Evensong

1

The following day, promptly a t9:00a.m., Anwar started work. It was an easy commute. Gaetano’s apartment and offices were on the same floor as Olivia’s. She had left three hours earlier on Church business.

Gaetano’s office, like every interior he had seen—though he hadn’t seen hers, yet—was nacreous white and silver. It was tidy and sparse, as Anwar had expected.

“You’re early,” Gaetano said.

“No. It’s exactly nine, as we arranged.”

“I meant for your stay here. September isn’t over yet and the summit isn’t for two weeks. A young woman named Arden Bierce called us last week and said you wanted to come here early. A very nice young woman.”

“Yes, people like Arden. She has a way about her.”

“Well, it made her suspicious.”

“The Archbishop? Why?”

“It was different from what she got Rafiq to agree...She really does feel threatened. You may not think she acts or sounds like it, but she does.”

“Last night she was supposed to give me a briefing about who’s threatening her, but she changed her mind halfway through. Apparently I’m now getting it from you.”

“She was in a strange mood last night...What did she tell you?”

“Only that the people threatening her are the people who really run the Church’s original founders: the ones who aren’t named, even in conspiracy theories, and they don’t like her having moved the Church beyond their control. Is there any truth in that? Do you believe it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then why didn’t she say more? If she wants me to protect her, why didn’t she say exactly who she wants protection from? Do you know who they are? Where they are? Why they’re threatening her?”

“I can tell you some of that, but sometimes she’s less than honest with me, too, and I don’t know why. Sometimes she tries to conceal how frightened she is by talking about them lightly, or ambiguously. But I believe she’s genuinely frightened. I can tell you the rest of what she was going to say last night, and I’ll add some ideas of my own that might help you, although my own enquiries haven’t uncovered much.”

“Alright. But if I don’t think it’s enough, I’ll walk away.” No you won’t, he thought, not from this. Not now.

“She doesn’t know their individual names and locations,” Gaetano continued, as if he hadn’t heard Anwar. “They aren’t even members of the Bilderbergers or the Atlanticists and the rest. They just work through them indirectly, when it suits them. They have larger agendas. Maybe Zaitsev’s one of them. Or the presidents of some UN members. Or you, or me, playing a double or triple game. And they stay...”

“Stay dormant for years, then come out once or twice in every generation to give history a nudge. I know, she told me. But why are they suddenly a threat? And why at the summit? How does she know?”

“She’s been dealing with them since she became Archbishop five years ago. She must sense their long-term plans. And they don’t attend our Boards or Assemblies. They communicate only with her, by messages given to Board members. Handwritten messages in sealed envelopes, passed through a network of couriers and proxies which soon disappears if you try to trace it back. I’ve tried.”

“The UN will have to check all this, I don’t have the resources, and personally I don’t buy it,” Anwar said. “A conspiracy inside bodies which are themselves the subject of conspiracy theories. A shadowy cell that manipulates the manipulators. Handwritten notes. I don’t buy it.” But privately he was just beginning to. It fitted some of the observed data, and it felt right. “I really don’t buy it,” he repeated, as if the repetition would drive the uncertainty out of his voice. It didn’t. “And this is what she was going to tell me last night?”

“Part of it. But you need to hear the rest.”

2

I shouldn’t really have come here this morning, Richard Carne thought. But they didn’t tell me not to, so they must have suspected I might. And I’m glad I did. It’s quite striking. Really singular.

It had been an easy journey from London, and only a short detour from where he was headed, to reach Brighton. And an easy journey of ninety seconds from Gateway to Cathedral, in a sleek white-and-silver maglev, to see the Conference Centre at the end of the New West Pier.

Those who employed him were unknown to him. He only dealt with them indirectly, through several layers of proxies and cutouts, but even the little he’d seen of what they could do was deeply impressive. They’d be doing more things between now and the summit, but the summit—here, in two weeks— was where it would really kick off. And what would happen at this Conference Centre would be only a small part of it.

What they could do, he reflected, was quite diverting and singular. He was a relatively minor functionary, but he’d seen and heard enough. There was what they’d done to Asika. And what they’d done to Levin, which was worse. And Levin’s face, when he’d realised he couldn’t defend himself. Now, he thought, let’s have a look at that extraordinary Cathedral, and then a longer look at the equally extraordinary Conference Centre. That was where it would all really begin. The thing which would kill her was quite singular, quite diverting. It might already be here, in this beautiful silver and white building where the summit would begin on October 15.

If not, it would be on its way.

3

“Half a percent of the world’s population,” Gaetano said, “owns 40 percent of the world’s wealth. Four million people. The ones threatening her are a few random and apparently unconnected individuals, out of four million.”

“Individuals running the founders’ organisations?” “Yes, but indirectly, not as members. They operate through networks of proxies and subsidiaries, the way they operate their share holdings and finances. And they don’t have a secret underground HQ in Antarctica, or a hollowed-out mountain in the Himalayas. They have something much better: their corporations. When they want a task done, or an object made, they divide it down to its smallest components and farm it out to subsidiaries and sub-subsidiaries.” When Anwar stayed silent, Gaetano added, “Maybe Rafiq’s one of them.”

“No. He’s rich, but not that rich. He has millions, but the people you’re talking about have billions. Or trillions.” But Anwar was thinking, Currency isn’t only money, it’s also power and knowledge, and there Rafiq must be in their league. This was beginning to worry him. His mind was racing, but he If this is real, it’s the worst combination of threats: a cell, like Black Dawn, but with trillions. I must talk to Arden.

Gaetano waited politely for Anwar to digest this—he hadn’t been convinced by Anwar’s convincing poker face—before he continued. “I think they’re putting together something intricate and far-reaching, and her death is only a part of it. But... a handful of people, unconnected, not even members of the founders’ organisations. Out of four million. I don’t think you can easily locate or identify them.”

“UN Intelligence can.”

“Probably not in time.”

“They’ve done nothing to invade our space yet.”

“They will...And if you can’t locate them pre-emptively, all that’s left is the inferior option: just wait for them to move at the summit, and hope you can stop them.” When Anwar didn’t reply, Gaetano got up. “Think about it, while I go and make us some coffee. Vietnamese, yes?”

“How did you...Oh, of course. Her people asked Rafiq’s people.” He watched Gaetano set the two glasses down. There was a layer of condensed milk at the bottom of each glass, on top of which the dark coffee floated without mixing. It looked like an upside-down Guinness.

“So how did you come to work for her?”

“Isn’t it in Rafiq’s briefing?”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I’m a mercenary. It was interesting—far more than guarding politicians or business people or criminals—and it paid well.”

“And now?”

“I’m still a mercenary. It’s still more interesting than guarding politicians or business people or criminals, and it still pays well. I’m a permanent employee with a job description and a contract. But if I wasn’t, I’d still go out and die for her.” The last sentence was spoken without any change of voice.

“She told me you’ll be providing a two-day briefing on the summit. Do you want to take me through it?”

Yes, Gaetano did want. He would give Anwar a first look at the Conference Centre, where the summit would take place. Then he would detail the security arrangements for the summit, in the following order:

One, descriptions of each delegate and his/her entourage, especially security.

Two, liaison protocols with delegates’ security staff.

Three,the currently-agreed version of the summit Agenda, which would be subject to last-minute changes.

Four,the arrangements on the first day of the summit:the delegates’ arrival, and the style and content of the opening ceremony. “Despite what she believes,” Gaetano said, “the threat could come on the first day, as well as the last. It’ll be just as public, and just as high-profile. She’ll be there as host, and she’ll make the welcoming speech, all about the love that dare not speak its name because its mouth is full.” Anwar looked up sharply. They locked eyes for a moment, then Anwar smiled faintly. Each of them thought, Maybe he hasn’t got his head as far up his ass as I’d feared.

Five, the arrangements for each day: seating plans, meals, coffee breaks, break-out sessions, evening social events.

Six, the disposition of security people, translators, support staff, catering staff.

Seven, provisions for attack from sea and air.

“… And that’s what I’ll take you through this morning.”

“Do I need to know it in such detail?” Anwar asked. “I’m >here for her security only.”

“She’s the host. As well as speaking at the opening and closing ceremonies, she’s expected to make appearances from time to time at the summit sessions. And when she does, you should know what’s all around her.”

“Yes, that’s reasonable.” But you still haven’t mentioned the important part.

“And,” Gaetano added, “you need to know it in detail because—this is the important part—she wants you to review all the arrangements and make any recommendations you see fit.”

“And what do you think of that?”

“Not much, initially. But if it protects her better...”

“Good. Then let’s not talk in code. If I see something wrong with any of your arrangements, I’ll say so. If I think they’re good, or very good, or mediocre, or sloppy, I’ll say so. And can you put it all on an implant bead?”

“I already have. You can download it and study it over-night. And tomorrow, I’ll take you through the Archbishop’s engagements from now to the end of the summit.”

“She has one this afternoon which she may not have mentioned.”

“Going into town with you to collect a book?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll have some people follow you, but only at a discreet distance. You understand that you’ll be her primary protection?”

“Yes.”

“And please, get her back here before four. She has several meetings.”

“OK. And the briefing tomorrow?”

“We’ll cover the detailed security arrangements for the Archbishop—how they operate now and how they’ll be ramped up for the summit. I’ll give you backgrounds and credentials for all my people. And I’ll put it all on an implant bead, so you can…”

“Study it overnight. Thank you.”

A short silence grew between them. Anwar noticed—for the first time, despite his enhancements and training—the signs of strain on Gaetano’s face: sleeplessness around the eyes, tenseness in the jaw. Signs of the inevitable and mounting pressure of the approaching summit and the threats to Olivia.

Gaetano, as if he sensed what Anwar was thinking, said, “You know, this is only about a tenth of what the summit involves. She has departments dealing with the PR and political aspects. And the legal. And the financial. Especially the financial. There are daily accounts for every item of expenditure connected to the summit. This meeting will be costed down to the last minute, and she’ll see the costing tonight. She doesn’t give any obvious appearance of micromanagement, in facts he professes a huge dislike of it. But she misses nothing.”

Like Rafiq, Anwar thought. When Arden and I deal with him, it’s like we’re the only thing he has in front of him. But there’s legal, and financial, and political, and PR, and intelligence, and the conventional military, and the Agencies Rafiq and Olivia del Sarto. Different characters, but similar styles of working.

Anwar said none of this out loud, so Gaetano continued. “And what about you? I thought you people didn’t like body-guard work, because...”

“That’s how I felt at first.” He remembered what he’d thought, back at his home in northern Malaysia, after watching her Room For God lecture. Frozen hope. My life has been arid, hers is real. “But I feel differently now.”

4

For two hours Gaetano took him through the security arrangements for the summit. The initial wary courtesy between them had developed into something slightly less guarded. Gaetano went through the briefing in the order he’d outlined and, as promised, gave him the implant bead. Anwar acknowledged politely and promised his detailed comments the following morning. Already he knew there would not be many; Gaetano’s arrangements were characteristically thorough.

They walked out of the New Grand and across the Garden. It was a bright pleasant day for late September, like yesterday when he’d arrived. The domes and spires and latticeworks of the Cathedral complex were lustrous in the sunlight. The Garden showed blues and reds from hydrangeas, gradations of yellow and gold from witch hazel and broom. The trees and shrubs were swaying in the wind from the ocean.

Ahead was the Conference Centre. Anwar noticed some people wheeling luggage trunks.

“Contractors, from Patel. They’re doing building work on the room where the signing will take place,” Gaetano explained.“The UN wanted a replica of the Press Suite in New York. Nineteen-sixties décor and furniture.”

“They don’t look much like contractors.”

“She insisted they shouldn’t. They have to use containers that resemble luggage and are small enough to go in the luggage section of a maglev. She wouldn’t allow anything to be dropped by VSTOL or by sea to the end of the Pier. It all has to go through Gateway Station to Cathedral Station, then up and along here, no matter how many journeys it takes. It means their equipment is disassembled in the vehicles parked on Marine Parade, and reassembled on site in the Conference Centre. It’s taken weeks. And when they travel up here and back, they must wear normal civilian clothes, and change on site. And the site must be closed and soundproofed.”

“She’s very particular about appearances,” Anwar said.

“She is, but it’s also about security. Shall we go in?”

I could get here, Anwar thought, through all the detectors. In a luggage trunk. I could dislocate my joints to bend into it. I’d go to near-death. A timed hibernation. No body-heat detectors would find me: surface temperature would be the same as my immediate surroundings. No heartbeat or breath detectors would find me: pulse and breathing would be almost nonexistent, and random. No scanners or imagers or DNA detectors would find me: my body would echo the texture and shape of its immediate surroundings.

Enough of that for now. I’ll add it to my overnight comments.

“Shall we go in?” Gaetano repeated.

The Main Hall, on the ground floor of the Conference Centre, was an interior space as large as that of the Cathedral. Anwar was transfixed. He’d expected a vast white and silver interior, with clean swooping lines, and that was exactly what it was. But the sheer scale was deeply impressive. And its style couldn’t have been more different from the UN General Assembly Hall in New York. As with the Cathedral, and the rest of the New West Pier complex,the inside contradicted the outside.

The Main Hall was where the scheduled sessions of the summit would be held. There were adjoining smaller rooms for spin-off sessions, coffee shops and bars, translators’ booths. Actually, the Conference Centre was bigger inside thantheCathedral,becausetherewasnofullupperfloor,only a mezzanine: a balcony running round the entire circumference, with doors leading off. These opened into further anterooms for breakout sessions, and included the large room being refurbished for the signing ceremony. The contractors could be neither seen nor heard.

Anwar stood for a moment, memorising the lines of sight and tying them in with Gaetano’s briefing.

“Let’s go back to the New Grand. She’ll be waiting. And please make sure she gets back by four. She cancelled several meetings to do this.”

“She cancelled meetings?” Anwar asked in surprise. “Just to go into Brighton with me and collect a book?”

“I hope you don’t misinterpret what’s passed between you.”

“No. I know about her appetites. Everybody does. And,” he added, “don’t misinterpret my accepting this mission. It’s because of what she stands for, not her personally.”

5

Olivia was waiting in the reception of the New Grand.

Gaetano had suggested she didn’t wear her normal clothes. Not really a disguise, he’d said, just dress differently so your identity isn’t so obvious. She did, and it totally altered her.

She wore flat loafers instead of her customary heels, so she appeared even smaller than usual. She had on very little makeup. She wore a sweater and jeans—though the jeans were black and expensively cut—and her famously-coiffed blonde hair, which normally she wore so it softened the slight sharpness of her features, was pulled back off her face and tied in a ponytail.

Anwar thought she looked too natural. He preferred her in her structured and tailored and madeup mode: her Formal Normal look, as he’d privately taken to describing it. Also, she made him feel overdressed. He was wearing another of his expensive linen-blend suits, with a contrasting shirt of dark woven silk.

They took the maglev from Cathedral to Gateway—nobody appeared to give them a second glance—and walked out of the Pier onto Marine Parade, from where they descended the steps to the seafront.

“Do you know,” she asked suddenly as they walked along the shore, “how many Churches and religious centres there are within walking distance of where we are now?”

“Unaccountably, Rafiq’s briefing didn’t include that.”

“Loads of them,” she went on, as though she hadn’t heard him. “There’s St. Paul’s, West Street—Old Anglican. St.Mary’s, Preston Park—Catholic. The Middle Street Synagogue. The Buddhist Centre in North Laine. The Quakers’ hall in Meeting House Lane. The Al Quds mosque in Seven Dials.” She turned and looked up at him, straight-faced. “I like to know where they all are. If they go fundamentalist, I can tell them I know where they live.”

“If you add all of them together and multiply them by ten, they still wouldn’t be a tenth of what your Church done—” he looked back at the New West Pier “—over there.”

“Yes,” she said simply, and unhelpfully. She knew where he was going, but she wasn’t going to help him get there.

“The money for this…”

“I told you. Originally the founders. But now the Church has moved beyond needing their money. It has plenty of its own. And they don’t like it.”

They walked along the seafront. The mast-rigging of the small boats drawn up on the beach thrummed in the wind. They walked past the arches Anwar had walked past yesterday, and past some arcades with games. There was one where things popped up and you had to knock them down with a rubber mallet, only for others to pop up, also to be knocked down. She watched it for a while.

“Remind you of fundamentalists?”

“Yes,” she hissed, “and they’re filth! Scum! I hate their beliefs more than I love mine.”

“I only meant,” he said mildly, “how they pop up somewhere else if you...”

“Theocrats, creationists, racists, homophobes, all of them! The death of dialogue. ‘If you don’t agree with me, you’re better off dead.’ Knock them down in one place, they pop up somewhere else.”

“I don’t like their beliefs either, though it may not matter to you. But they’re not all filth. Or scum.” The words had a strange echo for him, of the greeting he would sometimes exchange with Levin. “Some of them just want certainty.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t matter to me.”

“Don’t hate them so much. It makes you ugly.”

“If I didn’t hate them so much, I wouldn’t be who I am! And what business is it of yours if something makes me ugly?”

“You’re right, it isn’t. But if you hated them less and understood them more, maybe even more people would support you. Including some of them.”

She looked up at him sharply. “I didn’t expect that. I thought you were just a Consultant.”

They climbed a stairway up the embankment to road level, just before the old Palace Pier. They walked across Marine Parade and into East Street, which led upwards, away from these a front. It was busy and crowded, a mix of shops and restaurants, mostly upmarket. There was the usual doppler effect of approaching and receding conversations, and the usual mix of smells: things being cooked, substances being smoked. Still nobody appeared to give them a second glance.

He spotted Gaetano’s people. He liked how they worked: discreetly, keeping a distance, constantly changing their patterns. She didn’t seem to see them, but he knew she’d assume they were there somewhere.

Ahead they could now see the original Royal Pavilion in Pavilion Gardens with the Indian Gate. The New Anglicans, careful as always, had made sure the original Royal Pavilion and the New West Pier were never in direct sight of each other.

Leading off East Street on the left was the Lanes district, with small esoteric shops selling bespoke interiors, designer clothes, antiques and curios and books. It was an area of narrow alleyways, sometimes called twittens and catcreeps. The walls were patchworks of old brick, flint, cobblestone, and stucco. The Lanes had been the original fishing village of Brighthelmstone.

Anwar took them to Ramsden’s Bookshop, in Meeting House Lane. The proprietor nodded, apparently casually, but somehow giving the impression that he remembered Anwar from his last visit, two years ago. It was a small musty shop, but carried a good stock of Shakespeares, including the one Anwar had reserved online for collection: a replica of the 1609 Chalmers-Bridgewater edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. So much, these days, was a replica, but this was a very good one.It wasn’t cheap. Even replicas could be valuable in their own right.

They continued along Meeting House Lane.

“There,” she said. “Frobisher’s Tea Rooms. Come on, I’m buying.”

Where Ramsden’s had been genuinely old and musty, Frobisher’s was a modern copy of age and mustiness. None of the darkwood wall panelling or furniture had ever been part of, or even near, a real tree.

It was more utilitarian than its outside appearance suggested, or than Anwar guessed she was used to. It was crowded, and she joined the queue at the counter.

“Self-service for the self-serving,” she muttered. She got a pot of English breakfast tea for both of them, and a selection of cakes for herself.

“Fifty-five euros forty.” The cashier pronounced it with a rising note of accomplishment on forty, as if it was the culmination of a trick he’d done. She’d forgotten she was buying, and took the tray to a table. Anwar paid and joined her.

“So you got your book.”

“Yes, it’s a nice edition.”

“A replica?”

“Partly. It reproduces the typesetting and font of the original, but puts each sonnet on a separate page.”

“May I look?”

“Of course.” He slid the book across the table to her.

“Sonnet 116 is my favourite. Especially the first four lines.” He watched her turn to it, and said the words to himself as he watched her reading them.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

“Each phrase,” she said, “has at least three or four possible meanings. Is that what he intended?”

“I think so.”

“Didn’t he write the sonnets to a mysterious Dark Lady?”

“Some of them, yes. But some might also have been written to a man.”

“Oh.”

Just then her wristcom buzzed. She flipped it open, listened briefly.

“It’s Gaetano. He says they’ve detained a possible suspect on the Pier.”

6

In the Cathedral complex, a thief had been tempted by an obviously wealthy-looking tourist. But this wasn’t just any tourist.

“The thief,” Gaetano said, “is a twelve-year-old boy,known to police. Dysfunctional parents. The social services put him in Care.”

Care, Anwar thought. A dismal word, smug and liberal. The boy was doomed.

“He does petty crime,” Gaetano continued. “Steals purses, wallets,briefcases, anything that looks valuable. Whizzes past on powered rollerblades, snatches and escapes. This man had just taken out his wallet, andt he kid flew past and took it.The man ran—ran—after him and caught him. Kept kicking him, even after he’d knocked him down. Broke his arm and collar-bone and three ribs.”

“Where did this happen?” Anwar asked.

“Just outside, in the Garden. We detained him—” (a simple phrase, Anwar thought, considering what he’d done) “—until you could speak to him. The boy’s in the Royal Sussex County Hospital.”

Anwar, Gaetano, and Olivia were in the Boardroom. She was eating a cake that she’d managed to scoop up in their hasty departure from Frobisher’s. In between mouthfuls, she asked Gaetano, “Were you already watching this man when it happened?”

“Yes. He’d been looking around the Conference Centre.”

“Is that all? You don’t think they’ve already got architects’ plans and computer models?”

“Probably. But this man had the look of a professional. We had a feeling about him.” Gaetano turned to Anwar. “I wish we’d got there before he caught the boy.”

Anwar nodded. “How long can we detain him?” He saw Olivia glance at him, possibly because he’d said We, not You.

“If we invoke the summit, which I’ve done, the local police will let us hold him for twenty-four hours. He’s in there.” Gaetano pointed to the closed door of one of the Boardroom’s adjoining rooms.

“Is he restrained?”

“Of course. Except for his conversation.”

“What do we know about him?”

“We have his papers, and we checked his DNA, fingerprints, and retinas. His name is Richard Carne.”

I used to have a name that sounded like that.

“He’s ex-SAS. No currently known employer. Various jobs in the past, some legal and some not. Unpleasant habits. There’s this thing he does with bread.” Gaetano paused, and added, “And he’s a member of something called the Johnsonian Society. He was carrying the text of a talk he gave in London a couple of days ago.”

Anwar stood up. “Thank you,” he said to Gaetano.“I think I’ll go and see him.”

“And something else: we found two poison implants in his teeth. We’ve removed them. But…”

“Yes,” Anwar said, “there’ll be others. And there isn’t time to locate them all. I must speak to him now.”

“He’ll trip them and kill himself, if the interrogation goes wrong...Look, maybe I should do this, I’ve done it before.”

“No, I’ll do it...Gaetano, does the Pier have a medical centre?”

“No. It has a fully-equipped hospital.”

“Could you please ask one of your people to go there and bring me up a medical trolley with a tray of surgical instruments?”

There was an ease about Richard Carne. An air of insouciance.

The restraints which held him in his chair were not mono-filament, just extruded kevlar, but they’d been expertly tied. He couldn’t move. But he still managed to give the impression of lounging.

He had straw-coloured hair, brushed flamboyantly back. Slightly pouty lips. Pale blue eyes. A large man, with an obvious Special Forces kind of build. His clothes were expensive: a dark bluejacket, sand-coloured slacks and cream shirt, and jaunty two-tone shoes in blue and cream. Even matching blue and cream socks.

“Do you know who I am?” Anwar asked him.

“I know what you are. Only a few like you in the world.”

Anwar did not reply.

“And now she’s got one of you, for the summit. It won’t be enough, not against what they’ll send.”

“What you did was cowardly. That kid was totally out-matched. Why not take on someone who can fight back?”

“Like you? I’d be as outmatched as the kid. And you’d be as cowardly as me. In fact you already are. All you ever do is defeat outmatched opponents.”

Two-nil to him. Anwar pulled up a chair, and sat facing him. For a while he said nothing, a tactic which didn’t even slightly unsettle Carne. Three-nil.

He knew Carne was right. The Dead had it easy. Intelligence did all the hard work, before and after. Before, their work was to identify targets: dictators, oligarchs, criminals, political or religious fanatics. Then The Dead came in, to abduct or disable them. Usually abduct, in which case they were handed over to UN Intelligence. Information or compliance would be tricked or blackmailed out of them, or bullied out of them with threats of lifelong litigation or financial ruin.

The Dead had the most simple and self-contained part of the process, though it was physically impossible for anyone else.The parts before and after were more complex, less clear-cut, and didn’t end. The people who undertook them couldn’t go back into a comfort zone afterwards.

“Forty-love to me, I think,” Carne murmured.

But this time, Anwar would have to do the before and after parts himself. He couldn’t just guard her reactively. He had to identify and locate those who threatened her. And here was one of their minor functionaries. Clever and self-assured, and more experienced at this than Anwar; but there might be a way. When the instruments came. Until then...

“So you’re a member of the Johnsonian Society.”

“Yes."

“So am I.”

“Really?” Carne was mildly, but genuinely, surprised. “I haven’t seen you at any functions.”

“I don’t often get to London, but I’ve been a member for years. I keep all the Society’s newsletters.”

“You’ll have seen my articles, then.”

“Yes, that’s where I remembered your name…What makes you a Johnsonian?”

“Oh, that’s easy. He had an opinion about everything. His own, original opinion.”

“Exactly,” Anwar said, nodding enthusiastically. “Always an original opinion. He was High Church, High Tory, but anti-slavery. Risky, in those times. For a man of his class and profession.”

Carne was now genuinely excited. “Did you hear about my talk the other day? It was called...”

‘Mask: The Nature Of Individual Identity In Postmodern Literature.’ Yes, I saw it advertised in the newsletter. No offence, but I thought it sounded rather pretentious.”

“None taken. I was never really happy about the title.”

“Also,” Anwar continued, “it didn’t sound like the kind of literary criticism Doctor Johnson would have recognised…Ah, here are the things I asked for.”

He turned as Gaetano wheeled in a hospital trolley full of surgical instruments.

“What is it she usually says?” he asked Gaetano.“Leave us. Give us this room.”

Carne was looking at the surgical instruments, almost as dispassionately and appraisingly as Anwar.

“Let’s save time,” Anwar told him. “I’m supposed to ask who you’re working for, and you’re supposed to say nothing. So let’s assume we’ve had that conversation. Now we move to the part where I help you.”

Gaetano had arranged a good selection of laser scalpels on the surgical trolley.

“Never mind these things here. I promise I won’t kill you, and I won’t cause you pain. I do have the necessary surgical skills...”

There were even some antique stainless steel scalpels. All arranged neatly.

“...and before I start using these things, I’ll give you a local anaesthetic. So. No death and no pain. This is what I’m going to do.

“I’ll trap you, permanently, inside your own head. No light, or sound, or touch, or words, or communication of any kind. I’ll give you to yourself. You’ll inhabit yourself, and nothing else.

“How will I do that, Mr. Carne? Your Eyes. Eardrums. Tongue. Hands. Feet. I’ll surgically remove them all. I’ll leave your eyes to last, so you can see everything I’m doing.”

Carne said nothing. His expression hadn’t changed.

“I could leave you in some stinking twitten or catcreep in the Lanes,” Anwar went on, “but I won’t. I’ll leave you near a hospital, where people will find you and care for you. But you’ll never be able to communicate with them. Or with anyone, except yourself.”

Carne spoke at last. “You know, I’ve actually done things like that; but I bet you haven’t. You’ve only read about them.” He smiled. “I must read the same books you do.”

Anwar had thought that would be his ace. He’d remembered it from a biography of Parvin Marek, who’d used the threat very successfully in interrogations. And Carne had just batted it back.

“And you couldn’t do it,” Carne added. “You can keep me for twenty-four hours, then you have to place me in the custody of the local police. They’d probably notice if you’d removed my—what was it?—hands, feet, tongue, eardrums and eyes.”

“Then we’d ship you by VSTOL to Kuala Lumpur and do it there.”

“No you wouldn’t. Even Rafiq wouldn’t sanction it.”

“The Controller-General wouldn’t know.” Anwar didn’t like the ease with which Rafiq’s name rolled off the other man’s tongue.

“Yes he would. Rafiq knows everything. Or you think he does. Actually, about now Rafiq is probably beginning to realize he doesn’t know everything.”

Anwar’s turn not to answer.

“I know what you are,” Carne added conversationally. “Only a few like you in the world.”

“Yes, I heard the first time.”

“Two less, now.”

“What? What did you say?”

Carne smiled but didn’t reply. Still, he hadn’t tripped any poison implants yet.

Desperately, Anwar ramped it up. “There are surgical techniques to restore some of what I’ll do to you. New eyes and eardrums and tongue. Prosthetic hands and feet. But they’re expensive. When the hospital identifies you from your DNA, they’ll check your bank accounts, but the UN will have emptied them.”

Still Carne smiled but said nothing.

Anwar pushed again, inexpertly, trying to amplify the threat but still speaking quietly. “So that leaves your employers, and they won’t want to be identified. For the rest of your life, the whole world will be a darkness the size of the interior of your head.”

The quiet voice was intended to sound menacing, but Carne wasn’t buying it.

“Oh, behave,” he said languidly. “We both know I’ll activate the poison before you get anything useful. Your ham acting threatens to sully the dignity of my passing.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Two less, now. They annihilated Levin. Then Rafiq sent Asika, and they annihilated him too.”

Anwar wanted to cry out, but he didn’t. Not yet.

“Who are they? Where are they? How did they do it?”

“They’re even more subtle and ruthless than Rafiq.They’ve been there since before he was born, and they’ll be there after he dies. They work in long cycles, longer than his lifetime.” His voice was modulated and mocking. “Doctor Johnson used to say that the prospect of imminent death concentrates the mind wonderfully...You’re not very good at this, are you? At what comes before and after the easy bits that you do? Everything I am, I worked for. You, you were just made.”

Anwar moved in a blur to grab the man by his coat. “Who are they? Why did you come here?!”

Carne let out a long breath, and Anwar knew he had finally tripped the poison.

“You wouldn’t believe what they can do. I’m just a minor functionary of theirs. And you’re just a minor functionary of Rafiq. So our lives have both been pointless, but you’re still living yours.”

There was a dark stain spreading over the front of Carne’s trousers: the final effect of the poison, a slackening of his bladder.Urine, which he’d never spilt through any of Anwar’s attempts to scare him, now poured out.

Anwar turned away. The second person I’ve killed. And both of them by mistake.

When he needed to mask his feelings, as he did now, he could reach somewhere inside himself and find the ability to do it. He made his features neutral and static, as if he was a shrouded actor in a formal codified Noh drama. It was a minor piece of stagecraft, like the Idmask he used for Tournaments; but it came internally, and didn’t disguise his features, just covered his feelings. Normally he could hold it for hours, but after what he’d just discovered he calculated it wouldn’t last long; maybe long enough to get him through the next few minutes and into his suite where he could cal Arden Bierce.

The door opened and Anwar stepped out into the Boardroom, followed by a waft of urine. His manner seemed strangely normal.

“Anwar! What did you do to him?”

“Nothing.” The first time she’s used my name. “I threatened him with something, and he said something. Then he tripped his poison implants. Gaetano, I’d like his body kept securely here until the UN come for it.”

“Bodyguard duties,” Gaetano muttered. “I told you to leave the questioning to me.”

“What did he tell you?” Olivia asked.

“Something I need to check first with the UN…And I need permission for a VSTOL to land on the pad at the end of the Pier. They’ll want his body.” Without waiting for her answer, he turned to Gaetano. “I want you to put it around that he’s alive and being held here until the summit finishes. Someone might come for him.”

“What did you threaten him with?” Olivia asked.

He told her.

She stared. “Would you have done that?”

“Of course not. But the threat works.” Just not for me.

“Did...did you think it up?”

“No, Parvin Marek did. Remember Parvin Marek? About ten years ago he…”

“Yes, I know who he was.”

“Is. He’s still out there. And don’t gape like that, it makes you look gormless. Eat a cake or something.”

Somehow, Anwar made it back to his suite. He sent Arden Bierce a report through his wristcom, including word-by-word accounts of his interrogation of Richard Carne and his conversations with Olivia and Gaetano, and waited.

After ten minutes, about the time he estimated it would take her to digest his report, her call came.

His wristcom could project a small image on to the air a few inches in front of it, or a larger high-definition image on to a wall or other convenient flat surface. He chose the wall.

Normally, it would have been good to see her again. Her face was regular and open (unlike Olivia’s, with its sharp small features and changing expressions) and he knew it genuinely reflected what was inside her—including, this time, a look of preoccupation which closely echoed his own.

“Anwar, I...”

“Levin was assigned to find Marek, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. There was a possible lead, but it...”

“And when were you planning to tell me about Levin?”

“Until your call, I had no idea of any connection between his mission and yours.”

He let the silence grow between them.

“I’m sorry. But we don’t have his body. Maybe he’s not dead.”

“Annihilated, Carne said. Like Asika. Did you see Chulo’s body?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

She told him.

“Miles...and Chulo.”

“We don’t know for certain about Miles. His body hasn’t been found.”

“Yes; you said that.” He studied her face. The distress was genuine enough. “But you’d say that if his body had been found. You want me functional. You’re just beginning to see what’s in this mission, aren’t you?”

“Anwar, listen. Whatever did that to Chulo, when it comes for her, do you think you can stop it?”

“Find them, Arden. Find who they are and where they are.”

“You heard what Gaetano said. A handful of people out of millions,connected informally. What does that remind you of?”

“You tell me.”

“The Dead. Moving in and out of the real world, back to a comfort zone where nobody can touch them.”

“You’re wrong. They’re a cell. Like Black Dawn, random and untraceable, but in every other way the opposite of Black Dawn. A cell with trillions. Which doesn’t publicise itself, which plays long and patient, which operates through proxies and cutoffs, and uses corporations and conglomerates and shareholdings and banks and networks of subsidiaries.” The exact opposite of Black Dawn. White Dusk, he named them privately.

“This is bigger than even Rafiq knows.” She was unaccustomed to saying such things, and it showed in her face. “I spoke to him this morning. It’s beginning to worry him.”

“What did he say?”

“He didn’t, I did. But he didn’t argue. An enemy who hasn’t been around for years, and now is. And knows all about us. And when they kill her, it will only be the first move of something larger.”

“I think you meant If, not When.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. “It’s not her, Rafiq doesn’t particularly care about her, but it’s what they do afterwards...” She took a breath, and made her voice louder. “And there’s something else. Rafiq’s concerned you’re having to do what UN Intelligence usually does. You don’t have the experience.”

“Oh, I see. First the Archbishop, now the Controller-General, telling me I’m not good enough.”

“What? No, that’s not what I...”

But Anwar wasn’t listening. “And her guard, Proskar: you’re sure he isn’t Marek?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“But you’ll check again?”

“Of course.”

“He’s Croatian. Fortyish. And those hands.”

“I said, we’ll check again. We already checked, before you even took this mission—the surface resemblance was obvious. But nothing else matches—DNA, fingerprints, retinal scans, dentition, nothing. And his database ID is genuine.”

“But you’ll still...”

“...check again. Yes.”

“Because if he is Marek, tell me and I’ll kill him.” Anwar had never intentionally killed, or offered to kill, anyone. It must be the mask slipping, he could feel it. Dissolving. Corroded by the feelings he’d kept underneath it.

“Well, say something.”

“Anwar, listen. Maybe she was right. Maybe Rafiq should send someone else.”

“You bring in anyone else, I’ll kill them. I’ll come back and kill Rafiq too, right in front of Fallingwater where Marek…” He stopped, horrified. What made me say that? I’ve never said anything like that. “Arden, listen to me! I want this mission, but not for her, she’s appalling. I want it for what she stands for.” It might have been his voice, but it sounded to both of them like rambling.

Embarrassed, she changed the subject. “So why this summit? Why now?”

“It’s not about the summit. The summit is only important because it’s live and public and gives them the perfect stage to make their move for her.”

They both let it hang there for a while, and went on to safer things: when they’d pick up Carne’s body by VSTOL from the Pier, how they’d pretend he was still alive (to see who might come for him), and how they’d fake his death later. Fake death was easy, real death wasn’t. When Anwar joined the Consultancy, they faked his passing as thoroughly as they always did. The UN databases thrummed with his exhaustively-documented death from a virulent strain of flu. They sometimes did car/plane/boat accidents, but that involved corroborating wreckage: not impossible, but more troublesome. His new identity, later, was slipped into the world’s electronic landscape as if it had always been there.

Carne was genuinely dead, but they’d still have to fake it. After they did all the things they needed to do with his body.

“Will you be aboard the VSTOL?”

“No.I need to stay here and brief Rafiq on what Carne told you.”

She went to say something else, then cut the connection. Anwar stared for a while at the empty projected rectangle on the wall. His mask, now he was alone, collapsed.

Arden Bierce replayed Anwar’s report and started making notes. Like Anwar, she worked quietly and reflectively, and worked best on her own.

She hadn’t looked at Anwar’s earlier files, when he was Rashad Khan, for some time. She did now. Most of them she already knew well, but she found something she’d almost forgotten, tucked away in a subfile: The Story of Arnold the Wart. It was Anwar’s (then Rashad’s) entry for a short story competition at his school, written at the age of twelve.

Hubert had a large wart on his head. It was growing larger every day. Hubert grew attached to it, in every sense of the word, and after living with it for a while he decided to give it a name. He called it Arnold.

Hubert and Arnold went through life comfortably together, but Arnold grew bigger and bigger. Eventually he got so big that Hubert became a wart on Arnold, and Arnold’s friends kept saying to him “Arnold, why don’t you cut off that ugly wart?” So he did.

Rashad’s teachers told him that the Arnold story was cold and careless and brutal. It needed more work, particularly on Arnold’s and Hubert’s relationship to each other and their social interaction with their peer groups. Rashad went away and thought about it, then came back with a new ending.

...Arnold’s friends kept saying to him “Arnold, why don’t you cut off that ugly wart?” So he did, and they both died.

Not only did the story not win the competition, but it led—after a series of worried meetings with educational psychologists—to the school principal asking for a conference with Rashad’s parents. The outcome was inconclusive.

The principal referred to Rashad’s well-known skill with immersion holgrams. Indeed, Rashad had many impressive qualities, but (his parents sensed the “but” coming) the holograms often showed a kind of quiet disrespect for authority figures. They also showed a compulsive curiosity about how things worked and what was hidden inside them—the tension between containers and contents, surface and substance. None of these were in themselves bad things, but they gave him a quality of apartness. A quality further emphasised by the Arnold story. There wasn’t just a quietly cruel humour hiding in there, there was a private dread of relationships and commitment: the idea that getting close to another person could kill you.

She pondered Anwar’s exact, word-for-word report on his interrogation of Richard Carne, and remembered Annihilate. I used that word myself, in the villa. Asika was annihilated, and so was Levin. Both of them, long gone.

And she remembered what she’d been about to ask him before she’d cut the connection: would he really have done those things to Carne? She knew what he’d told Olivia when she asked the same thing—he’d included a verbatim report on that conversation, too—and knew that if she, Arden, was to ask him, he’d simply have referred her to that answer. She’d have to settle for that. But she remembered his outburst just now, and thought, What is this mission doing to him?

Dissolution. Corrosion. Collapse.

Anwar snapped his wristcom shut. The empty projected rectangle faded from the wall. Something was going to happen, here, live and in public, in two weeks. Whatever they would send,it wouldn’t be some Meat slab. It wouldn’t be just another out matched opponent. It would be whatever killed Levin and Asika. Only about thirty people in the world knew what he was, and eighteen of them were others like him. Sixteen now. How can they make things that kill Consultants? Who are they? How can Rafiq not know about them? Am I out of my league? Is Rafiq out of his?

For the first time he actually feared for his own life, never mind hers. No, he did mind hers. Olivia was offensive, but this was his mission. Very offensive, but this was still his mission. Monumentally offensive, so that he could almost imagine killing her himself, but he wouldn’t let them kill her, whoever they were. Because of what she stood for. Bigots multiplied everywhere and made the world ugly. Only a few people stood for things which made it less ugly: Rafiq, certainly, and maybe her, at least publicly, no matter how offensive she was privately.

So this was still his mission. The one he was made for. But his lifelong comfort zone was gradually, detail by detail, collapsing.

A VSTOL landed on the pad at the end of the Pier. For the first time, Anwar thought, a VSTOL comes without Arden. Another detail, changed. It contained people from UN Intelligence. Also some doctors, in case any one was watching. Carne’s body was stretchered aboard, an IV bag attached to his arm, busily and uselessly pumping fluid into a dead man.

Anwar watched the VSTOL lift off silently and flicker into the dusk, then he returned to his suite. He walked out onto the balcony, and for the second time saw the sun setting over the Cathedral complex. September was about to become October, with the summit only two weeks away. He cried out for Asika, and for his friend Levin.

A floor above, Olivia heard him. She too was crying, but silently, and for a reason of her own. It was a quite specific reason, almost a detail, but if she told Anwar now it would change everything. She would tell him after the summit, if they were both alive then.