Sam Bourne 4-Book Thriller Collection. Sam Bourne

Howard Macrae or Pat Baxter to be murdered in the name of a lunatic fantasy. The end of the world indeed! It was obviously nonsense. Who could seriously believe thirty-six people kept the world alive? Will had not breathed in the empirical, sceptical air of Oxford for nothing. He had been taught to dismiss such bunkum out of hand: it made more sense to believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden.

      And yet what he thought was surely irrelevant. Someone obviously did believe it – with an intensity that made them ready to kill wholly innocent men, all over the world. If this was the killers’ motive, what did it matter whether it was rational or not?

      That was what Will told himself. But still something nagged. Something about this man and his books; something about the respect TC had for him. Something about TC, Tova Chaya, herself. These people were not bug-eyed maniacs. They were keepers of an ancient tradition which had endured since the city of Sodom. The story of the thirty-six had been passed down quietly, generation after generation, from the days of Abraham through centuries of wanderings from Babylon to eastern Europe and, now, to America. Jews were not cranks, latching onto fantasies; not as far as he knew. His conversations with TC had always projected the same impression: that Judaism was not concerned with the supernatural, so much as with the way real human beings treated each other in the here and now. They did not seem to believe in flying saucers or cripples throwing away their crutches. They were more grounded than that. So if they believed in the hidden presence of thirty-six good men, maybe there was a reason.

      Something else dulled Will’s usually sceptical instincts. If he had not discovered it for himself, he would never have believed it. But Macrae and Baxter, Samak in Bangkok and Curtis in London had fitted the rabbi’s description perfectly. They had indeed performed acts of uncommon goodness and had done so entirely in private. They had shunned publicity, just as the legend demanded. (Will’s strong hunch was that, until he started digging, the righteous acts of Baxter and Macrae, at least, had been entirely unknown.) The four people he knew about had even disguised themselves as sinners, people who would be reviled rather than revered. A pimp and a politician, for heaven’s sake!

      What if he accepted the existence of these lamadvavniks, just for the sake of argument? That allowed a new thought to encroach. Until that moment, his sole interest had been in discovering how this strange, ancient story might lead him back to his wife. Now he felt his hands go moist at a different notion. If this myth had any grounding in reality, then the pursuit of the righteous men was not just a cruel crime. It would also bring disaster upon the world. For the first time he understood Rabbi Freilich’s words to him on the telephone the previous evening. Your wife matters to you, Mr Monroe, of course she does. But the world, the creation of the Almighty, matters to me.

      Thirty-six, thought Will. It was so few. Just thirty-six people on the whole of this crowded, cramped planet, teeming with, what, six billion people? Four men were dead, he knew that. Did that mean there were another thirty-two dead, or dying, in far-off corners of the world, all but unnoticed?

      He remembered again his conversation with Rabbi Freilich. An ancient story is unfolding here, threatening an outcome that mankind has feared for thousands of years. So this is what he meant. The ancient story was the legend of the lamad vav, the thirty-six righteous men. The outcome feared for so long was nothing less than the end of the world.

      Whoever had been sending those text messages knew all this, Will now realized. While Rabbi Mandelbaum stretched for another book, Will stole a glance at his cell phone, to look at the last message he had received. A four-line poem, a quatrain.

      Just men we are, our number few

      Describable in digits two

      We’re halved if these do multiply

      If we few perish then all must die.

      Just men . . . describable in digits . . . two. The two digits were three and six. If these do multiply. Three times six was eighteen, half of thirty-six: We’re halved. And the texter understood what was at stake. If we few perish then all must die.

      Will tried hard to compose himself. He wanted desperately to produce his notebook, to start ordering all this information. Still, he had to ask some questions.

      ‘These thirty-six? Are they all Jewish?’

      ‘Usually in Hassidic folk lore the tzaddikim are Jewish. But this is more sociology than theology: who else did these yidden know? They knew only Jews. That was their entire world. In the early rabbinic writings, there are different views on the identity of the tzaddikim. Some believed they all lived in the land of Israel, some said that a portion lived outside it; others said that the righteous men emerged from the goyim, the Gentiles. There is no settled view. It could be all Jews, all non-Jews or a mixture.’

      ‘But they’re always men?’

      ‘Always. On that the sources all agree. No doubt about that at all. The lamadvavniks are all men.’

      TC could read Will’s mind. So why are they holding my Beth?

      The truth was, Will was disappointed. Since the rabbi had first started talking, Will had been trying to trace a path back to his wife and her abduction. Even before he came here he had accepted that Macrae and Baxter were connected, but he could not fathom their link to Beth. This theory of the thirty-six seemed bizarre and far-fetched, if not completely loopy, to Will, but at least it might explain what was in the Hassidim’s mind. Perhaps for some deluded reason, they had decided Beth was one of the righteous ones. Now he knew that could not be true: she was the wrong sex. He was as mystified as ever.

      A new question surfaced. He asked it as soon as he had thought of it.

      ‘Who would want to do such a thing? Who would want to bring about the end of the world?’

      ‘Only one who was in thrall to the Sitra Achra.’

      Will’s brow furrowed.

      Rabbi Mandelbaum realized he needed to say more. ‘I’m sorry, I’m forgetting. The Sitra Achra means literally “the other side”. In kabbalah, it is the phrase used to refer to the forces of evil. Unfortunately, these are present all around us, every day and in everything.’

      ‘A bit like the devil, like Satan?’

      ‘No, not really. Because the Sitra Achra is not some external force we can blame for everything that goes wrong. The power of the Sitra Achra derives from the actions of human beings. It is not Lucifer who brings evil into the world. I’m afraid, Mr Monroe, it is us.’

      ‘Why would religious people, men of God, want to do such a thing – to kill the righteous men?’

      ‘I cannot imagine why. You know, we Jews say that if you save a life it is as if you have saved the whole world. So to kill any human being is a great crime. The ultimate crime. To kill a tzaddik? That would be a further desecration of the name of the Almighty. To kill more than one? To aim to kill all of them? I cannot even contemplate such wickedness.’

      ‘No motive we can think of?’

      ‘I suppose it’s conceivable that someone very misguided might want to test this belief to its limits. To see if it’s really true, that the lamad vav maintain the world. If the lamad vav are all gone, all not here, well then we will know, won’t we?’

      ‘Or they could believe it already,’ said Will. ‘Believe it so much that they want to bring about the end of the world.’

      In the silence that followed, Will was struck by something he had half-noticed but had not thought about properly till now. For someone who had just been confronted with such news, Rabbi Mandelbaum looked remarkably calm. He remained in his chair, thumbing his books. As if this was a purely theoretical problem.

      Now it was the rabbi’s turn to read Will’s mind.

      ‘Anyway, no one could ever do it,’ the old man said, sighing as he adjusted himself in his seat. ‘Because no one ever knows who the lamadvavniks are. That is their power.’