Evensong

They only emerged once or twice in a lifetime, to give history a nudge. Other than that, they existed, but didn’t do. They weren’t part of anybody’s landscape, or anybody’s living memory. They were part of the long slow circling of history. Individuals lived and died and were replaced, but goals remained. Individuals were traceable and vulnerable; goals, if part of a long game, weren’t.

Like Anwar, they came out of their comfort zone, struck, and went back. But they followed different ends and used different means. In a world pervaded by electronic comms, they simply used handwriting and bits of paper, and made themselves untraceable. Laurens does the same, of course, she thought, but he does it for reasons of style. He has a singular sense of style.

And they used Special Forces, but only for low-grade wet work. They didn’t have the UN’s techniques of physical and neurological enhancement, so they couldn’t make them into rivals of The Dead. Not the ones she and Anwar had questioned, certainly.

But they had something that had killed Levin and Asika.

And that summarised all that she knew about them. The last point might yield something, but hadn’t so far, and otherwise there wasn’t much more she could usefully learn. So she parked it, and considered other routes: what they did, and who they employed to do it.

Nine days or less. 

5

Anwar recalled what Rafiq once told him. The more established major members—the Americans and Chinese and Europeans—liked to think of the UN as a corporation, with themselves as shareholders. “They’re wrong,” he said. “My part, the unelected part, is like a corporation. But Zaitsev’s part, the political part, isn’t. It’s just a microcosm of the world, with all the world’s history and hatreds and differences. Those things don’t go away just because you put them into a General Assembly.” Or into a summit, like this one.

The most powerful UN members were currently America, China, Europe, Brazil, Indonesia, and India. Russia and

Japan were now less important, politically and economically: Japanese manufacturing and electronics had been overtaken by China and India, and Russian natural resources were worth less now that new energy sources were becoming viable. Russia still remained a Security Council member, but the new energy geopolitics might eventually change even that. Middle Eastern countries were less important for the same reason.

After the opening ceremony, the real business commenced and fault lines already began to appear. Olivia stayed to listen, and so, therefore, did Anwar. He sat a few rows back from her, absorbing lines of sight and possible angles of attack. He sensed from voice inflections and body language that things weren’t going well, but he didn’t listen closely to the words: only enough to know that the early objections were not about detailed Agenda items, but about the Agenda’s very existence.

Other honorary guests and worthies who came for the ceremony gradually left, not wishing to be associated with the process of real business and real disagreements. But, to their credit, the two Archbishops from the Old Anglicans did stay on for an hour or so. They adjourned with Olivia afterwards for a private meeting in one of the adjoining rooms leading off from the main auditorium. Anwar waited discreetly at a distance, covering the door and listening to the discord between the delegates.

Gaetano’s briefing to Anwar was as thorough as one of Rafiq’s. It included the latest version of the Agenda. Anwar had studied it carefully. It set out to define policies and codes of conduct—not diverting or damming rivers to deny water downstream, reforestation to ensure rainwater didn’t run off uselessly, no dumping of untreated waste, desalination technology, and much more. It aimed to identify and define what it termed Guiding Principles which, when agreed, could be applied to the several current disputes, and even wars, between some of the members present.

The Agenda was a document that had been negotiated almost as fiercely as water rights themselves. And, only a few hours into the first day, it was unravelling. 

6

Parvin Marek had been theirs. Their instrument.

He was a freak of nature. Normal family, ordinary upbringing, average accomplishments. Averagely gregarious. No special talents or failings. Not bullied or sexually abused. Then, in his twenties, a dark light switched on inside him. It made him brilliant and monstrous. Nihilism was his religion.