Evensong

“Thank you for coming so promptly, Mr. Abbas.” Rafiq motioned to a chair, and Anwar sat down. “I want to offer you a mission. May I describe it?”

“Please.”

“First,I should tell you this. It involves bodyguard duties.” Anwar spoke carefully, to mask his surprise. “We don’t

usually do that, Mr. Rafiq. Even for you.”

“This isn’t for me, it’s for someone else.”

His surprise turned to anger. For someone else? Playing for time, and trying to compose himself, Anwar gazed round

Rafiq’s office. Like the original Fallingwater, and the reception outside, it was spacious and understated and restful. But it didn’t relax him. This is wrong, he thought. Special Forces, mere Special Forces, do bodyguard duties. Not us. Asking a Consultant to do that is like…

“It must be like asking Shakespeare to write greeting card verses,” Rafiq said. “I know how you feel.

“But there’s a UN resources summit next month. Several member states attending have been, or still are, at war with each other over water rights. A volatile subject, and security will be a concern. Also, the usual venues might offend political sensibilities. So the New Anglicans have offered us the conference centre attached to their Cathedral in Brighton, on the south coast of England.”

“I know where Brighton is, Mr. Rafiq,” Anwar said. “I go to bookfairs there.”

“Yes, I’d forgotten.” He hadn’t. He wanted to give Anwar a minor point now, to help the dynamics later. “So. The New Anglicans’ offer is tempting. Their Cathedral complex, with conference centre and hotels, is large and well-equipped.And, most important for security, it’s at the end of a two-mile-long ocean pier. But there’s a price.”

Rafiq paused, not for dramatic effect but because what he said next could lead to something unprecedented, a Consultant refusing a mission.

“Olivia del Sarto has asked for a Consultant to attend her during the nine days of the summit, starting October 15.

Apparently she’s always wanted one of The Dead—” he spoke the phrase with distaste “—as her personal bodyguard.”

Olivia del Sarto, thought Anwar, still somehow masking his feelings. Archbishop of the New Anglicans. And Archbitch: brilliant and offensive, with her hidden political and financial backers and her sexual appetites and her foul ginger cat. The sexual appetites and the cat were familiar parts of her media persona. She consistently refused to tone down the former, or to have the latter castrated. He’d seen her, again and again, on the news channels. This is wrong. One of us, as a fashion accessory for her?

“She’s asked you for something you shouldn’t give. We only do things for you. For the Controller-General.”

Rafiq said nothing, just waited for Anwar to continue. He knew when to pause and when to press. So did Anwar, but with Anwar it came from enhancement and training. With Rafiq it came naturally.

“It’s the heart of the compact. Any mission you offer us must be impossible for anyone else. And only for you. This doesn’t qualify on either count.”

Again Rafiq waited.

Anwar stood up suddenly, shockingly fast, and glared down at Rafiq. “Occasionally, very occasionally, if there was exceptional risk, we’d do bodyguard duties for you or the

Secretary-General. This is different! You want me to nurse that—that person, because you’ve done a deal with her for a conference venue?”

With Anwar still towering above him Rafiq thought, I’m alone with one of The Dead, and I’ve seriously annoyed him. Be careful with this one, he’s obsessive. Likes everything just so. >But still he said nothing.

“You negotiated with her? You let her have one of us, as a fashion accessory?”

Still Rafiq said nothing.

Anwar added, “And she must have security people of her own.”

Got him. Rafiq smiled. “She has. Mere Special Forces, as you would say, but they’re good. I doubt whether you’ll either add to her safety, or uncover anything her people may have missed. Also, she’s not a participant in the summit, only the host. The national leaders and UN officials are more likely to be targets, and they too will have their own security.”

“Including you?”

“I won’t be there. This is political, not executive, so the Secretary-General will go.” Rafiq rarely referred to the Secretary-General by name; he had already outlasted three of them.