Black Man / Thirteen

by Richard K. Morgan

  And out of thin air, as if in answer, the helicopters came.

  There were two of them, nondescript commercial machines, bumping down through the brilliant canyon air with the ungainly caution of crane flies. They quartered noisily back and forth, dipped about for a while, angled rotor blur shimmering in the sun, and then they held position over the river opposite the lodge. Carl watched bleakly from the shattered picture window. Enough carrying capacity in the two aircraft for a dozen men at least. He stayed back out of view, let the scattered corpses on the ground around the lodge door paint the picture he wanted. The helicopters dithered and dipped. Finally, he picked up one of the Steyr assault rifles and loosed a quick burst out the window in their general direction. The response was immediate—both machines reared up and fled downriver, presumably in search of a safe place to land.

  The path ran on that way, he knew, grooving back down toward the water, building another rock wall on its landward side. They’d be able to come back that way, upriver, and stay hidden right to the edge of the cleared ground outside the lodge, mirror-imaging the approach he’d made a couple of hours ago from the other side. He frowned a little, cuddled the folding frame stock of the Steyr into his shoulder, squinted along the sight, and panned experimentally across the cleared ground. He was pretty sure he could knock down anyone coming for the house before they’d made a couple of meters in the open. They might try a rush assault but it wasn’t likely—they didn’t know how many were in the house, or what they might have done with Greta Jurgens, whether she was alive or dead, safe in her womb or dragged downstairs ready to be held up ragdoll-limp as a shield.

  And the lodge was a tough nut to crack. Ferrer had been clear about that much. Bitch got a fucking fortress there, man. Right into the fucking rock, no way you can come down from above, smooth sides so you can’t sneak up. I mean. He sat back, hands in the pockets of his clean new chinos, smirking and confident now he’d done his deal. Who the fuck she expecting, man, the fucking army? And all so she can fucking sleep? Man, I don’t know what hold that bitch got on Manco’s balls, but it’s gotta be something pretty fucking major, get him doing all this. Gotta give the mother of all blow jobs or something.

  Like Stefan Nevant before him, Suerte saw the results and jumped to the obvious wrong conclusion. Onbekend stayed in the shadows. If you didn’t know he was there already, you looked for other, more visible explanations.

  Like unhuman monsters, home from Mars.

  It was the dynamic Ortiz had built his whole cover-up effort around. A monster stalks us! All hands to the palisades and the torches! Don’t ask, don’t ever ask who’s really making all this happen.

  A head poked up from down near the river. Carl let him have a good look around, then fired off another burst. Stone chips and dust leapt in the air; the head jerked back down.

  Just so they’re clear on the situation.

  “Marsalis?”

  Manco Bambarén’s voice. Carl got his back to the side of the window space, stayed in the shadows, and edged an eye around. Steep early-afternoon sunlight flooded down into the canyon. If you crouched and peered upward, you could just see the rich angled fall of it past the rim, and a restful blue gloom beneath where the higher parts of the valley wall were cast in shadow. It was very quiet now that the helicopters were gone—the whirring scrape of crickets, and the buzzing of flies on the bodies outside.

  “Black man, is that you?”

  “Good guess,” he shouted back, dumping Bambarén’s Spanish for Quechua. “What do you want?”

  Brief hesitation. Carl wondered if Onbekend maybe couldn’t follow a conversation in Quechua—there was no guarantee he’d have learned it in his time living hidden up on the altiplano. He’d get by easily enough with Spanish and English. And as Bambarén’s pet pistaco, he’d have no need to integrate with the locals. Standard thirteen isolation would work like a dream.

  Sure enough, Bambarén stayed in Spanish. “It’s really about what you want, Marsalis. Can we talk?”

  “Sure. Come on in.”

  “You guarantee not to shoot me before you’ve heard what I have to say?”

  Carl grinned. “I don’t know, you going to take the word of a twist on that?”

  “Yes. I will.”

  “Then come on across. No weapons, no body armor, hands where I can see them.” Carl paused. “Oh yeah, and bring your brother with you.”

  Long, long silence. The crickets scraped in the heated air outside.

  “What’s the matter, Manco? You not been watching the feeds? It’s all burned down now, didn’t you know? Ortiz is gone, COLIN are cleaning house. We know all about Onbekend. So let’s see both of you.”

  It took a couple of minutes, but then the two figures emerged from the cover down by the path and walked steadily up toward the lodge, hands clasped over their heads. Carl watched them over the Steyr’s sight. Onbekend was holding one arm lopsided, as if it hurt to lift. Carl remembered Sevgi in the Bayview bar—Hit him a couple of times, but not enough to put him down. Thirteens, huh.

  Yeah, we’re tough motherfuckers.

  He lined up on Onbekend’s face, flexed his trigger finger a couple of times, took up the tension. Then let it go, put the gun aside impatiently. He picked up a handgun, another Glock, from the pile on the floor, checked the load, and snapped the slide. As Bambarén and Onbekend reached the doorway, he stepped back, mindful of sniping angles through the picture window, and wagged the pistol at them.

  “Come on in.”

  Onbekend stared at him, spat out English. “Where is she, Marsalis?”

  “Not so hasty. Back there to the table in the alcove, both of you. Hands on your head at all times. I’m not going to mess about patting you down, so if either of you do move a hand anywhere near your body without my permission, I’ll just make the assumption and kill you. Got that?”

  Bambarén pivoted back and forth slightly, eyes sweeping the open-plan space inside the lodge. Understanding widened his eyes.

  “You came here alone?”

  “Go to the table. Sit down in the two chairs I’ve pulled out. Keep your hands on your heads until you’re seated, and then put them on the table in front of you. No sudden moves. Sudden movement will get you dead.”

  He tugged the door closed, pulled it until the latch whined over into lock.

  “Marsalis, I have fifteen men out there.” Bambarén’s voice was low and conversational as he walked to the table. He’d shifted into English as well. “You’re sealed in. Let’s talk about this.”

  “We’re going to talk about it. But you’re going to be sitting down when we do. Hands where I can see them, and then flat on the table in front of you.”

  They seated themselves, awkward with the need to keep their hands lifted. Bambarén took the head of the table, Onbekend the seat adjacent. This far back in the open-plan space, the lodge made inroads into the cliff face and it was cool and dim, so the two men looked like part of some arcane spiritualist gathering, stiff-backed in the chairs, palms down on the wood, expressions taut. Carl pulled out a chair opposite Onbekend and sat in it, well back from the edge of the table. He floated the Glock on his knee.

  “And now what?” the other thirteen asked evenly.

  “Now we talk about why I shouldn’t kill you both. Any ideas?”

  “Are you so anxious to die, black man?” Bambarén asked.

  Carl gave him a faint smile. “Well, fifteen-to-one is long odds, it’s true. But then again, eight-to-one didn’t look good, either, and there they all are, out there for the flies.”

  “Have you learned nothing?” Onbekend was looking at him with the same contempt he’d given off in the Bayview bar. “Are you still nothing better than a soldier for the cudlips?”

  Bambarén stiffened. Carl put a small smile together.

  “Want to be careful who you use that word around, brother. It’s not Manco here’s fault he didn’t get an upgraded limbic system and a beefed-up area thirteen out of Isabela’s raw ma
terials.”

  Onbekend barely flickered a glance at Bambarén. “I’m not talking about Manco, and he knows it. I’m talking about the men at the UN you sold your soul to.”

  “I’m not here for them.”

  Onbekend’s eyes narrowed. “Then why did you come?”

  “Because you killed a friend of mine.”

  “If you have friends, hired man, then I don’t know them. Who have I killed?”

  “You shot a woman called Sevgi Ertekin, a police officer, when she chased you out into the street in Bayview. You shot her with a Haag pistol, and she died.”

  “Were you fucking her?”

  “Yeah, we were fucking each other. Rather like you and Jurgens.”

  Onbekend’s face whitened as he saw the corollary. He cleared his throat.

  “It was a firefight,” he said quietly. “Not personal. You would have done the same in my place.”

  Carl thought of Garrod Horkan camp and Gaby. The Haag shells knocking her down.

  “That’s not the issue.”

  “Then what is?”

  Carl stared at the other thirteen. “Payment.”

  “Listen to me, Marsalis.” Manco Bambarén, misunderstanding what he’d heard. “Whatever you think you’re owed, we can come to an agreement.”

  “Manco, shut up.” The tayta looked at Onbekend as if the thirteen had slapped him. Onbekend ignored him, maybe didn’t even notice. His eyes had never left Carl’s face. “You want me to buy Greta’s life with my own?”

  “Why not? It’s the same deal you offered Toni Montes in the Freeport, isn’t it? Her life for her children.”

  Onbekend looked down at his hands. “If you knew what Toni Montes had done with her life before she acquired that name, had done with other children before she acquired her own, you would perhaps not judge me so harshly.”

  “I don’t judge you at all. I just want you dead.”

  “If you kill him, black man, you’ll have to kill me as well.” There was a quiet determination in Bambarén’s voice. “And then my men will cut you down like a rabid dog.”

  Carl threw him a glance. He smiled, shook his head a little.

  “You’re really enjoying having a younger brother all over again, aren’t you, Manco. Well, I don’t suppose I can blame you. But do you want to know something about this brother of yours?” He nodded at Onbekend. “This brother of yours is a twin. You’ve actually got two younger brothers by way of your mother’s rather desperate attempts to stay afloat in Peru’s new corporate dream. The other one’s called Allen Merrin. Unfortunately, he’s dead. Do you want to know why?”

  Bambarén looked back and forth between the two thirteens.

  “He’s dead because you killed him, Marsalis,” Onbekend said casually. “That’s what I heard.”

  “He’s dead because his twin brother, Onbekend here, had him brought back from Mars as a sacrificial gene set. Sold him to the people he’s been working for. Would have used him to explain away—”

  “But you did kill him, didn’t you?”

  The tayta stared at Onbekend. “What is this? What’s he talking about?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s nothing, Onbee.” There was a gathering tightness in Bambarén’s voice now. The same thing Carl had seen on his face when Onbekend used the word cudlip. “What is he talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Isabela’s other modified son.” Carl kept the pistol raised in Onbekend’s direction. “The egg your mother sold to the gringos sub-divided a few days in, Manco, and Project Lawman ended up with two identical thirteens for the price of one. That’s very handy when it comes to crime scene genetic trace. While your brother here went about slaughtering inconvenient colleagues from his past, he also arranged for his twin to take the fall for it.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Manco. This is—”

  “Is he lying?” The look on the tayta’s face marked it as rhetorical. His voice sank almost to a whisper. “You did this? You used your own blood to cover yourself?”

  “Manco, there really wasn’t much option. I told you the situation Ortiz put me in, I told you the danger it—”

  “You did not tell me this!”

  And now Bambarén was trembling, still staring at the thirteen whose genes he shared. His face twitched with suppressed rage.

  “A brother?” he asked hoarsely. “A twin? You sold your twin brother? After you came to me and I gave you—”

  “It’s not important, Manco. I never knew him, we never even met—”

  “He was your blood!” Bambarén started to get up. Carl wagged the Glock at him and he sank back, sat like something coiled. “He was your mother’s blood! I told you when you came to me, blood is everything. The corporations have stolen our souls, they shatter the bonds that make us strong, turn us into uniform strangers living out our lives alone in polymered boxes. Family is all we have.”

  “Not if you’re a thirteen,” Carl told him somberly.

  There was a long pause.

  “Manco, listen to me,” Onbekend said. “I did this to protect—”

  “Did you ever even tell our mother?” Bambarén’s face had gone cold and hard as the stones out at Sacsayhuamán, and his voice had grown quiet as the wind. “Did you ever tell Isabela that she had another son somewhere?”

  Onbekend’s temper snapped across. “For fuck’s sake, Manco, there would have been no point!”

  “No?”

  “No. He was on Mars!”

  The quiet swept in after the words like a tide, like a breath snuffing candle flames out. They sat in silence in the dim light.

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to know how your other brother was persuaded to come home from Mars, would you, Manco?”

  Onbekend tensed. His voice grated. “Marsalis, I’m warning you.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Carl told him. “I’ll put you down before your arse comes off the chair.”

  He shifted slightly toward Bambarén. Kept the Glock leveled on the thirteen. The tayta stared back at him.

  “See, Manco, your unexpected brother here did a deal with Mars. I’m guessing you didn’t know about that?”

  “It was not a deal,” Onbekend growled. “It was a strategy, a deception.”

  “Okay, he organized a deception, in your name. Your other brother was supposed to be coming back as an assassin for the Martian chapters. Some story about clearing out the Lima familias by way of reparation, laying the whole afrenta Marciana to rest so you could all do business with Mars again. That about right, Onbekend?”

  “You did this?” Manco Bambarén whispered. “Even this?”

  “Come on, Manco, we’ve talked about it often enough.” Onbekend gestured impatiently. “It wasn’t for real anyway, but—”

  “You used my name?”

  “By association, yeah. Marsalis, you fuck, listen to me—”

  Bambarén lunged across the table at Onbekend. The thirteen jumped, blindsided, fended him off. Carl raised the Glock.

  “Gentlemen,” he said warningly.

  Bambarén appeared not to hear. He braced his arms on the table, still staring down into the face of the man he’d made into his brother. Rage brought up his accent, bruised the English he used.

  “You used my fucking name?”

  “Sit down, Manco,” Carl told him. “I won’t tell you again.”

  But the familia chief did not sit. Instead he turned himself deliberately to face Carl and the Glock. He drew a deep breath.

  “I wish to leave now,” he said stiffly. “I have no further interest in this matter. I withdraw my protection from Greta Jurgens.”

  “Oh, Manco, you can’t fucking—”

  “Don’t tell me what I can do, twist.” Manco pushed himself off the table with his hands. He looked at Carl. “Well? Is our business concluded, black man?”

  “Sure.” Carl hadn’t expected it to work nearly this well, but he wasn’t about to miss the sudden bonus. “Wal
k to the door, hands on your head. Let yourself out and shut it behind you. And I’d better hear those helicopters leaving inside ten minutes.”

  Bambarén stood up and laced his hands together over his head. He and Onbekend looked at each other for a long moment.

  “Don’t do this,” Onbekend said tightly. “I’m your brother, Manco. Fourteen years, I’m your fucking brother.”

  “No.” Bambarén’s voice was as cold now as the chill coming off the alcove rock. “You are not my brother, you are a mistake. My mistake, my mother’s mistake, and the mistake of gringos without souls. You are a twisted fucking thing, a thing that crept into my family and used me, a thing that cut the living fat from my bones to feed itself. I should have listened to the others when you came.”

  “You used me, too, you fuck!”

  “Yes. I used you for what you are.” Bambarén spat on the table in front of the thirteen. “Twist! Pistaco! You are nothing to me.”

  Onbekend stared down at the spittle. Then, abruptly, he swayed to his feet.

  “That’s it, Onbekend.” Carl rapped on the tabletop, gestured with the Glock. “Sit the fuck down.”

  There was a grim smile stamped onto Onbekend’s mouth. “I don’t think so.”

  Carl came to his feet like whiplash. The chair went over behind him, the Glock leveled on Onbekend’s face.

  “I said—”

  And then Bambarén was on him like an opsdog.

  Later, he never knew why the tayta jumped. Maybe the rage, rage at Onbekend but sloshing generally to include all thirteens, maybe all variants, maybe just anybody within reach. Maybe rage at the unaccustomed powerlessness of sitting at the table under another man’s gun. Or maybe—he hated the thought—not rage at all, maybe the two of them, Bambarén and Onbekend, the two unlikely brothers, maybe in the end they just played Carl, improvised, used the angle, and it worked.

  Bambarén slapped a hand into the Glock, swept it wide, and came around the edge of the table yelling. The gun went off, once, nowhere useful. Carl twisted, took the other man’s momentum, and dumped it over his hip. Most of him was still trying to work out where Onbekend had gone. Bambarén clung on with street-fighter savagery, fingers digging for eyes, knee to groin. Carl dropped the gun. They both went down, thrashing to get the upper position.