Evensong

“Some of them, yes. But some might also have been written to a man.”

“Oh.”

Just then her wristcom buzzed. She flipped it open, listened briefly.

“It’s Gaetano. He says they’ve detained a possible suspect on the Pier.” 

6

In the Cathedral complex, a thief had been tempted by an obviously wealthy-looking tourist. But this wasn’t just any tourist.

“The thief,” Gaetano said, “is a twelve-year-old boy,known to police. Dysfunctional parents. The social services put him in Care.”

Care, Anwar thought. A dismal word, smug and liberal. The boy was doomed.

“He does petty crime,” Gaetano continued. “Steals purses, wallets,briefcases, anything that looks valuable. Whizzes past on powered rollerblades, snatches and escapes. This man had just taken out his wallet, andt he kid flew past and took it.The man ran—ran—after him and caught him. Kept kicking him, even after he’d knocked him down. Broke his arm and collar-bone and three ribs.”

“Where did this happen?” Anwar asked.

“Just outside, in the Garden. We detained him—” (a simple phrase, Anwar thought, considering what he’d done) “—until you could speak to him. The boy’s in the Royal Sussex County Hospital.”

Anwar, Gaetano, and Olivia were in the Boardroom. She was eating a cake that she’d managed to scoop up in their hasty departure from Frobisher’s. In between mouthfuls, she asked Gaetano, “Were you already watching this man when it happened?”

“Yes. He’d been looking around the Conference Centre.”

“Is that all? You don’t think they’ve already got architects’ plans and computer models?”

“Probably. But this man had the look of a professional. We had a feeling about him.” Gaetano turned to Anwar. “I wish we’d got there before he caught the boy.”

Anwar nodded. “How long can we detain him?” He saw Olivia glance at him, possibly because he’d said We, not You.

“If we invoke the summit, which I’ve done, the local police will let us hold him for twenty-four hours. He’s in there.” Gaetano pointed to the closed door of one of the Boardroom’s adjoining rooms.

“Is he restrained?”

“Of course. Except for his conversation.”

“What do we know about him?”

“We have his papers, and we checked his DNA, fingerprints, and retinas. His name is Richard Carne.”

I used to have a name that sounded like that.

“He’s ex-SAS. No currently known employer. Various jobs in the past, some legal and some not. Unpleasant habits. There’s this thing he does with bread.” Gaetano paused, and added, “And he’s a member of something called the Johnsonian Society. He was carrying the text of a talk he gave in London a couple of days ago.”

Anwar stood up. “Thank you,” he said to Gaetano.“I think I’ll go and see him.”

“And something else: we found two poison implants in his teeth. We’ve removed them. But…”

“Yes,” Anwar said, “there’ll be others. And there isn’t time to locate them all. I must speak to him now.”

“He’ll trip them and kill himself, if the interrogation goes wrong...Look, maybe I should do this, I’ve done it before.”

“No, I’ll do it...Gaetano, does the Pier have a medical centre?”

“No. It has a fully-equipped hospital.”

“Could you please ask one of your people to go there and bring me up a medical trolley with a tray of surgical instruments?”

There was an ease about Richard Carne. An air of insouciance.

The restraints which held him in his chair were not mono-filament, just extruded kevlar, but they’d been expertly tied. He couldn’t move. But he still managed to give the impression of lounging.

He had straw-coloured hair, brushed flamboyantly back. Slightly pouty lips. Pale blue eyes. A large man, with an obvious Special Forces kind of build. His clothes were expensive: a dark bluejacket, sand-coloured slacks and cream shirt, and jaunty two-tone shoes in blue and cream. Even matching blue and cream socks.

“Do you know who I am?” Anwar asked him.

“I know what you are. Only a few like you in the world.”

Anwar did not reply.

“And now she’s got one of you, for the summit. It won’t be enough, not against what they’ll send.”

“What you did was cowardly. That kid was totally out-matched. Why not take on someone who can fight back?”

“Like you? I’d be as outmatched as the kid. And you’d be as cowardly as me. In fact you already are. All you ever do is defeat outmatched opponents.”

Two-nil to him. Anwar pulled up a chair, and sat facing him. For a while he said nothing, a tactic which didn’t even slightly unsettle Carne. Three-nil.

He knew Carne was right. The Dead had it easy. Intelligence did all the hard work, before and after. Before, their work was to identify targets: dictators, oligarchs, criminals, political or religious fanatics. Then The Dead came in, to abduct or disable them. Usually abduct, in which case they were handed over to UN Intelligence. Information or compliance would be tricked or blackmailed out of them, or bullied out of them with threats of lifelong litigation or financial ruin.