by Sam Bourne
'Not yet. He that knows nothing doubts nothing. What could that mean?' TO was pencilling the words down, in the corner of a page already marked with drawings.
'I don't get it,' Will said, chiefly for the sake of saying something.
'It's a contradiction. In the first message, he's telling us not to hesitate. Just to get on with it. Now he's saying that it's good to doubt. You know, only a moron doesn't experience doubt.'
'Doubting's not the same as hesitating.'
'What's the difference?'
'I don't fucking know. I'm trying to think. He wants to tell us something. You know, "move it". Or "think things through". I don't know. But he sounds like he wants to help.'
'No. If he was trying to help he wouldn't be talking in fucking riddles.' Another beep.
Opportunity seldon knocks twice As soon as Will read it out, TO began murmuring. 'Twice is interesting. Perhaps he's telling us to multiply something.
Maybe we're looking at this all wrong. Maybe he wants us to look at the letters as numbers!'
'What?'
'You know, like the way text messages work, only reversed.
They're letters and words formed from numbers. Maybe this is the reverse. We're meant to take the letters and think of them as numbers.'
'What are you talking about?'
'Well, one thing could be to count the number of letters in each clue. That number could be significant. Or perhaps each letter has a numeric value. You know, A is one, B is two.'
Will was baffled, but TO was ignoring him. She was scribbling away frantically on her sketchpad, wildly computing one sum after another.
More beeping; perhaps a minute after the previous one. a friend in need is a friend indeed Will was becoming more irritated with each message. If this was help, why did it have to be so damned opaque? Will felt like shaking young Yosef Yitzhok by his lapels: If you want to help, then just help! 'What is this, Cliche Night? A friend in need is a friend indeed. What the hell is that? How on earth does he expect us to solve these so fast?'
'Look, cool down Will. Right now this is all we have. He's all we have. Maybe he's suddenly in a place where he can text without being seen; he might want to get all his messages out while he can.'
It was plausible; Will bit his lip. He did not want to set off a whole row with TO now, not while she was concentrating so hard on her role as unofficial cryptographer.
Will began to pace around, letting his pores fill up with the fat and grease of a burger joint — which this place was, even if it did now sell salads. He strode into a seating area where a single TV monitor was playing. Set to NY 1, the local news channel, it now flashed pictures of the Bangkok arrest of a Brooklyn rabbi on murder charges. The suspect was in the trademark garb — beard, white shirt, black suit, trilby hat — as he was handcuffed and led away by two young and scowling Thai policemen. His face seemed to be determinedly aimed downward, in shame or to avoid recognition, Will could not tell. Altogether, the sight could not have been more incongruous. That sequence was followed by footage of NYPD officers arriving on foot in Crown Heights, eschewing their usual squad cars in a gesture of 'sensitivity' apparently ordered by the mayor's office.
Those pictures renewed an argument Will and TO staged several times that long afternoon.
'I should go back there, right now.'
'And do what? Get dunked again?'
'No. I would tell them what I, what you, wrote in that email. That I know what they're up to and that they should cut a deal.'
'Too risky., You might say just the wrong thing and escalate the whole situation. The virtue of email was that we could control exactly what was said.' Was said, the cowardly passive again. TO was obviously reluctant to admit that she had put those words in Will's mouth.
'I can't just leave Beth there. Who knows what they might do now that they're under siege. They might panic. One of those thugs could tighten the screw a bit too hard, or keep her head in water ten seconds too long-'
'You're doing it again. Getting into a panic. I told you, this is like climbing a mountain: you mustn't look down. You mustn't think about any of that. Besides, the place is crawling with police today: they wouldn't dare do anything while they're around. The whole vibe of those text messages from Yosef Yitzhok is that everything's still to play for. Nothing has changed, nothing terrible has happened.'
'Except you don't think they're from Yosef Yitzhok.'
'I'm not sure, that's all.'
That's how it went, several times over, ending inconclusively with both TO and Will falling into a sullen or drained silence. Afterwards, Will would reflect on the fact that Beth and he never bickered. They argued but never bickered; he and TO had turned it into an Olympic sport.
Interruption came whenever a message landed. These texts, which once made Will's chest pound with nervous anticipation, were becoming routine. Even boring. Will clicked to see the latest.
To the victor the spoils That sounded menacing, as if the Hassidim were registering a claim on Beth: if we win, we will keep her. Will felt his hatred rising. 'Now they're threatening us.'
'To the victor the spoils,' TO repeated slowly once Will had read it out, as if she were taking dictation.
Will glimpsed what looked like a grid on TO's sketch pad, neatly filled in with each new line from YY. 'What have you got?'
'The numbers things didn't work out, so I've been looking at anagrams for each one. And I can get something but nothing that hangs together. There's no pattern. I've tried running it as an acrostic-'
'A what?'
'An acrostic. Where the first letter of each sentence provides a letter of the hidden word. You know, "Roses are red" gives you R, "Violets are blue" gives you V. There are some psalms laid out like that. Put together the first letter of each line and you get another line of prayer. It was a trick: a twelve-line poem with an invisible thirteenth line.'
'I get it. So what do we get if we do that?'
'So far? We have H, H, O, A, T. If we skip the indefinite article — so it's "Friend in need" not "A friend in need" — we get H, H, O, F, T. Not much better.'
'What the hell is he playing at? Hang on.' Another one was coming through.
Goodness is better than beauty Will was beginning to feel swamped. TO was having to think like a grandmaster at one of those chess exhibitions, moving around the room, playing a hundred games on a hundred different boards at once. It had taken a long time to decode just one message. Now she had six.
'Look, Will. There's no way to work out what this is till it stops. Whenever I try one theory, it's blown out by the next message. We need to have the full set and then see what this guy's trying to say.'
'YY.'
'If it's him, yes.'
'Who the fuck else could it be?'
'Leave me alone, Will.'
He couldn't blame her for being exasperated. He knew he was being insufferable, taking out his rage, grief and sheer fatigue on her. She didn't have to take this from him. She could walk away — and he would be stranded.
He wanted to say sorry, but it was too late. She had turned her back on him, wisely preventing any escalation in hostilities.
Pity neither of them had ever been so shrewd when they were lovers.
No more than two minutes later, another message arrived: a man is known by the company he keeps Was this some way of urging Will to think about the people around the rabbi who had interrogated him last night? Forget about him, start thinking about his henchmen. Was that what this clue was trying to say?
And then, perhaps thirty seconds later:
From little acorns nighty oaks grow Christ, this guy was annoying. What was this, some oblique reference to fathers and sons? The effort he was putting into these messages, hammering out long texts when all he had to do was send a few, simple words: the address where Beth was held. The ire was rising through Will's body, reaching the veins in his neck.
He had not even shown TO the latest message when he began texting back:
Enough of these horseshit games. You know what I need.
The instant he had sent it, Will regretted it. What if he scared Yosef Yitzhok off? TO was right: he was all they had.
Worse, what if Will's message was somehow intercepted by the Crown Heights hardliners, who would instantly realize what YY was up to, that he was in communication with the enemy, and punish him? Will imagined YY in an alleyway, just off Eastern Parkway, huddled over his cell phone, maybe using his prayer shawl as a canopy, when two men grab him from behind, snatch away his phone and drag him off for an impromptu meeting with the rabbi.
And yet, Will felt a release of cathartic energy flow through him. He could not stand the passivity of his situation, sitting there, hands outstretched, waiting for clues to fall like crumbs from the Hassidim's table. It felt good to fight back.
Finally, the sky began to darken. Will started pacing, his right hand gripping the BlackBerry, turning it clammy. At 7.42pm exactly TO nodded, telling him that the Sabbath had now ended. Will glanced down immediately, expecting a red light to flicker on within seconds. No, no, advised TO: they should give it at least thirty minutes before expecting a reply.
There were things to do after the sabbath, including the Havdalah ceremony which used wine, spices and a plaited candle to bid a final farewell to the day of rest. Then there was the walk back from synagogue to make Havdalah at home. Most men would probably want to freshen up after that. Even if the Hassidim read Will's message on a computer in a home or office, they would not want to reply from there: too traceable. Not by Will of course, but by the police in some future investigation. So they would have to go back to the Internet Hot Spot — all of which could take at least an hour.
Even this scenario was optimistic, TO warned. Will knew he had sent them an email, but they did not. They were not expecting one, so why would they rush to check?
On the other hand, maybe today was different. Crown Heights was crawling with detectives investigating a murder under instruction from Interpol. The rabbi who had grilled Will would not be able to stick to his usual ritual. He would be answering questions and they would not be about the correct dimensions of a Talmudic stove. He would be under interrogation — and under pressure. (The thought of that role reversal pleased Will.) If that was the atmosphere, Will reckoned they would have a hundred reasons to check email as soon as they could. Even if they were not waiting for word from him, they would need to communicate with their people in Bangkok. Will guessed they would be powering up their laptops the moment it was theologically decent.
At eight o'clock Will's hunch was confirmed. Twenty minutes after sundown, the red light on his BlackBerry blinked. Will clicked the track wheel and saw that same, hieroglyphic script, the characters he now knew to be Hebrew. Re: Beth.
You are out of your depth. Do not drown.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Saturday, 8.01pm, Manhattan
He had no time for a seminar with TO. He replied instantly, his thumbs working furiously.
I could call the police right now. What do I have to lose?
He waited, while TO sat opposite him, curled into a ball, rocking herself backward and forward. Will wondered if he had ever seen her in this position, so nervous she was foetal.
The crowd at McDonalds had changed. The bums and homeless mutterers now mostly replaced by twenty-something men about to fuel up before a night hitting the bars. The red light came on.
You have everything to lose. You could lose her.
Again, Will did not wait. This, he realized, was what he had wanted since that first message: a direct confrontation with the kidnappers. When they had met last night, Will was pretending to be someone else. He had had to be polite. Now it was out in the open, he could take them on.
You touch her and you will be guilty of two murders. My evidence will send you down. Release her or I start nailing you.
The delay was longer this time, excruciating. The red light flashed, Will pouncing on the little blue machine.
Low price pharmacy for all your medical needs. We deliver. Spam.
More minutes and then:
Call now on 718-943-7770. Do not use a recording device. We will know if you try.
Will imagined how this was working at the other end.
Doubtless, one of the monkeys, Moshe Menachem or Tzvi Yehuda, was at the Internet Hot Spot, reading and typing the emails, taking direct instruction from the boss on the end of a phone. Now the boss had something to say that he did not want committed to email, even one as disguised as this. Good, thought Will, sensing his opponent was weakening a little.
He looked at TO: having consumed her nails, she was now gnawing at her cuticles.
He pulled out his cell phone, dialling the number slowly, as if he was performing surgery. His hands were trembling.
He realized that this man frightened him.
It rang only once. He could hear the phone had been answered but no one spoke: he was going to have make the first move.
'This is Will Monroe. You asked me to call.'
'Yes, Will, I did. First, let me apologize for what happened yesterday. A bad case of mistaken identity, partly compounded by the fact that you made the mistake of concealing your identity.' Will wondered if he was meant to laugh at this little bit of wordplay. He did not. 'I think it's right that we talk about the current situation.'
'You're damn right we need to talk about it. You need to give me back my wife or else I will implicate you in a double murder.'
'Now calm down, Mr Monroe.'
'I'm not feeling very calm, Rabbi. Yesterday you nearly killed me and you have abducted my wife for no reason. The only reason I have not gone to the police so far is because of your threats to kill my wife. But now I can go to them and confirm your guilt in the Bangkok case by saying you have already performed a kidnap right here in New York city.
If you kill her then, that will only compound your guilt.' Will was pleased with how that had come out; it was more coherent than he had expected.
'All right, I am going to make a deal with you. If you say nothing and talk to no one, we will do our best to keep Beth alive.' Beth. It sounded strange coming from this baritone voice, whose timbre had only barely altered in the metallic compression of the phone.
'What do you mean, "do our best"? Who else is there?
You've done this, you should take responsibility for it. Either you will guarantee her safety or you won't.' That sentence, unplanned, prompted a thought, one he voiced out loud before it was fully formed in his own mind. 'I want to speak to my wife.'
'I'm sorry.'
'I want to speak to her right now. I want to hear her voice.
As proof that she is still… safe.'
'I don't think that's a good idea.'
'I don't care what you think. As I'm only too happy to explain to the police. I want to hear her voice.'
'That will take some time.'
'I'm calling you back in five minutes.'
Will put the phone down and exhaled as if he had been holding his breath; the blood seemed to be pounding through his veins. His own firmness had taken him by surprise. And yet it had seemed to work; the rabbi had not refused.
Will counted the minutes, staring at the second hand as it swept across the face of his watch. TO could say nothing.
A minute passed, then two. Well felt an ache in his forehead; the muscles of his face had been tensed so long, they hurt. The top of the plastic pen he had been chewing came apart in his mouth.
Four minutes gone. Will stood up and stretched, tilting his head toward one shoulder, then the next. It made a loud crack. He looked down at the phone and, four minutes and fifty five seconds after he had hung up, he redialled the number.
'It's Will Monroe. Let me speak to her.'
There was no reply, just a series of clicking sounds, as if his call were being transferred. The sound of breath and then: 'Will? Will, it's Beth-'
'Beth, thank God it's you. Oh my love, are you OK? Are you hur
t?'
Silence, and then three more clicks. 'Beth?'
'I'm afraid I had to cut off the line. But now you have heard her voice; you know she is-'
'For God's sake, you barely gave us a second.' Will smashed the table with his fist, making TO leap back in fright. He felt himself flood with emotion. For less than a second he had felt such relief, such joy: it was Beth's voice, no mistaking it.
Just the sound of it made him weak. And then it had disappeared, cut short before he had even had a chance to tell her he loved her.
'I couldn't risk any more time. I'm genuinely sorry. But I did what you asked: you have heard your wife's voice.'
'You have to promise me NOW that nothing is going to happen to her.'
'I tried to explain this to you last night, Will. This is not entirely in our hands, not in mine, not in yours. Much bigger forces are in play. This is something mankind has feared for millennia.'
'What the hell are you talking about?'
'I cannot blame you for not understanding. Not many would, which is why we cannot explain this to the police, much as all of us might like to. They would certainly not understand. For some reason, HaShem has left this in our hands to resolve.'
'How do I know you're not tricking me to stay quiet? How do I know that you don't plan to kill my wife the way you killed that man in Bangkok?'
A pause. Then: 'Ah, nothing grieves me more than what happened there. Every Jewish heart will cry out in despair at the pity of what happened there.' He paused again. Will let the silence hang. Wait for the interviewee to fill the void … 'I am going to take a risk, Mr Monroe. I hope you take it as it is meant, as a gesture of good faith on my part. I am going to let you into a secret which you could easily use against me. By revealing it to you, I will be showing a degree of trust in you. As a result I hope you will feel better able to trust me. Do you understand?'
'I understand.'
'What happened in Bangkok was an accident. It is true that we wanted to take Mr Samak into custody, just as we have with your wife, but we certainly had no intention of killing him. God forbid.' TO had moved round to sit next to Will, pressing her ear against the back of his cell phone.