The Righteous Men (2006)

by Sam Bourne

  The only trouble were people like Grace, the woman Andre had met on one of the earliest trials. Too poor to get the antiretroviral medicine she needed, AIDS was a death sentence for her — not a condition that could be lived with, as it was in Europe or the US. This cure would be no cure for her or for the millions of women, men and children like her, all over the world. The new drug would never reach them because it would be too expensive. The company had a patent on the new medicine that would last twenty years: until then, they had a monopoly and could charge what they liked.

  So he had gone to the FedEx office earlier that day with a large box addressed to a man he had never met in Mumbai, India. Revered and reviled as the king of the copycats, this man had made a fortune making bootleg copies of the latest western drugs and selling them to the third world for a tenth of the price. He had done it with some of the early AIDS medicines. Now, in the next day or two, he would receive a full blueprint for the cure. Andre’s note issued a clear demand: ‘Make this drug and distribute it to the world. Now.’

  The sun was beginning to set; he could hear the waves more easily than he could see them. He would go to a bar and chug back a beer. Who knew when he would get another chance. Tomorrow the company might discover his theft, his treachery, and have him arrested on a dozen counts. With this much money at stake, they would have to make an example of him: he could be in jail for years.

  So he decided to savour this night. He drank, he flirted. And when one beautiful girl, with long bronzed legs and a skirt that barely stretched over her bottom, came on to him, he rose to the occasion. She laughed at his jokes; he rested his hand on her smooth, naked thigh.

  The ride in her open-topped car was punctuated by long, open-mouthed kisses at each traffic light. They fell into her apartment, her clothes falling willingly to the floor. And when she went to fix him a drink, he gulped it down gratefully, not even noticing the powdery residue still undissolved at the bottom of the glass.

  He coughed a little; he grew dizzy and resolved to drink less next time. As he lost consciousness and fell towards death, he could hear the girl’s voice, gently reciting what sounded like a poem. Or perhaps a prayer.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Saturday, 11.27pm, Manhattan

  If it had not been for lust and guilt, Will might never have seen him. He had not yet had a chance to tell TC of his breakthrough, the phone call from Jay Newell, when she stood on tiptoes to reach for a book from one of her highest bookshelves. As she stretched, her thin shirt pulled away from her jeans, revealing the taut, unmarked skin of her lower back. For all the feelings of shame, he was at it again, noticing the shape and curve of TC’s body. He turned away.

  To dispel any impression that he was ogling, he made a point of looking elsewhere, starting with a glance down at her desk. It was piled high with papers, cuttings from magazines, fine art journals mostly, but with the odd piece from the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly too. There were flyers promoting film seasons at art house cinemas, a couple of catalogues from clothes stores, two thick editions of Vogue and what he could see was a handwritten letter.

  At a job interview he would have called his next impulse professional curiosity, but the simpler truth was that he was nosy. He tugged at the paper, sandwiched between an edition of The New York Times Sunday magazine and a seasonal guide to the Lincoln Center, until he could glimpse the top half of the first sheet.

  Will jumped. The letter was written in a series of symbols that looked like gibberish. Yet it was definitely a letter, on personal notepaper, with a date at the top right in conventional numbers. He frowned. Surely he would have remembered if TC was fluent in another language. Indeed, he distinctly recalled that one of her few areas of academic deficiency was linguistic. She always said she regretted that she had never learned French or Spanish; despite her supercharged education, she had never found the time.

  Movement outside caught his eye. A couple were getting out of a just-parked Volvo: perhaps they had been at the movies or at a dinner party with friends. They might have been himself and Beth, enjoying a normal life. The very idea struck a sharp pain into his heart. For the hundredth time since the phone call a couple of hours earlier, he heard her voice. Will? Will, it’s Beth.

  He dragged his gaze away. Further up the street there was a pair of teenage boys in oversized jeans and a middle-aged woman carrying a single flower. Instantly Will could see and hear Beth at the Carnegie Deli, telling him the story of Child X and the flower he had handed Marie, the grieving receptionist. Beth had been so touched by that action, an act of humanity which, Will felt sure, his wife had somehow drawn out of this wild, damaged young boy.

  Directly below, on the opposite sidewalk, was the man in the baseball cap.

  Will did not recognize him straight away. Even when he saw the blue body-warmer, he did not make an immediate connection. But something in the man’s stance, a certain relaxation of posture that suggested he was not on his way somewhere else, but needed to be right here, sparked a memory.

  Will instantly snapped back the curtain and took a step away from the window. He had seen that man this very evening; he had thought him a lonely tourist, admiring the headquarters of The New York Times, peering into the window as if he had nothing better to do. Now this same man was padng around outside TC’s building. It was too much of a coincidence.

  ‘TC, how many exits are there out of here?’

  She looked up from the King James bible she had just taken off the shelf. ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  ‘I think we’ve been followed and I think we’re going to have to leave right now. Except we can’t walk out the front entrance. Any ideas?’

  ‘You’re kidding. How would any—’

  ‘TC, we don’t have time for a discussion.’

  ‘There’s a fire escape at the back; it comes out onto the alleyway, I think.’

  ‘Too risky. There could be someone at the back as well.

  Does this building have a caretaker?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘You know, a super?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Sweet guy. Lives down in the basement.’

  ‘Do you know him? Please tell me he has a soft spot for you.’

  ‘Kind of. Why? What are you thinking?’

  ‘You’ll see. Pack up everything you might need.’

  ‘Might need for what?’

  ‘For a night away from here. I don’t think we can risk coming back.’

  Planning their exit, Will made one hurried call, then rounded up TC’s scattered Post-it notes, his mobile and BlackBerry and shoved them all into the voluminous pockets of his coat. He could hear TC rifling through drawers.

  At the open front door they surveyed the apartment one last time. Out of habit TC reached for the light switch; Will gripped her forearm just in time.

  ‘We don’t want to advertise our departure do we?’

  That gave him an idea. Like plenty of security-conscious New Yorkers, TC had several time-switch gadgets attached to her light fittings. Most people used them when they were away, timing them to act as phantom occupants, turning on lights in the evening and off in the morning. Now, without asking, Will found the one in the living room and set it to go off at midnight. No, too neat. Ten to midnight. Next, he went into TC’s bedroom — taking care not to look around too closely — and set the light to go on in there five minutes earlier and then to go off again twenty minutes later. With any luck, the peeping tom outside would conclude that Will and his female friend had turned in for the night.

  With that done, they headed for the basement. Overheated and marked by a series of handleless doors, it seemed an inhuman place to live. But this was home to Mr Pugachov, the Russian super. TC knocked lightly on the door, from behind which, Will was delighted to note, floated the sounds of late-night TV. Finally the door creaked open.

  To Will’s surprise, the super was not some crabby old man in a holed cardigan and worn-out slippers like the school caretakers of Will�
��s youth. Instead Mr Pugachov was a handsome man in his thirties bearing an uncanny resemblance to the onetime chess champion Garry Kasparov. And given the migration patterns from the former Soviet Union, it would be no great shock if this man, whose job was to sign for daytime deliveries of mail and fix busted water pipes, turned out to be a grandmaster.

  ‘Miss TOI’ Though Pugachov’s expression flicked from pleasure to disappointment the moment he caught sight of Will.

  ‘Hello Mr P.’

  Flirtatious, thought Will. Good.

  ‘What can I doing for you?’

  ‘Well, it’s a funny situation, Mr P. My friend and I have been planning a lovely surprise for his wife’s birthday.’

  Nice touch, establishing that I’m not the boyfriend.

  ‘Which is due to begin,’ TC made a show of looking at her watch, ‘any minute now, in fact. At midnight!’ She was sounding breathless, too eager.

  ‘So the thing is,’ Will said, taking over. ‘We need to leave here without her seeing us. We left her outside the building you see. Now, I know this is going to sound crazy but I wondered if there might be a way for you to somehow hide us in, oh I don’t know, some kind of wagon or trolley and take us out the back way.’

  Will could see that the chess champion was stumped. He was staring, baffled, at both of them. TC was laying on a smile you could have seen from space, but it was no good. The super was utterly confused. Will decided to speak the international language.

  ‘Here’s fifty dollars. Take us out of here in one of those trash cans.’ He pointed at a row of oversized plastic bins on wheels lined up just outside the back door.

  ‘You want me to put Miss TC in dumpster?’

  ‘No, Mr P. I want you to put both of us in there and just wheel us down the street. One hundred dollars. OK?’

  Will decided the negotiation was over. He stuffed the money in the super’s hand and headed over to the back door. Still shaking his head, Mr P opened up. Will pointed at the blue bin marked ‘Newspapers’, gesturing for the janitor to wheel that as close to the door as he could. It was too risky to step outside: he might be seen. Next, Will reached out, grabbed the handle and tilted the bin, flipping open its lid and emptying its contents onto the floor. Magazines, listings guides and free inserts selling home computers came tumbling out, spreading themselves on the ground. When he saw the janitor’s face fold into a grimace, Will dug into his pocket and took out another twenty.

  Once he had got the bin almost horizontal, its top resting on the stoop, it was not too hard to crawl in. Will did it in a crouch, as if entering a tunnel. Then he curled himself up, lay on his side and gestured for TC to follow until the pair of them sat like two halves of a walnut, in a blue plastic shell.

  Will gave the nod and Garry Kasparov closed the lid. Then, with a mighty effort and a deep, low grunt, he lifted the bin so that it was vertical, tilted it and began to push. With panic, Will realized they had never discussed either a route or a destination.

  Inside, TC and Will rattled and bounced, but knew better than to let out even a squeal. Their knees were touching and their faces were just an inch apart and, as they tossed upwards when Mr P hit a rut in the alleyway, the urge to giggle was strong. Their situation was so ridiculous. But the smile only had to form in Will’s mind for his plight to come pressing back in. Beth.

  They could feel themselves slowing down; Mr P was obviously tiring. Will lightly tapped on the side. The bin tilted back down, allowing them to creep out. The janitor had done a good job: he had covered nearly three blocks, staying with the narrow alleyway behind the apartment buildings. They were surely unseen.

  They said goodbye, TC giving Mr P a brief hug which, Will suspected, was more valuable than twice his cash fee. They watched him lope back, a Russian emigre pushing an empty wheelie bin through the streets of New York at midnight.

  That was the beauty of a big city: nothing was ever out of the ordinary so nobody paid attention.

  ‘OK,’ Will said, looking around and getting his bearings.

  ‘Now all we need to do is head north about six blocks. We should jog.’ And off he went.

  Finally TC had a chance to speak. ‘What the hell is going on here, Will? You see a guy in a baseball cap and suddenly we’re shoving ourselves in a trash can? And now we’re running? What is this?’

  ‘I’ve seen that guy before. Outside the Times building.’

  ‘You’re sure? How could you tell from six flights up? You only saw him for a second.’

  ‘TC, believe me. It was the same man.’ He was about to explain his posture theory, but realized it would sound unhinged. And take up too much oxygen. ‘His clothes were the same. He was there to watch me. Or us.’

  ‘You reckon the Hassidim sent him?’

  ‘Sure. He might even be one of them. All he’d have to do is change clothes, then he could pass for normal.’

  TC shot him a look.

  ‘You know what I mean. He could disappear into the crowd. What I saw at Crown Heights last week — Christ, it was only yesterday. What I saw yesterday is that plenty of these blokes were born into ordinary American backgrounds.’

  He was beginning to pant. ‘It wouldn’t be hard for them to shed all the garb and go right back into it, if that’s what the mission required.’

  They had arrived at their destination: Penn Station, and had only five minutes to wait for what Will called the ‘milk train’, a Britishism referring to the sleepy services that ran after midnight. They had the carriage all to themselves, but for an unshaven man apparently snoozing into his neck, obliviously drunk.

  ‘This is the train I used to catch visiting my Dad’s place, before we got the car.’ He regretted that ‘we’: it felt somehow unkind to rub his married coupleness into TC’s still-single face. And that regret instantly reminded him that he and TC had never once spent a weekend at Sag Harbor. He had taken his cue from her, keeping their relationship a virtual secret. TC had met Will’s father just once and they had never spent any proper time together. Beth, on the other hand, had fitted in straight away; it was one of the things that made it feel so right.

  A silence fell. It was TC who broke it, digging into her bag to produce the item she had been holding before they left her apartment. The Holy Bible. ‘Christ, I nearly forgot.’ She thumbed through the pages at top speed. ‘There. The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 10.’

  ‘Haven’t we been through this already? We found what he wanted us to see: righteous, righteous, righteous.’

  ‘I know, but I’m a nerd. I want to study it some more.’

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know. But something tells me I’ll know it when I see it.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Sunday, 3.08am, Sag Harbor, New York

  The house in Sag Harbor, at least, sprung no surprises. The key was under the flower pot, as always; the place was even quite warm, testament to the efficiency of the local couple Will’s father hired to keep things ticking over out of season.

  He moved around rapidly, turning on lights, putting hot water on the stove, making tea. Clutching a packet of Oreos, he finally sat himself opposite TC, facing her across the vast, aged oak table that dominated Monroe Sr’s stylishly rustic kitchen.

  Instantly, the memories flooded back. The long winters at school, when Will could feel every one of those three thousand miles that separated him from his father. The joy when a parcel arrived in the post, often containing a delicious slice of exotic Americana — perhaps a packet of bubblegum or, never forgotten, a leather baseball. And then the thrill as he was put on a plane during the summer vacation, ‘an unaccompanied minor’ on his way to see his Dad. Those August weeks in Sag Harbor, spent crabbing on the beach or eating clams on the deck, were the highlight of Will’s year. He could still feel, even now, twenty years later, the pit in his stomach when September loomed and he would be taken back to the airport — and away from his father for another year.

  Will forced himse
lf back into the moment. He had begun on the train, but now he explained in full what he had been bursting to tell TC since the moment he had taken the call.

  It was the first TC had heard either of Jay Newell or of Will’s conversation with him earlier that evening. But she was a quick study; once Will had told her about Jay’s phone message, she did not need him to join the dots.

  ‘So Baxter and Macrae were both drugged before they were killed; they were both deemed righteous by people who knew them; and, according to YY and Proverbs 10, if your reading of it is right, it’s this righteous thing which is significant.

  Which somehow explains the wider Hassidic plot. Why they’ve taken Beth, why they killed the guy in Bangkok, why they had someone follow you, or us, tonight. That’s essentially the theory here, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a bit more than a theory now, TC. “2 down: More’s to come.” “Yet more deaths soon.” That’s what he said. He was addressing me directly! He’s read the stories in the Times and he’s telling me, “OK, you’ve cracked two of them, but there are going to be more.” Meaning we have to link this with everything else that’s going on! Don’t you see?’

  ‘No, no, I do see.’ She chose her words carefully. ‘I do see that this must all be linked. The trouble is … Rather, my problem is, I personally cannot quite see how we get from the Macrae/Baxter/righteous thing — which I admit is fascinating and incredible — to the “more” that are supposed to be coming.’

  Will slumped in his chair.

  ‘No, Will. Don’t be like that. This is great progress. We’re nearly there, I’m sure of it. Look, let’s get some sleep and then we’ll think this last bit through,’ she said, placing her hand on his shoulder, sending a pulse of memory through them both. ‘Come on, we can do this.’