“You’ve just assigned Miles Levin. Are our missions connected?”
“You know I can’t answer that.” Rafiq knew that they genuinely weren’t connected, but even if he’d said so he doubted that Anwar would believe him. Anwar had a tendency to look for pockets of darkness in everything.
In fact, Anwar had only asked about Levin to buy some time while he tried to think it through. She isn’t asking this as a whim, and Rafiq doesn’t grant whims. He must owe her. Or the New Anglicans, or their political and financial network.And for a lot more than just a conference venue. Do I cite the compact and refuse? Or find out what it is?
“Why did you ask me to do this?”
“I really don’t know. I just had an instinct that you would be the right one.”
Pause.
“I need Offer and Acceptance. Will you do it?”
“Yes.” As he spoke, Anwar heard a succession of doors closing, and others opening, all the way to England.
TWO: SEPTEMBER 2060
1
In seven years Levin had carried out fifteen missions for Rafiq. None of them compared, even remotely, to this. It was why he’d been preoccupied when he met Anwar. If only I could have told him…It was heaven’s gate. It would take him to Croatia to locate Parvin Marek, the only person ever to evade The Dead.
“I don’t aim to destroy society,” Marek once wrote, after one of his atrocities, “but to demonstrate that it has already destroyed itself.”
Rafiq had given him a detailed briefing, but Levin already knew most of it. The case had always affected him deeply, particularly its later events.
Ten years ago Parvin Marek led a terrorist movement called Black Dawn. It wasn’t a mass movement, and had no interest in becoming one. It wasn’t religious, or even conventionally political. It was nihilist. It had no goals or aims, only methods; its slogan, sprayed over derelict buildings, was
“Justify Nothing.” The group consisted of Marek and seven others, who operated as one-person cells. They rarely met or even talked to each other, and had long ago cut all ties to family and friends. The Croatian authorities knew who they were but not where, which made them almost unstoppable.
Marek himself was quiet and withdrawn, an absence of all qualities except action. He didn’t shout, threaten, exhort, or inspire. He only did. What drove him was the Marxist dialectic seen through the dead eyes of nihilism. Society was an illusion, a mere theatre: religion, culture, values, art, politics, all merely a mask for economic forces. Destroy the economic forces? Impractical. But destroy the mask, and the economic forces will be uncovered and die.
Black Dawn attacked random civilian targets: stores, airports, stations, even schools and hospitals. They took no hostages because they had no demands. They were unique, not because of the numbers they killed, but the nature of their killing. Religious fundamentalists killed more people; but they had reasons, however insane, and would say so. Black Dawn had none, and said nothing.
The culmination came in 2050 when Marek bombed the UN Embassy in Zagreb, killing twenty Embassy staff and seven passersby. Before leaving, Marek went back and shot dead two people lying on the pavement who, he noticed, were still alive. Later he issued a statement saying that the bomb had been designed to explode outwards as well as inwards, to kill passersby as well as Embassy staff. Justify Nothing, his statement concluded.
The Croatian authorities formally requested UN assistance. They had never been able to locate Marek and the other seven, but UN Intelligence did. Two Consultants (not Levin or Anwar; this was before their time) accepted amission from Rafiq. In one night they took the seven, alive, and gave them to the authorities. Marek,remarkably,evaded them, but Black Dawn was broken.
It still wasn’t enough.
The Dead hardly ever did bodyguard duties: that was the province of, in Anwar’s words, “mere Special Forces.” So, six months later, three mere Special Forces bodyguards were on duty when Rafiq’s wife and two children, a boy of seven and a girl of five, were shot dead by Marek. The family had just arrived at a marquee on the lawn in front of Fallingwater for the boy’s birthday party; Rafiq was on his way to join them. After shooting them, and the bodyguards, Marek turned back: the boy, he noticed, was still alive. Marek shot him again, twice in the head. From his wristcom he detonated a couple of bombs nearby. He didn’t know, or care, if they’d killed or injured anyone. They were a diversion, allowing him to walk— not run—away. Again he proved untraceable; this time, not for six months but ten years.
After it happened Rafiq became isolated and solitary, though no less effective. His only public statement was, “Marek has killed more people than just my family. For all of them, this is unfinished business.”
The family wing at Fallingwater was closed and sealed.
And now, ten years later, the UN had a possible lead. “Not a direct lead to Marek,” Rafiq had told Levin, when
he summoned him to Fallingwater a day earlier, “but to someone who might be prepared to sell him: Slovan Soldo, a distant relative. Soldo lives in Opatija, a seaside resort on the northern coast of Croatia. He’s facing arrest on rape charges, and probably looking for a deal.”
“How good is the lead?” Levin asked, trying to mask his elation.
“It’s from UN Intelligence. It’s good, but it’s tenuous, and we don’t want it compromised. Whoever we send to follow it can have no surveillance or backup.”
So, Levin thought, this mission satisfies the compact. It’s impossible for anyone except a Consultant, and it’s specifically for Rafiq. More so than any other mission.
I was right to choose him, Rafiq thought. He really wants it.
“I’m formally offering you this mission. I want you to contact Soldo, and locate Marek. But if you accept,” he added,
“you’ll need to move within a day. Soldo won’t wait around. Will you do it?”
“Yes.” Levin had enough good taste—but only just enough—not to show Rafiq his genuine delight. If he’d punched the air, as he originally wanted, he’d probably have knocked it unconscious.
Marek would now be in his early to middle forties. What little information there was showed him to be a dark-haired man of average height and stocky build, running slightly to fat.
Softly spoken, like Anwar. Physically unremarkable, except for his hands. They were broad, almost spadelike, giving a large lateral spread. But the fingers were long and slender, like a concert pianist’s. Ideal for the manipulation of devices.
Levin’s imagination was racing. He’d seen possible Mareks all through the flight, and was seeing more of them now he’d landed. Every third or fourth adult male Croatian seemed to be stocky and fortyish with unusual hands. The Croatian national basketball team had been on his flight. Most of them were in their twenties and nearly seven feet tall, but Levin still caught himself double-checking them for hidden resemblances to Marek.
Levin carried no luggage, not even a briefcase. He was alone and unarmed. He had travelled by scheduled flight to Rijeka, where he was to be met and driven to a villa near Opatija.
Rijeka Airport, Zracna Luca Rijeka, was nondescript when it was built and had not improved with age. Its minor buildings and outbuildings were like architectural acne. It did have a new terminal, built on a part of the runway that was no longer needed since the advent of blended-wing VSTOL airliners, but it wasn’t much better than the 1960s building it replaced. It was flyblown and fluorescent, and smelled of stewed coffee and styrofoam. Levin walked quickly through it and out to the main entrance. A car eventually pulled up alongside him. It wasn’t battery-driven, like most of those around it, but a newer hydrogen fuel cell model. The window opened.