The Trespass(80)

Mukannishum was fully awake now. His lip curled in distaste. “You killed him. And he has taken her in exchange.”

“Killed who?” Dracup leaned in close, but the answer had already come to him in a moment of sick revelation. The man in the Aberdeen hotel. The assassin.

“His brother,” Mukannishum hissed. “The blessed one’s brother. Your forefather betrayed the son of God, and you murdered Kadesh’s brother.” Mukannishum coughed and spat a dry ball of vomit. The flies circled it gleefully. “The blessed one has pronounced your family to be cursed. For all generations.” He gasped with the effort of speech and allowed his head to sink back to the ground.

Dracup remembered the smell of cordite, the hole in the pillow. The fractured glass of his hotel window. Now he knew why he was the victim of such pure, unadulterated hatred. But there was another reference he needed to explore.

“Son of God?” Dracup probed. “What do you mean by that?”

Mukannishum coughed again and a trickle of blood escaped from the corner of his mouth. He levered himself into a half-sitting position and opened his mouth to speak, but Dracup saw the look in his eye and knew what it meant. He was no longer looking at Dracup, but past him. Dracup turned slowly. The lion was padding purposefully towards them, its great head raised. When the roar came it was deafening, but more terrifying was the low growl it made as it closed the distance between them.





Chapter 27





Kadesh had dismissed the others. Natasha had been returned to Ruth’s care. The searchlights had been extinguished and the only remaining illumination was provided by a silvery slice of moon. Sara sat in the passenger seat of the jeep, Kadesh beside her playing with the bunch of keys, passing them from hand to hand. Her heart was beating in a sick, slow pulse.

“I brought you back out of kindness,” Kadesh said eventually. “I believed you to be a true worshipper.”

Sara stared fixedly ahead. She knew she was talking for her life. “And I am. You know that. But your abduction of the girl is an injustice.”

Kadesh looked at her disdainfully. “Don’t speak to me of injustice.”

“Tarshish was killed by a man acting in self-defense. Can’t you see that?” Sara pressed on, ignoring the tremor in her voice. “I loved him too. You know I did.”

“Tarshish was killed unjustly. He was my brother. Killed by an outsider. The price must be paid. It is the law.” Kadesh spat the words.

Sara knew that argument was futile. His mind was made up. Her only chance was to stall the execution of his decision. Kadesh, ruler of the Korumak, master-planner and – to his people – successful in the most audacious of all enterprises, would not be moved to another course of action by a mere woman. Or would he? In this she sensed a slender opportunity. She knew of his passion, the passion that had sidelined Ruth and transformed her sister into a desperate, bitter woman. Sara smiled at the irony of it. Ruth, the girl most likely to be married the moment her first blood made its appearance, pursued by more young men than Sara could remember, had rejected all in favour of this cold, calculating saviour. But his eyes had not been on Ruth; they had been on her younger sister, the dowdy Sara. It was a situation that had prompted Sara’s voluntary exit from her home into the strangeness of the West.

Her education had had a profound effect on her, the culture even more so. Could she not remain faithful to the Korumak and live out her dreams as well? But Kadesh’s eyes were never far from her. Contact had been maintained; at first just a comforting sense of protection, but then demands had been made. The culmination of half a century of investigation, infiltration, checking and double-checking was upon her people. The moment was nigh. And the plan had succeeded. The American government had been caught half asleep as the wisdom of God and one man’s brilliance removed their prized acquisition from under their noses. And then she had been sent to Dracup. The failsafe. Nothing had escaped Kadesh’s attention, not even the death of an old lady in Aberdeen and the tiny time bomb that lay in a locked drawer waiting for Dracup to open it; the only means by which the Korumak could be traced.

“Come to me.” Kadesh reached out and touched her hair. “Be with me in these times of fulfilled prophecy. Be with me at the end of the age.”

She recoiled involuntarily. She found him repellant, although she could never say exactly why. He was handsome – perhaps striking – to look at, and his body, although slender, was strong and muscular. But his heart; it was cold like the stone of the caverns.

And he’s not Simon Dracup.

Sara checked herself and forced a smile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to –”