The righteous men

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 hurt?'

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.

'What we did not know, what we could not have known, was that Mr Samak had a weak heart. Such a strong man, but a terribly weak heart. The… steps we had to take to bring him into custody were, I'm afraid, more than he could take.'

For a brief moment, Will thought like a journalist: he had wrung a confession from this man. Not of murder, perhaps, but of manslaughter. In a spasm of professional pride, Will guessed that, despite hours of intense questioning, New York's finest had not yet achieved quite so good a result.

'That is what happened, Mr Monroe and, though it will amaze you to hear it, I have only told you the truth in all our encounters so far. I repeat that I have taken a great risk in speaking so candidly. But something tells me you will take my gesture the right way and you will not spurn me. I have trusted you and now, I hope, you will trust me. Do it for your own reasons, Will. Do it because I have told you that I will do my best to keep your wife alive. But do it also because of what I told you yesterday and repeat again today: that an ancient story is unfolding here, threatening an outcome mankind has feared for thousands of years. Your wife matters to you, Mr Monroe, of course she does. But the world, the creation of the Almighty, matters to me.'

Now the rabbi was leaving the silence, waiting for Will to fill it. He knew what was happening, but he could not help himself.

'What are you asking me to do?'

'To do nothing, Mr Monroe. Nothing at all. Just to stay out of this and to be patient. There are perhaps a couple of days left and then we will all know our fates. So even though you are desperate to see Beth again, I urge you to wait. No meddling, no amateur detective work. Just wait. I hope you will do what's right, Will. Good night. And may God turn his face to shine upon all of us.'

The phone clicked off. Will looked at TO, who seemed to be trembling with him.

'It's so strange to hear his voice,' she was saying, in little more than a whisper. 'After we've talked about him so much, I mean.'

Will had scribbled the odd note while the rabbi was talking so that he and TO could deconstruct his meaning. But it was the tone that was most striking. If Will was briefing Harden on the conversation he had just had, that would be his headline.

The rabbi had sounded conciliatory but something else, too — almost regretful.

The silence was not allowed to last. The cell phone had another text to disgorge. a chain is no stronger than its weakest link And then a moment later:

Safety in numbers. No more.

Will read them out, pausing as TO demanded clarification of the location of the period in that sentence. There were two full stops, Will replied. Was he sure? He was sure. He was having trouble concentrating. He was hearing Beth's voice, over and over: Will? Will, it's Beth.

'OK,' TO was saying. 'Let's assume that he means what he says, that there will be no more. This is the full set.'

In front of her, laid out on the table, were ten neat squares of paper, one message written on each.

He who hesitates is lost

He that knows nothing doubts nothing

Opportunity seldom knocks twice

A friend in need is a friend indeed

To the victor the spoils

Goodness is better than beauty

A man is known by the company he keeps

From little acorns mighty oaks grow A chain is no stronger than its weakest link Safety in numbers. No more.

TO was glaring at them, her sketchbook on her lap, surveying the pattern she had arranged. The messages were in three groups. Encouragement, warnings, enigmas.

TO now laid the pad onto the table, alongside the scraps of paper. It was almost dark with ink: she had filled the page. All over it were words or half-phrases crossed out, written backwards or in diagonals. She had written out the messages in every possible order, each time underlining the first letter of each line: attempting the acrostic. Will could see the results: HHOATGAFAS followed by a list of random variations using the same letters. All of them spelled gibberish.

As if reading his mind, TO turned the page of her sketchbook to show the one underneath, its surface no less covered with calculations and abortive anagrams. She peeled that away to show the one below and the one below that. She had been breaking her head to solve this puzzle for hours.

Will felt a surge of gratitude: he knew how lonely he would have been without her. But there was no getting away from it. Despite all her efforts, despite their combined intellect, they still had not cracked this riddle in ten parts. It had defeated them.

'I can't believe I am that dumb.'

'What?' Will looked up from the table to see TO leaning back in her chair, hands on her head and eyes fixed on the ceiling.

'I cannot believe I am so stupid.' She was smiling, shaking her head in disbelief.

'Please tell me precisely what you're talking about,' Will said, in a voice that even he recognized as excessively polite and English, a voice he often used when trying to stay calm.

'It was so obvious and I made it so complicated. How many hours have I spent on this thing now?'

'You mean, you've worked it out?'

'I've worked it out. What has he sent us? "A friend in need." "From little acorns." He's sent us proverbs. Ten proverbs.'

'Right, so… Sorry, you're going to have to tell me. I can see he's sent us ten proverbs. The trouble is, we don't know what they mean.'

'They don't mean anything. They're not meant to mean anything. He's sent us ten proverbs. Because that's where we're meant to look. Proverbs, 10.'