Evensong

by Love, John

  “It looks real enough to me,” said Gaetano. “You heard their eleventh demand.”

  “She’ll refuse. And when she does, they won’t move again until the summit. This was just a try-on. If she really did stop the summit it would be less convenient for them, because she’d have to be killed later. Their preferred option is to kill her at the summit.” Publicly, in a way that gives history a nudge.

  One of Olivia’s screens had a CCTV replay of the kidnappers stepping into the Cathedral last night and announcing themselves. Anwar studied them. Assessed their height, size, movement. Not the real thing. Two weeks before the summit is too early. And those five are not good enough. A grade or two below Meatslabs, nothing special. Except that he sensed they were carrying something inside them. He wished he could go there and see them face to face. He’d know what it was.

  Rani Desai had gone quickly to Rochester by VSTOL, and had taken charge of negotiations and operational matters. By about number three on Jones’ list she was speaking to him not from London but from an operations vehicle in the Cathedral precincts.

  She had Special Forces in position around the Cathedral, but she wouldn’t send them in unless negotiations failed. And, before number eleven was announced, negotiations had been going well, even despite the Quakers. Now all that was changed.

  On her own set of screens, Rani Desai was watching. Body heat scanners picked out the congregation and the kidnappers. There were three figures standing separately at the front of the Nave by the altar (one of them Taber?), and others moving among the congregation and choir. She didn’t know how many there were. She guessed five or six, maybe more; five, said her analysts, who had studied the body language of all those in the Nave, as revealed by the scanners, and had noted that five of them carried themselves differently.

  Other scanners confirmed the location of the explosive devices. Sometimes you could deep-scan them, disable them remotely with motive beams, but their casings were impenetrable and they had beam-scramblers. They really were military ordnance.

  Yet more scanners got snatches of conversation from the hostages. Before number eleven their relations with the kidnappers had not been particularly unfriendly, but now conversation had all but ceased. Would Jones kill them all if the Archbishop didn’t acquiesce? Or was he, as she suspected, out of his depth? The conclusion was still the same for Rani Desai: go in only if gunshots were heard.

  There was a continuing commotion outside the Cathedral: helicopters and VSTOLs, operations vehicles gunning their engines, figures striding back and forth across College Yard and Boley Hill, under the spreading trees. Jones and the others watched them calmly.

  “What are those trees?” Jones asked Taber.

  “Magnolias. And the big one’s a Catalpa—American Indian Bean Tree. It’s more than two hundred years old...I met her once, you know. Olivia del Sarto. She came here as our guest, at an Evensong service like tonight’s, five years ago when she became Archbishop. She won’t give in.”

  “You know her?”

  “No, I just met her that one time. But that was enough. She won’t give in.”

  “Then, as you said, things will get serious.”

  Rani Desai said, “Archbishop, their leader wants to speak to you.”

  “Is this being broadcast?”

  “No, it’s a secure link. Only him and you.”

  “Put him on.”

  Jones appeared on one of the screens in the Boardroom. Now that number eleven was known, he was in no mood to waste time. “You know what we want.”

  “Yes. And you can’t have it.”

  “Unless you comply,” he said, “we’ll execute them.”

  “I won’t comply, and you won’t execute them.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course we’ll execute them.”

  “No,” Olivia replied, “you won’t. Not execute. You’ll murder them. And I won’t comply. The summit will save more lives than you can take. So, murder or slaughter or kill or whatever, but don’t call it Execute. Don’t give yourself a fake judicial authority. You’ll murder them. So No, I’ll decline your invitation. And Fuck You.”

  She cut the connection, and the screen died, then relit with Rani Desai.She was dark-hairedand well-groomed, a slightly older and plumper version of Arden Bierce.

  “That wasn’t smart,” she hissed at Olivia.

  “Look, I know you’ve been trying to handle this all night, but—”

  “No, I meant it wasn’t smart. The summit isn’t yours to proceed with or call off. It’s the Government’s.”

  “And the UN’s.”

  “Yes, and the UN’s. But—”

  “If the kidnappers were serious about getting the summit called off, they wouldn’t go to minor players like you and me, or even to your Government, they’d go to Rafiq. He’s the real authority. He could switch venues if he wanted. It wouldn’t be ideal,” she glanced at Anwar as she said this, “not at short notice, but Rafiq could do it. Except, of course, that he never would. They know the summit’s never going to be called off, and you know they aren’t going to murder anyone if the summit proceeds. At least,” another glance at Anwar, “not anyone in Rochester Cathedral. It’s all a performance.” She killed the screen, and swiveled to face Anwar. “So what’s your problem?”

  “Most of it will keep for later...But you’re right, this is a UN matter. Rafiq would send in someone like me, it’s exactly that kind of mission. But the Government would have to ask him.”

  “What, and have one of The Dead running around Rochester Cathedral? I don’t think so.” She smiled at him; it was like a rat baring its teeth. “The thing about Governments asking Rafiq for help is that he usually succeeds, and then they owe him, and his prices are high.” When Anwar didn’t press the point—she’d expected he wouldn’t—she went on. “This drip-feed leading up to the last demand. They wanted it to break now, when the whole country’s woken up. But why didn’t they demand more money?”

  “You know why,” said Anwar, with a trace of impatience. “To get it to proceed amicably through the night. To get to where we are now. So you mustn’t—”

  “I have no intention of complying. You heard me.”

  “Yes. It’s better that you don’t, because then they’ll come for you at the summit. If you did comply, they’d still come for you, but we wouldn’t know where or when. And I don’t intend on living here indefinitely.”

  She looked up at him sharply; one of the occasions when she actually seemed to notice him.

  From one of the screens, showing the exterior of Rochester Cathedral, came the sound of gunfire.

  “The Archbishop’s refused number eleven,” Jones told Taber, “as we expected. So we have our orders.” He put down his rifle and drew a sidearm. He spoke a few words in his wristcom to Rani Desai, snapped it shut, and smiled ruefully. “You’re a good man, Dean Taber,and a perceptive one. I wish I’d known you better.” When he and his four companions shot themselves, they made no formal leave-taking of each other. They’d probably done that before they even entered the Cathedral. It must always have seemed inevitable to them.

  “Time for us to die,” Jones had told Rani Desai, in his final call to her. “You’ll hear our five gunshots. If you trust me, send in your people. The hostages are safe and the bombs are fake.”

  Rani Desai ordered the Special Forces to go in the moment she heard the first shots. They found the hostages safe and unharmed, as Jones had promised, and the kidnappers all dead. Subsequent checks confirmed what Rani Desai had figured out. They were mercenaries—not in Richard Carne’s league, but like him they had no known current employers. They all had terminal illnesses. That’s what they were carrying, Anwar thought when it came out later.

  Also as Jones had promised, the bombs at the Cathedral entrances and windows were fake: casings only, with nothing inside them. The sensors on the floor, walls and ceiling were all genuine and active, so their operation would be detected, but the explosive devices weren’t. They were ju
st empty containers.

  The congregation and choir and Dean Taber were all physically unhurt, but traumatized. Even at the end, after the announcement of number eleven, they couldn’t bring themselves to hate Jones and the others. They were grief-stricken, not at having been held hostage, but at having to watch five people who they didn’t hate and in some ways had grown to like, putting pistols to their heads.

  As the wall of screens relit, Arban Proskar burst into the Boardroom. Burst awkwardly, because his left shoulder and collarbone were still heavily strapped. Anwar again noted the hands, broad and long-fingered.

  He was breathless. “We’ve taken another one. Like Richard Carne. We think he was checking whether Carne was still here, after we put out the story that we were holding him. This one’s called Taylor Hines. Similar CV to Carne. He’s trussed up in a private room in the hospital. Says he wants to see you.”

  “I’m a little busy,” Olivia snapped, as one of her staff pointed to a screen where Rani Desai’s image had reappeared.

  “No,” Proskar was looking at Anwar, “you.”

  Taylor Hines looked more formidable than Carne, though he’d let them take him easily. As if it didn’t matter. He was tall, dark-haired, and sinewy. Slim to the point of cadaverousness. His thin face, over whose bones the skin was almost shrinkwrapped, radiated the same ease and insouciance as Carne. Even manacled and chained in a hospital bed, he still looked like he was lounging.

  “Another one like Richard Carne,” Anwar muttered to himself, but Hines heard.

  “Yes, Richard was another one like me.”

  Anwar noted Was.

  “And,” Hines went on, “the answer is No. I won’t tell you who I’m working for, where they are, or how they’ll kill her.”

  Physically, Taylor Hines wasn’t like Carne at all. There was no fleshiness, just sinew. He was all sinew. His shirt was tightly buttoned up to the top, as if to conceal his thin lizard-like throat. But even so, there was a gap between his throat and the shirt. A gap which, when he spoke, opened and closed like a second mouth.

  “Especially not how they’ll kill her, though you wouldn’t believe it if I did...And don’t,” he drawled, “try that thing about disabling all my senses, one by one, and leaving the eyes till last. You don’t have time, and you wouldn’t do it anyway. Even Marek didn’t actually do it.”

  How the hell did he know about that? thought Anwar, without bothering to ask or show any reaction. Not that Hines was particularly looking for a reaction.

  Anwar studied him. They both knew he’d be tripping a poison implant soon. His employers had sent him here to die, merely for tactical reasons: not to find out about Carne, but probably just to create another level of uncertainty. There was nothing of value he could learn. Not now. Hines really was one of the dead.

  “My employers are still perfecting body enhancements. You’ll see when your people do the usual autopsy on me, as they’ve probably already done on Richard. They don’t do enhancements as clever as yours. Not yet.”

  “What…”

  “But they’re unbelievably challenging. They do other things much better.”

  He tripped the poison. Anwar looked away.

  3

  Back in his suite, Anwar called Arden Bierce. He gave her another verbatim report of another interrogation, and made arrangements for another body to be taken at night by another VSTOL from Brighton to Kuala Lumpur. Then he asked her about Carne’s autopsy.

  “Yes,” she said, “it revealed some physical enhancements. But they’re crude; just bits of metal and circuitry and servo-mechanisms. Nothing organic. Hines will probably be the same. Your enhancements are far more sophisticated.”

  Anwar nodded, remembering. They do other things much better.

  That was the housekeeping part of their conversation, and was concluded satisfactorily. The rest of it was more difficult.

  “And Proskar...” he began.

  “No,” said Arden Bierce yet again, “he isn’t Marek. I know, he’s Croatian, he’s the right build, he’s the right age, and...”

  “He’s got those hands.”

  “Anwar, he isn’t.”

  Anwar looked away. Proskar had done nothing remotely questionable, and Gaetano had listed him as one of those to be trusted. But all that would be true if he really was Marek. Better kill him anyway? Fortunately, Anwar managed to dismiss that thought without showing on his face the surprise it caused him. Where did that come from? What’s this mission doing to me?

  ArdenBierceclearedherthroat.“Anwar...Rafiqwantsyou back at Kuala Lumpur.”

  “I told you before, I’m not leaving.”

  “I remember what you told me before.”

  “I don’t know what made me say those things, Arden...”

  “Neither do I.”

  “...but I won’t leave. I mean it. I will not give up on this mission!”

  “He’s not taking you off the mission.You have my word, and his. He wants to talk face to face about who’s behind this.”

  “Face to face?”

  “Imagine,” she went on, “I’ve just stepped out of a VSTOL on your lawn, carrying one of his letters. You’ll be back in Brighton by tomorrow morning.”

  “Did you get that car I ordered?” “How can you think of that now?”

  “Because I’ll need it now. It is where I wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. In the underground lockup garage in Regency Square. I made all the arrangements, just like you said. I can’t believe what it cost.”

  “I’m good for it. If Rafiq wants to see me I’ll drive to the airfield. You can send a VSTOL there.”

  “Why not just...”

  “No. Not the one you send for Hines’ body. Send me one of my own. You have plenty.”

  “It’ll be at the airfield on the Downs in ninety minutes. And Anwar: I’ll be with Rafiq when you arrive. You won’t be alone.”

  Anwar left his suite and walked up to the floor above. Her floor. Proskar was lounging on a sofa—stone white, the colour of those at Fallingwater, but more angular—just outside the door leading to her section of the floor. Anwar nodded politely, and Proskar, politely but awkwardly. Anwar did not go in, however. He walked past her door to Gaetano’s office.

  “Rafiq’s ordered me back to Kuala Lumpur,” he said. He’d deliberately phrased it like that so he could assess Gaetano’s reaction, and he was gratified to see an initial approval replaced immediately by concern, both of them genuine.

  “Rafiq’s standing you down? Why?”

  Anwar assessed his body language: facial muscles, voice inflexions, hand movements, moisture on skin. Gaetano’s initial approval stemmed from his first reluctance to have Anwar there at all, but the concern which replaced it came from his decision to work properly with Anwar. All the things which are right in him are often wrong in her when I look for them.

  “No, he’s not standing me down. I understand he has some new information about who’s trying to kill her, and he wants to talk it through face to face.”

  “Face to face?”

  “Yes, he prefers face to face meetings. If he’s got something of substance.”

  Gaetano’s relief was as genuine as his earlier reactions. “It’s about time we had something of substance. Both of us.”

  “I’ll be back by tomorrow morning.”

  “Then you must be getting one of Rafiq’s VSTOLs.”

  “Yes. Not the one that’s coming for Hines. A car,” he said carefully,“is taking me to the airfield on the Downs, where the VSTOL will pick me up.” Something told him not to say what car, or where. He might need it later, if everything went wrong and he had to get her away.

  Anwar took the maglev and walked out of Gateway alone, across Marine Parade and into Regency Square. Obvious symbolism, but it was now October. Everything seemed a little colder and greyer.

  Regency Square had a small Green at its centre, with eighteenth-century town houses overlooking it. They were quite grand houses, three or four sto
ries, with black wrought-iron balconies and railings. Some had external spiral staircases.

  There was an underground car park on the Green, with private lock-up garages. He went down into it and saw the car he had ordered. It was in one of the private lockups, behind bars like a beast in a cage.

  It was a replica Shelby Cobra. Not with the original 427 cubic inch petrol engine, of course, but four computer-synchronised electric motors, one for each wheel, charged by a jet turbine. Twelve hundred bhp (three hundred per motor) and four wheel drive. Its paint was simple matt black, not one of the fashionable kinetic or pseudoliving surfaces; that would have been wrong for a Cobra.

  But otherwise, it was thoroughly modern. The jet turbine was variable-cycle for optimum power and fuel efficiency. It took air through the car’s front grille, mixed it with biomass-derived jatropha oil fuel, and used the resulting controlled explosion as a constant charge to the four electric motors. It didn’t need storage batteries. The body was ultra lightweight ceramics and plastics, so there was a huge power-to-weight ratio. It would easily out-accelerate and out corner the original Shelby Cobra which raced at le Mans in the early 1960s—and most current cars too.

  Modern high-performance cars were stunningly beautiful, almost unearthly, and filled with similar technology to that of the Cobra, but the Cobra was different. Although its shape was designed over a century ago, it had a quality of timelessness. It was simultaneously ugly and beautiful. Squat, muscular, and brutish, with a low crouching stance and hugely flared wheel-arches. The shape of the grille, like a snarling mouth, made it look like it was saying Fuck You to the world. A genuine original, like the ginger cat.

  These days, replicas were a strong subculture choice. Some people, like Anwar, preferred them to their modern rivals, for many different lifestyle reasons. For Anwar, it was the tension between outside and inside: old on the surface, brilliant and cutting-edge underneath.