Evensong

Rafiq might almost have heard her thoughts. “It doesn’t have to be a full-blown attachment, if that makes you uneasy. And it doesn’t have to be physical, though I’d like it if it was. It’s been a long time...Now I know for certain Marek’s dead, it’s time to move on. My family died ten years ago. I’d like to find someone.”

“I understand.”

“You said first there’s Anwar. Was there anything else?”

With Rafiq, she knew, you had to examine your words minutely, because he’d be examining them minutely too. And your inflections and body language. In that way he was like a Consultant, but he did it naturally. Like her empathy, it was a gift he’d always had.

“Was there anything else?” he repeated.

“I’m taller than you,” she said, straightfaced. “And you smoke.”

“Most people are taller than me. My wife was. And I didn’t smoke while she was alive.”

She was silent again.

“So what do you think?”

“It can’t start until after the summit. Anwar needs my full attention. Also...”

“Yes?”

“Are you holding something back about Anwar’s mission?”

“I always hold things back. But about his mission, no.” He looked directly into her eyes when he said it; but he was good at doing that. The most important thing is sincerity. If you can fake that, you can fake anything. Still, she believed him, on balance. Her empathy against his labyrinthine cunning, and on balance she believed him.

“There’s something about his mission that’s worrying me,” she said. “I can’t quite find it yet.”

“Like Anwar and his Detail. Remember him going on about it when he came here?”

“He goes on about it to me, too. Almost as much as he goes on about her. I don’t think that my Detail is the same as his, but it’s there somewhere. I will find it.”

For once, he was silent.

“And,” she added, “there’s something else.”

“Another Detail?”

“Maybe. When I said park it, I meant only that. I didn’t mean abandon it or forget it.” She looked directly into his eyes. “I’ll help Anwar through this, if I can. But when it’s over, you and I have unfinished business. Laurens.” 

3

The opening ceremony began at exactly 10:00 a.m. It was large-scale and well attended. In addition to the delegates there were august non-participants and well-wishers like the British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, the Mayor of Brighton, and the Old Anglicans’ Archbishops of Canterbury and Rochester. And their entourages, including a security complement for each. It was a huge arrangement of inter-locking and interfacing mechanisms that Gaetano somehow contrived to keep moving. Anwar hadn’t seen him or spoken to him much during the last few days.

There was also a large media presence, not only in the Conference Centre but also at Gateway, to cover the VIPs as they arrived. Paths were cleared for them, but the Pier was not closed to the public. Tourists and sightseers still milled around as usual, as did the people who worked in the Pier’s business district. One maglev was set aside for the summit participants, and paths were cordoned off where they disembarked for the delegates to walk through the Garden, or the squares and piazzas of the business district, on their way to the Conference Centre.

All the major UN members were present. Countries not directly involved in water rights disputes sent ministers or senior civil servants. Those directly involved—sometimes to the extent of being at war with each other—sent heads of state.

The delegates and other participants were seated in the main auditorium, facing the stage on which the top table was set. The people who would usually occupy the top table during the proceedings were Zaitsev and five others. Zaitsev would be chairing the summit. The others were the members of the committee responsible for drafting the Agenda—a mixture of retired diplomats, senior civil servants and UN officials. For the opening ceremony they were joined by Olivia.

She again gave a short, non-political opening address. “Welcome. We’re proud to be your hosts, and we hope you’ll find the arrangements work well and assist your deliberations. We wish you every success. It would be nice to look back on this summit and think that we helped to make it productive.”

Zaitsev gave a rather more fulsome opening address. Anwar recognized many of the phrases from Rafiq’s briefing; Zaitsev must have picked them up in conversation with Rafiq. He used them without attribution, of course.

“Thirty years ago, this summit would have been about fossil fuels—oil, gas, maybe coal and shale. Thirty years ago, fossil fuels were limited. They still are. But now we have alternative energy sources, and we’ve made them commercially viable: wind, sun, tides, high-atmosphere turbulence, nuclear fusion, hydrogen cells, even continental drift. So we’ve come to Brighton, to this magnificent venue, not to talk about energy sources, but about something much more basic. Something ever-present, but ever-scarce where it’s most needed: water.”