Sam Bourne - The righteous men

'What's happened to him?'

'He's dead, Will. He was murdered, brutally murdered.'

'Oh my God. Where?'

'No one knows. They found him dead in an alleyway near the shut It was early this morning, probably on his way to shacharis. Sorry, morning prayers. His tallis, his prayer shawl, was red with blood.'

'I don't believe this. Who would do such a thing?'

'I don't know. None of us know. That's why Sara Leah you met her, my wife — said I should find you. She thought this was somehow connected with you.'

'With me? She blames me?'

'No! Who said blame? She just thinks this might be connected to whatever happened on Friday night.'

'You told her about all that?'

'Only what I knew. But Yosef Yitzhok's wife is her sister.

We're family, Will. He's my brother-in-law. Was my brotherin-law.'

The redness of his eyes was about to deepen again.

'And Yosef Yitzhok said something to his wife?'

'Not much, I don't think. Just that he had spoken to you on Friday night. He said you were caught up in something very important. No, that wasn't the word. He said you were caught up in something catastrophic. That was the word he used, catastrophic'

'Did he say anything else to his wife?'

'Just that he hoped and prayed that you understood what was happening. And that you would know what to do.'

At that moment, Will could not have felt more helpless.

The rabbi had said it first and now Yosef Yitzhok was repeating it, from the grave. An ancient story is unfolding, that's what the rabbi had said. Something mankind has feared for millennia. Now YY was telling him the stakes were so high that he was praying that Will would know what to do. And yet, Will felt as confused as ever. If anything, more confused — his head swirling with the bizarre coincidence of Macrae, Baxter and Samak, three noble men all dying horrible deaths; the blustering rhetoric of the Book of Proverbs and, most recently, the impenetrable, mystical geometry of the diagram he and TO had found in this very library.

'Shit! TO She's still upstairs. Come with me. Hurry!'

Will was scolding himself at every step, as he bounded up stairs and along corridors, Sandy behind him, returning to the reading room. How could he have left her alone?

Will marched towards the desk he and TO had shared nearly an hour earlier. As he got nearer, his heart sank. A woman was sitting there — but it was not TO. She had gone.

Will punched the desk with his fist, sending a bolt of pain through his arm — and a look of terror across the woman's face. How can I have been such a fool! These kidnappers had now taken two women from under his nose. He was meant to have protected them both and he had failed them. Both.

Sandy was standing by him, but Will could not see him or hear him. Only one thing stirred him out of his torpor: the steady, persistent vibration he now felt on his thigh. It was his phone. 2 New Messages He pressed the first one.

Where are you? Had to leave. Call ne. TO.

Will sighed out a chestful of air. Thank God up above for that. He opened the next message, sure it would be TO, suggesting the place they should meet up. What he saw made him take two steps back in amazement.

Fiftieth and Fifth.

Yosef Yitzhok might have been dead — but the riddles lived on.

Sunday, 4.04pm, Manhattan

'And when did it arrive?'

'Just now. This second.'

'Well, the first conclusion we can draw is that Yosef Yitzhok was not our informant after all.'

'We can't be certain of that, TO. His killer may have grabbed his phone and carried on sending messages.' As he said it, Will saw the absurdity of his suggestion. What were the chances that an assailant would steal a phone, check the 'sent' file and carry on sending perfectly coded messages in the same vein? Besides, there was an easy way to check.

'Sandy, can you do me a favour? Call home and find out if anyone took Yosef Yitzhok's phone when he was killed.'

Now talking back into the mouthpiece, to TO, he offered another theory. 'What if someone stole his phone in the first place?'

'Well, then it wouldn't have been YY sending the messages at all, would it?' TO was getting exasperated. Fearful of returning to her own apartment, she had fled to Central Park.

To her great relief, she had run into some people she knew: married friends, with plenty of kids. As Will could hear through the phone, she had stuck herself in the middle of the group. The strollers, toddlers and picnic blankets would, she reckoned, serve as a security cordon, keeping the stalkers and kidnappers at bay. Listening to the sounds of childhood chatter, of softball games and a mother handing out cake, Will felt a pang of envy or, rather, longing — longing for a Sunday afternoon of relaxed, sun-kissed normality.

'You mean, it was someone else all along.'

'I think so, yes. YY is dead but the messages have not stopped. Ergo, he wasn't the one sending them.'

'So why would they kill him?'

'Who?'

'The Hassidim.'

'We don't know it was the Hassidim who killed him. That's just another conclusion you're jumping to. The truth is, Will, we know hardly anything. We can guess and speculate and theorize, but we know very little.'

'What about the drawing in the library. Did you see anything?'

'I think it's probably telling us something very simple. It's saying, "Think kabbalah". The image is so complex, full of so many component parts, it can't be about any one bit. It's just the general idea. That diagram is the fundamental building block of all kabbalah. It's almost like a logo.'

'Hang on. There's another one coming now. I'll call you back.'

He walked as he pressed the buttons to reveal the latest message, one which he willed to be clear. Now that he did not have TO at his side, he desperately needed a little simplicity.

Behold the lord of the heavens but not of Hell.

They only had to walk a few blocks north to find the junction which the earlier message had directed them to: Fiftieth Street and Fifth Avenue. That was where they stood now.

Looming over them was the gothic fortress of St Patrick's Cathedral where, little more than a week ago, he had sat rapt, listening to The Messiah with his father. A week ago but a different lifetime.

His father. A spasm of guilt passed through Will: he had barely included him in this search. It was obvious he wanted to help; he had made that clear last night and again this morning, even doing his bit to decipher the text messages.

Yet Will had been impatient, happy to use his father as a glorified chauffeur and not much more. Perhaps for all the effort of the last few years, the two of them were not as close as Will liked to believe. Most men would probably have looked to their fathers to be their chief ally in a crisis like this, but Will was not most men. He had lived the bulk of his childhood, his formative years, a continent away.

Looking at it now, Will remembered his initial impression of the cathedral when he had first arrived in New York. It struck him as vaguely ridiculous. Despite his love of old buildings, this vast, vaulted structure, which would have fitted in fine in Paris, London or Rome, looked absurd in the middle of Manhattan. Sandwiched between steel and glass skyscrapers, its arched windows, crenellated towers and heaven piercing spires were not only out of place but out of time.

They seemed to embody a kind of futility, an attempt to hold back the onrush of modernity. This was the fastest city in the world and the cathedral stood implacably at its centre — trying to stop the clock.

What could it mean? Beckoning Sandy to follow him, he waded through the tourist throng and stepped inside, enveloped immediately in the deferential hush vast houses of worship wreathe around themselves like fog. Will marched forward, his eyes scanning for anything that might fit that message. Who was lord of the heavens but not of hell?