Sam Bourne - The righteous men

Will could feel the anger rising within him again. Why did he not just shake this man and force him to reveal where Beth was? Why was he putting up with this? Because, a voice inside him began, if these people were fanatical enough to kidnap Beth for no apparent reason, they were fanatical enough to hold on to her. Rabbi Freilich might have looked weak and exhausted, but there were a dozen men in here who were stronger. If Will lunged, they would soon have him pinned down.

'All right, so it's not me. Who else knows?'

The rabbi sunk lower. 'That's just it. No one knows. No one outside this community. And not even this community has any idea what's going on: there would be mass panic if they did. If they knew that the lamadvavniks are being murdered, every day more of them killed, there would be chaos here. They would believe the end of the world was coming.'

'You believe that, don't you?' It was said in Tova Chaya's gentlest voice.

The rabbi looked up at her, his eyes wet. 'I fear that what the Rebbe spoke of is coming to pass. Di velt shokelt zich und treiselt zich. That's what he used to say, Tova Chaya. The world is trembling and shaking. I fear for what judgement this day is about to bring upon us.'

Will was pacing. 'So no one outside this small group has any idea of this. Just you, Yosef Yitzhok and a few of your best students.'

'And now you.'

'And you're sure no one breathed a word?'

'To whom? Who even knew about this whole subject?

Why would anyone ask? But when Yosef Yitzhok was found dead. Well, then 'Then, what?'

'It confirmed that somebody knows what we know and wanted to know more. until then, I thought maybe it was a strange coincidence that the tzaddikim were dying. Maybe this was the work of HaShem, for a purpose beyond our understanding.

But Yosef Yitzhok being murdered, that's not a plan of HaShem's.'

'You think someone was pressing him for information?'

'Just before you came tonight, I had a visit. The police.

They think Yosef Yitzhok was tortured before he was killed.'

Will and TO both recoiled.

'What did they want from him that they didn't know already?'

'Ah, this you tried to ask me about before. Remember, I told you about the verses the Rebbe quoted in his talks? The ones Yosef Yitzhok had memorized? Well, there was something missing.'

'There were only thirty-five.'

'That's right. Only thirty-five. You can use the method I just showed you, converting letters into numbers and turning those numbers into co-ordinates, but you would still have only thirty-five righteous men. Isn't it obvious what the men who killed Yosef Yitzhok wanted to know? They wanted the identity of number thirty-six.'

Sunday, 11.18pm, Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Will's first impulse was to ask Rabbi Freilich the name of this thirty-sixth man. It was crucial. If he and TO knew that, they could work out where the killers were heading next: whoever he was, they were bound to be on his trail.

But the rabbi would not budge. For one thing, he said, the death of Yosef Yitzhok suggested the murderers were still not in possession of this vital fact. Had YY cracked under torture?

The rabbi was convinced he had not. 'I know this man. His intellect, his soul. He would not betray the word of the Rebbe.'

He was sure the secret was safe. If he shared it with TO and Will, it could only bring harm to them. Better that they did not know. (Will was sceptical: if the torturers came after him, they were hardly likely to inquire politely whether he had any useful information and then, once assured he did not, beat a polite retreat.) Will tried' another approach. 'This thirty-sixth righteous man? Is he still alive?'

'We think so. But I really will not say any more, Mr Monroe.

I cannot say any more.'

'Is he the only one alive?'

'We're not certain. Our sources of information are very patchy. We have had to scramble people to the furthest corners of the world to find these tzaddikim. Each time we have been getting there too late.'

'You mean, you didn't work out these names until this week?'

'No, Yosef Yitzhok made this breakthrough a few months ago. And, as I told you, we sent people to take a look, just to see who these tzaddikim were. We planned to keep an eye on them, no more. Maybe give them food or money if they were in trouble. But, to answer your question, we did not know they were dying until this week. We're not sure, but it only seems to have started a few days ago.'

'On Rosh Hashana,' said TO, her mind turning over visibly.

'That's when Howard Macrae was murdered.'

'I'm afraid we didn't know about that until days after it happened. When the news about the others started coming through. Was it even in the papers?'

'Yes,' said Will, pushing the air out of his nostrils in a sound of wry resignation. 'It was in the papers.' That was the trouble with page B3 of Metro; people could sail right past it.

'Anyway, it was the high holy days. We were not reading the newspapers. We were living our lives. We had no idea anything was happening. But then some of our people started hearing things. Our emissary in Seattle saw the cabin he had visited on the television news. The man who runs our centre in Chennai was reading through the local paper when he saw that the tzaddik in that town — one of our youngest — had been found dead. One report after another.'

'How many have gone?'

'We don't know. Remember, Yosef Yitzhok only began working on this a few months ago. Our list was barely complete; we hadn't been able to confirm everyone. This man, for example-' the rabbi gestured back towards the wipe-board with the Chancellor's number on it '-it took us a long time to find him. It turns out the GPS system is slightly different there, in England; it takes a different key. The WGS84 datum, apparently. We didn't know that then, so when Yosef Yitzhok first ran the numbers, they indicated, of all things, a prison. A Belmarsh jail. It seemed unlikely. But we didn't dismiss such a possibility. We know the tzaddikim delight in concealing their true nature.

'But when we readjusted the figures the result was instant.

Downing Street! And not the famous house, Number Ten.

But the house next door. The map was very clear. At the time, this man, Curtis, was in some trouble. A scandal, I think. Another disguise.'

Will was getting impatient. Enough lectures, he thought.

He wanted simple, hard facts — stripped of their mystical overtones.

'So, sorry, I just want to be clear on this. Do you have the full list or not?'

'We think we do.'

'And of those, how many are dead?'

'We think at least thirty-three.'

'Jesus!'

'You mean, they may only have to kill three more people?

It's nearly midnight now. Yom Kippur ends in about nineteen hours!' TO, usually so calm, sounded genuinely panicked.

'Rabbi, whoever's doing this seems to be pretty clued up on Jewish religious custom, wouldn't you say?' Will began.

'I mean, who else but religious Jews know all this stuff about the righteous men, about the Days of Awe? They're following it all to the letter. And you say that no one outside this very small group even knew of Yosef Yitzhok's discovery.'

'What are you saying, Mr Monroe?'

'I'm saying, Rabbi, that you may not be behind this, despite the fact that I know you're a proven kidnapper. But somebody inside this… organization or community or whatever it is, almost certainly is. I reckon this is what the police would call an inside job. If I were you, I'd start looking at the people here very closely.'

'Mr Monroe, it's late and time is running out. I don't have the time or the strength to start fighting you. What Tova Chaya said before is right: we need to work together. So I'm going to trust you, even if you cannot trust me. I'm going to let you do something that will prove we are not behind this terrible wickedness.'