‘That’s it? You’re going to leave it at that? You’re not going to tell me what’s going on?’
‘No, I cannot risk that. So I’m going to leave you with a few things for you to remember. You can write them down later if you like. The first is that this is much bigger than any of us. Everything we believe in, everything you believe in, hangs in the balance. Life itself. The stakes could not be higher.
‘Second, your wife will be safe unless you endanger her life by your recklessness. I urge you not to do that, not just for your own sake, but for the sake of all of us. Everybody. So even though you love her and want to protect her, I plead with you to believe me that the best thing you can do for her, as a loving husband, is to stay away. Back off and don’t meddle. Interfere and I can offer no guarantees, not for her, not for you, not for any of us.
‘And third, I don’t expect you to understand. You have wandered into all this quite by accident. Perhaps it’s not an accident, but a series of steps fully understood only by our Creator. But this is the hardest thing of all. I’m asking you to believe things that you cannot comprehend, to trust me just because I ask you. I don’t know if you’re a man of faith or not, Will, but this is how faith operates. We have to believe in God even when we have not the barest inkling of what he has in mind for the universe. We have to obey rules that seem to make no sense, simply because we believe. Not everyone can do it, Will. It takes strength to have faith. But that is what I need from you: the faith to trust that I and the people you see here are acting only for the sake of good.’
‘Even when that means nearly drowning an innocent man like me?’
‘Even when the price is very high, yes. We are determined to save lives here, Will, and in that cause almost any action is permitted. Pikuach nefesh. Now I must say goodbye. Moshe Menachem will give you back your things. Good luck, Will. Travel safely and, please God, all should be well. Good shabbos.’
At that moment, as he imagined the Rebbe lifting himself up out of his chair and shuffling towards the door, he heard an interruption. Someone else had come into the room; barged in, by the sound of it. He seemed to be showing the Rebbe something; there was muttered conversation. The new voice was highly exercised, a raised whisper. They need not have worried: even at that volume, all Will could establish was that they were not speaking English. It sounded like German, with lots of phlegmy ‘ch’s and ‘sch’s’. Yiddish.
The exchange ended; the Rebbe seemed to have gone. Redbeard, Moshe Menachem, now left his sentry position at Will’s side and stood in front of him. His eyes were sheepish as he handed to Will the bag he had left at Shimon Shmuel’s. ‘I’m sorry about, you know, before,’ he mumbled.
Will took the bag, seeing that his notebook had been put back inside, too. His phone was still there, and his BlackBerry, untouched. He took out his wallet, faintly curious to see which stub or ticket had given him away. It was as he expected, full of anonymous cab receipts. He opened up the series of slots made to carry credit cards, a feature he never used. In one, a book of standard US postage stamps; in another, a business card of a long-forgotten interviewee. In the third, a passport-sized photograph – of Beth.
A bitter smile passed across Will’s face: it was his bride who had betrayed him. Of course they would recognize her. She had given him this picture about six weeks after they met; it was summer and they had spent the afternoon boating off Sag Harbor. They passed a photo booth and she could not resist: she mugged for the automated camera there and then.
Will turned the picture over and there it was, the message which had left no doubt. I love you, Will Monroe!
Will looked up, his eyes wet. Before him was a new face; he guessed it was the man who had briefly clashed with the Rebbe a few moments ago. His face was soft and round, his cheeks chipmunk-full, framed by a jet-black beard. He was tubby, with a round head atop a round tummy. Will guessed he was in his early twenties.
‘Come, I’ll show you out.’
As Will got up, he saw at last the chair where the Rebbe had sat during the inquisition. It was no throne, just a chair. Next to it was a side table, the kind a lecturer might use to keep his notes and a glass of water. What was on it made Will jolt.
It was a copy of that day’s New York Times, folded, very deliberately, to highlight Will’s story about the life and death of Pat Baxter. So that was what the round-faced man had shown the Rebbe; that was what they had argued about. Will could guess what the young man had been saying: This guy’s from the New York Times. He’s never going to keep this quiet. We should keep him here, where he can’t shoot his mouth off.
By now they were outside, Will holding the clean white shirt the Hassidim had given him but which he was not yet wearing: he had not wanted to undress in front of his inquisitors. He had been humiliated enough already.
They stood on the street, outside the shul. Men were still coming in and walking out. Will looked at his watch: 10.20pm. It felt like three am.
‘I can only repeat our apologies about what happened in there.’
Yeah, yeah, thought Will. Save it for the judge when I sue your Hassidic asses for false imprisonment, assault, battery and the whole fucking shebang. ‘Well, better than an apology would actually be an explanation.’
‘I can’t give you that, but I can give you a word of advice.’ He looked around, as if making sure that he was not being watched or overheard. ‘My name is Yosef Yitzhok. I work to bring the Rebbe’s word into the world. Listen, I know what you do and here’s my suggestion.’ He lowered his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. ‘If you want to know what’s going on, think about your work.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will. But you have to look to your work. Go on, leave.’
This Yosef Yitzhok seemed agitated. ‘Remember what I said. Look to your work.’
Friday, 11.35pm, Brooklyn
Tom answered his phone within one ring. He told Will, who had been stumbling through the streets of Crown Heights looking for the subway, to hail a cab and head straight over to his apartment.
Now he lay on Tom’s couch, fit to pass out with tiredness, kept awake only by a kind of fever. He was wearing nothing but three thick towels. Tom had shoved him in a hot shower the minute he walked through the door, determined that his friend not succumb to a cold, a fever or even pneumonia. He knew they had no time to waste with illness.
Will did his best to tell him what had happened, but most of it was too bizarre to take in. Besides, Will spoke like a man just woken trying to remember a dream: new bits of information, new characters, new descriptions and phrases kept popping up. There were so few items of normality for Tom to cling to, he gave up making sense of it after a while. Bearded men, a near-drowning, a sign telling women to cover their elbows, an unseen inquisitor, a leader worshipped as the Messiah, a rule preventing people from carrying even keys for twenty-four hours. He wondered if Will had gone to Crown Heights at all, rather than to the East Village to score some particularly strong acid and embark on one of the more surreal trips in recent hallucinogenic history.
Harder to resist was the urge to say, ‘I told you so.’ This was precisely the outcome Tom had feared: Will charging into Crown Heights, under-prepared and out of his mind with anguish, clumsily walking into the hands of his enemies.
Not only did Will expect Tom to follow his account of the last, baffling few hours, he also wanted his help in trying to decode it. What was that reference to his work? What did the Rebbe mean about an ancient story, about saving lives, about having just four days to go?
‘Will,’