“No, Mr. Secretary-General, I won’t budge. UNESCO has enjoyed a comfort zone, on public money, for too long. What they do is important but they’ll do it on my terms, and in accordance with my performance goals.” Rafiq paused, listening to Zaitsev’s reply, then laughed; not his usual quiet laugh, but something louder and more unpleasant. “Vote of no confidence? Your predecessors tried that and failed. So will you.”
He flicked his wristcom shut and turned back to Anwar, switching attention instantly; there was no grimace or shrug or other unspoken comment on the last call.
Anwar, too, resumed instantly. “You said she isn’t important. That she’s not your concern.”
“I meant it, Anwar; she’s appalling. You wouldn’t believe how she negotiated with me for the venue.”
“Yes I would. I know what she’s like,” Anwar said. “But what she stands for is your concern. If it isn’t, it ought to be.”
“Alright, then I didn’t mean it. It was just said for effect. Don’t take it at face value.”
“I’d be ill-advised, now,” Anwar replied, “to take anything you say at face value.”
“You mean about your mission and Levin’s being connected? I genuinely didn’t know when I assigned you. I know now, but I didn’t then.”
Genuinely. Like Frankly. If you’re adding words like that to your vocabulary, and if you need to use them with people like me rather than the media, you’re in trouble.
Rafiq’s skill at working people close-up meant he usually got more from a face to face meeting than they did. And he had called for this meeting, immediately after studying Anwar’s reports; to review, he said, the identity of those who’d killed Asika and Levin and apparently threatened Olivia. But Anwar sensed that Rafiq wasn’t scanning him as closely as usual; and he’d made unguarded remarks, and used words loosely.
It was unthinkable that Rafiq, of all people, could be pre-occupied: Rafiq, whose reputation was that he’d never give whoever was in front of him anything less than his undivided attention, no matter what other things concerned him at the time. Maybe UNESCO is more serious than he’s letting on. No, he has situations like that every day. It’s something else. Miles was preoccupied with something too, the last time I saw him alive, here at Fallingwater.
“They’re like you,” Rafiq said suddenly. “Like The Dead— they have their real identity, and their identity in the world. They come into the world and go back out of it. Like you, in and out. I could be one of them. Or Arden, or Zaitsev. Or Gaetano. Everyone you know, you could re-interpret all they’ve said and done as being one of them.”
Even his syntax isn’t quite as polished as usual. “I know you could be one of them. You’d be perfect. The damage you could do before anyone found you out...And no,” Anwar’s voice hardened, “they’re not like The Dead. Arden made that mistake. They’re more like Black Dawn. A cell, but with trillions and with a network of corporations and subsidiaries and proxies and cutouts. You must have reached that conclusion yourself.”
Rafiq gazed closely at Anwar. Anwar held his gaze.
“A play within a play, Anwar. Shift the world-picture just one notch, and there’s a parallel world. Theirs.”
He noticed Rafiq had started calling him by his first name.
He’d never done it before. And he is preoccupied. He’s trying to cover it up by being louder and less formal and more direct.
Along one wall of Rafiq’s office was a floor-to-ceiling array of screens, carrying news and current affairs feeds. The sound was muted, but they listened to it for a couple of minutes, in preference to the silence which had started to lengthen between them. Rochester had sparked off a debate about the New Anglicans: whether they should be hosting the summit, whether they were getting above themselves, whether they should be more of a Church and less of a corporation or a political movement. But the New Anglicans were already countering it; their PR machine was as formidable as the rest of their organisation, and Olivia’s five years had given them huge popular support. Rochester might put them on the back foot for a moment, but no more.
“Conventional political parties,” said Rafiq, “detest fundamentalists, but they won’t confront them openly. The New Anglicans will, and do—Olivia saw that niche in the market. So maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe it isn’t the New Anglicans’ founders. Maybe this is all a double or triple bluff, and it’s really the fundamentalists. What do you think?”
“No,” Anwar said. “They don’t have the imagination, or the resources. She was telling the truth about that, at least.”
“And we’d know,” Arden Bierce added. “We have people there.”
“Very well,” Rafiq said. “Then the working hypothesis is the founders. In my briefing I said they don’t like her because she’s taken the Church away from them. She and Gaetano told you that too. And,” he went on, as Anwar started to reply, “I know, not the Bilderbergers and the rest, but a cell operating through them indirectly. Shall we call them The Cell? We can’t keep referring to them as the ones who set up the New Anglicans, are threatening Olivia, and killed Asika and Levin.”
“Yes, The Cell is fine.” I prefer White Dusk, but I don’t share my private nicknames.
“Then let’s consider what she told you, or told Gaetano to tell you. That line about 0.5 percent owning 40 percent is hardly new. Here’s another one: over half of the hundred biggest economies in the world aren’t even countries—they’re corporate bodies.”
“So?”
“So the 0.5 percent aren’t the same people. There’s been an explosion of individual wealth, and corporate wealth: Russia, China, India, Brazil, Indonesia. And others, undercutting China and India in costs—just as China and India once undercut America and Europe and Japan, even though those three are still very wealthy. So if there’s a cell, the members might come from further afield than the original founders. And if the members have changed, the motives have changed. Is that what she meant?”
“Possibly,” Anwar said. “But there’s more. Something she isn’t telling me. Something quite specific. Almost a detail, but it could blow everything else away.”
Rafiq looked at him curiously for a moment, then said, “Maybe. But since you don’t presently know what it is, we can’t process it. In the meantime, let’s stay with who they are.”
“No,” said Anwar. “Forget who they are and focus on where they are.”
“Intelligence haven’t found them yet.”
“So blitz it. Throw masses of stuff against the wall. Check all the known mercenaries and ex-Special Forces with profiles like Carne and Hines, and question them until you...”
“Find who recruited them?” said Arden Bierce. “We’ve already questioned dozens. So far we’ve found five who were recruited like Carne and Hines—indirectly, through multiple layers and proxies.”
This is new. “And was your questioning any better than mine?”
She paused. “I’m sorry, Anwar. I know Miles was your friend. They said he’d been annihilated, and when Chulo was sent to find him, he was annihilated too. They even used similar phrases: ‘What our employers did to Asika. And what they did to Levin, which was worse. And Levin’s face, when he realised he couldn’t defend himself. There wasn’t enough left of him to make into an exhibit like the one they’d made of Asika.’”
Anwar was silent for a few moments, then asked carefully, “Are they still alive?”