Out of sheer bloody-mindedness, he kept the S(t)igma jacket.
‘He’s late,’ she said, from behind the jeep’s wheel.
‘Of course he’s late. He’s making a point.’
Through the windscreen, the grassy terraces of Sacsayhuaman rose on walls of massive, smoothly interlocking stone, dark under a glaring white clouded sky. This late in the day, they had the ruins almost to themselves, and the emptiness lent the ramparts a brooding air. There were a few late-season tourists wandering about the site, but the scale of the Inca building blocks dwarfed them. Similarly reduced, a small knot of locals in traditional dress had withdrawn to the margins, women and children minding long-suffering llamas done up in ribbons, all waiting for a paying photo opportunity. They made tiny flecks of colour against the sombre stone.
It wasn’t the first time Carl had seen Sacsayhuaman, but as always the stonework fascinated him. The blocks were shaped and finished but hugely irregular, echoing the slumped solid enormity of natural rock formations. The jigsaw lines between them drew your eye like detail in a painting. You could sit there just looking at it all for quite a while, which – he glanced at his watch – they had been.
‘You think he’s making a point with this as well?’ Ertekin nodded forward, at the walls. ‘Land of my fathers, that kind of thing?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But you don’t think so?’
He shot her a side glance. ‘Did I say that?’
‘You might as well have.’
He went back to staring at the stonework. Ghostly beyond, Névant grinned at him out of a blood-stained, broken-nosed face, pale with hospital lighting. Your feelings are your own, Mars man. Wallow in them as you see fit.
He made an effort.
‘You could be right,’ he admitted. ‘The guy does talk like a fucking poet half the time, and he’s seriously impressed with himself. So yeah, maybe he is getting all cultural on us.’
Ertekin nodded. ‘Thought so.’
Ten more minutes crept by. Carl was thinking about getting out to stretch his legs when an armoured black Range Rover rolled bumpily across the rough turf parking area to their left. Smoked glass windows, glossy curved flanks, anti-grenade skirt almost to the floor. Carl dropped his introspection. The jet-lag folded away.
‘Here we go.’
The new arrival braked to a halt and a door cracked in the black carapace. Manco Bambaren stepped out, immaculately attired in a sand-coloured suit and flanked by minders in Ray-Bans that matched his own. No visible weapons, but there didn’t need to be. The stances and blank, reflective sun-shade menace were old-school South America. Carl had seen the same thing deployed all over, on streets from Buenos Aires to Bogota. The mirror patches Bambaren and his minders had in place of eyes talked up the same exclusive power as the shiny bomb-proof flanks on the Range Rover. You saw yourself thrown back in the reflecting surfaces, sealed outside and of no importance to the eyes within.
Carl climbed out of the jeep.
‘I’m coming with you,’ said Ertekin quickly.
‘Suit yourself. It’s all going to be in Quechua anyway.’
He crossed the turf to the Range Rover, pushing down an unnecessary surge from the mesh. He intended to lean on Bambaren, but he didn’t think it’d come to a fight, however much he’d have liked to smash the mirror shades back in splinters into the eyes behind, take a limb from the bigger of the two minders and–
Whoa, Carl. Let’s keep this in perspective, shall we?
He reached the familia chief and stopped, just out of reach.
‘Hello, Manco. Thanks for coming. Could have left the kids at home, though.’
‘Black man.’ Manco jerked his chin. ‘Nice coat you have there. Jesusland threads?’
Carl nodded. ‘South Florida State.’
‘Thought so. Got a cousin had one just like it.’
Carl touched finger and thumb to the lapel of the S(t)igma jacket. ‘Yeah, going to be a major fashion any time now.’
‘It was my understanding,’ said the familia chief urbanely, ‘that in Jesusland it already is. Highest incarceration rate on the planet, they say. So who’s your tits and ass?’
Carl turned casually and saw that Ertekin had got out as well, but hadn’t followed him. As he watched, she leaned back on the jeep beside the COLIN decal and put her hands in her pockets. The movement shifted her jacket aside, showed the strap of her shoulder holster. She’d put on her shades.
He held down a grin. ‘That’s not tits and ass, that’s a friend.’
‘A thirteen with friends.’ Bambaren’s eyebrows showed above the curve of the sunglasses. ‘Must go against the grain for you.’
‘We adapt to circumstance. Want to walk?’
Manco Bambaren nodded at his security and they relaxed, opening space around their tayta. He took a couple of paces away from the Range Rover, in the direction of the stone walls. Carl fell into step. He saw the familia chief squinting sideways behind his sunlenses, towards the jeep and Ertekin’s casual watchfulness.
‘So you work for COLIN now?’
‘With.’ Carl let his grin out. ‘I work with COLIN. It’s a co-operative venture. You should understand that.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning you’ve made a niche career out of co-existing with the Initiative, and from what Greta said it’s a flourishing relationship.’
Bambaren shook his head. ‘I don’t believe Greta Jurgens discussed my business associations with you.’
‘No, but she tried to threaten me with them. The implication was that you have bigger friends these days, and you keep them closer.’
‘And this is what you wanted to talk about?’
‘No. I want to talk about Stéphane Névant.’
‘Névant?’ A frown wrinkled the tayta’s forehead. ‘What about him?’
‘Three years ago, he was trying to talk your people up here into an alliance. I want to know how far that went.’
Bambaren stopped and looked up at him. Carl had forgotten how short and stocky he was. The palpable force of the familia chief’s personality wiped the physical factors away.
‘How far it went? Black man, I gave Névant to you. How far do you think it went?’
‘You gave him to me because it was less trouble than having me disrupt your business in the camps. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t offering you something of value.’
The tayta took off his sunglasses. In the harsh glare from the altiplano sky, his eyes barely narrowed. ‘Stéphane Névant was up here scrabbling for his miserable twist life. He had no friends and no allies. He had nothing I could use.’
‘But he might have done, given time.’
‘I do not have the luxury of dealing in what might have been. Why don’t you ask these questions of Névant himself?’
Carl grinned. ‘I did. He tried to kill me.’
Bambaren’s eyes flickered to the glued-up wound on Carl’s hand. He shrugged and put on his sunglasses again. Resumed walking.