Evensong

Anwar and Gaetano walked swiftly through the Conference Centre. One by one, they were joined by the people Gaetano had urgently summoned—his security staff, the Patel contractors, the Patel site manager. Their varying states of dress reflected the urgency of the summons: drop everything, Gaetano had told them, and come here now.

The ragtag procession, increasing in size as it went, made its way through the huge main interior space of the Conference Centre with its clean swooping lines, white and silver walls, and citrus air. The Conference Centre was even bigger inside than the Cathedral, because there was no full upper floor, only a mezzanine: a balcony running round the entire circumference, with doors leading off. Anwar, Gaetano, and the others made their way up the wide staircase to the mezzanine, and through a set of pale wood double doors which opened into the large room set aside for the signing ceremony.

Anwar stood there silently for a few moments, waiting for stragglers to arrive; it was the first time he’d seen the Signing Room, and he studied it carefully.

The room was about fifty feet wide by sixty feet long. One end was effectively a stage-set for the signing ceremony. There were expanses of wood panelling: exact matches of the 1960s-style teak and mahogany panelling from the UNHQ Press Suites in New York. They covered the walls in the direction where they would be facing the cameras, which would all be massed at the other end of the room. The rebuilt area had been calculated exactly from the camera angles and lines of sight. The rest of the room was unchanged. There was an abrupt division between the newly-built replica panelling and the original curving white and silver walls. It was curious, seeing two such different styles in one space. Levin wouldn’t have liked it.

The wood panelling stood three to four feet proud of the original walls, as the room’s natural shape was curved and organic and the UN wanted to give the impression, where the panelling had been fitted, of a conventional rectangular space. The contractors had done it carefully and very well, Anwar concluded, with no detail missed. It was immaculate andvery convincing.

He continued to admire it (and, being who he was, also to record it) as the final latecomers arrived. They were all there now, the people he’d asked Gaetano to summon: ten of Gaetano’s staff, carrying sidearms and rapidfire rifles, which they held rather self-consciously; the nine Patel contractors who’d worked round the clock for the last three weeks in this room to create the painstaking illusion of a Press Suite; and nineteen more Patel contractors who’d worked on board the vehicles parked at Gateway, pre-assembling and disassembling panels and material so it could all be carried unnoticed to the Conference Centre, as Olivia had insisted. The final latecomer was the Patel site manager, a large beefy man who’d been dragged out of another meeting and who burst in dramatically, glaring. The Patel people shot glances at Anwar and Gaetano, and asked each other and Gaetano’s staff what this was about. Nobody knew, and the conversation gradually died to a murmur; then to silence.

“Tear it down,” Anwar said.

“What?” the site manager shouted.

“I want it pulled apart, all of it, and then I want it rebuilt while I’m watching.”

There was uproar. Anwar used it to turn to Gaetano. “Starting now,” he said above the noise around them, “I’ll stay here twenty-four-seven while they work on it. I want at least five of your people here, also twenty-four-seven and armed like now, until they finish work. After they finish work I want three of them here, round the clock, until the summit starts.”

He was hoping to find, buried in the walls, the entity or device they’d sent to kill her. But even if he didn’t, it would put him on the front foot. Give him the initiative. And it would ensure that even if it hadn’t already been buried there, it wouldn’t be buried there before the summit.

“Can we talk this over privately?” Gaetano whispered. “I understand the reasons but I’d like to discuss the scale, and I don’t want us to be overheard if we have differences.”

“No,” Anwar said. “I’m not leaving this room until the work is completed. Even if it takes days.” The uproar was continuing unabated. Anwar took Gaetano to one side and continued. “This isn’t negotiable. Whatever they’re sending for her, it’ll be concealed in these new walls. If it’s an advanced version of me, it could have got past security in the same way I could. If it’s some kind of mechanism, it could be disassembled, brought in piece by piece, and reassembled.”

The uproar intensified. The Patel contractors were now arguing furiously with Gaetano’s staff—quite unreasonably, since Gaetano’s staff had also only just been summoned there and were no wiser than anyone else.