by Tom Knox
The two of them stared out to sea, watching the mighty waves. The fortress of the Order of Christ sat on the very furthest promontory, urging the bravest to go and find, to explore.
Nina said, ‘We have to get away.’
They both knew where ‘away’ would be. They were going to find it again. To find the Templar drug.
He nodded, and said, ‘Peru.’
42
The Radisson Hotel, Lima, Peru
Deck the halls with boughs of holly …
Jessica Silverton sat in the lobby of her hotel. It was Christmas Day: the PA was playing endless carols on a loop. She’d rung her mother. She’d rung her brother. She’d told them very little of her predicament; she couldn’t bring herself to regurgitate all the misery. For a second she felt like asking about Dad – how did he really die? – but of course she didn’t: the fear of hearing the wrong truth was too great.
Now she was pounding her laptop, oblivious to the warbling voices of the festive muzak. Here. She scrolled up the page once more and read it for the third time this afternoon.
Ololiúqui. ‘Turbina corymbosa (syn. Rivea corymbosa), also known as the Christmas vine, is a species of morning glory native throughout Latin America from Mexico in the north to Peru in the south and widely naturalized elsewhere.’
Tra la la la la la la la la …
‘It is a perennial climbing vine with white flowers, often with five petals, shaped as a star. It secretes copious amounts of nectar, and the honey the bees make from it is very clear and aromatic.’
Don we now our gay apparel …
‘Turbina corymbosa is also known to natives of north and central Mexico by a Nahuatl name ololiúqui and by the south-eastern natives as xtabentún (in Mayan). Its seeds were perhaps the most common hallucinogenic drug used by the natives of pre-Columbian Mexico, and elsewhere in Mesoamerica.’
Tra la la la la la la la la …
‘In 1941, Richard Evans Schultes of Harvard University first identified ololiúqui as Turbina corymbosa and the chemical composition was first described on August 18 1960, in a paper by Dr Albert Hofmann. The seeds contain ergine (LSA), an ergoline alkaloid similar in structure to LSD. The psychedelic properties of Turbina corymbosa and comparison of the potency of different varieties were studied in the CIA’s MKULTRA Subproject 22 in 1956.’
Follow me in merry measure
Fa la la la la …
‘The plant is called coaxihuitl, “snake-plant”, in Nahuatl, and hiedra or bejuco in the Spanish language. The seeds, in Spanish, are sometimes called semilla de la Virgen (seeds of the Virgin Mary).’
While I tell of Yuletide treasure
Fa la la la la la la …
She’d had enough. Taken at face value, this sounded as if she had solved the problem in one go. And yet maybe she hadn’t. An hour ago she’d telephoned her old tutor, in Iquitos: Boris Valentine. He was, after all, an ethnobotanist, working in the Amazonian capital of ethnobotany: he had the expertise. And he had sent his reply by email, and it provided a very different perspective.
‘It’s a moot point, Jessica. The story is famous of course, how, after several weeks Schultes found Turbina corymbosa growing around the porch of a witch doctor’s house in Santo Domingo Latani, south Mexico. But in recent years, yes, some have questioned his identification: various other forms of morning glory (convolvulae) have been suggested as alternative candidates, or other plants entirely.
‘To my mind it is actually unlikely that ololiúqui was Turbina corymbosa: the descriptions of Aztec intoxication by ololiúqui do not match the effects of Turbina corymbosa. So it is quite possible that you are looking for a different plant. If your theory is correct, you could disprove the mighty Schultes! Find the real ulluchu and the real ololiúqui! That would be a remarkable achievement. Indeed I’d love to help you out. It’s likely this entheogen comes from the jungle out here: that’s where the ancient Peruvians sourced all their drugs. We have the best pizza these days, as well. Bx’
The holly and the ivy, / When they are both full grown / Of all the trees that are in the wood, / The holly bears the crown …
She sipped her iced coffee, and wrote some notes in her pad. The coffee was decaff; the caffeine of excitement inside her was quite sufficient. Jessica sensed she was in danger of running away with herself. So she slowed down and reviewed what they already knew for sure.
To start with, it was generally accepted that the Moche – like most pre-Columbian societies – took mind-altering drugs. They had found cocaine-taking implements in most Moche tombs: bird bones for tooting, elaborate snuff-boxes. The sacrificed children were probably given nectandra before they were killed: an analgesic and mild psychedelic derived from the laurel. So there was no doubt the Moche experimented with intoxicants.
Now there was tantalizing evidence of a different intoxicant, an underlying drug, the ur-drug; the secret drug, so sacred it could only be symbolized iconically, in the shape of its seeds.
Her thoughts halted at the obstruction, which was yet a way through. Like a car at a locked gate.
The seeds!
Of course. Why hadn’t she done this before?
Speedily, she Googled ‘morning glory seeds’. Then stared at the screen of images, her eyes quite wide.
The seeds of morning glory, in almost all species, looked like little drops of blood. Like ovals or commas. Just like the iconic blood drops, in all the Moche murals and pottery.
The holly bears a blossom, / As white as lily flower, / And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ, / To be our sweet Saviour …
Ulluchu was therefore, very possibly a kind of morning glory, like ololiúqui, but perhaps not the precise one identified by Schultes. It was likely to be a more powerful and maybe volatile drug, a drug that stimulated the sex drive and induced violent cruelty. It was probably given to prisoners before the sacrifice ritual. Which was why the men had erections in the murals of El Brujo.
Who else gave drugs to people before executions?
She found another web-page. ‘The Sacrificial Customs of the Aztecs’: ‘Many Aztec sacrificial ceremonies were small, with the sacrifice of a single slave or captive to a minor god. Others were savagely spectacular, involving hundreds or even thousands of doomed and shuffling captives. Aztec history claims that Ahuitzotl (1468–1502), the ruler before Moctezuma II, sacrificed twenty thousand people after a battle in Oaxaca.
‘Whatever the size of the rite, the sacrificial ceremony was nearly always conducted with the same brutal ceremonies. Four priests held the victim on an altar at the top of a pyramid or temple while the presiding official made a cut below the rib cage with a blade of obsidian – a black volcanic stone – and pulled out the living heart. Commonly the victim was given a drug, before the ritual, which meant he went more willingly to the altar.’
The victims were given a drug.
Surely this was ulluchu. The drug that made you want to cut off your own hands and lips; the drug that made you accept being led up a pyramid to have your pumping heart torn out by Aztec priests. The drug of sex and violence, the drug that led people in a state of erotic and psychotic bliss to kill others or mutilate themselves, to drink their brother’s blood, to permit their own destruction.
Jessica’s fingers were trembling. Entheogenic and psychedelic drugs united all the cultures of pre-Columbian America. The Aztec and the Inca, the Maya and Mazatec, the Zapatec and the Mixtec, the Chan Chan and Zuni, and Hopi and Chimu, and Nazca and Navajo and beyond. The practice stretched far north: the Kiowa of Oklahoma took peyote cactus buttons; it reached west into the deserts, where the Tarahumara ate mescal; it reached deep into the jungle, where Amazonian tribes took ayahuasca; it reached unto the Olmec, who delighted in datura; it reached long into the Great Plains, where Apache imbibed nicotine, and down the Andes, where virtually all cultures sniffed and chewed cocaine. It reached into the Sonora wilderness, where ancient men licked the cane toad, and into the pampas, where Argentine tribes endured psychedelic enemas of l
iquidized snuff made from the ground seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina.
The Aztecs even gave hallucinogens to their jaguars.
The holly bears a berry
As red as any blood
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To do poor sinners good
Jess sat back. She had her proof; or, at least, an excellent theory. Drug use was the unifying factor that underlay all pre-Colombian cultures from Patagonia to Canada, and therefore perhaps all their rituals and religions. And maybe their iconography, too: perhaps they all hallucinated in the same way, because of this unknown plant, explaining the similarity of pre-Columbian art from the Maya to the Aztec to the Inca and Muchika.
A universal proto-drug that eroticized sadism or masochism would also explain the terrible cruelty of all these religions and cultures: the obsession with sacrifice and blood letting, with blood drinking and decapitation.
The words of the carol were still spinning in her mind, though the PA had been switched off, long ago.
The holly bears a prickle
As sharp as any thorn
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas Day in the morn.
So what happened to this precious and terrible drug? It must have gone north, from Peru to Mexico, and then gone to ground. But now, it seemed, ulluchu had re-emerged. Someone had found it, taken it, used it. Others were looking for it.
Jess felt a tiny frisson of exultation, but then her epiphany passed, and the fear returned. Who would be the most likely people to want such a powerful and dangerous drug? Who would be prepared to kill to get it? To murder indiscriminately?
They were all in much more danger than they had ever realized. She reached for her phone. This time she wasn’t going to be fobbed off with cached Facebook pages and unanswered emails.
Getting put through to the right person took an hour, and it probably cost her two hundred dollars. But she didn’t care.
Finally a warm but wary British voice answered her query. ‘Yes, I am Detective Chief Inspector Mark Ibsen. I’m in charge of the McLintock case. But who are you?’
43
The Embassy of the United States, Lima, Peru
‘Carlos “El Santo” Chicomeca Monroy.’
Jessica looked at the besuited man in front of her. He was young: about thirty; his head was close-shaved, his eyes were piercingly blue, the shirt was the whitest shirt she had ever seen. Clearly he was CIA or FBI, or Drug Enforcement Agency. DEA. She asked, ‘El Santo?’
‘The Saint.’ The man smiled. Very briefly. ‘It’s a joke, Mexican black humour. Carlos Monroy is about as far from a saint as you can imagine. Even by the sick standards of the Mexican drug wars, he is a sicko. Pathologically violent. We think he drinks blood.’
Jessica had phoned the embassy with her theory just after she had spoken with the British police, and made several other connections to cover her bases. The embassy had immediately asked her in for an interview the following day. But now it was their turn to talk.
The official pulled out a sheet of paper from a file on the desk and swivelled it so that Jessica could see. ‘This is the best image we have of Monroy.’
She leaned to look. ‘He’s handsome. Very young?’
‘It was taken a few years ago, when he was at Harvard.’
‘I don’t understand.’
The DEA guy leaned back, steepling his fingers, as if in prayer. ‘How much do you know about the Mexican drug wars? The drug cartels? You told us that you suspect the drug gangs are somehow involved in the events in Zana, and Europe. But what else do you know?’
‘Well.’ She shifted in her seat. The room was airless. Windowless. Featureless. Buried deep inside the embassy, like a safe room. ‘Not that much. I’ve been abroad the last three years. India, then Peru.’ She shrugged, awkwardly. ‘I mean – I hear about the awful murders of police. I know it is seriously violent across the border. I know that if the Mexican drug gangs are involved in all this, then it’s important. And dangerous.’
‘Indeed. Seriously violent is something of an understatement. Since 2003 at least fifty thousand people have died in the conflict between the various drug cartels of Mexico, who are competing to supply cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin, primarily to the USA. Moreover, in recent years the death rate in this drug war has actively worsened. The death toll is far higher than, say, the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The rate of killing is actually higher than the Afghan war. One city alone, Ciudad Juárez, on the Texan border, sees thousands of murders a year: it is the most dangerous city on earth.’ A terse pause. ‘And the violence is unbelievably brutal. People are tortured to death on YouTube. Victims are beheaded and mutilated and stripped naked and strung up from bridges in Juárez, with obscene notices slung around their necks. Women are mercilessly raped and tortured, then killed. In 2009 a series of victims were dissolved in acid by the “stewmaker” – so called because that’s what he did, he made human stew. A stew of dissolved humans.’
The young man frowned, stood up, and walked to the side of the room. ‘One reason for the violence is the vast amounts of money provided by the narcotics industry. We estimate the drug trade in Mexico generates at least forty billion dollars in profits a year. One cartel leader, Chapo “Shorty” Guzman, was listed amongst the world’s richest men by Forbes magazine. The income these guys make is phenomenal, and they will fight to the death to own the “plaza” – the place of trade. They will kill indiscriminately. They will walk into a wedding and spray the place with machine guns just to show they can. Just to terrorize.’ He gazed at a wall, as if it were a window. ‘The drug lords, of course, become famous. Even glamorous. Songs are sung about them – about the narcos, the enviable billionaire drug bosses, these songs are so popular have their own genre, narcocorridas. There is a whole culture of narco this and narco that. When the drug lords die they are buried in elaborate narcotumbas. Their beautiful teenage mistresses are called narcoesposas – narco-wives. There is a narco-architecture: the vast lurid villas they build. You get the idea. It is an entire civilization of cruelty and killing, based on the misery of addiction.’
He turned. Talking directly at her.
‘A couple of years ago, straight into this maelstrom of horror, walked Carlos Monroy. His family is aristocratic: they can trace their descent from the Aztec royal family, and from the conquistadors. This is not uncommon, of course. There are many descendants of the Aztec Emperor Montezuma living today; some went to Spain, to Europe. President Chávez of Venezuela was descended from Montezuma. Similarly, the conquistadors had many children, when they interbred with the Aztec and Inca royal families. But it is unusual for the leader of a drug cartel.’
Jessica felt a need to speak now, to interrupt this ceaseless flow of knowledge. To show she existed. ‘I don’t understand. Why is his lineage so important?’
‘Because it meant he got a very good education. Most cartel bosses are from the slums, the barrios. They fight and kill their way to the top. But Monroy went to Harvard, where he studied history and science. He is extremely intelligent, cultivated and educated, and his family is already wealthy. Why then did he become a cartel boss? He seems to be motivated by some hatred of the West. Of the gringos. A resentment which makes him particularly vicious. His Harvard education has also given him a business acumen and, we believe, a skill at drug synthesis. His meth, for instance, is some of the best on the market. He is ruthlessly superb at his chosen career. When he returned to Mexico, he took over a small cartel, the Catrina cartel. And since then, by utilizing a brutality that is shocking even by Mexico’s appalling standards, he has turned Catrina into one of the most powerful cartels of all, such that they are challenging the supremacy of the Zetas.’
‘Who are?’
‘Los Zetas are the dominant cartel in Mexico, founded by a small team of Mexican special forces deserters, which has since expanded to take in corrupt local police, state police, federal officers, prostitute informers, teenage
assassins, and so on. They employ thousands across Mexico and beyond. This is why the Peruvian police were maybe less than eager in their investigation of your situation. If they suspect the drug cartels are involved, especially the Zetas, then they are quite right to be scared. The Zetas are fearsomely well equipped – their arsenal includes assault rifles and submachine guns, grenade launchers, surface-to-air missiles, helicopters. Even submarines.’
‘Submarines?’
‘Submarines. Until recently it was feared that the Zetas were threat to the Mexican state itself. Until recently, the US authorities regarded them as the most potent paramilitary drug gang in Mexico. That is … until the rise of Carlos El Santo Monroy. Until the Saint arrived on the scene.’
Jessica stared at the picture of the US president on the wall. She didn’t particularly want to look at it. This was just the only thing to look at, apart from the man opposite her telling her all this frightening, frightening stuff. ‘How does this fit with my information?’
The man lifted a single finger. ‘One more thing. El Santo is, as I say, a student of history. One of the reasons for his rise is, we think, his astute use of psychology. He has turned his cartel into a kind of military religious order. What is special about El Santo’s brand of faith is that he has deliberately utilized the imagery and culture of Santa Muerte. Holy Death.’
‘I’ve heard about this. About Santa Muerte.’
‘He uses it as a bonding mechanism, and also as a kind of branding. It is not unlike the way Hitler built Nazism – the impressive iconography, the sense of religious purpose in the adherents. Holy Death is a criminal and working-class cult religion in Mexico, which combines Roman Catholic elements with ancient Mesoamerican and Aztec motifs. It may even be a direct and living descendant of Aztec religions, which survived in poor areas of Mexico City and then re-emerged in the last few years. Practitioners of Santa Muerte worship death herself, in the image of a white lady, also known as “the skinny one”. They venerate her presence as a skull or a skeleton in a dress or robe or veil, sometimes she is called Catrina, hence the cartel’s name.’
