‘Again, Blessed One, with help,’ Ber Lusim said. ‘Not alone. Not by some superhuman ability or intuition.’
‘Then, having read the book, she comes here.’
‘And does nothing.’
‘And does – so far as we can see – nothing. But what can we infer from that, Ber Lusim? If she came to search for us, why doesn’t she search? If she came to confer with someone, why doesn’t she meet them and confer? Why does she go from such wild activity to such complete stillness? What is she, perhaps, waiting for? I beg you to indulge me in this. If you’re right, you lose nothing by questioning her. If you’re wrong, you lose much by leaving her free to harm us. Despite the time you’ve lost because of events in England – the need, which you have explained to me, to re-route shipments and to source new equipment – we are coming to the final page. I beg you to question the
rhaka
and ensure that nothing she has planned can interfere with that.’
‘I will do this thing,’ said Ber Lusim, ‘if I’m brought to it. But precisely because of that lost time, Most Holy, I would rather not be brought to it. To secure the
rhaka
, and then to question her, would delay us still further. I would rather drive onward with the mission that we’ve set ourselves.’
‘Well, I am unschooled in these things.’ Shekolni’s voice was freighted with almost subliminal amounts of sarcasm and resentment. ‘I’m prey to foolish fears.’
It was necessary to bring this matter to rest, Ber Lusim knew. It was bad for the others to see the two of them at odds, even for a moment. An idea struck him. He caught Hifela’s gaze and held it for a moment.
‘Tell me this, Blessed One. If you’re right, and the
rhaka
knows we’re here – if she is about to call down some disaster on our heads – how should I cast my net, for such a fish? How should I bring this woman into my house, so that I can question her? No matter how many Messengers I send against her, she’ll merely eat them alive and excrete their bones.’
Nobody laughed. Nobody could be completely certain that their leader was joking.
‘Send me,’ Hifela suggested.
The words hung in the air. The
Elohim
, awed, waited for Ber Lusim’s verdict.
‘You, old Skull-bone?’ Ber Lusim enquired. ‘Well, I said that she was formidable. But if I approved this thing, I’d want her brought to me alive and your natural instincts tend towards death.’
‘No,’ Hifela said.
‘No?’
‘No,
Tannanu
. My instincts tend towards obedience. I wait on your will. If you say to bring her alive, I will be as protective of her body’s safety as her mother would be. But I will bring her.’
He knows me so well
, Hifela thought. It was like a small piece of theatre that they had planned together. Perhaps, as the ending of days came closer, all conversations would feel more and more like this. As though the weight of many centuries pressed on every word.
‘Watch her, Hifela,’ Ber Lusim said. ‘Choose a few who you trust, and watch her close. So long as she does nothing, do likewise. When she moves, move with her. And if she does anything that concerns you, even in the smallest degree, take her. Take her and bring her before me. Let me speak with her and satisfy myself on some few significant points.’
He rose to his feet, signalling that the meeting was at an end. But none of the
Elohim
moved or spoke. They waited on his peroration.
‘It may be,’ he said, ‘that Heather Kennedy’s death is meant to be folded into the greater death. It may be that God has brought her to our door for a reason. Because he wishes us to make a sacrifice unto Him that is great in proportion to the greatness of what we do. If that’s so, we’ll sacrifice joyfully, as the commandment bids us.’
He left the room to the sound of their cheers. He paused at the doorway and put his hands on Hifela’s shoulders, staring for a moment into the man’s deep-set, almost hooded eyes. Then he walked on without a word. The Face of the Skull was never comfortable with signs of approval, let alone signs of love. But this was a father’s blessing bestowed upon a faithful son – and as such, it was holy.
The day was hot and humid – uncomfortable at ten in the morning, and by noon hardly bearable. In Kennedy’s hotel room, where the AC control on the wall turned out to be a completely empty plastic box, it went by like a river of treacle.
But it was even worse for the watchers. The rooftop opposite the hotel was as hot as a grill pan. Diema slathered her melanin-deficient skin with a zinc oxide preparation and bore it stoically. Rush, still in the car, was far less stoical but was forbidden by Diema to move the car so that he could follow the shade. All he could do was wind the windows down and keep swigging water from the plastic bottles stacked up on the back seat. Only Tillman, bivouacked among the dumpsters, was out of the fierce sun and fairly comfortable.
There was one point in the course of the morning when it seemed as though someone might be walking into their trap – when a windowless van rolled up at the hotel’s back entrance and two men stepped out. But they were delivering catering supplies, boxes of individual tea bags and sugar sachets, plastic cups and tiny packs of biscuits. They were done inside of ten minutes and on their way again.
At 1 p.m., breaking protocol, Kennedy called Tillman on the walkie-talkie that Diema had given her.
‘What?’ Tillman said, without preamble.
‘Nothing,’ Kennedy muttered. ‘Too much nothing. I’m starting to get antsy.’
‘I sympathise. But you’re supposed to maintain radio silence unless there’s an emergency. Is there an emergency, Heather?’
‘No.’
‘Then we stick to the plan.’
She could tell from his tone that he was about to sign off, so she spoke quickly, forestalling him. ‘Leo, I’m not sure the plan is going to work.’
Tillman sighed. ‘We agreed on this. Anything we do now—’
‘No, hear me out. Say we read them right and everything is playing out the way we wanted it to. Say we got Ber Lusim’s attention. He could have watchers camped out around the hotel now, but further out than where you are – or closer in, for that matter. Someone sitting down in the lobby, waiting to follow me when I move.’
‘So?’
‘So maybe I should move. He might be ready to swallow the bait, but still not feel happy about moving into a space I’ve had time to fortify. Maybe he’s planning to grab me off the street as soon as I step out.’
‘All the more reason to keep you off the street, Heather.’ Tillman’s tone was dry. ‘We’re in control here. Out there, not so much.’
‘I’m looking out of my window at the dumpsters, Leo.’
‘I know. I can see you.’
‘So give me a wave.’
‘No. And don’t look out of your window at the dumpsters.’
‘Listen, if there was less at stake, I’d agree with you,’ Kennedy snapped, all her tension coming to the surface at once. ‘But if he’s waiting for us to do something, and we’re waiting for him to do something, he wins. Because presumably, he’s still got his merry band of lunatics out there setting incendiaries and decapitating rats the whole time – and getting closer to whatever it is they’re going to do that will leave a million people dead. I don’t want that on my conscience, Leo. I seriously don’t. I can’t just sit here and wonder how high the body count is getting.’
‘But we can protect you here,’ Tillman objected, stolid and patient. ‘If they come in, we come in right behind them. Out in the open, it’s different. Not to mention the fact that if you start wandering around again, it doesn’t look purposeful. It looks random. We want them to think you’re up to something that threatens them.’
‘I know. So let me do something purposeful.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as a meeting.’
There was silence on the line while Tillman considered this.
‘Diema could set up someone for you to meet with,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘One of her
Elohim
…’
‘I don’t mean a real meeting. Especially not with someone they might recognise. I mean an imaginary someone. I go to a place where there’s a crowd, but only a few ways in and out – a place where it’s still easy for the three of you to come in close to me.’
‘And what does that give us?’
‘Leverage, maybe. If they think I’m up to something – delivering something or hooking up with my contact – maybe that’s when they decide to play out the hand. Maybe they feel they need to stop it from happening.’
She waited. The silence was a lot longer this time, because Tillman was thinking through all the implications. ‘I’ll talk to Diema,’ he said at last.
‘It’s not for her to decide,’ Kennedy said sharply.
‘No, it isn’t. But she’s got people who know the ground. If we do it, we need to pick the right place.’ There was a pause, but he didn’t turn off the walkie-talkie, so she knew he hadn’t finished speaking. ‘But you could be right,’ he said at last. ‘This is meant to be a provocation. It becomes less provoking the longer you sit there and do nothing. I’ll talk to the others and get back to you.’
He signed off. Kennedy tossed the walkie-talkie onto the bed and made herself a cup of really uninspiring coffee.
Diema didn’t even argue the point. ‘She’s right,’ was all she said. ‘We should probably have done it earlier. Give them a changing situation to react to, instead of one that seems stable.’
‘Jesus, please,’ Rush broke in. ‘Anything that gets me out of this car. It’s like a sauna in here.’
‘So where should she go?’ Tillman asked Diema.
‘I’ll ask.’
‘You mean you’ll confer with your people?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how long will that take?’
‘As long as it takes.’
She closed the channel. A moment later, the walkie-talkie vibrated again. It was Rush.
‘I need to pee,’ he groaned.
‘Use the empty water bottles,’ Tillman said. ‘That’s what they’re for.’
‘Okay, then I need to breathe.’
‘No, you don’t. It’s just a habit people get into.’
‘I need to use my legs before I get a deep-vein thrombosis and die.’
‘Keep the channel clear,’ Tillman grunted, ‘and your eyes open. We’re still working here.’
He switched off the walkie-talkie. His shoulders were stiff so he massaged them, one at a time, always keeping the walkie-talkie ready in his free hand, and never taking his eyes off the hotel’s rear door.
Maybe a little more than half an hour later, Diema got back to him.
‘My people say we should use the Országház,’ she said. ‘The parliament building.’
Tillman was dubious. ‘Did they say why? Lots of security, presumably, so lots of risk. Plenty of reasons for Ber Lusim not to want to go anywhere near Heather in a place like that.’
‘And plenty of reasons why he’d be afraid of who she might be meeting there,’ Diema countered. ‘The high risk cuts both ways. Ber Lusim thinks that, perhaps, this is why she came. Perhaps she’s been waiting for an appointment with someone high up in the government and it just came through. He’d need to know who that is and what’s being planned. Most likely, if he makes a move, he’ll do it as soon as he figures out where she’s going – either when she’s in the front lobby or before she even gets into the building.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Tillman said. ‘There’ll be armed guards in there. If Ber Lusim’s people come for her, Heather could get caught in a crossfire.’
‘Heather’s in this conversation,’ Kennedy said on the walkie-talkie. ‘No pain, no gain. I follow the reasoning, Diema, and I’ll do it.’
But Tillman was still thinking it through and he still had questions. ‘How many exits has that place got?’
‘More than a dozen,’ Diema conceded. ‘But I had a thought about that. My people are going to drop something off – something that gives us a bit of an edge.’
‘What kind of something?’ Kennedy asked.
‘A GPS chip. It’s about the size of a pinhead, and we can implant it under your skin. Once it’s in place, we can establish your location to an accuracy of half a metre – which means if we lose you for any reason, we can still keep track of you. They’ll be dropping it off to me in the next few minutes. I’ll need to get it to you. The easiest way is if I just walk right in there, looking like I’m visiting someone or delivering something. Leave your door unlocked.’
The channel went dead. But only for a couple of seconds.
‘Tillman?’ Rush said.
‘Lad, either use the bloody water bottles or hold it in until we—’
‘It’s not about that. It’s about this whole thing. Taking the Heather Kennedy show on the road.’
‘Well? What about it, Ben?’
‘I think I might have a better idea.’
Kennedy did as she was told – unlocked the door and left it on the latch, so it could be pushed open from the outside. For a few minutes after that, she paced up and down the room, unable to keep still. Finally she went back to the window and stared out at the dumpsters, trying to identify where exactly Tillman had secreted himself. Wherever he was, he was well hidden. But he could see her, so she ought to be able to see him. At any rate, it was interesting to keep looking, like playing a chess game with only one move.
The door whickered momentarily against the thick pile of the carpet and a breath of air touched her back. She turned and saw Diema closing and locking the door.
‘Okay,’ the girl said. ‘Let’s do this.’
She was carrying a shoulder bag. She took something like a Bic lighter out of it and threw the bag on the bed.
‘That’s it?’ Kennedy asked.
‘This is the applicator. And this,’ she held up her other hand, in which she was holding a small, unlabelled tube like a tube of toothpaste, ‘is a topical anaesthetic plus anti-bacterial agent. You need to rub it on the spot and leave it to work for half a minute. Take off your pants and sit on the bed.’
‘Take off my
what
?’
Diema was matter-of-fact. ‘There’ll be an implant wound – tiny but noticeable. If we had time for it to heal over, anywhere on your body would be fine. As it is, our best bet is to implant the chip internally, so there’s no visible mark. The supplier said the inside of your cheek would do, but he also said there might be swelling on your face, which would look suspicious. So I think we should go with his other suggestion, which was to place the chip in your vaginal wall.’