But it was still sloppy and thoughtless and she couldn’t give him the last word. ‘We don’t take risks that we don’t have to take,’ she snapped. ‘Only a fool would do that.’
Tillman didn’t answer. She looked round. He was watching her with detached curiosity. ‘First time on a stealth mission?’ he asked.
‘No. I’ve been a soldier for almost a year now. And I’ve been undercover in enemy territory for most of that time.’
He nodded and his expression changed — became something that she suspected was pity. ‘But the whole world is enemy territory for you, isn’t it? Apart from that one tiny patch of ground. No wonder you people go squirrelly in the head.’
‘Whereas your society is a monument to pure reason,’ Diema sneered. How dare this hacked and sanded thug, this slubbering executioner, lecture her? Talk down to her?
‘We don’t make murder into a sacrament.’
‘Yes.’ Diema couldn’t keep the outrage from showing in her voice. ‘You do. Of course you do. Your priests and bishops blessed soldiers and butchers for centuries. They still do. You kill more of your own every day than we’ve killed in the whole of your history. Half the stories you tell, the novels and movies you make, have killers for heroes. Your whole culture is in love with violence. You embrace your own destruction, all the time. It’s what defines you. You ruin the world that was given to you. Treat her like a whore, instead of a mother, and then—’
She stopped herself by force of will, fighting down the anger as she’d been taught. Tillman was still staring at her very intently, but his expression now was unreadable.
‘Well,’ he said, in a tone that was carefully neutral, ‘you got me on that one. Here we both stand, kid. On the moral low ground.’
‘I don’t think I could get down that low,’ Diema said, ‘if I dug for a thousand years.’
She left him and went back to her seat. The conversation had done nothing to improve her mood and she was still unable to settle either to work or to diversion. She was relieved when the plane finally landed and she could become active again. Movement and action healed by their very nature.
They went through customs and immigration very quickly. They’d brought only carry-on luggage, and their new-minted passports stood up to scrutiny.
She had been told to go to the third level of the short-stay car park, where she’d be met by a Summoner of Elohim with local knowledge. He would be standing beside a blue Skoda Fabia and he would have with him a range of equipment from which she and her team could take what they needed.
When she stepped out of the elevator on the third level, she saw him at once. Saw both of them, rather. There were two men waiting there, hands in their pockets, stolid and patient. Diema turned to Tillman and Rush, who were right behind her.
‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘I’ll speak to them alone.’
‘Given what we were saying back in England about trust,’ Tillman said curtly, ‘I think that’s a pretty terrible idea.’
‘For a minute, alone,’ Diema insisted. ‘If this was an ambush, I’d have set it up by phone, before we ever got on the plane. I wouldn’t be trying to scrape it together now.’
‘A minute,’ Tillman said. ‘Go on.’
Diema crossed the thirty yards or so of asphalt that separated her from the two Elohim. The nearer man smiled and opened his arms as she approached. She embraced him and let him embrace her.
‘It’s so good to see you, Diema,’ he murmured in her ear.
‘It’s good to see you, too, Nahir,’ she said in a neutral tone.
He’d changed a lot since she saw him last, but probably no more than she had. Now that he’d been exposed to sun and weather, he’d lost the characteristic pallor of the People. But where Diema’s skin had initially reddened and blotched, and turned gradually to an uninspiring ruddy blush, Nahir’s had magically reverted to the rich olive cast that the People must have had when they lived in the air instead of the earth. He’d changed in other ways, too. He seemed to have gained a confidence, a poise, that he’d never displayed in Ginat’Dania. It was perhaps no surprise that he’d already been promoted to the role of Summoner.
The second man, Shraga, who Nahir now introduced, was a complete stranger to her. He too bore the marks of living among the Nations, although in his case, while his skin darkened, his hair had bleached to the colour sometimes called strawberry blond. It would have made him a wonderful exotic in Ginat’Dania.
They gave Diema another set of papers. A new name, a Hungarian passport and driving licence, a bank account to draw on, and weapons. Nahir had assumed correctly that she would have left her knives, her guns, her pharmaca, behind in London, and that she would wish to resupply at the earliest opportunity.
‘Kuutma relayed your message,’ he told her, as she examined the guns they had brought — dismounting and reassembling them, testing the load and the firing action, weighing them in her hands. It was a slightly risky thing to do right there in the car park, but they were shielded by the raised lid of the boot and Diema wanted to be done and gone from here as quickly as she could. ‘He told us to extend every assistance to you and promised us two dozen Messengers in addition to those we have. Some have already arrived. Do you want to brief them yourself?’
‘No,’ Diema said. ‘Not yet. I have other duties to attend to. I assume you made sure you weren’t followed here. But I won’t be taking that risk again, with you or anybody else. If there’s news, tell me by phone or through agreed channels. If there’s no news, leave me be.’
Nahir stared at her, both affronted and troubled.
‘We understood,’ he said stiffly, ‘that you’d be leading this mission.’
‘That’s correct,’ Diema told him, still absorbed in her triage of the weapons. Along with six sica blades, and the modified Dan-inject she’d chosen and ordered for Kennedy, she chose a nameless Chinese army-issue semi-automatic and a nine-millimetre hand pistol, which was small enough to carry in her ankle holster. She put both guns into a sports bag that Shraga handed to her. After a moment’s thought, she also took a Ruger 44 carbine rifle.
‘Follow the brief that Kuutma gave you,’ she instructed the two men, helping herself to some boxes of ammunition. ‘Look for possible addresses or areas from which Ber Lusim might be operating. Circulate likenesses of his rogue Elohim to all your people, and drill them — make them memorise faces and names. Also, look for trucks, vans or cars bearing the name of the High Energy Haulage company, and anyone who travels or books goods or services under their auspices. If you turn up anything that seems positive, or even hopeful, pass the information to me at once.’
‘To you?’ Nahir asked.
Diema nodded. ‘To me. And then wait. I’ll decide what action you’re to take, if any. Those men standing over there by the elevators are my primary team, for now — along with the rhaka, Heather Kennedy. I’m sure Kuutma didn’t omit her from his briefing.’
She beckoned to Tillman and Rush, who came over from where they were still standing, in front of the elevator doors. ‘Help yourself,’ she said to Tillman.
Tillman rummaged among the guns on offer, watched with silent outrage by the two Elohim. Finally he held up a retooled Beretta that looked as though it might once have been a competition gun. ‘Is this chambered for .380?’ he asked the Messengers.
Shraga nodded wordlessly.
‘Okay, then,’ Tillman said. ‘I’ll take this. Thanks.’
‘What about me?’ Rush said. ‘Do I get to have a gun?’
‘Have you ever fired one?’ Diema asked him.
‘No.’
‘Then no, you don’t. You’ll be more danger to us than to the enemy.’ She looked into the boot of the car again. In among the weapons, there were a great many items of general equipment. Some of them were clearly left over from training exercises, and had no conceivable use for her or her team.