On another day, some other time, he would have called the bringer of this news a liar to his face, would have refused to believe.
But there was too much else now. The old landscape had burned down around him, Sevgi, Jeff, the aftermath of the Merrin case – it was all on fire, too hot to touch anywhere without getting hurt.
‘It was Tanaka’s fucking idea from the start.’ Jeff, laying it out. Bloodied nose staunched once more, this time with torn twists of tissue pushed up each nostril, a freshened tumbler of cognac and, now, slightly slurring tones. ‘He comes to me two, two and a half years ago with this stupid fucking scheme. We can take Ortiz for some serious extra cash, if we just threaten to go public on Scorpion Response.’
‘Why you?’ Marsalis asked.
Jeff shrugged. ‘I was all he had. When we scattered back in ’94, there were no links, no looking back. I was the only one apart from Ortiz who kept my identity, the only one with any public profile. Tanaka – he was called Asano back then, Max Asano – sees me on the feeds, this conference in Bangkok on the Pacific Rim refugee problem. So he sneaks across the fenceline, tracks me to the house over in Marin and he lays it out for me. He’s got it all set up, the discreet clearing accounts in Hawaii, the back-sealed financial disconnect, the whole method. It’s all there for the taking.’
‘Ortiz?’ Norton still could not make it fit. ‘Joaquin Ortiz ran Scorpion Response? Why the hell would he get involved in something like that?’
Jeff shot him a weary look. ‘Oh, grow up, Tom. Because he’s a fucking politician, a power-broker with an eye to the main chance. He always has been. Back then, just after secession kicked in, he was a junior Rim staffer looking for an edge. He got Scorpion Response handed to him and he worked it as far as it would carry him, which was pretty much up to policy level. When Jacobsen came in and the oversight protocols looked too stiff to risk any more, he folded Scorpion up ahead of time and moved on to getting elected to the assembly instead. That’s how you do it, Tom. Stay ahead of the game, know when to get out and keep your eyes open for the next opportunity.’
‘The next opportunity being COLIN.’
‘Yeah, that’s right, little brother.’ Jeff’s expression turned hooded and resentful. ‘Fucking Ortiz does seven years of elected office in the Rim, which he then bargains into a consultancy with the Colony Initiative. Another six years there, climbs to the top of that tree as well, and now they’re talking about the UN.’
‘Ripe for the plucking,’ said Marsalis.
‘Yeah, well, that’s what Tanaka thought.’ Jeff swallowed brandy, shivered. ‘See, he figures there are twenty or thirty ex-Scorpion personnel scattered about North America with their new identities, so Ortiz can’t know who the blackmail’s coming from, and he can’t very well set out to find and kill them all. Plus he’s got access to COLIN-level funds these days, he can skim a few million off here and there, make the payments easily. It’s the line of least resistance.’
‘But that’s not Ortiz,’ said Norton automatically, startled.
‘No. That’s what Tanaka missed.’
‘And so did you,’ Marsalis pointed out. ‘Why did Tanaka need you in the first place? Why not take his demands straight to Ortiz?’
Another shrug. ‘He said he wanted a buffer. I don’t know, maybe he just wanted a friend, someone to work with. It’s got to be tough, right? Living a cover identity for the rest of your life. Covering for a past you can’t ever tell anyone about.’
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.’