‘You’re almost up and running,’ Nemesis said to Liza, less than forty minutes later back down in the undercroft.
It was already Christmas Day.
Running late, Nemesis had said when Michael had brought Liza back, her decision made. Punctuality vital for the scheduled event, formal booking necessary to ensure guaranteed live streaming.
The event’s title: Christmas Eve Midnight Service from St Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Shiloh, Rhode Island.
That was a mistake by them, Liza had registered, because the service was never held at midnight, and if any of this was genuine, if they were really going to broadcast what was going to happen, then surely locals would be the only people remotely interested in viewing, and someone might realize right away that something was amiss.
She’d kept the vain hope to herself, had asked instead why anyone should want to watch an insignificant church service.
‘You’d be surprised. And for our purposes, it may only take one person to turn it into news,’ Nemesis had said. ‘They see what’s happening, call it in to their local news station or the cops or maybe CNN, and bingo.’
‘So that’s really what you want? To publicize this crime?’
‘That’s what Reaper wants,’ Michael had said.
‘What if no one sees it or calls it in?’ Liza asked.
‘Reaper says they will,’ Nemesis said.
Was that blind belief in her leader, Liza wondered, or did they have viewers out there, part of the gang, ready and waiting to set the publicity ball rolling?
Surreal not a strong enough word for this.
Just her and Nemesis down here now. And a small fortune’s worth of equipment set up and ready for her to use. 4G LTE courtesy of Verizon Wireless; hard-wired connection courtesy of the apparently technically-minded vicar; a professional camcorder plus a tripod plus a fluid video head to facilitate wide shots and panning, said the other woman—
Terrorist, Liza corrected herself, remembered the FBI’s definition of terrorism, and this was ticking enough boxes to make her grandfather’s assessment correct. And it ought to have set her screaming, she thought, but her brain was swimming with details about multi-cellular cards and battery hot-swapping and embedded video and audio media compression processors …
‘Though pretty much all you really have to know,’ Nemesis said, ‘is how to start and stop recording, and which microphone to use.’
One when Liza was speaking, the other for picking up what was going on around her, though if that became too confusing, Nemesis said, she could just cancel out her own voice and still pick up both her subject and herself. And she didn’t have to concern herself with bandwidth issues because they were going to be storing and forwarding, so everything Liza recorded would be saved.
‘This is mad,’ Liza said. ‘Clearly you should be doing this.’
‘You’re the reporter,’ Nemesis said.
‘So how come you know so much about it?’
‘I’m a quick study.’
Not giving anything more away, though Reaper had at least given her the codenames which the Whirlwind team would use for the duration, and Nemesis had shown her a page on the MacBook Pro with photographs and names.
Isaiah. Amos. Jeremiah. Luke. Joel. Nemesis.
‘You want me to use those names in the broadcast?’ Liza had asked.
‘I do,’ Reaper had answered. ‘So remember them, please.’
Afraid to argue, she had stared at the screen, wanting to ingrain the faces on her memory, not in order to do this man’s bidding, but to be able to identify them later to the cops, and it seemed vital for her to believe that would happen.
Vital to her sanity.
‘I need some kind of script,’ Liza said now, to Nemesis.
‘Just tell them what’s going on. Be yourself and let the events speak for themselves.’
‘Live events,’ Liza said, bitterly, ‘are generally very well-planned by broadcasters.’
‘This is living news,’ Nemesis said. ‘It’s different.’
She rechecked settings, connected cable, then loaded the backpack and held it out. ‘I’ll help you put this on.’
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Liza said.
‘It’s amazingly light.’ Nemesis ignored her panic, slipped a strap over her right arm and Liza reacted automatically, numbly held out her left arm, allowed the pack to be securely placed, felt it against her back.
‘God,’ she said, quietly.
‘I’m pulling a small cable out of the top of the backpack, and routing it over your shoulder.’ Nemesis did so, plugging it into the camera, which she handed to Liza.
‘I’ll take the tripod and the rest.’
She picked them up.
‘All set,’ she said.