Evensong

“Something you said in Brighton, about if I hated people less and understood them more.”

“What has that got to do with what happened here? I was talking about fundamentalists, about how you treat your enemies.”

“You were talking about how I treat everyone. I can deal with media and mass audiences, but not with individual people, whether they’re enemies or friends. I’ve never noticed them. I’ve never had a relationship that works both ways, not with any of them. So...”

“So you decided to practice on me?”

“Not practice. Start.”

He laughed out loud. “Start a relationship, with a Consultant?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, not that kind of relationship.” She hurried on, conscious that she’d immediately backed down at the first sign of derision, and was now fighting only for her fallback position. “And I have to start with someone. And I got Rafiq to send you here, and I never really stopped to notice you. And when I asked you things about yourself, I’d forget your answers even before you finished speaking. And—” She was conscious of too many Ands, as if she was scrambling for anything she could find. She took a breath and began again. “—And you’d be only the first. I have to start somewhere.” She knew how lame it sounded, and added “After you I could go on to real people.” She’d meant it to cover her retreat, but it sounded worse; gratuitous, and ugly.

He stopped laughing. “Then skip the part with me and go straight to real people, because this didn’t work. It was embarrassing.”

He wasn’t merely embarrassed, he was burning with embarrassment.It was knotting his stomach. A woman in her thirties trying to learn the elements of courtship, of pleasing a partner. Sucking me into herself. Or, if he believed her fall-back position, trying to learn how to notice and value people. Either way she had years to make up, and he couldn’t see beyond mid-October.

He strode over to the full-length Boardroom window. The early evening view of the Brighton foreshore and the i-360 Tower was beguiling as always, but he wasn’t really looking at it; only turning his back on her.

This mission had threatened to overturn his life, and he’d staved that off by the change that had come over him since meeting Rafiq—the change that had made him take decisive action and let others do the worrying and pick up the pieces. And now that change, and her reaction to it, was in turn threatening to overturn his life. The same threat, from another direction.

“You’re different since you’ve come back,” she said, and immediately knew how fatuous it sounded; she’d only said it to avoid saying other things. When he didn’t reply, shea dded, “Was it your meeting with Rafiq?”

“Yes.”

“What happened there? Tell me about it.”

He told her. As with Gaetano, he omitted references to the names and number of Consultants, and left out the conversation with Arden Bierce, but he was grateful to be able to retreat into the detail. It stopped him saying other things.

“Well,” she said when he’d finished, “it checks out.”

“What checks out?”

“Gaetano told me all that yesterday, and his account was almost exactly the same as yours. He practices—” she hurried over the word “—eidetic techniques. He works very hard at it.”

He would, Anwar thought. Not like me, I was made. He has to work at it. And he’d work with quiet persistence and thoroughness. With near-obsessiveness. He’d make a good Consultant. In fact, maybe he was. Another labyrynthine move of Rafiq’s? A secret twentieth Consultant, unknown to the others? No, now a secret nineteenth. No, eighteenth.

He turned away from the window and faced her. “You said you’d answer my question about that final detail.”

“You started this. You shouldn’t have said that to me in Brighton. If Rafiq had sent someone else, I’d never have heard it.”

“Answer my question.”

“And you should go and get cleaned up. And I must go, too. I have an organisation to run, and a summit in seven days. And I need to eat.” She looked at him. “Alone.”

“My question.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t answer it.”

“You said...”

“I can’t. But if we survive this, you’ll know why I can’t.” 

2

He walked through the early evening, across the Garden from the Cathedral to the New Grand. He walked through the lobby and up to his suite. He shaved, cleaned his teeth, took a long shower, and changed his clothes. It took him over an hour to clean off the last five days, particularly the last hour of the fifth day.