Evensong (4 page)

There were nineteen Consultants. Fourteen took part in this Tournament. The other five were on, or recovering from,active missions. Of the fourteen, only Anwar suffered the indignity of injuring rather than disabling an opponent. It was a notable Tournament. The previous record was twenty seconds, broken first by Miles Levin (nineteen seconds) and then by Chulo Asika (seventeen). Asika’s display even outshone Levin’s. Asika, in the real world, designed and built theatre sets.

Anwar’s time was tenth out of fourteen. Even without his mistake, it would probably have been no better than seventh. Levin came up to him afterwards and clapped him on the shoulder. “I’m Miles ahead of you, Anwar,” he said, as usual.

Levin was full of such remarks. Anwar privately nicknamed them Levin’s Levities. He often thought of good rejoinders, but only when it was too late. At Fallingwater, for instance, he could have said, “Don’t look so preoccupied. You don’t have the attention span.” He thought,
How can two people so dissimilar develop a friendship?
He smiled, as he knew Levin would do every time he asked himself the same question. The question contained the answer.

But he couldn’t distance himself from the mistake. He’d been replaying it obsessively for days. It mortified him.

The door opened, apparently automatically, into a large reception room. Levin walked in, immediately killing his shock and smiling a greeting at those inside.

His shock was caused by the room: a replica of the reception at Fallingwater.
They know what I am.
He parked the thought, and concentrated on the eight men waiting in the reception. They hadn’t surprised him at all.

Their suits were immaculate, almost as expensive as his. He could tell, by the drape of the jackets and trousers, where guns and knives and other weapons were variously stowed in shoulder and ankle holsters, forearm and wrist implants. He could tell by details of stance and mannerism where they had served: SAS, Green Berets, Spetsnaz, and so on. At least three of them looked vaguely like Marek. Not their build, just their faces.

Eight. Normally this would not have been outside his competence—any one of The Dead would be certain of taking six such people, and almost certain of taking eight. But they had an
ease
about them. They knew, as well as he did, that he could defeat them. But their ease suggested they had something else.

Among his enhancements was a sensitivity to changes in ambient air pressure, replicating that of seabirds and spiders.

It worked, but it didn’t help him.

He felt a shift in the air behind him, and realised that the eight were a diversion for the ninth man, who shot him quickly with a tranquiliser gun, then disappeared. He caught a glimpse of him: stocky, dark-haired. About mid-forties? Running to fat? No, he was seeing Mareks everywhere, and it didn’t matter because something else was happening which was impossible: the tranquiliser was actually working. It was a new compound, and slid easily past his molecular defences, which were designed to be infallible. He felt it taking hold of his motor functions. His molecular defences gathered and regrouped, then collapsed utterly.

Does Rafiq know about these people?
was his closing thought as he crumpled to the ground.
He has to. Rafiq knows everything.

Anwar settled back into his black and silver chair and pressed his wrist implant. Rafiq’s face reappeared on the inner surface of his retina.

“…our hosts, the New Anglicans. When an environment changes, omnivores, not specialists, adapt best. The New Anglicans are omnivores, feeding over a broad spectrum, from religious near-fundamentalists to secular near-atheists.

They’ve taken spectacular advantage of a changing political, spiritual, cultural, and economic environment.

“The New Anglican Church was founded in 2025 as a counterweight to fundamentalist Islam, although by the time it appeared the need for it was already disappearing; main-stream Islam had effectively disowned fundamentalism. The New Anglicans flourished, however, because of their omnivorous robustness: their creeds and teachings could sound like all things to all people.

“Also, they were exceptionally well-run, with gifted and charismatic leaders. And still are. The current leader and Archbishop (unlike the Old Anglicans, they have only one Archbishop) is Olivia del Sarto.”

There was some more about her, much of which he already knew from the news channels: her abilities and background, her organisational skills, her likely allies and enemies. And her spectacular success in her five years as Archbishop, causing upheavals in religious fundamentalism. Anwar, because of his own intense dislike of fundamentalism, knew this part particularly well.

Fundamentalists would never completely go away. The

Islamists were marginalised but still powerful, and (because marginalised) harder to trace. Fundamentalist Christian sects were well-entrenched political lobbies, with good networks. So were the fundamentalist single-issue movements, like those against abortion or birth control, or those in favour of

Creationism or faith-based education. Frighteningly, some of them were setting aside their historical differences to make common cause against what they perceived as a more serious threat from the New Anglicans—a scabrous courtship between extremists, like earlier courtships between Nazis and

Communists. Olivia del Sarto called it the Batoth’Daa: the Back to the Dark Ages Alliance.
Like one of my private nick-names,
Anwar thought approvingly. It put them on the back foot, always having to deny it.

“So,” Rafiq’s briefing continued, “Olivia del Sarto reinvented the New Anglicans as a centre of rationalism, confident and assertive because they didn’t have the baggage of older churches like the Catholics or Old Anglicans. They could choose which doctrines to discard, which to keep. They became more like a political movement crossed with a socially-aware business corporation.”

Anwar paused the briefing as a thought returned to him, one that wouldn’t go away. It was related to the Tournament.

He’d carried out thirteen missions for Rafiq in seven years, and had killed only once, and then almost by accident: a bodyguard with an unsuspected heart condition, sent into massive shock by Anwar’s blurring speed. Speed was the key.

Consultants had a 90 percent advantage in speed over most opponents. In the other three “S” categories their advantage was 30 to 60 percent, but speed was the key. It made everything else possible.

The details of their enhancement and training were overwhelming—musculature, bone structure, internal organs, neurological processes, sensory abilities, all transformed—but the outcome was simple. They were beyond black belt, or its equivalent, in all the main martial arts, armed or unarmed.

As a by-product, they were also beyond Olympic standard in most athletic and field disciplines.

And the thought which had made him pause:
there are only eighteen others like me in the world, and nine or ten of them are better than me.
It nagged him and picked at him and obsessed him. Even more so since the Tournament.

Ironically, the shuto strike which broke his opponent’s collarbone had been a good one, well-executed and with just the right weight. He remembered the feel of the collarbone shearing—not shattering, but shearing cleanly—under the edge of his hand. His hands and feet, and elbows and knees, and any other striking surfaces of his body, could— if he willed them to—become strengthened locally at the molecular level at the point of impact, acquiring the density of close-grain hardwood. Most of his abilities were powered by enhanced organic processes, not by metal or machinery or electronics.

So, a good shuto strike: if he’d got it wrong, it would have continued through his opponent’s body and out at the shoulder-blade. But it was the result of an earlier mistake. And it left him with a lousy Tournament time. Which in turn left him with a mission involving mere bodyguard duties.

Except that this time, there was something different.

He gestured, and another immersion hologram, one he’d programmed himself, replaced his living room: the reception at Fallingwater. The colours and textures always relaxed him, and he needed relaxing. There was something ominous about this mission…
No, not now. Later.

When Levin woke the reception room was still there. So was the Fallingwater decor. It wasn’t a hologram, he decided. The textures and colours, the weave of the stone-white fabric covering the sofas, seemed too tangible. No quivering round the edges. A real replica. And—the architect part of him kicked in automatically—not of Frank Lloyd Wright’s original, but larger. Scaled up, like Rafiq’s house. And the eight who’d been waiting for him (eight, not nine; the other one had gone) were lounging among the groups of sofas like Rafiq’s staff had been lounging when he’d last been at the real Fallingwater. No, the real
replica
Fallingwater. So this wasn’t a hologram, but a genuine replica, of Rafiq’s original replica. His head hurt, not because of any violence done to him, but with the strain of following his own thoughts.

He remembered that Anwar liked this interior. He, Levin, didn’t particularly: he thought interiors should be one thing or the other, either grandiose or minimalist, and this was neither.

He was sitting in one of the impeccable Frank Lloyd Wright armchairs. He had no choice. His wrists and ankles were tied. Also his forearms. Also his thighs. Also his torso. And his neck. The fact of being restrained neither surprised nor disturbed him, but the fact that he’d been restrained with monofilament disturbed him very much. As did the fact that even if it hadn’t been monofilament—even if it had been something he could break or loosen, like industrial cable or steel hawsers—whoever had tied it had done so with an obvious knowledge of how he might try to break free. There were blocks and local strengthenings in all the right places.

This seemed an incongruous place for torture—a cellar, though rather obvious, was the usual preferred location—but the prospect of torture didn’t disturb him. He could shut out his pain receptors, even wind down to death if irreparably damaged.

One of the eight people lounging on the sofas turned to him.“We know you have in built defences against torture.You won’t need them. We have no plans to torture you.”

After which they continued conversing among themselves.

It wasn’t acting. They were genuinely behaving as if he wasn’t there. Two of them got up and walked past him, and he caught a snatch of their conversation.

“A hundred years from now, none of this will matter.” “No. A thousand maybe, but not a hundred.”

The
ease
of their manner, as before. Talking to each other as if he wasn’t there.
These people can’t be involved with someone like Marek.
The conversation of the two sitting closest to him gradually resolved itself above the murmur of the other conversations, none of which seemed to have anything to do with him.

“My talk at the Johnsonian Society. Are you still coming?” “Yes, I’m looking forward to it. What title did you finally decide?”

“‘Mask: The Nature Of Individual Identity In Postmodern Literature.’”

“Hmm.”

“Yes, I know. Pretentious. It needs something to liven it up, maybe a witty opening. Something like ‘What happened to the I in Identity?’”

“Hmm…How about this? A man invents time travel. He goes forward to a minute after his death, so he can have sex with his own corpse.”

“Why only a minute?”

“So he’d still be warm. You could leave that bit out if you want, but the rest of it addresses your theme about the self-referential nature of Identity.”

“Self-referential, yes. And the time-travel motif gives it a dimension of circularity.”

“Literally a dimension.”

One of the others detached himself from a group of two or three and strolled over to Levin.

“Sorry to cause you this discomfort, but we’ll release you when our colleagues get here. If you’d like anything to eat or drink, we’ll have to feed it to you. I know that’s a bit undignified…you may prefer to wait until our colleagues get here.”

“You don’t know what you’ve done,” Levin said.

“You’re right, I don’t. But our colleagues do. You’ll soon be meeting them.”

He’d never been in a situation like this before, never in fifteen missions. They’d done it so easily.
When I get out of here,
he told himself—it didn’t occur to him to say
if
rather than
when
—
I
can track at least two of them from their references to the Johnsonian Society. Anwar would be incandescent at this. Mere Special Forces, casually strolling into Doctor Johnson’s sacred territory of literary criticism?

But their
ease.
If he’d been free of the monofilaments, he could defeat them all. Not kill, just defeat. The Dead very rarely killed; with their abilities, they didn’t have to. But he
wasn’t
free of the monofilaments. And the tranquiliser, and the way they knew how to fasten the restraints.
Who are these people? Does Rafiq know about them? He has to, Rafiq knows everything. In which case…No. Don’t go there.

Anwar pressed his wrist implant and Rafiq returned to the inside of his retina.

“The Church’s founders come straight out of urban mythology. The Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Atlanticists, and others who won’t identify themselves.

But the New Anglican Church has moved beyond them. It still takes their money, but it’s also very rich in its own right—because it’s well-led, commercially successful, and has a wide offer.

“Among the founders, Olivia del Sarto has friends and enemies. Her friends support her because she’s charismatic and gifted and has made the New Anglicans rich and powerful. Her enemies distrust her for the same reasons. Even her own personal staff and security staff, as you will find, are split along similar lines.”

So. A successful leader of a successful organisation apparently fears for her life, and this is a simple bodyguard mission?

In fact,it was. Rafiq could have said so, but chose to observe protocol. First, Anwar’s mission was genuinely unconnected to Levin’s. Second, Rafiq didn’t have some secret deal with the