Evensong

Rafiq was ruthless and cunning, but he inspired personal loyalty. People who worked for him—those he hadn’t discarded or ruined—knew that within the constraints of his labyrinthine political agendas he still, usually, tried to make things better. Not perfect, but better. His compact with The Dead stated that they should serve the office of the Controller-General: not the individual, but the office. In reality, they served the individual. And now the nineteen deadliest people in the world (No, she thought, eighteen. Or is it seventeen?) were facing a new and apparently unknown opponent. One which had already done something unthinkable.

She again remembered the note. One character no longer in search of an author.

“They know so much about us. You think this might be Zaitsev? Or some other part of the old UN in New York?”

Rafiq almost laughed. “No, they don’t have the imagination. Maybe there sources, but not the imagination. No, this is an attack on the whole UN, mine and Zaitsev’s. And it comes from outside.”

After she’d gone, Rafiq thought,Only part of that is right, and I’m not sure which part. For once, maybe I don’t know everything. 

4

The interruption was Gaetano, carrying a large folder.

“Sorry, Archbishop, but you asked to see this as soon as it was ready.”

She turned to Anwar. “It’s our year-end financial statement. I need to check it now.”

“Should I leave?”

“No, this is just the first draft, it won’t take long.”

Gaetano stood silently by her side as she studied the documents. She took only a couple of minutes to absorb them (something which, like Rafiq, she did without enhancements).

She glanced up at Gaetano. “See what they’ve tried to do?”

“Yes. Notes 19 and 36 on the non-recurring and below-the-line items. I told them you’d never agree.”

“So why did they do it?”

“To hide the real cost of some of the Room For God projects. They think that if the media find out what a Church is spending on campaigns against Creationism and blasphemy laws…”

“Why do they keep doing that? Thinking? Why is it that my head of security knows more about proper financial reporting than my Finance Director and his three Deputies? We had this last year, when they…”

“When they tried to hide the cost of commissioning independent research into the Bible conclaves. I reminded them of that.”

“Alright, Gaetano, remind them of this: those items are our core business. I will not have them hidden. I want them where they belong, in the main Income and Expenditure accounts. I’m throwing out their draft. And remind them not to try this again.”

“You could also,” Gaetano suggested drily, “tell me to remind them about their appraisals.”

“Yes, they’re due in four weeks, aren’t they? If I’m alive by then…Just checking you’re still awake,” she told Anwar, as both he and Gaetano looked at her sharply.

This is like her Room For God broadcast, Anwar thought. Everyday she fights real battles. More than I’ve done in seven years.

“As the Archbishop,” she explained to Anwar, after Gaetano left, “I’m a mix of Chairman and Chief Executive. Like,” she looked sideways at him, “the UN Secretary-General and Controller-General rolled together into one.”

Anwar thought of Yuri Zaitsev, the jowly and heavyset Secretary-General, and Rafiq. The idea of them rolling together into one was not something he could easily imagine.

“Back to who’s threatening you. Why not fundamentalists? Your Batoth’Daa?”

This time, she laughed in his face. “Never! They don’t have the imagination, or the intellect. Their religion sucks it out of them. Makes them turn unanswerable questions into unquestionable answers…That’s not original. Someone else said it, I can’t remember who.”

“It was an Art Gecko slogan.”

“What? Oh, of course. You and your old books.”

“It wasn’t a book…” he began, then left it. She’d already forgotten, and was busy pouring herself some wine.

“No thanks,” he said as she started to pour a glass for him.

“I don’t drink alcohol.”

“Oh, your name…Are you a Muslim?” “No. Worse.”

“Atheist?”

“Worse still. Agnostic.”

“A lapsed atheist. Do you also bet each way at Brighton Racecourse?”

“I like to think it’s rational,” he said, rather pompously.

She scented blood and went for him. “Having blind faith in reason is not the same as being rational.”

“You’re a walking dictionary of one-liners.”

“One-liners are useful for religious leaders. Martin Luther had ninety-five of them. His Ninety-Five Theses were good. But if he’d nailed the Ninety-Five Faeces to the Church door at Wittenburg…”

Anwar laughed out loud, something he rarely did. But she didn’t notice. She was already busy clearing the table.