Evensong (26 page)

A couple of Gaetano’s people were standing nearby, but when she saw him she waved them away. He took off his jacket and offered it. She draped it over her shoulders.

He began “I think I was wrong—”

“Didn’t you hear me in there? You’ve won. You can have your comfort zone, I won’t violate it. And I won’t try to trick you, or suck you in. So that’s my part of the deal, and your part, which you’ve already told me you’ll honour, is to stay for the summit. For the whole of the summit.”

“Why are you talking like this?”

“It all kicks off in four days. October 14, the eve-of-summit reception. Then October 15 for nine days or however long it lasts. Are we still agreed?”

“Is this because of the news about Marek?”

“They were saving Marek for later, but something made them decide to reveal him now. They’re still active. You stopped their plans for the Signing Room, but they’re still coming for me.”

“That book you gave me. You went out and looked for it yourself, didn’t you? Not your staff, but you.”

“Yes.”

“Nobody’s done anything like that for me before, except maybe Arden.”

“Who? Oh yes, her...Well, you tore a page out of your book, and nobody’s done anything like that for me. Not even Gaetano. But they’re both gestures and they both belong in the past.”

He wanted to argue, but couldn’t find the right words. Her sermon, the part of it intended for him, had hit him like one of his Verbs. He saw her differently. He was beginning to think he understood her.

“What if I was wrong?”

But she wasn’t listening. She had already decided she understood him. “Your obsession about—what do you call it?—The Detail. That’s in the past too. If we both survive this I’ll tell you. But it’ll wipe out what you think you feel for me...”

“How do you know what I think?”

“Because you’re looking gormless. God knows what you’d have said if I hadn’t interrupted you...And it’ll wipe out everything I’d planned for getting closer to you, some of which I’d almost believed would work. But it won’t, not with a Consultant. You were right about that. So you’ve won and I’ll leave you alone.”

He didn’t reply.

“Oh, come on. We can still do the fucking if you want, that doesn’t mean anything. We’ll each take what we want from it.”

“You said that once before.”

“This time I mean it.”

“You said that once before too. Why are you talking like this?”

“Because you’re starting to sound as gormless as you look. I understand you better now. You changed after your meeting with Rafiq, but only on the surface. Underneath you’ve still got the same one-person comfort zone. And that’s just you, I haven’t even started about me.”

He didn’t reply.

“Too much keeping us apart, Anwar. On both sides. Think about it.
Me?
And a
Consultant?
You were right the first time. That train’s left the station.”

“Maybe it hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Don’t be crass. It’s gone. Like I wrote in your book, you mistimed.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“Yes it does. Listen to yourself. You’re in denial. When your head’s in the sand, you know what you’re talking through.”

Again he didn’t reply.

“Why do you think I promised to tell you The Detail afterwards? Because we won’t be here afterwards. You
really
mistimed. When I thought I wanted you, you were scared to commit. Now you think you want me, but in a few days we won’t be here. Even you can’t defend me against what they’ll send. It will kill you, Anwar! Rafiq knows that. That’s why he’s left you here on your own. He’s saving his best Consultants, however many there are, for when they come for him. He’s next, and he knows it.”

A noise behind made him whirl round, and both of them gasped. Gaetano was coming towards them, and with him was Arban Proskar.

Back at Fallingwater, Arden briefed Rafiq about events at the villa.

UN Intelligence had told her that what happened to Proskar was bad news because, to them, it was. They’d missed him. They traced his entry into Croatia easily enough, as he was travelling openly on his passport, but because of the way he’d left Brighton they expected him to go into Zagreb, where his flight had landed, or on to Dubrovnik; he had family in both cities. They didn’t expect him to leave Croatia directly after entering; but that was what he did, slipping over the border into Slovenia, where he used his passport to get a flight back to Britain. For UN Intelligence it was an almost unheard-of error, though his change of mind was a genuine act of impulse. As his plane touched down at Dubrovnik he’d simply decided that he shouldn’t walk out on her.

Rafiq’s usual courtesy almost slipped during all this. He had trouble concealing his boredom, since it was all academic now. She’d previously told him that the examinations carried out exhaustively on Marek’s body at Kuala Lumpur confirmed conclusively the findings of the field examinations carried out at the villa at Opatija. Beyond any doubt it was Parvin Marek, and beyond any doubt he’d been dead, and kept in cold storage, for at least three years. Carefully-worded news releases were already breaking in the media.

While he gazed at Arden, Rafiq saw a number of scenes passing behind his eyes; scenes from ten years ago which he couldn’t repeat to her, but didn’t need to.

“I know what you’re feeling,” she told him, and immediately regretted how empty it sounded. For once, her famous empathy had deserted her.

“I was going to tell you,” he said, “to let me have an hour privately with the body so I could do things to it. No,” he waved down her reply, “it was only a passing thought. Get forensics to take the body. And get
them
to do things to it.”

“They already have,” she reminded him. “I told you earlier.”

“And the families of his other victims? They’ve been contacted?”

“Yes, all of them. I told you that earlier too.”

“Thank you.”

Olivia rushed past Anwar to Proskar. She took both his hands—those unusual hands—in hers. “Thank you for coming back.”

“I couldn’t walk out on you, Archbishop.”

She kept his hands in hers. “I missed you. And,” cocking her head back at Anwar, “
he
has something to say to you.”

“I owe you an apology,” Anwar said. “And however I word it, it’s going to sound inadequate.”

“I’m just glad to be back,” Proskar said awkwardly. “Let’s leave it, we have a lot of work to do.”

Olivia still hadn’t released his hands. They dwarfed hers. “Are you finally sure,” she asked Anwar, “that he isn’t Marek? Maybe Arden what’s-her-name isn’t what she seems. Maybe she switched the bodies. Proskar could be the one getting cut up in Kuala Lumpur while here, before us, we have the real Parvin Marek.”

Laughing, the three of them walked away and left him in the Garden. He heard her call back to him over her shoulder, “You mistimed, Anwar.”

He thought about her sermon. He’d thought of little else. What she said about her meanness of nature. She didn’t do compassion, she preferred to strike at perpetrators rather than comfort victims. Anwar, despite his physical prowess, had never behaved with any particular meanness towards any opponent. He’d just done what was necessary.
There,
he thought,
there’s an example of how we could fit together, how we could become more than the total of our individual parts
.

He was still in denial.
Before,
he told himself,
there was nobody. Now, there’s nobody else.
He walked over to where she’d dropped his jacket. He picked it up, dusted it carefully down, and put it back on.
“Now, there’s nobody else?”
he thought.
“Now, there’s nobody else?”

When you’re in denial, you tell yourself ridiculous things. When your head’s in the sand, you know what you’re talking through.
He started laughing at himself, the way he’d laughed at her.

By October 14, all the delegates had arrived. The New Anglicans had, as expected, attended efficiently to all their needs: dietary, religious, administrative, communications, PR, transport. And security. The huge and complicated security network of which Gaetano was the central part had, like some old brass mechanism, juddered into motion, got up to optimum speed, and was now moving smoothly.

The eve-of-summit reception began in the Conference Centre at 9:00 p.m. on October 14. There was a brief opening address by Olivia. She was smart enough not to over-egg it, or to slip in commercials for the New Anglicans. Her remarks amounted to no more than
Welcome, glad you could come, we’re just the hosts but we wish you well, enjoy tonight’s gathering.

She wore her usual long velvet dress. This one was dark green. Anwar found it arousing, but he preferred her in dark red, or purple, or dark blue.
Green,
he thought,
doesn’t suit her quite as well
. He still caught himself having thoughts like that.

The security regime he’d agreed on with Gaetano was fully operational. It had been so since he last spoke to her in the Garden, a conversation whose aftertaste wouldn’t leave him. At any time she had at least three of Gaetano’s staff with her, chosen by Anwar at random each day from Gaetano’s “trusted” list. Anwar was also around her for at least twelve hours a day—at services, meetings, press conferences, wherever she went. He hardly let her out of his sight. Only when he slept was he not in her immediate vicinity; and even then he primed himself, catlike, to sleep for the minimum time.

And his parameters had narrowed. Not Who, or Why, or even How, but just Where and When. Who and Why no longer concerned him. He’d got all he’d ever get out of her. Only Where and When mattered now. In a society adept at retro replicas and concealed motives and manufactured identities, Who and Why were the most complicated of the five questions. He didn’t have time for them, not anymore.

Anwar moved carefully among and through the delegates, always in Olivia’s vicinity without being obviously so. He stayed alone, but kept moving with an expression on his face as though he’d just left one conversation and was on his way to join another. He listened carefully to the smalltalk around him but didn’t participate. The way he felt, he’d probably insult or offend anyone who spoke to him.

Something was in his blood and wouldn’t let him alone.
Her,
obviously, but he didn’t let it affect his watchfulness. Or his obsessiveness.

Yuri Zaitsev was due to join the reception at 10:00, but he didn’t arrive until 11:30. He’d been delayed by the debate in the UN General Assembly on Rafiq’s running of UNESCO, and the vote of no confidence in Rafiq that he, Zaitsev, had initiated. Rafiq’s UNESCO policy was carried by a large majority, and the no-confidence vote was defeated by an even larger one. It didn’t put Zaitsev in an ideal frame of mind. He thought he’d covered enough angles on the voting, but Rafiq had covered more, and covered them better. In such things, Yuri Zaitsev wasn’t even remotely in the same league as Rafiq.

Zaitsev was furious and mortified, but did his best to conceal it and to make an impressive entrance. He acknowledged the many courtesies, sincere and ironic, which came his way and set about working the room. The reception would go on a little later than intended, but not so late that it would affect the summit.

It was now one minute past midnight on October 15.

A large open area in the Conference Centre, between seating and stage, had been cleared by the removal of the first few rows of seating. Drinks and food were served by circulating waiters, and from tables set up on the stage. The various adjoining rooms on the ground floor of the auditorium (for use during the summit as breakout spaces, subsidiary meeting rooms, and coffee lounges) also had their own food and drink. The huge white and silver auditorium, the walls and ceiling a combination of swooping organic shapes, looked like a replica of the New West Pier seen from inside.

The mezzanine running round the upper levels of the auditorium was now a minstrels’ gallery. A string quartet played there, softly and discreetly. The rooms leading off the mezzanine (including the Signing Room) were closed but would be open when the summit began, making more areas for breakout meetings and informal discussions—except for the Signing Room, which would stay shut until the signing ceremony (if any) at the end of the summit. It was still guarded inside: there were never less than three security people in there at any time. Their stay in the room was less conspicuous, less noisy, and more hygienic than Anwar’s had been.

Some delegates had gone upstairs to listen more closely to the music, and were leaning over the handrail of the mezzanine balcony, looking down on the main reception. Considering the size of the space and the numbers present, it was fairly quiet. Conversations were animated but not loud. And everywhere, as always, there was the discreet scent of citrus. After a while, Anwar thought as he continued circulating, you got to think that citrus was what white and silver smelt like. Or that white and silver were the colour of citrus.

The Conference Centre didn’t look anything like it would look at 10:00 the following morning, when the opening speeches would be made and the summit would commence. The reception should have ended at midnight, but in view of Zaitsev’s late arrival it would go on for an hour or so. The New Anglicans had foreseen the delay and prepared for it; their staff would reinstate the front rows of seating, check computers and audio-visual, set up catering and put the whole auditorium into full conference mode before 10:00 a.m.

Extra staff had been recruited to deal with administration, catering, transport, and communications. All of them were checked by Gaetano’s people, and double-checked by UN intelligence—a condition of Rafiq’s, which (unlike some of his other conditions, when the venue was negotiated) met with no opposition from Olivia.

Anwar continued listening to the smalltalk. He heard a few people repeat the old stories about Olivia having driven a ferociously hard bargain when negotiating for the venue, and Rafiq having hated negotiating with her. Strange, when they should be allies. Arden had said that. So had he, Anwar, to Rafiq. “
I know what she’s like. But what she stands for
is
your concern. If it isn’t, it ought to be.
”