by Adam Blake
Diema stared him down. ‘For the reason she just gave you. She was involved in the earlier stages of this hunt. Her knowledge is relevant. I thought it was sensible to keep her close to hand.’
Nahir raised his eyebrows, politely sceptical. ‘If she has knowledge, I can have my people interrogate her.’
‘She worked as a detective. Her insights have been useful to me.’
‘Yes,’ Nahir said. ‘So you told me. And I wait, enthralled, to see that wonderful mind in action. But that doesn’t mean I want to sit at the same table as her or have her speak to me as though we are equals.’
Diema turned to Kennedy. ‘Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to,’ she ordered her.
‘And I won’t use her gutter tongue just so she can hobble along beside us.’ Having made his point, Nahir reverted to Aramaic and continued to talk to Diema in a loud, hectoring tone for a further minute.
When he was done, Diema glanced at Kennedy once and – seemingly with bad grace – nodded. Two Elohim rose and approached Kennedy.
‘They’ll take you back to your cell,’ Diema told them. ‘We’ll talk later.’
Kennedy stood, bowing to the inevitable as the girl had just done. But at that moment the doors opened and a man she’d never seen before walked in. He was a little on the short side but very solidly built, his upper arms bulging with muscle to such an extent that they slightly spoiled the lines of his light tan suit. His bald head gleamed with sweat, and he wiped his face with a linen handkerchief. Two women had entered with him and took up their stations to either side of him. Both were about six feet tall, dressed identically in dark grey pinstripe two-pieces that were probably intended to make them look like lawyers. But they didn’t: they looked like the angel of death and her sister. They watched the room with eyes that defied anyone to move.
But the Elohim moved anyway. One by one – starting with Nahir – they pushed their chairs back and sank to one knee, bowing their heads. Diema was last.
‘Bless us, Tannanu,’ she murmured. ‘And give us your counsel.’
Kennedy wondered why she’d switched back to English, and who the VIP was. But the second question was answered at once when the stranger’s gaze, sweeping the room, came to rest on her.
He didn’t speak, but it was obvious that he recognised her. And from that, her mind made the leap. This must be Kuutma, the Elohim’s supreme commander – the man who sometimes took the name of Michael Brand. The angels were scowling at her, eyes narrowed. Probably it was some kind of lèse majesté to look Michael Brand in the eye, but Kennedy was damned if she was going to give him a curtsy. She owed this bastard nothing but harsh language.
Kuutma turned his attention back to his own people. With a brusque gesture he signalled to them to stand. ‘I’m sorry I arrived too late to take part in your recent action,’ he said. ‘I’m also sorry that its outcomes were mixed. You seem to have comprehensively derailed Ber Lusim’s operations – and that was very well done – but I gather that the man himself evaded you.’
He crossed to the table, where Nahir instantly and without a word surrendered his place at its head. ‘Please bring me up to date on what’s happening now,’ Kuutma said. ‘What steps have been taken to find Ber Lusim?’
Nahir looked profoundly nervous, but spoke clearly. Kuutma had followed Diema’s lead and spoken in English, so he did likewise. ‘We’ve closed Ferihegy airport, by planting a small explosive device there and phoning in a warning. Follow-up threats were phoned in at Debrecen, Sármellék, Györ-Pér and Pécs-Pogány, so we’re assuming that flights have been grounded there, too. We’re also watching the mainline stations and the roads out of the city, but it’s impossible to stop all traffic there. We’re backtracking from phones and ID found on Ber Lusim’s Elohim to addresses in the city to which they were registered. We’re hoping we might find a safe house where he has gone to ground.’
Kuutma nodded. ‘And you’ve questioned the Elohim you captured in the caves?’
‘They refuse to speak,’ Nahir said. ‘We considered torture, but —’
‘But that’s out of the question, for anyone of the bloodline,’ Kuutma finished. ‘I agree. The precautions that you’ve taken are good ones, but we have to assume he’s been able to escape from the city and is now on his way to wherever it is he’s going. So where is he going?’ Not waiting for an answer, Kuutma turned to Diema. ‘You believe he’s still working his way through the prophecies in Toller’s book?’
‘As far as we can tell, Tannanu, yes,’ Diema said. ‘Leo Tillman’s intervention in London bought us a little time, but there’s no reason at all to think that it derailed the overall plan – which is to enact all the prophecies in sequence and force God’s hand.’
The blasphemy, so bluntly spoken, sent a frisson through the ranks of the Messengers.
‘And how far has he got?’ Kuutma asked calmly.
‘That’s what we’re trying to determine,’ Nahir said. ‘I have people looking at the book now.’
‘People?’ It was Kennedy who spoke. She was sick of standing by and listening – and she didn’t even try to keep the sardonic edge out of her voice. Nahir gave her another look of dyspeptic hatred, but Kuutma laughed – long and loud, throwing his head back. The Elohim, including Diema, stared at him. Twice Nahir seemed about to speak, but hesitated, waiting for Kuutma’s huge amusement to run its course.
‘She makes a point,’ Kuutma said, still smiling, and wiping the corner of his eye. ‘What people do you have, Desh Nahir? Put the lady’s mind at rest.’
Nahir clearly didn’t get the joke and just as clearly hated having to explain himself to an outsider, a rhaka. ‘Interpreters,’ he said, his gaze glancing off Kennedy before returning to Kuutma. ‘Priests. Textual exegesists. People who might be expected to have some skill in navigating a book of prophecies. But the prophecies were deliberately written in opaque and elliptical language. They support many different interpretations, and it’s hard – impossible, even – to say which if any is correct.’
‘So you don’t know,’ Kennedy concluded. ‘You don’t have any idea how long you’ve got or which prophecy Ber Lusim has reached. Which prophecy he’ll be looking to fulfil.’
‘This pains me,’ Nahir said to Kuutma. ‘Tannanu, I was about to exclude her. Please permit me to do so. I don’t see what we gain by letting her hear our proceedings. If you want to interrogate her later, I’d be happy to provide a room and some suitable—’
‘It’s the last prophecy,’ Kennedy said.
‘—some suitable implements for—’
‘He’s reached the last prophecy. Didn’t you see what Shekolni did down there? Did he slip it past you while you weren’t looking?’
Nahir was forced to acknowledge her now. He snarled what was presumably a curse word in ancient Aramaic, then swivelled to face her. ‘You’re talking about things you don’t understand,’ he said. ‘There are mysteries that will never be revealed to you – even if you were to spend a lifetime studying them.’
And that was meant to be a killer put-down, Kennedy thought: if there hadn’t been so very much at stake, including her life, she might have laughed in Nahir’s face. He was only a year or so older than Diema, Kennedy realised now. Of course, the Elohim tended to be young. Apart from Kuutma, she was probably the oldest person in the room. ‘And that’s your problem, right there,’ she said to him, her tone of condescension matching his. ‘You’re looking for revealed mysteries. All I’m looking for is an evidence trail.’
‘And you found one?’ Kuutma asked. He was staring at her keenly, expectantly. ‘Share it with us, please.’
‘Has someone got the text?’ Kennedy demanded.
Diema had learned it by rote, and to Kennedy’s surprise she recited it. ‘And the stone shall be rolled away from the tomb, as it was the time before. Then will a voice be heard, crying “The hour, the hour is at hand” and all men will see what heretofore was hidden. The betrayer will condemn a great multitude with a single b
reath. On the island that was given for an island, in the presence of the son and of the spirit, he will speak the names of the thousand thousand that will be sacrificed. And from his throne in the heavens, the Lord Jesus who is our glory and our life will speak the names of the few that will be saved.’
The words were met with a faintly awed silence from the other Elohim. Kennedy just nodded. ‘Avra Shekolni used his last words to name a time. Midnight on Sunday, GMT. He was being the voice – fulfilling Toller’s prophecy. And he roped us in, too. When we blew that door, we all became part of the scenario. Rolling away the stone from the mouth of the tomb. That’s the only reason why he waited for us.’
‘That place was not a tomb,’ Nahir said angrily. ‘It had been used as a granary.’
Kennedy turned to stare at him. ‘Wow, you got me there. Unless it became a tomb when he got a whole lot of his men to cut their throats in it. What do you think?’
‘And the door was steel. Not stone.’
‘Steel filled with poured concrete. You’re going to argue semantics with a dead prophet?’
‘No,’ Nahir said. ‘With a live whore.’
Kennedy shook her head in sorrowful wonder. ‘Did you skimp on your research, sweetheart?’ she asked. ‘Or are you scared you won’t be able to say dyke without blushing?’
She returned her attention to Kuutma, but she was speaking to the room at large. ‘Shekolni was pulling a trigger,’ she said. ‘We’ll probably never know, now, whether they had it planned this way all along or whether he killed himself rather than let you take him and question him. But by dying, he lined everything up – he fulfilled the conditions that would let Ber Lusim enact the last prophecy. And wherever he went when he left here, the place he’s heading for is the island – the “island that was given for an island”. Find that, and you’ll find him.’
She paused and looked from face to face, meeting an endless gallery of hostile stares and one quizzical frown.
‘And how,’ Kuutma said, ‘are we to do that?’
‘I’d suggest doing it fast,’ Kennedy answered.
A hubbub of voices arose, with Nahir and a dozen of his Elohim all shouting out at once. Kuutma held up a hand, calm and commanding, and the voices died away.
‘Enough,’ Kuutma said coldly. ‘I need to be completely briefed on your recent actions.’ Diema began to speak, but he continued over her. ‘Desh Nahir has rank and oversight in this city, so I’ll speak with him first – and then with my special emissary, Diema Beit Evrom. Time is short. We’ll speak in your command room, Nahir, and then we’ll meet again here immediately afterwards. The rest of you will wait for us to return.’ He glanced at Kennedy. ‘Except for the rhaka, who can be placed in whatever receptacle you deem appropriate.’
‘Take her back to her cell,’ Nahir said. The two Messengers who had started to close in on Kennedy earlier, and had stopped in their tracks when Kuutma entered, took hold of her now.
They turned Kennedy around and led her to the door. Their grip on her shoulders was tighter than it needed to be: one of them also had a fist jammed against her lower back, presumably prepared to get her in a full lock if she stepped out of line. Nahir looked away, done with the whole business. So did Diema.
If I wasn’t dead before, Kennedy thought, I’m sure as hell dead now.
62
For about a quarter of an hour after he was thrown back into his cell, Rush just sat on the cot bed with his head sunk onto his raised knees. But gradually, boredom and frustration won out over fear and unease.
He whiled away some time carving obscene graffiti on the walls with the edge of a coin. Then he hammered on the door for a while, demanding something to eat and drink – until he remembered the apple that Diema had given him, and ate that. It quenched his thirst a little, but mostly just reminded him of how much he wanted a hamburger or a chicken madras.
He tried not to be afraid, but he’d seen how Nahir and his posse had been looking at him and Kennedy down in the caves, and he was pretty sure he knew what those looks meant. They’d outlived their usefulness – not that there’d been much usefulness to outlive, in his case. The Elohim would figure out the prophecy without their help, or else they would blow it. Either way, he and Kennedy – and Tillman, assuming Tillman wasn’t dead already – would be taken out behind the barn. Even if Diema wanted to protect them, there probably wasn’t a lot she could do about it. And as far as he could tell, Diema was going along with the whole—
The bolt on the outside of the cell door rattled and then clanked as it was drawn back. Rush turned around, expecting to see the Messenger who’d brought him here – but it was her.
Diema closed the door behind her, quietly but firmly. She stared at Rush hard, her expression intense but unreadable.
‘So how was your day?’ he asked.
‘Shut up,’ Diema said.
‘Okay.’
‘And lie on the bed.’
It wasn’t what he was expecting to hear, so the snappiest comeback he could dredge up was ‘What?’
‘The bed,’ Diema snapped, walking up to him and pushing him towards it. Her body was rigid with tension. ‘Lie down. Lie down on the bed. Quickly!’
Bemused, Rush obeyed – but this just seemed to get the girl angry. ‘Not with your clothes on!’ she exploded. ‘For God’s sake, have you never had sex before? Your pants. Your pants!’
He stood up again. ‘Is this a joke?’ he asked. ‘Because I’m really not in the mood. The apple? Okay, the apple was funny, but this—’ A thought struck him, and he wound down in mid-sentence. It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t a joke at all, it was—
Poison on a sugar lump.
A hypnotist’s pocket watch, set swinging.
Being asked to count down from ten, so you wouldn’t feel it when the needle slipped into your arm on the count of seven.
‘Hey,’ he said, his voice shaking a little. ‘Let’s not do this, okay. I swear I’m not going to tell anyone about you. Nobody would even believe me if I did. You don’t have to …’
Diema exhaled – a loud huff of exasperation – and breathed in again deeply and slowly. On the in-breath she magically produced a knife, one of those evil-looking sica things, and pressed it to Rush’s stomach.
‘Oh shit,’ he blurted.
With a single sweep of the knife, she sliced clean through his belt and took his fly button, too. Then she pushed him again, tangling up her foot with his in a complicated way so that he slammed down onto the bed.
Diema kicked off her boots and undressed from the waist down. With the knife still in her hand, she climbed on top of him. She tapped the blade of the knife against his chest. Her face, as she contemplated him, was solemn, even severe.
‘We’ve got ten minutes,’ she said. ‘Can you get there in ten minutes, Rush?’
‘Can I—’
‘Because if you can’t, I’m not going to be responsible for the consequences. But I can pretty much guarantee there’ll be a lot of blood.’
She reached underneath her, found him with her hand and rubbed him with a lot more vigour than tenderness. When he was hard enough, she guided him in.
It was reminiscent of Dovecote Farm, in a lot of ways. Except that being beaten up by her at Dovecote Farm hadn’t involved performance anxiety. It took him a long while to get into any kind of a rhythm, and a couple of times along the way he almost lost his erection. Diema was pushing back against him brusquely, but there was no trace of pleasure on her face.
As soon as he reached his climax, Diema uncoupled from him and tucked the knife away. She began to dress again without a word.
‘Was it … was it good for you?’ he asked dazedly.
Diema snorted in derision. ‘No!’
He raised himself a few inches to stare at her. ‘Then why did we do it?’ he asked.
She tugged her trousers up over her hips, then stepped into her boots and knelt to tie up the laces.
‘Why?’ Rush insisted. He was afraid of what the
answer might be, but he really needed to know.
Diema was already walking towards the door, hauling it open, but she paused for a moment in the doorway and glanced back at him.
‘Because I don’t trust you to lie,’ she said coldly. From the tone of her voice and the look on his face, a casual observer would think Rush had just run over Diema’s dog, rather than that they’d just shared a moment of physical intimacy.
The door slammed shut behind her.
He slumped back onto the bed and closed his eyes, overwhelmed by a feeling of helplessness and despair.
Maybe every condemned man felt like that after his hearty meal.
Diema was oppressed by the feeling of time running out – except that the image her mind gave her wasn’t of sand falling through an hourglass. It was of a lit fuse, like the fuse on a bomb in a Tex Avery cartoon, burning down to the final, irrevocable KABOOM.
She found Nahir sitting at the desk in his command room, deep in discussion with Kuutma. She waited in the doorway to be noticed, prepared to walk away again if Kuutma ignored her, but he beckoned her in.
‘—monitoring live data feeds from scanners at airports and border checkpoints,’ Nahir was saying as she entered. ‘But there’s nothing yet. We’re checking against all of Ber Lusim’s known aliases, but of course we’re not assuming that we know every identity he has. Since we closed the airports, the knock-on effects have led to security checkpoints being set up along all the major roads into and out of the city. We can’t say for sure that we’ve stopped Lusim, but I’m confident we’ve slowed him down.’
Kuutma nodded. ‘Sensible steps to take, certainly,’ he said. ‘Diema, your opinion?’
‘My opinion? I don’t think it can do any harm,’ Diema said. Her slow, considered tone left vast amounts unspoken.
‘What would you do that I’ve left undone?’ Nahir asked, receiving the insult with a face frozen into immobility.
‘Assuming that you’ve also stationed Messengers at the Keleti and Nyugati Pályaudvar railheads—’
‘Of course.’