The Righteous Men (2006)

by Sam Bourne

  ‘Exactly, Will. Yosef Yitzhok has this thought in the very closing days of the Rebbe’s life, when the Rebbe is too ill to answer any questions. He can barely speak.’

  ‘So what does he do?’

  ‘He stares at the thirty-five verses for days on end. He is sure the Rebbe wants them to be understood, that he is passing this information on for a reason. So he is determined to break them open, so to speak, to find out what is inside. He looks at them from every angle. He translates the letters into numeric values; he adds; he multiplies. He reproduces them as anagrams. But of course there is a logical problem.

  ‘How could the identities of the righteous men be contained in those verses? The identities change in every generation. Yet the verses stay stubbornly the same. Even if, say, verse twenty included the name of tzaddik number twenty for this year, where would we find the name of tzaddik number twenty for the year 2020 or 2050 or, in the past, 1950 and 1850? How could the names of men who are alive today be concealed in a text that remains static?’

  ‘And that’s when Yosef Yitzhok’s remarkable powers truly shone through. He remembered the answer.’

  ‘You mean the Rebbe had already told him?’

  ‘Not directly, of course. But the Rebbe had given him the answer. Yosef Yitzhok had heard it. All he needed to do was to remember it. And do you know what it was? It was the last line of the last talk at the last farbrengen the Rebbe ever addressed. “Space depends on time. Time reveals space”. Those were his last words in public’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Incredible,’ said TC.

  ‘You’ve lost me, I’m afraid,’ said Will, suddenly the dunce of the class.

  ‘Don’t worry. Yosef Yitzhok was baffled too. These were beautiful sentences. But they were an enigma. Space depends on time. Time reveals space. What does that mean? That’s when Yosef Yitzhok came to me, letting me in on his theory. The Rebbe often spoke in riddles, in elliptical sentences that might take many hours — many years even — to study and interpret. Yosef Yitzhok spent a long night working away at these sentences. And then he had what you would call a brainwave and what I would call a helping hand from HaShem.’

  ‘You may know that the Rebbe was a very close follower of science and technology. He read Scientific American and Nature and a whole variety of journals. He was always up to date on the latest developments, in neuroscience, in biochemistry. But he had a special interest in technology. He loved gadgets! He never owned them: he was the least materialistic man you could ever know. But he liked to know about them.

  ‘Yosef Yitzhok knew that about the Rebbe. And that’s what gave him his idea. Here, I’ll show you.’

  Rabbi Freilich reached for a worn, leather-bound book and thumbed rapidly through the pages. He found the page and then the verse he was looking for.

  ‘Now what is the year?’

  Will was about to answer when TC got there first. ‘Five thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight.’

  Will frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the Hebrew calendar,’ TC explained. ‘It dates back to creation. Jews believe the world has been in existence for less than six thousand years.’

  ‘OK,’ said the rabbi. ‘The year is 5768. And here is a verse from Chapter 10 of the Book of Proverbs. In fact this is a crucial verse. Verse 18. This is what Yosef Yitzhok tried out.

  We count along the line and mark the fifth letter.’ The rabbi’s finger stopped at the selected character. ‘Then the seventh from there.’ It stopped again. ‘Then the sixth from there. And then the eighth. You see: 5-7-6-8. And we keep doing that till we get to the end of the line. So in this case, the fifth letter is a yud. The seventh letter after that is a hay. The sixth is a mem. And the eighth is also a mem. You keep on like that until you have a string of letters.’

  ‘Which then convert into numbers.’ Will was guessing.

  ‘Precisely so. A string of numbers. Here, I’ll show you one of the very earliest ones Yosef Yitzhok worked out.’

  The rabbi stood up, leading Will and TC over to a second wipe-board. There, neatly written in a black marker pen, was a long series of digits: 699331, 5709718, 30.

  ‘Don’t tell me that’s a phone number.’

  ‘No, it is not. We wondered about that, too. We even tried a few. No, this is where the Rebbe’s eye for the latest advances in technology was so important.’

  TC was staring at the figure, as if the sheer penetration of her gaze would crack it open.

  ‘It is—’ and at this the rabbi could not deny himself a little smile of amused pride, as if he had still not got over the brilliance of it all ‘—a GPS number. Or rather, contained in this number are the co-ordinates of longitude and latitude that give you a GPS number, co-ordinates for the Global Positioning System.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Will. ‘You mean that whole satellite navigation thing?’ It sounded preposterous.

  ‘That’s it. A system that maps the entire globe, watched from space, and which gives precise co-ordinates for any spot on earth. The Rebbe must have read about it. Or maybe he just knew.’

  ‘You’re telling me that contained in those thirty-five biblical verses are the co-ordinates for thirty-five righteous men?’

  ‘We did not believe it either, Mr Monroe. One verse gave us a number for a remote hillside in Montana: according to the map, nobody lived there. But we sent the man who runs our centre in Seattle to take a closer look and he saw a log cabin. With a man inside, living alone. Like something from our folk tales, Tova Chaya: a simple man in the forest.’

  Pat Baxter, thought Will. The very cabin he had gazed at just a few days ago.

  ‘Another number was an empty space in the middle of the Sudan. Again, no one was meant to live there. But then we saw from satellite pictures that a refugee camp had sprung up on that spot during the last few months, saving people who were fleeing for their lives. It was maintained by one man: the international agencies were not even sure who he was. So we began to realize that we were right. That the Rebbe was right.’

  ‘What about this number?’ asked Will, pointing at the wipe-board. ‘What did this come out as?’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ The rabbi walked the few paces to where one of the young men was working away at a computer. TC and Will caught up, watching the technician over his shoulder.

  The rabbi pointed at the number on the wipe-board and murmured an instruction.

  The young man punched in the digits, waited a few seconds and then watched as the computer came back with an answer.

  11 Downing Street, London, SW1 2AB, UK.

  ‘So this was the verse for Gavin Curtis?’

  The rabbi nodded.

  Will needed to sit down and, ideally, drink something.

  Though nothing was around. These men would use computers and work hard, even though it was Yom Kippur, because lives were at stake. Pikuach nefesh. But they would break no rules they did not have to.

  Now TC was speaking. ‘So that was what the Rebbe was trying to say. Space depends on time. Time reveals space. The location depends on time. If you know the time, the year — if you use the number 5678 — then you will know the space. You’ll work out the location.’ She was shaking her head in wonder at the ingenuity of it. ‘And I suppose if you try the same verses with different years, you get different places. Different people.’

  ‘Well, our texts are good at guarding their secrets, Tova Chaya. Yosef Yitzhok wanted to do as you say. He worked with people here to devise a computer programme, to do what we just did with that one verse: stopping at every fifth or seventh character. He did it for different years. And then he ran it through the GPS system and, sure enough, he started getting place names. But what use is a place name, Kabul or Mainz, for 1735? How are we to know who lived there then? Besides, Yosef Yitzhok always wondered if that was too easy.’

  ‘If what was too easy?’

  ‘He wasn’t sure it would necessarily be the same verses for all time. Those were the verses the
Rebbe had mentioned for his generation. But maybe the other great sages who had somehow been let in on this secret in the past — the Baal Shem Tov or Rabbi Leib Sorres — maybe they knew of the righteous men of their time in a different way. They didn’t have this GPS, did they? This method wouldn’t have made much sense to them, would it? They would have had their own ways — different verses, or maybe a different method entirely.

  This, I now realize, is what lay behind the Rebbe’s interest in technology. I think he understood that even the most enduring, ancient truths could outwardly change very fast, that they would find new forms. Hassidim had to know about the modern world, because this too is HaShem’s creation. He is found here, too.’

  Will and TC were silent. Awestruck, even: it was not just the lives of the thirty-six that were keeping Rabbi Freilich working around the clock, even now on the solemnest night of the Jewish year, when all work was prohibited. This man, who spoke with erudition and in calm, rational paragraphs, clearly believed he had less than twenty-four hours to save the world. Will tried to blot that out, to focus on his own, immediate need: Beth.

  ‘OK,’ he said, like a police captain calling his squad to order. ‘So that’s how the system works. The crucial question is, who else knows about this? Who else might know the identity of the righteous men?’

  By now they were back at the table, where the rabbi had all but fallen into his chair. Will could see the exhaustion in his face.

  ‘You were our best hope.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘When you came here on shabbos. On Friday night. We thought you were some kind of spy. From the people who are doing this, I mean. You were asking questions, you were an outsider. Maybe you were trying to find out about the lamad vav. That’s why we, why I, treated you so harshly. Then we discovered you were—’ Will could see the rabbi did not want to name him as the husband of their hostage ‘—you were something else.’

  Will could feel the anger rising within him again. Why did he not just shake this man and force him to reveal where Beth was? Why was he putting up with this? Because, a voice inside him began, if these people were fanatical enough to kidnap Beth for no apparent reason, they were fanatical enough to hold on to her. Rabbi Freilich might have looked weak and exhausted, but there were a dozen men in here who were stronger. If Will lunged, they would soon have him pinned down.

  ‘All right, so it’s not me. Who else knows?’

  The rabbi sunk lower. ‘That’s just it. No one knows. No one outside this community. And not even this community has any idea what’s going on: there would be mass panic if they did. If they knew that the lamadvavniks are being murdered, every day more of them killed, there would be chaos here. They would believe the end of the world was coming.’

  ‘You believe that, don’t you?’ It was said in Tova Chaya’s gentlest voice.

  The rabbi looked up at her, his eyes wet. ‘I fear that what the Rebbe spoke of is coming to pass. Di velt shokelt zich und treiselt zich. That’s what he used to say, Tova Chaya. The world is trembling and shaking. I fear for what judgement this day is about to bring upon us.’

  Will was pacing. ‘So no one outside this small group has any idea of this. Just you, Yosef Yitzhok and a few of your best students.’

  ‘And now you.’

  ‘And you’re sure no one breathed a word?’

  ‘To whom? Who even knew about this whole subject? Why would anyone ask? But when Yosef Yitzhok was found dead. Well, then…’

  ‘Then, what?’

  ‘It confirmed that somebody knows what we know and wanted to know more. until then, I thought maybe it was a strange coincidence that the tzaddikim were dying. Maybe this was the work of HaShem, for a purpose beyond our understanding. But Yosef Yitzhok being murdered, that’s not a plan of HaShem’s.’

  ‘You think someone was pressing him for information?’

  ‘Just before you came tonight, I had a visit. The police.

  They think Yosef Yitzhok was tortured before he was killed.’

  Will and TC both recoiled.

  ‘What did they want from him that they didn’t know already?’

  ‘Ah, this you tried to ask me about before. Remember, I told you about the verses the Rebbe quoted in his talks? The ones Yosef Yitzhok had memorized? Well, there was something missing.’

  ‘There were only thirty-five.’

  ‘That’s right. Only thirty-five. You can use the method I just showed you, converting letters into numbers and turning those numbers into co-ordinates, but you would still have only thirty-five righteous men. Isn’t it obvious what the men who killed Yosef Yitzhok wanted to know? They wanted the identity of number thirty-six.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Sunday, 11.18pm, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

  Will’s first impulse was to ask Rabbi Freilich the name of this thirty-sixth man. It was crucial. If he and TC knew that, they could work out where the killers were heading next: whoever he was, they were bound to be on his trail.

  But the rabbi would not budge. For one thing, he said, the death of Yosef Yitzhok suggested the murderers were still not in possession of this vital fact. Had YY cracked under torture?

  The rabbi was convinced he had not. ‘I know this man. His intellect, his soul. He would not betray the word of the Rebbe.’

  He was sure the secret was safe. If he shared it with TC and Will, it could only bring harm to them. Better that they did not know. (Will was sceptical: if the torturers came after him, they were hardly likely to inquire politely whether he had any useful information and then, once assured he did not, beat a polite retreat.) Will tried’ another approach. ‘This thirty-sixth righteous man? Is he still alive?’

  ‘We think so. But I really will not say any more, Mr Monroe. I cannot say any more.’

  ‘Is he the only one alive?’

  ‘We’re not certain. Our sources of information are very patchy. We have had to scramble people to the furthest corners of the world to find these tzaddikim. Each time we have been getting there too late.’

  ‘You mean, you didn’t work out these names until this week?’

  ‘No, Yosef Yitzhok made this breakthrough a few months ago. And, as I told you, we sent people to take a look, just to see who these tzaddikim were. We planned to keep an eye on them, no more. Maybe give them food or money if they were in trouble. But, to answer your question, we did not know they were dying until this week. We’re not sure, but it only seems to have started a few days ago.’

  ‘On Rosh Hashana,’ said TC, her mind turning over visibly. ‘That’s when Howard Macrae was murdered.’

  ‘I’m afraid we didn’t know about that until days after it happened. When the news about the others started coming through. Was it even in the papers?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Will, pushing the air out of his nostrils in a sound of wry resignation. ‘It was in the papers.’ That was the trouble with page B3 of Metro; people could sail right past it.

  ‘Anyway, it was the high holy days. We were not reading the newspapers. We were living our lives. We had no idea anything was happening. But then some of our people started hearing things. Our emissary in Seattle saw the cabin he had visited on the television news. The man who runs our centre in Chennai was reading through the local paper when he saw that the tzaddik in that town — one of our youngest — had been found dead. One report after another.’

  ‘How many have gone?’

  ‘We don’t know. Remember, Yosef Yitzhok only began working on this a few months ago. Our list was barely complete; we hadn’t been able to confirm everyone. This man, for example—’ the rabbi gestured back towards the wipe-board with the Chancellor’s number on it ‘—it took us a long time to find him. It turns out the GPS system is slightly different there, in England; it takes a different key. The WGS84 datum, apparently. We didn’t know that then, so when Yosef Yitzhok first ran the numbers, they indicated, of all things, a prison. A Belmarsh jail. It seemed unlikely. But we didn’t dismiss such a possib
ility. We know the tzaddikim delight in concealing their true nature.

  ‘But when we readjusted the figures the result was instant. Downing Street! And not the famous house, Number Ten. But the house next door. The map was very clear. At the time, this man, Curtis, was in some trouble. A scandal, I think. Another disguise.’

  Will was getting impatient. Enough lectures, he thought. He wanted simple, hard facts — stripped of their mystical overtones. ‘So, sorry, I just want to be clear on this. Do you have the full list or not?’

  ‘We think we do.’

  ‘And of those, how many are dead?’

  ‘We think at least thirty-three.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘You mean, they may only have to kill three more people? It’s nearly midnight now. Yom Kippur ends in about nineteen hours!’ TC, usually so calm, sounded genuinely panicked.

  ‘Rabbi, whoever’s doing this seems to be pretty clued up on Jewish religious custom, wouldn’t you say?’ Will began. ‘I mean, who else but religious Jews know all this stuff about the righteous men, about the Days of Awe? They’re following it all to the letter. And you say that no one outside this very small group even knew of Yosef Yitzhok’s discovery.’

  ‘What are you saying, Mr Monroe?’

  ‘I’m saying, Rabbi, that you may not be behind this, despite the fact that I know you’re a proven kidnapper. But somebody inside this … organization or community or whatever it is, almost certainly is. I reckon this is what the police would call an inside job. If I were you, I’d start looking at the people here very closely.’

  ‘Mr Monroe, it’s late and time is running out. I don’t have the time or the strength to start fighting you. What Tova Chaya said before is right: we need to work together. So I’m going to trust you, even if you cannot trust me. I’m going to let you do something that will prove we are not behind this terrible wickedness.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m going to send you to the next victim.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Monday, 12.10am, Manhattan