The Righteous Men (2006)

by Sam Bourne

  And I bet I know where it continues, thought Will. He went back to Google, now narrowing his search to ‘Church of the Reborn Jesus and replacement theology’. Three references, the first an article from The Christian Review.

  ‘… Replacement theology became increasingly unfashionable in this period, discredited by the politically correct crowd, said its defenders. A few years earlier, it had enjoyed a vigorous revival chiefly through a cerebral grouping known as the Church of the Reborn Jesus. According to this group, Christians had, by their recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, not only inherited the Jews’ status as the elect, but inherited Judaism itself. The Jews had, the Reborn Jesus movement argued, ignored God’s direct wishes and therefore forfeited all that they had learned from Him. They had disinherited themselves from their role as the chosen people but — and this is what set the Church of the Reborn Jesus apart — the Jews had also abandoned their own traditions, customs and even folklore. From now on, those were to be regarded as the possessions of committed Christians.’

  ‘Stop.’ It was TC, white-faced. ‘That’s the key point, right there. Their own traditions, customs, even folklore. This group believes that Judaism contains the truth, not for Jews but for Christians. Even the folklore. Don’t you see? They’ve taken it all. The mysticism, the kabbalah, everything.’

  ‘The story of the righteous men,’ said Will.

  ‘Yes. They don’t think this is some weird Hassidic tradition.

  They think this belongs to them. They believe it’s true.’

  He clicked on the next Google result. It was a link to an evangelical discussion group. Somebody calling themselves NewDawn had written a long posting, apparently in reply to a question about the origins of the Church of the Reborn Jesus.

  In its day it had quite an impact — kind of the smart end of the whole Jesus freak, sandal-wearing movement. It was centred on this very charismatic preacher who was then a chaplain to Yale, Rev Jim Johnson.

  Will looked up at TC. ‘I know that name,’ he said. ‘He founded some evangelical movement in the seventies. Died a few years ago.’ But TC was reading on.

  ‘Apparently Rev Johnson influenced a whole generation of elite Christians. They called him the Pied Piper on campus, because he enjoyed such a dedicated following.’

  I can vouch for that, said the posting below. I was at Yale in that period and Johnson was a phenomenon. He was only interested in the A-list, top-flight students — editors of Law Review, class president, those guys. We called them the Apostles, hanging around Johnson like he was the Messiah or something. For anyone interested, I’ve scanned in a picture from the Yale Daily News which shows Johnson and his followers. Click here.

  Will clicked and waited for the picture to load. It was grainy, in drab, 1970s colour and it took a while to fill the frame. Slowly it came into view. At the centre, wearing a broad grin, like the captain of a college football team, was a man in his late thirties, wearing an open-necked shirt and large glasses with the curved, rectangular frames that were then regarded as super-modern. He wore no dog-collar, no dark suit. He was, Will concluded, what the Victorians would have called a muscular Christian.

  Surrounding him were young, serious-looking men, exuding that born-to-rule confidence that radiated out of Yale or Harvard yearbooks. The hair was long or bulky, the shirt collars and jacket lapels wide. The faces seemed to shine with possibility. These men were not only going to rule the world. It was quite clear they believed they would do it with Jesus’s blessing.

  ‘I think you need to hurry,’ said Tom, now taking up Will’s previous position by the curtain. There’s a car outside. Two guys are getting out and coming into the building.’

  But Will was hardly listening. Instead he was pushed back into his seat with surprise: he had recognized one of the faces in the photograph. He was only able to because he had seen another, different picture of this same man in his youth recently. The paper had run it when he was appointed. There, at Jim Johnson’s side, was none other than Townsend McDougal — the future editor of The New York Times.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Will said.

  ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’

  Will was confused. How would TC recognize McDougal?

  ‘I didn’t want to say, because I wasn’t sure. But it really couldn’t be anyone else.’

  Will looked up at her, crinkling his eyebrows to register his puzzlement. ‘Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Will! They’re coming up. You’ve got to go!’

  ‘Look,’ said TC, taking her finger to the far left of the back row of the picture — an area Will had barely examined. TC stopped at a lean, handsome young man with a full head of thick hair. He was unsmiling.

  ‘Maybe I’m wrong, Will. But I think that’s your father.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Monday, 2.56pm, Brooklyn

  Tom had fairly wrenched Will from the chair and out the window, sending him plunging down the fire escape. He nudged TC the same way and was about to follow himself when he looked back. The computer screen was still alight with information. It would be too terrible, thought Tom, if his machine, always such a loyal ally, were to end up giving them all away.

  He rushed TC out, then moved over to the desk and started frantically closing down programmes. It was while he was shutting down the internet browser that the door flung open.

  He heard it before he saw it, a splintering crash, as two men shouldered their way into the apartment. Tom looked up and saw one of them: tall, thick-armed and with the clearest, sharpest blue eyes. In an instant, Tom decided to do the one thing his every instinct rebelled against. He reached for the powers cord and pulled it out of the wall, shutting down his computer and everything connected to it.

  But the move was too sudden for his uninvited guests. They interpreted a man stretching downwards the way they had been trained to, as someone reaching for a weapon. As he pulled on the white flex, the bullet pierced his chest. He crumpled to the ground. The screens went dark.

  Will charged down the back ladder, taking two then three rungs at a time. His head was throbbing. Who was chasing him? What had happened to TC and Tom? Where should he go?

  But even as he thundered downwards, storey after storey, his mind was racing with what he had just seen. The face was unmistakable; TC had seen it straight away. What Freudian impulse had led his eye away from it? The eyes, the jaw, the firm nose: his father.

  And yet, the one thing he knew for certain about William Monroe Sr was that he was an avowed rationalist, a coolly secular man whose scepticism about religion might well have thwarted his highest ambition, to serve as a justice of the United States Supreme Court. Could he really have once been a bible-thumper, and such a serious one?

  Three more storeys to go, and now he could feel the iron handrail vibrating. He looked up, to see the soles of shoes descending just as fast as his. One more level to go: Will all but jumped it.

  Now he started sprinting down Smith Street, dodging people as they came out of the Salonike diner. He looked over his shoulder: a commotion behind him, caused by a man dashing through a crowd. ‘Hey, watch it asshole!’

  Will body-swerved round the corner, clasping hold of a pretzel wagon to steady himself. In front of him was Fourth Avenue, with six lanes of traffic, all moving fast. At the first gap, he plunged in.

  He was standing on the dotted white line separating two streams of heavy traffic. Drivers started blasting their horns; they clearly thought Will was some kind of psycho. He looked back. There, just a lane of cars away, was the stalker, the man he had nearly caught in the act of murder less than twenty four hours ago. As if protected by the traffic, Will stared at him. What came back was a laser-beam eye that seemed to bore right through him.

  He wheeled around and spotted another gap in traffic just a beat and he would miss it. Will leapt across, turning around to see that his pursuer had made the same move.

  They were still just the width of a single car apart. He could see a
bulge around the man’s hip, what Will assumed to be a holster.

  He looked ahead: the light was still green. But for how much longer? Soon it would be red: the traffic would slow down and he would be able to cross to the other side, but so would the man with the gun. He would be within pointblank range. But there was no gap. The cars were moving too fast.

  Will had only one option. Instead of crossing the road, he sprinted to his left, as if trying to catch up with the traffic.

  He ran faster, never taking his eye off the lights. He would act the second he saw a glimmer of red. Come on, come on. He looked around. The man was still just one lane away, but hardly moved from his previous position. Now was the moment.

  As green turned to red, the traffic slowed, the cars bunching up behind each other: Will had only to dart between them, keeping himself low. Three, four, five lanes and he was nearly there.

  Once across, he had to burst through a family waiting at the crossing; he knocked the balloon out of a child’s hand.

  Will looked back to see it soar — and to realize Laser Eyes was now just a sprint away from him.

  At last, Atlantic Avenue subway station. Will hurtled down the stairs, cursing the wide woman blocking his way. Down and down, vaulting over the turnstile, hoping his ears would not fail him. Years of travelling on the Underground in London had given him a sixth sense for the mix of wind, light and humming sounds that indicated a train was coming. Will was sure he could hear it on the opposite platform. He would have to get up the stairs and across the bridge in just a few seconds. He could hear the thudding of footsteps; the stalker was just behind him.

  Only moments separated them, but as Will crossed the bridge he could see the train that had just pulled in. An instant later, he was sliding down the stairs, shoving people out of the way. There was the beep-beep-beep and hiss of air that announced the train was about to move off. Just one more second …

  Will dived from the bottom stair and across the platform in what felt like a single leap. The door had almost closed behind him when it stopped — held back by four fingers of a hand. Through the glass, Will could see his face: the eyes almost translucent, fixed in a stare that turned Will’s guts to ice. The door was inching back.

  ‘What you doing? You just gonna have to wait for the next train like everyone else!’ It was a woman passenger, no younger than seventy, using her walking stick to whack the knuckles protruding through the door. As the train began to move off, she rapped harder — until one by one, they disappeared.

  The man with the glass eyes was left on the platform, getting smaller and smaller.

  ‘Thank you with all my heart,’ said Will, gasping for air as he fell into the nearest seat.

  ‘People need to have more respect,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Will wheezed. ‘Respect. I couldn’t agree more.’

  As the air came back into his lungs, and the oxygen returned to his brain, he could see only one image. When he closed his eyes, it was there, imprinted under his eyelids. His father, aged twenty-one — a comrade in the army of Jesus. And not just the army, but the vanguard. A handpicked elite who believed they knew the secrets of the true faith.

  What were they exactly? Christians, certainly. But with a strange edge of arrogance. It was they, not the Jews, who were the chosen people. They, not the Jews, who could regard Judaism itself as their birthright. They, not the Jews, who would quote the Old Testament and all its prophecies, they who would see the promises made to Abraham as promises made to them.

  Will looked out the window. DeKalb Avenue station. He got out and jumped on another train. Keep Laser Eyes and his friends guessing.

  TC had seen the significance straight away. According to this strict brand of replacement theology, if Judaism was theirs, that meant all of it. The story of Abraham’s bargain with Sodom would be part of their inheritance — and so would the fruit of that story, the mystical Jewish belief that the world was maintained by thirty-six righteous men. For some reason, they had taken that belief as their own — and now, it seemed, they had added a new twist. They were determined to kill these good men one by one. But if it was this bizarre Christian sect who were behind the killings, why on earth had the Hassidim kidnapped Beth?

  It was too much. Will needed to think, calmly. He looked at his watch. 3.45pm. So little time. He called TC’s number, praying she had somehow got away.

  ‘Will! You’re alive!’

  ‘Are you OK? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in the hospital. With Tom. He was shot.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘I was on the roof. I heard a shot, I ran downstairs and he was lying there, bleeding. Oh, Will—’

  ‘Is he alive?’

  ‘They’re operating on him now. My God, who did this, Will? Why would anyone do this?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m going to find them, I promise. I’m going to find the people behind this whole fucking mess. And I know I’m close.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Monday, 3.47pm, Manhattan

  TC, I know they’re here. In New York City’

  ‘How can you be so certain? They’re killing righteous men all over the world — why would they be here?’

  For one thing, everything they know, they’ve got from the Hassidim. They’ve got all they can from hacking into their computers. Now they need to be here in person; to complete the process. That’s why they killed Yosef Yitzhok. They’re desperate to find number thirty-six. And they’re convinced the Hassidim know who he is. And they’re right. Besides, I reckon they want to be here.’

  “What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t you see? Tonight is the climax. It’s the moment it all comes together. They’ll want to be in the place where all this prophecy becomes real. Because this is where it all ends, TC. The Sodom of the twenty-first century. New York City!

  It’s here the world finally loses its bargain with God. Just thirty-six righteous men; so long as they’re alive, the world goes on. Without them, it’s all over. These people will want to be here to see it happen. The end of the world.’

  ‘Will, you’re scaring me.’

  ‘And there’s one other thing.’ He stopped himself. ‘Look, there’s no time. I’ve got to go.’ He hung up and dialled a number at The New York Times.

  ‘Amy Woodstein.’

  ‘Amy, it’s Will. I need you to do something for me.’

  ‘Will!’ She was whispering. ‘I shouldn’t even be talking to you. Are you getting some help?’

  ‘Right now I need your help, Amy. There’s a flyer on my desk, for a convention of the Church of the Reborn Jesus.

  Could you just read it out to me?’

  Amy sighed in audible relief. ‘Hold on.’ Seconds later she was back. ‘OK: The Church of the Reborn Jesus, valuing families through family values. Spiritual Gathering, Javits Convention Center, on West 34th Street … oh, hold on, its today.’

  ‘Yes!’ He sounded as if he was punching the air.

  ‘Oh, Will, I’m so glad you’re finding some comfort in your faith. I know many people facing challenges—’

  ‘Amy, love to chat, got to go.’

  Thirty minutes later, he was there. The Javits Convention Center. He could see a delegates’ counter, staffed by bright eyed volunteers. That would not work. Ah, a press desk.

  ‘Excuse me, I’m from the Guardian, a London newspaper, and I fear I’m not yet on your list. Is there any way you might be able to accommodate me?’

  ‘Sir, I’m afraid accreditation has to be done through our Richmond office. Did you pre-accredit?’ Pre-accredit. Just when Will thought he had heard every coinage corporate America could possibly come up with.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I just couldn’t get through on the phone. But my editors would be so disappointed if I couldn’t cover this wonderful celebration of family values. We have nothing like this in Britain, you see. And I know there is a real hunger back home for this kind of spiritual example. Is there any way you cou
ld let me in, just for half an hour or so, so that I could at least tell my bosses I saw it with my own eyes?’

  He had pushed every button. In the years since he had arrived in America, this kind of patter had got him into NASA for a space launch, Graceland for an Elvis tribute night and a presidential candidates’ debate in Trenton, New Jersey. He hoped his eyes glowed with eagerness.

  But the woman on the desk, identified by her label as Carrie-Anne, Facilitator, was not about to relent. I’m going to need you to speak to Richmond.’

  Damn.

  ‘Sure, what’s the number I need to dial?’

  Will wrote it down carefully — then, using his cell phone, he dialled his home number.

  ‘Hello. This is Tom Mitchell from the Guardian in London. It’s about today’s convention. I just wondered if there’s any chance …That’s right.’ At the other end, he could hear his own voice, announcing that he and Beth were away from the phone right now. He tried to block out the sound and carry on talking. ‘So I need to look at the programme. OK—’ Will put his hand over the receiver and then mouthed to Carrie-Anne, ‘She says I need to see the press pack.’ Without hesitation, she passed one over.

  ‘OK, so I should go through that now, see what interests me … all right, that’s a very big help. Thanks so much.’

  As he was talking to his own answering machine, Will’s eye ran down the list of sessions.

  The Holden Suite: Putting togetherness back together. Parenting after divorce with Rev Peter Thompson.

  The Macmillan Room: How would Jesus do it? Seeking the saviour’s advice.

  Will could not find what he wanted. He looked up; Carrie Anne was smiling as she handed press badges to a TV reporter and her cameraman. Silently, Will wheeled around and headed for the conference rooms — his press pack held high as a surrogate credential.

  He looked back at the list. Lunch breaks, creche facilities, workshops. Then his eye stopped.