Sam Bourne 4-Book Thriller Collection

Interruption came whenever a message landed. These texts, which once made Will’s chest pound with nervous anticipation, were becoming routine. Even boring. Will clicked to see the latest.

To the victor the spoils

That sounded menacing, as if the Hassidim were registering a claim on Beth: if we win, we will keep her. Will felt his hatred rising. ‘Now they’re threatening us.’

‘To the victor the spoils,’ TC repeated slowly once Will had read it out, as if she were taking dictation.

Will glimpsed what looked like a grid on TC’s sketch pad, neatly filled in with each new line from YY. ‘What have you got?’

‘The numbers things didn’t work out, so I’ve been looking at anagrams for each one. And I can get something but nothing that hangs together. There’s no pattern. I’ve tried running it as an acrostic—’

‘A what?’

‘An acrostic. Where the first letter of each sentence provides a letter of the hidden word. You know, “Roses are red” gives you R, “Violets are blue” gives you V. There are some psalms laid out like that. Put together the first letter of each line and you get another line of prayer. It was a trick: a twelve-line poem with an invisible thirteenth line.’

‘I get it. So what do we get if we do that?’

‘So far? We have H, H, O, A, T. If we skip the indefinite article – so it’s “Friend in need” not “A friend in need” – we get H, H, O, F, T. Not much better.’

‘What the hell is he playing at? Hang on.’ Another one was coming through.

Goodness is better than beauty

Will was beginning to feel swamped. TC was having to think like a grandmaster at one of those chess exhibitions, moving around the room, playing a hundred games on a hundred different boards at once. It had taken a long time to decode just one message. Now she had six.

‘Look, Will. There’s no way to work out what this is till it stops. Whenever I try one theory, it’s blown out by the next message. We need to have the full set and then see what this guy’s trying to say.’

‘YY.’

‘If it’s him, yes.’

‘Who the fuck else could it be?’

‘Leave me alone, Will.’

He couldn’t blame her for being exasperated. He knew he was being insufferable, taking out his rage, grief and sheer fatigue on her. She didn’t have to take this from him. She could walk away – and he would be stranded.

He wanted to say sorry, but it was too late. She had turned her back on him, wisely preventing any escalation in hostilities. Pity neither of them had ever been so shrewd when they were lovers.

No more than two minutes later, another message arrived:

A man is known by the company he keeps

Was this some way of urging Will to think about the people around the rabbi who had interrogated him last night? Forget about him, start thinking about his henchmen. Was that what this clue was trying to say?

And then, perhaps thirty seconds later:

From little acorns, mighty oaks grow

Christ, this guy was annoying. What was this, some oblique reference to fathers and sons? The effort he was putting into these messages, hammering out long texts when all he had to do was send a few, simple words: the address where Beth was held. The ire was rising through Will’s body, reaching the veins in his neck.

He had not even shown TC the latest message when he began texting back:

Enough of these horseshit games.

You know what I need.

The instant he had sent it, Will regretted it. What if he scared Yosef Yitzhok off? TC was right: he was all they had. Worse, what if Will’s message was somehow intercepted by the Crown Heights hardliners, who would instantly realize what YY was up to, that he was in communication with the enemy, and punish him? Will imagined YY in an alleyway, just off Eastern Parkway, huddled over his cell phone, maybe using his prayer shawl as a canopy, when two men grab him from behind, snatch away his phone and drag him off for an impromptu meeting with the rabbi.

And yet, Will felt a release of cathartic energy flow through him. He could not stand the passivity of his situation, sitting there, hands outstretched, waiting for clues to fall like crumbs from the Hassidim’s table. It felt good to fight back.

Finally, the sky began to darken. Will started pacing, his right hand gripping the BlackBerry, turning it clammy. At 7.42pm exactly TC nodded, telling him that the Sabbath had now ended. Will glanced down immediately, expecting a red light to flicker on within seconds. No, no, advised TC: they should give it at least thirty minutes before expecting a reply. There were things to do after the sabbath, including the Havdalah ceremony which used wine, spices and a plaited candle to bid a final farewell to the day of rest. Then there was the walk back from synagogue to make Havdalah at home. Most men would probably want to freshen up after that. Even if the Hassidim read Will’s message on a computer in a home or office, they would not want to reply from there: too traceable. Not by Will of course, but by the police in some future investigation. So they would have to go back to the Internet Hot Spot – all of which could take at least an hour. Even this scenario was optimistic, TC warned. Will knew he had sent them an email, but they did not. They were not expecting one, so why would they rush to check?

On the other hand, maybe today was different. Crown Heights was crawling with detectives investigating a murder under instruction from Interpol. The rabbi who had grilled Will would not be able to stick to his usual ritual. He would be answering questions and they would not be about the correct dimensions of a Talmudic stove. He would be under interrogation – and under pressure. (The thought of that role reversal pleased Will.) If that was the atmosphere, Will reckoned they would have a hundred reasons to check email as soon as they could. Even if they were not waiting for word from him, they would need to communicate with their people in Bangkok. Will guessed they would be powering up their laptops the moment it was theologically decent.

At eight o’clock Will’s hunch was confirmed. Twenty minutes after sundown, the red light on his BlackBerry blinked. Will clicked the track wheel and saw that same, hieroglyphic script, the characters he now knew to be Hebrew. Re: Beth.

You are out of your depth. Do not drown.

TWENTY-SIX (#ulink_3c904aad-6833-535c-8d57-149cf6e0f538)

Saturday, 8.01pm, Manhattan

He had no time for a seminar with TC. He replied instantly, his thumbs working furiously.

I could call the police right now. What do I have to lose?

He waited, while TC sat opposite him, curled into a ball, rocking herself backward and forward. Will wondered if he had ever seen her in this position, so nervous she was foetal. The crowd at McDonalds had changed. The bums and homeless mutterers now mostly replaced by twenty-something men about to fuel up before a night hitting the bars. The red light came on.

You have everything to lose. You could lose her.

Again, Will did not wait. This, he realized, was what he had wanted since that first message: a direct confrontation with the kidnappers. When they had met last night, Will was pretending to be someone else. He had had to be polite. Now it was out in the open, he could take them on.

You touch her and you’ll be guilty of two murders. My evidence will send you down. Release her or I start nailing you.

The delay was longer this time, excruciating. The red light flashed, Will pouncing on the little blue machine.

Low price pharmacy for all your medical needs. We deliver. Spam.

More minutes and then:

Call now on 718-943-7770. Do not use a recording device. We will know if you try.

Will imagined how this was working at the other end. Doubtless, one of the monkeys, Moshe Menachem or Tzvi Yehuda, was at the Internet Hot Spot, reading and typing the emails, taking direct instruction from the boss on the end of a phone. Now the boss had something to say that he did not want committed to email, even one as disguised as this. Good, thought Will, sensing his opponent was weakening a little. He looked at TC: having consumed her nails, she was now gnawing at her cuticles.

He pulled out his cell phone, dialling the number slowly, as if he was performing surgery. His hands were trembling. He realized that this man frightened him.

It rang only once. He could hear the phone had been answered but no one spoke: he was going to have make the first move.