Sam Bourne 4-Book Thriller Collection. Sam Bourne

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      The noise from next door was still throbbing. Maybe the Rebbe had finally made his entrance; perhaps he was working the room before he came in here to work over Will. The clamour was certainly thumpingly loud; the ground was moving like the walls of a club, shaken by bass. But whether it had suddenly got louder, as if the Rebbe had arrived while Will was dragged out of the room, he could not tell.

      ‘OK, let us begin.’

      That same baritone voice, again from behind. Will tried to turn around, but the hands came down to clamp his shoulders tight.

      ‘What’s your name?’

      ‘Tom Mitchell.’

      ‘Welcome Tom and good shabbos. Tell me, why do we have the pleasure of your company in Crown Heights?’

      ‘I’m here to write a story for New York magazine about the Hassidic community. It’s for a new slot: “Slice of the Apple”.’

      ‘Cute. And why have you come here this weekend of all weekends?’

      ‘They only commissioned me to do it this week so I came the first weekend I could.’

      ‘You didn’t call ahead, you didn’t want to make an arrangement maybe?’

      ‘I just wanted to look around.’

      ‘See how the natives live in their natural habitat?’

      ‘I wouldn’t put it like that,’ Will croaked. The force of two men pressing their hands down on his shoulders was starting to take its toll. ‘I hope I’m not being rude, but why are you holding me like this?’

      ‘You know, Mr Mitchell, I’m glad you asked me that because I wouldn’t want to give you the wrong impression of Crown Heights or its people. We welcome guests here, we really do. We invite visitors into our homes. We are not even hostile to the press; reporters have come here often. We have had no less than the New York Times pay us an occasional visit. No, the reason for this,’ he paused, ‘unusual reception is that I don’t believe you’re telling us the truth.’

      ‘But I am a reporter. That is the truth.’

      ‘No, the truth, Mr Mitchell, is that somebody has been prying into what is strictly our business and I am wondering if that somebody is you.’ The voice, briefly raised, paused to recover its equilibrium. ‘Let’s relax a bit, shall we? It’s shabbos, we’ve all had a hard week. We’ve worked hard. Now we rest. So let’s take it slow and calm down. Back to my question. You’ve been talking to Shimon Shmuel for a while, so I’m sure you’ve picked up a few things about our customs already.’

       They’ve been following me.

      ‘You’re an intelligent man. You’ve realized by now that observance of the Sabbath is one of our strictest rules.’

      Will said nothing.

      ‘Mr Mitchell?’

      ‘Yes, I understand that.’

      ‘You know we are forbidden from carrying on the Sabbath, don’t you?’

      ‘Yes, Sandy told me. Shimon Shmuel.’ He regretted that late addition of Sandy’s Hebrew name: it sounded like an attempt at ingratiation.

      ‘He may not have mentioned that on the Sabbath, we are forbidden to carry but not only to carry: we are also barred from using electricity of any kind. The lights that are on now were switched on before shabbos began and they will stay on all day until after shabbos ends tomorrow night. Those are the rules: no Jew is allowed to turn them on or off. Moreover, you’ll have noticed that there were no cameras out there just now. And there have never been cameras out there, not on shabbos. What you saw just now has never been photographed or filmed. Never, and that’s not through lack of requests. Do you see where I’m heading, Mr Mitchell?’

      Now that he had heard the voice speaking for longer, he began to form a picture of the speaker. He was an American, but his accent was not the same as Sandy’s. It was more, what, European? Something. Will could not quite identify what it was: certainly more New York, almost musical. It contained a kind of shrug, a recognition of the absurdity of life, sometimes comic, usually tragic. In split, fractional seconds he saw the face of Mel Brooks and heard the voice of Leonard Cohen. He still had no idea what the man speaking to him looked like.

      ‘Mr Mitchell, I need to know whether you understand what I’m saying.’

      ‘No, I don’t have a camera, if that’s what you’re asking.’

      ‘As it happens, I wasn’t thinking about that. More on the lines of a recording device.’

      Again, Will was in the clear. Despite his age, he did things the old-fashioned way: notebook and pen. This was not down to some technophobic Luddism on his part, but sheer laziness. Transcribing recordings was just too much hassle: you did an interview for half an hour, then spent an hour writing it up. The mini-disc recorder was saved only for set-piece interviews where every word was likely to count: mayors, police chiefs, that kind of thing. Otherwise he opted for paper and ink.

      ‘No, I haven’t recorded anyone. But why would it be a problem—’

      He suddenly felt himself jerked forward and then up, the darker, younger man at his left side apparently taking the lead. The pair of them had looped their arms under Will’s armpits and levered him upward, ensuring he did not turn around. Next, the dark man swung around to face him, avoiding Will’s eye while he first stretched Will’s arms up and out, then reached under his jacket, moving his hands over Will’s shirt, around his back and under his armpits. He was like a zealous airport security guard.

      Of course. Recording device. They weren’t looking for a reporter’s Dictaphone. They were looking for a wire. They were worried that he was the police or the FBI. Of course they were: they were kidnappers and they feared Will was an undercover cop. The questions he had been asking, the snooping around with no warning.

      ‘No wire,’ the dark man was saying, in an accent that confirmed him as at least Middle Eastern if not Israeli.

      ‘But there is this.’ It was the redbeard, whose task during this two-man body search, which had continued up and down Will’s legs when it was not focused on his back, had been to examine the captive’s every pocket – including the one on the inside left of his jacket. His secrets offered little resistance: his Moleskine notebook always made a neat bulge in his left breast pocket. Redbeard took it out and offered it to the unseen hand behind. Will, shoved back down into his seat, could hear the pages being turned.

      The blood seemed to drain from him. His mind rewound back to Sandy’s house, when his host urged him to leave his bag behind. And Will thought he was being so clever. He had left his bag behind all right – but only after he had slipped out his notebook and zipped his wallet into what he liked to think was a concealed compartment. He had not wanted Sara Leah prying. Now the book was in the Rebbe’s hands. What a fool!

      Will girded himself for the explosion. The longer the silence lasted, punctuated only by the sound of turned pages, the slicker the moisture on Will’s palms.

      His mind was racing, trying to remember what was in that book that might give him away. Luckily, he was not organized enough to have written СКАЧАТЬ