They stayed enigmatic, wrapped in the stuff of conspiracy theories. It magnified their threat. They’d even invented the concept of Conspiracy Theory, made it an urban myth—like Rafiq did, on a smaller scale, with his Tournament rumours. Made it the province of cranks. Marginalised it. And amplified it at the same time.
They only emerged once or twice in a lifetime, to give history a nudge. Other than that, they existed, but didn’t do. They weren’t part of anybody’s landscape, or anybody’s living memory. They were part of the long slow circling of history. Individuals lived and died and were replaced, but goals remained. Individuals were traceable and vulnerable; goals, if part of a long game, weren’t.
Like Anwar, they came out of their comfort zone, struck, and went back. But they followed different ends and used different means. In a world pervaded by electronic comms, they simply used handwriting and bits of paper, and made themselves untraceable. Laurens does the same, of course, she thought, but he does it for reasons of style. He has a singular sense of style.
And they used Special Forces, but only for low-grade wet work. They didn’t have the UN’s techniques of physical and neurological enhancement, so they couldn’t make them into rivals of The Dead. Not the ones she and Anwar had questioned, certainly.
But they had something that had killed Levin and Asika.
And that summarised all that she knew about them. The last point might yield something, but hadn’t so far, and otherwise there wasn’t much more she could usefully learn. So she parked it, and considered other routes: what they did, and who they employed to do it.
Nine days or less.
5
Anwar recalled what Rafiq once told him. The more established major members—the Americans and Chinese and Europeans—liked to think of the UN as a corporation, with themselves as shareholders. “They’re wrong,” he said. “My part, the unelected part, is like a corporation. But Zaitsev’s part, the political part, isn’t. It’s just a microcosm of the world, with all the world’s history and hatreds and differences. Those things don’t go away just because you put them into a General Assembly.” Or into a summit, like this one.
The most powerful UN members were currently America, China, Europe, Brazil, Indonesia, and India. Russia and
Japan were now less important, politically and economically: Japanese manufacturing and electronics had been overtaken by China and India, and Russian natural resources were worth less now that new energy sources were becoming viable. Russia still remained a Security Council member, but the new energy geopolitics might eventually change even that. Middle Eastern countries were less important for the same reason.
After the opening ceremony, the real business commenced and fault lines already began to appear. Olivia stayed to listen, and so, therefore, did Anwar. He sat a few rows back from her, absorbing lines of sight and possible angles of attack. He sensed from voice inflections and body language that things weren’t going well, but he didn’t listen closely to the words: only enough to know that the early objections were not about detailed Agenda items, but about the Agenda’s very existence.
Other honorary guests and worthies who came for the ceremony gradually left, not wishing to be associated with the process of real business and real disagreements. But, to their credit, the two Archbishops from the Old Anglicans did stay on for an hour or so. They adjourned with Olivia afterwards for a private meeting in one of the adjoining rooms leading off from the main auditorium. Anwar waited discreetly at a distance, covering the door and listening to the discord between the delegates.
Gaetano’s briefing to Anwar was as thorough as one of Rafiq’s. It included the latest version of the Agenda. Anwar had studied it carefully. It set out to define policies and codes of conduct—not diverting or damming rivers to deny water downstream, reforestation to ensure rainwater didn’t run off uselessly, no dumping of untreated waste, desalination technology, and much more. It aimed to identify and define what it termed Guiding Principles which, when agreed, could be applied to the several current disputes, and even wars, between some of the members present.
The Agenda was a document that had been negotiated almost as fiercely as water rights themselves. And, only a few hours into the first day, it was unravelling.
6
Parvin Marek had been theirs. Their instrument.
He was a freak of nature. Normal family, ordinary upbringing, average accomplishments. Averagely gregarious. No special talents or failings. Not bullied or sexually abused. Then, in his twenties, a dark light switched on inside him. It made him brilliant and monstrous. Nihilism was his religion.
Arden had no detailed proof that he’d been one of theirs at the time of Black Dawn, but all her instincts suggested it. His particular role had probably been to destabilise Balkan politics, or to provide misdirection while they destabilised politics in more important areas. He was notable only because his agenda and philosophy were unlike anyone else’s. That would have been his value to them. He didn’t kill as many people as other terrorists, particularly the religiously-motivated ones, but he killed them more unexpectedly.
And he went back. At the UN Embassy in Zagreb, with passers-by. At Fallingwater, with Rafiq’s family. He went back, shot them in the head to make sure they were dead. How could you survive that, Laurens, and still come back here?
But that was as far as that particular route took her. Interesting historically, but Marek was dead.
She considered their other instruments.
Richard Carne was one of their minor functionaries. One of many. He’d been in London to address the Johnsonian Society. Only a short trip from there to Brighton. He wouldn’t have been privy to his employers’ detailed plans for Olivia, but possibly he’d heard something—enough to make him want to take a stroll round the famous New West Pier. Maybe he just wanted to see the Cathedral and Conference Centre where it would happen. He wasn’t doing detailed planning; those he worked for would have done that long ago. Maybe this was just idle curiosity, and genuine coincidence.
Or was it? Maybe they’d sent Carne deliberately. Or maybe they’d known he’d go to Brighton anyway. Either way, they’d known Anwar would want to question him personally, and they’d known Carne would defeat Anwar in the questioning. Not just defeat him, but leave him reeling.
She’d studied exhaustively what Carne had told Anwar. Hines had told him similar things. So had the five like Carne and Hines who she’d questioned. But, even though she hadn’t been present, there was something about Carne’s questioning to which she needed to return. Park it for now. It might surface when I stop looking for it.
At the end of the first day, Anwar was with Olivia in her bedroom. He slept there now, and would do until the summit was over. The day before the summit began, he had decided to go to full close-protection mode.
“I’ll take the sofa,” he told her. “Don’t worry about these chocolate wrappers, I’ll move them.”
She didn’t answer.
“And the bits of paper. And the discarded clothes.”
Fuck you the ginger cat meaowed from somewhere underneath the sofa.
“You know, I always imagined you more with a Siamese cat.”
“Why?” she asked, reluctantly. She’d have preferred to avoid conversations with him about anything except security matters.