After a couple of hours Anwar started to slip in and out of unconsciousness, and each time he woke he’d see Olivia there. Standing guard ridiculously in his hospital room like (he remembered) he’d stood guard ridiculously in the Signing Room. Every time he woke she was there. Maybe she’d brought a bucket.
Many of the broadcasters in the Signing Room died, but not all of them. Enough survived to make sure the events were seen worldwide and live. The news channels treated it as a failed attempt on Zaitsev’s life.
Mass killing at UN summit in Brighton.
Battle of The Dead.
Nineteen killed in attempted assassination of UN Secretary-General Zaitsev.
Nineteen killed, but very few injured. Anyone not near to Levin when he burst out of the wall lived. The others, if he touched them, died.
With so much coverage, as low-motion analysis of Anwar’s combat with Levin was inevitable. Rafiq knew better than to try to suppress it, though he refused to make any public comment on it. It was broadcast extensively and analysed by an assortment of retired military people. There were headlines like Who were they? and Battle of The Dead and Do we need things like this? Rafiq knew that inquiries would be inevitable, and was fighting on several fronts to ensure they stayed private.
Zaitsev managed to hold things together politically. His remark about “this marvellous venue that will now have such good associations for us” was expected to come back and bite him, but it didn’t. His tone was restrained, dignified, and exactly right. He kept to a simple message, not descending into hasty speculation about who was responsible or why they’d done it. And certainly not about whether the target was anyone other than him.
“This was a summit on water rights. Vitally important, yes, but not an explosive subject like political or ethnic or religious persecution. Not something for which any of the participants would expect to be killed. Just water rights. Civil engineering ideas. Ways to make water so readily available that people don’t have to fight over it, or die for the lack of it. A groundbreaking and imaginative business model. And a political and financial model to match. The summit succeeded, better than any of us expected. Let’s hold to that, and work as we agreed to implement it. Anything less would be a discourtesy to those who died, and to their families and colleagues.”
Even to Anwar, who heard snatches of this during a brief waking spell, it didn’t sound like all of it was acting. Some, maybe, but not all. And yet, all that Zaitsev would get from it would be to survive a summit most people didn’t expect him to survive. Rafiq, who wasn’t even there, would get a massive increase in UNEX’s future status and would get to make some things better in the process. What a piece of work! Anwar thought, and went back to sleep.
He woke on the morning of October 21 feeling pretty good. His night’s sleep had been dreamless and relaxing. He’d expected it to be more troubled.
Olivia was sitting at his bedside. He managed to close his eyes before she noticed he’d opened them, and to pretend sleep for a few minutes until Arden came in.
“Archbishop, please take a rest. You’ve been here all night. I’ll sit with him for a while. I’ll call you if there’s any change.”
“Thank you,” Olivia said, and actually smiled. Even she felt comfortable around Arden. Most people did.
Anwar, as the door closed behind Olivia and without opening his eyes, said, “What did they do to him?”
“Anwar, I’m so...”
His eyes snapped open. “I know. But tell me what they did to him!”
“You probably guessed some of it. They...”
“Wait. This was your Detail, right?”
“Yes. I called you too late...When they abducted him, we think they didn’t have the time or the ability to reverse-engineer his enhancements, so they rewired him to take away his personal identity. To make him use his abilities only in response to their orders. And everything was channelled into his physical abilities. Everything else, personality and memories and judgement and constraints, they wiped out.”
“Like taking his soul.”
“Yes. They turned him loose on Asika, then put him into the wall and made him go to near death to conserve energy while he waited. Then they turned him on full blast to kill her and you.”
Anwar said, “They should just have kept him as Levin. I’d never have beaten him then....Do you know exactly how they rewired him?”
“No, because Gaetano emptied a gun into his head. But we’ll find it eventually. His body’s gone to Kuala Lumpur for autopsy.”
“We’re shipping so many bodies from here to Kuala Lumpur we should start an airline. Maybe call it Air Abbas.”
“How about Dead Air?”
Anwar laughed, for the first time in days. He felt some residual pain in his sternum and upper ribs.
“The Patel people. They’re the real surprise.”
“Yes,” she said, “and we’re tracking them. There were nine in the original party. They were helped by Olivia’s insistence that they should work away from public view. She didn’t want her Conference Centre looking like they had the builders in.”
“Gaetano checked them, and so did you. How did they beat the checks?”
“We’ll know that when we find them. Maybe techniques like those they used on Levin. Also, the misdirection of sending people like Carne and Hines didn’t help, and—” she paused “—neither did your obsession with Proskar.”
Anwar smiled bleakly. Not to mention my obsession with Olivia. The Detail. Not the one Arden found, but the one I’m still looking for. Unfinished business. “The best plans are always simple. Hiding in plain sight. They made a replica of the original wall at the other end of the room, and put Levin behind it, while they were shut in there building the panelled wall. The panelling was such a major piece of work, especially when I made them tear it down and remake it, that nobody would think they’d built another fake wall elsewhere. I didn’t.” Usually I look for pockets of darkness, but I missed that one. “And I’d already told Gaetano how I’d be able to stay undetected if they got me in there.”
He remembered his conversation with Gaetano. Quite detailed and precise, given that they hadn’t then known or trusted each other very much. I’d go to near-death. Hibernation. No body-heat detectors would find me: surface temperature would be the same as my immediate surroundings. No heartbeat or breath detectors would find me: pulse and breathing would be almost nonexistent, and random. No scanners or imagers or DNA detectors would find me: my body would echo the texture and shape of its immediate surroundings.
And then, an electronic signal to activate. From the next room or the next continent. A single pulse. Two targets, Olivia primary, Anwar secondary (because Anwar, though out-classed, was still the only one there who might be able to do something). Simple: two faces, kill both.
“Yes,” Arden said, as though she’d heard what Anwar had been thinking. “Their primary objective was to kill Olivia publicly. But also, as a bonus, to kill a Consultant publicly, the way they had Levin kill Asika privately. Not quickly, but piece by piece, limb by limb. To send a message, live and worldwide: total functional annihilation. Of a Consultant, by a Consultant.”
“Who are they, Arden?”
“Laurens is already fighting back. He knows more about them.”
“Laurens?” In two syllables she’d told him what she’d tried to hide earlier. “You and Rafiq. I didn’t see that coming.”