Black Man / Thirteen

by Richard K. Morgan

  “Yeah.” Carl gestured around at the deserted road and the empty landscape beyond. “You see a hospital out there anywhere?”

  “In Arequipa—”

  “In Arequipa, he’d have been a fucking liability.” Running a little anger of his own now. “Ertekin, we need to hit Greta Jurgens fast, before she finds out what went down here tonight. We don’t have time for hospital visits. This isn’t a…what?”

  Ertekin was frowning, anger shelved momentarily as she reached into her jacket pocket. She fished out her phone, which was vibrating quietly on and off, pulsing along its edges with pale crystalline light.

  “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” Carl looked away down the perspectives of the road in exasperated disbelief. “At this time of night?”

  “Rang before,” she said, putting the device to her ear. “Just before the fireworks kicked off. Didn’t have time to pick up. Ertekin.”

  Then she listened quietly. Made monosyllabic agreement a couple of times. Hung up and put the phone away again, face gone calm and thoughtful.

  “Norton,” he guessed.

  “Yeah. Time to go home.”

  He gaped at her. “What?”

  “That’s right.” She met his eye, something harder edging the calm. “RimSec called. They’ve got a body. We’ve got to go back.”

  Carl shook his head. Twinges of the firefight backed up in his nerves, fake-fired the mesh. “So they’ve got a body. Another body. Big fucking deal. You going to pull out now, just when we’re getting somewhere?”

  Ertekin gazed around at the carnage. “You call this getting somewhere?”

  “They tried to stop us, Sevgi. They tried to kill us.”

  “They tried to kill us in New York as well. You want to go back there? Come to that, Nevant tried to kill you in Istanbul. Violence follows you around, Marsalis. Just like Merrin, just like—”

  She clamped her lips.

  Carl looked at her and felt the old weariness seeping in. He cranked up the rind of a smile for cover.

  “Go ahead, Sevgi, say it. Just like Ethan.” He gestured. “Go on, get it off that gorgeous chest of yours. It’s what you’re thinking anyway.”

  “You have no fucking right to assume—”

  “No?” He paused for effect. “Oh yeah, I forgot. You get some kind of perverse thrill out of fucking unlucks, and that makes you think you don’t see us the same way the rest of the whole fucking human race does. Well, it takes more than a Cuban wank and a few sheet stains to—”

  Abruptly, he was on the ground.

  He lay there on his back in the road dust, staring up while she stood over him, clutching her right fist in her left hand.

  “Motherfucker,” she said wonderingly.

  She’d stepped in before she threw the punch, he realized. Right hook, or an uppercut, he couldn’t work out which. He never saw it coming.

  “You think I haven’t been where you are now, Marsalis?”

  He propped himself up on an elbow. “What, flat on the your back in the road??

  “Shut up.” She was trembling visibly. Maybe with comedown from the firefight. Maybe not. “You think I don’t know what it’s like? Think again, fuckwit. Try growing up Muslim in the West, while the Middle East catches fire again. Try growing up a woman in a Western Muslim culture fighting off siege-mentality fundamentalism again. Try being one of only three Turkish American patrolwomen in a New York precinct dominated by male Greek American detectives. Hey, try sleeping with a thirteen, you’ll get almost as much shit as being one, not least from members of your own fucking family. Yeah. People are stupid, Marsalis. You think I need lessons in that?”

  “I don’t know what you need, Ertekin.”

  “No, that’s right, you don’t. And listen—you got some fucking problem with what we did back in Istanbul, then deal with it however you need to. But don’t you ever, ever call into question my relationship with Ethan Conrad again. Because the next time I swear I will put a fucking bullet in you.”

  Carl rubbed at his jaw. Flexed it experimentally left and right.

  “Mind if I get up now?”

  “Do what you fucking like.”

  She stood away from him, staring off somewhere beyond the corpses and the arid landscape. He climbed carefully to his feet.

  “Ertekin, just listen to me for a moment. Look around you. Look at this mess.”

  “I am looking at it.”

  “Right. So it’s got to mean something, right?”

  Still she didn’t look at his face. “Yeah, what it probably means is that Manco Bambarén’s tired of you pushing him around in his own backyard.”

  “Oh come on, Ertekin. You’re a cop, for fuck’s sake.”

  “That’s right, I’m a cop.” Suddenly she whipped around on him. Fast enough to halfway trip a block reflex. “And right now, while I get dragged around the globe watching you fulfill your genetic potential for wholesale slaughter, other cops elsewhere are doing real police work and getting somewhere with it. Norton was right about this, we’re wasting our time. We are going back.”

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “No.” She shook her head, decision taken. “I made a mistake in Istanbul. Now I’m going to put it right.”

  part IV. OUT TO SEA

  We must at all times guard against any illusory sense of final achievement. To recommend change, as this report does, is not to suggest that the problems we address will disappear or no longer require attention. At most they will disappear from view, and this may very well be a counterproductive outcome, since it cannot fail to encourage a complacency we can ill afford.

  —Jacobsen Report, August 2091

  CHAPTER 32

  Greta Jurgens came to work early, shuffling across the deserted white stone courtyards just off the Plaza de Armas before the sun got high enough to make them blaze. Still, she wore heavy-framed sunglasses against the light, and her pace was sluggish enough for summer heat or a woman twice her age. She wasn’t small-boned, or even especially pale given her Germanic ancestry, but the tanned, muscle-freighted bulk of the two Samoan bodyguards detailed to escort her from the limousine each day made her seem delicate and ill by comparison. And as she reached the cloistered edge of the courtyard where her office was, stepped under the cloister’s stone roof and up to the office door, she shivered, harder than most humans would. October was a knowledge, a cold creeping tide in her blood. Darker, colder days, coming in.

  Back in Europe, the seasonal cycle her metabolism had originally been calibrated for was already well into autumn and winding slowly down to winter. And you never could quite get it together to get recalibrated, could you, Greta. Too little faith in the local service providers—it was a complicated procedure, went very deep—and too little disposable income or time to go back and pay someone she’d trust. Yeah, and if you’re honest, just never the right time, either: too fucking busy, then too fucking depressed, then just too fucking asleep. It was a pretty standard hib complaint—along with the more obvious physiological factors, the hibernoid hormonal suite lent itself to mental fluctuations that were almost bipolar in their intensity. All through the waking segment of the cycle, she whirred like an overloaded magdrive dynamo, working, dealing, brokering, living but always too busy, too busy, too busy to rest or relax or sleep or worry about minor considerations like changing her life for the better. Then, as the hormonal tide began to ebb and such considerations finally managed to creep to the front of her conscious concerns, they came in freighted with such a surging sense of weariness in the face of insurmountable odds that it was all she could do not to weep at the pointlessness of trying to do anything about a thing like that now. Better just to sleep on it, better just let it go this time around, pick up again in spring and…

  And around she went again.

  An unfortunate psychological side effect, went the arid, tut-tutting text of the Jacobsen Protocol, and somewhat debilitating for those implicated, but not a failing this committee need conce
rn itself with unduly, nor a social threat as such.

  Somewhat debilitating. Right. Her fingers mashed at the door code panel, slow and clumsy, as if they weren’t really hers. The Samoans stood by. Isaac and Salesi, both of them familia enforcers since their youth, long schooled in a sort of hard-faced butler’s diplomacy where escort duties were concerned—they knew better than to offer her help. She’d been in a foul mood for days now, snappish and strung out at the wrong end of her waking tether. Judgment fraying, social skills barely operational. Under normal circumstances, she’d already have handed over operations here to one of Manco’s brighter minions, given in to the inevitable changes in her blood chemistry, and let the cold tide turn opiate-warm along her veins. She’d already be housebound, down at the Colca retreat, pottering about, prepping for the long sleep ahead. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have to—

  He came out of nowhere.

  She still had her sunglasses on, blurry early-morning vision, and not much peripheral sense at all this late in the cycle—no surprise she didn’t see it happen. Her first warning was the sound of a solid, untidy impact behind her. The door, coded open, was already swinging inward off the latch. She felt the huge hand of one of the bodyguards hit her in the small of her back, shoving her bodily inside. She stumbled, caught the corner of a desk in the cramped office space, struggled foggily to comprehend.

  We’re being hit.

  Impossible. Her mind rejected it out of hand, objections in a blurry rush. Manco had put his stamp on the Arequipa gangs a decade ago, made his allegiances, wiped out the rest. No one—no one—was stupid enough to buck the trend. And the courtyard, the white stone courtyard, was pristine when they crossed, empty this early.

  The sound behind her played back in her head. Shock jumped in her blood as she put it together.

  Someone had come off the paved walkway above the cloister, jumped better than five meters directly down and onto one of her escorts. Was outside now, finishing the job…

  Isaac cannoned into the doorjamb and sagged there, clinging. Blood matted his hair and poured down his face between the eyes. He made a convulsive effort to gain his feet again, failed, went down in a heap.

  Behind him in the doorway, a black figure silhouetted against the gathering glare of the early-morning sun. Something flopped in her sluggish blood, deep jolt of instinctive fear just ahead of recognition.

  “Morning, Greta. Surprised to see me?”

  “Marsalis.” She spat it out, temper snapping across. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  He stepped carefully into the office, skirting Isaac’s toppled bulk with cat-like care and a wary sideways glance. Behind him, through the open door, she saw Salesi stretched out unmoving on the chessboard white-and-gray pavement of the courtyard like a beached whale. Marsalis didn’t have a mark on him; didn’t even appear to be breathing heavily. He stood just inside reaching distance and looked impassively at her.

  “I haven’t had much sleep, Greta. I’d bear that in mind if I were you.”

  “I’m not afraid of you.”

  He saw it was true. Smiled a little. “I guess not. Welcome to the twist brotherhood, right? All just monsters together.”

  “I repeat.” She stepped away from the desk corner, straightened up to him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “I might ask Manco the same question. See, I’ve been pretty polite so far. Couple of quick conversations and I’m out of your hair for good. No damage, no disruption, everybody’s happy. That’s the way I wanted it, anyw—”

  “We don’t always get what we want, Marsalis. Didn’t your mummy ever tell you that?”

  “Yeah. She also told me it was rude to interrupt.” He reached in, whiplash-swift, and her sunglasses were gone, plucked into his hand. Her vision watered and swam. “Like I said, Greta, I could have been out of everyone’s hair in nothing flat. Instead, last night, while I was on my way here to talk to you, someone paid a bucketful of your illustrious local military to have me disappeared.”

  She blinked hard to clear her vision. Silent curse at the tears it squeezed visibly out at the corners of her eyes.

  “What a shame they didn’t manage it.”

  “Yeah, well, you just can’t get the help these days. Point is, Greta, who do you think I should blame?”

  She tipped her head to look past him at the crumpled form by the door. “Looks to me like you’ve already decided that one.”

  “You’re confusing purpose with necessity. I don’t think your islander friends would have been overkeen on us all having a sitdown chat.”

  She met his gaze. “I don’t seem to be sitting down.”

  For a moment, they stared at each other. Then he shrugged and tossed her sunglasses onto the desktop. He nodded at the chair behind the desk.

  “Be my guest.”

  She made her way around the edge of the desk and seated herself. At the door to the little office, Isaac stirred, shook his head muzzily. Marsalis glanced his way, looked back at Greta and pointed a warning finger, then crossed to where the Samoan lay. Isaac snarled and spat blood, glaring up at the black man in disbelieving rage. He braced his arms at his sides, and pressed huge hands flat to the floor.

  “You stand up,” Marsalis said without passion, “I will kill you.”

  The Samoan didn’t appear to hear. His arms flexed, his mouth formed a grin.

  “Isaac, he means it.” Greta leaned over the desk, put urgency into her tone. “He’s thirteen. Unluck. You stay where you are. I’ll square this.”

  Marsalis shot her a glance. “Generous of you.”

  “Fuck you, Marsalis. Some of us got loyalties past getting paid.” Sudden, unstoppable, cavernous yawn. “Wouldn’t expect you to understand that.”

  “Am I keeping you up?”

  “Fuck off. You want to ask me questions, ask me. Then get the fuck out.”

  “You talk to Manco today?”

  “No.”

  He seated himself on the edge of the desk. “Yesterday?”

  “Before he went to meet you. Not since.”

  “Why would he use the army and not familia talent?”

  “You’re assuming it was him.”

  “He came close to greasing me himself, up at Sacsayhuamán. Yeah, I’m assuming this was him.”

  “You got no other enemies?”

  “I think we agreed I was asking the questions.”

  She shrugged. Waited.

  “Manco got any interests up in Jesusland?”

  “That I know of? No.”

  “The Rim?”

  “No.”

  “He had a cousin did jail time in Florida. Wore a jacket just like this one, apparently. Know anything about that?”

  “No.”

  “You guys move medical tech at all?”

  She held down another yawn. “If it pays.”

  “Heard of a guy called Eddie Tanaka?”

  “No.”

  “Texan. Strictly small-time.”

  “I said no.”

  “What about Jasper Whitlock?”

  “No.”

  “Toni Montes?”

  “No.”

  “Allen Merrin?”

  She threw up her hands. “Marsalis, what the fuck is this? Gone Walkabout? Do I look like Shannon Doukoure to you? We’re not a fucking missing persons agency.”

  “So you don’t know Merrin?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “What about Ulysses Ward?”

  She sat back in the chair. Sighed. “No.”

  “Manco treat you okay, Greta?”

  She flared again, for real this time. “That’s none of your motherfucking business.”

  “Hey, I’m just wondering here.” He gestured. “I mean, you’re good looking and all, but in the end you’re a twist, just like me, and—”

  “I am nothing like you, unluck,” she said coldly.

  “—we all know how the familias feel about twists. I don’t imagine Ma
nco’s any different from the other taytas. Must be tough for you.”

  Greta said nothing.

  “Well?”

  “I didn’t hear you ask me a question.”

  “Didn’t you?” He grinned mirthlessly. “My question, Greta, was how does a gringa hib twist like yourself end up working front office for the familias?”

  “I don’t know, Marsalis. Maybe it’s because some of us twists can transcend what it says in our genes and just get on and do the work. Ever think of that?”

  “Greta, you’re asleep four months out of every twelve. That’s going to put a serious dent in anyone’s productivity. Add to that you’re white, you’re a woman, and you’re not from here. The familias aren’t known for their progressive attitudes. So I don’t see any way this works, unless my sources are right and you’re fucking the boss.”

  Across the room, Isaac’s eyes widened with disbelieving fury. She caught his gaze and shook her head, then fixed Marsalis with a stare.

  “Is that what you’d like to believe?”

  “No, it’s what Stefan Nevant tells me.”

  “Nevant?” Greta sneered. “That shithead? Fucking wannabe pistaco, too stupid to realize—”

  She stopped, sat silent.

  Fucking end-of-cycle slippage, she knew dismally. Fucking traitorous genetic bullshit modifi—

  Marsalis nodded. “Too stupid to realize what?”

  “To realize. That he needed us, and we didn’t need him at all.”

  “That’s not what you were going to say.”

  “Oh, so now you’re a fucking telepath?”

  He got off the edge of the desk. “Let’s not make this more unpleasant than it’s got to be, Greta.”

  “I agree. In fact, let’s stop this shit right now.”

  The new voice held them both frozen for a pair of seconds. Greta locked onto the figure in the doorway, then looked back just in time to see Marsalis’s face slacken into resignation. His lips formed a word, a name, she realized, and realized at the same moment, confusedly but surely, that it was all over.