Evensong

Another sideways look. Her next expression began to form, like a delayed echo, and he guessed it correctly. Mocking. “And what is your Identity In The Outside World?”

“Antiquarian book dealer. When this is over I may need to change it, or change my appearance. Another reason we don’t like bodyguard duties.”

“Antiquarian…”

“Book dealer, yes. Tomorrow, after I’ve seen Gaetano, I’m going into Brighton to pick up a book.”

“Ah. Then I think I’ll go with you.”

“Why?” He was genuinely surprised, and immediately wary.

“Every time I go into Brighton, Gaetano insists on surrounding me with his people. In the next few days it’ll be even worse. Tomorrow will probably be the last chance I’ll get just to walk around Brighton without being surrounded. After all, I’ll have a Consultant...Relax,” she added, as he shot her a suspicious glance, “that’s all it is. Sometimes things really are no more than they appear on the surface.”

She was looking at him differently, as if she actually noticed him. Not as a person, he suddenly understood, but as the latest implement to scratch an itch which had begun somewhere in her velvet darkness.

Her other set of appetites. They do come round quickly. He started to get up.

Just then, they were interrupted. 

3

At 10:00 p.m. in Brighton, it was 5:00 a.m. in Kuala Lumpur; the morning of the following day. Rafiq stood on the lawn in front of Fallingwater. He sometimes came there to watch the sunrise, when he had things to think about. He was apparently alone, but his security was all around him at a discreet distance.

Apart from his concerns over Asika and Levin, he also had an organisation to run. Today would be a big day. He was in the final stage of his restructuring of UNIDO. It was a brutal restructuring; Yuri Zaitsev, the Secretary-General, had openly questioned it. Also, Rafiq had precipitated a crisis by refusing to sign UNESCO’s year-end operating statement until more rigorous performance goals were set. Both issues would produce internal conflicts which, although he would win them, were likely to be bloody.

He took out a cigarette. As nobody else smoked indoors neither did he, even in his inner office. Where, he remembered, he’d left his lighter. Arden Bierce, who had also been at a discreet distance, came up to him and gave him hers. She didn’t smoke, but always carried a lighter when she was with him.

He watched the sunrise. Dawn. Black Dawn. He remembered the marquee which had stood here ten years ago. It wasn’t just my family. It was others. Empty places at other tables, empty halves of other beds. And it’s still unfinished business.

“Thanks for the light. And thank you for attending the funeral.”

“Thank you for not asking how it went.”

He saw she was doing that thing which people do to stop crying: clenching the face, compressing the lips, breathing in through the nose, looking upwards as if gravity might slow the tears. To his relief, she succeeded.

He lit his cigarette and handed back her lighter. He inhaled. A filthy and antisocial habit, he knew, but he never smoked more than one or two a day, and he wasn’t a lifelong smoker; he’d started only ten years ago.

“I told Chulo he should wait until he retired before having a family, but... You know, of all of them Chulo was the only one I really felt comfortable with.”

She nodded but said nothing.

“I listened to your report,” he added.

Still she said nothing, for a while. Then it all came. “Who are they? Why would they do this? And how could they do it, to Chulo? And where’s Levin?”

“I think,” he said slowly, “that maybe they were just trying out. Maybe they killed Levin to get us to send someone even better…We’ll get the rest of it, Arden. Our forensics and intelligence are the best in the world, just as the Consultancy is the best executive arm in the world. They’re chasing down those questions you asked, and dozens more like them. We will get the rest of it.”

She nodded. She knew he’d come out here to think about Asika and Levin and UNIDO and UNESCO, but she knew he’d also been remembering his family. Now even more people had died trying to catch the man responsible, and he had sent them. She could read it in his face. She didn’t often see him like this, and it distressed her.