The Demon Code (59 page)

‘No!’ Diema shouted. ‘The timer, Kennedy! The timer!’

The woman ran to the desk, but hesitated. The smaller bomb that was the primer for Ber Lusim’s WMD was a baroque, ramshackle thing with wires and metal rods connecting to packets of acetone peroxide and clusters of industrial blasting caps. ‘What do I do?’ Kennedy yelled.

The timer on the screen showed twenty-three seconds. Kennedy turned to look at Diema, desperate, urgent. But Diema had no more idea than she did and it must have showed in her face.

With a wordless cry, like a paratrooper jumping out of a plane, Kennedy ripped the laptop out of the circuit.

It continued to count down in her hands.

To ten.

To five.

To zero.

Diema held an in-breath until her chest ached. Then slowly, soundlessly, let it out.

69

‘I’m bleeding,’ Rush said plaintively, from the floor. ‘Oh Christ. I’m bleeding all over the place. Help me.’

Diema crawled across to him slowly and painfully. She checked Rush’s wounds: both of them, entry and exit. The entry wound was small and neat and wouldn’t give any trouble at all. The exit wound was a lot bigger and the bullet had taken meat with it.

By the time it hit its intended target, the bullet would have spent at least a third of its initial velocity, most of it inside of Ben Rush. No wonder it had stopped Ber Lusim dead. The slowing bullet, lacking the energy required to leave his body once it had forced its way in, had sent a widening shockwave ahead of itself, pulping his internal organs like a steak tenderiser.

‘You did well,’ Diema said to Rush, as she patched him up.

Kennedy knelt down beside her and helped by tearing more strips of cloth as Diema knotted the makeshift dressing into place. ‘You did brilliantly,’ she confirmed. ‘Rush, how in the name of God did you figure that stuff out?’

‘I didn’t figure it out,’ he mumbled. His face was ashen. ‘I made most of it up. It’s probably all wrong. Except for the sign. I was pretty sure about the sign.’

‘You prevented a million deaths,’ Diema said. ‘You were a shield to my people. And to some of yours, too. You might amount to something one day after all, little boy.’

‘And you … aah, shit … you might grow some breasts,’ Rush countered. ‘Dream big.’

Diema turned her attention to Kennedy. ‘I’ll finish here,’ she said. ‘You go and check on my father – and get the truck into position. We’re leaving.’

A look passed between them. Kennedy nodded and left them to it, going rapidly back up the stairs to the grease pit.

Diema carried on knotting the dressing more firmly in place until Rush took hold of her hand to stop her. ‘When we had sex,’ he asked her, ‘was that just so you could get pregnant?’

‘I’m not pregnant, Rush.’

He stared at her, nonplussed.

‘You’re not?’

‘No. I said that to stop Nahir from cutting your throat.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ He thought about that a little longer as she tested the tightness of the dressing. ‘Uh … why?’

Diema was silent for a long time.

‘Do you mean, why would that stop him from killing you or why would I care whether he killed you or not?’

‘Either. Both.’

‘It’s hard to explain,’ she told him. ‘My people have some pretty odd ways of looking at things sometimes.’

Rush winced as some random movement sent a wave of pain through his torn shoulder muscle. ‘You don’t say? Well, thanks for the heroic self-sacrifice, anyway.’

Diema said nothing, pretending to check Ber Lusim’s greying body for signs of life.

It wasn’t over yet.

‘Do you feel up to moving?’ she asked Rush.

He tried to get upright, but every movement hurt him. It took the two of them, finally, Diema bearing the boy’s weight whenever a twinge of agony froze his muscles. She raised him like a banner – a flag of surrender, because that was how it felt. As though she were giving in, suddenly but far too late, to the logic of an argument that had first been put to her three years before, when her hands were around the throat of Ronald Stephen Pinkus and the light disappeared from his eyes.

‘Ready?’ she asked Rush.

‘Ready for what?’ he panted. ‘You want to dance?’

‘I need you to walk.’

‘Okay.’

It took an eternity for them to get up the stairs. Kennedy met them at the top, her face grim.

‘Leo’s just about awake,’ she told Diema, ‘but I think some of the wounds on his chest have opened up. I’m scared of moving him.’

‘We don’t have any choice,’ Diema said.

They both looked towards Tillman. He was on his feet in the corner of the grease pit, his two arms stretched out along its edge to either side. His head was sagging onto his chest. He looked like a boxer who’d only just made it through the previous round.

Diema turned back to Kennedy.

‘Heather, we have to go,’ she said. ‘This is—’

‘I know what it is.’

‘It was part of the plan, always. You take the stick out of the fire, you beat your enemies, and then you throw it back. You let it be burned.’

‘I got that, Diema. I got that the first time.’

‘I can walk,’ Tillman said. His voice was a ghastly, gallows thing.

‘Prove it,’ Diema said.

But first they had to get out of the pit, which was so protracted an agony that Diema felt nostalgic for the stairs. She and Kennedy had to prop Tillman up against the side of the pit, then drag and push at his limbs one at a time as though they were trying to reassemble the faces of a Rubik cube. When they were done, he was lying on his back at the edge of the drop, exhausted by agony, drawing breaths so shallow that the front of his shirt, stiff with fresh blood, didn’t even move.

Then they had to do the same thing with Rush.

Finally they had both men up and moving, Diema supporting Tillman because she was the stronger of the two, Kennedy following with Rush.

They made their way, like the last teams standing in a marathon three-legged race, out onto the factory floor and across the obstacle course towards the main doors.

They passed Desh Nahir along the way, lying unconscious in his blood. Diema murmured a blessing, but didn’t stop or slow. The doors were in sight now, and she could see the tailgate of the truck. Tillman slipped in the algae-slick of a dried-up puddle, almost fell, but Diema held him upright by getting her weight under him and pushing him upward – the
tsukuri
part of a judo throw, with the follow-through indefinitely suspended.

The doors were directly ahead of them. Her eyes on the ground, because she was forced now to treat each step, each shifting of her weight, as an exercise in logistics, Diema saw her feet, and Tillman’s feet, enter the slanting beam of sunlight that spilled across the grimed cement. They were emerging into the world outside in tortuous slow motion.

Kuutma stepped through the doors, with Alus and Taria to either side of him, and met them there. Other Messengers were standing on the asphalt outside, still and silent, awaiting Kuutma’s order.

He stared at Diema, who had stumbled to a halt. His expression was complex and unreadable.

‘Report,’ he suggested to her, with dangerous mildness.

Diema tried to speak, but the words fled away from her flailing mind.

‘I … we …’ she tried.

‘Ber Lusim is dead,’ Kennedy said. ‘It’s over. But you need to dismantle the bomb. And your man, Nahir, needs medical attention.’

Kuutma’s gaze flicked to her for the smallest fraction of a second, then back to Diema. ‘Is this true?’ he asked.

Diema nodded, still mute.

‘Then the threat is removed? There’s no longer any danger?’

‘There is …’ Diema tried again. ‘The bomb. As Kennedy says. We removed the detonator, but the bomb needs to be dismantled. And Nahir …’

Kuutma turned to Alus and Taria. ‘See to him,’ he ordered, and they were gone from his side in an instant.

‘
Dan cheira hu meircha!
’ Kuutma shouted. Obedient to his command, the Messengers filed in through the doors to surround the small party.

With Rush leaning on her right arm, Kennedy tried to get her left hand inside her jacket to reach her shoulder holster. Diema reached out, snake-swift, to grip her wrist and keep the hand in plain sight. If Kennedy succeeded in drawing the gun, she’d be dead before she drew another breath.

Kuutma had been staring at Diema throughout these manoeuvres. ‘It was well done,’ he said to her. ‘It was very well done. You may stand down, Diema Beit Evrom. What remains to be done here, others will do.’

Diema made no move. The muscles of her chest seemed to be squeezing her lungs, so that it was a great effort even to draw a breath. ‘
Tannanu
,’ she said, ‘I need to speak with you.’

‘No,’ Kuutma said. ‘You don’t.’

‘Yes,’ Diema insisted. ‘To report.’

‘I’ve heard your report, Diema. And now this is in my hands. Step outside. I’ve deliberated, in the matter of your pregnancy, and I’ve reached a verdict. The only verdict possible, if you’re to escape censure. The boy’s death protects your honour. The other deaths were already agreed on before you ever left Ginat’Dania. But there’s no need for you to be present for this. I understand that it might distress you to see these people, who’ve fought at your side, lose their lives. Go. Go to the gates of the compound and wait for me there.’

Sour bile rose in Diema’s mouth and she swallowed it down again.

‘
Tannanu
,’ she said, the words scouring her throat like gravel, ‘I wish to speak. My testimony is pertinent to these matters. Hear me out.’

They held the tableau for some seconds. If Kuutma saw the tension in her posture, and if he understood what it meant, he gave no sign.

‘Very well,’ he said at last.

He gave clipped commands. Messengers came forward to remove Tillman from her grasp and to take hold of Kennedy and Rush.

‘Son of a bitch!’ Kennedy yelled. She threw a wild glance at Diema, who ignored it. Their fates rested with Kuutma now.

He walked aside a little way, beckoning her to follow him. Diema obeyed.

‘I’m listening,’ Kuutma said, dropping the mantle of formality. ‘But there’s no way of stopping this, little sister. You must know that.’

‘Brother,’ Diema said, staring full into his eyes, ‘there is. You’re Kuutma, the Brand, and what you say will happen here is what will happen. Nobody will argue with you.’

Kuutma shrugged brusquely. ‘That’s irrelevant. I can’t gainsay what I’ve already said. They’re going to die.’ He breathed out slowly, a breath that was almost a sigh. ‘I can see that these three have come to mean something to you – I saw that back in Budapest. And I grieve for you. You’ve known enough loss in your life already. But Kennedy’s death, and Tillman’s, were part of the task you accepted. Be strong, now, and see it through. As for the boy, even if you love him, you’ll forget him soon enough. Take another lover. Take a husband, even. Desh Nahir would embrace you in an instant.’

Diema ignored this grotesque suggestion, and stuck remorselessly to her point. ‘
Tannanu
, Leo Tillman is my father.’

‘No, Diema, he is not. He’s only—’

‘He is the father of my flesh and the father of my spirit. He is the only father I acknowledge. I cleave to him, as his daughter, and I will stand by him. The hand that’s raised to hurt him becomes, with that act, my enemy’s hand. On Gellert Hill, he fought for me and would have died for me, though we had but an hour’s acquaintance. I knew then that he had loved the child he lost, and that therefore he could not knowingly have killed my brothers. That was some terrible mistake, as the
rhaka
Kennedy told me it was. The monster whose death I assented to never existed – and to my father’s death,
Tannanu
, I do not assent.’

Kuutma listened to this speech with a look of sombre concern. When it was finished, he said nothing for a long time.

Finally, he reached out and put a hand on Diema’s shoulder.

‘I’ve done you no service,’ he said heavily. ‘I see that now. I love you and honour you, Diema, but I put you in the way of this hurt, and now I don’t see how to make it pass from you.’

‘Let them live.’

‘I can’t do that. I’m not free to choose.’

‘Then neither am I,’ Diema said. She drew a sica from its sheath against her breast and placed it so that the tip of the blade touched her stomach. ‘Kill Leo Tillman and I’ll die, too.’

Kuutma’s eyes widened in horror. ‘Diema,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. ‘You can’t mean it.’

‘I mean it.’

Many emotions crossed Kuutma’s face. The one that was most clearly visible was pain. ‘A blasphemy,’ he said.

‘I’m damned already. On Gellert Hill, I shot Hifela, of the
Elohim
, and watched him die. And I lied to you in Budapest,
Tannanu
. I’m not pregnant. I said that to save the boy, and the boy just saved us all.’ She wrestled with words, with reasons, trying to explain something that had come to her without the benefit of either, as a rising tide of revelation. ‘If I let them die,’ she said, ‘I become less than they are. Less than I thought they were, when I didn’t know them.’

Kuutma’s face still bore the same expression of dismay and suffering. ‘I could disarm you,’ he pointed out.

‘Possibly. But you couldn’t keep me disarmed.’ She put the knife away, to reinforce the point. ‘I don’t have to die here or now,
Tannanu
. I’ve got all the time in the world. If I decide to kill myself, the only way to stop me is to kill me first.’

Silence fell between them. They stared at one another, intransigent, immovable.

With no more sound than a whisper of fabric, Alus and Taria appeared to either side of Diema.

‘Desh Nahir will live,’ Alus said.

‘And he has withdrawn his execration,’ Taria added. ‘He wishes no harm to Diema Beit Evrom.’

Kuutma nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Secure Diema Beit Evrom and confiscate her weapons.’

The two women did as they were told. Diema made no protest and she didn’t struggle, as Alus held her hands behind her back and Taria methodically searched her for weapons. The tall woman’s eyes met hers and she could see how little they liked to treat one of their own in this way.