Evensong

They’d walked through some of her other rooms—reception, library, office, sitting room, dining room—to get here, and all were exactly like rooms everywhere else on the New West Pier. It was as though this was her last personal refuge. He felt like he shouldn’t have seen it.

Anwar gave the page to Gaetano, who read it and handed it back. Carefully, Anwar put it on her bed; then, in case it got lost amid the tumble of unmade bedclothes, he put it on her pillow.

“I don’t like this, it’s wrong,” Gaetano said.

“It’s only a gesture.”

“I warned you before: don’t read too much into how she behaves with you.”

“I’m not. Particularly after tonight.”

“I think you are. That Shakespeare quote is hardly ambiguous.”

“Ambiguous is exactly what it is.”

“Then I’ve got another quote, just for you. ‘The verb To Love is hard to conjugate. The past isn’t simple, the present isn’t indicative, the future is very conditional.’ I read books too.”

Or perhaps just quotation dictionaries. “Yes, Cocteau knew he was being clever when he wrote that, but in this case it’s irrelevant. I’ve got another quote too: Velvet Bag of Shit. That’s what I think of her, Gaetano, that and nothing else. I’ll protect her because it’s what my mission says and I don’t walk away from missions, but otherwise...”

“Then why,” Gaetano asked, “put that on her bed?”

“Because it might remind her of something I said in Brighton, just before I showed her that page in my book and watched her read those lines.”

“You’ve torn a page out of a book for her?”

“Yes.”

When he’d recovered from what seemed like genuine surprise, Gaetano said, “I’ll warn you again, don’t imagine things she didn’t intend. She’s no good at relationships.”

“Neither am I.”

“So what did you say to her in Brighton?”

“Something about hating people less and understanding them more. It’s one of the few times she’s actually noticed me.”

“Is that where she got this idea for an Outreach Foundation?”

“Yes. I was talking about how she treats her political and religious enemies, but she widened it into building relationships...Relax, I don’t mean those kinds of relationships, and I don’t mean with me.” He gave Gaetano only her fallback position; not her primary one, which he’d laughed into nonexistence. “Relationships generally. She said she wants to start noticing people and valuing them. God knows, I had no idea that what I said would lead to that.”

“I don’t like it. If you harm her...”

“I know. You said all that before. I haven’t forgotten.” 

3

Early evening in Brighton was early morning in Kuala Lumpur; the beginning of the following day. Arden Bierce had been working through the night.

She’d been reading and re-reading transcripts: of Anwar’s questioning of Carne and Hines, of her own questioning of the five others like Carne and Hines, of Anwar’s conversations with Olivia and Gaetano, and of her report to Rafiq given from Opatija as she stood over Asika’s remains. Something was in there, hiding in plain sight.

In the villa at Opatija, she’d hoped that Asika had been killed by a swarm of opponents and not a single opponent. But a single opponent was what she sensed then and still felt now.

Even Levin couldn’t have done that to Asika without suffering damage himself. In fact Levin couldn’t have done it at all, because Asika was better. And it was academic anyway, because Levin was as dead as Asika. Carne and Hines had told Anwar, and five others like Carne and Hines had told her: Levin died first, then Asika. But what they’d done to Levin was worse. There wasn’t even enough of him left to make a corpse. And they all remembered his face, when he realised he couldn’t defend himself. So what have they got that kills Consultants? How and where did they make it, or create it?

She had originally joined UN Intelligence as a field officer. She proved effective, not because she was particularly ruthless but because she understood people instinctively, whether colleagues or opponents. With colleagues, she established good working relationships and sensed what they needed from her. With opponents, she sensed what made them tick and how they’d act or react.

UN Intelligence was a source from which Rafiq drew many of his personal staff, and she was quickly promoted. She was the obvious choice for her present role, as the staff member with responsibility for The Dead. Only she could instinctively know what made them tick. Or Rafiq, who was even more impenetrable.

But after the meeting with Anwar, she wasn’t so sure about Rafiq. The meeting still worried her. Rafiq had told her beforehand how he would play it, how he would try to tease ideas out of Anwar by pretending to be struggling to understand these new opponents. She was unconvinced then, and remained unconvinced now, about how much he was acting. She sensed something in him which, in anyone else, might almost have amounted to uncertainty.