by Condor
“You play the guitar very well, Child Ryan,” he said. “Perhaps you would come with me and show me how you form those wonderful chords.”
At these words, the young man’s chest puffed out.
“Of course, Père Christophe. Gladly. Did you know I played in a band before I saw my future lay here with you? You should have heard me playing my old axe.”
“Axe! What a strange word to use for a musical instrument.”
Jardin held the young man by the left elbow and guided him away from the clearing towards a stand of bamboo. Their stems were as thick as a man’s arm at their bases and broke up the sunlight into hundreds of stripes of light and shade. He pushed his way into the centre of the bamboo, making the hard stalks rattle against each other. Standing facing Ryan, in a space no more than a yard or two across, he held out his hand.
“May I try?” he asked.
Ryan handed over the guitar. “Do you know how to hold it, Père Christophe?” he said.
Jardin grasped the guitar with both hands around the neck, enjoying the sensation of the steel strings digging into his palms.
“You hold an axe like this, no?”
63
Beasts of the Forest
GABRIEL BRUSHED AT THE IRRITATION with his hand and felt something move off his neck and down his shoulder. He glimpsed something dark brown and furry out of the corner of his eye. His first thought was that a mouse or a rat had run onto his arm. But mice generally manage quite well with four legs. Short little legs that are hard to spot under their slim bodies. This creature seemed to have won the legs lottery and doubled its money. Fuck! Don’t even shudder. Keep absolutely still.
Gabriel had known some of the toughest men in the Regiment who’d suffered from phobias. No, not suffered from them. Had them. They’d learnt to suppress their reactions to snakes or creepy-crawlies or heights or enclosed spaces, so desperate were they to enter the British Army’s elite. In his own case, things with eight legs—eight scuttling, hairy legs—aroused his particular hatred.
Now one of these creatures was picking its way across the rough cotton fabric of his right shirt sleeve. It was so big he could see the individual black beads of its multiple eyes and the huge palps housing its venomous fangs, each as long as the top joint of his fingers. When its trailing legs were still disengaging from his bicep, the leading limbs were feeling their way across the middle of his forearm. Drops of sweat were running freely into his eyes as he tracked the outrageous spider’s path. The spider made its way onto his wrist. Gabriel tensed every muscle in his arm and then, with a convulsive spasm, jerked it straight and shook the revolting beast onto the ground. He raised his foot and stamped down hard onto its fat, hairy body. It burst with a cracking sound, squirting yellow and brown viscera out to the sides of Gabriel’s shoe.
“Jesus Christ! Like I need any more fucking enemies around here,” he muttered.
A shout echoed through the trees. A man’s voice. He dropped into a crouch and backed into the undergrowth. Another, answering, shout. Spanish, not Portuguese. Easier to understand, at any rate. He drew some fallen palm leaves towards him and draped them over his shoulders as best as he could to camouflage his white clothes, which were still high-contrast and out of place in this world of green, despite the sweat stains.
“Hey, Jacobo!” the first voice shouted again. “Hurry up. The boss says we’re leaving soon.”
“OK, fine. But the bitch just bit me.”
“Well, give her a slap.”
There was a percussive crack and a muffled scream. Gabriel crouched lower.
Two minutes later, two men dressed in jeans and brightly coloured cotton shirts printed in tropical patterns of yellow, red and orange came into view on the track. Between them they were dragging a girl dressed in a white dress. The front was ripped, exposing one breast. She was sobbing but her head was down and she wasn’t attempting to break free or even scream.
Combat appreciation, Wolfe. Now.
Yes, sir. Two enemy combatants, armed with semi-auto pistols. One civilian prisoner. Female. Combatants no threat once disarmed. Intention rape. Objective, free prisoner, kill combatants. Use weapons to prosecute rest of mission.
Very good, Wolfe. Mission ratified. In you go.
Gabriel waited until the ungainly trio had passed his position. Then he crept clear of the undergrowth and stood. He moved quickly and silently, using Yinshen fangshi. Three long strides took him directly behind the right-hand man. In a single, fluid move, he pulled the pistol, a Glock 19, from the man’s belt-mounted holster. With a shout, the man dropped the girl’s arm and whirled to face Gabriel, just in time to catch a double-tap between his eyes that blew his brains out through the back of his head in a pink mist.
Now the girl did scream as she twisted free of the other man’s grip. He was still trying to process what was happening as Gabriel’s gun arm swung through ninety degrees and shot him three times in the chest, directly over the heart. He crumpled without making a sound, his arteries fire-hosing blood through the massive exit wound.
Gabriel bent to retrieve the second man’s Glock, checked the magazine—full, nothing in the chamber—and stuck it into the back of his waistband. The girl stood, pulling the tear in her dress closed across her chest.
“Child Gabriel, is it you?” she asked, eyes wide with shock.
“In one,” he said. “But it’s plain Gabriel now. I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name.”
She smiled. “That’s OK. It’s easier to remember the new faces than the crowd. I’m Child Sarah. Well, one of them, anyway. There are seven of us.”
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“Yes, yes I am. Thanks to you. Those men were …” Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I know. But you’re safe now.” He checked the watch Jardin had given him. Half past ten. “How come you’re out here? Isn’t it time for Père Christophe’s sermon?”
“It is. But they grabbed me as I was leaving my house.”
“Who are they? Were they, I mean?”
She looked down at the bodies, then turned back to look at Gabriel.
“They came with that man Père Christophe’s always with. I heard them talking. His name is Diego Toron.”
“And he’s here now? This Toron character?”
“I’m not sure. He’s been around for a few days, in and out by plane.”
“OK, look. I don’t think you should go back to the village. Not for a while. I’ve got something I need to do there, and it’s better you stay clear.”
Her eyes flicked down to the corpses. Blood was pooling in the grass between them, already attracting flies and beetles. “Don’t make me stay here. Not with … not with them.”
He looked around. “You see the building over there?” He pointed to the half-finished factory in the middle of the clearing. She nodded. “Go and wait there for me. I’ll come back for you. I promise. But go now, I have to move.”
Perhaps sensing the purpose in his voice, the girl ran off to the centre of the clearing, looking over her shoulder once or twice. Then she darted inside and was lost to view.
Gabriel ran along the access road. Then he heard men’s voices. He veered off into the trees at the side of the track, pulling the second Glock out of his waistband, and crouched behind a tree whose massive trunk provided perfect cover. These two had no captive. One was tall, and musclebound, like a nightclub bouncer. Dressed like the other two in denim and a bright shirt, white with red flowers this time. The second man was shorter, and dressed in a navy linen suit with a white shirt. Was this Toron? Bosses usually dressed better than their hirelings, in Gabriel’s experience.
While he watched the men approach, hoping they’d pass him and allow him to continue towards the village, a narrow column of ants emerged from a pile of dead leaves by his right foot. One, straying from its fellows, started climbing the toe of Gabriel’s shoe. It crossed the short expanse of protective leather and walked onto the bare skin of his ankle. Absentmind
edly, as he continued to watch the two men, Gabriel brushed at the ant. The ant did what ants do. It attacked, sinking its jaws into the skin of its enemy. Gabriel stifled a yell as the hugely powerful jaws closed, drawing a bead of blood. But this was just the warm-up act. The main attraction happened next. Curving its abdomen down, it thrust its stinger into Gabriel’s ankle. The pain was agonising and he shouted out as the toxins flushed into his bloodstream.
The two men yanked out their pistols and dropped to their knees, facing Gabriel. They fired a handful of rounds each, which tore through the foliage around Gabriel, ripping chunks of bark from the tree that had become his torture chamber as well as his shelter. With tears of pain coursing over his cheeks and what felt like a white-hot knife driven through the flesh of his leg, he stumbled away from the men, and the column of ants, deeper into the forest. The men gave chase, crashing into the trees behind him, still firing. He should have been counting their shots, but the agony from his leg was making thought impossible. Ten yards ahead, he saw a fallen tree. He sprinted for it, managing to ignore the pain for a moment, and hit it at waist height. He rolled over and collapsed on the far side. His pursuers would be on him on seconds and he needed to drive them back and take the initiative.
Keeping his head down, he popped the two Glocks up over the top edge of the trunk and fired three rounds from each pistol. That stopped the men and he heard them swearing in Spanish and scurrying for cover. Another two shots held them down while he gathered his thoughts.
They’ll be expecting you to run. So don’t. Go wide. Get behind them. Attack.
He belly-crawled behind the dead tree for the entire thirty yards of its length. The men were on their feet again, but they were heading for his firing position. And he was no longer there. Standing, he began working around in a circle, taking his time now and silently swearing in a stream of inventive Anglo-Saxon that Scotty would have enjoyed, had he been there to listen.
Behind them now, Gabriel could see the taller man about forty feet away. Too far for a head shot and risky even to try to take him centre-mass. Crouching, he started to work his way closer, ready to shoot if the giant or his boss should turn and come towards him. The forest floor was carpeted with soft leaves, but he was on the lookout for anything dry that could give him away with a rustle or a snap. His quarry was still pushing deeper into the trees. But the thick vegetation was slowing them down. The big man was now just twenty feet away. Gabriel adopted the shooter’s stance—gun held up and level with the head, not dropped with the head lowered—that he’d learned working ops in Northern Ireland with a unit called 14 Company. He hated to say it, but they made the SAS look like amateurs when it came to undercover work.
“You SAS boys are all the same,” a 14 Company operator called Lewis had told him on patrol. “Zapata moustache, bomber jacket, tight stonewashed jeans and trainers. Why don’t you just hang a sign round your necks saying, ‘SAS’ and have done with it?” At the time, Lewis was dressed in the skankiest grey acrylic trousers Gabriel had ever seen, paired with a nylon zip-fastening cardigan and pair of scuffed and worn-heeled tan slip-on shoes.
Now, Gabriel faced his target, left palm cradling right, which was wrapped around the Glock’s butt, pushing forward to steady the gun.
64
Relics …
RYAN SMILED AND REACHED FORWARD. But before he could correct his master’s grip, Jardin brought the guitar back behind his shoulder and swung it forwards with all his strength. The edge of the body connected with Ryan’s left temple, shattering the thin bone beneath the skin and driving sharp-pointed fragments into Ryan’s brain. The young man collapsed to his knees, swaying, his eyes unfocused and rolling in their sockets. The spruce and rosewood guitar cracked and splintered from the impact.
Jardin took a step back, raised the smashed guitar behind his head, and brought it down and across in a driving blow into Ryan’s face. The force broke his nose, which spurted blood over his mouth and chin and down the front of his white shirt. One of his eyes was pushed from its socket and lay on his cheek suspended from shreds of optic nerve and muscles.
“Do not take what doesn’t belong to you!” Jardin shouted, battering the now lifeless head with all his might until the fragile wooden construction of the guitar’s body imploded with a bang under the tension of the strings. He flung the remains of the guitar onto the ruined face of his former disciple, then looked down at the blood spatters across the front of his robe and tutted.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll be changing for the flight anyway.” He laughed as his pulse returned to normal and his breathing settled.
He returned to his house by a circular route, pausing to watch a blue and yellow macaw flying amongst the topmost branches of a date palm.
“I’ll be joining you soon,” he told the bird.
Toron had gone by the time he arrived back at the house. Gone to ready his men, presumably. Jardin pulled a leather holdall from a cupboard. He’d bought some street clothes on his last trip into Nova Cidade. Jeans, T-shirts, a cotton zip-fronted jacket, underwear. He changed into one set, then stuffed the rest into the holdall. Then he crossed the bedroom and knelt in front of a wooden cabinet, its front, top and sides carved with feathered serpents, winged lizards, men with grotesque bulging eyes, women with multiple sets of breasts. He turned the key in the lock faced with a brass plate and opened the door.
Inside the cabinet was a black steel safe locked with a combination dial. Jardin twisted and spun the dial clockwise and anticlockwise. He was humming as the internal ratchets and cogs ticked and clicked. When the final spin had dropped the last tumbler into place, he cranked the steel handle down and opened the door. He began pulling out the contents of the safe and placing them beside him on the floor.
What emerged in his hands were thirty, inch-thick blocks of tightly-banded hundred-dollar bills. In total, six hundred and ninety-nine thousand dollars. This constituted the dollar cash balance of his inheritance, after he had sold the art and founded Eden all those years ago. He wasn’t sure whether or how he would access the money tied up in Switzerland. Those suave, oily bankers were more than happy to hold onto Jewish gold and art treasures looted by the Nazis, but just recently he’d noticed on the news a troubling willingness to cooperate with international law enforcement in terrorism cases. His passport, meticulously renewed through the years, followed.
Finally, he pulled out a small, zipped case, about three inches wide by seven long, and perhaps an inch and a half thick. The covering was made from snakeskin in irregular bands of red, white, and black. He pulled the tab on the zip and opened it out onto the floor between his knees. Inside were a three-inch long pencil-shaped piece of blackened wood, several inch-long, roughly cylindrical bones and a stoppered vial of oily and clotted plum-coloured liquid that glowed a deep red as he held it up to the light.
These were his ‘relics’—the final proof, if his disciples had ever needed any, that their leader was truly a divine. “A piece of the true cross,” he’d explained in the early days. “The bones of Christ’s right hand. Blood from his side where the Roman centurion’s spearpoint penetrated his body.” There was a mahogany tree in the compound with a short gouge in its trunk, a dead howler monkey missing a hand buried in the earth under one of the adobe huts, and empty bottles from an art supplies store jettisoned along with the trash years back. He re-zipped the case with a smirk and stuffed it down to the bottom of the holdall.
“Now,” he said, brightly, “just a few things for the flight, and we’re done here.”
He stood, not bothering to close the door to the safe and went to a drawer in the kitchen. Inside were dozens of slim, white cardboard packets. These were the knockoff pharmaceuticals manufactured by Toron at one of his facilities in Colombia. Low-level stuff for the most part: painkillers, sedatives, amphetamines. No labels—printing was an unnecessary expense for the segment of the market Toron served. The poor living in the barrios of Bogotá and the up-country peasants couldn’t afford rea
l doctors, or real drugs, but they could scrape together enough cash to buy some of his pills when a child was bitten by a dog or a wife became catatonic with post-natal depression.
Jardin used both hands to scoop out the packets and returned to dump them on top of his things.
“There! All done.”
He closed the holdall.
At the back of the house was a small wooden shed. Jardin opened the padlock that fastened the hasp and stepped inside. He retrieved a jerry can of petrol and stepped back into the sunlight. The can was heavy—full almost to the neck—and barely sloshed as he carried it to his living room. He checked his watch. Then he turned and left, back to the Children of Heaven for one last morning ritual.
65
… and Regrets
THE YOUNG PEOPLE WHO’D FOLLOWED Jardin out to the Brazilian rainforest, or, in some cases, been summoned or escorted, were gathering in the village square. Jardin watched, silently, through the knotted fringe edging a hammock, sunk so deeply into the brightly coloured woven sling that nothing but the very top of his head was visible. He rolled a little, this way and that, to set the hammock in motion. The movement soothed his fevered thoughts as he looked at the women in particular. So much beauty, so much youth, so much potential. He sighed. If there were another way, my Daughters, believe me, I’d take it.
The Children were forming rows like a school assembly. No chairs, of course, but they were used to standing. Used to waiting for Père Christophe to make his appearance. Among them, the Aunts and Uncles walked, patting a head here, stroking a shoulder there, whispering reassurance into those trusting ears.
Jardin amused himself as he waited by trying to spot all the girls he’d had brought to him. He leaned forwards a little, craning his neck to get a better view. He could only see the first couple of rows, but that was enough. There was Rowena, a middle-class black girl who couldn’t deal with her bourgeois parents’ aspirations for her. Two along from Rowena was Elinor. Sweet Elinor who’d run away from an abusive father at age thirteen and been picked up living rough on the streets in Los Angeles by one of his scouts. Behind her, he could just make out the fiery red hair of Madison, as stupid as fuck but with a body Jardin had once ravished for two days without letting her leave his house. Ah, Daughters, such times we’ve had here. But there will be others. The world is full of people who need to believe someone else is responsible for what happens to them. I just take that need and … tweak it a little. God has served me well as a pimp here, and I’m sure he or some other spiritual figurehead will be happy to continue serving that purpose somewhere new.
