The door opened and Anwar stepped out into the Boardroom, followed by a waft of urine. His manner seemed strangely normal.
“Anwar! What did you do to him?”
“Nothing.” The first time she’s used my name. “I threatened him with something, and he said something. Then he tripped his poison implants. Gaetano, I’d like his body kept securely here until the UN come for it.”
“Bodyguard duties,” Gaetano muttered. “I told you to leave the questioning to me.”
“What did he tell you?” Olivia asked.
“Something I need to check first with the UN…And I need permission for a VSTOL to land on the pad at the end of the Pier. They’ll want his body.” Without waiting for her answer, he turned to Gaetano. “I want you to put it around that he’s alive and being held here until the summit finishes. Someone might come for him.”
“What did you threaten him with?” Olivia asked.
He told her.
She stared. “Would you have done that?”
“Of course not. But the threat works.” Just not for me.
“Did...did you think it up?”
“No, Parvin Marek did. Remember Parvin Marek? About ten years ago he…”
“Yes, I know who he was.”
“Is. He’s still out there. And don’t gape like that, it makes you look gormless. Eat a cake or something.”
Somehow, Anwar made it back to his suite. He sent Arden Bierce a report through his wristcom, including word-by-word accounts of his interrogation of Richard Carne and his conversations with Olivia and Gaetano, and waited.
After ten minutes, about the time he estimated it would take her to digest his report, her call came.
His wristcom could project a small image on to the air a few inches in front of it, or a larger high-definition image on to a wall or other convenient flat surface. He chose the wall.
Normally, it would have been good to see her again. Her face was regular and open (unlike Olivia’s, with its sharp small features and changing expressions) and he knew it genuinely reflected what was inside her—including, this time, a look of preoccupation which closely echoed his own.
“Anwar, I...”
“Levin was assigned to find Marek, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. There was a possible lead, but it...”
“And when were you planning to tell me about Levin?”
“Until your call, I had no idea of any connection between his mission and yours.”
He let the silence grow between them.
“I’m sorry. But we don’t have his body. Maybe he’s not dead.”
“Annihilated, Carne said. Like Asika. Did you see Chulo’s body?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
She told him.
“Miles...and Chulo.”
“We don’t know for certain about Miles. His body hasn’t been found.”
“Yes; you said that.” He studied her face. The distress was genuine enough. “But you’d say that if his body had been found. You want me functional. You’re just beginning to see what’s in this mission, aren’t you?”
“Anwar, listen. Whatever did that to Chulo, when it comes for her, do you think you can stop it?”
“Find them, Arden. Find who they are and where they are.”
“You heard what Gaetano said. A handful of people out of millions,connected informally. What does that remind you of?”
“You tell me.”
“The Dead. Moving in and out of the real world, back to a comfort zone where nobody can touch them.”
“You’re wrong. They’re a cell. Like Black Dawn, random and untraceable, but in every other way the opposite of Black Dawn. A cell with trillions. Which doesn’t publicise itself, which plays long and patient, which operates through proxies and cutoffs, and uses corporations and conglomerates and shareholdings and banks and networks of subsidiaries.” The exact opposite of Black Dawn. White Dusk, he named them privately.
“This is bigger than even Rafiq knows.” She was unaccustomed to saying such things, and it showed in her face. “I spoke to him this morning. It’s beginning to worry him.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t, I did. But he didn’t argue. An enemy who hasn’t been around for years, and now is. And knows all about us. And when they kill her, it will only be the first move of something larger.”
“I think you meant If, not When.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “It’s not her, Rafiq doesn’t particularly care about her, but it’s what they do afterwards...” She took a breath, and made her voice louder. “And there’s something else. Rafiq’s concerned you’re having to do what UN Intelligence usually does. You don’t have the experience.”
“Oh, I see. First the Archbishop, now the Controller-General, telling me I’m not good enough.”
“What? No, that’s not what I...”
But Anwar wasn’t listening. “And her guard, Proskar: you’re sure he isn’t Marek?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“But you’ll check again?”
“Of course.”
“He’s Croatian. Fortyish. And those hands.”
“I said, we’ll check again. We already checked, before you even took this mission—the surface resemblance was obvious. But nothing else matches—DNA, fingerprints, retinal scans, dentition, nothing. And his database ID is genuine.”
“But you’ll still...”
“...check again. Yes.”
“Because if he is Marek, tell me and I’ll kill him.” Anwar had never intentionally killed, or offered to kill, anyone. It must be the mask slipping, he could feel it. Dissolving. Corroded by the feelings he’d kept underneath it.
“Well, say something.”
“Anwar, listen. Maybe she was right. Maybe Rafiq should send someone else.”
“You bring in anyone else, I’ll kill them. I’ll come back and kill Rafiq too, right in front of Fallingwater where Marek…” He stopped, horrified. What made me say that? I’ve never said anything like that. “Arden, listen to me! I want this mission, but not for her, she’s appalling. I want it for what she stands for.” It might have been his voice, but it sounded to both of them like rambling.
Embarrassed, she changed the subject. “So why this summit? Why now?”
“It’s not about the summit. The summit is only important because it’s live and public and gives them the perfect stage to make their move for her.”
They both let it hang there for a while, and went on to safer things: when they’d pick up Carne’s body by VSTOL from the Pier, how they’d pretend he was still alive (to see who might come for him), and how they’d fake his death later. Fake death was easy, real death wasn’t. When Anwar joined the Consultancy, they faked his passing as thoroughly as they always did. The UN databases thrummed with his exhaustively-documented death from a virulent strain of flu. They sometimes did car/plane/boat accidents, but that involved corroborating wreckage: not impossible, but more troublesome. His new identity, later, was slipped into the world’s electronic landscape as if it had always been there.
Carne was genuinely dead, but they’d still have to fake it. After they did all the things they needed to do with his body.