Evensong

The site manager finally pushed through the melee and located Anwar and Gaetano where they’d moved to one side. “It’s taken three weeks,” he shouted at Anwar, “THREE WEEKS, to do this work, and you want it torn down? We’ve got less than twelve days to do it again!”

“You’ve got a lot less than twelve days,” Anwar said. “I want it done in six.”

The site manager turned to Gaetano, whose face he at least recognised, in the hope that he might mediate. “We had to get exact replicas of the panelling from New York. Grain, texture, density, all had to be matched exactly. We can’t do that again, not in twelve days! Certainly not in six days!”

“Then bring in more people,” Anwar said, before Gaetano could reply. “Work them round the clock. Just throw people and money at it.”

“But...”

“And screw the texture and density and grain. As long as it’s teak and mahogany, that’ll do. Get it from ordinary timber merchants in Brighton.” Anwar left him red-faced and apoplectic, and turned back to Gaetano. “I want her orders cancelled. No disguising workers as tourists, or disguising material as luggage and bringing it here in small amounts. There isn’t time. Bring in workers and materials openly. Load everything on the maglevs. If it won’t fit on the maglevs, bring it to the Pier by sea or helicopter.”

“But...”

“Youmustconvinceher.She’snottocomeanywherenear this room until it’s rebuilt, and until I say so.”

“She’ll be...”

“I don’t care if she’ll be furious, tell her I’m quitting if she enters this room before I say so. I’m staying here for as long as it takes them to rebuild it. I’ll watch everything they do. I want food and drink brought in here, and I want you to bring it personally. And I want a bucket. And I want at least five of your people, armed, here all the time until the work is completed.

And I want your deputies Bayard and Proskar kept away. And I want her kept away. And I want...”

So his stay in the Signing Room began.

He wouldn’t take food from anyone other than Gaetano. He had screens wheeled in from the Pier hospital and arranged so they curtained off a small area at the far wall where he used the bucket regularly and copiously. He refused any change of clothes. He stayed unshaven and unwashed, with stale breath and body odour—a condition of such total novelty to him that he privately catalogued its development. And through it all his expensively tailored suit still kept its shape impeccably despite his dirtiness. Elegant container, foul contents, he mused, picking at one of his favourite themes.

He almost revelled in it. All his life he’d never been anything less than immaculate. But in all his life he’d never done anything as unpredictable, as Olivia-like, as this. He was learning things from this mission: how to do the unexpected, how to take the initiative, even how to tear down and replace wooden wall panels.

On the first day he watched them start work. They decided to uncover a small area first, no more than ten feet square, to test their techniques before tackling the main area. He watched them rip out the old wooden panels, revealing the structures underneath: layers of plaster and, underneath the plaster, a latticework of carbon-ceramic laths. The laths had been fixed to the original walls with polymers which, although immensely strong, could be removed by the application of contra-polymers so they left no mark on the walls. As the first panels started to be torn away, he motioned to Gaetano’s men to have their guns ready. Nothing was there so far. The rubble and dust and debris mounted.

Then, the layers under the panelling were also ripped out: plaster, laths, back to the original silver and white surface. The first small area of the original wall was uncovered. The room’s shape was curved and the panelling was designed to create, at that end of the room, the impression of a regular rectangular space.

They paused. Nothing was there but the original walls. Anwar let out a breath and retired to the curtained alcove holding his bucket, where he called Gaetano and reminded him to double-check the Patel employees. Then he called Arden Bierce and told her to do the same. His priority was to find whatever (if anything) was hidden in the Signing Room, but his next priority was to find who put it there, how, and on whose orders.

The Patel contractors started on the main area of panelling. As the hours passed more of them joined the work, partly because the operation was becoming more frantic, and partly because Anwar’s cancellation of Olivia’s orders made it possible. Anwar observed them minutely. More teak and mahogany panelling was brought in from local timber yards to replace the panels that would be torn out. Anwar couldn’t tell the difference in grain or texture or density, and didn’t care.

After two days he had a visit from Bayard.

“I told Gaetano not to let you come here.”

“He doesn’t know,” Bayard replied. “I came on my own initiative. You know about initiative now, don’t you? At least, a bit more than you did before.”