“There’s something about his mission that’s worrying me,” she said. “I can’t quite find it yet.”
“Like Anwar and his Detail. Remember him going on about it when he came here?”
“He goes on about it to me, too. Almost as much as he goes on about her. I don’t think that my Detail is the same as his, but it’s there somewhere. I will find it.”
For once, he was silent.
“And,” she added, “there’s something else.”
“Another Detail?”
“Maybe. When I said park it, I meant only that. I didn’t mean abandon it or forget it.” She looked directly into his eyes. “I’ll help Anwar through this, if I can. But when it’s over, you and I have unfinished business. Laurens.”
3
The opening ceremony began at exactly 10:00 a.m. It was large-scale and well attended. In addition to the delegates there were august non-participants and well-wishers like the British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, the Mayor of Brighton, and the Old Anglicans’ Archbishops of Canterbury and Rochester. And their entourages, including a security complement for each. It was a huge arrangement of inter-locking and interfacing mechanisms that Gaetano somehow contrived to keep moving. Anwar hadn’t seen him or spoken to him much during the last few days.
There was also a large media presence, not only in the Conference Centre but also at Gateway, to cover the VIPs as they arrived. Paths were cleared for them, but the Pier was not closed to the public. Tourists and sightseers still milled around as usual, as did the people who worked in the Pier’s business district. One maglev was set aside for the summit participants, and paths were cordoned off where they disembarked for the delegates to walk through the Garden, or the squares and piazzas of the business district, on their way to the Conference Centre.
All the major UN members were present. Countries not directly involved in water rights disputes sent ministers or senior civil servants. Those directly involved—sometimes to the extent of being at war with each other—sent heads of state.
The delegates and other participants were seated in the main auditorium, facing the stage on which the top table was set. The people who would usually occupy the top table during the proceedings were Zaitsev and five others. Zaitsev would be chairing the summit. The others were the members of the committee responsible for drafting the Agenda—a mixture of retired diplomats, senior civil servants and UN officials. For the opening ceremony they were joined by Olivia.
She again gave a short, non-political opening address. “Welcome. We’re proud to be your hosts, and we hope you’ll find the arrangements work well and assist your deliberations. We wish you every success. It would be nice to look back on this summit and think that we helped to make it productive.”
Zaitsev gave a rather more fulsome opening address. Anwar recognized many of the phrases from Rafiq’s briefing; Zaitsev must have picked them up in conversation with Rafiq. He used them without attribution, of course.
“Thirty years ago, this summit would have been about fossil fuels—oil, gas, maybe coal and shale. Thirty years ago, fossil fuels were limited. They still are. But now we have alternative energy sources, and we’ve made them commercially viable: wind, sun, tides, high-atmosphere turbulence, nuclear fusion, hydrogen cells, even continental drift. So we’ve come to Brighton, to this magnificent venue, not to talk about energy sources, but about something much more basic. Something ever-present, but ever-scarce where it’s most needed: water.”
Zaitsev’s voice was more suited to oratory than conversation. In conversation it sounded harsh and rasping. In oratory it was deep and modulated, slightly tremulous with manly but restrained emotion at the important bits. A better actor than Rafiq.
“Some of the UN member states represented here have been at war over water rights. Some still are. It’s inconceivable to me that we could be on the way to making energy shortages a thing of the past, while water shortages are still a thing of the present. It’s inconceivable to me that people are dying over a substance which is more abundant in the world than fossil fuels ever were. With your help and goodwill, we’ll leave here nearer to a solution than when we arrived.”
Anwar found himself joining in the applause, and grudgingly admitted that Zaitsev was good. Cleverer than he looked. But the ultimate success of this summit would be decided not by what was said here, but by what was done later by Rafiq.
Rafiq couldn’t have matched Zaitsev’s oratory, but he would never need to. As clever as Zaitsev might be, Rafiq was cleverer still, distancing himself by professing to deal only with executive matters, not policy. He used Zaitsev, or whoever else was Secretary-General at the time, as a human shield. The media would often try to draw him out on matters of policy, but without success. Political matters, he would intone virtuously, and monotonously, are not the province of the unelected executive arm.
I first got that briefing, Anwar thought, about two weeks ago. It seems longer than that. He was annoyed at his readiness to join in the applause. All Zaitsev had done was to retail, in a slightly better voice, content he’d picked up from Rafiq.
Anwar would have liked to do an immersion hologram, like the ones he did in his teens, with them all naked. Especially Zaitsev. Somewhere in the deep interior darkness of Zaitsev’s capacious trousers, a pair of large buttocks lurked like a couple of conjoined cave bears. Oh for an immersion hologram, he thought, to bring them walloping and wobbling into the daylight.
4
She hadn’t seen it coming, but when it was out in the open she knew it was right. Rafiq was right for her, and she for him. They had a new life waiting.
Rafiq had gone off to meetings, leaving Arden in the parkland in front of Fallingwater. What they had spoken of was pivotal. Whatever would take place between them was on hold until after the summit, but then it would resume. She’d make sure of it. And then the detail would kick in.
Her life would change. She’d have to leave the UN, and hand over to someone else; it would be unprofessional to continue working with Rafiq if they became more than colleagues. As she knew they would.
A move to another part of UNEX, or even the wider UN, wouldn’t work. She’d have to find a new career, which wouldn’t be difficult with her CV, but at this point she couldn’t imagine herself anywhere else. And she couldn’t imagine leaving before her own part in this was finished. She wouldn’t need to leave immediately after the summit concluded. However it turned out, there would be time to finish her work before the media got wind that she and Rafiq were an item.
Which meant she had a bit longer than Anwar to find what worried her about his mission. No, that’s stupid. So stupid she almost laughed out loud. She had to find it in nine days or less, because Anwar had to be told what it was before they made their move.
They. Them. She couldn’t bring herself to call them The Cell; it sounded theatrical, though it was probably accurate. Anwar was right about that: they could only operate on such a scale, over such a long time, if they operated as a cell. Like Black Dawn, but with apparently limitless resources. And an inbuilt sense of timing. They knew exactly when to emerge and when to go back.
Except this time. Maybe Anwar’s rather gauche sojourn in the Signing Room had made them change their timing. Otherwise they wouldn’t have revealed what happened to Marek. She felt they’d been planning to play that card during the summit, as a final massive misdirection before they moved for Olivia, and something had made them play it early.