The journey from Hungary hadn’t given Kennedy any real time to talk with Tillman or with Rush. It had been a chaotic, seemingly endless ordeal involving a breakneck drive out of Budapest on narrow, crowded streets, across the Slovak border into the ragged industrial outskirts of Levice. And then a night flight out of a private airfield near Podluzany that turned out to be no airfield at all, but a newly laid runway in the middle of nowhere — just fresh tarmac poured over grass and weeds and smoothed with garden rollers while it cooled. Their feet, as they walked to the plane, had stuck to the still-wet surface and come up again with audible pops and smacks.
On the flight, they’d torn out a row of seats and adapted the row behind into a makeshift travois for Tillman, strapping him in with seatbelts and duct tape all along his body’s length. He was drifting in and out of consciousness: the Elohim doctor seemed to favour a pain-control regime that was basically a chemical sledgehammer. But in one of his brief periods of lucidity, Kennedy was at last able to ask him how he was feeling.
‘Fine,’ was all he’d said. ‘I’m good, Heather. Only hurts when I laugh.’
‘She sold us out, Leo,’ Kennedy had said, leaning close to murmur the words in his ear. ‘As soon as you were down, on Gellert Hill, she took us home to meet the folks. They’re running this, now. Running us.’
Tillman had smiled at that, a little lopsidedly because his system hadn’t purged itself of the sedatives yet. ‘I’m her folks,’ he said.
Which startled and appalled Kennedy, because she thought it must have been her that gave it away. ‘You knew that?’
‘Yes. I knew that. That was why I followed her signal, back there on the hill. I knew there was a possibility you might be in trouble, too. And the lad. But I heard … gunfire, explosions, all around her. I couldn’t leave her there. I’m sorry about leaving you to fend for yourself.’
‘Don’t be,’ Kennedy muttered. ‘How did you know, Leo? What did I say?’
He shook his head, very slowly. ‘Nothing. Well, you said at Dovecote that you only came to find me after you’d met Diema. You didn’t say it was because you’d met her, but that seemed to be the implication.’
‘Damn,’ Kennedy said bitterly.
‘But I would have known, anyway. She’s the spitting image of her mother.’
‘I think the resemblance ends right there.’ She had to say it, however much it hurt him. Otherwise, he’d only be hurt worse later. ‘She doesn’t give a good goddamn about any of us. She got them to stick a needle in your heart to wake you up, so they could question you.’
Tillman winced — pain from his wounds or from the words. ‘Good,’ he said.
‘Good?’
‘She doesn’t know me from Adam, and Adam was a piece of shit in her book. A million dead, Heather. That’s what’s about to happen. She plays the hand she’s dealt, which is what I’d want her to do. What I’d do.’
The conversation had to stop then, because they were coming in for a landing. It was Diema who loomed suddenly at their shoulders to tell them that — and in retrospect, there was no way of knowing how long she’d been listening.
How they’d gotten into the USA at all was still a mystery to Kennedy. Probably they hadn’t, officially. The plane had had to clear customs, of course, but there had been no inspection of its contents and — in her case, and Tillman’s, and Rush’s — no passport checks or immigration procedures. Kennedy’s best guess was that the remote field where they’d landed was mostly used by drug runners and that the Judas People were just taking advantage of an existing network of bribes, bungs and semi-professional courtesies. As far as US Customs were concerned, they were all airfreight. Whoever pocketed the kickback didn’t care whether they were sex workers, terrorists or camera-shy rock stars.
So they’d never had a chance, at any stage in the proceedings, to cut loose from their Elohim handlers and ask for sanctuary. They were here on Diema’s terms, and at her mercy, as they had been ever since the battle on Gellert Hill. They’d fallen off the edge of the world, and into another world that ran along next to it. Now their fate was in the hands of lunatics and children.
And it was a little after nine on a misty, sunny Sunday morning, which meant that there were ten hours left to Armageddon.
The truck took a turn very sharply, rocking on its base like a boat on a rising tide. One of Kuutma’s women — Alus, Kennedy thought — spoke through a security grille to the other, who was driving. Both had changed into security guard livery in case the truck got stopped at any stage. Everyone else had been given a change of clothes before they left Budapest, so they were now dressed in smart casual clothes that wouldn’t attract a second glance. Except that Tillman looked like a dead man walking and Rush’s face (though the swelling had gone down) was crossed and recrossed with ant-tracks of surgical suture.
‘Where are we?’ Diema asked Alus.
‘He vuteh,’ the woman answered shortly. ‘The tunnel.’
Diema looked at Kennedy, then at Tillman, ignoring Rush. ‘We’ve reached the Lincoln Tunnel,’ she said. ‘We’re crossing into Manhattan. We have to decide where we want to go first.’
‘The factory,’ Tillman muttered. His voice was indistinct. ‘Up in the Bronx. Where Lusim milled the ricin. I want to see it.’
‘The factory’s already been searched by our people,’ Alus said. ‘You won’t find anything they missed.’
Tillman didn’t waste energy arguing with her and Kennedy knew why. It was still Diema’s operation and her voice was the one that counted.
Diema spoke to Alus — it sounded like a single word — and Alus spoke through the grille to Taria.
‘This is foolish,’ Nahir said to Diema, in a low, fierce voice. ‘A waste of time. Everyone else is searching the north end of the island.’
‘You see a point in us doing what everyone else is doing?’ Tillman asked him.
Diema said something else to Nahir, in quick-fire Aramaic, and he fell silent. Do as you’re told, Kennedy guessed. So Diema trusted Tillman’s instincts, whatever else. So did she, for that matter. Everyone needs a rock to cling to when the flood comes.
Nothing to do now until they got through the Uptown traffic to the Henry Hudson Bridge, and over into the Bronx. Kennedy crossed to Rush, who was still lost in his own fathom less thoughts, and put a hand on his shoulder.
He looked up at her, his face tired and bleak.
‘Hanging in there?’ she asked him.
‘I’m okay,’ he said. He even tried a smile.
‘I don’t think any of us are okay, Rush. But you haven’t said a word since Budapest. Did something happen there?’
‘Lots of things happened there.’
‘That’s true,’ Kennedy acknowledged. ‘But you gave a good account of yourself. Faced a stone killer and came away alive, which is one-nil for the home team. You’re not going to have to do that again, if that’s what’s worrying you. If we figure out where Kuutma’s going to make his strike, it’s Kuutma’s people who will go in. Not us.’