Ричард Морган - The SF Collection

Marsalis stared at Jeff like something he wanted to smash. ‘Oh, you’re breaking my fucking heart. So how come it took this Asano-Tanaka-whatever guy fourteen years to get around to blackmail?’

‘I don’t know,’ Jeff said tiredly. ‘Scorpion personnel all got seed money for going away, all part of the deal. But not everyone knows how to handle that. Maybe fourteen years was what it took for Tanaka to piss his stake away. Or maybe he just got unlucky a couple of years back and lost what he’d made. You slip financially in the Republic, there’s not a lot of help out there to get you back on your feet.’

‘Right. So this washed-up ex-sneak ops petty crook comes to you with some wide-eyed scheme for putting pressure on one of the most powerful men in American corporate and political life. And you just go along with it?’

Jeff drained his glass again, sat hunched forward over it. ‘Sure. Why not? It could have worked.’

‘This I’ve got to fucking hear. Worked how?’

Jeff reached for the bottle. ‘Tanaka’s idea was, he sends the blackmail demands to me, and I take it to Ortiz as if I’m scared. I steer Ortiz towards paying up, point out the smart move and offer to act as a conduit so he stays clean.’

Norton shook his head. ‘But that’s not Ortiz. He wouldn’t just… Christ, you should have known that, Jeff. Why didn’t you see it?’

Jeff gave him a hunted look. He uncorked the cognac.

‘Why do you think, little brother? I wanted the fucking money.’

‘Yeah, but you must have—’

‘Just fucking don’t , Tom. All right?’ The bottle slammed down, the pale liquid slopped and splashed up through the open neck. Jeff’s voice scaled upward, defensive to bitter fury. ‘What do you know about my life anyway? It’s okay for you, with your fucking COLIN badge, your promotion that I set up for you, your fucking loft apartment on Canal Street and your no-ties, no-costs jet-set fucking life. You know what I make here at Human Cost? For fourteen hour days, six and sometimes seven days a week, you know what I fucking make? I’ve got two kids, Tom, a wife with expensive tastes, no pension scheme yet. What do you know about all this, Tom? You float , you fucking float through life. So don’t come to me telling me what I should or shouldn’t have known. I wanted the money, that’s it. I was in.’

Norton stared at him, too numb to pick up pieces and make them fit. It was too much, too much of his world blown open.

‘I don’t live on Canal Street, Jeff,’ he said stupidly. ‘I never did. It’s Lispenard. You should know that.’

‘ Don’t fucking tell me what I should know!’

‘ Why don’t you tell us what went wrong?’ Marsalis suggested. ‘Ortiz wouldn’t roll over, right?’

‘No.’ Jeff reached for the bottle again. ‘At first, yes. He transferred some funds of his own, told me to make an interim payment and play for more time. Then, when Tanaka’s next demand came in, he just sat me down and told me what we were going to do.’

Marsalis nodded. ‘Wipe out everyone who could be doing it.’

‘He – ’ A helpless gesture. ‘He’d kept tabs on them all. I didn’t know that, but he knew where every single one of them was. Or where they’d started out from, anyway. Some of them had moved about, he said, so it’d take a little time to track them down. But one way or another, they all had to go. I sat there, Tom, I couldn’t fucking believe what I was hearing. I mean – ’ Jeff’s voice turned almost plaintive. ‘We hadn’t asked for that much, you know.’

‘It wasn’t the money,’ Norton said distantly.

Marsalis reached over and took the bottle out of Jeff’s trembling hands. He poured into the tumbler. ‘UN nomination. Just a step away. You fucked with the wrong patriarch just when he could least afford it.’

‘Yeah.’ Jeff sat and looked at the drink the thirteen had just made him. ‘That’s what he said. There’s too much at stake here, Jeff. We can’t be exposed now. We have to get tough . I tried to talk him down, tell him it wasn’t so much money. But he didn’t care. I told him he’d get caught, that nobody could get away with killing that many people, that many ex-sneak ops guys. You’d need a whole team of people to bring it off, and then they’d have the same goods on you as the original blackmailers.’

‘Or,’ said Marsalis, ‘you bring in the one member of the old team you can trust to get it done. The one person who also can’t afford the word to get out, and who won’t let nostalgia and camaraderie get in the way of doing the job. The one person who’s wired for it – a thirteen.’

Jeff just nodded, let the black man talk. He was emptied out.

‘Everyone thinks Merrin’s gone to Mars.’ Marsalis went on, nodding what might have been approval. ‘A thirteen called Merrin did go to Mars. So that makes the other Merrin, Onbekend, pretty invisible back here on Earth. He’s pulled his own disappearing act, found a surrogate brother down on the altiplano , a safe haven. A sideline in playing pistaco for his brother now and then, when the local bad guys need scaring, but the rest of his time’s his own. Until suddenly here’s his old boss banging on the door, telling him it’s all about to end. Some ungrateful fuck from the old team is threatening to blow everything wide open, and the only way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to go back and wipe out every member of the old team left alive. Does Onbekend want the work?’ Marsalis spread his hands. ‘Probably not, but what choice does he have? If Ortiz isn’t going to pay, the blackmailers are going to get angry and the word on Scorpion Response is going to get out. And there’s just no telling how far that thread can unravel. Whatever Onbekend’s managed to swing for himself down on Manco Bambaren’s patch is under threat. There’s a good chance he’s going to the tracts, because if they do find him it’s that or a bullet. Feel free to contribute, Jeff, if I’m getting any of this wrong.’

‘No, you’re right.’ Jeff sipped at his drink, held it in both hands before him, staring into space. ‘When Ortiz went to Onbekend with it, he saw what had to happen right away.’

Marsalis grinned. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. ‘Clean sweep, huh? Just like Wyoming all over again.’

‘It was the only way,’ said Jeff.

‘Okay, but Onbekend isn’t stupid. He knows he isn’t going to get away with murdering thirty-odd ex-sneak op soldiers and not leave some trace of himself at least at a couple of the crime scenes. And once that genetic trace gets into the system, he’s as fucked as if he’d let Ortiz’s blackmailers go ahead and blow the whistle. Because the only living thirteen who’s supposed to have that gene-print is on Mars. So if it shows up around a stack of murder victims in the Rim or the Republic, all hell is going to break loose. That’s what he confronts Ortiz with, that’s the sticking point.’

‘And Ortiz is at COLIN,’ said Norton wonderingly.

‘Right. So he hatches the perfect alibi for Onbekend. Not only will they bring Merrin back from Mars to account for any genetic trace that crops up, they’ll set him up as the fall guy for the whole set of murders. Hold him in reserve while Onbekend gets the killing done, and then have him die in some plausible way and leave him for RimSec to find. With finesse, they could even set it up so RimSec get him pinned and kill him themselves. Medals all round, and no one looks too closely at the aftermath, because it’s so fucking neat. After all, you can’t argue with genetic trace, and there’s your monster, dead in the dirt.’

Norton looked at his brother and could not name the feeling that seeped into him. He hoped it was pity.