The Demon Code (57 page)
‘We’ll be back soon,’ Diema said. She was still staring into that one good eye. It pleaded silently, wide with unaccustomed shock and fear. She slipped off her leather jacket, folded it over on itself and slipped it under Nahir’s head. Kennedy went to the edge of the grease pit, drew a deep, startled breath and clambered down into it, out of Diema’s line of sight.
‘We’ll be back soon,’ Diema said to Nahir. ‘We’ll get help for you
.’ Or else
, she thought,
this whole place will be ripped into loose molecules by a ten-kiloton cubane explosion
. Either way, Nahir wouldn’t have to suffer long.
She crossed to the pit and surveyed its interior before climbing carefully and quietly down to join Kennedy. Kennedy had found Tillman, propped up in one corner of the pit, and was checking on his condition. His face was masked with blood and he was profoundly unconscious, but his injuries looked to be less severe than Nahir’s. Weakened as he was, he would have presented far less of a threat.
Kennedy opened her mouth to speak, but Diema hushed her with a raised hand and pointed towards the open door. Kennedy nodded. She touched Tillman’s cheek with the fingers of one hand, kissed the top of his head. Then she stood.
Diema took the Chinese semi-automatic from the back of her belt. She was about to offer the nine-millimetre from her ankle holster to Kennedy, but Kennedy stepped past her, moving slowly so as to minimise the squelching sounds her feet made in the thick ooze, and picked up Tillman’s fallen gun from where it lay at the edge of the pit. She examined it briefly, seemed satisfied, and responded to Diema’s questioning glance with a curt nod.
Ready
.
They moved to the door, taking opposite sides without needing to confer. Standing stock still, they listened.
Two voices, both male. A serious – if slightly bizarre – conversation was being conducted just below them.
‘He
is
a piece of bread.’ That was Ben Rush’s voice. And another voice answered, ‘God is one. Only fools deny that.’
There were seven wooden steps, which were dangerously slippery with the same grease and filth that filled the bottom of the pit. Then Rush’s feet touched down on gritty, dry cement.
There was a click from above him, followed by the whickering rattle of strip-lights waking up. Rush blinked and shielded his eyes as the dark space around him was suddenly scoured brighter than daylight with remorseless neon.
He was standing in a wide but low-ceilinged room, buttressed with rough-cut wooden beams. All around him were big bags like sandbags or sacks of fertiliser, stacked all the way to the ceiling, with a broad aisle between them. They all seemed to be identical. They bore the legend HIGH C8(NO2)8 EXPLOSIVE in stencilled letters on their sides.
At the far end of the room, facing him, a laptop computer sat on a trestle table. Two long leads connected it to a bizarre modernist sculpture consisting of a handful of steel rods and several dozen fat parcels wrapped in greaseproof paper.
Despite the foul state of the steps, the floor was reasonably clean. A broom was propped incongruously against some of the sacks of high explosive, and once Rush had noticed that, he saw a whole raft of domestic touches in quick succession: a kettle and a carton of milk on an upturned packing crate. A pair of speakers with an iPod nestled between them. A reading lamp on the table and a book lying open next to it.
Ber Lusim was waiting for the end of the world with all the comforts of home.
He appeared beside Rush and put a hand on his shoulder to steer him over to the table. Remembering what else Ber Lusim’s hands had just done, Rush shuddered and backed away hurriedly, turning to face the Messenger.
Ber Lusim was staring at him with quizzical interest.
‘Look,’ Rush said. ‘I … I don’t know what you want from me. I shouldn’t even be here.’
‘Yes,’ Ber Lusim said. ‘You should. Of course you should. You had no choice. Please, sit down. I won’t hurt you.’
‘I’m fine right here,’ Rush said.
Ber Lusim nodded. ‘Very well.’ He walked past Rush to the table and picked up the book that lay there. He held it up for Rush to see.
The book was very old, its corners foxed and furled, its cover as roughly ridged as though someone had dropped it into the bath. On the cover, in a plain, uneven font, were the words
A Trumpet Speaking Judgment, or God’s Plan Revealed in Sundry Signes.
‘You know this?’ Ber Lusim asked.
Rush thought about lying, but only for a moment. Why else would he be there?
‘Yes.’
Ber Lusim smiled warmly, as though he’d extracted a confession that would be good for Rush’s soul. ‘I want to thank you,’ he said.
The tone – serious, conversational, friendly – shook and scared Rush. He said nothing, only staring at the other man as he flicked through the pages of the book and handed it to him. Rush took it and saw that it was turned to the last page. The centuries-old paper, dry and brittle, rustled between his fingers.
‘That paragraph troubled me,’ Ber Lusim said. ‘Specifically, when Toller says that the son and the spirit will be present when the end comes. It smacked of the meaningless liturgy of the Roman church. The dividing of God into three, as though God were a piece of bread.’
‘He
is
a piece of bread,’ Rush said. ‘Did all that stuff about the Eucharist not get to you yet?’
He heard his own voice saying that and wondered at it. Did he want Ber Lusim to break his arms and legs into loose kindling? Or was he flapping at the mouth purely because of that earlier promise that he wouldn’t be hurt? Either way, Ber Lusim didn’t react to the flip tone, or even seem to hear it.
‘God is one,’ he said. ‘Only fools deny that. So this referencing of the son and the spirit always struck both of us – Avra and me – as strange. Enigmatic, rather. But time and providence make all things clear. Do you know what your name means?’
‘You already told me it means “son of”.’
Ber Lusim nodded. ‘Yes. That’s what “Ben” means. But I meant your family name. “Rush”.’ He went on, not waiting for Rush to answer. ‘It transliterates the Hebraic word
ruach
, which means “spirit”. You are the son, Ben Rush, and you are also the spirit. God told Johann Toller that you would come, and Johann Toller told me. In this way, he reassures me that all is well. That what I’m doing is right, and exactly as he intended. I can hear your breathing, by the way.’
He raised his voice on those last words and looked over Rush’s shoulder towards the stairs. ‘By all means, join us,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in hiding up there. And no time left, now, for anything you do to affect my plans. Although I will, of course, kill you if you try.’
Despite Ber Lusim’s words, Kennedy was nearly certain that it wasn’t their breathing that gave them away.
She’d discovered that Tillman’s gun – a retooled Beretta – had a grip safety, rather than the thumb toggle she was more used to, and she’d chosen a moment when Ber Lusim was talking to squeeze the front of the grip and cock the gun. The click was slight, barely audible even to her, and she’d thought it was completely hidden by the sound of Lusim’s voice – but something about the way he paused immediately afterwards made her think she’d put him on his guard.
Then he invited them to join him and there was no longer any doubt. Kennedy mimed to Diema, putting her hands together and then drawing them apart again.
Split up and give him two targets.
Diema nodded.
They came down the stairs, Diema leading the way and Kennedy hanging slightly back.
Ber Lusim watched them with narrow attention as they came into his line of sight.
‘I was expounding scripture to your friend,’ he told them. ‘Which is amusing. I never thought of myself as a preacher. You should perhaps drop those guns, in case you feel tempted to use them.’
‘In a roomful of explosives?’ Kennedy said. ‘That would be a little stupid, wouldn’t it?’
Ber Lusim looked at the ramparts of sacks all around them. ‘You can’t set off octocubane with a bullet,’ he said. ‘And the primer is behind me, on the table. You’d be shooting through Mr Rush, here, who would be unlikely to thank you. There are also, over there in the corner—’ he pointed with the barrel of his gun ‘— a number of plastic buckets filled with the extremely potent granular poison, ricin. If you were to puncture one of those, the air would fill with highly toxic dust. Of course, the explosion that is about to take place will kill you long before the poison starts to work on you, so that’s a matter of less consequence than it would otherwise be.’
‘Why are we still alive?’ Diema asked. ‘Have you lost your taste for killing, Ber Lusim?’ She was drawing away from Kennedy, making it harder for the rogue Messenger to keep them both in view at the same time and giving his gun a few more degrees of arc to travel through if he decided to shoot. He held up his hand for them to stop.
‘That’s far enough. To answer your question, I’m about to kill a million people, which scarcely suggests excessive squeamishness in the taking of life. But that’s in the nature of a sacrifice, rather than a murder – fundamentally, a religious observance. Individual deaths, on the other hand … here in this place, at this time, they smack of impiety. But I’ll do it, unless you stand where you are and disarm. I’m happy for you all to wait with me, for the moment to come – but I know what’s in your hearts and I won’t allow it.’
‘There’s still time to stop this,’ Kennedy said. She knew that Diema would be able to aim and fire far more quickly and accurately than she could, so she reasoned that it was up to her to be the diversion. ‘Too many people have died already.’
Ber Lusim’s gaze flicked to her, but went back to Diema. He seemed to have made an accurate assessment of the relative dangers.
‘Everybody who ever lived has died,’ Ber Lusim said. ‘Apart from the few who are still living now. But today, everything changes.’
‘Because of a few lines in a three-hundred-year-old book?’ Kennedy asked. ‘I don’t see that.’
‘You’re not required to. And this absurd dance must stop, now. Stand where you are. Drop your weapons or place them at your feet. I don’t want to spill your blood here. I don’t see the need. But I won’t let that stop me, if you’re determined to force my hand.’
Kennedy slowed and stopped.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘You win.’
She turned her gun in her hand to point it at the ceiling and bent, very slowly, from the knees, to lay it on the ground.
Diema picked her moment and fired.
Once again, just like during the fight beside the grease pit, the action accelerated to the point where Rush had real trouble with crucial things like cause and effect.
He saw Diema’s arm move and he heard gunshots – three of them, back to back, so loud that the sound felt more like a physical pressure, pushing against his skin.
Then something flew whirling from Diema’s hand and Diema herself was punched backwards so that she hit the wall.
The sound had seemed to come from all directions at once in the confined space, so it was only from this collateral evidence that Rush was able to figure out that Diema hadn’t fired at all. All three shots had come from Ber Lusim.
By the time he came to that realisation, the whole thing was over. Diema had slid down the wall to the floor and Ber Lusim had his gun pointed at Kennedy – who was frozen to the spot in a tight crouch, her hand still on her gun which was still on the ground.
‘Don’t,’ Ber Lusim advised her.
Diema breathed out, a long, shuddering gasp. She was lying full length on the cement floor, clutching her side. Blood oozed thickly from between her fingers, and as Rush watched a red stain spread across the leg of her jeans. At least two of Ber Lusim’s three bullets had hit their target.
No, all three, he realised. Diema’s gun lay on the floor ten feet away from her, the barrel bent into an L-shape.
‘I wish that had not been necessary,’ Ber Lusim said. ‘But you’re still alive, at least. Sadly, that’s the last courtesy I can do you.’
Rush’s heart was hammering in his chest and he felt like he was about to throw up. He saw Kennedy’s shoulders tense, which surely meant that Ber Lusim had seen it, too. She was about to make her move, and her move was going to get her killed. There was nothing else she could do.
But there was – there might be – something
he
could do.
If only there was time left to do it in. And if only he could find the words.
‘Wait!’ he said. Actually, he didn’t say it at all; he yelled it, way too loud and way too high. And he raised the book – Toller’s book – in his hand as though he were about to preach.
Ber Lusim turned to stare at him and he waved the book in the Messenger’s face.
‘I’m in here, right?’ he babbled. ‘You said that. I’m part of the big picture. God sent me, to bring you a message. That’s what you said.’
‘Yes,’ Ber Lusim said in a voice whose calm and quiet made Rush’s panicky yelping seem even more absurd than it was. ‘I did say that.’
‘Okay,’ Rush said, fighting down the trembling in his legs, his arms, his voice. ‘Then right here, right now, for however long the world’s got left, I’m what you are. I’m one of God’s messengers. I’m not just some Adamite idiot swimming out of his depth.’
Ber Lusim frowned. ‘So?’ he said. ‘Where is this going?’
‘I’ll tell you where it’s going. If I’m a messenger, Ber Lusim, my message is for you. Are you willing to listen to it?’
Ber Lusim made a gesture, turning both hands palm-up.
Go ahead
.
‘Okay.’ Rush swallowed. So far so good. He risked a look over his shoulder. Diema hadn’t moved at all, except to prop herself up on her left elbow. She was still pressing her hand against her wound, trying without much success to stanch the flow of blood. She was watching Ber Lusim with dulled eyes, or at least she was trying to, but her head kept drooping. Kennedy still looked like she was looking for an opening. Rush met her gaze and moved his head through the tiniest arc.
Not yet
.