The Demon Code (54 page)

‘Maybe we should forget about the maps, for a while,’ she suggested.

‘And do what?’ Nahir’s politeness was even more scathing than his contempt.

‘And go back to the book. Rush, could you give us the last prophecy again?’

Rush glanced at her, nodded, and turned to the final page of the typescript. She wondered what page he’d been reading, if it wasn’t that one. He began to read aloud. ‘And the stone shall be rolled away from the tomb, as it was the time before—’

‘We know what it says,’ Diema said. Her tone was tense, strained. They were all getting close to the ragged edge.

‘Sure,’ Kennedy agreed. ‘But have we accounted for all the variables? The stone and the tomb, and the voice crying out – yes. That all happened when Shekolni died. And presumably “the time before”, when the stone was first rolled away, is the time of Jesus’s death and resurrection. Toller seems to be saying that at least some of the circumstances of Christ’s second coming will be like the first one.’

‘Obviously,’ Nahir said.

‘And then there’s the breath. “He will condemn a great multitude with a single breath.” If Ber Lusim is as literal-minded with this as he’s been with the other prophecies, he’ll have turned the ricin into some kind of gas.’

‘That’s what we’re assuming,’ Diema said. There was still an edge to her voice, as if this were a distraction from more important things.

‘How high does he have to be to get the stuff out on the wind?’ Kennedy wondered. ‘Has anyone done the maths?’

‘It’s not a question of height,’ Nahir said. ‘With a microlight aircraft, he could cover an area of—’

‘I’m not thinking of aircraft. I’m thinking of window ledges. Rooftops. Terraces. Suppose he’s just relying on the wind? Ricin spreads best as a powder. If he’s refined it into that form, he could have tons of the stuff ready to shovel out into the air. You’re thinking crop sprayers and microlights, but maybe he’ll use a low-tech solution.’

Diema had already picked up her phone. A second later, she was having a conversation, either with Kuutma or with someone else in the hierarchy.

Locked out again, Kennedy gave the typescript back to Rush.

‘I think we may be about to hit the road,’ she said. ‘Get ready.’

Diema lowered her phone. ‘The prevailing wind is westerly,’ she said. ‘But only for the last couple of hours. It’s predicted to be from the north, which is where it’s been for most of the last three days. Kuutma is sending spotters up to the tops of the tallest buildings. They’ll look for suspicious movement. But we’re talking about thousands of windows and hundreds of rooftops. He’s…’ She hesitated, picking her words with care. ‘He’s going to try to draft in some additional
Elohim
.’

‘He’s asking for volunteers,’ Tillman translated. ‘Raising a posse of concerned citizens.’

There was another pause. Diema nodded.

Nahir muttered something savage and Diema shut him up with a terse ‘
Ve rahi!
’ She’d just confirmed that Ginat’Dania was right here and the fact had not gone unnoticed by the other Messengers.

Kennedy tried not to think about that. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ she said. ‘But a wind out of the north will be passing right through here, won’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Diema confirmed. ‘Kuutma already made that point. He’ll send some people – as many as he can. But we’re stretched very thin now. It’s possible that we can’t check every possible location in time.’

‘Then let’s get started,’ Kennedy said. ‘We can work outward from this place in semi-circular sweeps, doubling back on ourselves every time we hit the river.’

‘Two hours left,’ Tillman mused. ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong, Heather, but maybe this is the wrong time to be putting all our eggs in one basket.’

‘The only basket we have,’ Diema countered. ‘Unless anyone can think of anything better, that’s what we’re going to do.’

She waited, looking from face to face. Nobody spoke.

‘Then it’s agreed. We pair up, with a Messenger in each pair, so that we can stay in touch with each other and with Kuutma.’

‘Can I be paired with you?’ Rush asked her.

‘No,’ Diema said.

Rush tried again, tentative but stubborn. ‘I’d like … I need to talk to you about some stuff. Please. Let me go with you.’

‘We’ll talk later, Rush. For now, you go with Taria. Alus, you’re with Kennedy. I’ll go with—’

‘I’m staying here,’ Tillman said. ‘This is a tall building. If I can find my way up to the roof, I can get the lay of the land from here. I’ll just slow you down, in any case. You’ll get twice as much done without me, and I can keep in touch with you by phone. If anything else occurs to me, I’ll pass it along.’

‘He’ll need to be guarded,’ Nahir said, ignoring Tillman and speaking directly to Diema. ‘More than ever now, after your incautious words. He can’t be left alone, to speak to others of his kind, or leave messages. Someone has to watch him, from now until—’

‘Then watch him,’ Diema snapped.

‘Yeah,’ Rush said. ‘That’ll work.’ He stood up, whacking the rolled typescript against the side of the truck and producing a bass-drum boom. They all looked at him – much as they’d looked at Taria when she’d proved she had a voice. His face was full of anger and confusion and hurt pride. ‘I mean, it’s not like your friend there will kill us as soon as your back is turned. It’s not like he was trying to persuade your boss to finish us off back in Budapest. He’s a reasonable man. I bet he’d never even dream of sharpening his knife on Leo’s kidneys.’

Diema was rigid with impatience, standing on the balls of her feet. ‘He’ll follow his orders,’ she said tightly. ‘Kuutma said he’d give a ruling. You’re safe until he’s pronounced on you.’

‘So you say. If Leo stays, I’m staying too. And I’ll be watching your friend the whole time he watches us.’ He stared at her, looking close to tears, and she looked back at him with a face like a closed fist. If it was a staring contest, Rush lost. He held up the typescript like a shield in front of his eyes. ‘Anyway, Kennedy said the answer’s in here and I believe her. So you do what you want. I’ll stick around and catch up on my reading.’

‘As you like,’ Diema said curtly. ‘We’ll spend an hour on this, then regroup here. And we’ll stay in touch by phone, in the meantime. Those who are coming, come.’

Along with Alus, Taria, Kennedy and Raziel, she headed out. Diema and Kennedy took the truck, since somebody had to. The others took to the streets on foot.

66

A feeling of despair welled up inside Rush as he watched Diema leave.

Brief as it was, their lovemaking had left him feeling more bruised and blown open than he’d felt at any time since the death of his ex-girlfriend, Siobhan – the one who’d killed herself.

Then Kuutma had shone a light on the whole thing that was crazy but plausible. Diema had done that to him – seduced him, or raped him, or ricocheted off him – because for some reason she wanted to get pregnant. Maybe it was like that tired bullshit you heard about single mothers and council flats. Girls having babies so they could jump the queue. Maybe Ginat’Dania had a housing shortage.

But when he got that far, and tried to imagine Diema – who he thought of as an unexploded bomb in human form – knitting woollen booties, breast-feeding, pushing a stroller, it was like trying to paint the two sides of a Moebius strip in different colours.

If that was all, if she’d needed a quick delivery system for some DNA, he’d still feel stupid but he could let it go. What was hard was the not knowing: the feeling that his pocket had been picked, somehow, while his attention was elsewhere, and that he couldn’t figure out what had been taken.

But the more Diema ducked away from talking to him, the more certain he was that it was something that mattered.

As soon as they were out of sight, Tillman turned to Nahir.

‘So is she right?’ he asked. ‘Are you going to stick to your orders and work with me? Or are we going to have to fight this out? I know you don’t lie, so I figure it’s worth asking. It would be useful to know if I can turn my back on you.’

The Messenger stared at him – stared at both of them – with stony calm. The hate was still there, too, but it was a good way back and under control. And something else was working under the uncommunicative surface of his face.
Maybe he’s afraid
, Rush thought. Diema had as good as told them that this was her home town – Ginat’Dania, the great mysterious refuge. He hadn’t figured out yet how you hid a city in the middle of New York, but if that was what they’d done, Nahir – along with all the
Elohim
– might be about to become a homeless orphan. Under the circumstances, it was pretty much of a miracle that they were keeping it together as well as they were. Maybe being batshit crazy was protecting them from the worst of it. Rush knew that the only reason he was staying so calm himself was because his mind couldn’t make the phrase
a million dead
mean anything: it just kept slipping off at an oblique angle.

‘There would be no fight,’ Nahir said with chilly dignity. ‘If I were to decide that you and this boy should die, I’d kill you. But I would hardly have waited, in that case, until you stood on this holiest of ground. I would have killed you out among the Nations. I could have dealt with you while Diema was leading us into Gellert Hill. I thought about doing that. But I take the oaths I’ve sworn seriously. Obedience in a soldier is what chastity is in a marriage.’

Tillman raised his eyebrows at the comparison. ‘You mean it’s precious because it’s so rare?’

‘I’m getting tired,’ Rush said, ‘of being called a boy. Just thought I’d throw that out there.’

‘I want to get up to the roof,’ Tillman said. ‘Take a look at the neighbourhood from up there. Supposing you’re still feeling chaste, I’d appreciate some help with that. Are there any stairs in this place?’

It turned out there were, and with both Nahir and Rush taking some of his weight, Tillman was able to climb them. A steel door, hanging halfway off its hinges, gave onto a narrow walkway with the main pitch of the roof above and behind it. There was a parapet wall just high enough to trip over and a congregation of pigeons that scattered when Rush pushed the door open.

Gravel crunched under their feet as they stepped out. The Bronx was laid out before them, wearing the beauty of the evening like a garment – a peephole bra, maybe, or something similarly sleazy and enticing. Warehouses and office blocks close to hand gave way to streets of low-rises and row houses further to the north and east.

A thousand terraces, rising like the steps of an amphitheatre. New York’s vast, vertical concatenation.

A thousand places for a madman to sit and watch the sun go down, and throw his poisoned confetti.

Nahir and Tillman began to discuss wind speed and elevation. Rush left them to it, certain that they didn’t need him and wouldn’t see him go.

He went back down the stairs, into the big room with the vats. He found a patch of sunlight coming through a hole in the roof and sat to read Toller’s book one final time.

Diema let Kennedy drive, because she trusted her own instinct and observation more than she trusted anyone else’s. But the hopelessness of the task began to sink in before they’d gone half a mile. The possible launch points for an aerial release of the powdered ricin were pretty close to infinite – and unless they happened to see Ber Lusim loitering at a window or looking down from a roof, there was almost nothing to make any one stand out from the next.

Higher was better. Upwind was essential. They were searching a vast cone of three-dimensional space with the northern end of Manhattan Island as its base – and they were searching it from the ground.

Except that Kennedy wasn’t. She’d allowed the truck to roll to a halt, and she was looking south. Diema followed her gaze. They’d reached the end of a cross street – the sign told her it was 225th. Highway 9 was ahead of them, with a stretch of elevated railway rising like a rampart over the surface street. Beyond was just more of what they’d already seen, factories and marshalling yards and sheds, with occasional rows of shops whose windows were so grimy you couldn’t guess from this distance what it was they sold.

But just south of them, beyond the glittering arc of the Henry Hudson Bridge, Broadway opened up like a lover’s arms.

‘What’s the matter?’ Diema asked. ‘Why have you stopped?’

‘I’m just thinking of an old joke,’ Kennedy said. ‘When you’re buying real estate, what are the three most important things to bear in mind?’

‘I have no idea. Please keep moving.’

‘Location, location and location.’

Kennedy turned to look at her hard, and Diema understood what it was she was saying.

‘Ber Lusim’s factory,’ she murmured.

‘Exactly. Why here? Presumably he didn’t want to transport the poison a long way. Every time he moved it, he was risking being stopped, and found out. So he wanted to be close. But this close? I mean, that’s Ginat’Dania down there, isn’t it? A half-mile south of us?’

Diema said nothing.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Kennedy exploded. ‘Just nod!’

Slowly, with a prickle of superstitious dread, Diema forced her head to move – down once, then up again.

‘So I’m guessing he was well within the radius of your border patrols. There’s no way you wouldn’t keep a watch on your own front doorstep. He’s way too close, and way too visible.’

‘Perhaps it pleased his ego to play with us.’

Kennedy drummed the steering wheel with the heels of her thumbs, thinking. ‘Maybe. But is that what he was like, as a Messenger? Did he grandstand or did he get the job done?’

‘Mostly,’ Diema admitted, ‘he got the job done.’

‘Then I think we’re missing something. We’ve got to be. Otherwise—’

Diema’s phone rang, and although the
rhaka
seemed disposed to carry on talking, she silenced her with a raised hand. That tone meant Kuutma. And if Kuutma was calling her, he had something important to tell her or to ask her.

Rush had got sick of the final prophecy. They’d worried it to pieces and there didn’t seem to be any new insights to be gleaned. So he’d flicked back to the first page and started from scratch.