Page 74 of The Girl Beneath the Sea

Straight down the aisle. Straight toward the back. Straight toward me.

This was not the plan. The plan was that he sees me and he stumbles. They think he might do something like this so the suits take him by the elbow and walk him out through the side door where Havel and Gerhard are waiting at the end of the route with the car.

He wasn’t supposed to actually do it.

I don’t care. I stand up.

The woman beside me looks up at me confused. So does the man on the other side of her, and the row behind. I don’t look at any of them. I put my hand on the back of the pew in front and I start along the row.

Somebody says, “Hey,” as I step on his foot.

Aurelio is fast. I have never seen him run. It doesn’t take long. He’s running in a white suit and dress shoes on a stone floor, with the gold sash slipping off one shoulder and everyone is staring at him.

He isn’t looking at the cameras or at anyone else. He is looking at me.

Behind him, the gray suits of the Monteverran security team have come off the altar steps. Six of them. They are running too, and they are faster than he is, and they are closing.

I get to the end of the pew and into the aisle and he hits me.

There isn’t another word for it. He comes into me at a dead run and I take him against my chest and get my arms around him and my face down into his hair. He smells of sweet strawberries. I breathe him in.

“Roan,” he says, into my collar. That’s all. Just my name.

Then they have him.

Two of them take him by the arms and pull. He hangs on to me. His fingers are in the back of my jacket and I have a fistful of white cloth and gold sash in my hand and for a second neither of us lets go. Then a third one gets his forearm across Aurelio’s chest and hauls, and I feel the cloth tear along the seam, and he is gone out of my arms.

“Let me go.” He is shouting. I have never heard him shout. “Let me go. I have asked for asylum. You cannot touch me. Let me go.”

They don’t listen. They start walking him back up the aisle. He drags his feet and they lift him so his shoes don’t touch the stone. Shocked faces watch him go.

I try to go after him but I don’t get a single step.

Somebody grabs my arm from behind and I turn and put my elbow into a face. There’s a crunch and a grunt and a second man is on my other side and I get hold of his tie and pull him down into my knee. Then there is a third one and a fourth and I don’t have enough hands. My arms are pinned behind me. A hand goes into my hair and puts my head down.

Then something small and hard goes into my ribs, under my arm, and I stop.

“Do not move,” the man holding it says, quietly, in English with an accent.

I don’t move.

From here, bent over with my head held down, I can see the floor and the shoes of the people in the front rows on the American side. I twist my head so I can see up.

There are hundreds of phones: held up over heads, every screen lit, every one of them pointed at the aisle. There are the cameras on the rails, both of them turned now, and the one on the crane swinging around from the altar. It’s all going out. Every second of this is going out live to every country that has a television.

Aurelio is still shouting.

“Let me go. Let go of me. I do not consent to this marriage. I do not consent to being taken—”

I lift my head as far as they’ll let me. I can see him. He is halfway up the aisle between two men who are each twice his width, and he has stopped dragging his feet and is fighting them now, actually fighting. He is twisting, kicking back at their shins with his shiny expensive shoes. The sash is on the floor behind him in a gold line. His collar has come open at the throat and my mark is showing, dark against the white. I see one of the camera operator’s eyes widen and he turns the camera to focus on it.

On the American side, men are moving.

These are not the guests. They are men in dark suits, from the front pews, from the ends of the rows and from the shadow under the gallery. They have the same wires in their ears as the gray suits and the same flat faces, but they are not Monteverran.

One of them has his hand flat inside his jacket. One of them is talking into his wrist. Two more have stepped in front of the Vice President and his wife, but the Vice President is not being moved out. He is watching.

The Americans are coming down the aisle from the front. The Monteverrans are dragging Aurelio up it. There is about thirty feet between them.