The Righteous Men (2006) (12 page)

‘I’m going to ask the computer who it was who just emailed us.’

‘You can do that?’

‘Yep. Look.’

Tom was typing the words ‘Whois golem-net.net’. It always surprised
Will when, amid all the codes and digits, a computer (or computer geek, which
amounted to the same thing) used plain, conversational English, albeit with an
eccentric spelling. Yet, it turned out, this was a bona fide computer instruction.

Whois golem-net.net

Tom was waiting for the screen to fill up. There was nothing you could do in
these moments, as the lights flickered and the egg-timer graphic ticked away.
You could not hurry the computer. People always tried to. You saw them by ATM machines,
their hands in position, like a crocodile’s mouth poised over the
dispenser, waiting to catch the cash as it came out, ensuring that not even the
split second it would take to move across to collect it should be wasted. You
saw it in offices, where people would drum pencils or play their thighs like
bongos: ‘Come on, come on,’ urging the computer or printer to stop
being so damned slow — forgetting, of course, that five, ten or fifteen
years ago the task in question might have taken the best part of a working day.

‘Ah. Well, that’s interesting.’

There on the screen was the answer, clear and unambiguous.

No match for golem-net.net

‘They made it up.’

‘Now what?’

Tom went back to the email itself and selected an option Will did not know
existed: ‘View Full Header’. Suddenly several lines of what he
would have dismissed as garble filled the screen.

‘OK,’ said Tom, ‘what we have here is a kind of travelogue.

This shows you the email’s internet journey. That line at the top is
its final destination and that at the bottom is its point of origin. Each
server en route has its own line.’

Will looked at the screen, each sentence beginning ‘Received …’

‘Hmm. These guys were in a hurry.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Well, you could make up “received lines”. But that takes time
— and whoever sent this didn’t have time. Or didn’t know how
to do it. These received lines are all genuine. OK, this is the thing we need.
Here.’ He was pointing to the bottom line, the point of origin.
Received
from info.net-spot.biz

‘What’s that?’

‘Every computer in the world, so long as it’s connected to the
internet, has a name. That one there is the computer that sent you the email.
All right. That means there’s one more move I need to make.’

Will could see that Tom felt uncomfortable. This was not the way he liked to
do things. Will remembered one of their earliest conversations, when Tom
explained the difference between hackers and crackers, white hats and black
hats. Will liked all the names; thought it might make a magazine piece.

His memory was sketchy. He remembered his surprise at discovering that
hacker was a widely misused term. In the outside world, it was often applied to
the teenage nerds who broke into other people’s computers — other
people being Cape Canaveral or NATO — and wrought mayhem. Among
technofolk, hacker had a milder meaning: it referred to those who played on
other people’s virtual lawns for fun, not malice.

Those who were up to no good — spreading viruses, taking down the 911
emergency phone system — were known by aficionados as crackers. They were
hackers for havoc.

The same distinction applied to white hats and black hats.

The former would snoop around where they were not wanted — inside the
system of one of America’s biggest banks for example — but their
motives were benign. They might peek at customers’ account numbers, even
uncovering their PIN codes, but they would not take their money (even though they
could). Instead they would email the head of security at the bank with a few
examples of their plundered wares.

A typical white hat message, waiting in the inbox of the luckless official
in charge, might read ‘If I can see your data, then so can the bad guys.
Fix it.’ If the recipient was really unlucky, the email would be cc’d
to the CEO.

Black hats would do the same but with darker purpose. They would bust into a
maximum security network not on the Everest principle — because it’s
there — but in order to cause some damage. Sometimes it was theft, but
more often the motive was cyber-vandalism: the thrill of taking down a big
target. The headline-grabbing viruses of the past — I Love You and
Michelangelo — were considered artistic masterpieces in the black hat
fraternity.

Of course Tom’s hat was as white as they came. He loved the internet,
he wanted it to work. He had barely hacked, let alone cracked. He believed it
was essential that the world grow to trust the web, that people felt secure on
it — and that meant restraint on the part of those, like him, who knew where
to find the gaps in the fence. But this was an exceptional situation. Beth’s
life was on the line.

Will began to pace. His legs felt weak, his stomach queasy. He had eaten
nothing since first sight of that email, now some seven hours ago. He wandered
over to Tom’s fridge: multiple Volvic and a box of sushi. Yesterday’s.
Will took it out, smelled it and decided it was still just about edible. He
wolfed it, then felt guilty for having any appetite at all when his wife was missing.
As he swallowed, Beth came back to him. The very idea of food seemed to trigger
an association with his wife. The evenings together making dinner; her
unabashed appetite. Whatever he imagined, warmth, hunger or satiation, he could
only think of her.

He paced some more. He flicked through the computer periodicals and obscure
literary journals that Tom had in a stack by the couch.

‘Will, come here.’

Tom was staring at the screen. He had done a ‘whois …’ for
netspot-biz.com and had got an answer.

‘You don’t seem happy,’ said Will.

‘Well, it’s good news and bad news. The good news is I now know
exactly where the email was sent from. The bad news is, it could be anybody who
sent it.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Our path ends in an internet cafe. People are in and out of those
places all the time. How stupid can you get!’ Tom slammed his fist on the
desk. He seemed furious. ‘I thought we were going to get a nice, neat
home address. Dumb ass!’ Will realized Tom was addressing no one but
himself.

‘Where is this internet cafe?’

‘Does it matter? New York is a pretty big fucking city, Will. Millions
of people could have passed through there.’

‘Tom.’ Sternly now. ‘Can you find out where it is?’

Tom returned to the screen, while Will stared. Finally he spoke.

‘There’s the address. Trouble is, I’m not sure I believe
it.’

‘Where is it?’ said Will.

Tom looked him straight in the face for the first time since Will had shown
him the kidnappers’ email. ‘It’s from Brooklyn. Crown
Heights, Brooklyn.’

‘That’s fairly near here. Why don’t you believe it?’

‘Look at the map.’ Tom had done an instant MapQuest search,
showing with a red star the exact location of the internet cafe. It was on
Eastern Parkway. ‘Do you realize where that is?’

‘No. Come on, Tom. Stop fucking around. Tell me.’

‘This message was sent from Crown Heights. That’s only the
biggest Hassidic community in America.’

The red star stared at them without blinking. It looked like the X on a
treasure map, the kind that used to feature in Will’s boyhood dreams.
What lay under it?

‘Despite the location, it’s possible that it’s not them
who sent it.’

‘Tom, the email was in Hebrew, for Christ’s sake.’

‘Yeah, but that could be a cover. The real name was golem.net.’

‘Look it up.’

Tom keyed
golem
into Google and clicked on the first result. It
brought up a page from a website of Jewish legends for children. It told the
story of the Great Rabbi Loew of Prague, who used a spell from kabbala, ancient
Jewish mysticism, to mould a man from clay: a vast, lumbering giant they called
the Golem. Will’s eye raced to the end: the story climaxed in violence
and destruction, with the Golem running amok. The Golem seemed to be a Hassidic
precursor of Frankenstein’s monster.

‘All right,’ said Tom finally. ‘I admit it, it does seem
to be them. But it makes no sense. Why on earth would these people take Beth?’

‘We don’t know it’s “these people”. It might
be one psycho who just happens to be Hassidic.’ Will grabbed his coat.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going there.’

‘Are you crazy?’

‘I’ll pretend I’m reporting. I’ll start asking
questions. See who’s in charge.’

‘You’re out of your mind. Why don’t you just tell the
police you’ve traced the email? Let them handle it.’

‘What, and guarantee these lunatics kill Beth? I’m going.’

‘You can’t just go charging in there, with your notebook and
English accent. You might as well wear a fucking sign.’

I’ll think of something.’ Will did not say, though he thought it,
that he was getting quite good at this kind of amateur detective work. His
triumphs in Brownsville and Montana had left him pumped: in both cases he had
found out a hidden truth. Now he would find his wife.

H
is first reaction was
confusion. He got off the subway at Sterling Street and walked straight into
what looked to him like a black neighbourhood:
Ebony, Vibe
and
Black
Hair
on sale at the news-stand, murals on every other wall, knots of young
black men standing around in baggy combat clothes.

But once he crossed New York Avenue, he felt his pulse quicken with a
reporter’s sense that he was getting nearer to the story. Signs appeared
in Hebrew. Some of the words were written in English characters, though their
meaning was no less opaque.
Chazak V’Ematz!
promised one,
enigmatically.

Another word appeared several times, on bumper stickers, on fly posters,
even on notices collared to lampposts, like flyers seeking lost cats. Will soon
learned to recognize the word, though he had no idea how to pronounce it:
Moshiach
.

Next he passed a black man the size of a large refrigerator, with a little
girl in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Will’s confusion returned. He was now on Empire Boulevard, noticing
Indian restaurants and vans decked out in the national flag of Trinidad and
Tobago. Was he in the Hassidic neighbourhood or wasn’t he?

He turned off, into residential streets. The houses were large brownstones
or made of a firm, red brick, as if once, in a long-ago Brooklyn, they had been
positively posh. Each had a few steps up to the front door, which sat alongside
a porch. In other American homes, Will guessed, these porches might feature a
swing chair, perhaps a few lanterns, certainly a pumpkin at Hallowe’en
and very often, the Stars and Stripes. In Crown Heights they looked mainly
unused, though even here Will spotted that word again —
Moshiach
— on window stickers, and once on a yellow flag with the image of a
crown, which Will took to be some kind of local symbol.

Directly above each porch, one storey up, was a veranda, complete with
wooden balustrade. Will thought of Beth, held behind one of these front doors:
his legs suddenly tensed with the urge to run up the stairs of each house and
knock down door after door, until he had found his wife.

Coming towards him was a group of teenage girls in long skirts, pushing
strollers. Behind them were perhaps a dozen, maybe more, children. Will could
not tell if these girls were older sisters or exceptionally young mothers. They
looked like no women he had ever seen before, certainly not in New York. They
seemed to be from a different era, the 1950s perhaps or the reign of Queen
Victoria. No flesh was exposed, the sleeves of their white, prim blouses
covered their arms; their skirts fell to their ankles. And their hair: the
older women seemed to wear it in a preternaturally neat bob, one that barely
moved in the wind.

Will did not look too hard; he did not want anyone to think he was staring.
Besides, he no longer needed confirmation.

This was Hassidic Crown Heights, all right. As he walked, he honed his cover
story. He would say he was a writer for New York magazine doing a piece for its
new ‘Slice of the Apple’ slot, in which outsiders wrote dispatches
from different segments of New York’s wonderfully diverse community,
blah, blah. He would pose as the safari-suit explorer, sent to note down the
curious ways of the natives.

And this was certainly an alien landscape. Will searched desperately for
something that might give him a handle — an office perhaps, where he
might discover who ran this place.

Maybe he could explain what had happened and they would help him. He just
needed a foothold, something in this strange place he at least understood.

But there was nothing. Every bumper sticker seemed to convey a message that
might be worth decoding, but was indecipherable.
Light Sabbath candles and
you’ll light up the world!
There was an ad for a show:
Ready for
Redemption
. Even the shops seemed to be part of this religious fervour. The
Kol Tov supermarket carried a slogan:
It’s all good
.

He kept walking, stopping at a store front whose window was full of notices
rather than goods. One leapt out at him straightaway.

Crown Heights is the neighbourhood of the Rebbe. Out of
respect to the Rebbe and his community we request that all women and girls,
whether living here or visiting, adhere at all times to the laws of modesty,
including:

Closed neckline in back, side and front. (Collarbone
should remain covered)
Elbows covered in all positions
Knees covered by dress/skirt in all positions
Proper cover of the entire leg and foot
No slits