Black Man / Thirteen

“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 eggplant from the meze tray. “Are we going to eat some of this?”

Deep, final draw on the cigarette, raised brow. Nevant stubbed out the butt. “You freelancing now?”

“I always was, Stefan. UNGLA hold the license, 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 some familia andina co

“There’s some reason that I’d help you do that?”

“Apart from the fact that Manco Bambarén 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.”

Nevant ski

“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 bolt-hole, Stefan? 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, Stefan.”

“Yeah, and a whole different goal.” Nevant shook a new cigarette out of the packet. He fit 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 gri

Carl nodded, chewing. He’d had pretty much the same lecture from Nevant three years ago, waiting for the paperwork to clear so he could take the Frenchman out of Lima in restraints. But let Nevant 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 legitimized 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.” Nevant 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 anymore are ghetto populations in the Republic. No one else can be bothered. Nobody’s scared of them anymore.”

“So you were going to provide the fear.”

More smoke, billowing. Nevant 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 gri

“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?”

Nevant 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 ca

Sevgi nodded. “It’s Valipour’s stance as well, give or take. And a valid Sufistance, too, insofar as it represents a continuing revelation.”

“Sort of explains the backlash, though, doesn’t it.” Yavuz gri

“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 fu

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 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 ru

“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.”

“Now you sound almost patriotic.”

“Not me.” He shook his head grimly. “Did Carl tell you I used to teach in the prison system before I got this gig?”

“He mentioned it.”

“Yeah, well you get to see some unpleasant things in the Turkish penal system. I’ve met a few too many torture-scarred political prisoners to be much of a Turkish patriot anymore. The way I see it, anyone who’s proud of their country is either a thug or just hasn’t read enough history yet.”