‘I want to be there, too,’ Diema said. ‘I want to see this thing. Please, Tannanu. Tell me where this will happen.’
Shekolni stared at her for a long time. Then he stared at the knife around which his two hands were clasped.
‘Midnight,’ he whispered. ‘Sunday. Greenwich meantime.’
He leaned forward a little and drove the sica up to its hilt into his throat. With a curse, Diema ran forward as he toppled, and wrestled the knife from his grip, but there was nothing to be done. Shekolni was already drowning in his own blood, his airway as well as his jugular completely severed.
His right hand rose, trembling violently, and found her arm. It was as though he were trying to console her.
61
‘For Christ’s sake, could you please switch to English!’
Kennedy had said the words three times already, but this was the first time that the seemingly unending torrent of Aramaic was interrupted and the other people in the room — every last one of them Elohim — deigned to look at her. Not even Diema looked friendly.
She and Rush had been all but forgotten in the rapid retreat from Gellert Hill. The assassins had become removal men, taking up everything they could find — including the fallen, the few dead and the many wounded on both sides — and running flat-out with their heavy burdens back to the old print shop through which they’d entered.
From there, with the evacuation still in progress and the sound of sirens rising on all sides, Diema had had them taken back to the safe house in one of a phalanx of ambulances — real or fake, Kennedy couldn’t decide — driving with their own sirens full-on, against the swarms of emergency vehicles converging on the Buda side of the river. Earthquake or not, the fact that Gellert Hill had just shrugged massively and shaken down some of the houses on its slopes was being taken in deadly earnest. Kennedy prayed that no one had been killed as a result of the blast — then realised how futile that prayer was, with a million lives hanging in the balance.
Or were they still hanging? Thinking about the expression of peace and calm on Avra Shekolni’s face when he died, she had to wonder whether they’d just blown their last chance to stop Ber Lusim from turning Toller’s three-century-old visions into cold, hard fact.
At the safe house, Diema requisitioned a room and went into conclave with Nahir and his deputies. But at the last moment, just as she’d done down in the tunnels, she indicated with a flick of her head that Kennedy should come along too. Rush was led back to his cell, protesting bitterly.
But Kennedy’s presence at the crisis meeting mattered about as much as a fart in a windstorm, because the Judas People locked her out anyway — not with a door but with their language. And listening to the increasingly urgent and furious exchanges between them, Kennedy yielded to her own impatience at last and stepped in.
‘I’m not following this,’ she said now. ‘If you speak in English, I can be part of the conversation. Believe it or not, I might know something that will turn out to be useful.’ Nobody answered. The assassins all stared at her with a mixture of longing and hatred.
‘Why is she here with us?’ Nahir asked Diema. But he said it in English, allowing Kennedy to get the full benefit of his scorn for her. ‘Why must we endure this again?’
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?’