Evensong

Zaitsev’s voice was more suited to oratory than conversation. In conversation it sounded harsh and rasping. In oratory it was deep and modulated, slightly tremulous with manly but restrained emotion at the important bits. A better actor than Rafiq.

“Some of the UN member states represented here have been at war over water rights. Some still are. It’s inconceivable to me that we could be on the way to making energy shortages a thing of the past, while water shortages are still a thing of the present. It’s inconceivable to me that people are dying over a substance which is more abundant in the world than fossil fuels ever were. With your help and goodwill, we’ll leave here nearer to a solution than when we arrived.”

Anwar found himself joining in the applause, and grudgingly admitted that Zaitsev was good. Cleverer than he looked. But the ultimate success of this summit would be decided not by what was said here, but by what was done later by Rafiq.

Rafiq couldn’t have matched Zaitsev’s oratory, but he would never need to. As clever as Zaitsev might be, Rafiq was cleverer still, distancing himself by professing to deal only with executive matters, not policy. He used Zaitsev, or whoever else was Secretary-General at the time, as a human shield. The media would often try to draw him out on matters of policy, but without success. Political matters, he would intone virtuously, and monotonously, are not the province of the unelected executive arm.

I first got that briefing, Anwar thought, about two weeks ago. It seems longer than that. He was annoyed at his readiness to join in the applause. All Zaitsev had done was to retail, in a slightly better voice, content he’d picked up from Rafiq.

Anwar would have liked to do an immersion hologram, like the ones he did in his teens, with them all naked. Especially Zaitsev. Somewhere in the deep interior darkness of Zaitsev’s capacious trousers, a pair of large buttocks lurked like a couple of conjoined cave bears. Oh for an immersion hologram, he thought, to bring them walloping and wobbling into the daylight. 

4

She hadn’t seen it coming, but when it was out in the open she knew it was right. Rafiq was right for her, and she for him. They had a new life waiting.

Rafiq had gone off to meetings, leaving Arden in the parkland in front of Fallingwater. What they had spoken of was pivotal. Whatever would take place between them was on hold until after the summit, but then it would resume. She’d make sure of it. And then the detail would kick in.

Her life would change. She’d have to leave the UN, and hand over to someone else; it would be unprofessional to continue working with Rafiq if they became more than colleagues. As she knew they would.

A move to another part of UNEX, or even the wider UN, wouldn’t work. She’d have to find a new career, which wouldn’t be difficult with her CV, but at this point she couldn’t imagine herself anywhere else. And she couldn’t imagine leaving before her own part in this was finished. She wouldn’t need to leave immediately after the summit concluded. However it turned out, there would be time to finish her work before the media got wind that she and Rafiq were an item.

Which meant she had a bit longer than Anwar to find what worried her about his mission. No, that’s stupid. So stupid she almost laughed out loud. She had to find it in nine days or less, because Anwar had to be told what it was before they made their move.

They. Them. She couldn’t bring herself to call them The Cell; it sounded theatrical, though it was probably accurate. Anwar was right about that: they could only operate on such a scale, over such a long time, if they operated as a cell. Like Black Dawn, but with apparently limitless resources. And an inbuilt sense of timing. They knew exactly when to emerge and when to go back.

Except this time. Maybe Anwar’s rather gauche sojourn in the Signing Room had made them change their timing. Otherwise they wouldn’t have revealed what happened to Marek. She felt they’d been planning to play that card during the summit, as a final massive misdirection before they moved for Olivia, and something had made them play it early.

They stayed enigmatic, wrapped in the stuff of conspiracy theories. It magnified their threat. They’d even invented the concept of Conspiracy Theory, made it an urban myth—like Rafiq did, on a smaller scale, with his Tournament rumours. Made it the province of cranks. Marginalised it. And amplified it at the same time.