‘So you’re going to burn through it?’ Kennedy asked.
Diema shook her head. ‘Three feet thick,’ she said again. ‘And the core is concrete — only the shell and frame are steel. We’re going to use plastique.’
Kennedy looked shocked. ‘How much plastique?’ she asked.
‘A lot. But we don’t have to break through it, we just need to loosen it from the surrounding rock. Then we can tear it down. It should be simple enough.’
‘Then why are you looking like you swallowed a wasp?’ Rush asked.
Diema gave him a disapproving look — as though being reminded that he was still alive did nothing to improve her day. ‘Because it will take time,’ she said sourly. ‘And the more time they buy, the less we’re going to like what we find on the other side of that door.’
Avra Shekolni preached a sermon to Ber Lusim’s remaining Messengers. It was short and simple, since time was pressing on all of them.
His theme was the difference between the earthly and the eternal, and how hard it is, from behind the veils of the world and the flesh, to comprehend what is everlasting and incorruptible.
‘For now,’ he intoned solemnly, ‘we see as through a glass, darkly. But then we will see all things clearly, as they are. Now we understand in part, but then we will know and be known. As your teacher, I have tried to bring you to that glass, not so that you could peer through it, but so that you could feel how close the eternal world is — how thin and fragile is the barrier behind which He waits for you. But today my purpose is lost. Today you’ll step through the veil and see for yourselves what was hidden. And because of your courage, your faith, your love for each other and for the light of truth, the veil will soon be parted for ever. See, I bow my head before you. The fool has said in his heart that there is no God. But I look at you, and I know that there is. No demiurge or lesser spirit could have made anything so beautiful, so perfect as you. Give me your blessing, my sons, my angels. Your blessing, and then — if I may ask this, if I am worthy — your lives.’
Some of them wiped tears from their eyes as he walked among them: some let them fall down their cheeks, unashamed. Some of them reached out to touch his hands or the hem of his robe. All were preparing themselves, mentally, for what was to come.
Ber Lusim came to Shekolni, and they embraced briefly.
‘It should not have happened like this,’ Ber Lusim said. He didn’t say whether he meant the invasion, Hifela’s death, or what was about to come.
‘It happens as God wills, Ber Lusim. I don’t need to lecture you on predestination. You are predestination’s agent. This is no tragedy — and indeed, it seems to me that we’ve had this conversation already, only a short time ago. The only thing that would be tragic, now, would be if these final, most necessary things were left undone. It would be as though we climbed a great mountain, and turned around when the summit was in sight. We would be fools, when we thought to be saints. And I think that God probably finds fools harder to love than sinners.’
‘I hadn’t looked to be either,’ Ber Lusim said. ‘Go well, Avra.’
‘And you, my dear friend. I’ll see you soon.’
It took ten minutes to put the explosives in place. Diema used the time to satisfy herself absolutely that there was no easier way. She had had some hope that one of the adjacent walls might have been built during the time of the city, but they were all original rock — and far thicker than the vault door. That, of course, was why the door had been placed here rather than somewhere else. Ber Lusim had chosen his ground, and chosen it well.
‘Does this seem a little crazy to you?’ Rush asked Diema, as they jog-trotted with the Elohim back through several chambers to what Shraga had designated as the safe distance.
‘As compared to what?’ Diema asked dryly.
Shraga passed out earplugs and told them to breathe through their mouths from the start of the countdown right up to the detonation. It wasn’t unusual for a powerful shock wave to rupture eardrums, but if you had your mouth open, the Eustachian tubes should equalise the pressure and stop that from happening.
He offered the detonator to Diema, but she shook her head. ‘You’re the expert,’ she said. ‘Go ahead.’
Shraga counted down from ten, both aloud and with his fingers. Then he pressed the button.
Even with the earplugs, and the distance, the sound of the explosion felt to Diema like a physical blow, like a wrestler with two fistfuls of rings punching her temples. Then the shockwave hit, in two stages, making the floor buck and the air crack like a whip.
She didn’t realise she’d fallen until she felt the cold stone under her back. She picked herself up again and shouted out the command to go in. She knew nobody could hear her, but they could see her mouth form the words and her hand pointing.
Nahir’s men rushed into the chamber beyond the door, from which smoke was pouring like a river. They were carrying ropes and pulleys, but Shraga had placed the explosives like a maestro. The door was already down. Detached from the solid rock by perfectly shaped detonations, it had toppled under its own weight.
Nahir stepped out again, waving smoke away from his face, and gave the clear signal. Diema relayed it. The Messengers advanced, covering each other’s flanks and blind spots, alert for any movement from beyond the ragged opening in the rock. From moment to moment, as the smoke roiled, they stepped in and out of Diema’s sight.
‘Stay with me,’ she told Kennedy. Then she glanced across at Rush. He still looked shaken and disoriented by the explosion, but he waved his flashlight in a satirical show of readiness. ‘You too,’ she said curtly. She went forward, and after a moment they followed.
They had to clamber over the fallen vault door and the rubble that surrounded it. It had stayed miraculously intact through the blast, though the steel sheeting, inches thick, had been ripped away in places from the concrete core. It was as though some animal had clawed the metal — but it would have had to be one of the beasts of the Apocalypse.
That association was an unpleasant one. Diema stepped down and hurried on. A short corridor gave onto a roughly circular room much smaller than the gallery they’d just left, but with so high a ceiling that it was lost to the eye in the shadows overhead. No room at all, Diema thought: most likely it was a rock chimney that had stood at the heart of Gellert Hill since it reared its head up out of the earth, and greeted the Judas People when they first came here to build.
Around the curved walls, two dozen Elohim lay still. All were men, and not one wore the night-vision rigs or body armour of Kennedy’s people. Blood pooled visibly around the heads and chests of most of them, and a few had fallen on their backs or sides, so she could see that the blood came from their slit throats. They had kept their knives in their hands when they fell.
Diema’s own people hung back, guns trained on the man who sat at the centre of the room. He was dressed in black robes, bare-footed and bare-headed. He too held a sica in his hands, which were pressed to his chest as though he were praying. The tip of the blade pointed to his bare throat. His face wore an expression of beatific calm.
‘Avra Shekolni,’ Diema said. She raised a closed fist, signalling her Elohim to hold position and do nothing without her order. ‘Where is Ber Lusim?’
‘I am afraid,’ Shekolni said, ‘that this is not a question I am able to answer. He is gone to enact the glory of the ages and the end of time. The fifth and final king is coming, to reign for evermore. But He waits to be invited, and Ber Lusim must open the way for Him.’