Evensong

It was unthinkable that Rafiq, of all people, could be pre-occupied: Rafiq, whose reputation was that he’d never give whoever was in front of him anything less than his undivided attention, no matter what other things concerned him at the time. Maybe UNESCO is more serious than he’s letting on. No, he has situations like that every day. It’s something else. Miles was preoccupied with something too, the last time I saw him alive, here at Fallingwater.

“They’re like you,” Rafiq said suddenly. “Like The Dead— they have their real identity, and their identity in the world. They come into the world and go back out of it. Like you, in and out. I could be one of them. Or Arden, or Zaitsev. Or Gaetano. Everyone you know, you could re-interpret all they’ve said and done as being one of them.”

Even his syntax isn’t quite as polished as usual. “I know you could be one of them. You’d be perfect. The damage you could do before anyone found you out...And no,” Anwar’s voice hardened, “they’re not like The Dead. Arden made that mistake. They’re more like Black Dawn. A cell, but with trillions and with a network of corporations and subsidiaries and proxies and cutouts. You must have reached that conclusion yourself.”

Rafiq gazed closely at Anwar. Anwar held his gaze.

“A play within a play, Anwar. Shift the world-picture just one notch, and there’s a parallel world. Theirs.”

He noticed Rafiq had started calling him by his first name.

He’d never done it before. And he is preoccupied. He’s trying to cover it up by being louder and less formal and more direct.

Along one wall of Rafiq’s office was a floor-to-ceiling array of screens, carrying news and current affairs feeds. The sound was muted, but they listened to it for a couple of minutes, in preference to the silence which had started to lengthen between them. Rochester had sparked off a debate about the New Anglicans: whether they should be hosting the summit, whether they were getting above themselves, whether they should be more of a Church and less of a corporation or a political movement. But the New Anglicans were already countering it; their PR machine was as formidable as the rest of their organisation, and Olivia’s five years had given them huge popular support. Rochester might put them on the back foot for a moment, but no more.

“Conventional political parties,” said Rafiq, “detest fundamentalists, but they won’t confront them openly. The New Anglicans will, and do—Olivia saw that niche in the market. So maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe it isn’t the New Anglicans’ founders. Maybe this is all a double or triple bluff, and it’s really the fundamentalists. What do you think?”

“No,” Anwar said. “They don’t have the imagination, or the resources. She was telling the truth about that, at least.”

“And we’d know,” Arden Bierce added. “We have people there.”

“Very well,” Rafiq said. “Then the working hypothesis is the founders. In my briefing I said they don’t like her because she’s taken the Church away from them. She and Gaetano told you that too. And,” he went on, as Anwar started to reply, “I know, not the Bilderbergers and the rest, but a cell operating through them indirectly. Shall we call them The Cell? We can’t keep referring to them as the ones who set up the New Anglicans, are threatening Olivia, and killed Asika and Levin.”

“Yes, The Cell is fine.” I prefer White Dusk, but I don’t share my private nicknames.

“Then let’s consider what she told you, or told Gaetano to tell you. That line about 0.5 percent owning 40 percent is hardly new. Here’s another one: over half of the hundred biggest economies in the world aren’t even countries—they’re corporate bodies.”

“So?”

“So the 0.5 percent aren’t the same people. There’s been an explosion of individual wealth, and corporate wealth: Russia, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia. And others, undercutting China and India in costs—just as China and India once undercut America and Europe and Japan, even though those three are still very wealthy. So if there’s a cell, the members might come from further afield than the original founders. And if the members have changed, the motives have changed. Is that what she meant?”

“Possibly,” Anwar said. “But there’s more. Something she isn’t telling me. Something quite specific. Almost a detail, but it could blow everything else away.”

Rafiq looked at him curiously for a moment, then said, “Maybe. But since you don’t presently know what it is, we can’t process it. In the meantime, let’s stay with who they are.”

“No,” said Anwar. “Forget who they are and focus on where they are.”