The Babylon Rite

by Tom Knox

  Nina said nothing.

  He stood, with a slight jerkiness in his movements. The ulluchu maybe? Then he signalled to one of his men, who was carrying a plastic box, a kind of Tupperware container, quite ludicrously domestic.

  Inside the translucent box were small creatures moving in dirty water: the wriggling shadows were visible through the plastic, they looked like long, dark tadpoles.

  Boris, lying next to Adam, was already writhing and whimpering. What did he know?

  The whimpering was evidently a mistake. Marco swivelled, alerted by the noise. He scrutinized the fat man in the bright Hawaiian shirt and khaki trousers. The little fishes wriggled in the box in the dark chamber light.

  ‘And you are Boris Valentine. Famous scientist. So you know what these are, don’t you?’ A slight, unpitying smile. ‘For the benefit of your friends, who probably do not know, I will explain.’

  Marco took the box and put it on the floor. He opened the lid. The little fishes jiggled, as if enlivened, exposed to the beam of sunlight from the open trapdoor.

  Marco was putting on a very thick rubber glove. ‘These fish are candiru. The toothpick fish. Or, more often, the vampire fish. Of the family Trichomycteridae. A type of parasitic freshwater catfish. Unique to Amazonia.’

  He flexed his fingers in the glove. ‘The vampire fish was once thought to be the matter of legend. Or, at least, their less pleasant habits were considered much exaggerated. But then the first case of true human parasitism was scientifically recorded. In 1997.’

  He dipped a finger in the box, stirring the silty water. All the little black fish wriggled and jiggled, excitedly.

  ‘The candiru has a voracious appetite for blood. Given the chance it will eagerly parasitize fish and mammals, including humans. Some believe they are attracted by the smell of urine. They commonly enter the human system through the penis, anus or vagina. Once there, they lodge themselves in the urinary tract, or maybe the fallopian tubes or ovaries. Or the seminal vesicles? Is that the English word? Yes. Vesicles. And the ureter.’

  Boris was backing away, kicking at the metal floor in his urge to retreat from the shallow box of dancing vampire fish. Marco’s smile was brief. He reached in and picked out a fish with his gloved hand.

  ‘Once it is safely within the human body, the fish grows, gorging itself on human blood and flesh. They can easily triple in size. Quadruple even. They eat away at your flesh from the inside. Their vicious spikes prevent them being removed without lethal damage to internal organs, once they are in they are in. The pain as they eat their way through the sexual organs and lower intestines is said to be indescribable. For a man, the only possible way they can be removed is by complete emasculation. That is to say, by cutting off the penis and testicles. Even then the possibility of death from blood loss, trauma and sepsis is extremely high. But first the little fish has to enter the body.’

  He held the wriggling black fish in his palm and moved closer to Boris.

  ‘Tell me what you know.’

  Boris was wetting himself. Adam could see the stain on his khaki trousers. He sympathized fiercely. And he turned away. Helpless.

  Boris yelped, ‘He went to the mountains! He went to the Andes! The Andes!’

  Marco tutted. ‘Where in the Andes?’

  ‘Huancabamba. He want to a place, near Huancabamba! It’s true. I saw the receipts.’

  Marco shook his head. ‘Huancabamba? Why there? And where exactly?’

  ‘A mountain, uh ah uh ah – a village called Toloriu.’

  Marco shook his head, and dropped the little fish in the box. Then he pulled a knife from his pocket and quickly and brutally slashed open Boris’s khaki trousers, exposing the professor’s chubby white thigh. Then he diligently made a short but deep cut in Boris’s skin.

  Boris yelped like a dog being whipped.

  With his gloved hand, Marco dipped once more in the box and retrieved one of the fishes. It wriggled in his palm. Then he carefully tipped the little fish towards the bleeding red gash in Boris’s pale thigh. Adam stared, even though he didn’t want to stare. The vampire fish in Marco’s palm seemed to lift its tiny head, sniffing the blood. Then it slid gratefully into the open wound. Repulsively, quite repulsively, Adam could see the fish under the skin, intent and wriggling inside the flesh. Then it burrowed deeper and was gone.

  Boris was screaming.

  Marco gripped Boris’s shaking head with his rubber-gloved hand. ‘I can maybe cut it out now, before it reaches your groin, before it begins to eat your intestines. And your genitals. From the inside out. You have just a few seconds.’

  Boris’s voice was so thick with fear and pain it was barely comprehensible. ‘Toloriu … Toloriu.’

  Marco spat on the floor. ‘Not enough.’

  He turned to his men. ‘He terminado con él. No sabe nada. Mátalo. Y también a su amigo.’

  Boris Valentine was unshackled from the pipes, the blood spattering from the wound in his torn-open leg, a sagging, dying figure, groaning with pain. The Zetas dragged him up the metal steps, and pushed him into the light. Then they did the same with Jose.

  Marco departed, with a final blank yet thoughtful glance; and a keen little smile. It was the smile of ulluchu. Of pensive cruelty. Just like Ritter. The Zetas must have worked out a precise dose of the drug: enough to arouse the violent sexualized instincts of sadism, but not enough to self-mutilate. Something like that. Then they gave some to their top lieutenants.

  The trapdoor slammed. The loud noise was followed by two more loud noises: gunshots. Then another. And another. The Zetas were executing Boris and Jose. A few seconds later, two loud splashes confirmed it: the bodies had been thrown in the river. For Boris it was probably a mercy, Adam reckoned. The piranhas eating his dead body was better than than the vampire fish slowly eating you inside out, as you screamed, fully conscious.

  No one spoke. There was nothing to say. Apart from goodbye. Nina asked Jessica why she had called her doctor. Jessica looked at her helpless and pathetic. ‘I don’t know anyone else. He said he will call the police.’

  The police? The idea of the police rescuing them from the Zetas was comically absurd. The police were scared of the Zetas. Everyone was scared of the Zetas. Except perhaps the rising force of Catrina.

  An hour passed, maybe less, maybe much less: the fear was so intense it made time illegible. Then Adam heard noises, loud voices. He shunted himself back to the side of the metal chamber. Pressed his ear to the steel. The voices reverberated through the metal barge. He could hear.

  ‘Jessica. Listen – you speak Spanish – what are they saying?’

  She pressed her ear to the steel wall. Then she shook her head in the pungent darkness. ‘No good. Worse.’

  ‘What are they saying?’

  ‘Most of the men want to kill us now. Just shoot us. And move on. The guy, Marco, wants to … torture us some more. He reckons we might still know something – and he says he wants some more fun. That is the word he used. Quiero divertirme un poco más.’ She closed her eyes. ‘He wants to play with us a little more. That’s the ulluchu talking.’

  The trapdoor opened; Marco came down. He was carrying the same plastic box. Full of hungry little fishes.

  ‘We were talking …’ He was wearing rubber gloves on both hands now. He looked Nina’s way and snapped: ‘You. You rather desire your friend Adam, do you not? Would you still desire him if he had no penis, no cojones, if he just had a bleeding socket?’

  Nina shook her head. ‘Stop it.’

  Marco ignored her. He crouched by Adam. The lid was off the box, the fish were wriggling. Grunting as he worked, he cut open Adam’s jeans at the groin. A few crude slashes of the knife and it was done: Adam’s thigh was exposed. Then Marco casually stuck the knife in Adam’s thigh, and made a sudden five-centimetre-long downwards cut. Adam refused to scream. He refused. The sweat of fear and agony made him faint, but he refused to scream.

  ‘Very brave. Muy bravo. I do not think you wi
ll be so silent in a minute. Mmm? Vale. Say hello to the fishes?’ Marco’s smile was quite sincere. He put down the knife, reached for the box and pulled out a jiving little fish. ‘This one, I think, is especially hungry.’

  Then he paused. Because there was a noise outside. A big loud noise – people were shouting on the deck. Then gunshots echoed cacophonously around the metal hulk: an enormous and rattling hail of gunshots.

  Male screams of anger followed the shots. Men were fighting on the deck. At once, Marco dropped the fish and dashed for the stairs, but even as he reached the foot of the ladder he fell back. Someone had calmly shot him several times from the trapdoor; Marco’s body slumped, blood gushing from his stomach. The sound of the bullets echoed deafeningly around the metal cell; everyone shrank from the ricochet.

  Except Adam. He was staring in terror at the fish. It had fallen from Marco’s hand on to his leg. And now it lay there, wriggling, on his bared thigh. Right beside the open wound. It was sucking at his skin, urgently seeking the way in, trying to find the entrance into his body, where it could feed, and live, and grow.

  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.

  50

  Riverplane, Ucayali, Peru

  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 d
rug, 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.