36 Righteous Men

by Steven Pressfield

  I’m screaming. Bystanders wail. The train is twenty feet from Ben-David.

  He scrambles wildly, dives clear.

  Manning skids up, shouting to Rachel to get out of the way.

  She does.

  Manning rises into a shooting stance, point-blank before Instancer.

  I see muzzle flashes—three in rapid succession. Then the train, brakes screeching, passes between me and the platform, eclipsing all sight of Instancer and Manning.

  Ben-David is on the downtown express track, right in front of me. The train, huge and dark and stinking of hot steel and smoking brake pads, power-slides past on the uptown express track in a broadside of sparks.

  I grab Ben-David.

  I haul him to his feet.

  Astonishingly, two bystanders, both black kids in gangbanger garb, have leapt onto the tracks to help us.

  “Police officer!” I bawl into their startled faces, flashing my shield. I shove Ben-David into the boys’ arms. “Get him to the downtown platform. Be careful!”

  I spin toward the uptown side. I see more muzzle flashes from the far flank of the train, then two forms, no doubt Manning and Instancer, dashing along the platform, one in pursuit of the other.

  Alarms are going off all over the station. Red, yellow, and blue lights flash along both platforms and all four tracks. The train has finally stopped. I’m on the track. I stumble around the train’s rear. Finally I can see.

  Instancer faces Manning on the platform.

  Fifteen feet between them.

  Instancer is unarmed, in jeans and hoodie. If any of Manning’s rounds have hit him, I detect no sign.

  Manning fires again.

  Bangbangbangbang.

  Bystanders are shrieking and plunging for cover.

  The double-stack magazine of Manning’s P226 holds fifteen nine-millimeter hollow-points that at close range produce more hydrostatic shock on a human target than the mule-kick of an Army Colt .45 M1911. The weapon’s report is ear-shattering in a confined space like a subway platform.

  Manning’s initial fusillade shreds Instancer’s T-shirt and hoodie as if they were tissue. The salvo slams into Instancer’s chest.

  The impact rocks Instancer, but does not penetrate.

  He does not go down.

  My own nine-millimeter is in my hands.

  Manning fires again.

  I do too.

  Bullets tear into Instancer from two directions.

  The din is deafening. The muzzle flashes from Manning’s weapon leap out so far they actually touch Instancer.

  Instancer’s eyes never leave Manning’s.

  He staggers but remains upright.

  No blood.

  No rending of flesh.

  The bullet strikes rock him backward. But he remains on his feet.

  With a look first to Manning, then to me, Instancer springs from the platform, lightly and powerfully, onto the uptown express track to the rear of the stopped train.

  He flees in the downtown direction into the dark.

  Manning leaps after him, reloading.

  Two pairs of uniformed officers (the backup teams Manning had called for) sprint now onto the platform from adjacent stairwells. They vault after Manning into the pursuit.

  Something makes me turn and glance to the platform above me. Rachel stands at the brink, her hair spiky wild, the whites of her eyes livid and bloodshot.

  RACHEL

  Go after him! What are you waiting for?

  I take off. Instancer is already fifty yards down the track. Flashing alarm lights obscure him. I’m struggling to keep my footing on the wet, greasy railroad ties. I hear one of the uniforms shout that the fugitive has bolted through a door or hatch into a lateral shaftway.

  I’m sixty feet behind Manning and forty back of the first patrol officers. I see Manning, then the officers, duck right and into the lateral doorway.

  I follow.

  The passageway leads to a steam tunnel. You drop through a circular hatch and down a ladder well.

  What the fuck?

  This second tunnel runs parallel to the subway line but one level below. A single narrow-gauge track runs down its midline, apparently for maintenance handcars. The tunnel is an intestine of insulated high-pressure steam pipes, mounted along walls glistening with oily, gunk-dripping stormwater. Red and yellow emergency lights flash. Alarms sound. Jetting steam obscures everything.

  I hear a gunshot and race after it.

  Fifty yards.

  A hundred.

  Suddenly the tunnel opens onto a vaulted, tile-walled cavern. Floodwater thunders like Niagara from a dozen breaches in the overhead. A catwalk crosses the atrium. Storm runoff sluices in unimaginable volumes across the void. Roiling, viscous fluid fills the belly of the vault, thirty feet below.

  Instancer flees across the catwalk.

  Manning chases him.

  The patrol officers pursue along a second walkway, farther uptown.

  Suddenly Instancer trips. He slips and plunges down a four-step descender, but catches himself, nimble as a cat, and hauls himself back up.

  He races into another hatchway.

  A continuation of the steam tunnel.

  I crab-scoot across the catwalk, clinging to the rails in a death grip.

  Into the second steam tunnel.

  A hundred feet ahead, Manning overhauls Instancer.

  The pair grapple.

  I’m slogging as fast as I can, straining to see. Steam jets everywhere from the wall-mounted pipes.

  I see Manning seize Instancer in some kind of wrestler’s hold. For an instant it looks as if Manning gains the upper hand. Then Instancer punches with his elbow into one of the steam pipes.

  The vessel punctures.

  Scalding steam blasts into Manning and Instancer, obscuring them both.

  I glimpse Manning among the steam as he reels, shielding his face.

  He lets go of Instancer.

  Instancer, lit scarlet by the flashing emergency lights, stands stock-still amid the searing steam.

  He turns and bolts.

  Another tunnel. A level farther down. I drop off a ladder into floodwater up to my waist. Rats the size of small dogs dot the surface. The water is frigid. I see Manning ahead. Another muzzle flash.

  We must be a hundred feet below the street now.

  Ladder wells.

  I climb two.

  Tracks!

  I see Manning, a hundred yards ahead. We’re in a subway tunnel. A working track. Back at the level we started from. My hair is soaked with grease, the toe-boxes of my clodhoppers slosh with what feels like half a gallon of industrial solvent. Snot and saliva drain in runnels down my chin.

  Lights.

  A subway station!

  I’m thirty yards behind Manning now, on the track bed. Instancer is another seventy yards ahead of Manning.

  I see Instancer enter the lighted area of the station and haul himself up onto the platform. He stops and looks back.

  He pulls something from his shirt pocket.

  Manning has drawn up on the track bed, weapon in hand.

  Manning’s chest heaves. He gasps for air.

  Instancer holds a phone.

  He punches numbers.

  I stagger up to Manning.

  Manning’s phone rings.

  People on the platform ahead are reacting to Instancer’s sudden appearance. I can see faces peering down the tracks toward me and Manning.

  Manning hits ACCEPT.

  I hear Instancer tell Manning an address.

  Instancer takes the phone, a burner no doubt, and smashes it screen-first into one of the steel columns on the platform.

  He slings the busted mess onto the tracks and bolts up the stairs and out.

  MANNING

  (to me)

  Ellie Landau’s address. What is it?

  My phone finds it. Manning’s look says it’s the same one Instancer just gave him. Four blocks from here. Three seconds later he’s calling f
or precinct backup and phoning ahead to Security at Ellie’s building.

  We’re out on the sidewalk now, racing full-tilt.

  Manning gets Ellie Landau on the line. He’s half running, half staggering from exhaustion. Manning tells Ellie what has happened. He orders her to lock down every entry to her apartment, interior and exterior, and to keep her driver and security man in front of her, weapons drawn, ready for anything. I can half hear Ellie from the earhole of Manning’s phone:

  ELLIE LANDAU

  My building is super-secure. I pay enough for the service, believe me.

  Manning and I reach Ellie’s building. Manning highballs into the lobby, past doormen, security personnel, precinct officers.

  No break-in reported.

  No forced entry.

  No intruders picked up on security cameras.

  But when we hit Ellie Landau’s penthouse floor, the door to her apartment is wide open. Ellie’s driver sprawls facedown on the floor. A nine-millimeter automatic lies smoking beside him. Spent shell cases litter the entryway.

  Inside the apartment, whose ceilings are double-high and whose east-facing windows give onto a heart-stopping panorama of Central Park and the East Side skyline beyond, lights are on. Nothing appears disturbed.

  Till we reach the master bedroom.

  In the doorway lies the crumpled form of the security man. His weapon, an old-school Smith & Wesson .38, lies a body length away from his outstretched right hand, its smoking barrel searing the nub ends of the carpet pile.

  MANNING

  The bathroom.

  Manning steps over the security man’s body. The bathroom’s mirrored double doors are shattered, as if someone had been flung bodily against them.

  Manning enters, weapon in hand.

  MANNING

  Christ.

  He draws up.

  I stop at his shoulder.

  Ellie Landau’s nightgown-clad body lies, limp and broken, over the rim of a porcelain lion’s-leg tub. Her left hand clutches the shower curtain, which she has, in her fall, pulled down on top of herself like a shroud.

  A Glock 19, with its slide open and locked, indicating that its magazine has been fully discharged, lies on the marble floor beside her. Cartridge cases, still releasing wisps of spent cordite, are scattered atop a microfiber bath mat and under the tub. The inner surface of the bathroom door holds a tight group of nine shots, fired through the door from the inside.

  Manning withdraws a handkerchief from his jacket pocket.

  He kneels.

  Setting the cloth over the fingertips of his right hand, he reaches and checks Ellie Landau’s laryngeal airway.

  His expression confirms, Crushed.

  20

  A RIGHTEOUS WOMAN

  URIBE IN SCRUBS stands beside the stainless steel table, upon which Ellie Landau’s corpse lies, naked (though covered from the collarbone down by a paper surgical sheet), faceup, skull shaved. An autopsy tech readies the bone saw, like the one the Metro D.C. medical examiner used to uncap the skull of Michael Justman.

  URIBE

  (to Manning)

  You don’t have to stay for this, Jimmy.

  The Forensic Pathology Center of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner is at 421 East Twenty-Sixth Street, adjacent to Bellevue Hospital and one block west of the FDR Drive. Autopsies are performed on the eighth floor, between the hours of nine and noon. That’s the workday schedule for the MEs. It has been overridden in the emergency. Uribe will work at night.

  Manning signs to Uribe that he will remain. Manning must confirm the existence or absence of an “LV” sign between the eyes of the decedent. He needs as well to determine for himself, and to acquire Uribe’s sign-off to that effect, that cause of death is from a crushed tracheal airway.

  Then there’s something else.

  Manning’s terminal responsibility, at least in his mind, is to the family of Ellie Landau, for whom religious custom directs that the deceased’s remains be interred within twenty-four hours or as soon thereafter as circumstances permit.

  In the minutes after the murder, I search and acquire the contact information for the immediate family. Manning makes the calls. We’re still at Ellie Landau’s apartment. Uribe and CSU have arrived. Neighbors and emergency personnel fill the hallway. The press are downstairs in droves. When Ms. Landau’s grown children arrive—her daughter Lauren, also an attorney, and son Cameron, an orthopedic surgeon—it will be Manning’s job to get their permission for the medical examiner to perform an autopsy.

  This is the shit they don’t tell you about when you acquire your gold detective’s shield. I see grief in Manning’s eyes, the first time he’s ever shown it.

  At 2250, a few minutes before eleven, Lauren and Cameron arrive. Manning speaks with them privately. Ellie Landau’s children insist on viewing their mother’s body in its terminal posture. They are tough, these two. Manning gives them as long as they need, which is not long. When the siblings emerge I see them shake his hand. Manning’s eyes, I can tell even from across the room, are clouding from an oncoming migraine.

  Permission has been granted.

  The forensic examination proceeds.

  A memorial service for Ellie Landau will be held the following day.

  The medical examiner’s office transfers Ms. Landau’s remains from OCME to Temple Beth Shalom at Park and Ninety-First, arriving at one-thirty in the morning. Manning rides with the body. I follow in our Crown Vic. Amazingly nearly a dozen family members, friends, and colleagues wait to receive the corpse and sit with it. Rachel and Ben-David are there, in the same clothes they wore in the subway. Both are grim and shaken. They speak privately with Lauren and Cameron.

  The memorial service is scheduled for eleven this morning, Monday. The mourners will sit up with Ellie’s remains through the night. The men in the room all wear yarmulkes. Prayer shawls cover their shoulders. They chant softly or recite prayers.

  Throughout this interval I’ve been handling the press and supervising the precinct officers in securing the crime scene. I find a minute in transit to Beth Shalom to jump on the phone to Uribe and get the results of the autopsy. Yes, our ME confirms, the “LV” sign was present, exactly as on the corpses of Justman and Davis. COD, Uribe says, will go in his report as “trauma to tracheal airway.”

  As I’m entering these notes to my files and Manning’s, a text comes in for me from Iceland—the Reykjavík metropolitan police. WTF? I check local time. It’s six-thirty in the morning there. The message is from a homicide detective named Elisabet Gottmundsdottir. I’ve never heard of her, nor have I communicated with her via any medium.

  To Det. Covina Duwai, Division Six, New York Police Dept.:

  Monitoring your RIRC [Request for Interjurisdictional Remission of Confidentiality] re female person of interest in “LV” murders in Dusseldorf, Marseille and Riga. We have one here too, of 10 August 2033, eight months ago. This homicide has been linked to the others by forensic pathology only within the past 24 hours.

  My state of exhaustion vanishes. In .01 seconds I am awake and wired.

  Your request for FaceRec video file release has been approved by our office. Attached please find a sequential compilation. File total is 27. Most are from traffic-flow and sidewalk surveillance cameras and are unremarkable. Please note however the 22-second clip from a convenience store security camera at 9 August 33 (the morning before the aforementioned murder) that commences at 10:44:45. I think you may find it of interest.

  Elisabet Gottmundsdottir, Detective Inspector

  I cue the video and tap the PLAY arrow. I’m head-down in a corner at the front of the service room, with the young rabbi who will serve as the officiant for the memorial service approaching me and looking, I swear to God, like he’s about to hit on me. I bury my nose deeper into my phone.

  On the screen appears a woman who can be no one but Rachel. The face is the same, posture, hair, everything. She is standing beside some kind of self-serve coffee machine in in
tense, even passionate confrontation with a tall, broad-shouldered man appearing to be about thirty years old whose back is to the camera. Suddenly Rachel slaps the man, open-handed, across the face, so violently that the take-out cup in her other hand goes flying, sending hot coffee everywhere.

  The man does not turn or move.

  Rachel bawls something furious at the man, then wheels and stalks from the store. The clip ends when the man, still with his back turned, moves in the opposite direction and vanishes from the viewing field of the camera.

  I bolt from the young rabbi before he can open his mouth to say hello.

  I find Manning.

  I roll the video.

  He watches through his two-dollar Walgreens reading specs, peeking over their upper rims at Rachel herself, seated piously in a row of chairs at the rear of the room.

  ME

  When you questioned her at the impound lot, she said the last time she saw Instancer was in Israel in ’32. This video is from August ’33.

  MANNING

  But is that Instancer on the video? We can’t see his face.

  ME

  C’mon!

  I urge Manning to confront Rachel with this right now. Walk over and shove the video in her face. To my amazement, he resists.

  MANNING

  I thought you were her protector.

  ME

  Fuck that. She’s lying to us!

  I see from Manning’s eyes that his head is splitting. It’s all I can do to stifle my impulse to challenge Rachel myself. Whatever Manning is thinking, I know he is ten jumps ahead of me. I bite my tongue.

  The young rabbi comes over and introduces himself. He’s the age of Ellie Landau’s children. In fact, he says, he knew them both growing up. Ellie Landau was, he tells Manning and me, like a second mother to him.

  As the young rabbi speaks, he checks incoming news and texts on his phone. The story of Ellie Landau’s murder is leading every channel. Hits on social media are approaching a million, even at two in the morning. The press, the young rabbi says, has made the connection between the killing of Ms. Landau and the murder of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Reports are linking these to the attempt upon Ben-David’s life tonight, and the violent demises of Davis and Justman and the two Russians. Rumors are circulating of other, similar homicides worldwide. The press knows somehow of the “LV” mark, though as yet they have no idea what to make of it. I start to excuse myself when the young rabbi begins to pump me, as well, for information. Manning catches my arm.