Kuutma rubbed his cheek with his thumb. ‘Could this be done?’ he asked Nahir. ‘Could you wake him? Or is Tillman too far-gone?’
Nahir made a non-committal gesture. ‘I don’t know, Tannanu,’ he admitted. ‘I was thinking of Tillman as a spent asset, so I haven’t asked the doctors to report to me on his condition. I’ll do so now.’
‘Thank you, Nahir,’ Kuutma said. ‘Take my bodyguards with you. They both have a good grounding in field medicine. Perhaps they can be of use. We’ll join you shortly.’
‘I want the others there, too,’ Diema said quickly. ‘Kennedy and Rush.’
Kuutma frowned. ‘They were not, I believe, present in the warehouse with Tillman,’ he observed.
‘No. But they were both researching Johann Toller and his prophecies. Again, it’s a case of using all possible assets. If any of them has an insight we can use, we need to squeeze it out of them now.’
‘Very well,’ Kuutma said. ‘Nahir, please have them fetched.’
Nahir made the sign of the noose, which Kuutma returned, and then he left. Diema read extreme tension in the set of Nahir’s back and shoulders. He wouldn’t forgive her for the indignities she’d put him through today. But in a way, that made what she had to do easier: he was so relentlessly focused on his own hurt feelings that she didn’t need to give them any thought herself.
Alone with Diema for the first time, Kuutma gave her a brief but warm embrace. ‘I’m pleased with all you’ve accomplished,’ he told her. ‘Pleased and proud. The operation here was brilliantly handled.’
‘Thank you, Tannanu.’ Diema assumed the same tone of simple humility she’d used when she spoke with him in Ginat’Dania, and her heart swelled as it always had when he praised her, but there were other emotions in the mix now, and she chose her words with care. ‘But I think I could have done more, and done it more quickly. And in any case, the plan was yours.’
‘Yes,’ Kuutma agreed. ‘The plan was mine. I said you should bring Tillman and the rhaka into the orbit of our investigation, and use their talents. But I knew how much I was asking of you. I knew that this thing, which was so easy to say, would be very hard indeed to carry out. You carried it out immaculately.’
‘Thank you, Tannanu.’
‘What I’m concerned about, is how you yourself may have been hurt in the process — especially in meeting Leo Tillman and being forced into close proximity with him. No Messenger has ever had to bear that burden.’
Diema knew that she couldn’t plausibly counterfeit indifference, so she let him see some of the tension she’d been hiding, letting the mask slip as though with relief. She grimaced. ‘It hasn’t been easy. Sometimes I see my brothers in him. Myself, even. It’s hard, at those times, not to let him see how much I hate him.’
‘Walk with me,’ Kuutma suggested.
He bowed, and with a sweep of his arm invited her to go before him. As they left Nahir’s command room, he fell in at her side, hands clasped behind his back, moving at an easy amble that belied the urgency of their situation.
‘Your hate, then,’ he said. ‘It’s as great as it ever was?’
‘His crime is as great as it ever was.’
‘Of course. It’s important that I know your heart in this, Diema. Very important. You’ve served the city more in a year than many do in a lifetime. Your well-being matters to me.’
‘I know.’ She looked at the ground.
‘Well,’ Kuutma said. ‘I’m answered. And really, I shouldn’t even have needed to ask. It was your suggestion to wake Tillman and speak to him, despite the severity of his wounds. You’re obviously not troubled at the thought of compromising his recovery — or accidentally killing him. The drugs that will be used will be very potent. So we’ll be putting a strain on his heart, when it’s already weak.’
Diema swallowed hard. ‘So long as he lives long enough to talk to us,’ she said, as carelessly as she could.
‘And here we are,’ Kuutma said. They had reached a door that was like all the other doors they’d passed. How did he know? Diema wondered. Had he studied the layout of the house before he arrived? Had he arrived earlier and remained in the background during the raid on the caves? Was there some system of signs in the safe houses that he knew about and she didn’t?
Was her face equally easy for him to read?
Diema knew that prolonged use of the drug kelalit could induce amphetamine psychosis. Paranoia was its chief symptom. She reached out and opened the door, bowing for Kuutma to precede her into the room. She didn’t even look over the threshold.
‘Tannanu,’ she murmured.
‘Thank you, Diema.’
He went in, and she followed him, steeling herself. Killing, when she’d been brought to it, had been much harder than she expected it to be. But what she was about to do now would be harder still.
She had to bring all three Adamites out of here alive.
63
When Kennedy got her first look at Leo Tillman, she had to fight back a cry of dismay. She’d seen his injuries when they were fresh, so she thought she was armoured against anything she might find when the Messengers thrust her and Rush in through the door of the medical room and told them brusquely to wait there.
But she’d reckoned without the vagaries of Elohim psychology. Tillman’s wounds had been bandaged, and he’d been given the blood transfusion he so desperately needed. In fact, it looked as though he’d been given scrupulous care. Diagnostic machines had been brought in from somewhere and hooked up to his body wherever there was a space between the drip feeds and catheters. His dressings were clean, and so were the sheets.
But someone had remembered, at some point in all these clinical proceedings, that they were dealing with an enemy. At that point, they had shackled Tillman’s hands and feet to the bed frame with four sets of sleeve cuffs tied so tightly that his body was almost being lifted from the bed.
A doctor was checking Tillman’s blood pressure with a pneumatic sleeve, his expression bland and calm, as though this were all in a day’s work. Kuutma’s two angels also stood by, coldly indifferent, watching him work.
‘Jesus frigging Christ,’ Rush exclaimed.
Kennedy turned to the four Elohim who’d brought them there. ‘Cut him loose,’ she said. She had to force the words out. The blood was pounding in her temples and she felt like she was choking on an anger — close to panic — that had been rising in her since the first time they’d been brought to this place.
The Messengers affected not to hear her. Clearly they didn’t take orders from the likes of her.
Kennedy switched her attention to Nahir, who was standing in the corner of the room, watching them in silence. He hadn’t moved since they arrived, which was why she hadn’t seen him up until then. His expression was less detached than those of the doctor and the guards, but what was showing on his face was mostly curiosity — an interest as to which way they might jump.
‘What,’ Kennedy said, ‘are you scared he might pick a fight with someone? Cut him loose!’
‘No,’ Nahir said.
‘This is a human being.’
‘Is it?’
Kennedy went to the bed and started to untie Leo herself. When the Messengers moved in to stop her, she swivelled on the spot and punched the nearest one full in the face.
They had her immobilised before she could draw another breath. Actually, it was the man she’d just punched who put her in the arm-lock, inside of a second and without the aid of his three colleagues. Rush stepped forward to help her and ran into a human barricade: a male and a female Elohim, standing shoulder to shoulder, daring him to raise a hand against them.