Evensong (13 page)

“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.