Evensong

Something was in Anwar’s blood. He didn’t let it surface during the flight back from Kuala Lumpur, which he spent reclining in a contour chair in the VSTOL’s lounge, watching the play of shapes and colours moving just under the silvered surfaces of the walls. He didn’t let it surface when the VSTOL arrived without event and ahead of time at the small private airfield on the Downs—a measly collection of buildings, made to look even more so by the presence of the VSTOL and, when he released it from its lockup, the Cobra. There were only a few people there, most of them under contract to the UN; they nodded politely but avoided conversation.

He didn’t let it surface as he drove slowly from the airfield, south towards Brighton, and stopped at the edge of Devil’s Dyke. Lucifer’s Lesbian. He knew he’d be driving the Cobra past this vaginal gash in the landscape at least once more after today. How fast, and whether alone or pursued, would depend on how the mission ended.

Kuala Lumpur was seven hours ahead of Brighton. He’d left Fallingwater at 10:10 p.m. and landed back at the airfield at4:30p.m. Brighton time, 11:30p.m. in Kuala Lumpur. It was now nearly 5:00 p.m. on October 1: not yet wintry, but grey and chilly. It had rained earlier in the day, and the air was still damp. Back in Kuala Lumpur, October 1 would just be tipping over in to October 2. He sat in the Cobra, gazed down a long the length of Devil’s Dyke, and let what was in him surface.

Uncertainty. The meeting with Rafiq was unsatisfactory and unsettling, and compounded the uncertainty which was dogging him. He wanted to hit back at it, but was uncertain how to. He wanted to find these unnamed enemies, and he wanted them all to have just one throat, so he could give it a Verb.

He thought about what Arden had almost offered him. She was intelligent and beautiful and had an instinctive rapport that made people feel comfortable around her. Within the bounds of her job she even showed something like sensitivity. But he couldn’t have taken her offer, because she was a colleague. And, more importantly, because he couldn’t have known where it would lead. Whether it would entail baggage.

Olivia was different: less obviously attractive, and sex with her was sudden and sodden, impersonal and opportunistic, erupting between periods when she barely noticed him. But it carried no baggage, and it was simple and tidy afterwards. Literally in/out, like his missions used to be. Before this one.

He thought about his family, and what it would be like to walk once more along Ridge Boulevard, past the big brownstone house where he’d grown up. His family was still living there. They believed him dead, but didn’t know he’d become one of The Dead. Even if they knew, they wouldn’t have recognised him.

Kuala Lumpur had been his home for years, and he’d been in Brighton for only a couple of days; but going back to meet RafiqmadehimfeellikeKualaLumpur,notBrighton,wasthe interruption. He’d expected Rafiq would manipulate him the way he usually did, and felt uneasy when Rafiq didn’t. In fact Rafiq seemed almost to be struggling, a thought which troubled Anwar; another part of his comfort zone peeling away.

This won’t be decided by Rafiq in Fallingwater, but by me in Brighton. Whatever they’re sending to kill her, I’m all she’s got. That meant that if Rafiq wasn’t acting, if he really was struggling, Anwar needed help elsewhere. There was only one place.

Gaetano was competent, but had his limits; among other things, he was obsessive—a quality Anwar recognised and shared. Most Consultants were obsessive to varying degrees, although two of the best weren’t: Levin (flamboyant, confident) and Asika (settled, comfortable with himself). But that was academic now. Being dead trumped being obsessive.

I’m only a Consultant, he thought, unwittingly echoing Arden Bierce. I only do missions, I don’t do the Before and After. But Gaetano did, and was very good at it. Among the New Anglicans he was the only possible ally, at least until the summit. Maybe I should take a leap now, tell him everything Rafiq said. Or most of it. But I won’t tell him about this car. And working with Gaetano was still only a partial answer. It didn’t address the uncertainty.

Or the other matter, the whatever-it-was that she hadn’t told him, the possibly small and specific thing which might overturn everything else. Had she told Gaetano? Had Gaetano kept it from him? He tried to park it all for a few minutes, so he could sit in the Cobra and breathe in the smell of its leather and oiled metal surfaces, and the smell of the damp earth and grass outside. Maybe, if he stopped consciously trying to solve it, a solution would come unbidden.