The righteous men

by Sam Bourne

  This had been the moment he was most uncertain of: should he hug her, kiss her on the cheek, shake hands or do nothing? But she made the decision for him, standing up and opening her arms as if welcoming back a prodigal son.

  He fell into a hug and tried, through the positioning of his arms and hands, to make it somehow — what was the word — fraternal.

  'What's the problem, Will?'

  He told her as methodically and briefly as he could: the email, Tom's tracing of it to Crown Heights, Will's visit, the interrogation, the trial by mikve.

  'You've got to be kidding,' she said when that last detail dropped, her face giving a smirk that was either disbelief, nervous tension, schadenfreude or a little bit of all three. The semi-smile vanished when she saw Will's reaction. She could see this was deadly serious. 'Will, I feel for you, I really do.

  And my heart goes out to Beth's family.' Beth. He had never heard TO say her name before. 'But what exactly do you need from me?'

  'I need to know what you know. I need you to explain to me what I heard. I need you to translate for me.'

  She responded with a small, wan smile that somehow made her look older. At that moment, Will realized ageing was not chiefly about lines or wrinkles, though those things played their part. The years really showed in expressions like the one he had just seen. Suddenly TO's was a face of years; of knowledge.

  'OK. Very slowly and with as much detail as you can remember, you have to tell me everything that happened.

  Every street you walked, every person you met, every word they used. I'll put some coffee on.'

  Will fell back in the wicker chair TO had pulled up for him.

  For the first time in sixteen hours, he let his muscles relax.

  He was so relieved: TO was on side. He was filled with a sentiment he had never had when they were together; he felt that TO was going to look after him.

  She was, Will soon realized, a skilful interviewer, patient but methodical, demanding that he be precise about each detail, going back over episodes to ensure he had not missed anything. She pointed out contradictions too, in that old forensic way of hers. 'Hold on, you said there was only you and two others in the room. Who is this new person?' 'What did he say exactly? Did he say, "I will" or "I might"?'

  Her precision exhausted him. By way of a break, he let his eyes wander towards her work, scattered around the room.

  Large canvasses depicting classic Americana — naturalistic paintings of a yellow cab or a vintage diner — and, much as he admired their technical skill, he found himself wondering if TO was not in the wrong line of work. She had too clear a mind, too linear and logical, to be an artist. Surely with a brain like hers she should be a scholar or a lawyer or, on current form, a police officer? Wisely, he thought, Will did not say any of this.

  By the time he had got to the end, he realized TO had so far explained nothing. Each time she had opened her mouth, it was only to seek clarification from him or to ask supplementary questions. He knew no more now than he had when he left Crown Heights. He began to feel impatient. But he did not dare voice his frustration; he had to keep TO as an ally. Besides, he was nearly faint with fatigue; his words were starting to slur.

  He woke when his elbow slipped off the chair arm. He could tell from the taste in his mouth that he had fallen into a brief but deep sleep. He had dreamed of chants and dances, with Beth at the centre, surrounded, like a tribal queen, by men in white shirts and black suits.

  Will looked at his watch; two-thirty am. So this was not a nightmare, just a terrifying long day and night that seemed never to end. It had begun when he powered up his BlackBerry some eighteen hours ago. And now, incredibly, he was half-asleep in TO's wicker chair and it was still going on.

  'Hi, you're back,' she said, suddenly looking up from an artist's sketch pad that rested on her knees. Her forehead was crinkled in a way, Will remembered, that meant she had been concentrating hard. 'Here's what we've got. The first fact is they say Beth is safe — so long as you back off. Second, they seem to admit that she's done nothing wrong and maybe even nothing at all, but they cannot let her go. They acknowledge that this seems baffling now but, they promise, it will all become clear. We know from their emailed notes to you that they don't want money. They just want you to go away.

  That's it.

  'What this adds up to is one very weird kind of kidnapping.

  It's like they somehow want to borrow her for some unspecified time and some unspecified reason — and they expect you just to take it. We need to work out why.' Will found that we comforting, even if the rest of the puzzle — and the fact that TO had not instantly cracked it — was anything but.

  'So what do we have on motive? A clue is surely that they feared you were a fed. The charitable explanation for that is that they feared the feds were coming after them simply because of the kidnapping. The uncharitable view is that their fear was separate from the kidnapping, that they are involved in some other criminal activity and had long worried that the authorities were onto them. Kind of like those weirdo cults who lie in wait for the feds to come and take their guns away.'

  Will had a flash of memory back to Montana, Pat Baxter and his chums. Christ, that was only a few days ago; it felt like years.

  'But then they rule that out, for fairly rational reasons. I don't know about the wire, but I reckon they're right about the undercover Jew thing: that is what the feds would do.

  Yet, your not being a federal agent does not reassure them.

  Quite the opposite. It's once they've ruled that out that they get really heavy, nearly drowning you. That also makes some sense: they wouldn't dare mistreat you if they thought you were law enforcement. Once you weren't, they felt free. The question, though, is why? What could be, to use their phrase,

  "infinitely worse"? A rival Hassidic sect? A rival kidnapping cartel?'

  Will detected a glint of mischief in TO's eye, as if she was still taken by the humour of Hassidim up to no good. It irritated him; and she still had not come up with anything he did not know already.

  'What about all the Jewish stuff I heard, what does that all mean?' He wanted to get her back on track.

  'Well, the phrase you heard as "Peking Nuff-said" is actually pikuach nefesh. The safeguarding of a soul. It is usually used benignly, to forgive various infractions of religious law in order to do good. You know, you'll hear the Israelis invoke pikuach nefesh to explain why ambulances are allowed to run on the Sabbath. But by mentioning it alongside all that stuff about a rodef, they were obviously using it to threaten you to imply that Jewish law might allow them to kill you. Or Beth.'

  Will winced.

  'As for "Shabbos something" that's real. What you heard was Shabbos Shuva, the Sabbath of repentance, the most important Shabbat of the year. That's today, as it happens. It's the one between Rosh Hashana, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. We're in the middle of the Ten Days of Penitence, the Days of Awe. This is a big time for Jews.

  For the ultra-orthodox especially. But what did your questioner mean by "we have only four days left"? It's true there are only four days till Yom Kippur, but, judging from what you said, he meant it as some kind of deadline. He can't mean just four days left to repent, though they would think that.

  This must be connected to the wider thing he mentioned: you know, "everything hangs in the balance", "the stakes could not be higher", "the ancient story".'

  'And as far as all that stuff is concerned, we haven't got a clue, have we?'

  TO had her head down, consulting her sketch pad. He could see she was desperate to find something that would unlock this mystery. She had corralled all the facts as best she could, organized a coherent set of questions. But that's all she had: questions. 'No,' she said quietly. 'We haven't.'

  'What about the Rebbe?'

  'Ah, yes. Now I need you to think hard on this one. Did he ever say his name to you? Did he ever introduce himself to you?'

  'I told you, he never let me see
his face.'

  'So why are you so certain he was the Rebbe?'

  'Because they were all chanting and stamping and waiting for him inside the synagogue. Then I get led away. These thugs say they can't talk to me until their "teacher" arrives.

  Then, when he does, they do whatever he tells them to do.

  He was obviously the boss.'

  'When you were in the synagogue and you felt a hand on your shoulder, and the voice said, "For you my friend, it's all over" or whatever he said, that voice was the same one who interrogated you later?'

  'Yes, same voice.'

  'So if that was the Rebbe how come the crowd was not facing in that direction, looking towards him? If that were him, surely every face in the room would have been looking just past your shoulder, going nuts for the guy who is within whispering distance of your ear. But they weren't, were they?'

  'Maybe he was just hidden from view, crushed in that huge crowd.'

  'Come on, Will. You said it yourself: they worship this guy as if he's the Messiah. They're not going to just let him wander around, getting mashed by the foot soldiers. Think hard, did he ever announce himself as the Rebbe?'

  Will realized with embarrassment that his tormentor had never said any such thing. Now that he thought about it- 'Did you ever address him as Rebbe?'

  TO had read his mind. Throughout the ordeal, Will had assumed he was speaking to the Rebbe. Inside his own head, he referred to him as Rebbe. But had he ever used the term out loud? 'So you're sure that man who nearly had me killed tonight was not the Rebbe?'

  'I know it.'

  'How? How can you be so certain?'

  'I'm certain, Will, because the Rebbe of Crown Heights has been dead and buried for two years.'

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Saturday, 6.36am, Manhattan

  They were in a baking hot country, on a wide bed covered by a vast white net. It was a suite in an old colonial hotel.

  Sounds were floating up from the street below, car horns and traders; a mosquito buzzed lazily. It was the afternoon and he and Beth were making fevered love, their bodies slick with sweat…

  Will's heart thumped; the shock of waking from a dream.

  He looked down to see a bed that was narrow — and empty.

  Except it was not quite a bed. He had fallen asleep in TO's studio, on her red velvet sofa. It turned out she had a camp bed of her own behind a partition at the side of the studio.

  'Sometimes I work nights,' she had said.

  He reached instantly for his BlackBerry. Nothing more from the kidnappers; two emails from Harden; several from his father, begging him to get in touch and complaining of his desperate worry. His phone would not switch on: the battery must have died when he was at Tom's.

  He tiptoed over to TO's workbench, where he was relieved to see she had the same brand of phone as him. There would be a charger here somewhere. While looking, he spotted the sketch pad from last night. He turned it the right way up and saw that TO had not been taking notes, but doing what seemed to be an elaborate doodle. It formed a geometric pattern: circles linked by straight lines, like one of those molecular diagrams. Was TO an expert chemist on the side? It would not have surprised him.

  Seeing her Hebrew doodles brought back with a thud the night's biggest, and most baffling, revelation. The Rebbe was dead. Despite the pictures on every wall in Crown Heights, the websites covered with his face, the constant references to him in the present tense, the sheer fervour aroused by the mere sight of his chair — despite all this, TO had been adamant that the Grand Rabbi of the Hassidic sect, the Rebbe, was deep in the ground.

  He had died in his sleep two years earlier, plunging his entire community and thousands of followers worldwide into abject grief. In the last years of his life, the belief had grown that the Rebbe was not just an extraordinary leader but something more. 'Judaism holds that each generation includes one person who is the candidate to be the Messiah,' TO had explained. 'That doesn't mean he actually is the Messiah. But if God decided the time had come, that it was time for the Messianic era to begin, then this person, this candidate, would be the one. He would be revealed as the Moshiach.'

  'And so they started thinking the Rebbe was the candidate?'

  'Exactly.

  That's how it began. Just that he was the candidate for this age. But then things started getting more intense. People started saying this was not some remote, abstract possibility but that the Messianic days were imminent, that the moment was approaching. Truth be told, I think the Rebbe encouraged it. He whipped up this fervour.'

  'What, was he on some major ego trip?'

  'I don't know if it was that. He was an amazingly modest man in most ways. He lived frugally, in a few Spartan rooms in Crown Heights. After his wife died, he confined himself to his study. He'd sleep in there, but only for an hour or two at night; the rest of the time, the light would be on and he'd be working, working, working. Dictating letters mostly; offering advice to his people all over the world. You've got to realize, this is a billion-dollar, global organization. They have centres in almost every city of the world, even in really obscure places where there are hardly any Jews, just in case there are Jewish travellers nearby who might feel the urge to have a Sabbath meal. He would tell one of his emissaries,

  "You're needed in Greenland" and they'd go to Greenland.

  The Rebbe was like a cross between the CEO of some huge multi-national corporation and the Commandante of a revolutionary army.' TO grinned. 'He was Bill Gates and Che Guevara, all rolled into one. And aged ninety-something.'

  Will thought back to the picture of the twinkling old man with the snow-white beard. An unlikely revolutionary.

  'Anyway, then he died and most people assumed that would be the end of that. After all, he couldn't exactly be the Messiah if he was dead, could he?'

  'I guess not.'

  'Well, you guess wrong. The hardcore devotees started camping out at the graveside. When people asked them what on earth they were doing, they said, "Waiting". They wanted to be ready to welcome the Rebbe when he rose from the dead.'

  'Are you sure these guys aren't Christians?'

  'I know; it's weird isn't it? There's some serious debate going on about that, in fact. There are plenty of Jews who say Crown Heights is effectively taking itself outside Judaism, that it is becoming another faith. The argument is that Christianity was once just a form of Judaism which believed the Messiah had come; now Crown Heights is making the same move.'

  'The difference is they're still waiting. Mind you, Christians are still waiting for the second coming. Everybody's waiting.'

  This lot certainly are. They're waiting for their leader to reveal himself, for him to rise from the dead and tell them it's all going to be OK.'

  'You're taking the piss, aren't you?'

  'Kind of. Look, theologically speaking, they might be right.

  It is quite true that, in the Messianic age, Judaism says the dead will live again. And there's nothing written that says the Messiah can't be one of them; you know, one of the dead.

  So they might be right. It's just, I don't know, it just seems kind of sad to me. Like this is a group of children who've lost their daddy or something. As the therapists would say,

  "they're hurting".'

  Will tried to square TO's account — a cult traumatized by the loss of their leader, stirring themselves to a Friday night fury as if desperately summoning him back from the dead with the gang who had nearly killed him a few hours earlier.

  He found sympathy did not come easily. 'How come you know so much about them?'

  'I read the papers,' she said quickly; an instant scold. 'It's all been in the Times.'

  Will kicked himself. His haste at Tom's meant he never did the thorough Google search that would have told him all this — or at least that the Rebbe was dead. More galling was the certain knowledge that all this had, just as TO said, been in the paper but that he had skimmed over it: weirdo religious news, not relevant.
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  That was last night. This morning's thunderbolt came once he finally found the phone charger, near the coffee pot. He plugged it in and his mobile came silently to life. (He always set his to 'silent': you never knew when a loud, synthetic chime would embarrass you.) The voicemail messages declared themselves first: four from his dad, three, increasingly sarcastic ones from Harden, the last saying, 'You better be on a story so good that I win a Pulitzer for running it,' before telling him he would be on 'the first boat back to Oxford' if he did not report for duty soon. Two others that Will skipped after a few words, deeming them non-urgent.

  Next came the texts. One from Tom, wishing him luck.

  And then:

  Foot runs. B Gates.

  He pressed the button marked 'Details' but the phone yielded nothing. For number, it said 'Withheld Private Caller'.

  For the time, it uselessly gave the hour, minute and second Will had switched on the phone. He had no idea who had sent it or when. Given that the meaning was utterly opaque, that made the blank complete.

  By now, TO was up, emerging from her mini-bedroom with a sleepy stretch. Even in man's-style boxer shorts and a thin strapped white vest, she looked sumptuous. The navel ring was fully exposed now. Will felt a tremor of movement in his groin, followed by a thump of guilt. To lust after your ex girlfriend was appalling under any circumstances. To do so when your wife was a hostage in fear of her life was contemptible. He gave TO only the merest acknowledgement, looked back at his cell phone and reflexively tucked in his pelvis — as if to staunch the flow of erection-threatening blood before it passed the point of no return.

  To his relief, TO kept some spare clothes behind the partition and she now disappeared to put them on. When she emerged, Will handed her his phone. 'Now this,' he said.

  TO fumbled for her glasses; it was too early for lenses.

  'Hmm,' she said, staring at the words.