The ease of their manner, as before. Talking to each other as if he wasn’t there. These people can’t be involved with someone like Marek. The conversation of the two sitting closest to him gradually resolved itself above the murmur of the other conversations, none of which seemed to have anything to do with him.
“My talk at the Johnsonian Society. Are you still coming?” “Yes, I’m looking forward to it. What title did you finally decide?”
“‘Mask: The Nature Of Individual Identity In Postmodern Literature.’”
“Hmm.”
“Yes, I know. Pretentious. It needs something to liven it up, maybe a witty opening. Something like ‘What happened to the I in Identity?’”
“Hmm…How about this? A man invents time travel. He goes forward to a minute after his death, so he can have sex with his own corpse.”
“Why only a minute?”
“So he’d still be warm. You could leave that bit out if you want, but the rest of it addresses your theme about the self-referential nature of Identity.”
“Self-referential, yes. And the time-travel motif gives it a dimension of circularity.”
“Literally a dimension.”
One of the others detached himself from a group of two or three and strolled over to Levin.
“Sorry to cause you this discomfort, but we’ll release you when our colleagues get here. If you’d like anything to eat or drink, we’ll have to feed it to you. I know that’s a bit undignified…you may prefer to wait until our colleagues get here.”
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” Levin said.
“You’re right, I don’t. But our colleagues do. You’ll soon be meeting them.”
He’d never been in a situation like this before, never in fifteen missions. They’d done it so easily. When I get out of here, he told himself—it didn’t occur to him to say if rather than when—I can track at least two of them from their references to the Johnsonian Society. Anwar would be incandescent at this. Mere Special Forces, casually strolling into Doctor Johnson’s sacred territory of literary criticism?
But their ease. If he’d been free of the monofilaments, he could defeat them all. Not kill, just defeat. The Dead very rarely killed; with their abilities, they didn’t have to. But he wasn’t free of the monofilaments. And the tranquiliser, and the way they knew how to fasten the restraints. Who are these people? Does Rafiq know about them? He has to, Rafiq knows everything. In which case…No. Don’t go there.
6
Anwar pressed his wrist implant and Rafiq returned to the inside of his retina.
“The Church’s founders come straight out of urban mythology. The Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, the Atlanticists, and others who won’t identify themselves.
But the New Anglican Church has moved beyond them. It still takes their money, but it’s also very rich in its own right—because it’s well-led, commercially successful, and has a wide offer.
“Among the founders, Olivia del Sarto has friends and enemies. Her friends support her because she’s charismatic and gifted and has made the New Anglicans rich and powerful. Her enemies distrust her for the same reasons. Even her own personal staff and security staff, as you will find, are split along similar lines.”
So. A successful leader of a successful organisation apparently fears for her life, and this is a simple bodyguard mission?
In fact,it was. Rafiq could have said so, but chose to observe protocol. First, Anwar’s mission was genuinely unconnected to Levin’s. Second, Rafiq didn’t have some secret deal with the
New Anglicans, though he did want them in his debt because he judged he could use their connections: political, not financial. Anwar didn’t know any of this, and it was in his nature to look for complications; for pockets of darkness. So why did Rafiq choose me?
The Dead were not secret agents, just uniquely gifted functionaries.AfterUNIntelligence—therealsecretagents— had done their work, it all boiled down to a highly-guarded object which had to be stolen or sabotaged, or a highly-guarded individual who had to be abducted or disabled or subverted: specific in/out missions, impossible for anyone else. Bodyguard duties were different. They involved prolonged interaction with people and their staff, requiring new faces and identities—with the inconvenience of surgical and IT processes—afterwards. Also, bodyguard duties carried the taint of low status: Rafiq would tend to assign a lower-rated Consultant rather than tie up one of the top four or five. One like me. Who can’t dispose of six Meatslabs in under thirty-six seconds.
In the real world, Anwar was an antiquarian book dealer. He owned shops in London and New York. He was comfortably wealthy; his business was doing well, and his Consultancy pay was extremely high. He was a good antiquarian book dealer but a better Consultant. Levin, of course, was “Miles ahead”: an outstanding architect and an outstanding Consultant.
The Consultancy wasn’t interested in psychopaths or sociopaths. Its members had to be personable and well-adjusted (Anwar scored lower on that than Levin, but still passed) and had to have lives and identities in the outside world, however illusory they might be. Also, they had to be people with few connections so that their deaths could be faked, and new identities added, on databases worldwide. The UN had people who did this; people who moved easily through the electronic landscape.
All Consultants had genuine occupations outside: usually one-person businesses, operated anonymously online. The online world, at least the higher end of it, was virtually unhackable. Terminals, whether desktop or wristcom-sized, were peculiar to their operator. Their processors were not silicon chips but cloned neurons and synapses from the operator: keyed to his or her DNA, with security scanners reading lifesigns and doing further retinal and fingerprint scans. Anwar, Levin, and the others all did their book deals or architectural designs remotely worldwide with no personal interaction. Older silicon-chip computers still remained, but those who could afford the new type—wealthier individuals and businesses—did so. Even though engagement with the outside world was encouraged, Consultants’ contracts still stipulated they should not appear personally in a business capacity, even under an assumed name. Those working in Anwar’s bookshops, or in Levin’s studios, had never met or seen their ultimate employer.
Their personal contact with the real world outside was different. It was merely social, a network of shifting relationships of limited duration. They never stayed long in one place. They had different identities in different cities, and cover stories involving frequent travel. Their relationships formed and unravelled, grew and died.
Anwar turned his attention back to the inside of his retina. Rafiq was finishing up. “So, that’s the New Anglicans. To anticipate your question, and purely for completeness, a brief word about the Old Anglicans. They’re the original Church of England. They still have their great cathedrals, like Rochester and Canterbury, and their parish churches, but they’re in gentle decline. Even in the cathedrals, congregations are small and aging. But they’re generally a force for good, or at least not a force for harm. Some attitudes towards them may be dismissive, but very few people actually hate them.”
There were no closing salutations. Rafiq’s face was replaced by Further Material Follows. That would be a mass of supporting documents and images and recordings. Anwar decided he’d speed-read it later.