The Dead Sea Deception

by Adam Blake

  Leo turned the envelope in his hands, feeling its weight and solidity.

  ‘I think so,’ he said at last. ‘I think it will be.’

  Then there was the provisioning, the sourcing of equipment – not in London but in Los Angeles. He didn’t trust Insurance for this. He had his own contacts in America, and although it had been years since he spoke to them, they were still there when he called. Guns? Guns of any size and specification could be obtained. Explosives? Likewise. Electronic eavesdropping items, even of professional standard, were universally available these days, as were crowd control devices like pepper sprays and tear gas. Tillman put together a long list, to be paid for C.O.D.

  After that came the journey. Normally, he avoided planes because they were – by definition – enclosed spaces with no exits. Flying put you in the hands of people who might wish you harm. This time he didn’t spare a thought for those concerns. They belonged to a life in which there was a distinction to be made between ‘safe’ and ‘perilous’.

  Normally, too, Tillman bore the tedium of long journeys well: he sat still, his mind working through logistical puzzles that needed to be solved. This time his thoughts were locked on a single idea: revenge. He spent the flight in contemplation of that monolithic ambition, like a supplicant kneeling at an altar no one else could see.

  He’d paid for reconnaissance, as well as guns and ammunition, so he knew by this time that Arizona state police were holding Heather Kennedy – ex-sergeant – under guard at the Kingman-Butler Hospital in Kingman, Arizona, charged with first-degree murder, impersonating a police officer, false representation and a raft of lesser offences. He’d established the conditions in which she was being held, as well as her injuries and the likelihood that she’d be conscious at any given time of the day or night.

  Tillman drove from Los Angeles, in a car hired under the temporary name he’d bought from Insurance. It took the best part of a day, with stops along the way, but it had the advantage of making his precise location difficult to determine, even if Insurance had sold the name and credit card details on to third parties.

  From Bullhead City, he called the hospital and demanded to speak to Heather Kennedy. It was a calculated risk. He had to wait while the nurse put him on hold – to check with the police guard, he guessed – then she came back on and asked what this was concerning.

  ‘A death in the family,’ Tillman said. ‘Her mother. God forbid you keep this from her, ma’am. She needs to know, and it’s her right to know.’

  Another wait. Then a gruff state trooper came on the line and asked a few more questions. Mechanically, his thoughts elsewhere, Tillman invented a lingering illness for Kennedy’s mother that had gone through a great many permutations but left her alive long enough to gasp out one final message for her only daughter.

  ‘Only daughter?’ the cop grunted. ‘Our information is she has a sister. What’s that about?’

  ‘Half-sister,’ said Tillman. ‘Same father, different mothers.’

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Half-brother. Same mother, different fathers. Listen, does any part of your state or federal law allow you to hold Heather incommunicado? Because if it doesn’t, you should stop asking these stupid questions and just put her on the phone. I’m recording every word of this, officer … what was your name again?’

  It turned out his name was ‘Wait a second.’ Tillman waited, and the next voice on the line was Kennedy’s. She sounded groggy and very tired but not drugged into stupor.

  ‘Who is this?’ she asked. There was a time-delayed echo on her voice: maybe just a bad line, or maybe a bad wire-tap, set up very quickly with no real quality control.

  ‘It’s Leo.’

  A long silence. ‘Tillman.’ More silence. ‘Thank God.’

  ‘So. Murder? Conspiracy to murder? It’s like I don’t know you any more, girl.’

  ‘You remember Dovecote Farm?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘You remember hearing a woman screaming?’

  ‘Seems like I do.’

  ‘She did the murdering, and the conspiring, too. The local sheriff will vouch for me, but he’s in deep sedation right now. Bullet wound to the upper torso. He might not pull through. If he doesn’t, there goes my alibi. There was a woman who could have spoken up for me, but she’s dead, too.’

  ‘Sounds like you’re screwed.’

  ‘Doesn’t it.’

  ‘We miss you, Heather. All of us.’

  ‘All of you?’ She sounded wary. He wondered if she knew that the line was bugged. He’d have to assume that she did. There was no time to finesse this.

  ‘Me. Freddie. Jake. Little Wendy, with the squint eye. You’re in our thoughts all the time.’

  ‘I … miss you, too.’

  ‘You’re just being kind,’ Tillman said. ‘It’s no secret to anyone that you and I haven’t been close in recent times. I want you to know that’s going to change.’

  ‘Well, you always say that.’

  ‘I mean it, Heather. I’m going to see you again soon. I promise.’

  ‘Okay. Whatever.’

  ‘Are you ready, do you think? To see me again?’

  ‘Any time, Tillman. Name the day. Name the hour. Or just surprise me.’

  ‘I guess I’ll surprise you. You, um, you get many visitors there, Heather?’

  ‘Not that many, no. Just two big burly cops at the door to keep me company, and two more on the main corridor where it branches after the elevators.’

  ‘They don’t want you to go wandering off and get lost.’

  ‘Evidently. But in case I do, there’s always the GPS tag locked to my ankle.’

  ‘I see. Well, at least you’re among fellow cops. You guys can all sit around and talk shop.’

  ‘My shop’s a corner store in Queen’s Park. Theirs is a strip mall in Monument Valley. You’d be amazed how little …’

  Her voice faded out and the cop came on again. ‘I’m limiting you to five minutes,’ he told Tillman. ‘You can call again tomorrow, if you want.’

  ‘I didn’t even tell her about mum yet,’ said Tillman. ‘I was still working my way around to it. At least let me—’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ The line went dead.

  Tillman put the phone away and drove on, his mind starting to move again at last. It was a relief to have something practical to think about. And it would be, he knew, an even bigger relief to have something he could set his weight against and push.

  55

  The girl named Tabe lived alone, although she was too young, strictly speaking, to be allowed to do so. Before that, she had lived in orphans’ house with the helpers. She had always been an obedient and courteous child, but as the helpers said, beiena ke ha einanu, her soul moved on silence. She seemed to live alone in a small, self-bounded world, barely aware of the people who lived and had their being around her.

  This is not to say that she was selfish. Tabe was a warm-hearted girl, and kind, and even considerate, on the occasions when she surfaced from her own thoughts long enough to interact with others. But she was an artist: colours and tones and textures formed the dimensions of her world. Mostly she painted still lives. In the past she had painted people, too, but she had scandalised the helpers by asking if she could sketch a boy, Aram, with his robes removed. That had been the end of Tabe’s career as a painter of the human figure.

  Now she lived alone in a room on the fourth level of Dar Kuomet. But her paintings could be seen as far afield as Tethem towards the daybreak and Va Ineinu towards the night. She seemed happy alone. The boy, Aram, was betrothed now and Tabe had painted their married rooms with images of happy, dancing children. She seemed to bear no grudge against the lad, but then her interest in him had been primarily an aesthetic one.

  In her room in Dar Kuomet, Kuutma found her. She was drawing with a stick of black oil pastel on a bedsheet nailed to the wall (on the other walls, painted directly on to the plaster, were murals of strawberries and redcurrants in earthen bowls).
It took her some while to realise that she wasn’t alone. When she finally registered Kuutma’s presence, she bowed her head to him and whispered, ‘Ha ana mashadr’, blushing a red more hectic than the fruit painted on her walls.

  Kuutma signed to Tabe to sit. ‘You knew me for one of the Elohim,’ he said to her. ‘Was that by my complexion?’

  Tabe rubbed the tips of her fingers together nervously: they were black and greasy from the pastel. But she met Kuutma’s gaze directly. ‘Not only that,’ she said. ‘I remembered your face. You came to visit us once at the orphans’ house and I asked one of the helpers who you were. She said you were Kuutma. The Brand.’

  Kuutma nodded. ‘And so I am. Until mapkanah, at least.’ At that word, her eyes lit up, which somewhat surprised him. But to the young, anything new seems exciting just by being new. And then again, she was an artist: wherever Ginat’Dania went next, the light would be different and there would be new scenes to paint. For Tabe, mapkanah might seem like a rebirth.

  ‘When I came to the orphans’ house,’ Kuutma said, ‘it was to see you – you and your two brothers. I had an interest in verifying for myself that you were happy there. I knew your mother, you see.’

  The girl’s face clouded for an instant. ‘My mother …’ she said, tentatively, and left the sentence unfinished. Kuutma sensed something of bitterness in her tone, and he frowned.

  ‘You know she was sent forth, like me,’ he said.

  Tabe’s stare was hard: it gave no ground, no quarter. ‘Not like you.’

  ‘The work of the Kelim is every bit as important as the work we Elohim do,’ said Kuutma. ‘More so, even. We both work for the survival of the people: but our work is glorious, theirs is bitter and degrading. We’re honoured and they’re reviled.’

  Tabe shrugged, but made no other answer.

  ‘I would have you think well of her,’ Kuutma said, stiffly. ‘Your mother. I’d have you be generous to her, in your memory. Think what her sacrifice meant for you, as well as for us.’

  Tabe looked down at her blackened fingers now. He could see that she was longing for him to be gone, so that she could get back to her work.

  ‘I know your father, too,’ he said.

  Her gaze snapped up again, and her eyes as she stared into his were like two dark wounds in the unblemished whiteness of her face. But to the Elohim, all things look like wounds. Kuutma had made love only a handful of times in his life, plagued each time by the terrible thought that a woman’s sex is like the site of an old injury, partly healed.

  He waited, allowing the girl the space in which to speak. She only watched him.

  ‘You don’t ask me what he’s like – your father,’ he said at last.

  ‘No.’ Tabe was categorical. ‘How would it help me to know?’

  ‘He’s … a brave man, by his own lights. A soldier, like me. But he’s a soldier who fights against us. Our enemy.’

  Tabe considered this. ‘Then will you have to kill him?’ she asked.

  Kuutma smiled reluctantly. ‘That’s why I came to see you today,’ he admitted – although he’d had no intention, when he came, of telling her all this. ‘I think killing your father may be the last thing I do, as Kuutma. I have …’ He hesitated, picked his words with care. ‘I can see a pathway that leads us to meet. And when that happens, I’ll certainly have to kill him. Would I have your blessing, if I did that?’

  Tabe’s dark gaze was unwavering. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Of course. Ha ana mashadr, Kuutma. Everything you do, you do in our name. Of course you have my blessing. He’s only the father of my flesh, not of my spirit. But if he’s as brave as you say, I hope he doesn’t hurt you. I hope he dies quickly, without striking a single blow against you.’

  Kuutma saw the radiant innocence and earnestness in her face. He felt humbled by her simplicity – he who, out in the wider world, had become as complex and subtle as a snake. But snakes were holy, too, of course: snakes were holiest of all.

  He knelt before her. ‘Touveyhoun, daughter,’ he murmured, his voice thick with emotion he could not bear to examine.

  ‘Touveyhoun, Tannanu,’ she said, but she was unnerved by the wrongness of his kneeling to her. He realised that he had disturbed her calm and probably ruined the painting that she was making. With a muttered apology, he left her.

  Tabe paced the floor a while after he left, clasping herself hard and leaving black fingerprints on the flesh of her own forearms. But she had become used to turning strong emotion into some less transient form. Soon enough, she took up the pastel and resumed her effort to capture the swollen, pregnant belly of a storm cloud.

  56

  Tillman took his time. He’d come up with a reasonable plan, but it involved a great many moving parts, and he had to start from the assumption that he was in enemy territory. Getting Kennedy out of the hospital wouldn’t be hard in itself, but the Arizona police would mobilise quickly once she went off the grid. At that point, he had to disappear her quickly and unanswerably. Otherwise the operation would pretty much be doomed.

  He parked down the block from the hospital and walked up to its grounds, where he reconnoitred thoroughly, moving at a brisk pace so that he wouldn’t be challenged. He had floor plans to work from, but floor plans were useless unless he could link them to reality: he started that process by visualising the building as a three-dimensional space, with physical entrances and exits mapped on to the schematic diagrams he had in his head.

  The good news was the flat roof, three storeys below the window of Kennedy’s room; or at least, below the space that corresponded with Ward 20 on the plans. The bad news … well, the bad news was manifold. He’d timed the distance from the nearest police station: at the speed of a flat-out chase it was three minutes, no more. The flat roof was on the far side of the building from the car park, and he’d found no closer approach. Bullhead City and Seligman both had police heliports, and there were only two main roads out of town – State Highway 40 and Interstate 93. Closing both of those roads would be the work of a minute once the alarm went up.

  He thought about how to adapt the plan, given the lie of the land. He couldn’t come up with a single elegant or fool-proof solution. But one led the others by virtue of being intensely confusing and chaotic. If you haven’t got any good cards, play a wild card.

  Tillman walked back to the car and drove on up to the hospital, parking not too close to the police black-and-white he’d already located in the car park out front and not too far from the street: a fine balance, on which a lot was going to depend.

  He’d already chosen and packed his kit, in a plastic bag-for-life with the name and logo of a local florist blazoned on it and the leaves of a potted plant sticking out the top. He went in through the front doors, walked right by the reception desk and kept on going like a man who already knows his destination.

  In the gents’ toilets on the first floor of the main building, Tillman unpacked the bag and transformed himself into a hospital orderly by means of a long white coat and an official-looking ID badge. The badge was a fake, and not even a very good one, but it would fool someone who didn’t spend all day every day looking at the real thing: a cop on temporary guard duty, for example.

  In a wide hallway next to the service elevator, he obtained – as he’d hoped – an empty gurney. He’d been prepared to wander the wards a little until he found one, but the less time he spent walking around in the whites, the less chance he had of being challenged.

  Tillman rode the elevator to the fourth floor and stepped out, wheeling the gurney in front of him. The two cops who Kennedy had warned him about – the first two – were waiting where the corridor forked. They looked tough and humourless and alert. Tillman walked on up to them and nodded to indicate that he intended to pass. ‘Transfer from Ward 22,’ he said.

  The nearest of the two cops checked Tillman’s badge, which Tillman helpfully held out with the thumb of his left hand. His right hand rested on a sap that he was holding below the pushbar of the g
urney, but he was hoping not to have to use it: improvisation at this early stage would be a bad omen for the whole damned enterprise.

  The cop waved him through. Tillman rolled the gurney on down the branch corridor that led to Kennedy’s ward among several others.

  At Ward 22, he abandoned the gurney and the whites. The long coat would just encumber him and from here he’d have to move fast. From the storage bin underneath the gurney, he retrieved his bag, tossing the pot plant.

  Kennedy’s ward, number 20, was around a right-angled bend about ten yards further on. Tillman took the corner at the briskest of brisk walks and found himself heading directly for two more cops who looked just as solid and serious as the first two.

  He dropped the bag and raised his hands to shooting position. In each hand he held a bottle of OC spray, and his index fingers were already clamped down on the nozzles. This wasn’t pepper spray, as such: it was a Russian-made product, a derivative of pelargonic acid, the nastiest thing of its type Tillman had ever encountered, weighing in at four and a half million Scoville units. The two men went down in agony, clawing at their faces. Tillman slipped on a surgical mask and carefully and unhurriedly knocked them out with desflurane soaked into a handkerchief. He also anointed their faces with a milk and detergent mix that would mitigate the worst of the spray’s effects. He had no intention of killing law officers on this jamboree, even unintentionally.

  He left the men where they lay and walked through double swing doors into the ward. It had been sub-divided into several bays, but he got lucky: Kennedy’s bed was in the second of these areas. Tillman saw her just as a nurse came out from another bay further down and registered his presence. A second later she registered the Unica in his hand: not aimed at her exactly, but impossible to ignore.

  ‘Go back inside,’ Tillman told her. ‘Don’t say anything or do anything. Just wait.’

  With a nearly voiceless squeak of panic, the nurse backed away out of sight. Tillman turned his attention back to Kennedy.