She screamed for help, but he ignored her. There were enough screams echoing around the building that one more wouldn’t even be noticed. With his free hand, he took a plastic gardening tie from somewhere she couldn’t see and fastened it around her wrists, pulling it tight.
Then he hauled her to her feet, pressing her hard against the white-tiled wall. He drew a knife — a sica — and waved it in front of her eyes.
‘You see this?’ he muttered in her ear. ‘Just nod.’
Kennedy nodded.
‘The blade is poisoned. If I cut you with this knife, you’ll die. You understand?’
She nodded again.
‘At the end of the corridor, there is a door. Beyond the door, a small parking area. We will walk across that space to the van that’s parked there and you will climb into the back of the van. Do this without a word, without a sound, and without trying to run. Otherwise I’ll kill you. Do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ Kennedy said.
With a hand on her shoulder, he turned her and launched her.
When Diema clambered to her feet again, she found that she was deaf.
Two men were running towards her down the hill, but dirt and leaves were still raining down from the explosion and the air was thicker than soup, so they hadn’t seen her until she stood up directly in front of them. She let the first man run into her, ducked under him and threw him high and hard. But doing that laid her open to the second man’s attack, a vicious combination of kicks and punches that sent her staggering backwards on the treacherous ground until she fell, fetching up with a jarring impact against the bole of a tree.
The Messenger brought his rifle up to chest height, his free hand steadying the breech. His gaze met Diema’s.
‘Aikh kadal,’ Diema murmured, staring deep and pleadingly into those dark eyes. Older brother.
The man’s resolution faltered, for a heartbeat. Diema fired twice, which emptied the handgun’s clip. One shot went wide, the other hit the man’s right hand, shattering the rifle’s stock and blowing off two of his fingers.
He was drawing a sica from his belt, left-handed, when Diema rushed on him, leaving the ground in a desperate leap to kick him in the chest. He went down hard and took a second longer than she did to struggle upright again. By that time she’d snatched up his rifle — which was still just about serviceable as a club. Her wild swipe slammed into the underside of his jaw and the shuddering impact knocked him out cold.
Her hearing was starting to return now, but her whole body throbbed with pain — and against that dull background ache, every movement caused flares of bright, localised agony from her left side. Probably she’d cracked a rib when she’d fallen after the grenade went off.
But she had her prisoner. If the others had survived, this could still count as a success. Diema looked around for something to tie her attacker’s hands with. His belt would probably do. She knelt down and unfastened it, rolling the man onto his side so she could drag it free.
But as she bundled his wrists together, he stirred under her hands and opened his eyes. ‘Dekai?’ he mumbled. Alive? You’re taking me alive?
‘To question you,’ Diema told him, though she shied away from explaining what that might mean. ‘We want to know about Ber Lusim and about the work you’ve done for him.’
The man grimaced. The muscles of his jaw contorted and his pale face flushed suddenly red.
Diema didn’t realise what he was doing until it was too late to stop him. She wrestled briefly with his jaws, but even as she forced his mouth open, a shudder ran through him. He stiffened, eyes wide, and all his muscles locked in a body-wide rictus.
The idea of a suicide capsule — for one of the People — was as obscene to her as the idea of the People killing their own. Costly in the sight of the Lord is the blood of his servants. Their lives were precious because there were few enough of them to be counted. But Ber Lusim had taught them new ways of thinking.
Grim-faced, fighting back tears, Diema used her thumb and forefinger to force the dead man’s eyelids closed over his bulging eyes.
As she did so, something cold and hard touched the back of her neck.
‘Akhot ha’aktana,’ Hifela said softly, raising the Sig Sauer so that the tip of its barrel touched her cheek. ‘Little sister.’
Kennedy walked in front of the Messenger, but when they got to the end of the corridor he reached past her to push the door open. Bright sunlight flooded in, making her blink and squint.
‘There,’ the man said, not pointing but pushing her where he wanted her to go. There was a red van, parked about twenty feet away. On its side, in black script printed to look like a military stencil, were the words ‘High Energy Haulage’, along with the dolmen logo.
Kennedy stumbled towards it, dragging her steps in the vain hope that someone might come around the corner of the building and see what was happening.
Nobody did. They reached the van and her captor threw open the back doors. ‘Inside,’ he ordered. Kennedy stared at him. His voice had definitely been slurred and there was an asymmetric lean to his stance.
She backed away a few steps. The Messenger lunged for her and caught her by the arm, but almost fell over in the process. He blinked rapidly a few times, as though to clear his vision.
‘Inside,’ he said again, pulling her towards the van. He held the sica close to Kennedy’s throat and though he was careful not to cut her, she was terrified: his hand didn’t look that steady.
She climbed into the van, with great difficulty because of her bound hands, and swung herself around so she sat facing outward.
As the Messenger pushed the doors to, Kennedy threw her upper body flat, bracing herself against the floor of the van, and kicked the doors into his face. The knife flew from his hand, bouncing end over end across the ground, and he stumbled backward, going down on one knee.
Kennedy squirmed and rolled out of the van, aiming to hit the ground running. But the assassin was already scrambling to his feet again, blocking the only way out of the narrow cul-de-sac. She feinted left, then when he took a step towards her she sprinted past him on the right. But even doped and confused he was faster than her. He swivelled and turned, tripping her.
Kennedy rolled as she landed, and managed to get her feet back under her. The Messenger moved around her, putting himself between her and the exit again. Blood was brimming behind his clenched teeth and his eyes were glazing over, but the look on his face was one of murderous rage. He fumbled inside his jacket and came out with two slender wooden rods like the handles of a tiny skipping rope. A moment later, as it caught the light, Kennedy registered the almost invisible wire suspended between them.
The man advanced on her and Kennedy retreated before him. But a handful of baby steps left her with the wall pressing against her shoulders. She looked left, then right: she had nowhere to go. As the Messenger raised his strangling cord, she bowed her head and turned her back on him.
He dropped the cord into place around her neck and she stepped back into his embrace as though welcoming her death.
The sica, which she’d snatched up from the ground when she’d fallen, was clutched tightly between her bound hands. The assassin walked onto its blade, which sank hilt-deep into his stomach. Kennedy twisted, moving her hands up, down, across. Seppuku by proxy.
The dying man made a choking sound of pain and protest. She heard the muted impact as he fell to his knees, and only then turned to look. He was folded around the obscene wound, probably already dead, although his staring eyes seemed troubled by some unfathomable realisation. Kennedy told herself that the fentalyn must have taken away most of the pain. The strangling cord remained around her neck, its wooden grips dangling like the loose ends of a bow tie, as she addressed herself to the problem of freeing her hands with a poisoned blade.