by Love, John
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.