‘I understand.’
‘What happened in Bangkok was an accident. It is true that we wanted to take Mr Samak into custody, just as we have with your wife, but we certainly had no intention of killing him. God forbid.’ TC had moved round to sit next to Will, pressing her ear against the back of his cell phone.
‘What we did not know, what we could not have known, was that Mr Samak had a weak heart. Such a strong man, but a terribly weak heart. The . . . steps we had to take to bring him into custody were, I’m afraid, more than he could take.’
For a brief moment, Will thought like a journalist: he had wrung a confession from this man. Not of murder, perhaps, but of manslaughter. In a spasm of professional pride, Will guessed that, despite hours of intense questioning, New York’s finest had not yet achieved quite so good a result.
‘That is what happened, Mr Monroe and, though it will amaze you to hear it, I have only told you the truth in all our encounters so far. I repeat that I have taken a great risk in speaking so candidly. But something tells me you will take my gesture the right way and you will not spurn me. I have trusted you and now, I hope, you will trust me. Do it for your own reasons, Will. Do it because I have told you that I will do my best to keep your wife alive. But do it also because of what I told you yesterday and repeat again today: that an ancient story is unfolding here, threatening an outcome mankind has feared for thousands of years. Your wife matters to you, Mr Monroe, of course she does. But the world, the creation of the Almighty, matters to me.’
Now the rabbi was leaving the silence, waiting for Will to fill it. He knew what was happening, but he could not help himself.
‘What are you asking me to do?’
‘To do nothing, Mr Monroe. Nothing at all. Just to stay out of this and to be patient. There are perhaps a couple of days left and then we will all know our fates. So even though you are desperate to see Beth again, I urge you to wait. No meddling, no amateur detective work. Just wait. I hope you will do what’s right, Will. Good night. And may God turn his face to shine upon all of us.’
The phone clicked off. Will looked at TC, who seemed to be trembling with him.
‘It’s so strange to hear his voice,’ she was saying, in little more than a whisper. ‘After we’ve talked about him so much, I mean.’
Will had scribbled the odd note while the rabbi was talking so that he and TC could deconstruct his meaning. But it was the tone that was most striking. If Will was briefing Harden on the conversation he had just had, that would be his headline. The rabbi had sounded conciliatory but something else, too – almost regretful.
The silence was not allowed to last. The cell phone had another text to disgorge.
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link
And then a moment later:
Safety in numbers. No more.
Will read them out, pausing as TC demanded clarification of the location of the period in that sentence. There were two full stops, Will replied. Was he sure? He was sure. He was having trouble concentrating. He was hearing Beth’s voice, over and over: Will? Will, it’s Beth.
‘OK,’ TC was saying. ‘Let’s assume that he means what he says, that there will be no more. This is the full set.’
In front of her, laid out on the table, were ten neat squares of paper, one message written on each.
He who hesitates is lost
He that knows nothing doubts nothing
Opportunity seldom knocks twice
A friend in need is a friend indeed
To the victor the spoils
Goodness is better than beauty
A man is known by the company he keeps
From little acorns mighty oaks grow
A chain is no stronger than its weakest link
Safety in numbers. No more.
TC was glaring at them, her sketchbook on her lap, surveying the pattern she had arranged. The messages were in three groups. Encouragement, warnings, enigmas.
TC now laid the pad onto the table, alongside the scraps of paper. It was almost dark with ink: she had filled the page. All over it were words or half-phrases crossed out, written backwards or in diagonals. She had written out the messages in every possible order, each time underlining the first letter of each line: attempting the acrostic. Will could see the results: HHOATGAFAS followed by a list of random variations using the same letters. All of them spelled gibberish.
As if reading his mind, TC turned the page of her sketchbook to show the one underneath, its surface no less covered with calculations and abortive anagrams. She peeled that away to show the one below and the one below that. She had been breaking her head to solve this puzzle for hours.
Will felt a surge of gratitude: he knew how lonely he would have been without her. But there was no getting away from it. Despite all her efforts, despite their combined intellect, they still had not cracked this riddle in ten parts. It had defeated them.
‘I can’t believe I am that dumb.’
‘What?’ Will looked up from the table to see TC leaning back in her chair, hands on her head and eyes fixed on the ceiling.
‘I cannot believe I am so stupid.’ She was smiling, shaking her head in disbelief.
‘Please tell me precisely what you’re talking about,’ Will said, in a voice that even he recognized as excessively polite and English, a voice he often used when trying to stay calm.
‘It was so obvious and I made it so complicated. How many hours have I spent on this thing now?’
‘You mean, you’ve worked it out?’
‘I’ve worked it out. What has he sent us? “A friend in need.” “From little acorns.” He’s sent us proverbs. Ten proverbs.’
‘Right, so . . . Sorry, you’re going to have to tell me. I can see he’s sent us ten proverbs. The trouble is, we don’t know what they mean.’
‘They don’t mean anything. They’re not meant to mean anything. He’s sent us ten proverbs. Because that’s where we’re meant to look. Proverbs, 10.’
Saturday, 8.27pm, Manhattan
He had been there as long as they had and had been muttering just as loudly. He was on his own, middle-aged and no doubt homeless, with a face that seemed swollen through exposure to the elements. In the course of the afternoon Will had seen him eat half an apple pie, handed to him by a guy wearing an iPod (who did not take the earphones out), and perhaps a bag and a half of fries; and at intervals he had read aloud from the black, plastic-bound bible he held in his right hand.
Will had found these random sermons an irritation during the afternoon, as had the succession of customers who took pains not to sit too near. Now, though, he could not have been more grateful. With a hot cup of coffee in his hand, he approached gingerly.
‘Sir, I wonder if perhaps you’d like a cup of coffee. It’s freshly made.’
The man looked up, his eyes watery. The whites were yellow.
‘If it had not been the Lord who was on our side – let Israel now say – if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive, when their