Republic of Infidels I – The Remains – Chapter 3: The Adept
Oxford
2040
“If I say it’ll be on the final, it’ll be on the final, no guesswork. Just the assignments as given. If you did them, you’ll pass. If you didn’t do them, you will fail. The TA will be marking your exams, so try to keep your bribes modest.”
Pausing, Rachel regarded the small body of students. Most of them were two or three years her senior, all of them intent on her words. All, she noticed, but one. Alec Vigna dozed in the front row of the lecture room, either feigning or genuinely asleep, she wasn’t sure. Like her, he was younger than his academic peers by a couple of years. Just the other side of twenty with olive skin, dark curls and, when they were open, hazel eyes. He was not precisely handsome, but had a magnetism he cultivated shamelessly. He was the worst student in the class, not even a member of the medical college, but put just enough work in to advance.
She spent the next ten minutes checking in with her departing students, reassuring them, showing interest in their summer plans. Vikram was far better at this kind of thing, but Rachel found she could manage well enough. She preserved a distance from these young men and women, forestalling their interest in her in spite of the fact that the waitlist for her courses were the longest in Oxford’s School of Anatomy. In her first year at the Oxford Medical School, she had run out of graduate courses before the year was half over. The don had consented to letting her teach osteopathic and vascular anatomy classes to other students preparing for their entry exams.
Slowly, the last of them filtered out. Leaving only Alec, now peering at her from under long lashes. He closed his eyes when he thought she might be looking, something she found almost cartoonish. He’d taken three of her classes, spanning most of the year. At the end of each, had requested a chance to take her to dinner, or coffee, or a film, or even just a walk across the quad. She’d shot him down, reminding him that he was her student, even though he always waited until just after the end of term to put his invitations to her.
“Alec,” she said abruptly.
He opened his eyes in an exaggerated approximation of waking, fluttering his eyelashes as though blinking in the harsh light. Then his generous mouth stretched into a smile, as though she was a welcome vision of loveliness.
He grinned. “Si, professoressa?”
Rachel levelled her gaze at him. “Fuck off.”
He gave a sad little shrug, unfolding his long frame from his seat, and rose, laboriously shouldering his bag. It was a rustic leather affair, broad and rectangular, and she knew it held not textbooks, but high quality ink pens, charcoal pencils, newsprint sketch pads, and other artistic implements. She knew he’d constructed the portfolio bag himself in a leather working class in his own department, because his effusive advisor had told her this and more about his exploits.
It was this advisor who had paved the way for her star artist to join the anatomy school so he could learn from the source. That he had no interest in marks, assignments or exams might have been justifiable under those circumstances, but Rachel thought it hardly merited allowing him to ooze through three terms. What was more, if his real goal was to rumble her, it seemed like a gratuitous act of self sabotage. At least he’d kept the flirtation private, showing nothing but respect where others could see.
He stood an arms’ length away, half a head taller, confident in a way she secretly envied. It wasn’t the measured, penetrating confidence her brother used to politely subdue nations. It was his barely restrained laugh, his untempered enjoyment, perhaps more than a little of his natural Italian atavism. He seemed to radiate warmth, something Rachel felt keenly, but felt the tenuousness of her reputation more. But now, with the term ending for summer and with it the end of her brief tenure as an instructor, she was aware that she was running out of excuses.
“No chance, hm?” he said in a quiet voice, becoming unusually circumspect, his mock sadness becoming a little too real. In three days she’d be flying out to Himalaya, not to return for months, in which time they would both diverge to different academic paths.
She said nothing, did not look at him, felt all of her authority melting away in the heat of her burning inexperience. She’d had to fight for this position, for the respect of her peers, for the right to publish, for the chance to get out of Vikram’s all-encompassing shadow. If she said yes, if she even met his eyes, he would see that she was still a girl. Totally uninitiated. Still vulnerable.
The room seemed to tighten, constrict around her as he moved closer, just enough that she could smell his citrusy aftershave. He was hardly a year older than her, but he was very much a man. He carried himself with sudden seriousness as he reached into his leather satchel and withdrew a rolled piece of newsprint. He went to her table and set it down. Without raising his eyes to her again, he left.
Slowly, Rachel unrolled the paper. Inside was a portrait of her, sketched with clean, consummate skill in an almost Renaissance style. In this context, she might have been a saint with eyes raised heavenwards, but she knew it was only herself, eyes raised to whatever projection she happened to be using for that particular lesson. The slide was blank, just two lines that made a corner. As usual, he’d been paying attention to her, and not the lecture.
Still, the lines of her neck and shoulder were gracefully rendered in such a way as to be sensual. Nothing explicit, but the artist had done well, conveying his longing in those smooth strokes. Rachel felt a shiver run through her, as though Alec had described the parts of her he intended to touch. For all of his irreverence and immaturity, there was an articulate carnality there.
Below, in the corner, his mobile number rendered in quick, hard lines, along with a request:
Think about it, professoressa.
“Your secretary made me wait forty five minutes,” said the minister, his English heavily accented. His face, long and tired, sketched an aggrieved expression.
Vikram knew he’d waited twenty minutes at most. He generously supposed that the minister’s prejudice was a result of being accustomed to such disrespectful treatment, and no doubt treating his own clients with the same pomposity.
Vikram said nothing, only waited silently as his assistant Eugenia wheeled in the tea cart. He gave her a tight smile which she returned. She had been his companion through this strange turn of events, and probably knew more state secrets than all the heads of the world’s intelligence services combined. Her job had been to insulate Vikram and his activities, acting as an effective shield between outside scrutiny and his less-than-above-board policy direction—and doing it remarkably efficiently with little more than a good attitude and strategic understanding of when to interrupt.
Minister Sokolov obviously wanted to continue his complaining, but Eugenia’s warm smile disarmed him utterly, forcing him to smile back as she went through the ritual of pouring tea, and then inquiring about his sugar and milk preferences.
“Anything else for you, minister?” she asked brightly, her English only faintly accented with Cantonese inflection. The minister licked his lips, shook his head.
Eugenia turned to leave, and Sokolov did not trouble to conceal his interest in her figure. He passed an inquiring look to Vikram.
“She’s married,” Vikram confirmed with a smile. “Two young sons. And I doubt she’s interested in the cup bearers of deposed tyrants.”
“I don’t know where Putin is,” Sokolov pinched the bridge of his nose. “I swear to you.”
“I hope you aren’t lying to me,” Vikram said casually, switching to Russian. “Mariska Putin can either turn herself over UN forces or she can expect to finish like so many other tyrants—in a hole, surrounded by unscrupulous insurgents who have far less interest in humane remedies than we do.”
The minister hardened. He still had some face. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Kori?” he all but spat in Vikram’s direction. “You’ve already humiliated my nation in the sight of the whole world.”
Vikram swirled his tea around his cup, then set it down and fixed the minister with his most pacific smile. “I have worked to bring regimes in line with a common goal. Russia knows that she is wounded. And she knows who is responsible.”
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“No, Minister Sokolov. I asked you here today because I want to offer you sanctuary. Your wife and children have already been exfiltrated and are waiting for you in London. What’s more, I want you to act as a liaison for what’s left of the Putin regime, to bring this chapter to a peaceful close.”
As he absorbed the meaning of these words, Sokolov couldn’t hold back tears of relief. He wasn’t a bad man, just a weak one. A bureaucrat in over his head. And a ready made target, which he well knew. He left Vikram’s office aware of his debt, which was precisely how Vikram wanted him to feel.
Eugenia lingered by the door as she saw the minister out. She turned to Vikram, her dark eyes full of sober concern.
He gave her his most mild expression. “What?”
“You’re sure they won’t be able to get to you in Himalaya?”
“No. But we’ve got our own security and they know what to look for.”
Eugenia pulled out her mobile and scrolled through it. “I’ve changed your flight anyway. You’re leaving tonight after the interview. Go home and pack.”
He shouldered his bag and gathered up his mobile and briefcase. “Will you miss me when I’m garrotted by a Vory assassin?”
She shrugged. “You’ve already written a memo suggesting me as your worthy successor.”
He grinned. “Backdated for automated distribution?”
She looked at him as though insulted. He laughed, unable to help himself. He’d had a few assistants in his working life, but Eugenia, ten years his senior, had brought a kind of congeniality to his subterfuge. Her deep network of good will made it possible for him to undermine the nationalist foundations that prevented the United Nations from the primacy it deserved.
Vikram could do the strategizing himself. He had command of almost every language spoken in the world. He had plied his mind with a vast reservoir of information, every disposition, every weakness, every name and every face in the vast spiderweb of power politics. But it was this woman who had taught him, through her example, the power of gestures.
“You can charm people,” she’d once observed. “But it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t know how to be kind.”
“And you don’t resent that I’m a twenty-one year old man in a position of undeserved authority that you, with your talent and obvious qualifications, could reasonably expect to have?”
He’d said this to her in Keen’s bar over pints, six weeks after the “company” had assigned her to his supposedly ceremonial office. Everyone knew that Vikram’s UN office was really meant to act as a political clearing house, but it had been Eugenia who had hung the Mycroft Holmes sign on his door. He realized quickly that she was more than just a menial administrative assistant.
“Of course I resent it,” she said, a little thick voiced from the booze. “But you know what I’ve learned in my years in policy?”
“Tell me.”
“It’s going to sound obvious.”
“Tell me anyway, I’m fascinated.”
“A pretty, famous young wunderkind makes excellent cover.”
Vikram thought, as he drained his pint, that it was a shame he was not the kind of man to go to bed with his assistant, even if he did not tend towards women. Eugenia’s sparkling eyes invited him to ask, but he knew that he never would, and that even if he had, her no would be kindly meant.
“I see,” he said, smiling. “You rank me.”
She grinned, pushing her credit card towards the bartender. “They pay me a lot more, too.”
Leon Callow’s show was housed in one of the smaller CNN studios, but Vikram had been on television often enough to know they would make it appear larger using a combination of slick surfaces and blaring lights. He changed into a Givenchy suit, comfortable enough to tolerate an hour on camera, but not something he intended to wear home.
After Callow ran through the discussion program, Vikram would exchange the suit for a distressed NYU hoodie, disguising himself as just another student. In New York City it was easy for him to fade into the crazy-quilt of types, disappearing beside the stockbrokers and the high school kids. Using his unlimited global vocabulary to paint himself into any kind of ethnically ambiguous foreigner.
To the Indian bodega owners, he was a son of Delhi, which happened to be true. To Koreans, he was an intriguing anomaly, his fluency unexpected from a boy with brown skin. To the bakery owners of Coney Island, he might have been the product of a union between a domestic from Pakistan, and a Ukrainian commissar, which was less true, but his language was perfect. He was, as Eugenia said, capable of charm. His favoured weapon was the familiar sound of home. And he, Vikram, knew that underneath all of it, his ability to make people feel special in this way was an act of hypocrisy. It had taken him a week of concentrated effort to learn Korean. Ukrainian had been the work of an hour after meeting with a delegation for drinks uptown. He had Russian, his mother’s language, to build on—the rest was just listening.
Hindi was the language of his birthplace, the one he and Rachel spoke when they wanted to be confidential in the West. He’d also undertaken to learn the regional accents of New York City so he could drop out of British Received Pronunciation into the Yankee dialect, an adjustment that almost immediately put any curious individual attempting to place him right out of court. Vikram knew the power of sound, how an accent could be every bit as convincing as a physical disguise, and often more so.
Not tonight, though. He sat relaxed and slack in his chair as the makeup artist dusted his face with powder, then applied another layer of spray to his glossy black hair. The sound technician connected the microphone to the transponder, twitching his lapels to make sure they wouldn’t rustle and disturb the lavalier.
The producer ducked her head behind the black curtain. “On in five, Mr. Kori.”
“Thank you,” he said, nodding with a thin smile.
Leon Callow himself appeared from behind the sound baffles. He too wore a suit, a navy affair. His face was powdered down in the same way, making him look aged and papery. The camera wouldn’t catch it, but up close the effect was less than aesthetic.
Still, at fifty, Callow was handsome even for the average cable news anchor, not a blonde hair out of place. His generous mouth was relaxed, and the handshake he offered was dry and firm.
“I appreciate you making room in your schedule for me, Mr. Kori.”
Vikram sensed a hint of flirtation there. He wasn’t sure if it was just the newsman’s way of testing the tension, but Vikram was equal to that.
“We’ve met, actually.”
Callow’s brows came together slightly. “I don’t recall.”
“IR conference. Edinburgh. Global Refugee Media Coverage Implications. You were still in diplomacy then.”
The frown deepened. “That was at least fifteen years ago. You must have been… ”
“Six,” Vikram supplied. He patted Callow’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”
The lights on the set were thankfully newer models, and didn’t give off too much heat. Vikram felt primed, keen, one hand resting on the other on the canted black desk. It placed him at a bit of an unnatural angle to Callow, who sat at the head with his papers in hand.
“You’ve used the term “war crimes” to describe recent events,” Callow said, now using his reporter voice. “Does that mean you intend to deepen the UN mandate for Enforcement/Containment?”
“We enacted this policy months ago,” Vikram said, his hands coming apart to conduct his orchestrated argument. “No one should be surprised that we’re exerting ourselves on behalf of the people being victimized by regimes and terror organizations alike.”
“The implication here,” Callow consulted his notes. “Is that the United States caved to pressure to allow other nations to arm the UN due to our own internal crisis.”
“I think that’s fair,” Vikram conceded. “No one wants to use the term civil war, and the US doesn’t want to be seen as inviting foreign powers to suppress homegrown insurgents, but they’re not willing to… ”
“Put boots on our own ground?” Callow suggested.
“Precisely.”
“What about your part in unseating Russia from the UN security council?” Callow pressed, obviously hoping to raise a bit of a reaction.
“I don’t know about my part,” Vikram said with an affected shrug. “I was a conduit of negotiation, surely, but I don’t think any of the major nations, including the Russian polity, wanted to see the Putin dynasty into the new decade.”
“Sources suggest you were instrumental,” Callow said, now leaning forward slightly. “Issues of transparency have been raised. And concerns with the whereabouts of heir apparent Mariska Putin.”
Vikram straightened, keeping his shoulders loose, his elbows balanced on the edge of the desk as he offered his upturned palm.
“If you can’t name your sources, Leon,” he said smoothly. “Then you can hardly complain about my lack of transparency. It’s all a matter of public record. We don’t do closed sessions any more.”
“The voting body doesn’t. That’s to say nothing of this new civil service, or its information offices. There is mounting evidence that the UN worked with the CIA to destabilize the Chechen elections.”
“There’s mounting evidence that some major CNN shareholders count on a pro-Russia point of view, but again, transparency,” Vikram rejoined with vicious pleasure. “Look. It’s not my job to take sides on the grounds of nationalism.”
“You’re Russian yourself, on your mother’s side,” Callow feinted. “Would you say that increases your qualifications to make policy?”
“I’m a linguist and I am the communicant for this policy, not its author.”
“A linguist,” Callow repeated. “That’s modest for the all-time record holder. You speak what, eighty languages?”
Vikram smiled. “Sixty-three on a good day.”
“You can understand why you’re viewed as a prime mover in these negotiations.”
“You’ll find many qualified linguistic talents at the United Nations, I promise you. But I will concede my recognizability is a factor. And yet, it would make me awfully conspicuous for all this back channel dealing you’re accusing me of.”
Now Callow was on the back foot. “Mr. Kori, I was not making an accusation, I only—”
Vikram leaned forward, hands apart on the table as though spreading a poker hand and showing nothing but colour cards.
“Let’s get this straight, Leon. The Americans, the Russians, the Israelis, the Turks, they all thrive on conflict economies, and they all do it on the premise that the people they victimize will always fight, but won’t ever win. Well, go look for the Putin family now. If Russia can’t now protect its citizens from the legacy of unlawful expansionism, then it is up to the rest of the world to secure their future safety.”
Leon Callow blinked at him, a little stunned by the sudden force of passion, but recovered quickly. “Well. That’s quite a précis, but I won’t deny your point.” He smiled, moving another sheet of paper to the top of his pile to buy time. “I’m sure you have comments on concerns that the UN is exceeding its brief. New world order has been mentioned by some—”
“Cyber-terrorists,” Vikram said flatly. “Malcontents and insurrectionists. The people they murder and abuse hardly require the UN to appear as an enemy next to the kind of friends they’ve already got.”
“Fair,” Callow agreed. “We’ve got a few minutes left. If you can, please elaborate on this New Geneva Convention.”
“Well, it’s a misnomer, not being held in Geneva, but we can’t seem to get rid of it.”
“The New York City Convention doesn’t roll off the tongue.”
“Exactly.”
“So tell me—”
“Phase one has been in place for over a year now. Global draw-down of nuclear weapons, but also reduction of powerful ordnance, ships, submarine power, air power, so on. Restrictions on the destructive capability of new technology. Policy-compliant retrofitting. Every major country supplies to one global armed force. The Security Council functions as before.”
“Without Russia,” Callow affirmed. “And there are rumours we, the United States, might lose our seat as well.”
“I can’t confirm or deny that,” Vikram said. “Russia can regain eligibility when she’s met the standard of human rights for her people. With regards to the US, I can only say that bombing your own citizens is a delegitimizing act. Your government knows that the Heartland insurgency does not have the terrorist server farms claimed, but the drone strikes continue. It looks to the rest of the world like you’re trying to destroy the arable land to force the issue of produce outsourcing that began all of this in the first instance.”
“How,” Callow said, now looking directly at him. “Would you address this if it comes to your office?”
Vikram sat back, gave a little sigh. “I would hope that the US valued its seat and its global reputation more than that, but it’s part of an existing pattern of decline that will take many years to reverse.”
“But if the US loses its seat?” Callow continued, clearly wanting Vikram to commit. To give him something, any kind of hint of what the policy might be.
“That,” Vikram said with the utmost earnestness. “Would be a great tragedy for one the UN’s founding members.”