‘And that’s all wonderful,’ Tillman said. ‘But it still comes down to time. They’re working their way down Toller’s list. When they get to the end, it’s at least possible that a million people will die. We have to find them before that happens.’
Kennedy counted on her raised fingers as she worked it out in her head. ‘If they keep working at the present rate, I’d say that gives us four days at most,’ she said.
They were all silent for a moment or two as the implications of this sank in. Budapest was a very big haystack, and four days was no time at all. It had taken Kennedy almost that long to find Alex Wales and she’d only had one building to search.
‘We need a back-up plan,’ Tillman said. ‘By all means, girl, let your people go to town on this. But there’s no way we should just sit and wait while they work.’
‘You have a better suggestion?’ Diema asked, her eyes narrowing as she stared at him.
‘I do,’ Kennedy said.
They all turned to look at her, expectantly.
‘I think there’s at least a chance that we can make them come to us.’
PART FIVE
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
48
Diema, Tillman and Rush flew from Heathrow to Budapest Ferihegy on a red-eye flight that left at half-past midnight. They used false papers supplied by a contact of Tillman’s who he referred to as Benny.
It was only a two-hour flight, so there was no question of sleeping. Rush had brought along some of the books he’d swiped from the Ryegate House collection, and used the time to look up Johann Toller in the index of each book in turn.
Diema put on her headphones and selected a cartoon to watch. It was very beautiful to look at, but she quickly decided that she didn’t like it one bit. It started with a lengthy sequence in which a man loses his wife and mourns her: the emotional precipices that opened up for Diema as she watched were a long way from what she looked for in a cartoon. She wanted irreconcilable war between cats and mice, violence that bent and buckled the world, and a world so resilient it snapped right back into shape.
Angry and frustrated, she snatched the headphones off and stuffed them back into the seat pocket.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ Rush asked her.
‘No,’ Diema growled. She’d noticed how often his glance stole in her direction and it was irritating her so much that she’d considered moving seats.
‘It’s not big secret stuff, swear to God. It’s about Toller.’
Diema turned her head to give the boy a cold stare. ‘One question. Then you leave me alone.’
‘Okay, it’s this. Toller said he was born in darkness. Was that literally true? Do your people actually live underground?’
She carried on staring at him in stony silence for a few seconds longer. Then she picked up the headphones and put them back on.
‘Okay, I’m sorry,’ Rush said quickly. ‘If you don’t want to answer that, fine. I get it. Maybe that does touch on one of your big secrets. Different question. What’s the actual passage in your scripture that talks about the three thousand years? The one that Toller based his predictions on? Is it possible he was counting from a different start date?’
Diema suppressed the urge to clamp a hand around the boy’s windpipe — both to shut him up and for the sake of emphasis. ‘Adamites who read our gospel die,’ she reminded him. ‘So if that’s really your question, I’ll answer it. Then I’ll cut your throat in the airport car park at Ferihegy. It’s your call, boy.’
Rush digested this threat in thoughtful silence.
‘Okay,’ he said at last. ‘Scratch that, then. How about this? Robert Blackborne talks about the weird sign that Toller used to make as a blessing, but nobody else ever mentions it. So I’m wondering how different it is from the sign of the cross. Can I see it?’
Diema scowled. ‘You want me to bless you?’
‘I want to see you make the sign, that’s all.’
It was like pacifying a baby. Disgruntled, she demonstrated the sign of the noose for him, several times over, and he watched her with a certain fascination. Unless it was all just a ruse so that he could stare at her breasts again.
‘Can I try,’ he asked at last. ‘Or would that be blasphemy?’
Diema shrugged dismissively. ‘Go ahead.’
He moved his hand as though he were suffering from a stomach ache and was trying to ease it. Amused in spite of herself, and happy to be distracted from the lingering feelings left by the movie, Diema schooled him.
Not the whole hand, with the palm flat — that looks wrong. The forefinger should be extended, pointing inward to your chest.
Don’t do it so fast, and only do it once. Not around and around and around.
Imagine a clock, set in your chest. Imagine the hands of the clock running backward. Follow the hands of the clock with your finger.
‘I’m not going to get this,’ Rush said, but he kept on trying. In the end, he was reasonably proficient.
‘Would there be something you’d say, at the same time?’ he asked her.
‘You could say, “He kul tairah beral”. “The hanged man’s blessing be on you”.’
‘Ha kul tiara beral.’
‘Tairah. Tay-rah.’
‘Ha kul tairah beral.’
‘He kul. Not ha.’
‘He kul tairah beral.’
‘Vi ve kul te.’
‘What’s that?’
‘And on you.’
‘Okay. What else? Yeah, I was wondering—’
‘You’ve run out of questions,’ Diema said, cutting him off.
‘This one isn’t about Toller. It’s about you.’
‘I never said you could ask questions about me.’
‘No, you didn’t, but maybe we could swap. I ask a question, then you ask a question. Like an exchange of hostages.’
‘That’s a wonderful idea,’ Diema said.
‘Cool.’
‘Except that there’s nothing I want to know about you.’
This, finally, made the boy back off and give her a respite from his noise. She found another cartoon, a short from 1935 directed by Tex Avery, but she couldn’t enjoy it. Her mind was too unsettled.
She left her seat and went to the back of the plane, ostensibly to use the toilet. She didn’t really need it, but she did need to be alone with her own thoughts. The boy’s presence was intrusive, whether he spoke or not.
Both toilets were engaged and to her further chagrin, Leo Tillman was also waiting there.
He gave her a nod, which in her present mood incensed her more than she could bear in silence.
Leaning against the bulkhead wall, looking out at the unchanging vista of clouds, she addressed him without looking at him.
‘Did you understand the plan, as I outlined it to you?’ she murmured, her voice barely audible above the engines’ constant rumble.
‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘Because the whole point of our travelling separately is so that Ber Lusim’s people, if they’re checking flights into the city, won’t realise that we’re working together.’
‘Yeah, I got that.’
‘They’re meant to be watching Kennedy, not us.’
‘Sure.’ Tillman’s tone was easy and — insultingly — reassuring. ‘But you said yourself, we’re worried about them checking the passenger manifests on incoming flights. We’re not assuming they’ll have spies on the plane. That’s so unlikely, we might as well count it as impossible.’