Black Man / Thirteen

Norton watched, made himself watch. Jeff’s gaze clawed frantically at him, out of a face turning blue. But Sevgi’s fading was crowded into his head like someone shouting herself hoarse, and it kept him pi

“You killed her, Jeff,” he said, and his voice had a quiet, reasonable tone to it that felt like the rising edge of madness. “Someone’s got to pay.”

“Onbekend!”

It was a strangled grunt, barely recognizable. Marsalis caught it while Norton was still sorting meaning out of the crushed syllables. He unhinged his grip on Jeff’s throat and chest, hauled on the arm he’d captured at the wrist, dragged it up and around so Jeff was forced flat to the sofa. Marsalis leaned over and pressed the side of Jeff’s head down hard into the fabric, dug into the other man’s temple with his knuckles. Jeff coughed and gagged, whooped for breath, eyes flooded with tears.

“What about Onbekend?” Norton asked.

The dizzying sense of insanity had not gone. It circled him like a street gang. He wondered, in the midst of the revolving horror of it all, if this was what it felt like to be a thirteen, if this was what you had to embrace to live the way Marsalis did and Merrin had. He wondered how easy it would be to let go, and if you could ever find your grip again afterward.

Jeff made raw panting sounds.

“What about Onbekend?”

“All right, I’ll tell you, I’ll fucking tell you.” Jeff’s voice cracked. He stopped trying to get loose. He lay on the sofa, swallowing breath, leaking slow tears onto the fabric. “Just let me up. Please.”

Again, Marsalis flickered a glance at Norton. Norton nodded. My brother’s not a soldier or a thug, he’d told the thirteen the previous night. He’s not physically tough that way, he won’t stand up. Just let me call it. We’ll get everything we need from him.

Marsalis hauled Jeff into a sitting position on the sofa. He moved and took up a position by the desk. Folded his arms.

“Let’s hear it, then.”

Jeff’s eyes went from the black man to his brother. Norton stared back.

“Tom…”

“You heard him, Jeff. Let’s hear it.”

Jeff Norton seemed to collapse in on himself. He shuddered. Marsalis and Norton exchanged a glance. Norton lifted a hand in his lap. Wait. Jeff rubbed his hands over his face, dragged them back through his hair. He sniffed hard, wiped his eyes. Yeah, cry, Jeff, Norton caught himself thinking, with a violence that rocked him to the core. Cry like the fucking rest of us have been. Like Sevgi and me and Marsalis and Megan and Nuying, for all I fucking know, and who knows how many others. Want to play alpha male, big brother? Welcome aboard.

Jeff dropped his hands. He dredged up a weak smile, pi

“Look, you have no idea how deep this goes, Tom. Onbekend’s not just some random thirteen—”

“Yeah, he’s Merrin’s twin,” Marsalis said flatly. “We already got that far. You had Carmen Ren hold Merrin safe while Onbekend went around leaving genetic trace at crime scenes all over Jesusland and the Rim. Come the right time, Merrin shows up conveniently dead and takes the rap for it all. The question is why? Who were all these people?”

Jeff closed his eyes. Sighed. “Can I have a drink, please?”

“No, you can’t have a fucking drink,” said Marsalis. “We just got through agreeing to let you live. Count your fucking blessings and talk.”

Jeff looked at his brother, pulled a weary face. Norton made the co

“Sure. I’ll get you a drink, Jeff,” he said gently. He met the black man’s disbelieving look, made the tiny raised-hand gesture again. “Where d’you keep it?”

“Wall cabinet. There’s a bottle of Martell in there and some glasses. Help yourselves.” Jeff Norton turned to look at Marsalis. “He’s got you jumping pretty neatly to the line for a thirteen, hasn’t he?”

Marsalis looked down at him. A faint frown creased his brow. “You want to get that looked at.”

“Get what looked at?”

Norton looked around from the open bar cabinet just in time to see the black man’s fist snap out from the waist. Short, hard, and full force into Jeff’s nose. He heard the cracking sound it made as the cartilage broke. Jeff bucked and screamed. His hands flew to his face again. Blood streamed out between them.

“Get that looked at,” said Marsalis tranquilly.

Norton spotted a box of tissues on the desk. He hooked it up and carried it across to the sofa with the bottle of cognac and a single glass. He set everything down on the coffee table, tugged a tissue loose, and handed it over to his brother.

“Don’t fuck around, Jeff,” he said quietly. “He wants you dead bad enough to taste, and I’m not that far behind him. Here, clean yourself up.”

Jeff took the tissue, then a couple more from the box. While he stanched the blood flow from his nose, Norton poured into the single glass. He pushed the cognac across the tabletop.

“There’s your drink,” he told his brother. “Now make it good.”

“Scorpion Response,” he told them.

Carl nodded. “Claw Control. Right. You’re still using the call signs, you sad fuck. What were you, Jeff, backroom support? You sure as fuck weren’t the front end of anything as nasty as Scorpion.”

“You’ve heard of these guys?” Norton asked him.

“On the grapevine, yeah. Ghost squad in the Pacific Rim theaters, supposed to be one of the last covert initiatives before the Secession.” Carl looked speculatively down at Jeff Norton. “So let’s hear it, Jeff. What was your end?”

“Logistics,” the Human Cost director said sulkily. “I was the operations coordinator.”

“Right.”

“When the fuck was this?” Norton stared at his brother. “You didn’t even move out here until ’94. You were in New York.”

Jeff Norton shook his head wearily. “I was out here all the time, Tom. Back and forth, Union to the Rim, Rim to Southeast Asia. We had offices all over. Half the time, I wasn’t home more than one weekend in five.” He took the blood-clotted tissues away from his nose, dumped them on the coffee table, and grimaced. “Anyway, how would you have known? We saw you what, once a month, if that?”

“I was busy,” said Norton numbly.

“The way I heard it,” Carl said. “Secession should have been the end of Scorpion Response. Supposed to have been wound up like all the other dirty little bags of deniability the American public didn’t need to be told about. That’s the official version, anyway. But this is the seventies, a good few years before they would have been employing you, Jeff. So what happened? They go private?”

Jeff shot him a startled look. “You heard that?”

“No. But it wouldn’t be the first time a bunch of sneak op thugs couldn’t face early retirement and went to the market instead. That what happened?”

“Scorpion Response were retained.” Jeff was still sulking. More tissues, tugged up from the box on the table. Carl watched him impassively.

“Retained by who?”

Norton had the answer for that already. “The Rim States. Got to be. They’ve just cut loose, the Pacific arena’s their future. Anything that gave them an edge had to be worth hanging on to, right?”

“That’s right, little brother.” Jeff moved the tissues from his nose long enough to knock back a chunk of the cognac. “Starting to see the big picture now?”

“Toni Montes,” Carl said. “Jasper Whitlock, Ulysses Ward, Eddie Tanaka. The rest of them. All Scorpion perso

“Yeah. Not those names, but yeah.”

“And Onbekend.”

“Yeah.” Jeff Norton’s voice shaded with something. Carl thought it might be fear. “Him, too. Some of the time. He came and went, you know. On secondment.”

“But not Merrin?”

The Human Cost director sneered. “Onbekend was Merrin to us. We didn’t know about the other one, no one knew there were two.” He looked down into his glass. “Not until now.”