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 el. No sabe nada. Matalo. Y tambien 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 mas.’ 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 will 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
