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.
Carlos Monroy smiled at them. A gesture to the guards and some of them walked out, leaving two alert, and silent, sentries. He spoke: ‘The beating of our hearts is the only sound…’
He walked up to Nina, who was staring, rapt, at the drug lord, from her chair. Staring down at her white, mud-smeared face he said, ‘Your father was quite a man, quite a man. The only man to outwit me in many years.’
His accent was pure East Coast going on British. Quite flawless. His pale and austere eyes were very slightly bloodshot. The tiny fleck of foam at the corner of his mouth again spoke of ulluchu.
‘You’ve taken the drug,’ said Nina. ‘We can tell.’
‘The dose can be carefully calibrated so you achieve the exquisite high of sadism, but not the horror of suicide. You are not unintelligent. You have worked out a lot, Jessica has told me.’
Jessica?
‘But what you haven’t worked out is what the drug ultimately does.’ Monroy reached behind him, to a fine marble mantelpiece. He took down a small silver box. And showed it to Nina, then Adam. The small elegant box glittered in the sunlight through tall French windows that gave on to a balcony overlooking the patio. Adam wondered if he would survive a jump from that balcony.
Monroy turned the box in one hand. ‘Made by Francis Harrache, in London. Joyous, isn’t it? 1750. Solid silver. For tobacco, of course. Just one of the many drugs you Europeans took from the New World. And still you take our drugs…’ He snapped open the lid. ‘But we have less time to talk than I had hoped.’ His shining eyes regarded Adam. ‘Your outburst on the street was a sensible move. It is what I would have done in such reduced circumstances. And now the Zetas are indeed alerted: the street is a network of gossip and treachery. Just like the closest friendships. So. Here. This is ulluchu. This is what Archibald McLintock found. Look-’
The lid was open. Adam couldn’t help his curiosity. If he was going to die he wanted to see what he was going to die for.
He peered. The powder inside the box looked not unlike tobacco snuff, only greyer and finer.
Monroy carefully placed the open box on a side table. He took out a tiny silver spoon from a pocket in his pale jacket. His eyes flickered across them, from face to face. ‘Your theories as to the functioning of ulluchu were audacious. Creditable. But you missed the crucial factor, you failed to grasp what makes this plant so utterly unique even amidst the bounteous entheogenic richness of Amazonia.’ He picked up the box again. ‘Yes, the drug induces hypersexuality. Yes, it arouses violence and sadistic urges. Yes, the alkaloids therein work with extraordinary speed, just like dimethyltryptamine. Yes, the ulluchu commonly has gruesome or precise side-effects: the urge to drink blood is common, likewise a desire for sex per ano. Especially in a zoophiliac or necrophiliac context.’ He gazed at them, ‘And yes, the seeds, when powdered very, very finely, also have the happy character of being completely absorbed into the blood stream with great efficiency. The powder, we have elucidated, is best absorbed through the nasal or oral membranes. That way the powder is dissolved in seconds; if it is taken orally it is undetectable a few minutes later; you would have to analyse the molecules of the glottis to discern what had happened, even if you knew what you were looking for.’
He turned. ‘I deviate. You need to know what this drug does. You need to know because I am about to give it to you, approximately 0.5 grams, in a fine powder form, about five times what I take every day from my little Georgian snuffbox. When taken at that very concentrated level, in one single dose, the drug not only powers the libido and the aggressive and libidinous instincts, it arouses what Freud called the death instinct, thanatos, so closely entwined to eros, the sex drive, the life instinct. You see, the drug,’ his smile was pallid and moist, ‘ makes you want to die. It makes the user yearn for death, so that he
…’ He paused. ‘Or she, will self-mutilate, tear at their own flesh, or hurl themselves into danger with urgent fearlessness. Hoping for a fatal wound. Like the brave Templars of the Crusader Levant, foolishly throwing themselves into battle, believing they died for Christ, believing they died like Christ. Sacrificing themselves, quite intoxicated with the death instinct. Quite, quite inebriated on ulluchu. So this really is the secret that gets you killed. The late Archibald McLintock so loved that phrase.’
He scooped a tiny amount of powder from the box with the delicate silver spoon.
‘Half a gram. I am going to give each of you half a gram of ulluchu. At first you will feel nothing. Then you will experience intense pleasure, and you will become aroused, and probably violent, possibly at the same time. This will be interesting for us all. Consequently the very high dosage will… kick in. You will feel an unconquerable urge to seek the end, to slough off this weary mantle of worldliness, perhaps to hack off your own lips, to gouge out your eyes, in short: to die. You will want to die: this is the death drug, the ultimate drug, the suicide drug. Then you will kill yourselves. I have no idea in what way. It seems to affect different people in different ways: how they actually perform the Babylon rite of self-murder. The entertainment will be potentially quite profound, even, it is arguable, desolately beautiful. A kind of artwork. A gesamtkunstwerk, a living theatre of sex and death, like the rituals of the Moche in the Pyramid of the Sorcerer, like the overdosed Templars torturing men and children in Temple Bruer and hiding the evidence.’
Abruptly, he stepped close and grabbed Nina’s white cheeks, so hard that her mouth was forced open. He poised the heaped little spoon in front of her mouth, and blew the powder between her soft red open lips.
Then he let go. She coughed and hacked brown spittle on to the floor. Monroy shook his head. ‘The powder is on the very back of your throat, already being absorbed. You cannot spit it out. And now for the gentleman.’
Adam tried to avert his face but Monroy’s grip was very strong. He felt the powder hit the back of the throat. Felt the bitter taste, extraordinarily tart, almost like a powdered acid. A tang of some heavenly dark citrus. The taste disappeared, and a surge of pleasure overtook him.
Monroy stiffened, and walked to the last chair. ‘I don’t have to force you, do I, Jessica Silverton? You want the drug, don’t you? You want to die? That is, after all, why we are all here?’
She mumbled her reply, her eyes wet with tears. ‘Yes.’
51
Le Casa de Carlos Chicomeca Monroy
‘Why?’ said Nina, softly, gazing at Jessica. ‘Why did you betray us? Because you are ill?’
Jessica Silverton said nothing: she stared at the chevrons of the parquet floor. Handcuffed and miserable.
Carlos Monroy set the silver spoon on the marble mantel. ‘I can explain for Miss Silverton. You have to understand. She is an expert in her field, one of the brightest. She guessed some time ago the possible true nature of ulluchu. That it contained a unique alkaloid. Let us call it thanatine. An alkaloid which induces the desire to die. An alkaloid we have tried, and failed, so far, to isolate, extract and synthesize. Despite all our valiant
