Evensong

by Love, John

  He inserted a finger in the orifice concealed in its flank. After checking his DNA it unlocked for him. Arden Bierce had dealt with its programming and specification and delivery with her usual precision. He sat in it and allowed himself a moment to take it in. Considering what it had cost, the interior was quite spartan. Almost industrial, with lots of exposed oiled metal. Two things were very close to his heart, and he knew it was impossible they could ever come together, unless there really were infinite alternate universes: Doctor Johnson and the Shelby Cobra. He tried to imagine the former, riding as a fractious and querulous passenger in the latter.

  The car didn’t have the wet-throated roar of the 1960s V8 original. When he told it to start and it recognized his voice (another piece of Arden Bierce’s attention to detail) the four electric motors merely hummed. Microseconds later the jet turbine fired up, but that too was almost silent: a soft, throbbing whine.

  The drive from here to the airfield would take a matter of minutes: a few miles of countryside, past the spectacular gash in the Downs known as Devil’s Dyke. (He’d noticed it on the drive from the airfield to Brighton when he’d first arrived, and following his habit of bestowing private nicknames, he’d called it Lucifer’s Lesbian.) At the airfield they’d lock the car away somewhere securely (Arden Bierce again) and the VSTOL would probably already be waiting, hovering politely a couple of inches above the ground.

  But it wouldn’t have arrived just yet. It was about 6,500 miles from Kuala Lumpur to Brighton: a flight of less than ninety minutes, including acceleration and landing, and it was nearly an hour ago that Arden Bierce had told him she’d send it. So he sat back in the Cobra smelling the leather and oil and metal of its interior, listening to the thrumming of 2060s technology inside its 1960s body.

  Time, he thought, a few minutes later. He drove the Cobra—it fitted him as well, and felt as right, as one of his expensive tailored suits—out of the underground car park, out of Regency Square, and out of Brighton; towards the airfield, and Kuala Lumpur, and Rafiq.

  SEVEN: OCTOBER 1 - 6, 2060

  1

  “This is still your mission,” Rafiq told Anwar. “My concern is the summit, not her. And no, I’m not sending others, it’d make us look weak and she isn’t important enough. So when we’re through here, you should go back to her. You’re all she’s got.”

  Anwar picked up and echoed Rafiq’s unusually direct tone. “And if I’m killed and she’s killed, it’s only a below-average Consultant and an Archbishop and a UN summit; the first two aren’t crippling losses, and there will always be more summits. If their target was you or Secretary-General Zaitsev, it might be different. But neither of you are their targets. Not this time.”

  “Yes, I know what Gaetano told you about this being part of something bigger. We’ll come to that. I said I’m not taking you off this mission, and I’m not. But frankly I wish you’d take yourself off it. Some of the others would do better.”

  A word like Franklyisn’t one you use much, even when you’re faking. “Then why didn’t you pick them? At least seven or eight of the other eighteen score higher than me.”

  “Sixteen,” Arden Bierce corrected him.

  Before Anwar could reply, Rafiq’s wristcom buzzed. “Excuse me,” he murmured.

  The Cobra had taken Anwar north out of Brighton, past Devil’s Dyke, to the small airfield on the Downs where the VSTOL was waiting. The Cobra’s speed was merely tremendous, but the VSTOL’s was unearthly, covering 6,500 miles in well under ninety minutes with no apparent effort. It did something with ions that made air thinner in front than behind, pulling it into a frictionless vacuum perpetually dancing in front of it. And its power plant used low/medium-temperature superconductors, a technology which when perfected would be close to perpetual motion. Its design, and what powered it, were the product and property of UNEX. Rafiq had been investing in such things for years, to the unease of the UN’s major members.

  Arden Bierce was waiting for him on the lawn in front of Fallingwater. He felt a huge relief on seeing her; it seemed like he’d been around Olivia for weeks, not just a couple of days. But from the moment he entered Rafiq’s office, Anwar had been struck by his change of manner. Such directness was almost unheard-of for Rafiq; coming from anyone else it would have seemed like a sign of strain.

  Rafiq was still speaking into his wristcom. Anwar could have ramped up his senses to hear the other half of the conversation, but didn’t, out of courtesy. It wasn’t necessary anyway.

  “No, Mr. Secretary-General, I won’t budge. UNESCO has enjoyed a comfort zone, on public money, for too long. What they do is important but they’ll do it on my terms, and in accordance with my performance goals.” Rafiq paused, listening to Zaitsev’s reply, then laughed; not his usual quiet laugh, but something louder and more unpleasant. “Vote of no confidence? Your predecessors tried that and failed. So will you.”

  He flicked his wristcom shut and turned back to Anwar, switching attention instantly; there was no grimace or shrug or other unspoken comment on the last call.

  Anwar, too, resumed instantly. “You said she isn’t important. That she’s not your concern.”

  “I meant it, Anwar; she’s appalling. You wouldn’t believe how she negotiated with me for the venue.”

  “Yes I would. I know what she’s like,” Anwar said. “But what she stands for is your concern. If it isn’t, it ought to be.”

  “Alright, then I didn’t mean it. It was just said for effect. Don’t take it at face value.”

  “I’d be ill-advised, now,” Anwar replied, “to take anything you say at face value.”

  “You mean about your mission and Levin’s being connected? I genuinely didn’t know when I assigned you. I know now, but I didn’t then.”

  Genuinely. Like Frankly. If you’re adding words like that to your vocabulary, and if you need to use them with people like me rather than the media, you’re in trouble.

  Rafiq’s skill at working people close-up meant he usually got more from a face to face meeting than they did. And he had called for this meeting, immediately after studying Anwar’s reports; to review, he said, the identity of those who’d killed Asika and Levin and apparently threatened Olivia. But Anwar sensed that Rafiq wasn’t scanning him as closely as usual; and he’d made unguarded remarks, and used words loosely.

  It was unthinkable that Rafiq, of all people, could be pre-occupied: Rafiq, whose reputation was that he’d never give whoever was in front of him anything less than his undivided attention, no matter what other things concerned him at the time. Maybe UNESCO is more serious than he’s letting on. No, he has situations like that every day. It’s something else. Miles was preoccupied with something too, the last time I saw him alive, here at Fallingwater.

  “They’re like you,” Rafiq said suddenly. “Like The Dead— they have their real identity, and their identity in the world. They come into the world and go back out of it. Like you, in and out. I could be one of them. Or Arden, or Zaitsev. Or Gaetano. Everyone you know, you could re-interpret all they’ve said and done as being one of them.”

  Even his syntax isn’t quite as polished as usual. “I know you could be one of them. You’d be perfect. The damage you could do before anyone found you out...And no,” Anwar’s voice hardened, “they’re not like The Dead. Arden made that mistake. They’re more like Black Dawn. A cell, but with trillions and with a network of corporations and subsidiaries and proxies and cutouts. You must have reached that conclusion yourself.”

  Rafiq gazed closely at Anwar. Anwar held his gaze.

  “A play within a play, Anwar. Shift the world-picture just one notch, and there’s a parallel world. Theirs.”

  He noticed Rafiq had started calling him by his first name.

  He’d never done it before. And he is preoccupied. He’s trying to cover it up by being louder and less formal and more direct.

  Along one wall of Rafiq’s office was a floor-to-ceiling array of screens, carrying news and current affairs
feeds. The sound was muted, but they listened to it for a couple of minutes, in preference to the silence which had started to lengthen between them. Rochester had sparked off a debate about the New Anglicans: whether they should be hosting the summit, whether they were getting above themselves, whether they should be more of a Church and less of a corporation or a political movement. But the New Anglicans were already countering it; their PR machine was as formidable as the rest of their organisation, and Olivia’s five years had given them huge popular support. Rochester might put them on the back foot for a moment, but no more.

  “Conventional political parties,” said Rafiq, “detest fundamentalists, but they won’t confront them openly. The New Anglicans will, and do—Olivia saw that niche in the market. So maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe it isn’t the New Anglicans’ founders. Maybe this is all a double or triple bluff, and it’s really the fundamentalists. What do you think?”

  “No,” Anwar said. “They don’t have the imagination, or the resources. She was telling the truth about that, at least.”

  “And we’d know,” Arden Bierce added. “We have people there.”

  “Very well,” Rafiq said. “Then the working hypothesis is the founders. In my briefing I said they don’t like her because she’s taken the Church away from them. She and Gaetano told you that too. And,” he went on, as Anwar started to reply, “I know, not the Bilderbergers and the rest, but a cell operating through them indirectly. Shall we call them The Cell? We can’t keep referring to them as the ones who set up the New Anglicans, are threatening Olivia, and killed Asika and Levin.”

  “Yes, The Cell is fine.” I prefer White Dusk, but I don’t share my private nicknames.

  “Then let’s consider what she told you, or told Gaetano to tell you. That line about 0.5 percent owning 40 percent is hardly new. Here’s another one: over half of the hundred biggest economies in the world aren’t even countries—they’re corporate bodies.”

  “So?”

  “So the 0.5 percent aren’t the same people. There’s been an explosion of individual wealth, and corporate wealth: Russia, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia. And others, undercutting China and India in costs—just as China and India once undercut America and Europe and Japan, even though those three are still very wealthy. So if there’s a cell, the members might come from further afield than the original founders. And if the members have changed, the motives have changed. Is that what she meant?”

  “Possibly,” Anwar said. “But there’s more. Something she isn’t telling me. Something quite specific. Almost a detail, but it could blow everything else away.”

  Rafiq looked at him curiously for a moment, then said, “Maybe. But since you don’t presently know what it is, we can’t process it. In the meantime, let’s stay with who they are.”

  “No,” said Anwar. “Forget who they are and focus on where they are.”

  “Intelligence haven’t found them yet.”

  “So blitz it. Throw masses of stuff against the wall. Check all the known mercenaries and ex-Special Forces with profiles like Carne and Hines, and question them until you...”

  “Find who recruited them?” said Arden Bierce. “We’ve already questioned dozens. So far we’ve found five who were recruited like Carne and Hines—indirectly, through multiple layers and proxies.”

  This is new. “And was your questioning any better than mine?”

  She paused. “I’m sorry, Anwar. I know Miles was your friend. They said he’d been annihilated, and when Chulo was sent to find him, he was annihilated too. They even used similar phrases: ‘What our employers did to Asika. And what they did to Levin, which was worse. And Levin’s face, when he realised he couldn’t defend himself. There wasn’t enough left of him to make into an exhibit like the one they’d made of Asika.’”

  Anwar was silent for a few moments, then asked carefully, “Are they still alive?”

  “No. They all died like Carne and Hines. Autopsies showed the same crude enhancements as Carne. Nothing like yours, and even less like whatever killed Levin and Asika. And, before you ask, we’re tracing back the manufacture of the enhancements.”

  “That’s an obvious direction, so they’ll throw all their countermeasures into it.”

  “Then try another direction,” Rafiq said. “How do you think Hines knew about your questioning of Carne?”

  “One of Olivia’s people? Not all of them are loyal.”

  “How did he know it in such detail?”

  “Microbot listeners?” As soon as he said it, and even before he saw Rafiq smile derisively—another unusual mannerism, for him—Anwar knew it was a lame answer. Microbot listeners were pseudo-insects, devices used regularly by the UN, by governments, and by large corporate bodies like the New Anglicans. They were known technology, and there were reliable ways of detecting and neutralising them.

  “Fine, not microbots,” Anwar went on hurriedly. “A listener of some kind, but different. That’s something you can work on.”

  “Oh, you think? Well, we’d better do that. Arden, will you make a note?” Anwar was startled. Of all the weapons in Rafiq’s considerable arsenal, Anwar had never heard him resort to sarcasm.

  “We’ve already found them,” Arden explained quietly. “Nanobot implants, molecule-sized, located in the inner ear. Able to listen and transmit. Carne had one; so did the five we questioned. They’re quite sophisticated devices.”

  “But if they don’t do enhancements very well...”

  “Not organic enhancements, like yours. It doesn’t mean they don’t do other things very well.”

  Hines said that, or something like it. But it isn’t what he meant. “Can you trace them back?”

  “Not easily. Molecules don’t have serial numbers.”

  “Those other enhancements—the ones you found in Carne...”

  “Yes, we’ve started tracing them. There were smaller and smaller components and sub-assemblies, subcontracted downwards and downwards, until the people who finally made them were tiny one-or two-person machine shops, and the components they made were so small they had no idea what they were; and when we worked back upwards there were proxies and dead-ends and dummy corporations. We’ve been doing that,” she added, “since I got your account of Hines’ questioning.”

  Anwar stayed silent. He’d started thinking again of Levin.

  “Does nothing else occur to you?” Rafiq asked him.

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Can’t you do better than that?”

  Levin used to say things like that, but mockingly. Not in that tone. “Why don’t you just tell me what should have occurred to me?”

  “How about what they’ve done? I don’t mean about killing Consultants and threatening Archbishops, I mean what they’ve done strategically. They set up the New Anglican Church in 2025 and ran it, indirectly, through its founders. They work in long cycles and they aren’t part of the usual landscape. So we must find what pattern they’re working to, and then go back over years and search for what fits it. For what else they’ve done.”

  “Isn’t that more your territory than mine?”

  “Yes, but I thought you might have suggested we research it... And their network of corporations and proxies and financial holdings and subcontracting, we must unravel it and trace it back. That’s my territory too. But whatever they’re sending for her, whether it’s still on its way or already at Brighton: that’s your territory.”

  “I know.”

  “And are you sure nothing else occurs to you?”

  “If it does, I’ll call you. From Brighton.”

  Rafiq’s voice softened. “Remember, Anwar. They’ve got something that kills Consultants. Carne’s enhancements were crude, but they would be. If they had an advanced version of you, they wouldn’t let us see it. You do realize that, don’t you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Because Arden believes it was a single opponent that did that to Chulo. Probably to Miles too. Whoever the
y are, if they have something that can do that...I know, I’m repeating myself, but I offered you help or a way out and you won’t take either. So I think we’re done here.” And I feel you’re going to your death. I don’t think I’ll see you again.

  They stood and shook hands.

  Anwar saw Rafiq’s mouth open to speak, and could tell from its shape that the back of his tongue was against the roof of his mouth, about to form the hard G in Good Luck. He didn’t say it. Instead he said, “I’ll see you again, when all this is finished.”

  “I’ll walk back to the VSTOL with you,” Arden said.

  “That extraordinary car...” she began, as they walked across the parkland in front of Fallingwater.

  “You can only get them in England, from a specialist company in Surrey. I’ve always wanted a Cobra. Perhaps, when this mission is over, I’ll have it shipped back here.”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  “Rafiq didn’t seem like his usual self.”

  “He isn’t,” she said, and, “Anwar, if you want, we could...”

  “Don’t, Arden, don’t finish what you were going to say.”

  “You’re involved elsewhere, aren’t you?”

  “No!” he said, too loudly.

  When they reached the VSTOL, which was hovering politely a couple of inches above the lawn where a marquee had stood ten years ago, he added, “Really, I’m not. She’s poison. Whatever she stands for publicly, inside she’s poison.”

  “Protesting too much? Be careful, Anwar. Not just of what they send to kill her, but of her.”

  She shook his hand, and remained holding it for a moment. A door melted open in the VSTOL’s silvered flank. He stepped inside, and it melted shut behind him. The VSTOL lifted silently into the Kuala Lumpur night. It was 10:10 p.m. local time, on October 1.

  “He was a waste of time,” Rafiq told Arden, later. “He gave me nothing. Why didn’t he mention the link with Marek? I gave him at least three opportunities, and he missed them all.”