“Maybe.”
Gaetano looked askance at him, but did not press it.
“And,” Anwar said, “after yesterday I need to know about all your people. What ones I can trust when I’m not around. And she can’t go off like today, not in future. Not without me knowing.”
“Are you going to tell her that?” “Yes.”
“Well,I’ve got the details of my people. Here, I’ve made an implant bead.”
“Thanks, but I need your advice on each of them—who I can trust, who I can’t.”
“That’s there too. I’ve added it, name by name.” Gaetano had ninety staff. About half were frontline ex-Special Forces, and the others were support: analysts, forensics, intelligence, admin, IT. “You might,” Gaetano added drily, as Anwar seemed about to play it there and then, “prefer to read it in detail later. Most of us are loyal to her, including my deputy Arban Proskar and the six people you fought yesterday in the Cathedral. My other deputy, Luc Bayard...”
“Yes?”
“He’s more ambiguous. He isn’t someone you can trust like me.”
“That’s ambiguous too.”
Gaetano smiled briefly, but said, “I’m serious.”
Anwar nodded, and reviewed what he knew about Bayard. He’d done wet work for one of the more obscure of the several agencies attached to the French COS. Large, like Levin. Talkative. Loud. “Quite unlike you,” he added.
“Except,” Gaetano said, straightfaced, “that he makes you uncomfortable. And he also has something in common with you. He detests her cat.”
“I don’t...”
“Rafiq’s briefing,” Gaetano went on, “probably has most of these details about my people, but not the notes of their loyalties. I’ve never put stuff like that on record for anyone before.”
“What made you do it now?”
“If you’re the only one with a chance of protecting her, I decided I had to work with you. And if I have to work with you, I’ll do it properly.”
“I’m grateful.”
“Don’t be. We both want to protect her, whatever our reasons.”
“She wanted to replace me. You know what she thinks of my ability to protect her.”
“And I know what you think of bodyguard duties...But this is different.” The sudden edge to Gaetano’s voice caught Anwar unawares. “Whoever you’ve had to guard in the past—” (“I haven’t,” Anwar said, but Gaetano didn’t hear him) “—they weren’t as important as her. If you protect her, I’ll owe you. If you don’t, you’ll owe me. And I’ll collect.”
Long before he became Anwar Abbas, he’d been fascinated by the difference between containers and their contents. He’d liked to see into things, and people, and catalogue how their exteriors and interiors differed. Gaetano was not unlike him: haunted inside by thoughts that he was good, very good, but not the best. So he understood Gaetano, even the implied threat. Gaetano was only a Meatslab, but Anwar knew that he’d always carry out a threat. Assiduously, intelligently, and persistently. He’d never give up. And, having finally decided they should work together, Gaetano would never give up on that either. He’d do it properly.
All this time the wallscreen had been murmuring more reports about the kidnapping, reports to which Anwar only paid partial attention. Then he heard a mention of Rochester Cathedral, and froze.
“It’s them, Gaetano! Where is she? Where did she go?”
The Quakers still wouldn’t budge.
“It’s nearly seven in the morning,” said Rani Desai. “We’ve been at this all night. You must be as tired as the hostages. Why not just go to your reserve list?”
“What do you mean, I must be as tired as the hostages?”
“Oh, come on. We know who you are,” Rani Desai said. “All of you. And your medical conditions. Come on, we all want this to end. Your hostages are elderly people. Go to your reserve list, we’ll do number ten, then we can move to number eleven and they can all go home.”
Jones paused. “Alright. The first name on our reserve list is the Chronic Disease Research Foundation.”
It took less time than expected—the CEO was an acquaintance of Rani Desai—and was completed well inside the hour. Rani Desai obtained the charity’s acceptance, made the electronic transfer, and sent Jones’ wristcom the page showing the transaction.
“Good,” said Jones. “Ten down, one to go. And Number Eleven is good news: it’s non-financial, so you’re done with paying. It finished at ten million, not eleven. But this one may take all of an hour.” He paused for effect, and glanced at Michael Taber. “You must get Olivia del Sarto to cancel the New Anglicans’ hosting of the UN Resources Summit at Brighton.”
There was a long silence, both from his wristcom and in the Cathedral.
“Go on,” he told her. “Do it.” Rani Desai broke the connection.
The silence persisted in the Cathedral. Some of the congregation had relaxed again after the outburst over the Quakers and had even been starting to talk among themselves and with the kidnappers. Now all that ended.
Taber smiled bleakly. “This was always about Number Eleven, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Jones made a show of checking his gun, and wouldn’t look at Taber. “We took the Cathedral last night because it was easier in darkness, and then we had to spin it out until now, so Number Eleven would get morning coverage. We were going too quickly, until the Quakers helped us. That’s another reason I chose them, though I wish they’d taken the money. Still, we got ten million for some other good causes.”
“Yes, but now it gets serious.”
“I told you. This is the last day of my life.”
Gaetano and Anwar burst into the Boardroom.
The news had erupted around her. She had cancelled her meetings before they’d begun and was already at the wall of screens, dealing with Rani Desai and the media and kidnappers and her own staff. Dealing with several screens simultaneously, like Rafiq would have done. Like Anwar could also have done, but he had enhancements. Olivia and Rafiq didn’t.
The motives were obvious. The New Anglicans’ original founders were probably employing the kidnappers. They wanted Olivia to give up her high political profile, of which the UN summit was the latest example. Originally they wanted the Church made rich and powerful, but she’d done it on her terms, not theirs. Originally they wanted the Church to run like a business or political organization, and she’d done that too; but on her terms, not theirs. So they wanted her dead, and until they could arrange that, they wanted her quiet.
Except that Anwar didn’t believe any of it, either now or when she’d first told him, over the dinner which should have been a briefing but wasn’t. There was more. Not necessarily something larger, but something more specific and detailed: perhaps only a single fact, but one which would overturn all the others. And she wasn’t telling him.
And this pantomime at Rochester: too obviously staged and too obviously contrived. She might submit and lose face, or refuse to submit and cause the hostages to die. Either way it would be a PR problem, but not an insurmountable one; the New Anglicans’ popularity, and their formidable PR machine, would see to that. But whatever she did, summit or no summit, they’d still kill her.
It was in Anwar’s nature to look for pockets of darkness, and he’d found them. A whole billiard table of them.
Since Olivia was occupied—she hadn’t even glanced round when he and Gaetano entered, and was busy dealing simultaneously with three screens and her wristcom, as well as her staff—Anwar took the opportunity to tell Gaetano all this. “So,” he concluded, “Rochester is all an act. It isn’t real. They never expected her to give in.”