Evensong

“And yet, here you are, taking my men apart like they were nothing...My deputies, Luc Bayard and Arban Proskar.” Gaetano waved his hand to indicate the two men, still unconscious, who’d approached them first.

Anwar glanced down at them. Bayard: like Levin, large build and smile and not entirely unfriendly mockery. But a Meatslab, not another Levin. And Proskar: stocky, dark-haired,fortyish. Unimpressive physically except for his hands, broad and long-fingered, like the hands of a concert pianist.

Gaetano watched Anwar studying them, and said, “What, you thought your trick in the Boardroom would be enough?”

“No, of course not. I recognised your two deputies from my briefing. Also at least four of the others.”

“Yes, Rafiq’s briefings. Always thorough. Butshe wouldn’t know that. So,” he added, “I gave you another opportunity to impress her.”

“She didn’t seem impressed…And it could have been real, not staged. Rafiq’s briefings aid some of her security staff can’t be trusted; maybe helping whoever’s threatening her. I just followed his briefing. You appreciate,” he added, in a tone not calculated to make Gaetano feel any better, “that I could hardly have done anything else.”

They left the Cathedral through the now-open doors and walked across the Garden to the New Grand Hotel, a large pearlescent building which, from the outside, matched the size and style of the Cathedral.

Gaetano, who was now beginning to walk less painfully, took his leave of Anwar in the hotel’s large lobby. Like the >Cathedral,and like most interiors on the New West Pier,there was a discreet smell of citrus.

“I’ll come for you at nine.”

The reception staff showed him to his suite, where his luggage waited. It was a large and well-appointed suite, with a view over the domes and spires of the Cathedral complex. The sun was setting. He walked out on to the balcony and watched it.

When he’d first entered the New West Pier, everything was sleek and serene and silver and white. Then the mask fell away and he glimpsed the soul of the New Anglicans. Joining them was like joining a pack of wild animals. Fucking autistic retard, she’d called him—their own Archbishop, in her own Cathedral, right in front of the altar. He thought What are they? Are they still a Church? Or a corporation? Or a political movement? Have the last two identities consumed the first? They had the wealth and slickness of a religious cult, but their teachings weren’t so silly. The wealth and slickness of a major business corporation, but they practiced social responsibility. The wealth and slickness of a crime syndicate, but they stood for things rather more worthwhile.

He mentally shrugged. Containers and contents. Surface and substance. In the next few days he’d learn more about what was really inside them. For now, he knew for certain that everything about them, their very organisation and culture, was different to any other Church. They were to other Churches what Rafiq’s UNEX was to the old UN.

He continued to watch the sunset, and listen to the sea and the noises from the Brighton shoreline, two miles away; and the cries of the gulls, riding the air currents above the skyline of the Cathedral complex. He reflected on what had happened. He’d fought differently, with less caution, and it had worked. Twenty-two seconds wasn’t bad. And then there was Gaetano. And Bayard, and Proskar and the others. And something else, which made all the rest seem commonplace.

“Christ!” he whispered. “I’ve just fucked an Archbishop!” 

FOUR: SEPTEMBER 2060

1

Many unusual things arrived daily at Fallingwater, but the object which arrived one morning in late September, two days after Chulo Asika had agreed to find Levin, was particularly unusual. It was a handwritten letter, ink on paper, addressed to Rafiq. Postage was a niche product, used mostly to make a fashion statement or as irony, and this letter had actually been sent through the post. There was an envelope, with a handwritten address, and even a postage stamp and post-mark. Opatija, Croatia. REDGOD: Recorded Express Delivery Guaranteed One Day.