Sam Bourne - The righteous men

'Go on.'

'I'm going to send you to the next victim.'

Monday, 12.10am, Manhattan

Will had been to the Lower East Side a few times, to visit friends chic and savvy enough to buy up and renovate properties in the now-gentrified pockets north of East Broadway.

He had seen the old-time delis, drunk coffee in the retro-chic cafes on Orchard Street. But he had not wandered beyond the safely fashionable areas. He had glided past the old tenement buildings, seeing them as cinematic backdrop. He had never looked properly.

Now he was among them, shivering from cold and exhaustion in the night air. Scrunched in his hand, safely hidden inside his pocket, was the scrap of paper with the address he was meant to find.

Rabbi Freilich had led Will and TO back to the computer whiz who had given them the earlier demonstration. He talked them through the process. First, feed the computer the Hebrew sentence: Verse 16 of Isaiah 30. Then ask it to stop at the right intervals, and it will spit out a number. Feed that number through the GPS websites and you get co-ordinates for a place: a specific address on a specific street on the Lower East Side in Manhattan.

'Hang on a minute,' Will had said. 'Isn't this a bit unlikely?

You've got thirty-six righteous men out of six billion people on the planet — and two are in New York? Howard Macrae and now this guy? It sounds a bit convenient to me.' It had not yet congealed into a full allegation, but Will's scepticism was turning into suspicion.

The rabbi explained that they too had wondered at such a coincidence. But then they had read deeper into Hassidic folklore. It turned out a truly great tzaddik radiated a 'glow' — the same word Rabbi Mandelbaum had used — that might draw in others. Their calculated guess was that the Rebbe's goodness had been so powerful that a couple of tzaddikim had been pulled near. Think of them as satellites,' the rabbi had said.

But there was a problem. The address now balled up in Will's fist was an apartment building, home to dozens of people. Which one was the tzaddik? The Hassidim had gone down there once to check it out soon after Yosef Yitzhok had first cracked the Rebbe's code, but they had not been able to identify him. The man in this building remained one of the most hidden of the hidden righteous men.

'You will have a better chance of finding him than us,'

Freilich had said.

'Why?'

'Look at us, Mr Monroe. We cannot go where you go, we cannot ask what you can ask. We are too visible. You are a reporter from The New York Times. You can go where you like and talk to anybody. You found Mr Macrae, zechuso yogen aleinu, and Mr Baxter, zechuso yogen aleinu.' May his righteousness protect us. 'Find this man. Go find our tzaddik.'

So shortly before midnight, Will took off his skullcap and went back out into the world. As he set off, TO decided to do the same.

'I'm going to call the police. I can't hide from them forever.

We've done what we needed to do.'

'What will you say?'

'That my phone's been dead all day and I've only just heard what happened. Wish me luck. Or at least visit me in jail.'

'This is so not a joke.'

'I know. But you can see what it looks like: a dead man in my apartment and I'm AWOL. I might be charged with murder by the morning.'

'This is all my fault. I sucked you into this insane mess.'

'No, you didn't. You asked for my help. I could have said no. I knew what I was getting into.'

'Did you?'

'Not really, no.'

And with that, Will leaned over to give TO a kiss on the cheek — only for her to pull back the moment he came close.

There was a magnetic field of resistance around her face. Of course. She was not allowed to touch a man, let alone be kissed by one, not in the heart of Crown Heights. Will made do with a plain goodbye.

Now watching his breath form clouds before him, Will turned the corner so that he was at Montgomery and Henry.

Behind him was a small triangle of park. In front, the tenement building he was looking for. He held back, wanting to gaze at it a while. He could see one, two, three lights still on.

Now what? He had barely considered what he would do once he got here. He could not exactly start knocking on doors, claiming to be doing a vox pop for The New York Times after midnight. What could he do?

He would have to get into the building. That would be a start. Then he could look at the mail boxes, get some names, Google a few of them on his BlackBerry. He would think of something. '

Oh, good. Someone coming out. Perfect: that would give him his chance to slip in. Except this person was moving too fast, almost running. It was hard to make him, or her, out; it was too dark and the light above the entrance too dim. But when he stepped forward, looking nervously left and right, Will saw enough.

Most striking was the piercing brightness of his eyes, a chill, glassy blue. But it was the posture Will recognized. A physical confidence, as if this man was used to using his body.

The clothes were slightly changed, but there was no mistaking him — with or without his baseball cap.

Monday, 12.13am, Manhattan

Will's first instinct was to observe. He was used to watching, seeing how things unfolded. So it took a beat and then another before Will realized that he could not just watch. He would have to stalk the stalker.

He was wary. Hardly anyone was around; he would be noticed. So he kept far back, walking as quietly as he could.

He cursed the black leather shoes he was wearing: they made too much noise. He tried to prevent his heels making contact with the sidewalk, to dampen the sound.

But the man in front seemed to be in a hurry as he charged down Henry Street. Not running, but a brisk walk that allowed no time for looking back. That emboldened Will; he walked faster, taking pains to keep just less than a block between them.

The stalker was carrying a black leather bag at his side, the strap worn like a sash crossing over to his opposite shoulder.

He was neat and self-contained, moving nimbly. Will was no expert, but he would have been surprised if this guy did not have some connection with the military.

By now he had crossed Clinton and Jefferson. Where was he going? To meet a getaway car? If so, why had he not been picked up earlier? Maybe he was walking towards a subway station. Will cursed his limited knowledge of New York: he had no idea if there was a station near here.

Without warning, the man suddenly looked back. Will saw the movement of his head and, without even thinking, moved off the sidewalk towards the steps of the tenement block he was passing. At the same time he reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. What the stalker would have seen was a man entering his own apartment building. He walked on;

Will let out a deep sigh. He had been holding his breath.

By now the man ahead was turning a sharp right. Will tried to position himself so that he would not be caught in his field of vision.

'Yo, Ashley! You got my phone?'

Will had not seen them coming, but there they were, right in front of him. Three African-American teenage girls, filling up the sidewalk. Will tried to slide past, but they were in the mood for some fun.

'What's the hurry, handsome? You don't like how we look?

You don't think we look fine?' At this the other two were screeching with laughter. He looked over their heads, to see the stalker heading down a side street towards East Broadway.

He was hard to make out.

'Yo, I'm over here, honey!' It was the leader of the pack, now waving her hand in Will's face. If he had been born in New York, he was sure he would have shoved them aside with a curt, 'Get the fuck out of my way.' But even here, on a mission to prevent a murder in the dead of night, he was still an Englishman.