Evensong

by Love, John

  “Then why,” Gaetano asked, “put that on her bed?”

  “Because it might remind her of something I said in Brighton, just before I showed her that page in my book and watched her read those lines.”

  “You’ve torn a page out of a book for her?”

  “Yes.”

  When he’d recovered from what seemed like genuine surprise, Gaetano said, “I’ll warn you again, don’t imagine things she didn’t intend. She’s no good at relationships.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “So what did you say to her in Brighton?”

  “Something about hating people less and understanding them more. It’s one of the few times she’s actually noticed me.”

  “Is that where she got this idea for an Outreach Foundation?”

  “Yes. I was talking about how she treats her political and religious enemies, but she widened it into building relationships...Relax, I don’t mean those kinds of relationships, and I don’t mean with me.” He gave Gaetano only her fallback position; not her primary one, which he’d laughed into nonexistence. “Relationships generally. She said she wants to start noticing people and valuing them. God knows, I had no idea that what I said would lead to that.”

  “I don’t like it. If you harm her...”

  “I know. You said all that before. I haven’t forgotten.”

  3

  Early evening in Brighton was early morning in Kuala Lumpur; the beginning of the following day. Arden Bierce had been working through the night.

  She’d been reading and re-reading transcripts: of Anwar’s questioning of Carne and Hines, of her own questioning of the five others like Carne and Hines, of Anwar’s conversations with Olivia and Gaetano, and of her report to Rafiq given from Opatija as she stood over Asika’s remains. Something was in there, hiding in plain sight.

  In the villa at Opatija, she’d hoped that Asika had been killed by a swarm of opponents and not a single opponent. But a single opponent was what she sensed then and still felt now.

  Even Levin couldn’t have done that to Asika without suffering damage himself. In fact Levin couldn’t have done it at all, because Asika was better. And it was academic anyway, because Levin was as dead as Asika. Carne and Hines had told Anwar, and five others like Carne and Hines had told her: Levin died first, then Asika. But what they’d done to Levin was worse. There wasn’t even enough of him left to make a corpse. And they all remembered his face, when he realised he couldn’t defend himself. So what have they got that kills Consultants? How and where did they make it, or create it?

  She had originally joined UN Intelligence as a field officer. She proved effective, not because she was particularly ruthless but because she understood people instinctively, whether colleagues or opponents. With colleagues, she established good working relationships and sensed what they needed from her. With opponents, she sensed what made them tick and how they’d act or react.

  UN Intelligence was a source from which Rafiq drew many of his personal staff, and she was quickly promoted. She was the obvious choice for her present role, as the staff member with responsibility for The Dead. Only she could instinctively know what made them tick. Or Rafiq, who was even more impenetrable.

  But after the meeting with Anwar, she wasn’t so sure about Rafiq. The meeting still worried her. Rafiq had told her beforehand how he would play it, how he would try to tease ideas out of Anwar by pretending to be struggling to understand these new opponents. She was unconvinced then, and remained unconvinced now, about how much he was acting. She sensed something in him which, in anyone else, might almost have amounted to uncertainty.

  She’d never met Olivia del Sarto, or spoken to her directly, but she knew all about her. Why weren’t she and Rafiq closer? They stood for similar things. They should be natural allies. She was about to park that question for later, but then thought, Didn’t Anwar ask him that too?

  Anwar. She rarely made errors of judgement, but her near-offer to him after the meeting was an error. Not a crucial one, but she wished she hadn’t made it. Or maybe it wasn’t an error, and her instincts were correct. It had made Anwar tell her, by the strength of his denial, how Olivia was sucking him into herself.

  She normally ran relationships with Consultants by giving them space, by not crowding them. She always felt that she needed to find Anwar some extra space, for the way he worried about his lack of ability compared to some of the others. And for his obsessiveness, his insularity (he was solitary but not lonely), and his need for routine and a comfort zone, all of which were now being torn to pieces by this mission as it got more complicated and far-reaching than even Rafiq had suspected.

  Or maybe Rafiq was still holding something back. It wouldn’t be the first time. Surely he’d have picked someone other than Anwar, if he’d known how this mission would turn out. Unless he knew something else about it. And Rafiq knows everything. Doesn’t he?

  Anwar had told Rafiq of a detail that he sensed and that bothered him, a final detail that might overturn everything. She had also felt something, first at Opatija and again more recently, when it almost surfaced in Anwar’s questioning of Carne and Hines, and her own questioning of the others like them. She didn’t yet know what it was, or even if it was the same thing Anwar had sensed. But she felt that it, too, might overturn everything, and she would work until she found it.

  Her style of work was careful and reflective and thorough, like that of Anwar. But she had something he’d never had: her empathy, her instinctive feeling for people. Though she suspected, because of how this mission was turning on him, that he might acquire it.

  Or it might acquire him.

  4

  Anwar left the New Grand and walked back across the Garden to the Cathedral. Early evening was turning into night, and the night air carried the astringent scent of witch hazel to counterpoint the smells of damp earth and grass.

  He entered the Cathedral. It was almost empty, with just a few worshippers in the pews. He only needed a glance, and an assessment of their positions and postures, to confirm that they were worshippers and nothing more. The Cathedral air was cool and still, with the usual hint of citrus.

  He walked to the front of the pews, in the space before the altar where he’d fought Bayard and Proskar and six others and where she’d ridiculed him. He looked up at the silver cross on the altar. Like all New Anglican crosses it was plain and unadorned, with no figure of Jesus nailed to it. A cross, not a crucifix.

  He felt a movement in the air, and ramped up his senses. He knew, before he turned around, that she had entered and was walking towards him. The air she displaced was her shape.

  He didn’t know how to greet her after what had happened between them. But she solved it for him, to the surprise of the few worshippers.

  “Fucking autistic retard.”

  “Velvet bag of shit,” he replied.

  They sounded like he and Levin had once sounded, greeting each other. Muslim filth. Jewish scum.

  “About what you left for me,” she said. “I liked reading it again. But you tore a page out of a book.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nobody’s ever done something like that for me, except maybe Gaetano.”

  “Tell me, why do the New Anglicans only have plain crosses and not crucifixes?”

  He was steering her away from what happened in the Boardroom by getting her to talk about what she knew best. That suited her, too.

  “We don’t do guilt and pain and misery, that’s for the Catholics. We do affirmation and aspiration. We don’t deny that they nailed Jesus to a cross, but we don’t need to wallow in it.”

  “But you do have images of him. I’ve seen them.”

  “Yes. Replicas of the statues in Lisbon and Rio, Cristo Rei and Cristo Redentor. Jesus with arms outstretched, offering benediction. Not only benediction, but encouragement. Even urging. Be all you can be, for me. Those are my words,” she added proudly. “I wrote them.”

  “Yes, I can hear your voice in them.
Even more than His.”

  If his remark had any subsurface meaning she didn’t notice it, and she continued the direction of their conversation. It kept them on surer ground.

  “I’m proud of the New Anglicans. We’re rich and powerful and assertive. As much a corporation as a church, but a properly-run corporation. We pay all our taxes. We declare all our salaries. We declare all our investments.”

  “And,” he said, remembering their dinner, “you declare all your costs. Have your finance people given you an amended operating statement yet?”

  She didn’t hear his question. She was in full flow. “You know, Archbishop was a title I inherited five years ago, but it doesn’t sound right now. In a few years, when the New Anglicans are a finished product, I might change my title. To CEO. Or—” she glanced at him “—Controller-General.”

  Or, he thought, Archbitch. The word was already in his store of privately-invented names, like Meatslabs and Lucifer’s Lesbian and Levin’s Levities. They were all rather anal-retentive: a reflection of how much time he spent alone, adding building-blocks to his interior world. A world that was ordered and comfortable, and about to collapse.

  “You know,” she said, “you’ve made yourself ridiculous here. No one would ever say so, not to your face, but they’re laughing behind your back.”

  “You mean because I shut myself in the Signing Room?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you know why I did that.” This was more safe ground, and it suited him. Operational detail. “We’ve made sure there’s nothing of theirs in there. The signing ceremony is scheduled for October 23. So if that was their preferred option, it’s gone.”

  “So it could be any time.”

  “Yes. But you said they wanted it live and in public at the summit. So any time during the nine days commencing October 15.” When she didn’t reply, he hurriedly added, “But it was their preferred option. This one will be...”

  “Less preferred. But earlier. Look, I was wrong, let’s not waste those few days. Let’s go back to how it was.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Yes. Let’s go back to just fucking each other senseless,and each of us takes what we want from it.” She watched him as he visibly lightened. It was as though a weight was slipping off him. She added, “I mean it. No relationships, just relations.”

  “I’d like nothing more,” he said, then added, as the relief spread through him, “but not here in front of the altar?”

  “I can find somewhere better.”

  Later, in her bedroom, they went back to how it was. This time she raised her bottom slightly to assist him in pulling down her underwear. He didn’t seem to notice consciously, though he was aware that his preliminaries worked a little better. She knew how he liked her passive during this part, so he could enjoy doing his part slowly and artistically.

  It was a minor embellishment which might, indirectly, help her. Just a detail, and later she’d add others. Build empathy in careful penny pieces. Not all in one lump, as she’d tried so clumsily and embarrassingly before. The next detail— the thought came to her quite suddenly—could be to find a replacement for his book.

  “Retard,” she murmured afterwards.

  “Bag of shit,” he replied, and they went again.

  How many times have we gone tonight? she thought. He’s like a pistol. As one chamber’s spent the next one comes around. And keeps coming.

  She was learning empathy, though her version of it, unlike Arden’s, didn’t come naturally. And—because of who she was— there was something oblique and sinuous about it. Starting a relationship with him by accommodating his embarrassment at the idea of a relationship. Sharing with him his wish not to treat sex as something to be shared.

  She would work at it, carefully and quietly. Not her usual style of working, but it was worth it. He was obsessive and strange, potent and vulnerable, but he was the only one with a chance of protecting her. That, at least, was the obvious reason to draw her to him, but that—she told herself over and over until she almost believed it—wasn’t the only one. There was something else.

  Empathy had found her, and it would find him. And—the admission frightened her—she wanted it to find him. Nobody else would do.

  NINE: OCTOBER 7 - 10, 2060

  1

  The delegations for the summit started to arrive on October 7. They were minor officials and support staff, put up in hotels all over Brighton. The VIPs—political leaders and senior staff— would not arrive until two or three days before the summit. The most important would be put up in the New Grand, the others in the more prestigious hotels along Marine Parade. Their suites were being made ready.

  Yuri Zaitsev, the UN Secretary-General, would also be taking a suite in the New Grand. He was due to arrive on the evening of October 14, when he and Olivia would co-host a reception to mark the opening of the summit.

  The first administrative and housekeeping matters had begun. They were the first of a multitude: agenda headings, translations, dietary requirements, transport, media relations, religious observance. The New Anglicans’ staff had foreseen them and prepared for them, and addressed them with their usual efficiency.

  As well as the host of security issues associated with the summit, Gaetano was attending to something else.

  Proskar had gone.

  “Do you know anything about that?” he asked Anwar.

  Aware that Gaetano was not likely to ask questions to which he didn’t have answers, Anwar said, “Yes. I told him in the Signing Room that I couldn’t be sure his resemblance to Marek was only on the surface...”

  “You’ve been through that again and again, with me and with Kuala Lumpur.”

  “...and that he should go.”

  Gaetano seemed about to erupt, to shout obvious things like He reports to me, not you! But he controlled it, and when he eventually spoke, his voice was quiet. “I’m glad at least that you gave me a straight answer, because he left a note. It says that after what you told him, he wouldn’t be coming back.”

  “Sounds rather theatrical.”

  “Not theatrical. I’ve known him for five years, and I hav ea bad feeling. I don’t think I’ll see him again.”

  Anwar shrugged, but didn’t answer.

  “His early life,” Gaetano went on, trying to ignore Anwar’s manner, “was chaotic. Like mine. He always said that when he joined us he found...”

  “A comfort zone?”

  “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  “Removed an uncertainty.”

  “Removed my closest colleague, and my deputy. I needed him for the summit, and you’ve driven him away!”

  “You’re overstating.”

  “You’ve done one thing that seemed right since you’ve been back from UNEX, or at least one thing that she half-admitted might be right, but it gives you no licence to talk like that. Listen to yourself. You and I have to work together.”

  “You’re still overstating.”

  “I’ll have him found and brought back.”

  “Then,” said Anwar over his shoulder as he left Gaetano’s office, “you and I might have to have an accounting.”

  “Yes,” Gaetano whispered at the closing door,“we might.”

  Olivia knew the four lines by heart, but still preferred to read them rather than recite 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 time she read them, the lines turned themselves inside out and presented another face to her. One of the faces was uncomfortably close to The Detail. Maybe Anwar already suspected it, when he tore that page out of his book for her. Maybe Shakespeare did too. Always ambiguous and multilayered, Shakespeare. Like the bastard of Rafiq and a Consultant.

  She could have got her staff to search for a replacement book, but she didn’t. She searched personally, through dozens of
antiquarian book dealers’ websites. One of the websites might even have been Anwar’s. She’d never know; most small business proprietors retained anonymity, and she had no idea of Anwar’s trading name.

  She remembered exactly what he’d told her about his book, though: a replica of the Chalmers-Bridgewater edition of the Sonnets. Odd, because she hadn’t always noticed what he was saying. Then she remembered that that would have been after he’d said that thing to her in Brighton. She’d started to notice him a bit more after that.

  Eventually she found a copy, ordered it, and had it express-couriered to her. It arrived in hours. On the inside title page she added an inscription You mistimed. O. Her writing wasn’t like Anwar’s, but large and upright with flourishes. She’d written it with a cheap marker pen that happened to be the first one within reach. The ink started to bleed into the weave of the paper almost before she’d finished writing, and she thought, Fuck, I should’ve got a proper pen; then it stopped, and what she’d written remained legible.

  She’d go to his suite, on the floor below her apartments, and leave it on his pillow. No, that was too obvious. She’d give it to him personally. No, that was even more obvious. She’d ask Gaetano to give it to him. There was always Gaetano. Fuck, she thought again, these details. Why does everything have to be just so? While he’d been doing decisive things and made her mock him about almost turning into her, she was getting obsessive and almost turning into him.

  Maybe literally, she thought sourly. He’s already pumped enough of himself inside me.

  Anwar started to feel worse and worse about Proskar. He rehearsed uncomfortably to himself how he might try admitting to Gaetano that he’d behaved hastily and gone for an easy target; but Gaetano had already said as much, and admitting it to him wouldn’t do much practical good. The only thing that would, would be to find him. He could do something about that: he’d ask Arden to put UN Intelligence on it. But then, he thought, What if I was right about him, against all the odds, and I actually invited Marek back? Rather apt that Marek came from Croatia: vampires’ victims, it was said, had to invite them in.