Will looked at his watch; two-thirty am. So this was not a nightmare, just a terrifying long day and night that seemed never to end. It had begun when he powered up his BlackBerry some eighteen hours ago. And now, incredibly, he was half-asleep in TC’s wicker chair and it was still going on.
‘Hi, you’re back,’ she said, suddenly looking up from an artist’s sketch pad that rested on her knees. Her forehead was crinkled in a way, Will remembered, that meant she had been concentrating hard. ‘Here’s what we’ve got. The first fact is they say Beth is safe – so long as you back off. Second, they seem to admit that she’s done nothing wrong and maybe even nothing at all, but they cannot let her go. They acknowledge that this seems baffling now but, they promise, it will all become clear. We know from their emailed notes to you that they don’t want money. They just want you to go away. That’s it.
‘What this adds up to is one very weird kind of kidnapping. It’s like they somehow want to borrow her for some unspecified time and some unspecified reason – and they expect you just to take it. We need to work out why.’ Will found that we comforting, even if the rest of the puzzle – and the fact that TC had not instantly cracked it – was anything but.
‘So what do we have on motive? A clue is surely that they feared you were a fed. The charitable explanation for that is that they feared the feds were coming after them simply because of the kidnapping. The uncharitable view is that their fear was separate from the kidnapping, that they are involved in some other criminal activity and had long worried that the authorities were onto them. Kind of like those weirdo cults who lie in wait for the feds to come and take their guns away.’
Will had a flash of memory back to Montana, Pat Baxter and his chums. Christ, that was only a few days ago; it felt like years.
‘But then they rule that out, for fairly rational reasons. I don’t know about the wire, but I reckon they’re right about the undercover Jew thing: that is what the feds would do. Yet, your not being a federal agent does not reassure them. Quite the opposite. It’s once they’ve ruled that out that they get really heavy, nearly drowning you. That also makes some sense: they wouldn’t dare mistreat you if they thought you were law enforcement. Once you weren’t, they felt free. The question, though, is why? What could be, to use their phrase, “infinitely worse”? A rival Hassidic sect? A rival kidnapping cartel?’
Will detected a glint of mischief in TC’s eye, as if she was still taken by the humour of Hassidim up to no good. It irritated him; and she still had not come up with anything he did not know already.
‘What about all the Jewish stuff I heard, what does that all mean?’ He wanted to get her back on track.
‘Well, the phrase you heard as “Peking Nuff-said” is actually pikuach nefesh. The safeguarding of a soul. It is usually used benignly, to forgive various infractions of religious law in order to do good. You know, you’ll hear the Israelis invoke pikuach nefesh to explain why ambulances are allowed to run on the Sabbath. But by mentioning it alongside all that stuff about a rodef, they were obviously using it to threaten you – to imply that Jewish law might allow them to kill you. Or Beth.’
Will winced.
‘As for “Shabbos something” that’s real. What you heard was Shabbos Shuva, the Sabbath of repentance, the most important Shabbat of the year. That’s today, as it happens. It’s the one between Rosh Hashana, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. We’re in the middle of the Ten Days of Penitence, the Days of Awe. This is a big time for Jews. For the ultra-orthodox especially. But what did your questioner mean by “we have only four days left”? It’s true there are only four days till Yom Kippur, but, judging from what you said, he meant it as some kind of deadline. He can’t mean just four days left to repent, though they would think that. This must be connected to the wider thing he mentioned: you know, “everything hangs in the balance”, “the stakes could not be higher”, “the ancient story”.’
‘And as far as all that stuff is concerned, we haven’t got a clue, have we?’
TC had her head down, consulting her sketch pad. He could see she was desperate to find something that would unlock this mystery. She had corralled all the facts as best she could, organized a coherent set of questions. But that’s all she had: questions. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘We haven’t.’
‘What about the Rebbe?’
‘Ah, yes. Now I need you to think hard on this one. Did he ever say his name to you? Did he ever introduce himself to you?’
‘I told you, he never let me see his face.’
‘So why are you so certain he was the Rebbe?’
‘Because they were all chanting and stamping and waiting for him inside the synagogue. Then I get led away. These thugs say they can’t talk to me until their “teacher” arrives. Then, when he does, they do whatever he tells them to do. He was obviously the boss.’
‘When you were in the synagogue and you felt a hand on your shoulder, and the voice said, “For you my friend, it’s all over” or whatever he said, that voice was the same one who interrogated you later?’
‘Yes, same voice.’
‘So if that was the Rebbe how come the crowd was not facing in that direction, looking towards him? If that were him, surely every face in the room would have been looking just past your shoulder, going nuts for the guy who is within whispering distance of your ear. But they weren’t, were they?’
‘Maybe he was just hidden from view, crushed in that huge crowd.’
‘Come on, Will. You said it yourself: they worship this guy as if he’s the Messiah. They’re not going to just let him wander around, getting mashed by the foot soldiers. Think hard, did he ever announce himself as the Rebbe?’
Will realized with embarrassment that his tormentor had never said any such thing. Now that he thought about it—
‘Did you ever address him as Rebbe?’
TC had read his mind. Throughout the ordeal, Will had assumed he was speaking to the Rebbe. Inside his own head, he referred to him as Rebbe. But had he ever used the term out loud?
‘So you’re sure that man who nearly had me killed tonight was not the Rebbe?’
‘I know it.’
‘How? How can you be so certain?’
‘I’m certain, Will, because the Rebbe of Crown Heights has been dead and buried for two years.’
Saturday, 6.36am, Manhattan
They were in a baking hot country, on a wide bed covered by a vast white net. It was a suite in an old colonial hotel. Sounds were floating up from the street below, car horns and traders; a mosquito buzzed lazily. It was the afternoon and he and Beth were making fevered love, their bodies slick with sweat . . .
Will’s heart thumped; the shock of waking from a dream. He looked down to see a bed that was narrow – and empty. Except it was not quite a bed. He had fallen asleep in TC’s studio, on her red velvet sofa. It turned out she had a camp bed of her own behind a partition at the side of the studio. ‘Sometimes I work nights,’ she had said.
He reached instantly for his BlackBerry. Nothing more from the kidnappers; two emails from Harden; several from his father, begging him to get in touch and complaining of his desperate worry. His phone would not switch on: the battery must have died when he was at Tom’s.
He tiptoed over to TC’s workbench, where he was relieved to see she had the same brand of phone as him. There would be a charger here somewhere. While looking, he spotted the sketch pad from last night. He turned it the right way up and saw