The Babylon Rite (39 page)

Men were clattering down the ladder, he could hear them. They were in the room, snapping the shackles on the others; but Adam just stared, transfixed, at the fish: it had found the edge of the wound, and now it slipped inside.
It was burrowing into his skin.
He could see the shape of it. Adam screamed.

A knife flashed down, into the wound, and speared the fish, scooping it out of his thigh with a deft and practised movement. Like a gourmet skewering some buttery crabmeat. The fish wriggled at the end of the knife, then the fish was crushed under a military boot.

Adam looked up, faint with shock. He had been saved. But who were these men? The shackles on his wrists were cut by huge pliers; some wadding was applied to the wound in his leg, and it was wordlessly and hastily bandaged. He stood, unsteadily, then ran for the stairs and ran up and out, following Nina and Jessica on to the deck of the barge.

On the metal deck, in the hot sun, five more of these strange men gazed back at them. Implacable. Quite unsmiling. And very disciplined. It was the police. It had worked: Jessica’s phone call had worked. Adam turned in elation to Jessica but he saw she was staring in horror at something. The men. And their hands, clutching their guns.

All the men had dark black T-shirts and toned muscles and pressed jeans, like off-duty soldiers or elite police.

And they all had skulls tattooed on their hands.

Catrina.

They were given just five minutes to pack a few items from their rucksacks, then they were loaded, at gunpoint, on to a speedboat. The Catrina
cartelistas
remained silent. The boat curved the river for several minutes, until it reached a broader stretch.

Adam stared. On the water ahead was a riverplane. Dirty and white and impressively large. They were forced on board the plane and most of the
cartelistas
followed, wordless. Proficient. Tattooed. Muscled.

The propellers of the plane turned, shivering the wavelets beneath, then they sped across the grey-brown waters and ascended over the infinity of green forest. Strapped in his seat, Adam could just see the first rise of the blue Andes, so distant they looked like clouds. His mind drifted in despair. A little boat unanchored, heading for the terrible sea.

Is that where the true ulluchu was, then? The Andes? Is that where Archibald McLintock ended up, in some little mountain village, with shepherds in scarlet ponchos and trousers?

Or maybe it was in the high
puna
, the arid, bitter moorlands of Peru. He’d read about these windswept desolations, where the cold and mist and blowing rain was constant, where espeletia daisies grew tall and sad with bright yellow flowers. Like the ulluchu?

They were never going to find out. Who had betrayed them to Catrina? Nina? No, of course not. Jessica …? She was ill, she was sad, she was ambitious, but she was not a traitor. Boris? Possibly. He wanted to sell ulluchu on, if they found it; and maybe word had reached Catrina or the Zetas or both. Then of course, there was the captain, the drunken captain, was someone paying him? If so he’d paid the final price in return, along with his deckhands.

But then again, maybe
no one
had betrayed them: perhaps Catrina had simply followed the logic and traced them. Quite possibly Catrina had been watching the whole show, waiting for their moment.

But why had they been kidnapped? Did Catrina hope they had information? Would they try to torture it out of them? But they had no information to give, they had nothing to offer, even if they were allowed to bargain. Which wouldn’t happen.
Catrina were known to be even crueller than the Zetas.

Nina reached out and held his hand. He squeezed it tight. The air was turbulent as they headed for the mountains. Maybe they would crash. Maybe they wouldn’t. Did it matter? He squeezed her hand again and said nothing. No words were needed.

A man came down the aisle of the buffeted plane, armed and blank-faced. He opened up his palm, revealing a dozen green capsules.

Adam recognized the pills from his days in Sydney, with Alicia. These were Roofies. Rohypnol; the date-rape drug. Two of these would knock out a grown man for ten hours.

The Catrina man grunted. ‘Four. Each.’

They obeyed – with a certain bleak eagerness. Oblivion seemed welcome, certainly preferable to thinking about what lay ahead, because nothing lay ahead but more suffering and pain. Adam swallowed his pills with water. Then he watched as Jessica took her pills, too, across the aisle.

She turned and looked him and shook her head, as if to say, It is Over. And of course it was. Everything was over.

Jessica swallowed. Adam turned. She looked at him, and smiled a strange smile; and then she swallowed.
Gute nacht, meine kindern.

He gazed instead at Nina.
She
seemed almost happy as she put her head back. Happy?

Confusion surged through him, but there was nothing he could do about it. The Rohypnol hit him like a hammer thirty-seven minutes later.

When he woke they were on a different plane. A jet. Flying in the darkness. He groped to remember a vague dream about airports, hoods, or blindfolds, half-dream/half-reality. Everyone else was asleep on the plane, even some of the Catrina men. Nina and Jessica were sitting together. Strapped tightly in, and handcuffed.

Adam looked down: a handcuff jangled on his wrist. He motioned to the man guarding them. Jerking his head to the back of the plane. ‘Toilet?’

The man nodded. He unlocked the shackle and Adam stepped unsteadily down the aisle. He stared in the mirror of the tiny washroom as he zipped up. His face was dirty with river mud, and a patch of red rust. Red rust? Of course, from where he had pressed his cheek to the rusting steel of the barge, to listen to the Zetas.

A vague groping of an idea entered his head. Los Zetas. The bitter rivals.

Back in his seat he was given a sandwich and some water. He ate and drank, trying not to think. Then he was reshackled and the cartelista opened his palm. ‘Four. Each.’

Soon, the blackness of Rohypnol enveloped him again.

The second time he woke he was being unloaded from a vehicle. He was hooded; but he could hear sounds. The distinct sounds of a very busy city, Hispanic music, people, but echoey, and distanced, as if they were down a side street.

This was his chance. He yelled, desperately, into the blackness of his hood. ‘Zetas! This is Catrina! Help us! Catrina have got us, police, anyone,
policia!
’

The thud of a rifle butt or a pistol butt on the side of his head felt like a hammer blow. He slumped to his knees. But he yelled again, more weakly. ‘Catrina, the Catrina cartel have got us! Policia! Los Zet—’

Someone lifted the hood for a moment and shoved something in his mouth, a rubber ball maybe; he almost choked. Another vicious blow to his head sent him semi-conscious. They were being moved into the back of another vehicle, and forced to lie down. Adam gagged on the rubber ball. Would his desperate plan work? He had little hope, but it was their only hope. The two gangs were fighting over the drug, neither of them had enough of it, they were still trying to find the source. They were at war. And that war was the only leverage he and Nina and Jessica had.

Yet it seemed a ludicrous hope as he lay here on the floor of a van, bound and gagged and pathetic. Adam could sense Nina and Jessica, hear their desperate panting.

For a few kilometres, the traffic noise was intense. This was a big big city. Lima? Rio? Bogotá? Mexico City? Adam’s eyes burned to see but all he could see was blackness. Then the van stopped. The hood was whipped away. They were in a courtyard: a large, pleasant, green and marble Spanish colonial patio. Tall armed men stood between palm trees. The noise of the city was still audible; but large and closed steel gates muffled the drone. Adam’s hands were shackled behind him. He gazed around for Nina and Jessica.

He saw them being led in through a door. A gun in the back nudged Adam inside after them.

The house was big and airy, with majolica tiles and modern art in delicate juxtaposition. It was elegant and unboastful. A very rich man lived here, quietly and discreetly. Adam could guess who.

Carlos Chicomeca Monroy.
El Santo.

And here he was: standing in the middle of a large room painted a pale straw yellow. His lean face was older than his years but still handsome. Thirty-three maybe, but toughened by ambition or ruthlessness. He wore a pale suit. Everything about him was slightly pale. To Adam, he looked like a silvery saint in a dark Spanish Baroque painting. A saint preparing to ascend to heaven, to evanesce. To float on water, to beckon the birds to his hands. Even his dark hair was pale. His eyes were pale. His smile was pale, but gleaming.

Ulluchu.

The ulluchu smile. He was on the drug. He was going to torture them to death. Adam looked forlornly around the room, seeking an escape route, knowing it was pointless. There was no escaping this.

On the opposite wall he saw what looked like a Rothko, a real Rothko painting. They were told to sit down. Adam recognized the design: Barcelona chairs, exquisitely
moderniste;
ten thousand dollars each, screwed to the floor. They were shackled to the iconic steel chairs.

Carlos Monroy smiled at them. A gesture to the guards and some of them walked out, leaving two alert, and silent, sentries. He spoke: ‘The beating of our hearts is the only sound …’

He walked up to Nina, who was staring, rapt, at the drug lord, from her chair. Staring down at her white, mud-smeared face he said, ‘Your father was quite a man, quite a man. The only man to outwit me in many years.’

His accent was pure East Coast going on British. Quite flawless. His pale and austere eyes were very slightly bloodshot. The tiny fleck of foam at the corner of his mouth again spoke of ulluchu.

‘You’ve taken the drug,’ said Nina. ‘We can tell.’

‘The dose can be carefully calibrated so you achieve the exquisite
high
of sadism, but not the horror of suicide. You are not unintelligent. You have worked out a lot, Jessica has told me.’

Jessica?

‘But what you haven’t worked out is what the drug ultimately
does
.’ Monroy reached behind him, to a fine marble mantelpiece. He took down a small silver box. And showed it to Nina, then Adam. The small elegant box glittered in the sunlight through tall French windows that gave on to a balcony overlooking the patio. Adam wondered if he would survive a jump from that balcony.

Monroy turned the box in one hand. ‘Made by Francis Harrache, in London. Joyous, isn’t it? 1750. Solid silver. For tobacco, of course. Just one of the many drugs you Europeans took from the New World. And still you take our drugs …’ He snapped open the lid. ‘But we have less time to talk than I had hoped.’ His shining eyes regarded Adam. ‘Your outburst on the street was a sensible move. It is what I would have done in such reduced circumstances. And now the Zetas are indeed alerted: the street is a network of gossip and treachery. Just like the closest friendships. So. Here. This is ulluchu. This is what Archibald McLintock found. Look—’

The lid was open. Adam couldn’t help his curiosity. If he was going to die he wanted to see what he was going to die
for.

He peered. The powder inside the box looked not unlike tobacco snuff, only greyer and finer.

Monroy carefully placed the open box on a side table. He took out a tiny silver spoon from a pocket in his pale jacket. His eyes flickered across them, from face to face. ‘Your theories as to the functioning of ulluchu were audacious. Creditable. But you missed the crucial factor, you failed to grasp what makes this plant so utterly unique even amidst the bounteous entheogenic richness of Amazonia.’ He picked up the box again. ‘Yes, the drug induces hypersexuality. Yes, it arouses violence and sadistic urges. Yes, the alkaloids therein work with extraordinary speed, just like dimethyltryptamine. Yes, the ulluchu commonly has gruesome or precise side-effects: the urge to drink blood is common, likewise a desire for sex
per ano.
Especially in a zoophiliac or necrophiliac context.’ He gazed at them, ‘And yes, the seeds, when powdered very, very finely, also have the happy character of being completely absorbed into the blood stream with great efficiency. The powder, we have elucidated, is best absorbed through the nasal or oral membranes. That way the powder is dissolved in seconds; if it is taken orally it is undetectable a few minutes later; you would have to analyse the molecules of the glottis to discern what had happened, even if you knew
what
you were looking for.’

He turned. ‘I deviate. You need to know what this drug
does
. You need to know because I am about to give it to you, approximately 0.5 grams, in a fine powder form, about five times what I take every day from my little Georgian snuffbox. When taken at that very concentrated level, in one single dose, the drug not only powers the libido and the aggressive and libidinous instincts, it arouses what Freud called the death instinct, thanatos, so closely entwined to eros, the sex drive, the life instinct. You see, the drug,’ his smile was pallid and moist, ‘
makes you want to die.
It makes the user
yearn
for death, so that he …’ He paused. ‘Or she, will self-mutilate, tear at their own flesh, or hurl themselves into danger with urgent fearlessness. Hoping for a fatal wound. Like the brave Templars of the Crusader Levant, foolishly throwing themselves into battle, believing they died for Christ, believing they died
like
Christ. Sacrificing themselves, quite intoxicated with the death instinct. Quite, quite inebriated on ulluchu. So this really is the secret that gets you killed. The late Archibald McLintock so loved that phrase.’

He scooped a tiny amount of powder from the box with the delicate silver spoon.

‘Half a gram. I am going to give each of you half a gram of ulluchu. At first you will feel nothing. Then you will experience intense pleasure, and you will become aroused, and probably violent, possibly at the same time. This will be interesting for us all. Consequently the very high dosage will …
kick in.
You will feel an unconquerable urge to seek the end, to slough off this weary mantle of worldliness, perhaps to hack off your own lips, to gouge out your eyes, in short: to die. You will want to die: this is the death drug, the ultimate drug, the suicide drug. Then you will kill yourselves. I have no idea in what way. It seems to affect different people in different ways: how they actually perform the Babylon rite of self-murder. The entertainment will be potentially quite profound, even, it is arguable, desolately beautiful. A kind of artwork. A
gesamtkunstwerk
, a living theatre of sex and death, like the rituals of the Moche in the Pyramid of the Sorcerer, like the overdosed Templars torturing men and children in Temple Bruer and hiding the evidence.’