Evensong (18 page)

Even his syntax isn’t quite as polished as usual.
“I know
you
could be one of them. You’d be perfect. The damage you could do before anyone found you out...And no,” Anwar’s voice hardened, “they’re not like The Dead. Arden made that mistake. They’re more like Black Dawn. A cell, but with trillions and with a network of corporations and subsidiaries and proxies and cutouts. You must have reached that conclusion yourself.”

Rafiq gazed closely at Anwar. Anwar held his gaze.

“A play within a play, Anwar. Shift the world-picture just one notch, and there’s a parallel world. Theirs.”

He noticed Rafiq had started calling him by his first name.

He’d never done it before.
And he
is
preoccupied. He’s trying to cover it up by being louder and less formal and more direct.

Along one wall of Rafiq’s office was a floor-to-ceiling array of screens, carrying news and current affairs feeds. The sound was muted, but they listened to it for a couple of minutes, in preference to the silence which had started to lengthen between them. Rochester had sparked off a debate about the New Anglicans: whether they should be hosting the summit, whether they were getting above themselves, whether they should be more of a Church and less of a corporation or a political movement. But the New Anglicans were already countering it; their PR machine was as formidable as the rest of their organisation, and Olivia’s five years had given them huge popular support. Rochester might put them on the back foot for a moment, but no more.

“Conventional political parties,” said Rafiq, “detest fundamentalists, but they won’t confront them openly. The New Anglicans will, and do—Olivia saw that niche in the market. So maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe it isn’t the New Anglicans’ founders. Maybe this is all a double or triple bluff, and it’s really the fundamentalists. What do you think?”

“No,” Anwar said. “They don’t have the imagination, or the resources. She was telling the truth about that, at least.”

“And we’d know,” Arden Bierce added. “We have people there.”

“Very well,” Rafiq said. “Then the working hypothesis is the founders. In my briefing I said they don’t like her because she’s taken the Church away from them. She and Gaetano told you that too. And,” he went on, as Anwar started to reply, “I know, not the Bilderbergers and the rest, but a cell operating through them indirectly. Shall we call them The Cell? We can’t keep referring to them as the ones who set up the New Anglicans, are threatening Olivia, and killed Asika and Levin.”

“Yes, The Cell is fine.”
I prefer White Dusk, but I don’t share my private nicknames.

“Then let’s consider what she told you, or told Gaetano to tell you. That line about 0.5 percent owning 40 percent is hardly new. Here’s another one: over half of the hundred biggest economies in the world aren’t even countries—they’re corporate bodies.”

“So?”

“So the 0.5 percent aren’t the same people. There’s been an explosion of individual wealth, and corporate wealth: Russia, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia. And others, undercutting China and India in costs—just as China and India once undercut America and Europe and Japan, even though those three are still very wealthy. So if there’s a cell, the members might come from further afield than the original founders. And if the members have changed, the motives have changed. Is that what she meant?”

“Possibly,” Anwar said. “But there’s more. Something she isn’t telling me. Something quite specific. Almost a detail, but it could blow everything else away.”

Rafiq looked at him curiously for a moment, then said, “Maybe. But since you don’t presently know what it is, we can’t process it. In the meantime, let’s stay with who they are.”

“No,” said Anwar. “Forget who they are and focus on where they are.”

“Intelligence haven’t found them yet.”

“So blitz it. Throw masses of stuff against the wall. Check all the known mercenaries and ex-Special Forces with profiles like Carne and Hines, and question them until you...”

“Find who recruited them?” said Arden Bierce. “We’ve already questioned dozens. So far we’ve found five who were recruited like Carne and Hines—indirectly, through multiple layers and proxies.”

This is new.
“And was your questioning any better than mine?”

She paused. “I’m sorry, Anwar. I know Miles was your friend. They said he’d been annihilated, and when Chulo was sent to find him, he was annihilated too. They even used similar phrases: ‘What our employers did to Asika. And what they did to Levin, which was worse. And Levin’s face, when he realised he couldn’t defend himself. There wasn’t enough left of him to make into an exhibit like the one they’d made of Asika.’”

Anwar was silent for a few moments, then asked carefully, “Are they still alive?”

“No. They all died like Carne and Hines. Autopsies showed the same crude enhancements as Carne. Nothing like yours, and even less like whatever killed Levin and Asika. And, before you ask, we’re tracing back the manufacture of the enhancements.”

“That’s an obvious direction, so they’ll throw all their countermeasures into it.”

“Then try another direction,” Rafiq said. “How do you think Hines knew about your questioning of Carne?”

“One of Olivia’s people? Not all of them are loyal.”

“How did he know it in such detail?”

“Microbot listeners?” As soon as he said it, and even before he saw Rafiq smile derisively—another unusual mannerism, for him—Anwar knew it was a lame answer. Microbot listeners were pseudo-insects, devices used regularly by the UN, by governments, and by large corporate bodies like the New Anglicans. They were known technology, and there were reliable ways of detecting and neutralising them.

“Fine, not microbots,” Anwar went on hurriedly. “A listener of some kind, but different. That’s something you can work on.”

“Oh, you think? Well, we’d better do that. Arden, will you make a note?” Anwar was startled. Of all the weapons in Rafiq’s considerable arsenal, Anwar had never heard him resort to sarcasm.

“We’ve already found them,” Arden explained quietly. “Nanobot implants, molecule-sized, located in the inner ear. Able to listen and transmit. Carne had one; so did the five we questioned. They’re quite sophisticated devices.”

“But if they don’t do enhancements very well...”

“Not organic enhancements, like yours. It doesn’t mean they don’t do other things very well.”

Hines said that, or something like it. But it isn’t what he meant.
“Can you trace them back?”

“Not easily. Molecules don’t have serial numbers.”

“Those other enhancements—the ones you found in Carne...”

“Yes, we’ve started tracing them. There were smaller and smaller components and sub-assemblies, subcontracted downwards and downwards, until the people who finally made them were tiny one-or two-person machine shops, and the components they made were so small they had no idea what they were; and when we worked back upwards there were proxies and dead-ends and dummy corporations. We’ve been doing that,” she added, “since I got your account of Hines’ questioning.”

Anwar stayed silent. He’d started thinking again of Levin.

“Does nothing else occur to you?” Rafiq asked him.

“Not at the moment.”

“Can’t you do better than that?”

Levin used to say things like that, but mockingly. Not in that tone.
“Why don’t you just tell me what should have occurred to me?”

“How about what they’ve done? I don’t mean about killing Consultants and threatening Archbishops, I mean what they’ve done strategically. They set up the New Anglican Church in 2025 and ran it, indirectly, through its founders. They work in long cycles and they aren’t part of the usual landscape. So we must find what pattern they’re working to, and then go back over years and search for what fits it. For what else they’ve done.”

“Isn’t that more your territory than mine?”

“Yes, but I thought you might have suggested we research it... And their network of corporations and proxies and financial holdings and subcontracting, we must unravel it and trace it back. That’s my territory too. But whatever they’re sending for her, whether it’s still on its way or already at Brighton: that’s your territory.”

“I know.”

“And are you sure nothing else occurs to you?”

“If it does, I’ll call you. From Brighton.”

Rafiq’s voice softened. “Remember, Anwar. They’ve got something that kills Consultants. Carne’s enhancements were crude, but they would be. If they had an advanced version of
you
, they wouldn’t let us see it. You do realize that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Because Arden believes it was a single opponent that did that to Chulo. Probably to Miles too. Whoever they are, if they have something that can do that...I know, I’m repeating myself, but I offered you help or a way out and you won’t take either. So I think we’re done here.”
And I feel you’re going to your death. I don’t think I’ll see you again.

They stood and shook hands.

Anwar saw Rafiq’s mouth open to speak, and could tell from its shape that the back of his tongue was against the roof of his mouth, about to form the hard G in Good Luck. He didn’t say it. Instead he said, “I’ll see you again, when all this is finished.”

“I’ll walk back to the VSTOL with you,” Arden said.

“That extraordinary car...” she began, as they walked across the parkland in front of Fallingwater.

“You can only get them in England, from a specialist company in Surrey. I’ve always wanted a Cobra. Perhaps, when this mission is over, I’ll have it shipped back here.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

“Rafiq didn’t seem like his usual self.”

“He isn’t,” she said, and, “Anwar, if you want, we could...”

“Don’t, Arden, don’t finish what you were going to say.”

“You’re involved elsewhere, aren’t you?”

“No!” he said, too loudly.

When they reached the VSTOL, which was hovering politely a couple of inches above the lawn where a marquee had stood ten years ago, he added, “Really, I’m not. She’s poison. Whatever she stands for publicly, inside she’s poison.”

“Protesting too much? Be careful, Anwar. Not just of what they send to kill her, but of her.”

She shook his hand, and remained holding it for a moment. A door melted open in the VSTOL’s silvered flank. He stepped inside, and it melted shut behind him. The VSTOL lifted silently into the Kuala Lumpur night. It was 10:10 p.m. local time, on October 1.

“He was a waste of time,” Rafiq told Arden, later. “He gave me nothing. Why didn’t he mention the link with Marek? I gave him at least three opportunities, and he missed them all.”

She said nothing.

“He’s not good enough,” he said, unwittingly echoing Olivia. “I should have sent someone better. Why did I pick him for this mission anyway?”

Still she said nothing.

“I really don’t care about her, Arden. Better if they don’t kill her, but if they do it isn’t the end of the world.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Of course not. It would be sensational, and public, and would throw everything into chaos. But I’d back myself to be better than
them
in picking my way through the wreckage.”

“Do you think,” she asked him, “the Secretary-General will go to war with you over UNESCO?”

“He’ll try, but a no-confidence vote will fail. I have the voting covered.” He paused, and added, “I’m proud of UNEX. It works. It delivers on schedule and on budget. But it’s unelected; it could turn into a monster. That’s what he’ll argue in the General Assembly. He’ll lose, but he does have a point.”

“Maybe it works because it’s unelected.”

“Maybe...Arden, about Anwar. I gave him at least three openings to mention Marek and he missed them all. He knew, from you, that Marek’s the common factor in Levin’s and Asika’s deaths, but he didn’t mention it.”

“He’s only a Consultant. He’s not good at the Before and After.”

“He was a waste of time. He gave me nothing. I thought I’d shaken him when I started acting like I was in trouble, but it didn’t work. Wasn’t my acting convincing enough?”

“Yes,” Arden said. “It convinced me.”

He glanced at her sharply, but did not reply.

It was in his nature to think ahead, in long cycles. When the time came, he wanted his successor to be a member of his personal staff, rather than an outsider. Arden Bierce was a possible contender, but not the leading one. She wasn’t ruthless enough, though she had other qualities: intelligence, interpersonal skills, motivation. And something else, her empathy.

“And it wasn’t all acting,” she added. “If it was, he’d have spotted it. He’s still a Consultant.”

Rafiq was well aware of her empathy, her instinct for what made people tick. She wasn’t like him—subtle, labyrinthine, always holding something back—but her empathy was a quality even he couldn’t match, either genuinely or by faking.

Maybe she could do his job with the aid of that empathy, but she wouldn’t do it like him. She couldn’t manipulate people, or cheat them, or ruin or sacrifice them. No, people like Zaitsev and Olivia would eat her alive. And yet...

Something was in Anwar’s blood. He didn’t let it surface during the flight back from Kuala Lumpur, which he spent reclining in a contour chair in the VSTOL’s lounge, watching the play of shapes and colours moving just under the silvered surfaces of the walls. He didn’t let it surface when the VSTOL arrived without event and ahead of time at the small private airfield on the Downs—a measly collection of buildings, made to look even more so by the presence of the VSTOL and, when he released it from its lockup, the Cobra. There were only a few people there, most of them under contract to the UN; they nodded politely but avoided conversation.

He didn’t let it surface as he drove slowly from the airfield, south towards Brighton, and stopped at the edge of Devil’s Dyke.
Lucifer’s Lesbian.
He knew he’d be driving the Cobra past this vaginal gash in the landscape at least once more after today. How fast, and whether alone or pursued, would depend on how the mission ended.

Kuala Lumpur was seven hours ahead of Brighton. He’d left Fallingwater at 10:10 p.m. and landed back at the airfield at4:30p.m. Brighton time, 11:30p.m. in Kuala Lumpur. It was now nearly 5:00 p.m. on October 1: not yet wintry, but grey and chilly. It had rained earlier in the day, and the air was still damp. Back in Kuala Lumpur, October 1 would just be tipping over in to October 2. He sat in the Cobra, gazed down a long the length of Devil’s Dyke, and let what was in him surface.