He left the room to the sound of their cheers. He paused at the doorway and put his hands on Hifela’s shoulders, staring for a moment into the man’s deep-set, almost hooded eyes. Then he walked on without a word. The Face of the Skull was never comfortable with signs of approval, let alone signs of love. But this was a father’s blessing bestowed upon a faithful son — and as such, it was holy.
52
The day was hot and humid — uncomfortable at ten in the morning, and by noon hardly bearable. In Kennedy’s hotel room, where the AC control on the wall turned out to be a completely empty plastic box, it went by like a river of treacle.
But it was even worse for the watchers. The rooftop opposite the hotel was as hot as a grill pan. Diema slathered her melanin-deficient skin with a zinc oxide preparation and bore it stoically. Rush, still in the car, was far less stoical but was forbidden by Diema to move the car so that he could follow the shade. All he could do was wind the windows down and keep swigging water from the plastic bottles stacked up on the back seat. Only Tillman, bivouacked among the dumpsters, was out of the fierce sun and fairly comfortable.
There was one point in the course of the morning when it seemed as though someone might be walking into their trap — when a windowless van rolled up at the hotel’s back entrance and two men stepped out. But they were delivering catering supplies, boxes of individual tea bags and sugar sachets, plastic cups and tiny packs of biscuits. They were done inside of ten minutes and on their way again.
At 1 p.m., breaking protocol, Kennedy called Tillman on the walkie-talkie that Diema had given her.
‘What?’ Tillman said, without preamble.
‘Nothing,’ Kennedy muttered. ‘Too much nothing. I’m starting to get antsy.’
‘I sympathise. But you’re supposed to maintain radio silence unless there’s an emergency. Is there an emergency, Heather?’
‘No.’
‘Then we stick to the plan.’
She could tell from his tone that he was about to sign off, so she spoke quickly, forestalling him. ‘Leo, I’m not sure the plan is going to work.’
Tillman sighed. ‘We agreed on this. Anything we do now—’
‘No, hear me out. Say we read them right and everything is playing out the way we wanted it to. Say we got Ber Lusim’s attention. He could have watchers camped out around the hotel now, but further out than where you are — or closer in, for that matter. Someone sitting down in the lobby, waiting to follow me when I move.’
‘So?’
‘So maybe I should move. He might be ready to swallow the bait, but still not feel happy about moving into a space I’ve had time to fortify. Maybe he’s planning to grab me off the street as soon as I step out.’
‘All the more reason to keep you off the street, Heather.’ Tillman’s tone was dry. ‘We’re in control here. Out there, not so much.’
‘I’m looking out of my window at the dumpsters, Leo.’
‘I know. I can see you.’
‘So give me a wave.’
‘No. And don’t look out of your window at the dumpsters.’
‘Listen, if there was less at stake, I’d agree with you,’ Kennedy snapped, all her tension coming to the surface at once. ‘But if he’s waiting for us to do something, and we’re waiting for him to do something, he wins. Because presumably, he’s still got his merry band of lunatics out there setting incendiaries and decapitating rats the whole time — and getting closer to whatever it is they’re going to do that will leave a million people dead. I don’t want that on my conscience, Leo. I seriously don’t. I can’t just sit here and wonder how high the body count is getting.’
‘But we can protect you here,’ Tillman objected, stolid and patient. ‘If they come in, we come in right behind them. Out in the open, it’s different. Not to mention the fact that if you start wandering around again, it doesn’t look purposeful. It looks random. We want them to think you’re up to something that threatens them.’
‘I know. So let me do something purposeful.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as a meeting.’
There was silence on the line while Tillman considered this.
‘Diema could set up someone for you to meet with,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘One of her Elohim …’
‘I don’t mean a real meeting. Especially not with someone they might recognise. I mean an imaginary someone. I go to a place where there’s a crowd, but only a few ways in and out — a place where it’s still easy for the three of you to come in close to me.’
‘And what does that give us?’
‘Leverage, maybe. If they think I’m up to something — delivering something or hooking up with my contact — maybe that’s when they decide to play out the hand. Maybe they feel they need to stop it from happening.’
She waited. The silence was a lot longer this time, because Tillman was thinking through all the implications. ‘I’ll talk to Diema,’ he said at last.
‘It’s not for her to decide,’ Kennedy said sharply.
‘No, it isn’t. But she’s got people who know the ground. If we do it, we need to pick the right place.’ There was a pause, but he didn’t turn off the walkie-talkie, so she knew he hadn’t finished speaking. ‘But you could be right,’ he said at last. ‘This is meant to be a provocation. It becomes less provoking the longer you sit there and do nothing. I’ll talk to the others and get back to you.’
He signed off. Kennedy tossed the walkie-talkie onto the bed and made herself a cup of really uninspiring coffee.
Diema didn’t even argue the point. ‘She’s right,’ was all she said. ‘We should probably have done it earlier. Give them a changing situation to react to, instead of one that seems stable.’
‘Jesus, please,’ Rush broke in. ‘Anything that gets me out of this car. It’s like a sauna in here.’
‘So where should she go?’ Tillman asked Diema.
‘I’ll ask.’
‘You mean you’ll confer with your people?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how long will that take?’
‘As long as it takes.’
She closed the channel. A moment later, the walkie-talkie vibrated again. It was Rush.
‘I need to pee,’ he groaned.
‘Use the empty water bottles,’ Tillman said. ‘That’s what they’re for.’
‘Okay, then I need to breathe.’
‘No, you don’t. It’s just a habit people get into.’
‘I need to use my legs before I get a deep-vein thrombosis and die.’
‘Keep the channel clear,’ Tillman grunted, ‘and your eyes open. We’re still working here.’
He switched off the walkie-talkie. His shoulders were stiff so he massaged them, one at a time, always keeping the walkie-talkie ready in his free hand, and never taking his eyes off the hotel’s rear door.
Maybe a little more than half an hour later, Diema got back to him.
‘My people say we should use the Országház,’ she said. ‘The parliament building.’
Tillman was dubious. ‘Did they say why? Lots of security, presumably, so lots of risk. Plenty of reasons for Ber Lusim not to want to go anywhere near Heather in a place like that.’
‘And plenty of reasons why he’d be afraid of who she might be meeting there,’ Diema countered. ‘The high risk cuts both ways. Ber Lusim thinks that, perhaps, this is why she came. Perhaps she’s been waiting for an appointment with someone high up in the government and it just came through. He’d need to know who that is and what’s being planned. Most likely, if he makes a move, he’ll do it as soon as he figures out where she’s going — either when she’s in the front lobby or before she even gets into the building.’
‘I don’t like it,’ Tillman said. ‘There’ll be armed guards in there. If Ber Lusim’s people come for her, Heather could get caught in a crossfire.’