by Adam Blake
Rush looked confused rather than convinced. ‘But if they’re happening all over the world … and they’re only a few hours apart …’
He let the sentence tail off. Kennedy turned back to Tillman.
‘Tell him what you found,’ she said.
Tillman said nothing.
‘Leo, he knows about the Messengers. And the girl had him pegged as my accomplice, so you can bet that the Elohim know all about him. Tell him about the warehouse or I will.’
Tillman made a placatory gesture, but it was still a moment or two before he spoke. ‘There seems to be a group,’ he said, giving Rush a sombre glance, ‘that’s stockpiling weapons and explosives in very, very large amounts. They’re shipping the weapons out to a lot of different places. I found what I hope to God was their main stash, and closed it down, but it’s pretty certain that they’ve got a lot of really lethal kit already sitting in a lot of different places. Maybe if we’re lucky, I slowed them down a little.’
‘Oh my god,’ Rush said. His face was pale.
‘Someone is using Toller’s book as an instruction manual,’ Kennedy summed up. ‘Everything that he predicted, they’re playing it out, taking a lot of care to get all the details right and to make sure that the disasters happen in the right sequence – the same sequence the book puts them in.’
Something occurred to her, belatedly – maybe because of where she was, and because of what had happened, what she’d seen, the last time she was here. She went to the window and looked down. After a moment, when the two men came to join her there, she pointed to the side of the truck. It bore the name of the company that owned the warehouse, High Energy Haulage, with the initial letters picked out in red and their logo, which was a sort of dolmen shape, two vertical blocks supporting a horizontal one.
‘H-E-H,’ Kennedy spelled out. ‘Heh.’ She pronounced it hay. ‘It’s the fifth letter of the Aramaic alphabet. And they used their letters as numbers, too, so that sign, right there – it’s a five. As in fifth. As in monarchy.’
‘But why?’ Rush demanded, although it sounded more like a plea. ‘Why would anybody make prophecies come true three centuries too late? It doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Maybe it’s time to call in our expert witness,’ Kennedy said into the silence that followed.
46
There was once a man of great virtue, Diema said, to whom all earthly rewards and accolades came early, and easy. Everyone loved him. Everyone believed in him. Everyone wanted him to succeed. But unfortunately, although nobody around him could see it, he was possessed by a demon.
She told it exactly like this, as though it were a fairy story, or perhaps a parable – but in any case, as though it were a narrative already removed from all of them, herself and her listeners alike, into another level of reality, even though she’d made it clear that the man she was talking about was still very much alive.
His name was Ber Lusim, and perhaps, after all, he was no more than the furthest point on a bell curve. The Elohim were always chosen young. Diema herself, selected at age sixteen, was coming to her calling late, by the standards of the People. Most of the Messengers were learning the tools and methods of their trade before their thirteenth birthday.
Ber Lusim presented himself to Kuutma – pre-empted the process – when he was nine. His words, according to the story, were ‘I want to serve.’
‘And what service can you offer?’ Kuutma demanded of the little boy, amused.
Ber Lusim opened his hands. In each of them there was a dead bird – a tiny thing, less than four inches from beak to tail. The birds had green flanks and crimson throats. The feathers on their bellies, by contrast, were a drab grey. Calypte anna, Anna’s hummingbird, one of the fastest creatures that ever lived.
‘I want to serve,’ the boy said again.
Kuutma adopted him formally into the Elohim, there and then.
‘This Kuutma,’ Tillman cut in, his stare hard and unwavering. ‘This was the man we met in Mexico? The one who used to call himself Michael Brand?’
The girl stared back. ‘Yes, but why should that matter? It’s not a name, it’s a job description. All Kuutmas are the Brand. Kuutma means the Brand. And the “el” in Michael stands for the holy one, whose name cannot be spoken. Kuutma is the brand of God on the world of the godless.’
Wordlessly, Tillman waved to her to go on.
Ber Lusim was the greatest of the Messengers. He was given his journeyman posting when he was fifteen – to Washington, where his appearance of youth and unworldliness was a very useful resource. His first kill came quickly, when an American journalist began to take too much of an interest in certain medieval documents whose speculations touched on the existence of a Judas-worshipping sect.
The journalist, a woman, had paedophilic tendencies, so far expressed only through the consumption of illegal pornography. Ber Lusim’s Summoner was considering using this fact to silence her, but Ber Lusim took a more direct approach. He presented himself to the woman – a fresh-faced boy, apparently willing; an impossible combination of innocence and wantonness. He was welcomed into her house, into her bedroom, where he killed her in a way that posthumously destroyed her reputation and drew all media attention far, far away from her professional researches.
It was a triumph. But possibly it left the boy damaged, an unacknowledged victim of his own elegant plan. Or perhaps it woke something inside him. The demon that had always slumbered there, biding its time.
Ber Lusim went from strength to strength; from his Berlin apprenticeship to South Africa, and from there to the Federal Republic of Germany. There he proved adept at forestalling potential enemies by stepping in ruthlessly and decisively as soon as a possible threat was identified or even suspected. He did not trouble, as many Messengers did, to lay a smokescreen of suicide notes or decoy suspects: but neither did he leave any trail leading to the People, so his brutal methods were never questioned.
In his twentieth year, he was made a Summoner of Elohim. It was a popular choice. The Messengers with whom he’d served admired him and were loyal to him. His star continued to rise. Was he too fond of proceeding to extreme sanctions? Was the kill count for his station higher than it should have been? Perhaps. And was it only coincidence that male Elohim thrived and were rewarded under Ber Lusim’s dispensation, while women were assessed harshly and passed on quickly to other assignments? Perhaps not. But it’s always easy to see these things in the spotlight glare of hindsight.
As Summoner, Ber Lusim was chiefly responsible for guarding and shepherding the Kelim who were in Germany at that time. He was good at this, by his lights. At least, he was good at making sure the women returned, with their families, when the appointed time came. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a task that exposed the cracks in Ber Lusim’s personality, and drove a crowbar into them.
Ber Lusim disliked the Kelim and the continued business of their sending out. He had spoken, in Council, in favour of suspending the practice, and although he had lost that argument …
Another interruption, this time from Ben Rush. ‘This is what you were telling me about?’ he asked Kennedy. ‘The sacred whores? The women who leave the secret city to get themselves pregnant?’
Tense, Kennedy nodded. ‘Let’s just listen,’ she said.
As Diema spoke, Kennedy could see how tightly Tillman’s fists were clenched and how white his knuckles were. This subject was far from abstract and theoretical for him. His wife had been one of these women and although he knew she’d been dead for many years, his feelings for her had never adjusted to that reality.
‘Go on,’ Tillman said to Diema. For a moment, his gaze locked with hers. She knows what she’s doing to him, Kennedy thought, amazed and unsettled. Maybe it’s even part of why she’s here.
Diema continued. Ber Lusim disliked the Kelim, very strongly. Or perhaps he disliked what they implied, which was that the vigour and virtue of the Judas People were not sufficient in themselves – that they needed to be f
ortified, from time to time, with graftings from other stock.
Or perhaps it was because his own mother had been one of that number, and he felt tainted by the association. Whatever his motivations may have been, Ber Lusim’s position allowed him to act on his feelings. The women who came out of Ginat’Dania to lie with Adamite men and then to return home freighted with their DNA passed through his hands on both the outward and the return journeys.
Oh, he took his duties seriously. Nobody could say he slacked, or failed to exercise due diligence. No sheep went astray on his watch. No holy Vessels returned empty, or failed to return at all.
Some, however, returned damaged. Specifically, they had been beaten. When questioned about this, they said that they’d been punished for disobedience. For taking too long to arrange their Adamite affairs, for weeping at the loss of their Adamite husbands, for taking too much with them or leaving too much behind.
Representations were made in Council. Ber Lusim was not reprimanded – there was a minority point of view that saw his zeal as admirable – but he was requested to put a moratorium on the beatings. In some cases, returning Kelim might be pregnant; too harsh a punishment might harm the unborn babies, who of course were the very point and pith of the whole enterprise.
Even that was a divisive judgement. The case of Ber Lusim leaned hard upon the paradoxes that propped up the People’s society, and the paradoxes threatened to give. The Kelim were necessary, and in theory they were respected. The women who went out were chosen by lot, so the unwelcome mission could fall to anyone. It was a sacrifice, as important to the survival of the Judas People as the eternal vigilance of the Messengers, and the sacrifice was honoured.
In theory.
The reality was more complicated. When a young woman of good family was chosen to be a vessel, it was common (though officially deplored) for her parents to say the service for the dead over her. When she returned, it was often impossible for her to find a husband among the People. There were even some – religious conservatives or just unvarnished misogynists – who would refuse to allow her shadow to fall on them.
Ber Lusim was one of those – and he converted many of the Messengers who served with him to his extreme opinions. But he accepted the judgement of the Council and stopped inflicting physical punishments on the returning vessels.
Until Orim Beit Himah.
Orim Beit Himah failed to present herself and her children to be returned to Ginat’Dania when the time came for her to do so. Ber Lusim had to send out a team of Messengers to retrieve her. He decided to lead the team himself.
He found Orim still with her Adamite husband. It was rumoured that she had explained everything to this man and that he tried to kill the Messengers when they arrived. Then again, and to the contrary, it was said that the husband had found Orim about to leave and had imprisoned her, convinced that she was running away with another man. And one account said that she had missed her appointed date because she was ill and couldn’t rise from her bed.
Ber Lusim killed the husband.
And Orim.
And the children.
For the first time in the telling, Diema seemed to be having trouble getting the words out. She had to break off for a few moments and go to the window as if she was checking for traffic on the road below – but they could all hear that the low engine sound she was responding to was that of a plane flying overhead, probably on its way into Gatwick.
The three of them watched the girl in silence as she squatted in the hayloft door, still and silent, staring down at the empty road. Though her agitation showed that she had human feelings, the pose reminded Kennedy of what Diema was. It was the pose of a raptor, scanning for prey with its tele scope eyes.
When she came back, she’d recovered some of her composure.
Ber Lusim claimed that the deaths were accidental. There had been a fight with the husband, and he had been armed. The woman and the children had found themselves in the crossfire and had been killed by stray bullets before anyone registered their presence.
Ber Lusim’s men backed up his story, in every detail. But curiously, they used almost identical language in their descriptions, as though they had been coached or at least had discussed the matter between themselves in a great deal of circumstantial detail.
It was a terrible thing. Unlike the beatings, it could not be overlooked. No gloss of decency could be put on it. The best that Ber Lusim could hope for would be to be stripped of his post as Summoner. If it was found that he had killed Orim deliberately, with full intent, he would never leave Ginat’Dania again. His life would be lived out in a windowless cell, a foot longer and wider than he was tall.
But when he was recalled to be tried, he disappeared. And his Messengers went with him.
‘So that’s who we’re dealing with,’ Tillman said, when Diema had finished her story. His face was cold and inexpressive, but his fists were still clenched and pressed down hard against the table. Kennedy knew how deeply that story would have penetrated into him and how much blood it would have drawn.
And what about Diema? Her own mother had been one of these women. Was that what had moved her or had it been something else? She remembered the girl in action, taking on the two Elohim in Izzy’s bedroom, beating them down and leaving them for dead.
Leaving them for dead. Not killing them. Since when did the Elohim not finish the job?
An answer to that question came to her very suddenly and the more she thought about it, the more she felt it had to be right. It explained so much. It explained that unlikely mercy. It explained why Diema had broken off her story so abruptly just then. And most of all, it explained the impossibly tenuous chain of chance or destiny that had drawn first Emil Gassan, then her and then Tillman into this deepening, thickening mess. Tillman had said you went with coincidence or you surrendered yourself to megalomania – that there was no third way. But there was. And it took her breath away with its sheer simplicity – its almost indecent obviousness.
‘The enemy we face,’ Diema said solemnly, ‘is those renegade Elohim, commanded by Ber Lusim. There is another man – Avra Shekolni – who joined them recently and has become their spiritual leader and teacher. We think that Shekolni has strengthened Ber Lusim’s extremism. Made him even less inclined to compromise than he was before.’
‘Wait,’ Rush said. ‘If this Shekolni is new on the scene, is he why they went after the book? Was that his idea?’
Diema stared at him thoughtfully for a second or two. She seemed to be deciding whether or not answering a former hostage’s questions would compromise her dignity. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We think it was Shekolni’s idea.’
‘They didn’t just steal that one copy of the book, did they?’ Kennedy broke in. ‘There were ashes in the box at Ryegate House.’
Diema turned her head to stare at Kennedy. The intensity of her attention was unsettling. It was as though, when she looked at you, the rest of the room, the rest of the world, disappeared. ‘Tephra,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘The ashes of a sacrifice are called tephra.’
‘Whatever.’ Kennedy couldn’t keep the impatience out of her voice. ‘They stole every copy of the book they could find. They burned all but one of them. They were taking the holy word out of the hands of the unbelievers.’
‘Yes.’
‘But why is it the holy word? It was written only a few centuries ago, by – what would you call him? – a heretic? A turncoat? An escapee? It’s not your gospel. It’s late-breaking news from a religious lunatic.’
Diema nodded. ‘Toller’s words were lost because we didn’t think they were worth keeping,’ she agreed. ‘It was a long time before anyone even realised that he might have been of the People. One of our Messengers went astray, at that time, and was looked for but never found. It was within my lifetime that a scholar of the People saw the correspondences in Toller’s book and came up with the idea that our missing brother had taken a new name and preached to the N
ations as Johann Toller.’
‘Then why would his word be revered?’ Kennedy demanded. ‘Why would it even be read, any more?’
‘Toller was the first to leave the People without the People’s blessing or sanction. Until Ber Lusim and Avra Shekolni, nobody else followed his example. Not in all of the three hundred and seventy years in between.’ Diema reached into her shirt and drew out the knife she kept there – the strange, asymmetrical blade that the Judas People called the sica. ‘Do you know what this is?’ she asked them. Before she spoke, before she’d even completed the movement, Tillman once again had the gun in his hand. But the girl didn’t acknowledge the threat or seem to notice it.
‘Take that as a yes,’ Rush suggested.
‘But you don’t really know what it is,’ Diema insisted. ‘To you it’s just a weapon. To us, it’s two and a half thousand years of history. We carried it and killed with it when we were subjects of the Romans. Now we carry it and kill with it as free men and women.’
‘What’s your point?’ Kennedy demanded. ‘And can you make it without that filthy thing in your hand?’
Diema set the knife down on the table, beside the typescript of Toller’s book. ‘I suppose my point is that we stick to our traditions. Change isn’t something that comes naturally or easily to us. Perhaps Avra Shekolni was already interested in Johann Toller before he left the city. Or perhaps not. Now, we know, he’s obsessed with the man. Toller is his only real precursor – a man of religion who went alone into the world, carrying what he thought was a great message.’
‘So?’ said Kennedy.
‘So Shekolni believes in that message.’
‘But Toller was predicting the end of the world back in the 1660s. It didn’t end,’ said Rush. ‘Or does Shekolni think it did and now we’re all living in the Matrix?’
