When she flicked her wristcom shut, she was shaking. This was pivotal. There really was something, and she’d only thought of it when she’d been trying to avoid telling him about Rafiq and he’d been pressing her and now she had to chase it down and would there be time? He only had about two hours until the signing, and if they were still going to move for her then this—whatever it was—might be something he needed to know. She had to chase it down.
Anwar went into Olivia’s bedroom. She was still sleeping. The act of watching her sleeping, and the act of waking her, which he’d do in a moment, could in different contexts both be acts of intimacy. But not in this context. Her face was small and sharp-featured against the bulk of her pillow. Far from ugly, but not beautiful like Arden’s, either. It didn’t matter now. Her face carried too many associations for him to bother about its aesthetics.
You’ve shown me more double meanings, he thought, more things under the surface, in the last three weeks than I’ve seen in the rest of my life. I don’t know if love exists, but I’ve listed all the pros and cons about you and I think it must Nothing else seems to fit.
She moved slightly, but didn’t wake.
And now it’s academic. We both mistimed. Whatever happens today, whether I protect you or not, the mission will finish and we won’t see each other again.
He reached down and shook her shoulder to wake her. “Time,” he said.
12
Anwar and Olivia left the New Grand at 8:55 a.m. on October 20. Gaetano was with them. They walked through piazzas and gardens to the Conference Centre. Anwar wore his light grey linen blend suit and dark grey woven-silk shirt from his first day at Brighton. Olivia, coincidentally, wore the dark red velvet dress she’d worn when she first greeted him. It had to be coincidental, because they no longer dressed or undressed in each other’s presence.
Anwar also wore his Yusuf Khan badge, though it was probably too near the end to worry about details of identity.
Anwar and Olivia said nothing to each other while they walked. There wasn’t much to say, not now. The weather was like yesterday: cold, but sharp and clear, with pale sunlight. The sea was calm. Not so much placid, perhaps, as unconcerned. Gulls swooped and soared gracefully around the Pier. There was something wistful and sad in their calls, redolent of savage lonely shores; but also, if you listened a little differently, something like a cruel cackling laughter.
For the walk, Anwar briefly ramped up his senses to check where everyone was. It seemed like there was just the three of them, but Anwar saw (and heard, and smelt—that was one of the irritations of sense-heightening) Gaetano’s people all around, covering them discreetly. Must be most of his staff today, he thought. Proskar and others he recognised, but he didn’t see Bayard; he hadn’t seen him for a few days.
“You won’t see him here,” Gaetano said, when Anwar asked. “I wasn’t sure of him.”
Anwar reduced his senses to normal for the rest of their walk. He never liked heightening them for too long; people might infer, from his behaviour, what he was.
They entered the Conference Centre. The main auditorium, and the wide staircase up to the mezzanine, and the mezzanine itself, were already crowded with people not able to get into the Signing Room: junior delegates, support staff, broadcasters from minor channels. The big screen in the main auditorium would show a live feed of the signing.
They walked along the mezzanine, Olivia trailing her hand along the balcony rail. They went through the pale wood double doors and entered the Signing Room at 9:01 a.m. The signing was scheduled for 10:00, but already the room was starting to fill.
Once through the double doors they came immediately, on their left, to the panelled area mocked up to look like a UN Press Suite. The rest of the room, which was about sixty feet long by fifty wide, stretched away to the right, and still had the original curving walls of white and silver.
In the panelled area to the left was the top table. It held Zaitsev and three others, the senior politicians who’d drafted the Statement yesterday. Olivia, in deference to her position as host, also had a place there. She took it, leaving Anwar and Gaetano in the main body of the room. Anwar stayed in the middle, near to the top table, and Gaetano moved to the wall. Other security people—Gaetano’s, and those of the delegates — had already taken up positions.
Olivia sat quietly at the top table, next to Zaitsev. Her expression was unreadable. Anwar made brief eye contact with Zaitsev (A to Z, he thought irrelevantly) but neither of them said anything.
The Signing Room was large, but not large enough for all the summit delegates. Only the delegation heads—usually political leaders or senior ministers, with their security people—were allowed in; many of them were now standing in the main area of the room. At exactly 10:00a.m., Zaitsev would formally read out a communiqué incorporating the Statement of Intent. The heads of delegations would then come up and sign in the alphabetical order of their countries’ names.
Anwar saw Zaitsev’s array of Meatslabs: the one who’d threatened to tear off his penis, the one who couldn’t operate the button on Zaitsev’s pen, and some others. The one who’d threatened to tear off his penis sauntered up to him.
“Hello, Yusuf. Glad I let you keep your prick? I understand it’s her property these days. Good fuck, is she?”
Anwar smiled but didn’t answer.
To him, and he suspected most of those present, the panelling didn’t look any different. It covered the walls in the direction where it faced the cameras, which were massed at the other end of the room with mikes and lighting and reporters.
Every time he’d been in this room he noticed the same thing: the jarring division between the newly-built replica panelling and the original curving white and silver walls. He’d always thought it looked ridiculous. He couldn’t imagine two interior styles which so completely contradicted each other. Levin would have mocked both of them unmercifully.
It wouldn’t show on the broadcasts, though. The cameras were angled so that the panelled area would fill their entire picture. The wood panelling stood three to four feet proud of the original walls, as the room’s natural shape was curved and organic and the panelling was meant to look like a conventional rectangular space. The contractors had done it carefully and very well the first time, and equally well the second time after Anwar ordered it ripped out. But it still seemed a lot of trouble. Just for a theatre set.
Anwar tried to stare through it. He’d been there while it was actually being fitted, and armed guards had been there ever since, so he knew nothing was behind it. Yet he still ramped up his senses in the hope that he might see or smell or hear something there. He didn’t, though he saw and smelt and heard rather more than he wanted of the other people crowding the room.
They wore a mixture of modern clothes and traditional robes and he saw the microscopic texture and weave of the fabrics, the tiny dust motes in their interstices. And smelt them, though they’d all been painstakingly laundered and pressed for the occasion. Their colours were different when seen microscopically, because colours didn’t really exist, they were only selective light filters.
And the textures of their faces, in unforgiving close-up: minute tips of embedded stubble despite careful shaving, or traceries of cracks in makeup carefully applied for the occasion. Hair smelling stale despite careful shampooing. Body odours, bad breath, sweat, and subcutaneous grease despite careful morning toiletries. Snatches of conversation, normally indistinguishable in the background murmur, now each one a separate and distinct thread, some benign and some embarrassing. Sexual liaisons were a regular feature of most summits and conferences, and of ten had more far-reaching results than the formal business itself.