Norton’s voice came through his teeth. ‘Am I supposed to be fucking grateful to you now?’
‘No, of course not. That’s not what I’m saying. Listen to me, please. I suspected Jeff, I didn’t know for sure. But I did know that if I unleashed Onbekend on the others, whoever they were, Jeff would fold. If he had been involved, I knew he’d give me no more trouble. Even in the old days, even with Scorpion Response, he was a logistical manager, a facilitator. Not an operative, not a killer. Jeff never had the stomach for those things.’
Norton grinned savagely down at him. ‘That’s all you know. My brother sent those skaters to kill you. My brother got me to hire Marsalis out of South Florida State to crank up the pressure on you and Onbekend. He was playing you just like you played him.’
‘Is that so?’ An attempted smile wavered on the COLIN director’s face for a moment. ‘Ironic, then, that he provided both the agents of my death and the means to foil them. Ironic too thatyou, Mr Marsalis, should both save my life and then bring everything tumbling down around me. But then, that has always been the double-edged blade that your kind offered us, from the very beginning. Variant thirteen, the avatars of purified violence, our saviours and our nemesis.’
Carl listened to the lilt of imagery in Ortiz’s voice, and thought abruptly of Manco Bambaren’s mannered speeches on pistacos and human history. He wondered idly what genes the two men might share.
‘Where is Onbekend?’ he asked bluntly.
‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’ Maybe Carl twitched forward, because Ortiz’s voice tightened a little with anxiety. ‘Really, I don’t. Believe me, if I knew-’
‘Jeff Norton said he’d gone back to the altiplano. Back to Bambaren. That’s where you would have contacted him in the beginning to set this up, right?’
‘Yes, but through Bambaren’s organisation. In the end, I could only leave messages. It was he who came to me, here in New York one night, like a ghost through the security around my home.’ Ortiz stared away through the window and shivered a little. ‘Like something I had summoned up. I should have known then, all those lessons our myths and legends scream at us, time and again. Never summon up what you cannot control.’
‘You must have had direct contact with him after that,’ Carl said pragmatically. ‘You set him on me in San Francisco, after the Bulgakov’s Cat arrests.’
Ortiz tried another smile. It guttered and died. ‘Believe me, Mr Marsalis, I tried harder than you’ll ever know to prevent that. I am not an ungrateful man, and you had saved my life. But once decided, Allen Onbekend is a force of nature. You had already threatened the object of his affections in Arequipa, he would not take less than your death. I tried to move you out of range, I had UNGLA attempt to recall you, but it seems you are in your way no less stubborn than any other of your kind. You would not shift. And Onbekend was closing on you too fast for me to do anything else.’
The shock sparked in him. ‘You had di Palma call me?’
‘Yes, Mr Marsalis.’ Ortiz sighed. ‘And not only then. From the very beginning, Gianfranco di Palma had instructions to remove you from the proceedings as rapidly as possible. We had simply not expected you to be so tenacious in a fight that was not your own.’
Carl remembered the UNGLA clinic in Istanbul. Mehemet Tuzcu and his diplomatic attempts at extraction. His own refusal to shift, the weak fistful of reasons he threw out, like sand in his own eyes. But it had always been Sevgi Ertekin, he knew, even then.
‘Greta Jurgens is Onbekend’s?’ he asked distractedly
‘So it would appear. A curious match, is it not? But then they do at least have in common that they are both objects for the hormonal hatred the rest of humanity seems constantly to need a target for.’
Norton was dealing with something else, staring at Ortiz. ‘You’re pulling favours with UNGLA already? You’ve got your hooks in that far?’
‘Tom, I have a secure nomination for Secretary General. There will be no dispute, it’s decided at all the levels that matter. I will hold the post by this time next year, if you let me live.’ The pressed palms raised, almost like prayer. ‘Don’t you understand, either of you, that this is what I have been trying to safeguard? You think this was about me personally? It was not, please believe me. I have spent the last six years of my life trying to bend the Colony Initiative closer to a rapprochement with the UN. To reach agreements on Martian law and co-operative governance. To leash corporate greed and harness it to a European social model. To break down the barriers between us and the Chinese instead of building walls and fences. I’ve done all of that in the hope that we don’t have to take our insular nation state insanities to the first new world we’ve reached and build the same stupid hate-filled structure from the ground up all over again.’
Ortiz’s face was flushed and animated, passion briefly imitating health while it filled him. Carl watched the COLIN director as if he were something behind glass in an insect vivarium. See the humans. Watch the patriarchal male justify his acts to his fellows and to himself.
‘One more year,’ said Ortiz urgently. ‘That’s all I need, and I can continue that work from the other side of the fence. I can restructure the idiot posturing in the general assembly, force reforms, make promises, all built on the work I’ve already done here with COLIN. That’s what was under threat from this stupid petty blackmail out of the past - not some quick cash that I could have filtered through a COLIN account for less than the cost of a single nanorack elevator. That’s not why I did this. I did it for the future, a hope for the future. Isn’t that worth the sacrifice? It was a handful of used-up, counterfeit lives, tired, superannuated men and women of violence hiding from their own pasts, set in the balance against the hope of a better future for all of us.’
Carl thought briefly of Lola Montalban, imagined her fighting Onbekend with the decayed vestiges of her combat skill, then letting go and dying to keep the thirteen away from her husband and children. He wondered if she’d thought of smoking ruins in Wyoming as she stood there waiting for the bullet, or only the children she would never see walk through the door again.
He wondered what he’d have to picture when the time came for him.
Elena Aguirre, whispering behind him.
The quiet, filling him up ...
‘You’re full of shit, Ortiz.’ The rasp of Norton’s voice pulled him out of it. ‘You didn’t have a problem with using these men and women of violence when you were running Scorpion Response.’
‘No, that’s true, Tom. But it was a different time.’ Ortiz, pitching his tone raised but reasonable. Arguing his point in good faith. ‘You have to remember that. And back then, those men and women themselves would gladly have given their lives in the causes I’m talking about, because they also believed in a better future.’
Norton jolted forward, face tight with rage. He gripped the arms of Ortiz’s wheelchair, pushed it back a half metre before the autobrake cut in. Carl saw tiny specks of spittle hit Ortiz in the face as the COLIN exec yelled at his boss.
‘A better fucking future? And what exactly was your bright new future going to be, you motherfucker? Covert ops in other people’s countries. Corrupt corporate practice? A genetic concentration camp in Wyoming?’
Carl pulled him back. ‘Get a grip, Tom. This isn’t what we’re here for.’
But the force had already gone out of Ortiz’s face, like a candle flame blown out by Norton’s rage. Suddenly, the wheelchair held only an ill, old man, shaking his head in weary admission.
‘I . . . was . . . young. Foolish. I have no defence. But I believed what we were doing was right, at the time. You have to understand what it was like. In the West we were losing the edge, terrified of the gene research that needed to be done, held back by moral panic and ignorance. China was doing work that our universities and technology institutes should have been pursuing. They still are.’ Ortiz shifted his gaze to Carl, grew animated once more. ‘There is a future on Mars, Mr Marsalis, but it’s not a human future
the way Jacobsen and UNGLA understood it. You’ve been there, you know what it’s like. We will need the variants, we will have to become a variant of some sort if we plan to stay. The Chinese understand this, that’s why they haven’t stopped their programmes. I only sought to equalise the pressure, so when the explosion, the realisation finally came, it would not rupture our society apart from the differential.’
Carl nodded. ‘Yeah. Let’s get back to Onbekend.’
‘You don’t believe me?’
‘What does it matter what I believe? It won’t change what you’ve done. How did Onbekend find out he was Manco Bambaren’s half-brother ?’
Ortiz sighed. ‘I really don’t remember details of that sort. It was a long time ago. Yes, possibly, he used Scorpion Response time and resources to track his sourcemat mother down, discovered who she was and saw the angle. The work we were doing in Wyoming may have sparked his interest. It is through Scorpion channels that he discovered he had a twin, that I do know, so quite possibly he found Isabela Gayoso the same way. And I know that when he wasn’t seconded to us, Project Lawman deployed him in a covert capacity in Bolivia on at least one occasion, so he would perhaps have had opportunity then as well. All I can tell you is that when the time came to dissolve the Scorpion operation, he already had his place in the sun prepared. He knew that his twin had accepted Mars resettlement, and that Scorpion Response would be wiped from the flow by n-djinn. And Bambaren had made a place for him in his organisation. It was a perfect disappearing act.’
Yeah, until Stéphane Névant shows up trying to sell Bambaren a pistaco threat he already has blood-related access to and drawing down attention they can really all do without. Poor old Stéphane, right on target. Better intuition than you ever knew. No wonder Bambaren turned you over so fucking fast. All you were going to do was lead an UNGLA squad right to his half-brother’s door.
And no wonder Bambaren freaked when we showed up, set it all in motion, all over again. I thought I’d offended him when I talked about exemplary executions in some village square somewhere. Must have nailed something Onbekend did for him, too close to the truth for comfort.
He thought I was playing with him. Thought I’d come for his brother.
He thought of Sevgi Ertekin, propped against the side of the COLIN jeep, hands in pockets, jacket hooked back. Casual reveal of the shoulder-holstered Marstech gun, the telegraphed warning to Bambaren not to fuck up.
Sevgi, you should have been here to hear all of this. We were so fucking close after all.
But you would have told me not to gloat, it’s not attractive.
He focused hard on the man in the wheelchair. ‘Is Isabela Gayoso still alive?’
‘No, she died some years ago. Onbekend mentioned it to me in passing when we met in New York. She grew up in crushing poverty, it seems, and of course these things tend to take their toll later in life. From what I hear, Bambaren himself was lucky to survive his childhood. Neither of his siblings did.’
‘Does Bambaren know he has a second half-brother?’
‘No. We did not involve him. Onbekend has enough familia presence these days to make the contacts we needed at Bradbury and Wells, and to be convincing when he did. It took some time, but he convinced the Martian chapters that there is a wedge opening between the Lima clans and the altiplano.’ Ortiz’s shrunken shoulders lifted under the grey silk of the pyjamas. ‘From what I understand, it’s not far from the truth.’
‘And Merrin never knew who was hiring him either?’
‘Merrin was never aware that he had a twin in the first place. As I said, it was only through Scorpion Response intelligence that Onbekend discovered what had been done. Merrin never would have had access to the data. And you’ve seen Onbekend, he changed his face when he went underground back in ’94. No resemblance any longer.’
Carl thought about the echo in the features he’d seen the night Sevgi was shot. ‘No, there is a resemblance. If you look for it.’
‘Well, as I understand it the actual hiring was filtered through the Martian familia machine anyway. I doubt Merrin and Onbekend ever actually saw each other across the screen. The familias knew only that this was a personal matter, that the people at this end had chosen this particular man, Merrin, and that if they could not recruit him, there would be no deal.’
‘And Merrin?’ Norton wanted to know. ‘What was he told?’
Another fragile shrug. ‘That he had friends here on Earth who wanted him back, who would provide him with a new identity and the resources to disappear in comfort. We made it a very attractive package.’
The COLIN exec shook his head numbly. ‘So Onbekend just sold out his brother? His twin?’
‘Sacrified him, yes. What of it?’ Ortiz gestured. ‘They had never known each other, never met. What bond could there be?’
‘That’s not the point!’ But now Norton was looking at Carl. ‘He was his brother, for Christ’s sake!’
‘That is the point, Tom,’ Carl told him quietly. ‘Thirteens don’t do abstract allegiance. It’s not part of our make-up.’
‘But . . . Bambaren.’ Norton held out his hands. ‘That’s an abstract blood tie.’
Ortiz made an arid chuckling sound. ‘Yes, one that Onbekend has exploited to great benefit.’
‘Bambaren got used,’ said Carl, looking down at Ortiz. ‘Just like everybody else. Just like Scorpion Response, just like Human Cost. Just like Onbekend and Merrin. You got everybody dancing.’
‘Mr Marsalis, please understand-’
Enough.
Carl grabbed Ortiz under the arms and hauled him out of the chair in a single violent motion. The other man seemed to weigh almost nothing, but that might have been the mesh kicking in, or the rage. Ortiz kicked and struggled, but feebly. Carl held him in what felt for a moment like an embrace, stepped back clear of the panic-wired wheelchair and laid the COLIN director carefully down on the polished wood floor.
‘Wait, you can’t-’
But Ortiz’s voice was as weak as his struggles. Carl knelt and pressed a hand to the COLIN director’s chest to hold him still. He leaned over him, face impassive.
‘I know you, Ortiz,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen your kind making your speeches from every pulpit and podium on two planets, and you never fucking change. You lie to the cudlips and you lie to yourself so they’ll believe you better, and when the dying starts, you claim regret and you offer justification. But in the end, you do it all because you think it’s your right, and you do not care. If you really suspected Jeff Norton, if you knew what kind of man he was, you could have squeezed him for the names, dealt with whoever it was-’
‘It was Tanaka,’ Norton said, standing over Ortiz. ‘Only Tanaka.’
Carl nodded. ‘You could have stopped this thing as soon as it started. But what Tanaka and Jeff Norton could do, so could someone else sooner or later. So could any of the ones who knew about Wyoming, any of the ones who were left, and it could happen at any time. No matter what position you achieved, Scorpion Response was going to hang over you to the grave. You’d never be safe. So you saw a chance to clean house, and you took it, at whatever cost.’
And now Carl found a small truth seeping up inside him, an understanding.
‘You know, Ortiz, you would have made a pretty good thirteen. All you ever lacked was the strength, the power, and that, well, I guess you can always find a mob of cudlips to supply that for you.’
‘All right.’ Ortiz stopped struggling. The force came back into his voice. He spoke clearly and urgently. ‘Listen to me, please. If you kill me now, I have alarm systems attached to my body. They’re under the skin, inside me, you’ll never find them. There’ll be a crash team here in minutes.’
‘I won’t need that long,’ Carl told him.
Ortiz broke. His face seemed to crumple, his eyes closed, blinked open moist with tears.
‘But I want to live,’ he whispered. ‘I want to go on, I have work to do.’
Cold, cold pulse of rage. He fel
t his face move with it. ‘So did Sevgi Ertekin.’
‘Please believe me, Mr Marsalis, I truly do regret-’
Carl leaned closer. ‘I don’t want your regret.’
Ortiz swallowed, mustered control from somewhere.
‘Then, I have a request,’ he husked. ‘Please, at least may I phone and speak to my family first. To say goodbye.’
‘No.’ Carl hauled the COLIN director up onto his lap, locked an arm around the man’s neck, positioned his free hand against the skull. ‘I’m not here to ease your passing, Ortiz. I’m here to take what you owe.’
‘Please . . .’
Carl jerked and twisted. Ortiz’s neck snapped like rotten wood.
Soft, chiming sirens went off everywhere in the suite, the wail of distressed cudlip society. Man of substance down. Rally, gather, form a mob.
The beast is out.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The crash team were fast- less than two full minutes from when the microdocs tripped under Ortiz’s skin and the sirens went off. But well before that, the COLIN security detachment had heard the alarms and come through the door on general principles. They found Ortiz in his wheelchair, slumped over to one side, Norton and Marsalis standing staring at him.
‘Sir?’ the squad leader looked at Norton.
‘Lock this whole floor down,’ Norton told her absently. ‘Call in some more support to do it. I don’t want anyone, not even NYPD, getting up here without my say-so.’
‘But, but-’
‘Just do it.’ He turned to Carl. ‘You’d better get moving.’
Carl nodded, looked once more at Ortiz and then stepped outside the unconsciously tightening ring the security detachment had formed around the body. He headed out of the room without looking back, out of the suite and into the corridor where he met the crash team head on, all life-saving speed and resuscitation gear, trolley and white coats, dedicated emergency room doctor and all.
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