The Rozabal Line

by Ashwin Sanghi

  Anandamides are naturally occurring neurotransmitters in the brain whose chemical make-up is very similar to cannabis. The word ‘anandamide’ is derived from the Sanskrit word ananda, which means bliss.

  Swakilki learnt how to enjoy the rush of anandamides within her brain when she killed. She then learnt how to make men experience the same rush when she had sex with them.

  Takuya trained her well over the next few years. First came the techniques of killing—suffocation, strangulation, drowning, garrotting, poisoning, explosion, shooting, stabbing, castration and ritual disembowelment.

  Next were the techniques of seduction. Tantric sex and the Kama Sutra became her daily study rituals. Self-grooming, dressing, conversation, cuisine and wine selection were next on the menu.

  The friendship between Takuya and Swakilki was one of mutual dependence. Takuya was closely linked to Aum Shinrikyo, a lethal religious cult. He was member of a small group that carried out assassinations of important and influential people who were considered enemies of Aum Shinrikyo. Swakilki was an ideal recruit. She was gorgeous, ruthless and, most importantly, emotionally barren. The final product was sexy, seductive, sultry, silent, and sharp. Razor-sharp.

  Her first assignment would be Murakami-san, one of the most outspoken critics of Aum Shinrikyo.

  Tokyo, Japan, 1990

  Swakilki and Murakami-san had dined at a very expensive Kaiseki restaurant. Kaiseki cuisine was historically vegetarian owing to its Zen origin, though not anymore. Only the freshest seasonal ingredients were utilised, and these were cooked in a delicate style aimed at enhancing their original flavours. Each dish was exquisitely prepared and carefully presented along with elaborate garnishes of leaves and flowers.

  They were now in his penthouse on the top floor of a skyscraper in the neon-filled district of Shunjuku in northwest Tokyo. They lay entirely naked on the king-sized bed; she had worn him out completely. Swakilki knew some of the finest techniques in the art of pleasuring a man. Her petite frame, perfectly rounded breasts and delicate features only accentuated her oozing sex appeal.

  She had taken Murakami through several waves of near orgasm using different styles of stroking and stimulation. She knew that after coming close to orgasm a few times, without releasing themselves, most men experienced very strong and sometimes very lengthy orgasms.

  The art of Tantra had taught her that it was possible for a man to experience the feeling of orgasm without actually ejaculating. She had made Murakami experience several of these ‘dry’ orgasms in a row. When she allowed him a final release, the actual orgasm was so intense that it was a full body tremor lasting over a minute.

  It was thus no surprise to Swakilki that the ancient Indian sex treatise, the Kama Sutra, was still a bestseller even though its author, Vatsyayana, had written it way back in A.D. 600.

  She looked at Murakami-san, who was gently snoring, and sleeping like a contented baby. Quietly, she lifted her pillow and brought it down on his face. It was time for Murakami-san to sleep deeper.

  Tokyo, Japan, 1993

  Seishu Takemasa was sound asleep.

  Swakilki had just given Seishu a hot, sensual mineral bath in the luxurious sunken marble tub of the Imperial Suite.

  The legendary grande dame of Tokyo, the Imperial Hotel, had 1,057 rooms, including 64 suites, which were mostly reserved for statesmen, royalty and celebrities.

  Seishu Takemasa was all of the above. His proximity to His Imperial Majesty Akihito, the 125th Emperor of Japan, was well known. He was also close to the political establishment, including three successive prime ministers—Tsutomu Hata, Tomiichi Murayama and Ryutaro Hashimoto. His photographs with Madonna, Oprah, Prince Charles, Bill Gates, Tom Cruise and Bill Clinton appeared regularly in the society pages. The media empire he owned was second only to that of Rupert Murdoch and he had used it to launch a frontal attack on Aum Shinrikyo.

  Over the years, Swakilki had grown even more attractive. She was built like a beautiful and graceful Japanese doll. Her pale ivory skin was flawless. Her dark black hair had just a hint of auburn and cascaded down all the way to the curve of her hips. Her face was exquisite, with deep pools for eyes, an aquiline nose and delicate but full lips. She looked every inch a princess.

  After giving Seishu his bath, she began to massage him. Her intention was to tune him inward while deepening his awareness. Her knowledge of Tantra allowed her to focus on all the seven chakras, the nerve centres, starting from the base of his spine, to his genitals, onward to his belly, upward to his heart, further on to his throat, northward to his forehead—the mystical third eye—and finally to the top of his head. Her pampering ministrations had turned him into soft clay that she could mould in any way she wanted.

  Her present focus was on his prostate gland. This was purportedly one of the access points for Kundalini energy, which was supposed to lead to enlightenment.

  As she massaged him, he began to experience a deep emotional release. Tears ran down his cheeks. He was laughing. Then crying. It was wave after wave of immense pleasure. He looked up at her gentle smiling face to express his gratitude for her incredible skills.

  He barely noticed the flash of the extremely sharp razor as it swiftly slit his throat.

  Osaka, Japan, 1995

  On 20 March 1995, during the morning rush hour, ten members belonging to the Aum Shinrikyo cult boarded five trains at different stations. At a predetermined time, they punctured bags of sarin gas. Twelve people died and thousands were incapacitated. The Japanese police thought that the attack had been perpetrated by ten members of the gang. It had actually been twelve.

  Osaka, Japan’s third largest city, with a population of 2.5 million, was the economic powerhouse of the Kansai region. Higashi-Osaka, or East Osaka, was a residential suburb and its industrial district produced electric appliances, machinery, clothing fibre and paper. It had also produced Swakilki and Takuya.

  Takuya had been born in 1955, the same year as Asahara Shoko, the notorious founder of the Aum Shinrikyo sect. Like Asahara, he had failed the entrance exam at Tokyo University and had turned to studying acupuncture. Both Asahara and Takuya had joined Agonshu, a new religion that stressed liberation from ‘bad karma’ via meditation. Asahara had visited India in 1986 and upon his return to Japan had claimed to have attained enlightenment in the Himalayas. He had named his new group Aum Shinrikyo.11

  In Aum, a believer could eliminate bad karma by enduring various sufferings. As a result, members of the cult were free to justify the abuse of other members.

  As Asahara’s cult grew, so did his power and wealth. All new entrants had to sever ties with their families and contribute their wealth to the cult. Aum Shinrikyo became infamous for bloody initiations, involuntary donations, threats and extortion. Takuya was the brains and muscle behind many of these activities, although purely for commercial motivations.

  As Asahara became crazier, he felt the need to convince the world that an apocalypse was about to happen and that he was the world’s only salvation. In 1994 he ordered clouds of sarin gas to be released in the Kita-Fukashi district of Matsumoto. This was soon followed by the horrible train attack.

  Asahara was eventually found hiding in a secret room in the village of Kamikuishiki. He had in his possession a huge amount of cash and gold bars. Many of his followers were also found—comatose, under the influence of pentobarbital, an anaesthetic. Asahara and 104 followers were indicted. Two were not.

  Unlike the others, Swakilki and Takuya had been with Asahara for commercial reasons alone. They had no emotional or spiritual ties to Asahara or to Aum Shinrikyo, and they were now free to do as they pleased.

  Tel-Aviv, Israel, 1995

  On 4 November, Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing activist. The popularly accepted version of the killing was that the assassin had felt betrayed by Rabin’s signing of the Oslo Accord, which prompted him to take Rabin’s life.12

  No one knew of the two othe
r international conspirators who had taken the Thai Airways flight 643 from Tokyo to Bangkok and the connecting El Al flight 84 from Bangkok to Tel Aviv.

  Madrid, Spain, 1998

  Lopez Tomas, president of the Spanish Constitutional Court, was in his office at Madrid Autonomous University when a gunman rushed into his office and shot him at point-blank range.

  The commonly accepted view was that the Basque separatist group, ETA, was behind his murder.

  The camera-slung Asian couple that had arrived in Frankfurt on Lufthansa’s flight 711 from Tokyo had not bothered to shoot any photographs in Germany. Instead, they had taken the connecting Spanair flight 2582 to Madrid the very same day.

  There had been much more to shoot in Madrid.

  Dushanbe, Tajikistan, 2001

  On 27 October, Otakhon Khairollayev, a journalist of repute from Tajikistan, was shot dead at point-blank range. The same day a Japanese woman had entered the capital, Dushanbe, wearing an Afghan burqa.

  Asunción, Paraguay, 2002

  On 27 June, Luis Santa Cruz, the finance minister of Paraguay, was gunned down in his car. He had been a likely candidate for President. A Japanese woman had been visiting all the tourist spots, including Asunción, for a week around the same time.

  Athens, Greece, 2005

  On 16 June, David Roberts, a British military attaché in Athens, was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles who belonged to N17, the Marxist revolutionary organisation. A honeymooning couple from Japan had been on a cruise of the Greek islands at that time.

  Manila, Philippines, 2007

  On 26 February, Filemon Montinola, an upcoming left-leaning politician in the Philippines, was assassinated.

  A young Japanese woman visited the Minor Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, more commonly known as the Manila Cathedral, in order to light a candle the next day.

  Belgrade, Serbia, 2010

  On 9 May, Draginja Djindjic, the foreign minister of Serbia, was shot twice in the chest at 11:28 am inside a government building. His assassin, Vojislav Jovanoviae, had fired the bullets from another building in the area. The same building had been visited by a Japanese woman that morning.

  Yes, business was good for Swakilki and Takuya. They could now work entirely for themselves, given the fact that Asahara and Aum Shinrikyo were history. It also seemed that no one was really looking for them. Actually, someone was. Swakilki’s Santa Claus. His name was Alberto Valerio.

  Vatican City, 2012

  Alberto Valerio was busy reading a dissertation by the renowned scholar Professor Terry Acton, head of the Department for the Study of Religions at the University of London. The good doctor had built up a cogent case to prove that Jesus Christ had not died on the cross at all. Alberto Cardinal Valerio took a sip of his Valpolicella, and continued reading:

  If the vested interests of the temple Jews had wanted to kill Jesus, they had the power to do so by stoning him to death without taking any permission from Rome. Why did this not happen?

  Instead, Jesus was punished by the Romans under Roman law and then crucified—a punishment meted out to enemies of the Roman Empire. Why punish a man under Roman law if he had no political agenda, only a religious one?

  Under Roman law, he would have first been flogged, causing a significant loss of blood. In this weakened state, his arms would have been fastened by thongs or nails to a solid wooden beam placed across his shoulders and neck. He would then have been made to walk to the final place of crucifixion while continuing to bear the weight of this beam.

  At the place of crucifixion, the horizontal beam would have been attached to a vertical one, with the victim still hanging. Thus suspended, the victim would have been able to survive for a couple of days provided that his feet remained fixed to the cross. His feet remaining fixed would have enabled him to keep breathing by reducing the pressure on his chest.

  Eventually, the victim would have died from exhaustion, thirst or blood poisoning caused by the nails. The victim’s protracted agony could have been brought to an end by breaking his knees, causing the entire pressure to shift to the victim’s chest, resulting in immediate asphyxiation. Thus, contrary to popular opinion, the breaking of the knees was not malicious—in fact, it was an act of mercy. Jesus’s knees were never broken, yet he died within a few hours on the cross. Why?

  During his suspension from the cross, Jesus said that he was thirsty. Popular opinion tells us that he was sadistically offered a sponge soaked in vinegar instead of one soaked in water. It is worthwhile to note that vinegar was used to revive exhausted slaves on ships. In fact, the vinegar should have revived him temporarily. Instead, he spoke his final words and died immediately upon inhaling the vinegar fumes. Why did it have this opposite effect on him?

  There is one possible explanation. The sponge might not have contained vinegar. Instead, it may have contained a compound of belladonna and opium. This would have made Jesus pass out completely, only making it appear that he was dead. This would have prevented the guards from carrying out the final act of breaking his knees, leading to death from actual asphyxiation.

  Roman law specifically prohibited bodies of crucified victims being given back to the family. Bodies were meant to remain on the cross to decay or to be consumed by birds of prey. Why did Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, decide to ignore Roman law and allow Jesus’s body to be handed over for burial to Joseph of Arimathea? 13

  Alberto Cardinal Valerio smiled a contented smile as he took another measured sip of his delightful Valpolicella. It was time to send another heretic to burn in hell!

  Alberto Cardinal Valerio was a jovial, rotund and gregarious individual. His smiling eyes, his pink face and his Buddha-belly gave him the demeanour and appearance of a jolly Santa Claus. The position that he occupied, however, was sombre and serious. He was head of the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, more commonly known as the Secret Archives of the Vatican.

  The Vatican Secret Archives were the central repository for all documents that had been accumulated by the Roman Catholic Church over many ages. The Archives, containing thirty miles of bookshelves, had been closed to outsiders by Pope Paul V in the seventeenth century and they had remained closed till the nineteenth.

  Alberto Valerio had been born in 1941 in Turin. Ordained in 1964, he had soon been offered his first appointment in the Roman Curia and had rapidly risen through various positions in the Sacred Congregation for Seminaries and Universities till he had eventually become its undersecretary in 1981.

  After taking some time off to pursue a doctorate in theology from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, he had returned to the Vatican to become secretary for the Congregazione per le Chiese Orientali, or the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, at which time he had travelled extensively within Japan. He had held several positions within the Curia till he was given charge of the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, a position he relished immensely.

  What was common knowledge was his membership in the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, an association of the clergy who were completely supportive of Opus Dei and its activities. What was not common knowledge was Valerio’s membership of the Crux Decussata Permuta.14

  While a standard crucifix hung prominently around his neck, a much smaller pendant hung underneath his robes. It had a rather curious design.

  He picked up the Bang & Olufsen telephone on his antique Murano desk and began to dial: +81 . . .3 . . .

  After a few rings a female voice answered at the other end. His Eminence began ‘Ohaya gozaimasu . . .’ in fluent Japanese. ‘I have an assignment for you. Can you meet me in London sometime in the next two days?’

  ‘Hai, wakarimasu,’ said Swakilki respectfully. ‘Where shall I meet you?’

  ‘The Dorchester. We’ll meet in my suite.’

  ‘Domo arigato gozaimasu.’

  ‘God bless you, my child.’

  Swakilki looked across the table at Takuya as she put the phone down. She absentmindedly ran her fingers over the strange ta
ttoo on her left forearm.

  The tattoo had been placed there by her mother, Aki, when Swakilki had turned five. It was identical to the one that Aki had also possessed on her own arm.

  Swakilki remembered the Sisters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul who had taken such good care of her during her six years at the Holy Family orphanage in Osaka. She also remembered the jovial Santa Claus who had brought candy for all the kids in the orphanage in those years. She had always thought of him as Santa Claus ever since; his real name of course had been Alberto Valerio.

  He had taken special interest in her due to his personal friendship with Swakilki’s late mother, Aki. After her adoption she had continued to receive postcards from him for the next two years, but she had lost contact with him after she ran away from her abusive adoptive father. He had somehow managed to track her down several years later. She had confessed her plight to him, revealing the most intimate details of her life. He had then said to her, ‘I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’

  Swakilki could only remember how relieved she had been to unburden herself to him. Henceforth she would no longer kill for Aum Shinrikyo.

  Only for Christ.

  London, UK, 2012

  Virgin Atlantic’s flight 901 from Tokyo’s Narita airport took off on the dot at 11am and landed at London Heathrow a few minutes before the scheduled arrival of 3:30 pm local time. On board in Virgin’s Upper Class cabin was a Japanese couple who had spent the entire twelve-and-a-half-hour flight sleeping soundly. 15

  They had not asked for any reading material, nor did they turn on the personal entertainment screens. When the elaborate dinner consisting of shrimp with fish roe, zucchini in miso paste, egg yolk crabmeat rolls, buckwheat noodles and green tea, had been served, they had continued to sleep. They were certainly the freshest passengers to emerge from the Airbus aircraft in London.