‘That’s right.’ Yavuz nodded at the two thirteens in the restaurant window. ‘You’d have to wipe out all those guys, for a start.’
‘She’s the client.’ Carl picked up a fork and helped himself to a slice of aubergine from the meze tray. ‘Are we going to eat some of this?’
Deep, final draw on the cigarette, raised brow. Névant stubbed out the butt. ‘You freelancing now?’
‘I always was, Stéphane. UNGLA hold the licence, but they only call me when they need me. Rest of the time, I’ve got to make a living like everybody else’
‘So what does the client want with me?’
‘We’re chasing up some familia andina connections. Trying to bust a Marstech ring in the induction camps.’
‘There’s some reason that I’d help you do that?’
‘Apart from the fact that Manco Bambaren sold you out to me three years back? No, no reason I can think of. I always did have you down as the forgiving sort.’
Névant skinned a brief grin. ‘Yeah, tayta Manco sold me out. But it was you that came to collect.’
‘Blame the messenger, huh?’
‘Oh, I do.’
Carl helped himself to more meze. ‘You really think a cut-rate godfather with delusions of ethnicity was ever going to go up against UNGLA for you? Were you really that desperate to believe you’d found a bolthole, Stéphane? There’s a reason Manco made it to tayta level, and it’s not his charitable nature.’
‘What the fuck do you know about it, Mars man? As I recall, you were on urban fucking pacification detail most of your time in the Middle East.’
‘I know tha—’
‘Do you know that they’ve got warlord alliances operating in central Asia still, that I fucking built from nothing back in ’87? Do you know how many of those puppet presidents you see mouthing the words on Al Jazeera I helped launch?’
Carl shrugged. ‘Works in central Asia doesn’t mean it’ll fly in South America. That’s a whole different continent, Stéphane.’
‘Yeah, and a whole different goal.’ Névant shook a new cigarette out of the packet. He fitted it in the corner of his mouth, drew it to life and raised his eyebrows. ‘You want one of these?’
‘I’m eating.’
‘Suit yourself.’ He leaned forward, blew smoke across the table and grinned. ‘See, the familias aren’t like those warlord motherfucks, they never were. Warlord wants the same thing any cudlip politician wants – legitimacy, recognition and respect from the rest of the herd. The whole nine-car motorcade.’
Carl nodded, chewing. He’d had pretty much the same lecture from Névant three years ago, waiting for the paperwork to clear so he could take the Frenchman out of Lima in restraints. But let Névant lecture. It was Carl’s best chance of gleaning something he could use.
‘So, habitually, you’ve got a lawless vacuum and a bunch of these assholes fighting to put their stamp on a new order that lets them ride up front in the lead limo. Now, with the familias, that’s never going to be the case. There’s already a structure in place and it’s already full of legitimised scumbags, criollo whites and trained token indigenas, who’ve got the parliament, the military, the banks, the landowners, all that good shit right there in their pockets. The familias are locked out; all they’ve got is crime and this faint echo of an ethnic grievance.’ Névant cupped a hand at his ear. ‘And the echo’s fading, man. COLIN’s shipped so many altiplano natives out to Mars over the past fifty years, poured so much money into the region, the familias just can’t recruit like they used to. Only places they’re strong any more is ghetto populations in the Republic. No one else can be bothered. Nobody’s scared of them any more.’
‘So you were going to provide the fear.’
More smoke, billowing. Névant gestured through it. ‘Play to your strengths. Everybody’s scared of the thirteens.’
‘Yeah, would be, if they weren’t all locked up.’
The Frenchman grinned. ‘You wish.’
‘Oh, come on.’ Carl waved the fork. ‘We’ve got a couple of dozen out there at any one time, at most.’
‘Not the point, Mars man. Not the point, at all.’
‘No? Then what is the point?’
Névant toyed with the cutlery on his side of the table, just touching it with the fingertips of his right hand. ‘The point is that we exist. We’re a perfect fit for all those atavistic fears they have. They’ve been desperately looking for witches and monsters ever since they wiped us out the first time around. Now, they’ve got us back.’
‘Okay, so male force and hierarchy nail the human race into a coherent social order, weed out the worst of the loose cannons and provide a stable base, all so that thousands of years later female principles can emerge to govern with a modicum of civilised decency. That’s your imam’s stance?’
Sevgi nodded. ‘It’s Valipour’s stance as well, give or take. And a valid Sufi stance too, in as far as it represents a continuing revelation.’
‘Sort of explains the backlash, though, doesn’t it?’ Yavuz grinned. ‘Thanks, guys, you’ve done a bang up job, given your gender limitations, but we’ll take it from here. I mean, it’s hard to imagine the shahuda sitting still for that.’
‘Well,’ she shrugged. ‘They didn’t, no.’
‘Yeah, I remember the mobs here, chanting in the streets when I was a kid.’ Yavuz put a raised, droning note into his voice. ‘Men have authority over women because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other. So forth.’
Sevgi snorted. ‘That tired old shit.’
‘That tired old shit’s the Qu’ran, as I recall. Is the Qu’ran not a part of Islam in New York?’
‘Very funny. Is historical context not a part of intelligent human thought around here?’
The impish grin again. Yavuz seemed to be shrugging off his sudden bout of male guilt. ‘Around here, sure. But you don’t have to go too far southeast of here before intelligent human thought is pretty severely frowned on. Come to that, from what I hear you don’t have to go too far southwest of New York before the same thing applies.’
She laughed. ‘Fair comment. Marsalis told me you wrote a thesis on that stuff. Similarities in the US before secession and Turkey, something like that?’
‘Psychosocial Parallels in Turkish and American Nationalisms,’ Yavuz quoted with mock-bombast. He gestured modestly, undercut the effect. ‘Nothing’s ever that simple, of course, but there were a lot of similarities. Both big, stroppy nationalisms founded in very shallow cultural soil. Both constitutionally secular societies with a resentful fundamentalism snapping at their heels. Both running a massive cultural gap between urban and rural society. Both very uneasy with the New Math, both trying to beat back the virilicide with draconian drug laws and wishful thinking. You know this place might have fractured apart too, the way the US did, if we hadn’t had the Europeans sneaking about pulling levers from the outside.’
‘You don’t sound that pleased about it.’
The Turk sighed. ‘Yeah, I know. And I should be, I guess. Certainly don’t want the fucking shahuda prowling the streets here, stoning my daughters if they go out unchaperoned or showing more flesh than a wrapped corpse. But it’s no fun either, knowing your whole country’s just the new backyard for a bunch of over-the-hill ex-imperial cynics.’