Evensong

1

Many unusual things arrived daily at Fallingwater, but the object which arrived one morning in late September, two days after Chulo Asika had agreed to find Levin, was particularly unusual. It was a handwritten letter, ink on paper, addressed to Rafiq. Postage was a niche product, used mostly to make a fashion statement or as irony, and this letter had actually been sent through the post. There was an envelope, with a handwritten address, and even a postage stamp and post-mark. Opatija, Croatia. REDGOD: Recorded Express Delivery Guaranteed One Day.

Rafiq was told of its arrival, but it was exhaustively analysed before he even saw it. Unsurprisingly it revealed no DNA, fingerprints or other residual traces, other than those belonging to postal staff. The paper on which it was written was expensive, but not exclusively so. Obtainable at better-class stationery retailers worldwide. So was the envelope, whose weave matched that of the paper; it was self-sealing and bore no trace of saliva at the seal. Whoever had written and sent it had touched neither envelope nor paper with an ungloved hand. The person who had signed the Recorded Delivery forms at the post office in Opatija had paid cash and given a false name and address. He left no traces on the forms he signed. Staff remembered a stockily built male, fortyish, with no unusual features. The post office’s CCTV wasn’t working.

The ink, like the paper, was of superior but not exclusive quality. The nib of the pen used to write it was italic, and electron scans revealed traces of its metals: a high quality but not unusual mixture. The handwriting was regular and neat, and found no exact matches on any database, though it was not so unusual as to find no approximate matches. In fact there were thousands, all inconclusive. One of the closer matches, ironically,was Rafiq’s own handwriting. One of the others was Anwar’s.

When the letter was finally set before Rafiq, he had already been told what it said:

The villa north of Opatija is no longer empty.

At about the time Anwar Abbas met Olivia del Sarto for the first time, Arden Bierce was making another journey in another silvered VSTOL. This journey was less leisurely. The VSTOL took one hour from the lawn in front of Fallingwater to the grounds of the villa north of Opatija, where it hovered while a door rippled open and she got out. It waited for her.

The whole area was cordoned, drenched with arclights, and full of Croatian police and UN Embassy people from Zagreb. She was waved through the front door and into the reception. It was empty. Just the polished wood floor (which reminded her of Fallingwater) and the remains of Chulo Asika.

It looked like he’d been hit by a maglev bullet train. Something made of stuff like stainless steel and carbon fibre and monofilament. Something streamlined and frictionless, and so enormous and fast that it wrecked him without leaving any trace of itself. Without noticing him, if noticing was something it did. Every major bone in his body was broken, and hadn’t had time, before he died, to set or regenerate. The note placed on his chest read One character no longer in search of an author. Neat italic handwriting, like Rafiq’s. And, like the letter he’d received, they’d analyse it but it would reveal nothing.

Whoever did this to him could have done so much more, but more would have been less. They could have torn him apart, left him in separate places around the room. They could have stuffed his penis and testicles in his mouth, torn off his fingers and poked them in to his eyes. She’d been a field officer in UN Intelligence before her promotion to Rafiq’s staff, and she’d seen such things before, usually done to civilian corpses by fundamentalist militias. But not here. This wasn’t gratuitous or vicious, just clean, functional annihilation.

Neck broken, back broken, arms broken. Arden Bierce felt instinctively what the forensics would later verify: whoever did this to Asika left no traces of any kind on his body. No blood, DNA, saliva, fibre, fingerprints, flesh particles. Look under his fingernails, she was going to tell the forensic analysts, and stopped herself just in time. They’d have done that already, and all the other things which she was in no state to think of now.

Consultants had been injured, even killed, but never like this. By firearms usually. Not in combat, unless they were massively outnumbered. Chulo Asika had been wrecked on an industrial scale, but she didn’t think he’d been massively out-numbered. This, she thought with a certainty which horrified her, was done by a single opponent. Bysomethingwhichhad just gone through Asika on its way to somewhere else.

Neck broken, back broken, arms broken. She hoped, but doubted, that all this had been done to him after his death. Is this what happened to Levin? Who are these people? Does Rafiq know about them? He has to. Rafiq knows everything.

If this was done by a single opponent, then she knew of only four or five people in the world who could have done it. Four or five out of eighteen. And they were all accounted for, except Levin. But Levin couldn’t have done this without leaving traces. Levin probably couldn’t have done this at all, not to Asika. But Levin was unaccounted for. Either this had happened to him too, or he’d turned.

No. None of The Dead had ever turned. It was unthinkable. Their enhancements weren’t only physical but psychological. Even moral. Necessary when giving them such abilities. Then maybe there was another explanation. Maybe, whether or not Levin had turned, they had something else which did this to Asika. And probably to Levin too.

Something that kills Consultants. Something like Consultants, but better.

As chilling as this was, it also suggested an organisation, which in turn suggested lines of enquiry: how and where they did it, who they paid, how much it cost. Who are these people? She couldn’t imagine how they’d been unknown to Rafiq before now. But if there was an organisation, UN Intelligence would find it. She’d been whispering all this into her wristimplant as she picked her way around the villa. It would form her report to Rafiq, and she wouldn’t edit it, even the Rafiq knows everything remark. A bit stream-of-consciousness, maybe, but Rafiq trusted her first impressions.

Strange to say this about someone with his abilities, but Asika had always seemed to her like a gentle man. Quiet, courteous. His laughter was soft and reflective; never loud, and never aimed at a target. People felt comfortable around him. It wasn’t strange, of course. His abilities were exactly why he could be like that. To her knowledge he’d never killed or seriously injured anyone. In twenty-seven successful missions over nine years. He’d have retired soon.

No traces on his body. Maybe whoever did this wore frictionless material. Or was made of frictionless material. Or I’m over-imagining. Trying to draw conclusions, not from evidence but from the absence of evidence. She parked it for later, when she’d be able to consider it more dispassionately.

Anwar’s mission will be simple, compared to this. She liked Anwar. He’d never actually made a move for her, though he did sometimes flirt mildly. Asika was married and had never made any move. Levin had, occasionally. The last time was two years ago, at a retirement party, coincidentally for one of the two Consultants who’d broken Black Dawn. She’d reciprocated (Offer and Acceptance) and found herself over a table, where he took her lavishly and thunderously.

Table. Tables, sofas, chairs. She tried to look at the polished wood floor without looking at Asika’s body, to find the ghosting of furniture-shapes where the light hadn’t been able to touch the wood. She thought she saw ghostings in clusters, like the stone-white sofas and armchairs at Fallingwater, but in her present state she could be over-imagining. Still, this place must have had furniture of some sort. Where did it go, and when? Something else to be parked for now.

“One character no longer in search of an author.” If they knew Asika’s identity in the real world, how many other Consultants’ identities did they know? All of them, if Levin had turned and told them. And if Levin hadn’t turned and told them, if Levin was dead somewhere, how did they know Asika’s identity? Maybe Rafiq’s decision to let him run his business in person, rather than anonymously online, had backfired.She’d warned Rafiq at the time that it was ill-advised. Asika’s cover stories,involving absences to work on UNICEF projects,were painstaking and thorough; Rafiq had thought there were enough failsafes to conceal what he really did, but perhaps there weren’t.

She parked that too. Pointless going there now. She had her report to complete; and then, in two days, a more pressing duty.

She was the member of Rafiq’s personal staff with particular responsibility for the Consultancy, just as others had particular responsibilities for law, finance, and the UN Agencies. So, two days later, she went to Lagos for Chulo Asika’s funeral. She travelled by scheduled flight and took the identity of a middle-ranking UNESCO official who’d had dealings with his theatrical company.

Rafiq himself didn’t attend; a Consultant’s identity couldn’t be overtly acknowledged, even posthumously. None of the other Consultants were there, partly for the same reason and partly by custom. On the rare occasions that something like this happened, their preference was to mark it privately.

Adeola Chukwu-Asika was a playwright and actress at the National Theatre. She knew who Arden Bierce was, though the rest of her family didn’t. She lined up with her children after the funeral, to thank the departing guests. There were twochildren,aboyofsevenandagirloffive,thesameagesas Rafiq’swhen…Something else to park, Arden thought. Lots of things to park. She took both of Adeola’s hands in hers (the maximum show of sympathy consistent with her assumed identity) and whispered, “I’m so sorry. I don’t have words.”

“There aren’t words,” Adeola said. “Except,” glancing behind her at the gravestone, “those.”

Chulo Asika 2022-2060

Loved a woman

Made a family with her

2

At exactly nine, as arranged, Gaetano arrived at Anwar’s suite and took him to Olivia’s private dining room. It was not a long journey. Her apartment, together with her offices and meeting rooms and quarters for security staff, took up the entire top floor of the New Grand, the floor immediately above his.

Her dining room was yet another interior of silver and white. The floor-to-ceiling windows looked back towards the foreshore, where Brighton’s seafront lights flickered through the gathering dusk.

Gaetano left them to each other, and she began.

“You’re not good enough. I’m telling Rafiq to send someone better.”

Anwar laughed in her face; it surprised both of them. “Nobody tells Rafiq, ever. And he wouldn’t send anyone else. I’m all you’ve got.” He wasn’t sure of this, but some instinct made him gamble. “Don’t overestimate your importance. You’re providing a conference venue, that’s all. Venues can be changed, even at two weeks’ notice. Not ideal, but Rafiqc ould do it. His concern isn’t your safety, it’s getting a venue. Yours is the preferred choice, but there are others.”

He stared her down, and knew his gamble had won. Why did I do that? Why do I want this mission so much?

“Fuck you.” She sounded like her cat, which as always was orbiting in her vicinity. “Nobody laughs in my face. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I’m the designer product you rented for your protection. When this is over I’ll stop and we can each go our separate ways. I won’t even look like this any more.”

A couple of minutes passed in silence.

“Why did you want this mission?” she asked.

“I didn’t.”

“You did. Rafiq asked you. I know how it works: Offer and Acceptance.”

“I accepted, but I didn’t want it.”

“Do you want it now?”

“Yes.”

“And if I decide to keep you on, will you—” she saw him about to laugh at her again, and hurried on “—will you honour the deal I did with Rafiq? Will you protect me during the summit?”

“No, I won’t. I’ll protect you before, during, and after.Until I’m sure it’s over.” He stared her down again. “So, against all the odds, you got Rafiq to lend you a Consultant. Now tell me why I’m here.”

She paused. “To protect me from the snare of the hunter.”

“What?”

“It’s a phrase from Evensong.”

“Even what?”

“Evensong. A service I attended once at Rochester Cathedral. That’s the Old Anglicans. I paid them an official visit five years ago, when I became Archbishop. Do you know anything about the Old Anglicans?”

“They’re the original Church of England.” His memory, a substrate of his other enhancements, supplied the required text. “They’re in gentle decline. Even in the cathedrals, congregations are small and aging. Nevertheless, they’re generally a force for good (or at least, not a force for harm). Some attitudes towards them may be dismissive, but very few people actually hate them.”

She looked at him curiously.

“That didn’t sound like you. It sounded more like Rafiq.”

“It was. Part of his briefing.”

“Well, as usual he got it right…You know,on the way back from Rochester some of my staff were actually sniggering. They thought the Old Anglicans were ineffective and crumbling and outmoded: all the things we’re not. One of them said that even their Advent Calendars have boarded-up windows. I didn’t like them sniggering like that. The Old Anglicans are good people.”

In a far corner of the room, the ginger cat meowed softly in its sleep.

“And that’s where he got his name. Nunc. Short for Nunc Dimittis. Part of the Evensong service. Of course, nobody except me uses his name. They all think of him as an It, not a He.”

Yes, thought Anwar, me too. Alien, beyond gender. “So who’s threatening you? And why?”

“What do you know about our founders?”

Again his memory flicked up the pattern of words. “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.”

“It’s them. Not the Bilderbergers and the rest, they’re just the public face. It’s the others, the ones who won’t identify themselves. And Rafiq knows nothing about them.”

“Yes he does. Rafiq knows everything.”

A sideways glance. “He doesn’t know about them. But he will.”

“Rafiq had some more to say, about you. He said that among the founders, you’ve got friends and enemies. Your friends support you because you’ve made the New Anglicans rich and powerful. Your enemies distrust you for the same reasons.”

“Yes. They don’t like the direction the Church has taken. They originally set it up to be something else. They wanted to pull its strings, write its scripts, send it out on stage, and eventually I said No. I decided to reinvent it. Rafiq’s briefing probably covered that.”

“And only a Consultant can protect you from them?”

“Yes.”

“Why? And why only during the summit?”

“Because that’s when they’ll move. Probably at the signing. At the end of the summit, when everyone is looking at the politicians, when they’re all signing whatever they’ve cobbled together. The move won’t be at them, but at the host. Live, and in public. And when they come for me, it’ll be with something beyond even Gaetano. Something unstoppable. It’s how they work. Stay hidden, then emerge once or twice in a generation to give history a nudge.”

“How do you know these people will move for you?”

“I know how they think. And they aren’t people.”

Before he could ask her what she meant, the food arrived. It was brought in personally, on white porcelain and silver dishes, by Gaetano and Luc Bayard. They set it out on the table, efficiently and tidily. Anwar knew without asking that Gaetano would have been present while it was cooked, and wouldn’t have let it out of his sight.

Bayard still bore the red abrasion at his throat caused by Anwar’s Verb. Or Adverb. “How’s Proskar?” Anwar asked him. He’d meant it genuinely, but Bayard didn’t take it that way.As he left with Gaetano he murmured to Olivia, while smiling at Anwar,“Inferior. Only the inferior ones get bodyguard duties, and they don’t like it.”

There were several dishes, all Thai. Including Anwar’s particular favourite, a Thai green curry. It had a thin consistency, like dishwater. It didn’t look appetising, but when cooked properly, as this was, it had a delicate aromatic taste.

“How did you know I like Thai food?”

“I asked Rafiq. Or rather, I got my staff to ask his staff.”

They finished the meal quickly, and without much conversation. He watched her while they were eating. She was small and immaculate. Her dress was similar to the one she wore earlier: like a ball gown, with a fitted bodice and floor-length bell skirt. This one was also velvet, but purple. Perhaps indeference to the occasion, she wore evening gloves.

And she ate like a starving tramp: far more, and far more voraciously, than he did. Her appetites, he remembered. She must be one of those irritating people who never seem to put on weight.

“Mm, I do like food.”

“Yes,” he said, “I think it’s here to stay...Why did you say they aren’t people?”

“The same reason you aren’t. You were made like you are, you never had to work at it. And you move in and out of the world, with an ID that isn’t your real one.”

“Wasn’t this evening supposed to be a briefing about them?”

“It was, but I changed my mind. You’re scheduled to see Gaetano tomorrow at nine. He’ll brief you. Until then, I’ve told you enough.”

He shot her an irritated glance.

“Don’t worry, there’s time. We have more than two weeks before the summit. And whoever-they-are won’t do whatever-it-is until the final day.”

He didn’t like her tone, and told her so.

“I don’t like yours. What, you thought this was going to be simple and tidy? In and out, like your other missions?”

“I hope Gaetano will be more informative than you...”

“He usually is.”

“...because I have trouble buying what you’ve said. Dark forces threatening you? So dark that even Rafiq doesn’t know about them? So threatening that you question whether a Consultant can protect you? And then you describe them as if they don’t really exist. As ‘whoever-they-are.’ As if you don’t need protection at all.”

“Why don’t you like being a bodyguard?” she asked, as if she hadn’t been listening.

He wanted to press the point, but decided not to; he’d rely on Gaetano’s briefing. “Because we’re seen by the person we’re protecting, and by others around them. It compromises our identity in the outside world.”

Another sideways look. Her next expression began to form, like a delayed echo, and he guessed it correctly. Mocking. “And what is your Identity In The Outside World?”

“Antiquarian book dealer. When this is over I may need to change it, or change my appearance. Another reason we don’t like bodyguard duties.”

“Antiquarian…”

“Book dealer, yes. Tomorrow, after I’ve seen Gaetano, I’m going into Brighton to pick up a book.”

“Ah. Then I think I’ll go with you.”

“Why?” He was genuinely surprised, and immediately wary.

“Every time I go into Brighton, Gaetano insists on surrounding me with his people. In the next few days it’ll be even worse. Tomorrow will probably be the last chance I’ll get just to walk around Brighton without being surrounded. After all, I’ll have a Consultant...Relax,” she added, as he shot her a suspicious glance, “that’s all it is. Sometimes things really are no more than they appear on the surface.”

She was looking at him differently, as if she actually noticed him. Not as a person, he suddenly understood, but as the latest implement to scratch an itch which had begun somewhere in her velvet darkness.

Her other set of appetites. They do come round quickly. He started to get up.

Just then, they were interrupted.

3

At 10:00 p.m. in Brighton, it was 5:00 a.m. in Kuala Lumpur; the morning of the following day. Rafiq stood on the lawn in front of Fallingwater. He sometimes came there to watch the sunrise, when he had things to think about. He was apparently alone, but his security was all around him at a discreet distance.

Apart from his concerns over Asika and Levin, he also had an organisation to run. Today would be a big day. He was in the final stage of his restructuring of UNIDO. It was a brutal restructuring; Yuri Zaitsev, the Secretary-General, had openly questioned it. Also, Rafiq had precipitated a crisis by refusing to sign UNESCO’s year-end operating statement until more rigorous performance goals were set. Both issues would produce internal conflicts which, although he would win them, were likely to be bloody.

He took out a cigarette. As nobody else smoked indoors neither did he, even in his inner office. Where, he remembered, he’d left his lighter. Arden Bierce, who had also been at a discreet distance, came up to him and gave him hers. She didn’t smoke, but always carried a lighter when she was with him.

He watched the sunrise. Dawn. Black Dawn. He remembered the marquee which had stood here ten years ago. It wasn’t just my family. It was others. Empty places at other tables, empty halves of other beds. And it’s still unfinished business.

“Thanks for the light. And thank you for attending the funeral.”

“Thank you for not asking how it went.”

He saw she was doing that thing which people do to stop crying: clenching the face, compressing the lips, breathing in through the nose, looking upwards as if gravity might slow the tears. To his relief, she succeeded.

He lit his cigarette and handed back her lighter. He inhaled. A filthy and antisocial habit, he knew, but he never smoked more than one or two a day, and he wasn’t a lifelong smoker; he’d started only ten years ago.

“I told Chulo he should wait until he retired before having a family, but... You know, of all of them Chulo was the only one I really felt comfortable with.”

She nodded but said nothing.

“I listened to your report,” he added.

Still she said nothing, for a while. Then it all came. “Who are they? Why would they do this? And how could they do it, to Chulo? And where’s Levin?”

“I think,” he said slowly, “that maybe they were just trying out. Maybe they killed Levin to get us to send someone even better…We’ll get the rest of it, Arden. Our forensics and intelligence are the best in the world, just as the Consultancy is the best executive arm in the world. They’re chasing down those questions you asked, and dozens more like them. We will get the rest of it.”

She nodded. She knew he’d come out here to think about Asika and Levin and UNIDO and UNESCO, but she knew he’d also been remembering his family. Now even more people had died trying to catch the man responsible, and he had sent them. She could read it in his face. She didn’t often see him like this, and it distressed her.

Rafiq was ruthless and cunning, but he inspired personal loyalty. People who worked for him—those he hadn’t discarded or ruined—knew that within the constraints of his labyrinthine political agendas he still, usually, tried to make things better. Not perfect, but better. His compact with The Dead stated that they should serve the office of the Controller-General: not the individual, but the office. In reality, they served the individual. And now the nineteen deadliest people in the world (No, she thought, eighteen. Or is it seventeen?) were facing a new and apparently unknown opponent. One which had already done something unthinkable.

She again remembered the note. One character no longer in search of an author.

“They know so much about us. You think this might be Zaitsev? Or some other part of the old UN in New York?”

Rafiq almost laughed. “No, they don’t have the imagination. Maybe there sources, but not the imagination. No, this is an attack on the whole UN, mine and Zaitsev’s. And it comes from outside.”

After she’d gone, Rafiq thought,Only part of that is right, and I’m not sure which part. For once, maybe I don’t know everything.

4

The interruption was Gaetano, carrying a large folder.

“Sorry, Archbishop, but you asked to see this as soon as it was ready.”

She turned to Anwar. “It’s our year-end financial statement. I need to check it now.”

“Should I leave?”

“No, this is just the first draft, it won’t take long.”

Gaetano stood silently by her side as she studied the documents. She took only a couple of minutes to absorb them (something which, like Rafiq, she did without enhancements).

She glanced up at Gaetano. “See what they’ve tried to do?”

“Yes. Notes 19 and 36 on the non-recurring and below-the-line items. I told them you’d never agree.”

“So why did they do it?”

“To hide the real cost of some of the Room For God projects. They think that if the media find out what a Church is spending on campaigns against Creationism and blasphemy laws…”

“Why do they keep doing that? Thinking? Why is it that my head of security knows more about proper financial reporting than my Finance Director and his three Deputies? We had this last year, when they…”

“When they tried to hide the cost of commissioning independent research into the Bible conclaves. I reminded them of that.”

“Alright, Gaetano, remind them of this: those items are our core business. I will not have them hidden. I want them where they belong, in the main Income and Expenditure accounts. I’m throwing out their draft. And remind them not to try this again.”

“You could also,” Gaetano suggested drily, “tell me to remind them about their appraisals.”

“Yes, they’re due in four weeks, aren’t they? If I’m alive by then…Just checking you’re still awake,” she told Anwar, as both he and Gaetano looked at her sharply.

This is like her Room For God broadcast, Anwar thought. Everyday she fights real battles. More than I’ve done in seven years.

“As the Archbishop,” she explained to Anwar, after Gaetano left, “I’m a mix of Chairman and Chief Executive. Like,” she looked sideways at him, “the UN Secretary-General and Controller-General rolled together into one.”

Anwar thought of Yuri Zaitsev, the jowly and heavyset Secretary-General, and Rafiq. The idea of them rolling together into one was not something he could easily imagine.

“Back to who’s threatening you. Why not fundamentalists? Your Batoth’Daa?”

This time, she laughed in his face. “Never! They don’t have the imagination, or the intellect. Their religion sucks it out of them. Makes them turn unanswerable questions into unquestionable answers…That’s not original. Someone else said it, I can’t remember who.”

“It was an Art Gecko slogan.”

“What? Oh, of course. You and your old books.”

“It wasn’t a book…” he began, then left it. She’d already forgotten, and was busy pouring herself some wine.

“No thanks,” he said as she started to pour a glass for him.

“I don’t drink alcohol.”

“Oh, your name…Are you a Muslim?” “No. Worse.”

“Atheist?”

“Worse still. Agnostic.”

“A lapsed atheist. Do you also bet each way at Brighton Racecourse?”

“I like to think it’s rational,” he said, rather pompously.

She scented blood and went for him. “Having blind faith in reason is not the same as being rational.”

“You’re a walking dictionary of one-liners.”

“One-liners are useful for religious leaders. Martin Luther had ninety-five of them. His Ninety-Five Theses were good. But if he’d nailed the Ninety-Five Faeces to the Church door at Wittenburg…”

Anwar laughed out loud, something he rarely did. But she didn’t notice. She was already busy clearing the table.

Later they stood at the window looking out at the lights of Brighton’s shoreline and seafront. They were naked. They hadn’t been naked while on the table. Fully clothed, like the first time, she’d said. It’s better when you act like it’s spontaneous.

Normally Anwar preferred the feel of a woman’s naked body against his. But he was getting to like it her way. Disarranging her clothes was like unwrapping a gift. Seeing what was inside. And, if he still had to satisfy his obsession not to make tidy things untidy, he found he could disarrange her clothes carefully and slowly. She didn’t seem to mind.

She’d taken him into herself even more greedily than last time. I’m almost wiping her kidneys, he thought incredulously, amid the swelter. They went again and again. Her greed, for food and for sex. It’s unbelievable. Where does she put all that food? And all that sperm?

They kept stealing looks at each other. Naked, she was exactly as he’d imagined when he’d seen her for the first time: lithe, slender, and toned. He wasn’t quite as she’d imagined. His musculature was impressive and defined, but somehow not entirely right. On Brighton beach, a few people might have looked twice at him.

It was modelled on the musculature of big cats. All cats had a higher ratio of muscle to body-weight than other mammals, and so did Anwar. He wasn’t a cyborg or robot, but a living thing, with enhancements replicating other living things, in specific areas where they were better than human.

She didn’t know that, but she knew the Dead were somehow made. His muscles didn’t bulge unnaturally like those of a bodybuilder, but they rippled. Everywhere. She’d felt them moving, under his skin and under the touch of her greedy grabbing hands. They were living tissue. Not mechanical or metallic or electronic.

But still not entirely right. As if he’d been taken apart and somehow put back together according to slightly different principles. Which was, she realised, probably the case: millions must have been put into him. Tens of millions. She thought, Can he protect me from what they’ll send?

As in the Boardroom, there was an easy silence between them: fitting for the simple slaking of simple lust. Literally in and out, he thought, with no baggage. Tidy and self- contained. Even better than the best prostitutes. And he could afford the best.

They looked out at the i-360 Tower on the seafront two miles away, at the bright lights of its main structure and the illuminated observation pod, a large ring-doughnut going up and down the Tower’s shaft.

“I know an architect,” said Anwar, “a good friend of mine, who would have seriously considered redesigning that doughnut as a hand.”

She looked at him in puzzlement for a moment, then burst out laughing. But by the time he’d decided to join her (he normally preferred to smile quietly rather than laugh out loud) she’d already stopped and was thinking about something else.