered with calculations and abortive anagrams. She peeled that away to show the one below and the one below that. She had been breaking her head to solve this puzzle for hours.

  Will felt a surge of gratitude: he knew how lonely he would have been without her. But there was no getting away from it. Despite all her efforts, despite their combined intellect, they still had not cracked this riddle in ten parts. It had defeated them.

  ‘I can’t believe I am that dumb.’

  ‘What?’ Will looked up from the table to see TC leaning back in her chair, hands on her head and eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  ‘I cannot believe I am so stupid.’ She was smiling, shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘Please tell me precisely what you’re talking about,’ Will said, in a voice that even he recognized as excessively polite and English, a voice he often used when trying to stay calm.

  ‘It was so obvious and I made it so complicated. How many hours have I spent on this thing now?’

  ‘You mean, you’ve worked it out?’

  ‘I’ve worked it out. What has he sent us? “A friend in need.” “From little acorns.” He’s sent us proverbs. Ten proverbs.’

  ‘Right, so … Sorry, you’re going to have to tell me. I can see he’s sent us ten proverbs. The trouble is, we don’t know what they mean.’

  ‘They don’t mean anything. They’re not meant to mean anything. He’s sent us ten proverbs. Because that’s where we’re meant to look. Proverbs, 10.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Saturday, 8.27pm, Manhattan

  He had been there as long as they had and had been muttering just as loudly. He was on his own, middle-aged and no doubt homeless, with a face that seemed swollen through exposure to the elements. In the course of the afternoon Will had seen him eat half an apple pie, handed to him by a guy wearing an iPod (who did not take the earphones out), and perhaps a bag and a half of fries; and at intervals he had read aloud from the black, plastic-bound bible he held in his right hand.

  Will had found these random sermons an irritation during the afternoon, as had the succession of customers who took pains not to sit too near. Now, though, he could not have been more grateful. With a hot cup of coffee in his hand, he approached gingerly.

  ‘Sir, I wonder if perhaps you’d like a cup of coffee. It’s freshly made.’

  The man,looked up, his eyes watery. The whites were yellow.

  ‘If it had not been the Lord who was on our side — let Israel now say — if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their anger was kindled against us—’

  ‘Yes, sir, I’m sure that’s quite right,’ Will tried, in the short moment the man drew breath. But it was no good; he was off again.

  ‘Then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us; then over us would have gone the raging waters.’

  ‘Sir, I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wondered if I could borrow your bible.’

  ‘Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we have escaped.’

  ‘That’s truly what I pray for, too, sir. But if I could just take a peek at your bible.’ Will bent down and tried to take the book from his hand. The man’s grip was surprisingly strong. He would not let go.

  ‘Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.’

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s what I think too. So if you’d just let me glance at the holy book.’ The man’s hand gnarled itself even more tightly. Will tugged but the man tugged back, still muttering.

  Will looked up; TC had arrived. By now he was almost sitting next to the tramp, pulling horizontally at the book. He knew he looked ridiculous: he was mugging a tramp for his bible.

  ‘Sir,’ TC said softly. ‘Do you think we could pray together?’

  Suddenly the man stopped talking. TC continued, her voice a gentle stream of pure reason. ‘Can I suggest we take as our text, the Book of Proverbs, Chapter 10?’

  Without complaint, the man opened up the book, thumbing through its tissue-thin, closely printed pages. Within a few seconds, he began his recitation: ‘The proverbs of Solomon.

  A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.’

  Will tried to peer over his shoulder, to skim the rest of the ancient text at top speed. To him, it looked like the usual biblical mix of profundity and obscurity. Scripture always had this effect on him: the words might make stirring music, but their precise meaning only ever became clear through great effort. Most of the time, in church or at morning prayers at school, the sounds just washed over him. As they did now, in this odd, spontaneous prayer meeting.

  Their leader was onto Verse 2: ‘Treasures of wickedness profit nothing: but righteousness delivereth from death.’

  Eyes down, Will was racing ahead. Confronted now with verse after verse of the stuff, he found his eye lighting upon anything either immediately intelligible or, better still, familiar. One word stood out, again and again. It had appeared in Verse 2 and was there again in Verse 3. The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish: but he casteth away the substance of the wicked.

  And again in Verse 11. The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life: but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked.

  And in Verse 16. The labour of the righteous tendeth to life: the fruit of the wicked to sin.

  Verse 2I had it too. The lips of the righteous feed many: but fools die for want of wisdom.

  Wherever Will looked, the word seemed to jump off the page. In his sleep-deprived state, he could almost hear voices, angry male voices, shouting the word at him. There it was again, in Verse 24. The fear of the wicked, it shall come upon him: but the desire of the righteous shall be granted.

  Listening to the rambling murmur of the homeless man, he pictured the Rabbi of Crown Heights swaying as he read Verse 25, his bearded disciples swaying along with him. As the whirlwind passeth, so is the wicked no more: but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.

  The word refused to let go. Verse 28 had it — The hope of the righteous shall be gladness: but the expectation of the wicked shall perish — and so did Verse 30: The righteous shall never be removed: but the wicked shall not inhabit the earth.

  It was even there at the very end, in the final verse. The lips of the righteous know
what is acceptable: but the mouth of the wicked speaketh perversity.

  The tramp now had his eyes shut, incanting the words from memory. But Will had heard enough. He stood up and moved round, so he could whisper in TC’s ear.

  ‘I’m going.’

  He knew they could have discussed it for hours, parsing every clause for multiple meanings like a pair of the sharpest Talmudical scholars. But sometimes you just have to go with your first instinct. Journalism was like that. You would be at a press conference, handed some voluminous document, and somehow you would have to whip through it in five minutes, decide what it was all about, ask your question and go. In truth, the document could not be read properly in less than four or five hours, but journalists liked to think such strictures were for lesser mortals.

  So Will trusted his judgment. Besides, he was sick of talking, deciphering and interpreting. He wanted to move, to go somewhere.

  He had been inside for hours, inhaling air made sweet and sickly by fast food.

  He had heard what he needed to hear. He knew exactly where he had to go — and he knew he would have to go there alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Saturday, 9.50pm, Manhattan

  A long line of elevators, maybe ten of them, and barely a soul to elevate. All big offices were probably like this on the weekends: still functioning, still with a guard at the front desk and lights on in the canteen, but skeletal versions of their weekday selves.

  The lobby of The New York Times building looked especially bereft. On Monday at 10am, this space would be jammed, as circulation managers jostled with graphic designers to cram into elevators, half of them clutching steaming cups of overpriced coffee. Now the same space was empty and silent, with only the rarest ‘ping’ to announce that an elevator had moved up a few floors and come back home again.

  Will nodded a hello to the guard on duty who gave him the merest glance. He was watching a ball game on a TV monitor that Will was sure was supposed to be tuned to closed circuit pictures of the fire escape or rear entrance or something.