The Demon Code (52 page)

Or perhaps he was just growing old.

Old men, past their prime, were wont to second-guess their own decisions.

There was no doubt in his mind as to what Diema’s performance was meant to achieve. She had chosen a course of action – perhaps the only course of action – that would bring Tillman, Kennedy and the boy out of Budapest alive. Because she’d reasoned, correctly, that leaving them behind in Nahir’s hands would mean consigning them to their deaths. So she’d demonstrated that Tillman and the
rhaka
were still valuable alive, and then she’d extended to the boy the temporary but binding status of an out-father.

It was clever and deeply troubling – that his protégée, his agent, his almost-daughter should waste so much effort to such an end. As though she had lost the
Elohim
’s necessary indifference to Adamite lives. As though she had forgotten, all at once, the rules that licensed and governed her.

But it wasn’t so sudden, he corrected himself. There had been the boy she killed, and her inability to put his death behind her. The warning signs had been there from the start.

Kuutma knew he had been right, in any case, to bring Nahir back to Ginat’Dania. If they all survived this, the
Sima
would hear Nahir’s accusation against Diema, and pronounce on it. It would mean exile for one of them. This needed to be done at once. It couldn’t be allowed to fester.

But to place Nahir in Diema’s team – to force them to work together – that was unnecessary cruelty. It showed Kuutma the mirror of his own failings. He had put too much faith in the girl, allowed her inside his guard, and now he felt a sense of grief and anger that was largely personal, when he should be entirely Kuutma, the Brand, his individual emotions sublimed away by the heat of righteousness.

He had never had a family. The women he had known had never been as real to him as his vocation, his life of service, and he had let them drift away with no sense of loss.

For the first time, now, he found himself thinking about what Tillman had lost. Then about what Tillman had destroyed, with his own hands. It would not be possible to imagine two men who had lived more different, more opposed lives than himself and that man. The Adamite’s purely private, purely selfish quest, as against his own public life, his relentless self-abnegation.

But he knew what it was he was feeling, and the facile comparison didn’t blunt the force of it. Nahir’s jealousy, so blatant and indecent, allowed him to see his own for what it was – but it gave him no clue as to what he should do about it. Perhaps he would be fortunate. Perhaps the decision would be taken out of his hands.

Perhaps the world would end.

65

Three miles out from Manhattan, breaking the speed limit in the back of a truck that had air conditioning but no suspension, Kennedy held on tight to a balance rail and to her kidneys, and tried not to think about the situation they were all in.

Rush was sunk in introspective misery. The two female
Elohim
, Alus and Taria, sat in perfect stillness, seeming indifferent to their surroundings but, Kennedy was sure, supremely aware of them. Tillman was awake but very weak – and strapped onto a bench at the front end of the truck so that the incessant jolts and bounces didn’t send him sprawling. There was still a danger that they would open his wounds, and Kennedy could see from the expression of concentration on his sweat-sheened face the effort it was costing him to keep himself from fainting every time they hit a bad stretch of road. Diema stood a few feet away from him, her feet bracing her into a corner, staring at her father with an expression of deep thoughtfulness. Nahir watched them all, the way a cat watches a mousehole.

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.’

‘It’s not that,’ Rush said. ‘It’s … I …’ He seemed to wrestle with the next word for a long time. Kennedy realised that Nahir was watching them both from the other side of the narrow space, and moved to block his line of sight. The sound of the traffic and the rumbling of the truck’s diesel engine would drown out any sound they were making.

‘What?’ she asked him.

‘She’s in trouble with her people,’ Rush said. ‘Diema. And I think it’s because of me.’

The thought that he might be concerned about the girl had never occurred to Kennedy and it blindsided her completely. ‘What?’ she asked stupidly.

‘It was something that happened at the safe house. I think she might be under arrest, or something. The shithead over there, Nahir – he was mouthing off at her, and then the scary bald guy got a turn, too, and then he said he’d make a judgment.’

‘A judgment about what? Do you have any idea?’

He shook his head. ‘I wish I hadn’t come here,’ he muttered bleakly. ‘I haven’t made the slightest bit of difference. I don’t know why I thought I could. All I’ve done is screw things up.’

‘This – what we’re doing right now – it isn’t your area of expertise,’ Kennedy said gently. ‘Or mine.’

He looked up and met her concerned gaze. ‘Heather, I haven’t got an area of expertise.’

Kennedy took the typescript of Toller’s book out of her handbag and handed it to him.

‘Yeah, you do,’ she said. ‘Same as mine. We’re the detectives, Ben. That’s why they need us.’

The truck rolled to a halt at last, and Taria unlocked and opened its rear doors from the outside. They stepped out into daylight for the first time in two hours. Taria and Alus, with surprising care and gentleness, helped Tillman down off the tailgate of the truck. Kennedy had to remind herself that they’d be just as happy to cut his throat, if the order came down. You couldn’t lower your guard around these people.

Any of them.

The factory was a shell, most of its windows broken or boarded, graffiti climbing its walls like moss. It stood on an apron of asphalt that was being ripped apart in slow motion by bramble and knotweed. Pigeons nested on the ledges of the higher windows and in holes in the walls where bricks had fallen out. The air was heavy with their insinuations. There was a sign, also streaked with birdshit. It read PARNASSUS IRON AND STEEL COMPANY, with a stylised picture of a mountain behind it like the Paramount logo.

Beyond a sagging chain-link fence, the waters of the Harlem River lapped at a concrete pier on which an ancient sofa sat, mildewed and foul. There was a small, dense cluster of empty beer bottles standing next to the sofa and a cairn of polystyrene boxes bearing the McDonald’s logo. Further in the background, but dominating everything, the towers of Manhattan rose like a dream: the land of milk and honey, just across the water.

One of Kuutma’s Messengers, who looked to be about the same age as Diema or maybe a year older, had been stationed at the factory’s main doors to await their arrival. He was dressed in torn jeans and a faded STROKES T-shirt, but he came to attention as Diema approached and greeted her with the sign of the noose, instantly on his mettle. She seemed to know him.

‘Raziel,’ she said.

He blushed with pleasure at being recognised. ‘Ready to serve you, sister,’ he said. He stood aside for her without a word and fell in behind her. The rest of the party, apart from the driver, followed her inside the building. Tillman, leaning heavily on Kuutma’s two angels, brought up the rear.