The Righteous Men (2006)

by Sam Bourne

  Finally she spoke, through her tears. ‘You see, I told you. I told you I believed in you. Remember the song, Will? I knew you would come and find me. I knew it. And look. Here you are.’

  He brought her head to his chest, the two of them clinging fast, unaware of the woman who had opened the door, unaware of Rabbi Freilich standing at the foot of the stairs, unaware that each one of them had shed their own tears at the sight of this couple back, at last, in each other’s arms.

  ‘Mr Monroe, I am sorry,’ the rabbi began, as if clearing his throat. ‘Mr Monroe.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Will, using the back of his shirt cuff to wipe the tears from his cheeks. ‘Yes, of course.’ He turned to Beth.

  ‘Have they told you about all this—’

  ‘She knows nothing,’ the rabbi interrupted. ‘And there isn’t time. Now please.’

  Will hardly knew where to start. A tiny Christian sect that believed it had inherited Jewish teaching, all of it, even the doctrine of the lamad vav. How they had picked up on the Messianic fervour of Crown Heights and had started hacking into its computer network, eventually discovering the identities of the righteous men. How they had used their people all over the world to kill them, one by one — timing the murders for the Days of Awe, the Ten Days of Penitence. ‘Which,’ Will added, ‘will be over in twelve minutes.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I can’t be certain. At the service, this voice, the Apostle, was explaining it but that’s when they started beating me. He and the other man, the younger one, talked about redemption and judgment and salvation, but I couldn’t make any real sense of it. I’m sorry.’ Will glanced at Beth and took her hand: she looked completely baffled.

  ‘Can someone tell me what on earth is going on here?’ No one said anything. Will gave a small shake of the head. No time. Later.

  By now Rabbi Freilich was sitting, stroking his beard, deep in thought. ‘And you have seen this group with your own eyes?’

  ‘I was with them an hour ago. They’re here in New York. I’m convinced it’s them. And I’m convinced they’re here to finish the job. The Apostle said that “the final knowledge eludes us”. I think they still don’t know the name of the thirty-sixth righteous man. But they are determined to find him — and to kill him. You have to protect him. Where is he? Is he safe?’

  ‘He is in the safest place in the world.’

  ‘You must tell me. Otherwise, we can’t be sure they won’t find him.’

  Rabbi Freilich looked at his watch again and allowed himself a small smile. ‘He is right here.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Monday, 7.28pm, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

  The sounds of ne’eilah were drifting through, not just from the synagogue but from houses along the street — intense prayer at this, the most climactic hour of the holiest day of the year.

  ‘Here?’ Will said. ‘You mean . ..’ He stared at Rabbi Freilich himself.

  ‘No, Will, it’s not me.’

  Will looked around. There were no other men in the room; no other men in the house. His stomach began to turn over.

  Was it even possible? ‘No, it can’t be. You can’t mean—’

  ‘No, Will,’ said the rabbi, his smile stretching wider. ‘It’s not you.’ And then, with only the slightest tilt of his head, he nodded towards Beth.

  ‘Beth? But I thought the thirty-six were all men. You told me they were all men.

  ‘They are. And your wife is carrying inside her the thirty sixth righteous man. She is pregnant, Will, with a boy.’

  ‘You’ve made a mistake. We’ve been trying—’ Will stopped himself when he saw Beth’s face. She was smiling and crying at the same time.

  ‘It’s true, Will. I finally got to use that tester I’ve carried around in my bag for so long. It’s true. We’re going to have a baby.’

  ‘You see,’ said Rabbi Freilich. ‘Your wife didn’t know she was pregnant. But the Torah knew. The Torah told us. It was the Rebbe’s last message, given to Yosef Yitzhok in his dying hours. Nobody realized it at the time but his last words led us to the thirty-sixth verse — from the Book of Genesis, the book of new beginnings. This one verse — the tenth verse of the eighteenth chapter — was kept separate from all the others; not written down in any of the Rebbe’s papers or speeches.

  No one could have picked it up from our computers. But we counted off the letters in the usual way and it brought us a location: your home. At first we assumed that meant the tzaddik was you. But then Yosef Yitzhok looked closer at the words themselves. That verse describes the moment when God speaks to Abraham and tells him his wife, Sarah, is to have a son. She had been childless so long, yet she was to have a child. Yosef Yitzhok understood what the Rebbe was telling us. We weren’t to look at you, but your wife. We found the hidden of the hidden, Will. And he is your son.’

  Will pulled Beth towards him. But as they hugged, he felt something dig into his chest through the bandages. He heard the words of the vicar, repeated in his ears. We’ve bound your wounds. I hope your pain is easing.

  Will ripped open his shirt and tore off the bandages underneath.

  He cursed himself. How could he have been so stupid!

  He had followed the script exactly as the vicar had laid it out for him. Try instead to light the way — and that was exactly what he had done. Sure enough, there it was, concealed between the bandages: a simple wire, tipped at one end by a microphone and at the other by a tiny transmitter.

  A second, maybe two, passed before they knocked down the door. As it smashed against the wall, Will saw a blur with only two distinct features: a pair of laser-blue eyes and the barrel of a revolver, sheathed in a silencer. Instinct rather than judgment made Will shield Beth. He stole a glance at his watch. Nine minutes to go.

  Rabbi Freilich and the woman of the house froze, petrified.

  Laser Eyes barely looked at them.

  Thank you, William. You did what we asked.’

  The voice was not the gunman’s, but belonged to the figure behind him, now stepping into the room. The sound of it made Will’s brain flood. He realized he was looking at the head of the Church of the Reborn Jesus, the man behind the murder of thirty-five of the most virtuous people on earth, the man who wanted to bring about nothing less than the end of the world. And yet the face he was staring at was one he had known forever.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Monday, 7.33pm, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

  ‘Hello, William.’

  Will could feel his head pounding. The room seemed to spin. Beth, cowering behind him, grabbed his wrist and gasped.

  Rabbi Freilich, the woman — everyone was frozen.

  ‘What? What are you … I don’t understand.’

  ‘I don’t blame you, Will. How could you possibly understand?

  I never explained any of this to you. Nor to your mother either. Not in any way she could understand.’

  ‘But, I don’t, I don’t…’ Will was stammering. Nonsensically he said, ‘But you’re my father.’

  ‘I am, Will. But I am also the leader of this movement. I am the Apostle. And you have just rendered us the greatest possible service, as I knew you would. You have brought us to the last of the just. For that alone, you have earned your place in the world to come.’

  Will was blinking, like a fugitive dazzled by headlights. He could not compute what he was seeing or hearing.

  His father. How could his father, a man of the law and justice, be the architect of so many cruel, needless deaths? Did his father, a stern rationalist, really believe all that replacement theology, all that stuff about becoming God’s chosen people, about the end of the world? Of course he must believe it: but how had he hidden it all these years, convincing the world that he was a man whose only god was the legal code and the United States Constitution? Had his father really drawn up a plan to strangle and shoot three dozen good men, the last best hope of humanity?

  For less than a second, an image popped into his head. It w
as the face of someone he had not seen in years. It was his grandmother, serving tea in her garden back in England. The sun was shining, but all he could focus on was her mouth, as she uttered the words which had intrigued him at the time and ever since: Your father’s other great passion. So this was it. The force that came between his parents, both so young. It was not another woman nor even his father’s dedication to the law. It was his faith. His fanaticism.

  Will had so many questions, but he asked only one.

  ‘So you knew all along, all this time, about Beth?’ As he said it, his arms went backward, shielding his wife from both sides.

  ‘Oh, I had nothing to do with that, William. That was your Jewish friends’ initiative, theirs alone.’ Monroe Sr gestured towards Rabbi Freilich. ‘But once you told me Beth was kidnapped, I had my suspicions. Once you had tracked her captors down to Crown Heights, I knew for certain. It took me a while to work it out. At first, I wondered if it was somehow meant to stop you working on the story. You were doing so well — first Howard Macrae, then Pat Baxter — it seemed you were about to discover everything. But then I realized that the Hassidim had not taken Beth to stop you.

  That would make no sense. They had taken her to stop me. And there could only be one explanation. They needed to give her shelter because she was shelter — the shelter of the thirty-sixth righteous man.’

  ‘You knew what was going on, but you didn’t help me, you didn’t—’

  ‘No, William. I wanted you to help me. I knew you would not rest until you had found Beth and, in so doing, you would bring us to her. And I was right.’

  Will was struggling to stay standing. The room was beginning to turn. His lungs seemed to be emptying of air. He could only manage a few words. ‘This is madness.’

  ‘You think this is madness? Do you have even the first idea of what’s going on here?’

  ‘I think you’re murdering the righteous of the earth.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t use those words, William. I surely would not. But I want you to look more widely, to see the whole picture.’ It was a tone Will had never heard before, or not until an hour ago at any rate. It was the voice of a strict teacher who expected to be obeyed. Whatever electronic voice distortion had been used in the Chapel at the convention centre, it had not concealed this tone: the authority of the Apostle.

  ‘You see, Christianity understands what Judaism never could: what the Jews stubbornly refused to understand. They did not see what was staring them in the face! They believed that, so long as there were thirty-six just souls in the world, all would be well. They took comfort from the idea. They did not realize its true power.’

  ‘And what is its true power?’ It was Rabbi Freilich.

  ‘That if these thirty-six men uphold the world, then the opposite must be true! The instant the thirty-six are gone, the world is no more.’ Monroe Sr turned back to face his son. ‘You see, that didn’t interest the Jews. They thought if the world ended, then that would be that. It would all be over: death, destruction, the end of the story. But Christianity teaches us something else, doesn’t it William? Something glorious and infinite! For we Christians are blessed with a sacred knowledge: we know that the end of the world spells the final reckoning. And now we discover that all we have to do to make that happen — to make absolutely sure that happens — is to end the lives of thirty-six people.

  ‘If we can do that before the Ten Days of Penitence are complete, the true Judgment Day will be upon us. It’s as simple and beautiful as that.’

  Will could not quite believe these words were coming from his father’s mouth. It was a mismatch, as if he had become a ventriloquist dummy for a madman. With dread, Will realized that maybe this was the real William Monroe. Perhaps the father he had known was the fake. He forced himself to speak. ‘And why would you want to bring about “the true Judgment Day”? Why would you want this final reckoning?’

  ‘Oh come on, William. Don’t play the fool. Every Sunday school child in Christendom knows the answer to that. It’s all there in the Book of Revelation. The end of the world will bring about the return of Christ the Redeemer.’

  Will rocked on his heels, as if the words themselves were a physical force. ‘So you’re trying to bring Christ back into the world by killing thirty-six innocent people?’ Will was conscious of the gun pointed directly at him. ‘And these men are not just innocent. They are men of remarkable goodness.

  I know that for a fact.’

  ‘Don’t look at me as if I’m some common murderer, William. You must see the genius of this plan. Only thirty six. Just thirty-six men need die. You should read the scriptures, my son. It was assumed that millions would have to lose their lives in the battle of Armageddon, the final conflagration hastening the Second Coming. The dead piled on the dead, oceans of blood. “Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found”.

  ‘But this avoids all that. This finds a new way to paradise, via a path neither strewn with bones, nor drenched in tears.’ Will’s father was closing his eyes. ‘This is a just, peaceful way to bring about heaven on earth. Think of it, William: no more suffering, no more bloodshed. The Messianic days, brought about by the sacrifice of only thirty-six souls. That’s fewer than die every minute on the roads; fewer than die needlessly in house fires or train wrecks. And those deaths are for nothing. But these — these lives are given so that others, the rest of humanity, may live forever. In paradise.

  Isn’t that what these righteous men would have wanted?

  ‘And these were not brutal murders, William. Each one was carried out with love and respect for the blessed soul within. We gave them anaesthetic so they would feel no pain.

  Of course, sometimes we had to disguise what we were doing.

  Sometimes that meant a more violent end than we would have liked.’ Will thought of Howard Macrae, stabbed and stabbed again, so that his death might look like a gang killing.

  ‘But we tried to give them a measure of dignity.’ Will remembered the blanket laid over Macrae’s corpse. The woman he had interviewed a thousand years ago in Brownsville — Rosa — had insisted that the only person who could have done that was the killer himself, and it turned out Rosa was right.

  His father was still talking, his voice softer now. ‘Imagine it, William. Let yourself imagine it. A world without war. A world of peace and tranquillity, not just for now or next week, but for ever and ever. And you could make all that a reality, not by the sacrifice of millions but by sacrificing three dozen righteous souls. If you could do that, William, wouldn’t you do it? Wouldn’t you have to do it?’

  The Apostle stopped preaching, letting his words hang for a while. Will could feel his head aching. All this talk of the end of days, of the second coming, of redemption and Armageddon, was too vast. It seemed to engulf him. Out of nowhere, an image of his past floated before his eyes. He was six years old, jumping the waves on a beach in the Hamptons, clinging onto his father’s hand. But now there was no hand to hold.

  Everything rational told Will his father had lapsed into a kind of insanity. How long he had been like this, Will had no idea. Perhaps ever since he started following Jim Johnson at Yale. But insanity was what it was. An international killing spree to bring back Jesus? It was certifiable.

  But another voiced tugged at Will. It certainly sounded crazy, but the evidence was hard to deny. The Hassidim of Crown Heights yearned for Messiah; so did Christians the world over. Could all those hundreds of millions of people be wrong? A world without violence or disease, a world of peace and eternal life. His father was a clever, serious man his intellect was as formidable as any Will had ever known.

  If he believed the truth of this prophecy, that this might really bring about heaven on earth, was it not gross arrogance for Will to insist he knew better?

  Besides, it was too late to save the righteous men themselves.

  At least thirty-five of them were dead; that damage had already been done. And the decoding of ancient texts finding thes
e men by converting letters into numbers and then numbers into co-ordinates on the map — all that sounded loopy, but it had been vindicated. Those men were indeed righteous. Will had seen that for himself. Could he be so sure that he was right and his father wrong?

  Suddenly Laser Eyes was gesturing at his watch, pressing Monroe Sr to hurry. ‘Yes, yes. My friend is right. We have so little time. But Will, it’s important you know something.

  How I worked it out, how I understood that Beth is the mother of a tzaddik.’ Will flinched. The word sounded strange, unnatural in the mouth of his father.

  ‘Because I saw the beauty of it. The pattern. Don’t you see it, Will? None of it is a coincidence, none of it. Not the stories you wrote for the newspaper, not this.’ He gestured towards Beth. ‘Not you, not me. It’s not a coincidence at all. The rabbi here can tell us all about that. You’d call it beshert, wouldn’t you, Rabbi? “What is meant to be.” Destiny.

  ‘Time is running out, William. And it’s time for you to face your destiny. You’ve been chosen for this holiest of roles.

  Don’t you see how perfect it is? How God wants to end everything the way it all began? It started with Abraham and the request God made of him. You know what God wanted Abraham to do, don’t you William?’

  Will swallowed hard. Cold realization seeped through his veins. His tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth. ‘To sacrifice his son.’

  ‘Exactly. To sacrifice the son he and his wife had wanted for so long.’ Monroe Sr turned to the blue-eyed man, who suddenly produced a long, gleaming knife. Will’s father handled it gingerly. With respect.

  ‘That’s why it has to be you, William. Abraham was willing to slay his beloved Isaac merely to prove his faith. But I’m asking you to do this for the sake of every human being that ever lived, including all those now long dead. Let them rise again, William! Let the Kingdom of heaven reign on earth!’

  Will’s nervous system seemed to flood with rage. ‘And would you do it. Dad? Would you murder your own son?