The Righteous Men (2006)

by Sam Bourne

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Monday, 2.25pm, Brooklyn

  Will maintained his perch by the window, regularly peeling back the curtain to look out onto the street. He knew it was foolhardy. If anyone was following him, there could hardly be a better way to attract their attention. He flapped the material back and forth so often, he looked as if he were sending a coded message.

  He had said goodbye to his father only minutes after they had met up. Monroe Sr had looked at him blankly when Will called up the Bitensky story on the BlackBerry, as if the whole business was just too deranged to take seriously. He had made a gesture with his face and hands — let’s put all this nonsense aside — and asked Will to come back home with him. There he would have a chance to shower, sleep and generally calm down. Linda would look after him. For his own part, he had an important case to prepare for that morning, but he would be back in the evening. Then father and son could put their heads together and work out how they were going to get Beth back. It was a tempting offer, but Will declined. He had wasted enough time already. With thanks he sent his father back to his car — and fired off a text message to TC.

  To his great relief she called back. She had been released at nine that morning. Police had just viewed the CCTV tapes from her building. The footage from Saturday night included a sequence shot by the camera above the back entrance: it showed Pugachov helping TC and an unnamed man into a large bin and wheeling them out of sight. It then showed him re-entering the building a few minutes later. Not only did it confirm the admittedly strange story she had told detectives — it also showed that when TC had left Mr Pugachov, he was alive and well.

  There was something in the dead man’s trousers which helped, too. In his right pocket was the spare key for TC’s apartment. He would surely only have needed to use that if she was not in and the door had been locked. With that second alibi, the police released TC. They even thanked her for her time — doubtless, thought Will, with a scripted paragraph from the NYPD customer care manual.

  It was Will’s idea to meet at Tom’s, in what was a straightforward calculation. Both his and TC’s apartments had been monitored; here, they had at least a chance to meet undetected.

  Besides, TC had a plan — just a hunch, she said — that required major computing brainpower. Now she was standing over Tom’s shoulder as he stabbed at the keyboard.

  ‘So you’re certain of the domain name?’ he was saying.

  ‘All I can tell you is what it says on the card I took. Rabbi.Freilich@Moshiachlives.com.’

  ‘OK, OK, that’s what I’ll try. Spell Mosh—, you know, for me again?’

  ‘For the third time: M-O-S-H-I-A-C-H.’

  Will glanced back out of the window. As much as Tom loved Beth, he could not stand TC. At Columbia Will had always put it down to jealousy, the difficulties of being a three. Now he reckoned it was more like organic combustion: Tom and TC were phosphorus and sulphur. They could not meet without sparking up.

  In a novel form of coping strategy, Tom chose not to talk to TC at all. He talked to himself instead.

  ‘OK, so what we need to do is run a host domain name.’ He punched those last three words into the ‘shell’, a kind of empty window on the screen he had created. A few seconds later, a string of numbers appeared. 192.0.2.233 All right, who is 192.0.2.233?’ He said the words as he typed them.

  Back came an answer. Among a whole lot of blurb about ‘registrants’ and ‘administrative contacts’ was the address of the Hassidim’s headquarters in Crown Heights. The very building Will and TC had been in last night.

  ‘Good, now let’s talk to Arin.’

  ‘Arin? Who the hell is Arin?’

  ‘ARIN is the American Registry for Internet Numbers, the organization which allocates IP addresses — you know, the string of numbers we had before.’

  ‘But I thought you already had that for this, you know, domain.’

  ‘I had one of the numbers. ARIN will give us all the numbers allocated to this company or organization. We will have the number for every machine they have. Once we have that, we can get to work.’

  Soon the screen was filled with numbers, dozens of them. This, TC realized, was the entire Hassidic computer network, expressed in numerical form.

  ‘All right, this is the range we’ll scan.’

  ‘What does that mean, “scan”?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t want me to get too technical. “Save the geek stuff, Tom.” Remember?’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘We wait.’

  TC headed for the couch, laying herself flat out, using Tom’s overcoat as a blanket, before falling into exhausted sleep. Tom was working away on a different computer, hammering at the keys. Will alternated between staring out of the window and at a photograph on the wall: a picture of himself, Tom and Beth, wrapped up in thick winter gloves, scarves and coats in what looked like a ski resort. In fact it was the centre of Manhattan, early on a Sunday morning after a night-long blizzard. The smile on Beth’s face seemed to register something more than laughter: there was, what was the word, appreciation, for the fact that life, despite everything, could be wonderful.

  An hour and a half later, the computer beeped; not the trill of a new email but a simpler sound. Will turned around to find Tom jumping back to the machine he had left running.

  ‘We’re in.’

  Now all three were gathered round, staring at a screen that only made sense to one of them.

  ‘What’s this, Tom?’ It was Will, deciding to get the question in first — and phrase it politely — before TC had a chance to bark.

  ‘These are the system logs for the machine we’ve just hacked into. This way we should be able to tell who’s been in and out.’

  TC was biting her nails, willing everything to happen faster.

  Will was scanning not the screen but Tom’s face, looking for any sign of progress. He did not like what he saw: Tom seemed puzzled. His lips were pursed; when he was on the brink of a breakthrough, they would part, in readiness for a smile.

  ‘Nothing there. Damn.’

  ‘Look again,’ said TC. ‘You might have missed something. Look again.’

  But Tom did not need to be told. He inched closer to the screen, now slowly going through each line that appeared in front of him.

  ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘This might be nothing.’

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘See, that line in the log. There. Time service crashed. 1.58 this morning. It might be nothing. Programmes often crash and restart automatically. No big deal.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘It could indicate something else.’

  ‘Yes?’

  Tom was not doing well under TC’s interrogation. Will stepped in. ‘Sorry, Tom. For a know-nothing like me: what’s a time service?’

  ‘It’s just a bit of the networking set-up that some people forget about. They don’t turn it off so it just sits there, keeping track of the time of day.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The important thing is, people forget it’s there. So they don’t give it the tender loving care they give to the rest of the system.

  Old security holes that may have been closed elsewhere in the system sometimes get left in the time service bit.’

  ‘You mean, it’s like a hole in the garden fence, round the back where no one notices?’

  ‘Exactly. What I’m wondering is whether this time service crashed through, you know, natural causes — or whether somebody bust right through it. If you know what you’re doing, you can send in a buffer overflow, a huge bunch of data in a specific sequence, which totally screws up the time service. If you really know what you’re doing, you can not only make it crash but kind of bend it to your will.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Will.

  ‘You can make it run your commands, which effectively gives you access to the server.’

  ‘Is that what happened here?’

  ‘I don’t know. I need to see the time s
ervice’s own access log. That’s what I’m waiting for now … whoa, hold on. This is good. See that, right there?’

  He was pointing at a string of numbers by the time, 1:58am. ‘Hello, stranger.’

  It was a new IP address, a string of numbers different from all the others allocated to the Hassidim and their network. This was the signature of an outsider.

  ‘Can you see who it is?’

  That’s what I’m asking right now.’ He typed: whois 89.23325.09?

  ‘And here is our answer.’

  Tom was pointing at the line on the screen. It took Will a second to focus on the words. But there they were, words which changed everything. Neither he nor TC could make a sound. The three of them stood in silence, looking at the address in front of them.

  The organization which had hacked into the Hassidim’s computer — reading everything they were reading, looking over their virtual shoulder to see every one of their calculations, including those that revealed the exact locations of the righteous men — was based in Richmond, Virginia and there, on the screen, was its full name.

  The Church of the Reborn Jesus.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Monday, 5.13pm, Darfur, Sudan

  The night of the thirty-fifth killing was almost silent. In this heat, and with so little food, people were too listless to make much noise. The call to prayer was the only loud sound to be heard all day; the rest was moans and whispers.

  Mohammed Omar saw the heat-wave shimmering on the horizon and reckoned sunset would be only a few minutes away. That was the way it was in Darfur: the sun would sneak up without warning in the morning and disappear just as quickly at night. Maybe it was like that everywhere in Sudan, everywhere in Africa. Mohammed did not know: he had never travelled beyond this rocky desert.

  It was time for his evening tour of the camp. He would check in first on Hawa, the thirteen-year-old girl who had, too young, become a kind of mother to her six sisters. They had fled to the camp two weeks ago, after the Janjaweed militiamen had torched their village. The little girls were too scared to talk, but Hawa told Mohammed what had happened. In the middle of the night, terrifying men had arrived on horseback, waving flaming torches. They had set everything alight. Hawa had scooped up her sisters and started running. Only once they got away did she realize that her parents had been left behind. They had both been killed.

  Now, in the corner of a hut made of straw and sticks, she held her three-year-old sister in her arms. By the doorway, on the ground, stood a battered pot. Inside, a meagre ration of porridge.

  Mohammed walked on, steeling himself for the next stop on the tour: the ‘clinic’, in reality another frail hut. Kosar, the nurse, was there and her face told him what he did not want to hear. ‘How many?’ he asked.

  ‘Three. And maybe one more tonight.’ They had been losing three children a day for weeks now. With no medicine and no food, he did not know how he could stop the dying.

  He looked around. An empty corner of desert, sheltered by a few scrubby trees. He had not meant to start a refugee camp here. What did he know of such things? He was a tailor. He was not a doctor or an official, but he could see what was going on. There were columns of desperate people, often children, walking through the desert, searching for food and shelter. They spoke of village after village destroyed by the Janjaweed, the men who burnt and killed and raped while government aeroplanes circled overhead. Somebody had to do something — and, without ever really thinking it through, that somebody had been him.

  He had started with a few tents, two of them stitched together on his old Singer machine. He collected a few axes and gave them to the men to get firewood. They struggled. One, Abdul, was desperate to help but the burns on his hands were so bad he could not hold an axe. Mohammed saw him, his hands so scorched he could not even wipe away his own tears.

  Still, they chopped enough wood to start a fire and, once it burned, it worked as a beacon. More refugees came. Now there were thousands of people here; there was no time to count them precisely. They pooled what meagre resources they had. These people were farmers; what little could be conjured from the earth, they somehow teased out. But there was not enough.

  Mohammed knew what he needed: outside help. In the few hours of sleep he snatched each night, he would dream of a convoy of white vehicles arriving one bright morning, each one loaded with crates of grain and boxes of medicine. Even with just five vehicles — just one — he could save so many lives.

  It was then he saw the headlights, shining through the dusk. Strong and yellow, they were coming his way, their light wobbling in the heat haze. Mohammed could not help himself. He began jumping up and down, waving his arms in a wild semaphore. ‘Here!’ he was shouting. ‘Here! We are here!’

  The truck slowed down until Mohammed could get a better view. This was not an aid team, but just two men.

  ‘I come in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ,’ the first man began in English, rapidly translated by the second.

  ‘Welcome, welcome,’ said Mohammed, grabbing his visitors with both arms in gratitude. ‘Welcome, welcome.’

  ‘I have some food and drugs in the back. Do you have people to unload it?’

  A crowd had already assembled. After the interpreter had spoken, Mohammed nominated two of the strongest teenagers, a boy and a girl, to take the boxes off the truck. He then summoned a couple of men he could trust to stand guard: the last thing he wanted was a food riot, as hunger and desperation sparked a stampede.

  ‘Do you think we could talk?’ the visitor asked. Mohammed answered with a gesture, ushering his guest towards an empty hut. The man followed, carrying a slim, dark briefcase.

  ‘It’s taken me a long time to find you, sir. Am I right that you are in charge? This is a camp you started?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mohammed said, unsure whether to look at the translator or his boss.

  ‘And you have done this all by yourself? No one is paying you to do this? You don’t work for any organization? You did this purely out of the goodness of your own heart?’

  ‘Yes, but this is not important,’ Mohammed said through the interpreter. ‘I am not important.’

  At that, the visitor smiled and said, ‘Good.’

  ‘People are dying here,’ Mohammed continued. ‘What help can you give them? Urgently!’

  The visitor smiled again. ‘Oh, I can promise them the greatest help of all. And it won’t be long to wait. Not long at all’

  He then clicked the two side-locks of his briefcase and produced a syringe. ‘First, I want to say what an honour it is for me to meet you. It is an honour to know that the righteous truly live among us.’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m afraid I need to give you this. It’s important that a man such as yourself should feel no pain or suffering. No pain or suffering at all.’

  Suddenly the interpreter was gripping Mohammed’s arm, forcing him onto the ground. Mohammed tried to escape, but he was too weak and this hand too strong. Now, towering over him, was the visitor, holding the syringe up to the light. He was speaking in English, lowering himself closer to Mohammed. As he did so, the interpreter was whispering directly into his ear.

  ‘For the Lord loves the just and will not forsake his faithful ones. They will be protected forever, but the offspring of the wicked will be cut off.’

  Mohammed was writhing, struggling to break free. And still the voice was speaking, its breath hot.

  ‘The wicked lie in wait for the righteous, seeking their very lives; but the Lord will not leave them in their power or let them be condemned when brought to trial. The salvation of the righteous comes from the Lord; he is their stronghold in time of trouble.’

  Finally he felt the needle break the skin of his arm and, as the sky darkened, he heard the words of a prayer, until the voice grew distant and all was silent.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Monday, 2.50pm, Brooklyn

  Now it was Will’s turn to take charge
. He all but pushed Tom out of his chair, and instantly returned to twenty-first century journalism’s base camp: Google.

  ‘Church of the Reborn Jesus’ brought up a page of entries, but they were thin. To Will’s surprise, the group did not have a website of its own.

  He clicked the first entry, a link to a paper delivered at a University of Nebraska conference.

  Though never large in number, the Church of the Reborn Jesus achieved great influence at its height a quarter century ago, especially among young Christian intellectuals. Central to its teaching was a radical brand of replacement theology, the belief that Christians had replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people …

  Maddeningly, the article said nothing more, rambling off into a wider discussion of campus Christianity in the 1970s. But Will was on a roll. He could tell TC was keeping up, yet both knew, intuitively, there was no time to waste on discussion. He went straight to Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia and typed in ‘replacement theology’.

  It took a few seconds, during which Will’s right foot pulsated — partly in anxiety, partly in excitement. A half-buried memory was nagging away at him. The Church of the Reborn Jesus: he had seen that name before, somewhere at the office …

  Then a page appeared, headlined Supersessionism. It was defined as ‘the traditional Christian belief that Christianity is the fulfilment of Biblical Judaism, and therefore that Jews who deny that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah fall short of their calling as God’s chosen people.’

  Will skimmed to the next paragraph. ‘It argues that Israel has been superseded … in the sense that the Church has been entrusted with the fulfilment of the promises of which Jewish Israel is the trustee.’

  The entry noted that while several liberal Protestant groups had renounced supersessionism, ruling that Jews and ‘perhaps’ other non-Christians could find God through their own faith, ‘other conservative and fundamentalist Christian groups hold supersessionism to be valid … the debate continues.’