Evensong (7 page)

“She’s waiting for you in the Boardroom.”

Levin was gone.

He’d been sent to Opatija alone and unarmed, with all his tracking and monitoring implants deactivated—essential for this particular mission. Now, five days later, they remained deactivated. Nobody had seen or heard from him.

Rafiq was writing another of his neat, courteous letters. He handed it to Arden Bierce.

“Please go to Chulo Asika’s house in Lagos and ask him if he’ll come here.”

Arden Bierce brought Asika in another of the UN’s beautiful silvered VSTOLs. He was offered missions frequently, and she was familiar with the journey: VSTOL to and from the UN Embassy in Lagos, taxi to and from his house. (Anwar lived near enough to the UN to pass as a senior employee who occasionally got flown to Kuala Lumpur, but generally it was considered less than discreet to land a VSTOL on a Consultant’s lawn.) Asika nicknamed her Charon because she ferried The Dead. She liked him but didn’t like the nickname.

Asika’s company was designing and building the set for an upcoming production of “Six Characters in Search of an Author” at the National Theatre in Iganmu, Lagos. Asika’s wife had been one of The Dead. When she became pregnant, seven years earlier, she retired and they married. She now had her own career, as well as two children, and they lived in their family house in Lagos from which Asika ran his business—and, unlike the others, ran it personally rather than online. He had an elaborate system of cover stories to explain his occasional absences, most of them centred on work he did for UNICEF. There was a theoretical risk that his identity would be discovered, but Rafiq had decided, this once, to bend the rules.

The VSTOL settled an inch above the lawn. A door rippled open in its side. Arden Bierce got out and walked across the lawn towards Fallingwater. Chulo Asika followed her. She rang the doorbell, and they entered the reception area.

“I’ll tell him you’re here,” she said, and went through the door to Rafiq’s inner office.

Asika waited. As usual, several members of Rafiq’s personal staff were there, talking quietly among clusters of plain stone-white sofas and armchairs. A couple of them looked up as he entered.

A few minutes later, Arden Bierce came out.

“He’ll see you now.”

“Thank you for coming so promptly, Mr. Asika. I understand you had to postpone some business to come here.”

“You trump everything, Mr. Rafiq. Even the National Theatre.”

“Still, I’m grateful. I hope your work won’t be disrupted.”

Asika smiled. He was a gentle man, who smiled often. He was about the same height and build as Anwar. Along with

Levin, he was one of the four or five consistently highest-scoring Consultants. Despite his abilities, or perhaps because of them, Rafiq always felt comfortable in his company. More so than with any of the other eighteen.

“My work? No, my colleagues are used to my occasional absences. So is my family.”

Rafiq had a poker face that he deployed automatically when anyone mentioned their family. Most people didn’t notice when he deployed it. “I’d like to offer you a mission. May I describe it?”

“Please.”

Rafiq briefed Asika: the tenuous lead to Parvin Marek, Levin’s journey to Opatija and subsequent disappearance, and the villa north of Opatija which, according to the Croatian authorities, was now empty and deserted. When he spoke of Levin’s disappearance, Rafiq was carefully dispassionate. So was Asika.

“And you want me to find out what happened to Levin?” “Yes.”

“And Marek?”

“Secondary. The priority is Levin. Will you do it?”

“Yes. Of course.”

When he first saw her she was at the top of a stepladder, scooping a dead fish out of a floor-to-ceiling ornamental tank at the far end of the Boardroom. She had her back to him.Her bottom was wobbling interestingly under a long, voluminous velvet skirt.

“Sorry,” she said without turning round, “I’ll be right with you. I just noticed one of these angelfish had died.”

“Do they die very often?”

“No, only once.”

She turned to look at him, and he realised that all the stories about her were true. Coming off her in waves was a clean and simple lust, uncomplicated by any other motives. He immediately reciprocated. He could feel the reciprocation growing, between his legs.

He watched her descend the stepladder. She was wearing a high-necked,long-sleeved dress of dark red velvet, like a ballgown, with a fitted bodice and a full, floor-length skirt. New Anglican Archbishops didn’t wear traditional robes, but chose something which suited them personally while also looking formal. The velvet dresses were her particular choice.

She walked over to him. She was smaller than she appeared (or contrived to appear) in the newscasts.

“So this is what a Consultant looks like. I thought you’d be seven feet tall.”

He thought,
I only need another ten inches
, but didn’t say it. He already knew her well enough to imagine her reply. So he smiled and shrugged, and muttered “I was, but I haven’t been well.”

Behind him, he heard Gaetano laugh softly.

“Don’t smile and shrug like that, it makes you look gormless. Not good for a guardian angel.”

She tossed back her blonde hair. Her face was small and almost delicate. Perhaps rather sharp-featured, but softened by the way she did her hair. Her movements and moods appeared quick and birdlike. Her expression was hard to read, and seemed permanently on the verge of changing. She was a little younger than him; middle thirties, he estimated. She really was quite slightly built.

Her eyes were dark violet. They missed nothing, including his reciprocation when he first saw her. It was now tenting the front of his well-cut trousers.

And there, rubbing against her ankles, was the famous ginger cat, brawny of body and wide of whisker. It glowered at him.

Fuck You it meowed.

“It doesn’t seem to like me.”

“It doesn’t like anyone, except me. And It is a He.”

As at Fallingwater, he tried to mask his feelings by taking stock of his surroundings.

The Boardroom was large, mainly white and silver; with its adjoining anterooms it covered nearly a quarter of the area of the Cathedral’s first floor. It had a long table of light wood set for twenty people. There were windows floor to ceiling down two walls, looking back along the length of the Pier to the beach and the i-360 Tower, and looking to the left over the pearlescent domes and spires and arches of the Cathedral complex. The third wall was lined with comms and screens, and the fourth wall, at the far end, with the tropical fish tank.

There were clusters of armchairs around the room’s perimeter, occupied by people who were obviously the Archbishop’s personal staff. They reminded him of Rafiq’s staff: competent and well-groomed, like Arden Bierce. They’d all stopped talking as he entered. They were still silent now.

He sensed a compression in the air behind him, and turned to see Gaetano approaching.
Going to make me put on a show for her
.

Gaetano carried a quarterstaff, and held it like he knew how to use it. Anwar reached out, blurringly fast, and took it. He broke it in two, then in four, then in eight, and handed the pieces back to him.

“Please,” he said, “I don’t have time.”

He had done most of this without taking his eyes off her. Many of her staff had gasped as he did it, but she remained silent.

She studied him, his thin face and hook nose and dark eyes.
For he shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter. He shall defend thee under his wings.

He looked back at her.
Into your trousers like a rat up a drainpipe
, his eidetic memory helpfully reminded him.

“Leave us,” she said to her staff, hoarsely. “Give us this room.”

They left, with an alacrity which suggested this was not an unusual occurrence. After a moment’s pause, Gaetano followed them out.

It happened on the Boardoom table, noisily and untidily. There was no foreplay, just an abrupt transition from the vertical to the horizontal. He fumbled with her long voluminous skirt, she with his jacket and trousers, and each of them with each other’s underwear. They scattered the table settings. Normally he disliked making tidy things untidy, whether table settings or female clothing, but not now.

The ginger cat retreated to a corner of the room, and became absorbed in licking its private parts.

Because it was simple physical lust and nothing more, it came and went easily. There was little to be said afterwards. They sat on opposite sides of the long Boardroom table. It was a few minutes before either of them spoke.

“We’ll dine tonight,” she said, smoothing down her skirt, “and I’ll brief you. Gaetano will take you to your suite, and he’ll come for you at nine.”

“And you?”

She smiled. Her lips were dark red, like her dress. “I have an organisation to run.”

He turned to go.

“Wait,” she added. “I’ll walk back with you.”

Outside the door, Gaetano was waiting.

“Quarterstaff,” Anwar murmured. “Good choice.”

Gaetano smiled but did not answer.

They walked back along the silver and white corridor, down the wide staircase, and into the silver and white Cathedral.

Anwar felt something wrong in the air. Too much stillness. All the Cathedral doors were closed.

It was almost deserted. Just eight people, two together and the others singly. The two stood facing them, in the large open space before the altar. The other six were sitting in pews, >apparently at random. Anwar was already calculating distances, probable routes of approach. Vectors. Lines of sight. Estimating, from their posture and the drape of their clothes, what weapons they carried.

The two facing them approached Gaetano. Strangely, they hadn’t even glanced at Anwar or Olivia, and didn’t now. One of them was built like Levin. The other was smaller, stocky and dark-haired. With unusual hands.

The larger man went to speak to Gaetano. He made eye contact, smiled, and opened his mouth to begin a sound like “Erm...” on a rising note, as if about to air some routine matter. Then he delivered a huge kick to the testicles. Gaetano was lifted bodily, and landed doubled up and vomiting. The second man made for Olivia with a knife which came, as Anwar expected, from a forearm sheath. A specialist’s knife, with a blade combining points and tines and serrations. Anwar decided to take the blow himself.

The knife was aimed at his heart, and he turned at the last moment to take it in his side. But his timing was fractionally off, making the knife penetrate deeper than he’d expected. He felt a surge of anger—
how
many times must I
mistime?—
but he killed it. Geared it down to something colder, something he could use.

Olivia had seen Anwar’s mistiming and was shouting obscenities, mostly at Anwar. Quite unreasonably, he felt.
But she’s genuinely afraid. And
s
he’s not supposed to be afraid of anything.

He’d taken the knife-blow without apparently noticing. The blood it should have drawn was already clotting. He’d willed it to. The knifeman was starting another attack, but Anwar didn’t care. He moved liquidly, almost accidentally. Then a shuto strike to the collarbone, this time intentional. He felt the molecules in his hand aligning to hardness, felt the collarbone give. He pulled back before his hand could actually penetrate and shear it.

While the knifeman dropped unconscious, he was turning to the second man, the one built like Levin, and struck him. This time only a light fingertip to a pressure point on the temple, to put him out for a few seconds. Anwar very much wanted him for later.

“Gaetano!” Olivia screamed. But he wasn’t listening. He was still doubled up and vomiting. The kick had hit him like an express train. “Gaetano!”

“Shut up,” Anwar told her, softly and precisely.

The six men sitting in the pews had looked convincingly shocked while all this was happening, but that was then. Now they were suddenly encircling Anwar and Olivia.

“Don’t,” he told them.

“Why, what will you do, surround us?”

“Yes.” The word hung in the air behind him. He was already moving.

He really did surround them. He orbited the tight circle they’d made around her, attacking it from outside, silently and with frightening speed and from every angle and with every striking surface, so they couldn’t face her but had to face outwards. And it still wasn’t enough for them.

He fought them the way he should have fought in the last Tournament. Taking the initiative. They tried their best moves on him but he flicked them away, unnoticing. To him, their moves were slowed to near-torpor, and their martial arts yells to a hoglike bass. As usual, he fought in silence. That, and his speed, terrified them. They were good, better than his last six Tournament opponents, but still Meatslabs. He flickered in and out of them in a glissade, bestowing Compliments and Gratuities—all watered-down versions, enough to immobilise but not to injure or kill.

He was shockingly fast, and frighteningly silent. He thought,
This is everything I am, it’s what makes me extraordinary. But even now, when I’m doing it better than I did in the Tournament, it doesn’t mean much. My opponents are always outmatched, and half of the Consultants will always outmatch me. When will Everything I Am mean something?

It was never going to be a bloodbath. His abilities were too considerable, and too precise, for that. But it was almost an anticlimax. His inbuilt timer told him he’d finished them in twenty-two seconds.

He could have just stayed by her side and defeated them. Waited for them to attack, and countered. Instead, for once, he’d done it differently.
Why? Because of her?
He had enough time, now, to ask himself this and reflect on the answer.
No. Because they weren’t the real thing.
They weren’t the threat which had made her persuade Rafiq to give her a Consultant. They weren’t good enough.

He turned back to the Levin lookalike, who’d floored Gaetano and was now getting to his feet, smiling mockingly. Anwar indulged himself a little, and gave him a Verb. It was an openhand strike to the throat, fingers and thumb unusually splayed, the molecules hardening them into five striking surfaces. One of his favourite moves. A full-strength version would decapitate, but Anwar used only a powered-down version (an Adverb?) which didn’t penetrate flesh. He did it because the man looked like the real Levin, even down to the smile (
I’m Miles ahead of you, Anwar
) and it was the closest Anwar would get to wiping the smile off Levin’s face. The man fell, unconscious before he could cry out.