Evensong (25 page)

The top clamp shattered. The front section of the container fell open, hitting the driveway with a crash. Cold vapour erupted out of the dark interior, and something else erupted out in its wake.

Anwar and Gaetano were in Gaetano’s office. They’d been there for an hour, and there was an uncomfortable silence between them. It was 1:00 a.m. on October 10 in Brighton, 2:00 a.m. in Croatia. Noises from the Brighton foreshore floated over the two miles of sea. There were still plenty of lights there, and the i-360 Tower was still in operation.

Anwar’s wristcom buzzed, and Arden announced herself. There was something strange about her voice, and she’d blanked her screen.

“Say that again?” Anwar asked.

“It tumbled out of the container. A dead body. Been kept in cold storage. Forensics have done all the preliminary checks—DNA, dentition, retinas, fingerprints—and it’s unmistakeable.” She hesitated, and went on. “Features are unmistakeable too: the build, the hands.”

Gaetano rounded on Anwar. “So you really did it! I said I didn’t think I’d see him again. We will have an accounting, Anwar.”

“No,” Arden said, “it wasn’t Proskar’s body...”

Anwar froze.

“...it was Parvin Marek’s. And he’s been dead for at least three years.”

Olivia was given the news about Marek as soon as Anwar got it,in the early morning of October 10.Her reaction was quiet, almost uninterested. It was, of course, a story from the past that had no reason to concern her as personally as it concerned Rafiq or anyone else from UNEX. But she told Anwar, after a short pause, “I need to be sure you’ll stay until the summit’s over.”

“I already told you—”

“Tell me again.”

“Yes. I’ll stay.”

“Until the summit’s over.”

“
Yes.
You know I won’t walk out on a mission.”

“I’m taking tonight’s Evensong service in the Cathedral. I want you there. I’m giving the sermon.”

The news spread like wildfire: she was actually taking a service. She hardly ever took services, at least not routine ones like Evensong.

The media attention was huge. Reporters packed the Cathedral.Someone (Olivia herself, or the New Anglicans’ PR people) had told them it would be her biggest public statement since the Room For God broadcast. The Cathedral filled up. Gaetano and several of his staff were placed strategically, and Anwar had chosen an aisle seat in the pews, five rows from the front.

She wasn’t known for observing details of ceremony and ritual,andhalfthecongregation(themediahalf)werehoping for her to slip up somewhere and give them some good footage. She didn’t, though. She took the service impeccably.

The choir was singing the evening’s first psalm. She recognised the words from other Evensongs at other churches. The New Anglicans had regular Evensongs. She’d seen to that after the one she attended at Rochester Cathedral five years ago. She remembered meeting Michael Taber there. A nice man, and also very smart. She’d seen him only a few days earlier on her banks of screens, when Rochester Cathedral was occupied.

For he shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter.

He shall defend thee under his wings,

And thou shalt be safe…

October had turned cold and grey. No copper evening sunlight. A biting wind, a choppy pewter sea. The effect of the cold evening light on the Cathedral’s white and silver interior, the plain pale wood, the altar with its plain silver cross on which no figure was nailed, was to turn it colder.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace...

The words of the Nunc Dimittis always sounded like they should be the closing words, but they weren’t; there were some responses and collects, and then a brief silence during which the noises from Brighton’s foreshore could be dimly heard as she walked up to deliver her sermon. The New Anglicans didn’t do pulpits; she simply stood, a small figure in a dark red velvet dress, in the space before the altar where Anwar had fought Bayard and Proskar and six others, and where she’d ridiculed him. And where he’d met her on October 6. She spoke without notes.

“These last few days, I’ve found an unexpected companion. Someone who’s shown me some unexpected things. This companion told me recently I should hate our enemies less and understand them more.”

Anwar felt a thrill go through him.

“I was walking along the seafront, past those arches between here and the Palace Pier, and past some arcades with games. There was one where things popped up and you had to knock them down with a rubber mallet, only for others to pop up, also to be knocked down. My companion asked ‘Remind you of fundamentalists?’”

There was a faint ripple of laughter in the congregation.

“Yes, that’s how I should have reacted, but I didn’t. I went into a rant about fundamentalists everywhere. Filth, I called them, and scum. ‘I hate their beliefs,’ I said, ‘more than I love mine.’ My companion said, ‘If you hated them less and understood them more, maybe even more people would support you. Including some of them.’”

She looked around the Cathedral. The sounds of the Brighton foreshore and the gulls and the sea, which had been waiting outside for just such a moment, crept into the Cathedral as she stopped speaking.

She knew exactly where Anwar was sitting and carefully avoided looking in his direction when she went on. “That was important for me. More important than my companion suspected. It’s come back to me several times since. And for several different reasons, some of which I’ll share with you this evening.”

But only some
, Anwar silently prayed,
and nothing which gives any clues about me
.

“I’ve seen injustice and suffering and it should make me compassionate, but it doesn’t. It makes me furious. My first instinct isn’t to comfort the victims but to strike at the perpetrators. I’m an Archbishop, but compassion doesn’t come easily to me. Hatred comes easier.

“Which brings me to our enemies. You know what I call them. Batoth’Daa: the Back to the Dark Ages Alliance. I hated all of them, leaders and followers; followers because they’re weak and stupid, leaders because they make use of weakness and stupidity. But my companion’s remark made me look again at the followers.

“So to everyone who’s ever been duped or brainwashed or bullied into these ghastly fundamentalist cults, we’ll offer something new: an Outreach Foundation. It’ll be like everything else we do, businesslike and properly funded. And it’ll offer something better. Dignity. Self-esteem. Purpose. Not superstition and guilt and blind obedience–they can get those from any of our competitors.

“But if they don’t take it, then they’ll have what I still offer their leaders: my hatred.”

There was a murmur around the Cathedral. She’d said it with relish.

“Yes, you heard me. Hatred. We can’t love everyone. We can’t make heaven on earth. We can’t make everything perfect, but we can make some things better.”

She sounds so much like Rafiq
, Anwar thought.
Why haven’t they ever got into bed, either politically or literally?

“And we must make them better, because we may be all there is. We exploit space, but we’ve stopped exploring it. Is it because we think that nothing’s out there? We’ve turned inwards. Maybe there really is nothing except us. And God.”

This is new. They’ve never heard her say things like this. Where’s she going?

“Maybe we really are alone as a species. Often enough we’re alone as individuals. Think about our relationships: the line where an individual ends and a couple begins. A secret can mark that line. If one half has a secret they can’t share, maybe they should never become a couple. Maybe it would be better if they both stayed alone.”

There was a puzzled murmur from the congregation, and she didn’t elaborate. But for Anwar, it struck a chord. A cold and sickening one. He knew exactly what she meant. He’d said it to her himself, when she almost offered him something real and he rejected it. Not only rejected it, but laughed it into nonexistence.
What have I done?

And later, when she gave him that book, he’d sensed she was again moving in and he’d felt a copper tang of fear. He felt it now, but a different fear: the fear that he was wrong.
What have I done?

“Stayed alone,” she repeated softly, as if talking to herself. “Individual identity. It should be the last line, the one never crossed. The place where the soul lives. But I’ve seen it invaded…”

Even Anwar didn’t understand that reference. Maybe he wasn’t the only one here to whom she was addressing cryptic remarks.

She shook her head violently, as if to clear it.

“Our society is capable of great things. Technology hasn’t cured all our problems, but it has solved the food and fuel shortages that people feared fifty years ago would bury us. And yet, there’s always the thread of selfishness and selfobsession. While we work to solve the remaining problems, like the water rights that are why the UN is coming here, we see everywhere, on every screen, advertisements showing people putting things in their mouths.”

Again, a surprised murmur. Again, she didn’t elaborate. And again, Anwar was the only person in the Cathedral who knew what she meant.

Anwar, when he was Rashad, was fascinated by advertisements. His classmates talked about their favourite programmes, but he preferred the advertisements. An unconscious commentary on society. Have you ever thought, he asked repeatedly, how many of them show people putting things in their mouths? Burgers, chocolate, pies, lividly-coloured drinks? People putting things in their mouths: a logo for our society. His classmates chewed their burgers and stared at him, open-mouthed and uncomprehending.

Just like tonight’s congregation. They probably think she’s veering all over the place, but there’s no mistake. She’s been waiting to say this as long as I’ve thought it.

“Yes, the New Anglicans are a political movement. We’ve had to be, because established politics has too often chosen to appease fundamentalism rather than challenge it. Yes, the New Anglicans are a corporation. We’ve had to be, because having a better way than the Dark Ages isn’t enough unless you have the wealth and organisation to put it out there and make it work. And
yes,
the New Anglicans are a Church! More than ever. So we’ll reach out to the bullied and disenfranchised and marginalised and brainwashed, and bring them into the light where they can question anything and everything, including us, because we aren’t infallible. We don’t promise to make everything good. But we do promise to make some things better.

“I may not always be out here, in front of you, but God is always out there. And you know what
our
God wants from you. Not worship, but ambition. Remake youselves! Take
Him
into
you!
”

After the service she left quickly, going through a small door behind the altar. Gaetano stood there to prevent anyone following. People and press remained in the Cathedral for some time, milling around and discussing her sermon—the parts they understood, and the parts they didn’t.

One by one, wristcoms were flipped open and journalists started calling in their reports. A few went outside to call, hunching their shoulders against the cold—the wind from the sea had become more biting as evening turned into night—but most preferred to stay in the relative warmth of the Cathedral. Anwar, wandering dazedly among them, thought they were speaking in tongues.

Their reaction to her sermon was mixed. They didn’t know if her tone was optimism or despair. And they were puzzled about some of her references: relationships, for example, and people putting things in their mouths.

Along with the puzzlement Anwar heard annoyance and even scorn. Her sermon had been pitched as her most significant public statement since the Reith Lecture, and most reporters thought that, well, frankly it was nothing of the sort. The Outreach Foundation was significant, but hardly on a par with the huge policy and strategic initiatives she’d taken with Room For God. And many New Anglicans, below Olivia’s level, were already doing similar things, albeit informally and piecemeal.

Some of them were doubly annoyed because they’d expected her to say more about the summit, in view of everything that had happened in the last few days—her sudden cancelled meetings, rumours of rows with Zaitsev over the Signing Room, and the strange occupation of Rochester Cathedral with the failed ultimatum. More than once he heard the phrase “the Troubled Summit.”

And then, there was the Companion. That prompted a feeding frenzy. Who was it? Had she got one of The Dead, maybe there ahead of the summit to protect Zaitsev? He even heard someone likening the Companion to Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, but perhaps with the roles reversed. It was only a passing remark, and wasn’t picked up by anyone else. It didn’t even make it to that journalist’s channel. Some fat subeditor, between uncomprehending mouthfuls of burger, took it out.

And finally, her closing remark about not always being here. Some of them took it to be just an expression, but others wondered if it hinted at an attempt on her life. Most of them, however, tied it in with her suddenly-cancelled meetings, and wondered what was going on. Was she planning to leave the New Anglicans?

All these elements were enough to make the sermon a good story, but it didn’t get automatic top ranking. It was upstaged on most channels by the brief but breaking news about the discovery of Parvin Marek’s remains—which, by now, had been rushed back to Kuala Lumpur and definitively identified. It was an old story, but now it had returned strangely, and prompted speculation about the effect it might have on the families of Marek’s victims. And on Laurens Rafiq.

When he’d heard enough, Anwar walked up to the door behind the altar. Gaetano was still there.

“What did you make of that?” Anwar asked him.

“It sounded like Goodbye.”

“Where is she?”

“She went into the Garden.”

Anwar passed through the door and out of the Cathedral. He found her standing under a spreading laburnum tree. The Garden was darkening, and wind rushed through the shrubbery. Noises from the Brighton foreshore across two miles of ocean—music, people, traffic, laughter—made an unsuitable counterpoint to the weather, and to his mood.