Evensong (5 page)

New Anglicans, though he did want them in his debt because he judged he could use their connections: political, not financial. Anwar didn’t know any of this, and it was in his nature to look for complications; for pockets of darkness.
So why did Rafiq choose me?

The Dead were not secret agents, just uniquely gifted functionaries.AfterUNIntelligence—therealsecretagents— had done their work, it all boiled down to a highly-guarded object which had to be stolen or sabotaged, or a highly-guarded individual who had to be abducted or disabled or subverted: specific in/out missions, impossible for anyone else. Bodyguard duties were different. They involved prolonged interaction with people and their staff, requiring new faces and identities—with the inconvenience of surgical and IT processes—afterwards. Also, bodyguard duties carried the taint of low status: Rafiq would tend to assign a lower-rated Consultant rather than tie up one of the top four or five.
One like me. Who can’t dispose of six Meatslabs in under thirty-six seconds.

In the real world, Anwar was an antiquarian book dealer. He owned shops in London and New York. He was comfortably wealthy; his business was doing well, and his Consultancy pay was extremely high. He was a good antiquarian book dealer but a better Consultant. Levin, of course, was “Miles ahead”: an outstanding architect and an outstanding Consultant.

The Consultancy wasn’t interested in psychopaths or sociopaths. Its members had to be personable and well-adjusted (Anwar scored lower on that than Levin, but still passed) and had to have lives and identities in the outside world, however illusory they might be. Also, they had to be people with few connections so that their deaths could be faked, and new identities added, on databases worldwide. The UN had people who did this; people who moved easily through the electronic landscape.

All Consultants had genuine occupations outside: usually one-person businesses, operated anonymously online. The online world, at least the higher end of it, was virtually unhackable. Terminals, whether desktop or wristcom-sized, were peculiar to their operator. Their processors were not silicon chips but cloned neurons and synapses from the operator: keyed to his or her DNA, with security scanners reading lifesigns and doing further retinal and fingerprint scans. Anwar, Levin, and the others all did their book deals or architectural designs remotely worldwide with no personal interaction. Older silicon-chip computers still remained, but those who could afford the new type—wealthier individuals and businesses—did so. Even though engagement with the outside world was encouraged, Consultants’ contracts still stipulated they should not appear personally in a business capacity, even under an assumed name. Those working in Anwar’s bookshops, or in Levin’s studios, had never met or seen their ultimate employer.

Their personal contact with the real world outside was different. It was merely social, a network of shifting relationships of limited duration. They never stayed long in one place. They had different identities in different cities, and cover stories involving frequent travel. Their relationships formed and unravelled, grew and died.

Anwar turned his attention back to the inside of his retina. Rafiq was finishing up. “So, that’s the New Anglicans. To anticipate your question, and purely for completeness, a brief word about the Old Anglicans. They’re the original Church of England. They still have their great cathedrals, like Rochester and Canterbury, and their parish churches, but they’re in gentle decline. Even in the cathedrals, congregations are small and aging. But 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.”

There were no closing salutations. Rafiq’s face was replaced by Further Material Follows. That would be a mass of supporting documents and images and recordings. Anwar decided he’d speed-read it later.

He touched his wrist, and the image on his retina disappeared. He gestured, and Fallingwater’s reception disappeared. He remained sitting in his living room. He actually felt more at home in the Fallingwater hologram, among the natural colours and shapes and textures. His Bauhaus interior, black and silver and grey, reflected his taste but didn’t feel like home.

Olivia del Sarto: a theatrical-sounding name, but quite genuine.

Anwar checked the UN databases, the most detailed in the world. He found nothing he didn’t already know, or which wasn’t already covered in the supporting documentation to Rafiq’s briefing, but he always liked to check for himself before a mission.

There had been one earlier attempt on her life, three years ago, as she was leaving the BBC after her famous Reith Lecture, popularly known as the “Room For God” broadcast. It was not significant, Anwar decided. It was a spur-of-the-moment affair, carried out by a handful of zealots, enraged at what she had said that night. Their rage was a neat way of proving her point, so neat she might almost have staged it herself. Her security people dealt with it efficiently, keeping her safe and not hurting anyone. Anwar liked the way they conducted themselves.

She came from a wealthy London family of fourth-generation Italian immigrants. Her mother was a noted food journalist and broadcaster, and her father owned several restaurants. From them she acquired her ease with all branches of the media, and her prodigious appetite for food. Her equally prodigious sexual appetites were acquired later. A previous partner once said that if you were a half-presentable male she hadn’t seen before, she’d be into your trousers like a rat up a drainpipe.

She didn’t share her family’s traditional Catholicism. She felt closer to the Old Anglicans, though she never joined them; she decided, reluctantly, that they weren’t going anywhere.

When she found the New Anglicans, it was as if they were made for each other.

Rafiq had included among his briefing documents a recording of her “Room For God” broadcast. Anwar already knew it well, but something told him he should watch it again before leaving for Brighton. He put it on the wallscreen in his living room, and settled back.

She was onstage in the main theatre in BBC Broadcasting House in London, a small slender figure in an immaculate long dress of dark velvet. She was on her own, facing an invited audience of three hundred, representing all the major faiths. There were ayatollahs and immams, Archbishops and

Bishops, European Orthodox priests, various questionable TV evangelists, and self-styled religious scholars; an impressive array of costumes and hairstyles and beards and dentistry, with only a small scattering of women and Old Anglicans.

Nearly all of them were hostile to her. It came off the screen in waves. This broadcast was three years old, and she had now taken the New Anglicans a long way down the road she’d described, but people still replayed it. It showed so much about her: the presentation, the preparation, the confrontation. She always had an instinct for aggression, even when massively outnumbered.

A distinguished BBC news presenter briefly introduced her to the audience. There was the barest scattering of applause.

“I’d like to thank the BBC for inviting me to give this year’s Reith Lecture. As you know from the extensive way it’s been trailed—”(
especially by you,
Anwar thought)“—I’ll be talking >about a set of projects which will define the future direction of the New Anglican Church. The Room For God projects. I know this audience will be familiar with them, but for the sake of the wider broadcast audience I’ll out line them briefly. Later I’ll describe them in more detail.

“The Room For God projects are part of the core business of the New Anglican Church. Whether you look through a telescope or a microscope, you see that science uncovers more and more about the universe. But the more it uncovers, the more that remains unknown—and the more room it creates for God. So the New Anglican Church will encourage,
and
finance, scientific research which other churches may find threatening. Medical research, too. We’ll support campaigns for birth control. We’ll attack bigotry wherever we find it. Religious bigotry. Homophobia. Subjugation of women. We’ll fund independent research into the behind-closed-doors conclaves in which the Bible was put together: what was included and what was left out, by whom and why. And we’ll finance campaigns against fundamentalism and Creationism, and in favour of secular education and secular politics. We’ll even fight the tax-exempt status of religious cults. We’ll shine our light everywhere! We’ll...”

She paused. There were mutterings in the audience. “Oh, come on! People should come to a Church—any Church, ours or yours—as grownups! They should come from choice, not from being spoonfed by some ghastly priest caste who won’t
let
them grow up!”

“Arrogant! You’re arrogant and self-regarding!” someone in the audience roared. “This is just a PR event for you. You take an inordinate pride, young woman, in parading your anger!”

“Pride and Anger,” she said. “Two of the Seven Deadly Sins. I use a mnemonic to remember them: SPAGLEG. Sloth, Pride, Anger, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony.”

“Yes,” said another voice, “and you’ve shown two of them tonight, and all of them in your private life!” (Laughter, turning to applause.)

“Well,” she replied, leaning forward on the lectern, “four or five of them are not so bad, in moderation. For rational people. For people wanting self-respect instead of self-loathing, or aspiration instead of guilt, or just some physical comfort.” (Silence, turning to uproar.)

From there, the Reith Lecture ceased to be a lecture, and became a war: an audience against one person. All the protocols went out the window. Longboom mikes were swung out over the audience. Producers reordered schedules. This would be something unheard of in modern broadcasting: a major live event which erupted, in real time, before a worldwide audience of tens of millions. With any ordinary broadcast, corporate middle-managers might have killed the live feed and gone to a stock documentary on meerkats or modelmaking, but this was the Reith Lecture. Nobody dared kill it.

As if she sensed all this, she gathered up her sheaf of notes from the lectern and flung it, rather theatrically, to the floor. She glared down at them from the stage, awaiting their attacks.

“Even homosexuality,” said a voice from the audience. The longboom mike immediately swung over to him. “Anything offensive to normality and decency,
you’ll
be sniffing around it for its money. Even,” sneeringly, “the love that dare not speak its name.”

She smiled unpleasantly. “In Brighton they call it the love that dare not speak its name because its mouth is full.” (Indrawn breaths.) “Try a mouthful. It cures all afflictions. Even fundamentalism.”

Anwar was aghast at her aggression. And yet: just one of her, against all of them. She was like a small creature baring its teeth and refusing to back down. Ever. Against anyone.

“This is your new fascism! Anyone who disagrees with you, you call them afflicted! Brand them as fundamentalists! Turn them into hate figures!”

“I don’t hate fundamentalists. I just think that 99 percent of them give the other 1 percent a bad name.”

“Most of the people you brand with that—that offensive word, are legitimate religious scholars.”

“Scholars who know more and more about less and less. And
religious scholars
,” she hissed, “were put on Earth by God for
me
to offend them. Real scholars are scholars of a body of knowledge. You’re scholars of a body of unproven and unprovable belief. You belong in the Dark Ages. What conversations you must have in your own heads!” (More uproar.)

“You’re not an Archbishop, you’re an Arch
business woman
!”

“And,” someone else shouted, “an atheist!”

“I’m not an atheist. But I won’t buy what
you’re
selling. I want something better.”

“Something
better?
You want God in your own image?”

“I want us in God’s image. Does God want us ignorant and superstitious?”

“How dare you presume to say what God should want us to be!”

“It’s what your priests have been doing for generations, and claiming it’s God speaking through you. Our God’s outgrown that. Evolved, perhaps. And if your God hasn’t, then I and my Church have the right not to believe in him. Or her. Or it.”

“Do you even believe in the New Anglicans’ God?”

“Not just believe.
Approve.”

There was more of this; a lot more. After it had finished, the New Anglicans’ ratings soared. The rest was history. In the following three years she implemented most of the Room For God projects, and the New Anglicans became the world’s fastest-growing major Church.

Anwar sat in his living room for some time after the recording finished, repeating it to himself while the shadows lengthened around him. He knew it word for word. And he knew that inside it was something he needed. Something which would help him understand her, and this mission. He couldn’t see it yet, but he would if he reflected on it carefully. That was how he liked to work: carefully, and reflectively.

He was born an American citizen. His pre-Consultancy name was Rashad Khan. His family were third-generation Pakistani immigrants, living in Bay Ridge, New York. His parents were both successful lawyers. He spent a comfortable childhood in a large nineteenth-century brownstone house on Ridge Boulevard. He had brothers and sisters with whom he exchanged normal affection. His family were not particularly religious, and neither was he.

His parents feared he might be mildly autistic. He wasn’t, but he had some of the outward signs: a certain social awkwardness, and a liking for routine, for having everything in its fixed place, tidy and orderly. And he liked to see inside things—how they worked, what they were really like under the surface.

He probably saw more of the UN Headquarters Building in New York then, when he lived not far from it, than he did when he became a Consultant. He’d often look at it from across the East River, or at closer quarters from East 42nd or East 48th Street. It was an archetypal mid-twentieth-century building: clean and bright and optimistic when built, but now tastes had changed and made it ugly. Levin, when they met several years later, would never tire of telling Anwar about