Black Man (57 page)

“You’re starting to piss me off, Marsalis. I told you I don’t do that shit anymore.”

“Yeah, but I’m a naturally untrusting motherfucker. You want me to murder your boss for you? Indulge my curiosity.”

He heard her breath hiss out between her teeth.

“Late ’96, I worked undercover to crack a Triad sex-slave operation in Hong Kong. When we finally hit them, it got bloody. Department Two aren’t overly concerned about innocent bystanders.”

“Yeah, I heard that about them.”

“Yeah, well I took the opportunity of all that blood and screaming to step out quietly. Disappeared in the crossfire, crossed the line. Used the contacts I’d made to hook a passage to Kuala Lumpur, and then points south.” An odd weariness crept into her voice. “I was an enforcer in Jakarta for a while, played in the turf wars they had going against the yakuza, built myself an Indonesia-wide rep. Headed south again.

Sydney and then Auckland. Corporate clients. Eventually the Rim States, because that’s where the real money is. And here we are. That sort out your curiosity for you?”

He nodded, surprised once again by the twinge of kinship he felt. “Yeah, that’ll do for the CV. But I do have one more question, general point of information you could clear up for me.”

Weary sigh. “And that is?”

“Why bother with me? You’re lethal as shit, well connected, too. Staying one step ahead of RimSec and making it look easy. Why not go in and take this faithless fuck out for yourself. Not like you don’t know where he is, right?”

She was silent for a while.

“It’s a simple question, Ren.”

“I think I’ve told you enough. In the end, you’re an UNGLA bounty hunter. You take me down, it puts food on your table.”

“I already know what you are,” he said roughly. “You see me reaching for a Haag gun?”

Voice not quite even on those last two words. Her head tilted, as if she maybe caught the tremor. She examined the blade of her hand again.

“You’ve made a career of betraying your own kind. No reason why you’d stop now, is there?”

“Ren, let me tell you something. I’m not even sure I still have my license.” Memories of di Palma flitted through his head, the prissy bureaucratic superiority of the Agency. “And even if I do, first thing I plan on doing when I get back is turn it in.”

“Change of heart, huh?” It wasn’t quite a sneer.

“Something like that. Now answer the question. Why me?”

More quiet. He noticed the chill in the air for the first time. His eyes kept sliding back to the Marin hills, the disappearing stream of traffic headed north. As if there were something there waiting for him. Ren seemed to be making calculations in her head.

“Two reasons,” she said, finally. “First, he’s likely to be expecting me. You, he’s got no reason to watch for.”

“If I were standing where you are, that kind of risk wouldn’t be enough for me to hand things over to a proxy.”

“I know. But you’re a
male
thirteen. I’m a little smarter than that. For me it’s enough to know that it’ll get done. I don’t have to be there and smell the blood.”

“Maybe I’m smarter than you think. Maybe I just won’t do it.”

He saw her smile. “Well, we’ll see.”

“You said two reasons.”

“That’s right.” Now she was the one looking out across the water. Her voice tinged with something that might have been embarrassment, might have been pride. “It seems I’m pregnant.”

The silence seemed to rush them, like dark fog coming in off the bay. The noises of the city, already faint, receded to the edge of perception. Carl placed his hands flat on the stonework of the wall, peered down at them in the gloom.

“Congratulations.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Is it Merrin’s? Or machete boy’s?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t much care. And neither will your Agency friends. It’s enough that the mother’s a certified thirteen, without worrying about the father as well. They’ll send everything they’ve got after me.

I need to be leaving, Marsalis. Bowing out and heading somewhere safe.”

“Right.” He folded his arms against the chill, turned to face her. “On the other hand, you do have one major advantage over the Agency.”

“Which is.”

“They don’t even know you exist.”

And somewhere in his head, Sevgi Ertekin’s voice.

Baba, he’s a good man. He’s clean.

Carmen Ren regarded him narrowly. “That’s right. Right now, they don’t know I exist.”

Carl looked away across the bay again. Something was aching in his throat. Sevgi, Nevant, all the others.

His whole life seemed to pulse with grief.

“They aren’t going to hear it from me,” he said.

It felt strange, walking into the Human Cost Foundation’s offices for real. Memories of the v-format clashed with the actual architecture of the reception space and the corridors leading off it. There was no Sharleen sitting there, no one in the waiting area at all, and the walls were a paler, colder blue than he recalled. The artwork he remembered wasn’t there, and the prints and Earth First shout-out posters that had replaced it seemed grubby and tired. Jeff, when he came out to greet them, looked similarly worn.

“In the flesh,” he said, hugging Norton briefly at the shoulders. “Nice surprise.”

Norton hugged back. “Yeah, strictly business, I’m afraid. Come to pick your professional brains again.

This is Carl Marsalis. Marsalis, my brother Jeff.”

Jeff shook the thirteen’s hand without a blink. “Of course. Should have recognized you from the feed photos. Do you want to come through?”

They took a different corridor from the one Norton remembered in the virtual offices, and of course it didn’t blur out the way it had in the format. They passed doors with cheaply lettered plastic signs that hinted at the foundation’s daily round: TRAUMA COUNSELING, COAST GUARD LIAISON, HARASSMENT RESPONSE, FUNDING… Through one open office door, Norton glimpsed a stout Asian woman looking sleepily into the middle distance and drinking from a Styrofoam coffee cup. She half raised a hand as they passed, but said nothing. Otherwise, the place seemed to be deserted.

“Quiet this morning,” Marsalis said.

Jeff glanced back across his shoulder. “Yeah, well, it’s early yet. We’ve just ridden out a major funding crisis, so I sent everyone home with instructions to celebrate and come in late. In here.”

He let them into the office marked with the simple word directorate, closed the door carefully behind them. Changes from the virtual here, too: the décor was a higher-powered blend of reds and grays; the sofa was the same but had been turned so its back was to the window and there was space to walk around behind it, a low coffee table in front. Ornaments had moved around, been replaced. The photo of Megan was gone from the desk, there was a smaller one of the kids instead. Jeff gestured at the sofa.

“Grab a seat, both of you. How are COLIN treating you, Mr. Marsalis?”

The thirteen shrugged. “Well, they got me out of jail in Jesusland.”

“Yeah, I guess that could count as a pretty good opening offer.” Jeff came around to the sofa and seated himself facing both of them. He put on a weary smile. “So what can I do for you guys?”

Norton shifted uncomfortably. “How much do you know about the Harbin black labs, Jeff?”

Raised brows. His brother blew out a long breath.

“Well, not a whole lot. They keep that end sewn up pretty tight. Long way north, a long way from the sea. Very high security, too. From what we can piece together, it’s where the high-end product comes out.”

“You ever meet a variant from the Harbin labs?” Marsalis asked. “Human Cost ever handle any?”

“Christ, no.” Jeff sat back and rested his head on one hand. He seemed to be giving it some thought.

“Well, certainly not since we’ve been set up in our current form anyway. I mean, before we got state funding, back before my time, they might have, I could check the files. But I doubt it. Most of the escapees we get are failed variants from the experimental camps. They don’t quite let them go, but they don’t much care what happens to them, either, so it’s easier for them to slip out, grab a fishing boat or something, maybe stow away. Anyone coming out of Harbin, though, they’d be very highly valued, and probably very loyal as well. I doubt they’d be interested in running, even if security was lax enough to let them.”

“I met one last night,” said Marsalis.

Jeff blinked. “A Harbin variant? Where?”

“Here. In the city.”

“
Here?
Jesus.” Jeff looked at Norton. “You see this as well?”

Norton shook his head.

“Well.” Jeff spread his hands. “I mean, this is fucking serious, Tom. If someone out of Harbin is here, chances are they work for Department Two.”

“No.” Marsalis got up and went to the window. “I had quite a long talk with her. She bailed out of Department Two awhile back.”

“So.” Jeff frowned. “Who’s she working for now?”

“She’s working for you, Jeff,” said the black man.

The moment hung in the room, creaked and turned like a corpse at the end of a rope. Norton was watching his brother’s eyes, and all he needed to see was there. Then Jeff jerked his eyes away, twisted about, stared up at Marsalis. The thirteen hadn’t turned from the window. Jeff looked at the broad back, the jacket lettered with s(t)igma, the lack of motion. He swung back to his brother.

“Tom?”

Norton reached into his pocket and produced the phone. He looked into Jeff’s face and thumb-touched the playback.

“Guava Diamond?”

“Still holding.”

“We are unable to assist, Guava Diamond. Repeat, we are unable to assist. Suggest—”

“You what? You bonobo-sucking piece of shit, you’d better tell me I misheard that.”

“There are control complications at this end. We cannot act. I’m sorry, Guava Diamond. You’re on your own.”

“You will be fucking sorry if we make it out of this in one piece.”

“I repeat, Guava Diamond, we cannot act. Suggest you implement Lizard immediately, and get off
Bulgakov’s Cat
while you can. You may still have time.”

Pause.

“You’re a fucking dead man, Claw Control.”

Static hiss.

They all listened to the white-noise emptiness of it for a couple of moments, as if they’d just heard the last transmission of a plane going down into the ocean. Norton thumbed the phone to off.

“That’s you, Jeff,” he said quietly. “Tell me it’s not.”

“Tom, you know you can fake a voice like that as easily as—”

He jammed to a halt as the black man’s hands sank weightily onto his shoulders from behind. Marsalis leaned over him.

“Don’t,” he said.

Jeff stared across the sofa space at Norton. “Tom? Tom, I’m your fucking
brother,
for Christ’s sake.”

Norton nodded. “Yeah. You’d better tell us everything you know.”

“Tom, you can’t seriously—”

“Sevgi is
dead
!” Suddenly he was yelling, trembling, throat swollen with the force of it, memories of the hospital swirling. “She is fucking
dead,
Jeff, because you hid this from me,
she is dead!
“

Marsalis’s hands stayed where they were. Norton gritted his teeth, tried to master the shaking that would not stop. He clamped his mouth tight, breathing hard.

“Bonobo-sucking piece of shit,” he got out. “She called you right, didn’t she, Jeff. She knew you well.”

“Tom, you don’t understand.”

“Not yet, we don’t,” said Marsalis. He lifted one hand, slapped it down again on Jeff’s shoulder, encouraging. “But you are going to tell us.”

“I.” Jeff shook his head. “You don’t understand, I can’t.”

Marsalis lifted his head and looked directly at Norton. Norton felt something kick in his stomach, something that made him feel sick but was somehow a release as well. He nodded.

The black man hooked one hand into Jeff Norton’s throat, dragged him back against the sofa. His fingers dug in. His other arm wrapped around Jeff’s chest, pinning one arm, holding him in place. Jeff made a shocked, choking sound, flailed about on the sofa, tugged at the thirteen’s grip with his only free hand.

Marsalis grabbed the flapping arm at the wrist and held it out of the way. Jeff heaved, flopped, could not get loose.

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” said Marsalis coldly. It was the same voice that Norton had heard him use, in Quechua, on Gutierrez. “Someone is going to bleed for Sevgi Ertekin. Someone’s going to die. Right now, we’ve got you. You don’t give us someone else, then you’re it. You try keeping what you know from me, RimSec are going to find you floating in the bay with every bone in your body broken and both your eyes put out.”

Norton watched, made himself watch. Jeff’s gaze clawed frantically at him, out of a face turning blue. But Sevgi’s fading was crowded into his head like someone shouting herself hoarse, and it kept him pinned in his seat, watching.

“You killed her, Jeff,” he said, and his voice had a quiet, reasonable tone to it that felt like the rising edge of madness. “Someone’s got to pay.”

“Onbekend!”

It was a strangled grunt, barely recognizable. Marsalis caught it while Norton was still sorting meaning out of the crushed syllables. He unhinged his grip on Jeff’s throat and chest, hauled on the arm he’d captured at the wrist, dragged it up and around so Jeff was forced flat to the sofa. Marsalis leaned over and pressed the side of Jeff’s head down hard into the fabric, dug into the other man’s temple with his knuckles. Jeff coughed and gagged, whooped for breath, eyes flooded with tears.

“What about Onbekend?” Norton asked.

The dizzying sense of insanity had not gone. It circled him like a street gang. He wondered, in the midst of the revolving horror of it all, if this was what it felt like to be a thirteen, if this was what you had to embrace to live the way Marsalis did and Merrin had. He wondered how easy it would be to let go, and if you could ever find your grip again afterward.

Jeff made raw panting sounds.

“What about Onbekend?”

“All right, I’ll tell you, I’ll fucking tell you.” Jeff’s voice cracked. He stopped trying to get loose. He lay on the sofa, swallowing breath, leaking slow tears onto the fabric. “Just let me up. Please.”

Again, Marsalis flickered a glance at Norton. Norton nodded.
My brother’s not a soldier or a thug,
he’d told the thirteen the previous night.
He’s not physically tough that way, he won’t stand up. Just let me call it. We’ll get everything we need from him
.

Marsalis hauled Jeff into a sitting position on the sofa. He moved and took up a position by the desk.

Folded his arms.

“Let’s hear it, then.”

Jeff’s eyes went from the black man to his brother. Norton stared back.

“Tom…”

“You heard him, Jeff. Let’s hear it.”

Jeff Norton seemed to collapse in on himself. He shuddered. Marsalis and Norton exchanged a glance.

Norton lifted a hand in his lap. Wait. Jeff rubbed his hands over his face, dragged them back through his hair. He sniffed hard, wiped his eyes.
Yeah, cry, Jeff,
Norton caught himself thinking, with a violence that rocked him to the core.
Cry like the fucking rest of us have been. Like Sevgi and me and Marsalis and Megan and Nuying, for all I fucking know, and who knows how many others. Want to play alpha male, big brother? Welcome aboard
.

Jeff dropped his hands. He dredged up a weak smile, pinned it in place. Playing himself to the cheap seats once again.

“Look, you have no idea how deep this goes, Tom. Onbekend’s not just some random thirteen—”

“Yeah, he’s Merrin’s twin,” Marsalis said flatly. “We already got that far. You had Carmen Ren hold Merrin safe while Onbekend went around leaving genetic trace at crime scenes all over Jesusland and the Rim. Come the right time, Merrin shows up conveniently dead and takes the rap for it all. The question is why? Who were all these people?”

Jeff closed his eyes. Sighed. “Can I have a drink, please?”

“No, you can’t have a fucking drink,” said Marsalis. “We just got through agreeing to let you live. Count your fucking blessings and talk.”

Jeff looked at his brother, pulled a weary face. Norton made the connection—Jeff had to have his props.

Cheap-seat appeal.

“Sure. I’ll get you a drink, Jeff,” he said gently. He met the black man’s disbelieving look, made the tiny raised-hand gesture again. “Where d’you keep it?”

“Wall cabinet. There’s a bottle of Martell in there and some glasses. Help yourselves.” Jeff Norton turned to look at Marsalis. “He’s got you jumping pretty neatly to the line for a thirteen, hasn’t he?”

Marsalis looked down at him. A faint frown creased his brow. “You want to get that looked at.”

“Get what looked at?”

Norton looked around from the open bar cabinet just in time to see the black man’s fist snap out from the waist. Short, hard, and full force into Jeff’s nose. He heard the cracking sound it made as the cartilage broke. Jeff bucked and screamed. His hands flew to his face again. Blood streamed out between them.

“Get that looked at,” said Marsalis tranquilly.

Norton spotted a box of tissues on the desk. He hooked it up and carried it across to the sofa with the bottle of cognac and a single glass. He set everything down on the coffee table, tugged a tissue loose, and handed it over to his brother.

“Don’t fuck around, Jeff,” he said quietly. “He wants you dead bad enough to taste, and I’m not that far behind him. Here, clean yourself up.”

Jeff took the tissue, then a couple more from the box. While he stanched the blood flow from his nose, Norton poured into the single glass. He pushed the cognac across the tabletop.

“There’s your drink,” he told his brother. “Now make it good.”