Evensong

He gunned his engine and followed it. The road wound further up into the dark forested hills, and the truck slowed. He saw it turn into the driveway of the villa, and he drove past and drew to a halt a little way further on. He turned in his seat and looked back down the road at the villa.

He could hear the rustlings and drippings of the night forest, which was unusual because those noises should have been drowned by the noises made by the people who’d jumped down from the truck and were manhandling something out of the back; but they worked very quietly, and very quickly. There were four of them. It was too dark for him to make out their faces, and in any case they seemed to be wearing something like balaclavas or ski masks, but they were all larger than average and moved with a rehearsed athleticism. In just a few minutes they’d taken a large rectangular container out of the back of the truck and set it down on its end in the middle of the villa’s driveway, about halfway between the road and the front door. Then, apparently without speaking, they climbed back into the truck. It backed out of the driveway and headed down the road towards Opatija, quickly but not as quickly as when he’d first encountered it. It was still unlit.

He reversed back to the opening of the driveway, stopped, and lowered a window. Now he was on his own the forest noises should have sounded louder, but they didn’t; that was how quiet those four had been.

It was as if they’d chosen him as a witness. As if it was all an act, and they were waiting for him so they could perform it. They hadn’t threatened him—even when they’d forced him off the road it was done with a strange precision and lack of emotion. As if they just wanted him to see them, then they’d leave him to call it in. Which meant they might know things about him. Like the fact that he made this journey regularly, and what the journey was about. And that he’d still call in what he’d seen, even though it would mean having to explain what he was doing up here.

The villa was familiar to him from newscasts and previous journeys: low, white, with the dark verticals of cypresses looming in the shadows behind it. And, in the middle of the driveway, the container. Standing on its end. It was large, dark, rectangular, and featureless. It reminded him of the monolith in that old movie whose name he could never remember. He stared at it, and felt that it stared back at him.

The authorities were smarter than Horvath gave them credit for. They knew about his Saturday night drives into the mountains, but they knew also about his farm and his family and his financial difficulties. Some time ago they’d decided that as long as he dealt only with zoos and wildlife parks they’d turn a blind eye. All of which meant that Horvath, when he decided to call it in, would be an ideal witness.

He flicked open his wristcom.

3

Arden was told less than an hour after Horvath had called the local police. It was five in the morning of October 10 in Kuala Lumpur, about midnight on October 9 in Croatia.

She called Rafiq. He listened as carefully to her as she had listened to the UN Embassy attache who’d called her. Once Horvath had told the local police they’d acted quickly, notifying the UN because it concerned the villa, and deploying their own military to surround the villa—but not, she asked them, to attempt to open the container until she arrived.

Rafiq made a hasty call—not enough time, he told her drily, to write a letter—and arranged for a Consultant to go with her. Eve Monash arrived just as the VSTOL on the lawn in front of Fallingwater was ready to lift off.

Monash was about Arden’s age, but with a tall rangy build and a habit of not wasting words. She would have had the normal dislike of bodyguard duties, though she said nothing about that, or indeed about anything much, during the flight. She’d probably decided to stretch the point this time; Arden was, after all, the staff member responsible to Rafiq for the Consultancy, which made it almost like guarding Rafiq himself.

Eve Monash was one of the higher-rated Consultants, Arden knew, probably among the top four or five. Top two or three now.

The villa was owned by a Croatian banker who was sufficiently rich and well-connected to sidestep local planning regulations and get his house built on national park land. Then he’d fallen on hard times and rented it to a property company, from where it was sublet and assigned and disappeared into corporate networks which—so far—the Croatian authorities hadn’t unravelled. Once the flurry of activity following the discovery of Asika’s remains had died down, the villa was no longer guarded. Not even the police Do Not Cross tapes remained. It stayed empty and dark, until now.

For the second time she saw it from above, lit with arclights and surrounded by police and military and their vehicles. The VSTOL landed on the main drive. A door rippled open and she stepped out, followed by Eve Monash.