Sam Bourne 4-Book Thriller Collection

The urge to fall into one of the café’s roomy armchairs was strong; Will was exhausted. But TC was already chivvying him to get up and out. She was not just edgy, Will realized; she was making a calculation. Of course. TC was worried that Will himself could be a target for the Hassidim. If she had had her initial doubts, now she was convinced: the men of Crown Heights were not to be messed around. It was the news from Bangkok that converted her. Once a sceptic, she was now a believer.

As they left, Will’s mobile stirred. He waited till they were outside before he even looked at it: DadHome. Poor guy, he’d been calling for hours and Will had not sent him so much as a text message.

‘Hello?’

‘Thank God for that. Oh Will, I’ve been worried sick.’

‘I’m fine. I’m exhausted, but I’m OK.’

‘What the hell’s been happening? I’ve wanted so much to call the police, but didn’t dare until you and I at least had a chance to talk. Really, Will, I was this close – but I held off. It’s such a relief to hear your voice.’

‘You haven’t told anyone have you? Dad?’

‘Of course I haven’t. But I’ve wanted to. Just tell me, have you heard from Beth?’

‘No. But I know where she is and I know who’s got her.’

TC was gesturing at Will’s phone, then wagging her finger across her face like a school mistress. Will got the message.

‘Dad, maybe we should talk about this when I’m on a landline. Can I call you later?’

‘No, you have to tell me now! I’m going out of my mind here. Where is she?’

‘She’s in New York. She’s in Brooklyn.’

Will instantly regretted his revelation. Cell phones were notoriously leaky: he knew that much from the scanners on the Metro desk, where police radio transmissions were easier to get than NPR. For those who knew how, plucking cellular calls out of the air was a breeze.

‘But, Dad, I’m serious. There can be no vigilante rescue attempts here. No calls to the police commissioner who you knew at Yale. I mean it: that would truly fuck everything up and could cost Beth her life.’ His voice was wobbling. Will could not tell if he was about to scream at his father or break down and cry. ‘Promise me, Dad. You’re not going to do anything. Promise.’

His father gave a reply but Will could not hear it. A word went missing, drowned out by the sound of a beep on the line.

‘OK, Dad, I’m going to say goodbye. We’ll speak later.’ There was no time for niceties; he needed his father off the line so he could take this incoming call.

Will pressed the buttons as fast as he could, his thumbs trembling with tiredness, but there was no call. The beep he had heard had announced instead the arrival of a text message.

Will could feel TC leaning on his upper arm, straining to see his phone as they stood together on the street.

‘Read message?’ the phone asked dumbly. Of course I want to read it, idiot! Will hit the Yes button, but found the keypad was locked. Damn. More buttons to press, forcing him to go the long way around, choosing text messages then his inbox, then a long wait while the display promised that it was ‘opening folder’. Finally, the message appeared: five words, short, simple – and utterly mysterious.

TWENTY-FOUR (#ulink_ba3af1bb-af9b-56aa-ada8-72313d363795)

Saturday, 11.37am, Manhattan

2 down: Moses to Bond

Now that TC had broken the code, this message was not baffling – he knew it would be solved within a few moments – but it was frightening. This string of nonsense might be about to tell him anything. What if one of those words translated as Beth?

TC grabbed the phone and began punching numbers, only to stop suddenly. ‘2 could be A or B or C. But the only alternative for “down” is “down”. It must be a different system.’

‘It’s a crossword clue.’

‘What?’

‘2 Down. You know, 4 Across, 3 Down. It’s a crossword clue.’

‘All right. So what’s MOSES TO BOND? It implies some sort of motion: we’re meant to take Moses to Bond somehow. But what the hell is Bond anyway?’

‘James Bond? Could be a number. You know, 007.’ TC looked blank. ‘Maybe it’s two down from seven. Which would be five.’

‘Which could be the five books of Moses. But that’s not much of a clue. Listen, I’m cold.’ They were still standing on the street. ‘There.’ She pointed at a McDonalds.

With a bacon breakfast bun in one hand and a pencil in the other, TC was scribbling – combinations of letters and numbers.

‘What about Bond Street?’ said Will, pacing around her. ‘Take Moses to Bond Street?’

TC looked up at Will, her eyebrows raised.

‘OK, OK.’

‘Let’s think this through,’ she said, scoring a long line through everything she had written down. ‘What did you say in your reply to him?’ Will, his mouth now full, froze just as his hands were about to claw a clump of fries. ‘I didn’t.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I meant to. I was about to. But then we heard the news from Bangkok and everything got forgotten.’

Will was almost waiting for TC to pick him up on that lapse into what she used to call the cowardly passive. ‘Everything got forgotten,’ was the cowardly way of saying that Will himself had forgotten. (TC coined the term in honour of an old flatmate who, despairing at the state of the kitchen they shared, but too meek to accuse TC directly, announced, ‘Dishes have been left.’ Hence, and thereafter, the cowardly passive.)

That thought brought back a memory Will had not dredged up for years: the alternative grammar he and TC had devised to reflect the way language was really used, the way emotions really worked. There was, of course, the passive aggressive and, Will’s favourite, the past too-perfect, deployed by those consumed with nostalgia. The pressure caused by gift-giving, particularly pronounced at Christmas, was, inevitably, present tension. We must have been so obnoxious, thought Will now, re-constructing in his mind the world of smart-aleck, private jokes that he and TC had once inhabited together.

‘Well, that makes this even more intriguing,’ TC said, letting Will off despite his error. ‘It’s not a reply. It’s a second message, sent voluntarily. It suggests Yosef Yitzhok felt a degree of urgency: two messages in one morning.’

‘The first one could have been last night. But, OK. Why would this be urgent?

‘I don’t know.’ TC’s voice had dropped; she was distracted. She had grabbed Will’s phone back and was staring at it, taking occasional slurps from her chocolate shake without once breaking her gaze. She broke from the meditation only to murmur, ‘He was in a hurry.’ She began tapping the keypad, then scribbling, then tapping again. A small smile of satisfaction, followed by a crinkled brow.

There. She shoved the sheet of paper across the table.

TWO DOWN. MORE’S TO COME.

They both stared in silence, the pleasure derived from the act of decoding now giving way to the pain of further bemusement.

‘He’s playing games with us,’ said Will. ‘“Right, you’ve deciphered two of my messages; I’ll send more”. So long as we do . . . what?’

‘We need to let him know we understand, but we need more information. We don’t want to piss him off. If he’s trying to help, we need to keep him happy. Send a message back.’

Will took the phone, glancing up at TC with eyes that said, ‘I hope you’re right about this.’

Thank you. I won’t stop. And I want to hear more. Can you tell me anything? Please.