The righteous men

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Sunday, 12.12am, Manhattan

He had waited long enough. It was the lights going out that had made him suspicious. He was told this man was desperately searching for his wife: it did not make sense that he would happily go to sleep at midnight.

Besides, he feared he was arousing suspicion, pacing around outside an apartment building for hours on end. This might be Manhattan, where no one seemed to notice anything, but it was a risk.

He telephoned his superiors, asking for permission to make his move.

'All right. But keep it clean. Do you understand?'

'I understand.'

'And may the Lord be with you.'

He waited for the next new arrival at the building, a woman apparently returning from a late-night convenience store with a bag full of groceries. It took him a second to jog the few yards to the entrance, as if catching up with her.

'Oh, let me get that,' he said, holding the door once she had opened it. He followed her in.

While she checked her mailbox, he headed downstairs for the basement — pausing only to cover his face with a ski-mask.

He could hear the sound of a television, seeping out from under the door. He knocked and waited, checking once again the cold steel of the revolver he would reveal the instant the door opened. This would not take long.

Mr Pugachov jumped back in fright, raising his arms in an instant surrender.

'Good. Now, y'all need to stay nice and calm. We need to do this nice and easy. All you gotta do is take me to the apartment on the sixth floor. The one that looks out onto the street. The one where the pretty girl lives. You know the one I mean. Mighty pretty girl.'

Pugachov had never heard such an accent before; this man did not sound like the New Yorkers he knew. It took him a while to work out what he was saying. Guessing, he reached with his right hand behind the door.

'Hey! Hands in the air! What did I say just now, mister?'

'Excuse, excuse,' Pugachov sputtered. 'I was getting key.

Key!' He gestured behind the door, where the man in the ski-mask could see a series of numbered hooks: spare keys for every apartment in the building.

He shoved Pugachov out of the door and towards the back stairway. It was late; no one was around. But it was still too risky to take the elevator. Those were his orders: he must not be seen.

The super opened TO's door tentatively, calling out a meek hello. He felt the gun in his back.

The man in the ski-mask flashed on a torch, searching out the bedroom door. He pushed his hostage towards it.

'Open it.'

Pugachov turned the handle slowly but the gunman reached over him and pushed the door hard.

'Freeze!' he shouted, shining a torch onto the bed. Seeing nothing, he wheeled around, anticipating an ambush from behind. Nothing. Now grabbing Pugachov by the collar, he started flinging open cupboard doors, training his revolver onto each new opening of dark space. When he came to the bathroom door he gave it a firm kick and jumped in, before turning around to ensure no one could pounce.

He searched the rest of the apartment, beaming the torchlight into every corner.

'Well, there's a moral to this story. Trust your hunches. I thought they'd gone and they have.'

He put on the lights and started looking around more closely, never letting Pugachov out of his sight — or out of range.

He flipped open TO's computer, instantly opening up her internet browser. He asked for a 'history', generating a long list of the sites she had looked at most recently. He took out a silver pen and a black notebook and began writing down what he saw. Pugachov noticed for the first time that he was wearing tight black leather gloves.

Next he saw a half-finished pad of Post-it notes. The top sheet was blank, but he held it up to the light all the same.

Sure enough, as so often, he could see the trace of words, and numbers, indented from the page above. It amazed him that people still made this elementary mistake: he would have thought Will Monroe would know better.

Next he picked up the phone, pressing the 'last number' button: 1-718-217-54771173667274341. So many digits could only mean one thing: Monroe had dialled some kind of automated service, offering a series of numerical options, rather than a personal number. The gunman wrote down the full string of numbers and hit redial.

Thank you for calling the Long Island Railroad…

After that it was simple: he only had to punch in the sequence of numbers he had written down. ' 1' to use touchtone, ' 1' for schedule information, then, when asked to enter the first five letters of his starting station, 73667, and so on.

It was easy. Obligingly, the automated female voice told him the times for the next three trains from Penn Station to Bridgehampton, the nearest station for Sag Harbor.

He ran his torch over the floor one more time, noticing a yellow piece of paper that he had missed. It read: Verse 11. The mouth of a righteous man is a well of life: but violence covereth the mouth of the wicked.

He tucked that into his pocket and turned once again to face Pugachov.

'OK, son. It's time to shape up and ship out.' He used his revolver to gesture towards the front door.

As Pugachov made for the handle he turned his back slightly, so that he was sideways on to the gunman. Now he decided, remembering the training he had received as a long ago conscript in the Red Army, was the moment. In an instant, he grabbed the masked man by the wrist and looped his own arm under his shoulder, bringing him quickly to the ground.

The gun had fallen and Pugachov reached for it, only to be kicked, hard, in the balls. He doubled over and felt an arm around his neck. He tried to jab back with his elbows, but there was no movement. He was in a headlock and the man holding him seemed to have superhuman strength. He could feel his breath around his ear.

Somehow, and only with supreme effort, Pugachov managed to wriggle his right arm free and aim it at the man's head. But it did not connect. His fingers were flailing until they finally grabbed something. It took him a second to realize it was not hair. Out of the corner of his eye he could see what he was holding: he had removed the gunman's mask.

Suddenly the grip was loosened. Pugachov slumped, panting heavily. He was no longer the fit, fighting machine of his youth; that stint of military duty in Afghanistan was in the faraway past. Perhaps the masked man had realized that; maybe he understood that Pugachov could inflict no serious damage and was about to let him go.

'I'm afraid you've just made a big mistake, my friend.'

Pugachov looked up to see a much younger man than he was expecting. Now that the mask was off, he could see that his eyes were of the most exceptional blue, almost feminine in their beauty. They seemed to cast beams of sharp, bright light.

He did not have long to stare into them because his view was soon obscured — by the mouth of what he recognized to be a silencer, aimed right between his eyes.