The Dead Sea Deception (56 page)

Now she lived alone in a room on the fourth level of Dar Kuomet. But her paintings could be seen as far afield as Tethem towards the daybreak and Va Ineinu towards the night. She seemed happy alone. The boy, Aram, was betrothed now and Tabe had painted their married rooms with images of happy, dancing children. She seemed to bear no grudge against the lad,
but then her interest in him had been primarily an aesthetic one.

In her room in Dar Kuomet, Kuutma found her. She was drawing with a stick of black oil pastel on a bedsheet nailed to the wall (on the other walls, painted directly on to the plaster, were murals of strawberries and redcurrants in earthen bowls). It took her some while to realise that she wasn’t alone. When she finally registered Kuutma’s presence, she bowed her head to him and whispered, ‘
Ha ana mashadr
’, blushing a red more hectic than the fruit painted on her walls.

Kuutma signed to Tabe to sit. ‘You knew me for one of the Elohim,’ he said to her. ‘Was that by my complexion?’

Tabe rubbed the tips of her fingers together nervously: they were black and greasy from the pastel. But she met Kuutma’s gaze directly. ‘Not only that,’ she said. ‘I remembered your face. You came to visit us once at the orphans’ house and I asked one of the helpers who you were. She said you were Kuutma. The Brand.’

Kuutma nodded. ‘And so I am. Until
mapkanah
, at least.’ At that word, her eyes lit up, which somewhat surprised him. But to the young, anything new seems exciting just by being new. And then again, she was an artist: wherever Ginat’Dania went next, the light would be different and there would be new scenes to paint. For Tabe,
mapkanah
might seem like a rebirth.

‘When I came to the orphans’ house,’ Kuutma said, ‘it was to see you – you and your two brothers. I had an interest in verifying for myself that you were happy there. I knew your mother, you see.’

The girl’s face clouded for an instant. ‘My mother …’ she said, tentatively, and left the sentence unfinished. Kuutma sensed something of bitterness in her tone, and he frowned.

‘You know she was sent forth, like me,’ he said.

Tabe’s stare was hard: it gave no ground, no quarter. ‘Not like you.’

‘The work of the Kelim is every bit as important as the work we Elohim do,’ said Kuutma. ‘More so, even. We both work for the survival of the people: but our work is glorious, theirs is bitter and degrading. We’re honoured and they’re reviled.’

Tabe shrugged, but made no other answer.

‘I would have you think well of her,’ Kuutma said, stiffly. ‘Your mother. I’d have you be generous to her, in your memory. Think what her sacrifice meant for you, as well as for us.’

Tabe looked down at her blackened fingers now. He could see that she was longing for him to be gone, so that she could get back to her work.

‘I know your father, too,’ he said.

Her gaze snapped up again, and her eyes as she stared into his were like two dark wounds in the unblemished whiteness of her face. But to the Elohim, all things look like wounds. Kuutma had made love only a handful of times in his life, plagued each time by the terrible thought that a woman’s sex is like the site of an old injury, partly healed.

He waited, allowing the girl the space in which to speak. She only watched him.

‘You don’t ask me what he’s like – your father,’ he said at last.

‘No.’ Tabe was categorical. ‘How would it help me to know?’

‘He’s … a brave man, by his own lights. A soldier, like me. But he’s a soldier who fights against us. Our enemy.’

Tabe considered this. ‘Then will you have to kill him?’ she asked.

Kuutma smiled reluctantly. ‘That’s why I came to see you today,’ he admitted – although he’d had no intention, when he came, of telling her all this. ‘I think killing your father may be the last thing I do, as Kuutma. I have …’ He hesitated, picked
his words with care. ‘I can see a pathway that leads us to meet. And when that happens, I’ll certainly have to kill him. Would I have your blessing, if I did that?’

Tabe’s dark gaze was unwavering. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.
Ha ana mashadr
, Kuutma. Everything you do, you do in our name. Of course you have my blessing. He’s only the father of my flesh, not of my spirit. But if he’s as brave as you say, I hope he doesn’t hurt you. I hope he dies quickly, without striking a single blow against you.’

Kuutma saw the radiant innocence and earnestness in her face. He felt humbled by her simplicity – he who, out in the wider world, had become as complex and subtle as a snake. But snakes were holy, too, of course: snakes were holiest of all.

He knelt before her. ‘
Touveyhoun
, daughter,’ he murmured, his voice thick with emotion he could not bear to examine.

‘
Touveyhoun, Tannanu
,’ she said, but she was unnerved by the wrongness of his kneeling to her. He realised that he had disturbed her calm and probably ruined the painting that she was making. With a muttered apology, he left her.

Tabe paced the floor a while after he left, clasping herself hard and leaving black fingerprints on the flesh of her own forearms. But she had become used to turning strong emotion into some less transient form. Soon enough, she took up the pastel and resumed her effort to capture the swollen, pregnant belly of a storm cloud.

Tillman took his time. He’d come up with a reasonable plan, but it involved a great many moving parts, and he had to start from the assumption that he was in enemy territory. Getting Kennedy out of the hospital wouldn’t be hard in itself, but the Arizona police would mobilise quickly once she went off the grid. At that point, he had to disappear her quickly and unanswerably. Otherwise the operation would pretty much be doomed.

He parked down the block from the hospital and walked up to its grounds, where he reconnoitred thoroughly, moving at a brisk pace so that he wouldn’t be challenged. He had floor plans to work from, but floor plans were useless unless he could link them to reality: he started that process by visualising the building as a three-dimensional space, with physical entrances and exits mapped on to the schematic diagrams he had in his head.

The good news was the flat roof, three storeys below the window of Kennedy’s room; or at least, below the space that corresponded with Ward 20 on the plans. The bad news … well, the bad news was manifold. He’d timed the distance from the nearest police station: at the speed of a flat-out chase it was three minutes, no more. The flat roof was on the far side of the building from the car park, and he’d found no closer approach.
Bullhead City and Seligman both had police heliports, and there were only two main roads out of town – State Highway 40 and Interstate 93. Closing both of those roads would be the work of a minute once the alarm went up.

He thought about how to adapt the plan, given the lie of the land. He couldn’t come up with a single elegant or fool-proof solution. But one led the others by virtue of being intensely confusing and chaotic. If you haven’t got any good cards, play a wild card.

Tillman walked back to the car and drove on up to the hospital, parking not too close to the police black-and-white he’d already located in the car park out front and not too far from the street: a fine balance, on which a lot was going to depend.

He’d already chosen and packed his kit, in a plastic bag-for-life with the name and logo of a local florist blazoned on it and the leaves of a potted plant sticking out the top. He went in through the front doors, walked right by the reception desk and kept on going like a man who already knows his destination.

In the gents’ toilets on the first floor of the main building, Tillman unpacked the bag and transformed himself into a hospital orderly by means of a long white coat and an official-looking ID badge. The badge was a fake, and not even a very good one, but it would fool someone who didn’t spend all day every day looking at the real thing: a cop on temporary guard duty, for example.

In a wide hallway next to the service elevator, he obtained – as he’d hoped – an empty gurney. He’d been prepared to wander the wards a little until he found one, but the less time he spent walking around in the whites, the less chance he had of being challenged.

Tillman rode the elevator to the fourth floor and stepped out, wheeling the gurney in front of him. The two cops who
Kennedy had warned him about – the first two – were waiting where the corridor forked. They looked tough and humourless and alert. Tillman walked on up to them and nodded to indicate that he intended to pass. ‘Transfer from Ward 22,’ he said.

The nearest of the two cops checked Tillman’s badge, which Tillman helpfully held out with the thumb of his left hand. His right hand rested on a sap that he was holding below the pushbar of the gurney, but he was hoping not to have to use it: improvisation at this early stage would be a bad omen for the whole damned enterprise.

The cop waved him through. Tillman rolled the gurney on down the branch corridor that led to Kennedy’s ward among several others.

At Ward 22, he abandoned the gurney and the whites. The long coat would just encumber him and from here he’d have to move fast. From the storage bin underneath the gurney, he retrieved his bag, tossing the pot plant.

Kennedy’s ward, number 20, was around a right-angled bend about ten yards further on. Tillman took the corner at the briskest of brisk walks and found himself heading directly for two more cops who looked just as solid and serious as the first two.

He dropped the bag and raised his hands to shooting position. In each hand he held a bottle of OC spray, and his index fingers were already clamped down on the nozzles. This wasn’t pepper spray, as such: it was a Russian-made product, a derivative of pelargonic acid, the nastiest thing of its type Tillman had ever encountered, weighing in at four and a half million Scoville units. The two men went down in agony, clawing at their faces. Tillman slipped on a surgical mask and carefully and unhurriedly knocked them out with desflurane soaked into a handkerchief. He also anointed their faces with a milk and detergent mix that would mitigate the worst of the spray’s
effects. He had no intention of killing law officers on this jamboree, even unintentionally.

He left the men where they lay and walked through double swing doors into the ward. It had been sub-divided into several bays, but he got lucky: Kennedy’s bed was in the second of these areas. Tillman saw her just as a nurse came out from another bay further down and registered his presence. A second later she registered the Unica in his hand: not aimed at her exactly, but impossible to ignore.

‘Go back inside,’ Tillman told her. ‘Don’t say anything or do anything. Just wait.’

With a nearly voiceless squeak of panic, the nurse backed away out of sight. Tillman turned his attention back to Kennedy.

‘Tillman. Good to … see you,’ she croaked. She looked in a bad way, her left arm in a cast and taped to her side, which was also swathed in thick bandages. She was herself, though, and better, she was mobile. She levered herself up out of the bed with a grunt of pain and effort and came to meet him. Tillman was already hauling the bolt cutters out of the bag.

‘GPS tag,’ he said tersely. ‘Which leg?’

Kennedy showed him and he knelt to cut the strap. It was tight enough that he could only get the blade of the cutters halfway under, but it snapped all the way across when he applied pressure.

‘Open the window,’ he told Kennedy. He threw aside the bolt cutters and reached into the bag again for the rappel rope, which he uncoiled with a flick of the wrist.

Alarm crossed Kennedy’s face when she saw the rope. ‘Tillman,’ she said, tightly, ‘there’s no way I’m swinging out of the goddamned window. Look at me. I’ve only got one functional arm!’

‘You won’t have to take your own weight,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry
you.’ He was unfolding the grapnel, slipping the rope through its eyelet, checking the friction hitch on his belt.

Kennedy didn’t waste any more time arguing. She unlocked the window and opened it. A security lock stopped it from moving more than a few inches. Kennedy held out her hand for Tillman’s gun, which he handed over with some reluctance. She smashed the lock off the frame using the butt of the Unica, three measured blows, and gave the gun back to him. By this time, Tillman had the rope doubled through the friction hitch and the grapnel firmly wedged into the steel frame of Kennedy’s bed. He pushed the bed up against the window so it wouldn’t slide in that direction when they put their weight on the rope.

‘Ready?’ he asked her.

She nodded.

Tillman helped her over the sill, then climbed out after her, his left arm around her waist, his right arm on the control lever of the friction hitch. It took a few seconds to find a grip that was firm enough, yet didn’t press against her injured arm. He leaned backwards to test the weight and Kennedy swore, off balance above a gulf of air and not liking it a bit.

They heard an alarm begin to sound back inside the room: either the nurse had raised a shout or someone had found the two downed cops. From now on, it was all on the clock, and Tillman had to measure off every second against the perfect, Platonic version of the plan in his mind.

He kicked off from the window ledge and abseiled down the hospital wall in a series of clumsy, gingerly hop-and-jumps. If it had been a rock face, or the wood of a climbing tower, he’d have made the three storeys in three quick see-saw leaps, but this wall was mostly glass. If they went through, it would be a toss-up whether or not they bled out before hospital security or the troopers from the corridor found them and slammed the cuffs on them.