‘Yeah. In those days the familias here on Earth were still a force to be reckoned with. Anyone starting out as a hawk on the south Pacific coast worked for the familias, or they didn’t work at all. You might end up a big-name halcon de datos. But you started life as a cormoran.’
Ertekin was nodding now. ‘Including Gutierrez.’
‘Including Gutierrez,’ he agreed, and something sparked between them as he echoed her words. ‘Later he got his rep, got his own gigs. Got caught.’
‘And when he got to Mars, he found the familias waiting for him all over again.’
‘Right. It’s like stepping back in time half a century there. The familias have a hold they haven’t had on Earth for decades. Apparently Gutierrez had to go right back into ukai work. Back to being a cormorant.’ Carl spread his hands, case closed style. ‘He bitched to me about it all the time.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean he’d do the same with Merrin,’ Norton said.
‘Yeah, it does. Gutierrez had a thing about thirteens. A lot of people do on Mars, there’s a whole fetish sub-culture dedicated to it. It’s like the bonobo fan clubs here. Gutierrez was a fully paid-up member, fascinated by the whole thing. He had this pet analogy he liked to draw, between the thirteens and the Lima datahawks. Both supermen in their own right, both feared and hated by the herd because of it.’
Norton snorted. ‘Supermen. Right.’
‘Well, it was his theory,’ Carl said evenly. ‘Not mine. Point is, he went on and on about being reduced back to ukai status, about how I could understand that shit because of who I was, because of what I was. And he would have laid exactly the same line off on Merrin.’
‘So.’ Norton broke it up, stepped into the flood of light. ‘We call Colony, tell them to bring Gutierrez in and lean on him.’
Carl snorted. ‘Yeah, lean on him from a couple of hundred million kilometres away. Ten-minute comms lag each way. That interrogation, I want to watch.’
‘I didn’t say we’d lean on him, I said Colony would.’
‘Colony couldn’t lean on a fucking wall. Forget it. What happens on Mars doesn’t play this end. It’s not a human distance.’
Ertekin sank deeper into her chair, bridged her hands and stared across the office. Light from the tall window fell in on her like the luminous sifting sunset rains on Mars. Carl’s woken memories came and kicked him in the chest again.
‘If the familias andinas helped get Merrin out of Mars,’ she said slowly, and mostly to herself, ‘then they could be helping him at this end as well.’
‘Not the South American chapters,’ Carl observed. ‘They’ve had a war with the Martian familias for decades. Well, a state of war anyway. They wouldn’t be co-operating with anything at the Mars end.’
Ertekin shook her head. ‘They wouldn’t have to be. I’m thinking about the Jesusland familias, and what’s left of them in the Rim. They pay lip service to the altiplano heritage, but that’s about it. This far north, they run their own game, and a lot of it’s human-traffic related. I mean, the Rim squashed them pretty fucking flat after secession, ripped their markets with the drug-law changes, the open biotech policies. Sex slaves and fence-hopping’s about all they had to fall back on. But they’re still out there, just like they’re still here. And in-between, in the Republic, they still swing a hell of a lot of old-time weight.’
She brooded for a while.
‘Yeah, okay. They’ve got the human traffic software Merrin would have needed to get in and out of the Rim like that. Maybe they’ve got something going on with the Martian chapters, some kind of deal that gets them this Gutierrez’s services. The question is why? What’s their end of something like this? Where’s the benefit?’
‘You think,’ Norton ventured, ‘these are familia-sanctioned hits he’s carrying out?’
‘They bring a thirteen all the way back from Mars to do their contract killing for them?’ Ertekin scowled. ‘Doesn’t make much sense. Sicarios are a dollar a dozen in every major Republican city. Prisons are full of them.’
Norton flickered a glance at Carl. ‘Well, that’s true.’
‘No, this has to be something else.’ Ertekin looked up at Carl. ‘You said this Gutierrez did something for you on Mars. Can we assume you had a working relationship with the familias as well.’
‘I dealt with them on and off, yeah.’
‘Care to speculate on why they’d do this?’ She was still looking. Tawny flakes in the iris of her eyes.
Carl shrugged. ‘Under any normal circumstances, I’d say they wouldn’t. The familias run an old-time macho, conservative set-up, here and on Mars. They’ve got all the standard prejudices against people like me.’
‘But?’
‘But. About three years ago I ran into a thirteen who tried to forge an alliance with what’s left of the altiplano chapters. Guy called Névant, French, ex-Department Eight special insertion unit. Very smart guy, he was an insurrection specialist in Central Asia. Warlord liaison, counter-intelligence, all that shit. Given time, he might have got something working up there too.’
‘Might have,’ drawled Norton. ‘So it’s safe to say he wasn’t given time.’
‘No. He wasn’t.’
‘What happened to him?’
Carl smiled bleakly. ‘I happened to him.’
‘Did you kill him?’ Ertekin asked sharply.
‘No. I tracked him to some friends he had in Arequipa, pulled the Haag gun on him, and he put his hands in the air sooner than die.’
‘Bit unusual for a thirteen, isn’t it?’ Norton cranked an eyebrow. ‘Giving up like that?’
Carl matched the raised brow, deadpan. ‘Like I said, he’s a smart guy.’
‘Okay, so you busted this Névant, this smart guy, and you took him back.’ Ertekin got to her feet and went to stare out of the window. He guessed she could see where this was going. ‘So where is he now?’
‘Back in the system. Eurozone Internment Tract, eastern Anatolia.’
‘And you want to go and talk to him there.’ It wasn’t a question.
‘I think that’ll be more effective than a v-link or a phone call, yes.’
‘Will he see you?’ Still she didn’t turn round.
‘Well, he doesn’t have to,’ Carl admitted. ‘The Eurozone internment charter guarantees his right to refuse external interviews. If this were an official UNGLA investigation, we could maybe bring some pressure to bear, but on my own I don’t carry that kind of weight. But you know, I think he’ll see me anyway.’
‘You basing that on anything at all?’ asked Norton.
‘Yeah, previous experience.’ Carl hesitated. ‘We, uh, get on.’
‘I see. Three years ago you bust the guy, send him back to a lifetime in the Turkish desert, and as a result you’re the best of friends?’
‘Anatolia isn’t a desert,’ said Ertekin absently, still at the window.
‘I didn’t say we were the best of friends, I said we get on. After I busted him, we had to kill a few days in Lima, waiting for transfer clearances. Névant likes to talk, and I’m a pretty good listener. We both—’
A phone chirruped from Norton’s desk on the other side of the office. He shot a last glance at Carl, then strode across to answer the call. Ertekin turned from the window and nailed Carl with a mistrustful look of her own.