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Authors: Gary Braver

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They pulled ashore, and sometime later they settled by a fire on a bluff above the water. Iwati put a bundle of banu sticks in the flames to keep
mosquitoes away. To Chris’s face he applied a poultice of piper leaves and the latex of mammea tree fruit which reduced the swelling and sting. Then he settled back and puffed his old briarwood pipe, acting strangely remote—probably from that weed he was smoking, Chris guessed.
The ride had calmed Chris, though he was still wondering why they were out here. Iwati had removed his headdress but not the shrunken head from his neck. The thing was repulsive, more so than a freshly severed one. This obscene parody was somebody’s art. Iwati had sworn that his people had long ago given up cannibalism and headhunting—that only a few remote tribes like the Okamolu still maintained the practice in the belief that by consuming their enemy’s flesh they absorbed his life forces.
Chris eyed the talisman, thinking how much he didn’t know about Iwati. Yes, they’d been childhood pals, but twenty jungle years had separated them. Iwati could have been a physician practicing in Port Moresby or Sydney had he pursued his education, but he had chosen instead to return to the Stone Age—to the time-frozen ways of his ancestors, wearing grass skirts and shrunken heads instead of surgeon’s white and stethoscope, and treating people with ground beetles and plant pastes instead of penicillin. No, much more than two decades had separated them: millennia. In his mind Chris saw Iwati hunched over the head, meticulously scooping out the eyes and picking brain matter from the sockets, crushing the skull and jawbones to be removed in pieces, stitching closed the eyelids and mouth with strips of wallaby gut, basting the skin sac with pigfat, and filling the sac with hot sand until it was cured and tanned and shrunk into that obscene little monkey face and shiny hair to be worn around his neck like a school ring.
“Iwati, what happened back there? Those men were spooked, and I think you know why.”
Iwati puffed without response. Nor did he explain his shaman attire which, Chris understood, had been reserved for village rituals and intertribal sing-sings. But Iwati had brought it on the expedition.
“I asked you a question,” Chris insisted. “You saved my life, but I’m not sure how.”
Nothing.
“Then tell me why in God’s name you dragged me all the way out here, man. I’ve got to leave the country in five days, and it’s going to take us two just to reach the river, and two more to get to the coast.” And then it was another four days of stop-and-go flights before he made it back to the clean well-lighted world of Boston. “And while you’re at it, why in
hell are we out here and not back at camp? And by the way, what’s that stink?”
From the fire Iwati relit his pipe. “Yes.”
“Yes,
what?
”
“Yes, I’ll explain to you. But you must promise not to tell anyone, my friend.” Iwati kept his voice low even though his men were back at camp across the water, and none spoke English.
“Okay.”
“Swear on your soul.”
Chris began to smile at the silly old schoolboy ritual, but Iwati was dead serious. “I swear on my soul.”
“Swear on your grandmother’s soul.”
“I swear on my grandmother’s soul.”
“Swear on the Queen’s soul.”
“I swear on the Queen’s soul.”
“Swear on the soul of Jesus.”
“For godsakes, man, stop playing games.”
“Swear it!” Iwati’s eyes were intense.
“Okay, I swear on the soul of Jesus.”
Iwati hadn’t forgotten the order—the oath they had shared as kids sneaking cigarettes. But there was nothing in Iwati’s face that said he was playing games.
When he was satisfied he uttered a single word: “Tabukari.”
“Tabu what?”
“Tabukari.”
Iwati walked over to a tree growing up from the water’s edge. Hanging like pythons were thick vines clustered with small white flowers—the source of the sickeningly sweet air. He cut off a length of vine and gave it to Chris. “Tabukari. Special flower.”
In the firelight the petals were thick and white, the interior funneling into a bloodspot. It was some kind of orchid, but unlike any other Chris had seen. The fleshy petals and bloodspot gave it a sensual, almost animal quality. But most unusual was the odor. From a distance it was a fruity perfume, but up close the sweetness yielded to a nauseating pungency—apples undercut by the stench of rotten flesh. What Eve passed on to Adam, Chris would later tell himself.
“The smell brings insects,” Iwati said. “And the insects bring water birds.”
“Which explains the croc.”
“Yes. They come for the birds. This is the only place tabukari grows in the whole bush.”
Chris was not a botanist, but he was certain its uniqueness had to do with the locale: the volcanic ash lacing the soil, the mineral-rich lake, the foggy elevation, and, of course, the rain forest. “What’s so special about it?”
For the first time all evening Iwati smiled. “Everything.” But he wouldn’t elaborate.
“How do you use it?”
Iwati blew a cloud of smoke toward him. He’d been smoking the flower all along. “Sometimes I make tea. Sometimes put it in yam mash. But just for the medicine man. You want to try?”
“No.”
A four-day side trip through a jungle full of mosquitoes, cannibals, and Godzilla crocs just to view Iwati’s own private dope garden. Chris was tired and filthy and anxious to get back to camp and curl up in his cot. He couldn’t wait to get back to Boston where the air was cool and dry, where he could eat a good steak and take a long hot bath without worrying about leeches and crocodiles. Where he could finally dry out. Where he could snuggle up against Wendy and Ricky and not fight off millipedes. Iwati had let him down.
“The name means ‘forbidden flower of long day.’”
It struck Chris as a silly name, but he didn’t say that. “And, I suppose, it makes you feel good.”
“Yes.”
“Well, so does scotch—and you don’t have to cut through half the bloody bush.”
“No, no, not like that.” Then he added, “It’s dangerous. Very addictive.”
Probably a local species of coca, Chris guessed. “I see.”
“No, you don’t see. Addictive to the soul,” he said and tapped his chest. “More dangerous than all your powders. Why it’s called
tabu.”
Iwati held up the vine and whispered, “Never grow old.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Never grow old.”
For a long moment the words hung in the air. Chris stared across the circle of embers at Iwati, whose eyes had deepened with shadows and looked like holes in his skull.
“I don’t understand.”
Iwati nodded. More silence.
But the ground seemed to shift slightly, as if a ripple of awareness had run through the earth and back. “You’re saying this flower … prolongs life?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Long long.”
“So, what has it done for you?”
He smiled. “I’m still here.”
Through his grin shone teeth brown from years of smoking the stuff. But how many years? Twenty years ago in school Chris was sixteen, and he had assumed Iwati was about the same. The interim hadn’t changed him much, though it was hard to tell with Papuans. Their skin was oily and they smeared themselves with vegetable pastes and mud for protection against the sun and insects. And being slender, Iwati could pass for a teenager.
“So, how old are you supposed to be?”
Iwati shook his head.
“You’re not going to tell me that either?”
“I don’t know how old.”
Bush people lived by the movement of the sun; they took note of the years. Besides, Iwati loved watches. “How can you not know how old you are, man?”
“I was born before the missionaries come.”
That made sense. “The Red Cross missionaries were here during the war.” Which meant he was born sometime in the early forties.
“Not Red Cross missionaries,” Iwati said. “The Marists.”
A cold rash ran up Chris’s back. “Marists? That was 1857.”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible! That would make you at least … a hundred and twenty-three.” He started to laugh but the intensity in Iwati’s eyes stopped him. “That’s impossible. You can’t be more than forty.”
Iwati smiled indulgently. “I am. Much much more.”
“You
can’t
be that old, Iwati. Our biology doesn’t allow it.”
“
Your
biology.”
“Iwati, that’s ridiculous.” He wanted to say he was just trying to spook him, that for four years they had shared the same rational world of science—but suddenly that seemed so remote. So did Iwati.
“I was fifteen when I learned the tabukari power from my father.”
“And when was he born?”
“Nobody knows. Sometime before the Contact.”
“The Contact? Jesus, man, what kind of fool do you take me for? You’re talking the seventeenth century.”
Iwati nodded.
“And what happened to him?”
“The Portuguese killed him. The expedition led by Antonio d’Orbo.”
Antonio d’Orbo was the first recorded white man to voyage up the Sepik in the middle of the last century, Chris recalled. Only a handful of his men made it back to tell.
“You don’t believe me,” Iwati said.
“Frankly, not a word.”
Iwati stared at him for a moment, turning something over in his head. Then he removed the shrunken head from his neck and held it out to him. “Look. Look at it.”
Repulsive as it was, Chris studied it in the firelight. The face was small and shriveled, its skin a darkened leather, the lips and eyelids stitched shut. He had seen several others in museums, but there was something distinctly different about this one. And for a moment he couldn’t place it. Then it struck him: the hair. Unlike all the others, this was not black but a light brown, and not kinky but silky straight. Caucasian. The head had belonged to a westerner. Iwati lifted the plait, exposing one ear. It looked like a black apricot except for the lobe which was looped with metal and linked through a hole to a gold coin. The inscriptions were worn down some, but he could make out the Roman letters—the word
Anno Dei
and the Arabic numbers.
“It says 1866,” Chris said. “What does that prove?”
“It’s him.”
“Who?”
“Antonio d’Orbo.”
“Iwati, what the hell are you telling me?” But he did not answer. Just stared. “You’re saying you did this—you killed Antonio d’Orbo and shrunk his head?”
“He killed my father.”
Chris threw his hands into the air, shaking his head. “Sorry, my friend, but I don’t believe you. None of it.” He stood up and made a move to go. “Thanks for the bedtime story, but now I’d like to get some sleep.”
Iwati rose. “Christopher, listen to me. I am telling you the truth. I swear it.” Nothing in Iwati’s manner betrayed his words. “I owe you for saving my life.”
Chris stared into Iwati’s eyes, but they held no guile. Suddenly the image of the Okamolu warriors flashed across Chris’s mind. And the little juju man. They believed it.
They believed it!
Like his ears suddenly clearing, things began to make weird, terrifying sense. It wasn’t Chris’s skin that had reduced the Okamolu to frightened boys. They had seen white men before, probably had even eaten a few. Nor was it the gun. It was Iwati who had spooked them. Iwati! They weren’t sure it was he in T-shirt, shorts, and sunglasses—not until he had changed into his ceremonial headdress and face paint and shrunken head. The declaration of his juju identity. Not just another tribal shaman, but Iwati of the secret tabukari magic. Maybe, too, it was the reason the porters regarded him as a god. The reason they had trudged for two weeks even into
tabu
land of flesh-eaters. The reason their own heads were still on their shoulders and not on Okamolu spears.
To their minds Iwati was deathless.
Iwati nodded as if reading Chris’s mind. Then he shrugged and slipped the head back around his neck. “Maybe it’s best, my friend,” he said and tossed the flowered vine onto the fire.
The flames sputtered. But before they could claim the braid of small white blossoms, Chris’s hand flew into the fire and snatched it away.
3,155,414,400 Seconds
52,590,240 Minutes
876,504 Hours
36,521 Days
5,218 Weeks
1,200 Months
400 Seasons
100 Years
1 Life
—LEONARD HAYFLICK
OCTOBER 1986
APRICOT CAY, THE CARIBBEAN
Q
uentin took a sip of his champagne. “My best offer is three million dollars, take it or leave it.”
“Leave it,” said Antoine Ducharme, not missing a beat.
You son-of-a-bitch!
Quentin thought. “Then we have a problem.”
“No, my friend,
you
have a problem. The fee is five million per ton.”
Quentin Cross, Chief Financial Officer at thirty-seven and future CEO of Darby Pharmaceuticals, sat in uneasy silence on the rear deck of
Reef Madness
, a long sleek cruiser that Antoine’s girlfriend, Lisa, maneuvered around the coral heads. Working the mooring line from the bow was Marcel, one of Antoine’s security guards, who wore a snub-nosed revolver and pair of handcuffs on his belt.
They were inside the barrier reef on the northern coast of Apricot Cay, a palm-fringed island fifteen miles southeast of Jamaica and owned by Antoine Ducharme, an elegant and highly educated yachtsman, entrepreneur, and drug trafficker. Antoine, who looked to be in his mid-forties, was a tall, solidly built man with short salt-and-pepper hair, and an open face that appeared scholarly behind his rimless eyeglasses. It was a face that was used to making substantial decisions and one that could turn to stone in an instant.
Dressed in a green lounging suit, Antoine had arranged for his ten associates a sunset dinner of lobster tail, sautéed breadfruit, and French cheeses topped off with a dessert of fresh apricots, of course.
Quentin knew very little about the other men except that they were all part of an international group of very wealthy power brokers given to secret capital ventures and extravagances. But their association with
Antoine Ducharme suggested that they had no ethical qualms about getting dirty. There were no introductions. The men ate separately, speaking French and German, then moved into the inner cabin to watch a soccer game beamed from a satellite dish. To Quentin they were simply “the Consortium.”
Sitting with Quentin and Antoine was an American of about thirty-five named Vince Lucas, Antoine’s “financial security officer.” He was lean and attractive in a feral kind of way. He had smooth fleshy lips, a tanned, V-shaped face, and shiny black hair combed straight back to expose a deep widow’s peak. His eyebrows were perfect black slashes, and his eyes were so dark that they appeared to be all pupil. On his forearm was a tattoo of a bird of prey with a death-head skull. He looked like no financial officer Quentin had ever met.
“If you ask me, five million is a bargain,” Vince Lucas said.
“Five million dollars is out of the question,” Quentin repeated. But he knew that they had him by the proverbial throat.
Lisa cleared the dishes. She was clad in a scant black bikini, a yellow headband, and a rose tattoo on her shoulder. She was a stunningly exotic woman in her early twenties with cocoa skin and deep, uninhibited eyes—eyes which when they fell on Quentin made him self-conscious of his large pink face, thinning hair, and pot belly swelling over his shorts. When she was finished, she gave Antoine, who was twice her age, a long passionate kiss and went below, Marcel tailing her to leave the men to their business.
“Listen to me, my friend,” Antoine said, “We have over two thousand acres of mountain rainforest, another thousand acres of orchards with mountain streams for irrigation, protected harbors, your own airstrip, storage buildings—‘the works,’ as you Americans say. And most important: total privacy.”
Quentin had heard all this before. He had toured the island including the rainforest. But biological diversity was not what interested him. Nor the acres of cannabis hidden in the orchards. Nor the camouflaged sheds where imported cocoa leaves were processed into cocaine for easy shipment northward—an operation which made Apricot Cay the Delmonte of dope in the Western Hemisphere.
What Quentin Cross wanted was apricots—and a particular species,
Prunus caribaeus,
unique to Apricot Cay. And he was willing to pay $3 million a ton for them.
No, Darby Pharms was not diversifying into the produce market. What made the species unique was the pits: They contained cyanogentic compounds
highly toxic to cancer cells. In fact, the apricot toxogen had an astounding 80 percent success rate in the treatment of Mexican patients with malignant tumors. The FDA had not yet approved clinical testing in the U.S., but for Quentin the compound—with the potential trade name Veratox—promised to become the world’s first cancer wonder drug.
Darby Pharms had kept the toxogen secret for two key reasons. First, they had not yet secured FDA approval; but that was no problem since Ross Darby was an old college buddy of Ronald Reagan. The second reason was Antoine Ducharme. Nobody at Darby but Quentin knew that he was an international drug baron, including Ross Darby, Quentin’s father-in-law and current CEO—a man of impeccable scruples. If word got out, Darby Pharmaceuticals would not only lose its license to manufacture drugs, but it could end up in a criminal investigation that could put Quentin Cross and Ross Darby behind bars for years.
Antoine knew that and, thus, was asking for blood. What gnawed at Quentin’s mind was the entrepreneur’s unpredictability. Should Veratox turn out to be the world’s hottest pharmaceutical, Antoine might double the price of subsequent shipments. Or he might set up an auction for bidders with limitless resources, such as Eli Lilly or Merck. The only solution was a commercially viable synthesis. But in spite of months of all-out efforts by Christopher Bacon, Darby’s chief medical chemist, the toxogen was proving difficult to reproduce. The process required so many steps that the yield was infinitesimal. So far,
Prunus caribaeus
was an apricot only nature could build.
“Let me remind you that it grows only on Apricot Cay. And do you know why?” Antoine flashed another toothy smile. “Because a particular fungus that blights only
Prunus caribaeus
mysteriously wiped out all the apricot crops on the other islands.”
Quentin was about to ask where the blight came from, but something in Antoine’s eyes said he could guess the answer. The son-of-a-bitch was even more cunning than he had guessed.
“What prevents the blight from being introduced here?”
“The fact that nobody is allowed to disembark here without my permission.”
That was true. He had ringed its beaches with elaborate electronic security systems—cameras, motion detectors, barbed-wire fences—not to mention armed guards on constant surveillance in towers and jeeps. He had even pushed old cars into the shallows of the bay for coral to build upon, making boat passage perilous. Apricot Cay was a tropical fortress.
“You’re asking too much.”
“Not according to the
Wall Street Journal,”
Vince Lucas said. From his briefcase he pulled out a copy of the paper. “Darby Pharms’ profitability increased 30 percent over the last year—some 50 million dollars.
Barron’s
cites you as a growth company of choice. Besides, your Mr. Darby is an old friend of Ronald Reagan. Once you get FDA approval, Darby will be on the
Fortune
500,
n’est-ce-pas?”
Quentin wished he had never mentioned the White House connection. In a moment of bravado he once boasted how Ross Darby and Reagan played football together at Eureka College and that Darby had contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Reagan’s campaigns and raised millions more hosting Republican fund raisers. Ironically, Ross had even generously supported Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug initiative. That boast had probably doubled the cost of the apricots.
Quentin walked to the gunwale. The sun had set on the unbroken horizon, enameling the sea in burnt orange. Even with Reagan pressing the FDA Commissioner, it could take two years to win approval. Then another two before Veratox was on the market. Meanwhile, Darby would be another $25 million in debt to a Caribbean crook. Worse still, their ace microbiologist, Dexter Quinn, had retired two months ago, leaving only Chris Bacon and a couple of assistants on their premier project. They worked around the clock but had made no progress synthesizing the compound. But something bothered Quentin about Bacon. He seemed distracted all the time—as if he had another agenda just below the surface.
“Of course,” said Antoine, joining him at the railing, “it’s always possible that another firm would become interested in our fine harvest, no?” Antoine smiled broadly.
The bastard had him by the balls. On the table sat the leather-bound business plans containing all the lease conditions, the numbers, and paragraphs of legalese about the dummy corporation Quentin had established to export tropical fruit. It was all very sophisticated and legitimate, neatly spelled out in French and English and as negotiable as a firing squad.
Quentin felt himself cave in. Veratox was a billion-dollar molecule, and he was next in line to run the company. Once Chris Bacon’s group could synthesize the extract, they would have no need of Antoine Ducharme and his island. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“No such thing, my friend. Bargains are never hard.”
Quentin shuffled back to the table and signed the contract. By November first, he would have to wire two and a half million dollars to a bank in
Grand Bahamas as advance. A second payment of the same amount was due next June. And nobody would know because Quentin kept double books, siphoning funds from foreign sales of other products.
Antoine poured more champagne and they sat and watched the sky turn black while inside the others hooted over the game. After several minutes, Antoine stood up. “Trust, my friends. It is very important, no?”
The question threw Quentin. Vince Lucas just shrugged.
“More important than love.” A strange intensity lit Antoine’s eyes.
Quentin’s first thought was that Antoine was drunk. But he moved purposefully to a wall unit by the boat’s instruments and slid back a panel to reveal a small television screen. He hit a couple buttons and a color picture emerged. For a moment Quentin thought it was some kind of adult video. Two people were having sex. Antoine muttered something in French in a tone of harsh resignation, then turned a knob. The camera zoomed in on Lisa in the throes of an orgasm, Marcel, his red shirt still on, driving her from above.
Antoine’s expression was a strange neutrality. He flicked off the set then picked up the phone and said something in French. Within a minute, Marcel climbed up from below. He was fully dressed, the holstered gun still belted around his waist.
Quentin could feel his heartbeat kick up.
“Everything okay below?” Antoine asked.
“Yes, of course,” Marcel said, looking nervous.
“Good.” Then he turned to Quentin. “Because my American associate here is joining us. He will be investing very heavily in our enterprise here, and we must assure him of flawless security,
n’est-ce-pas?”
“But of course.”
Antoine approached Marcel and raised a finger like a teacher making a key point. “Trust,” he said, then reached around and unclipped the pistol from his holster. Marcel did not move. “See? Perfect trust.” Marcel made an uncertain grin. Antoine raised a second finger. “Perfect security,” he continued. “Essential ingredients for success, yes?”
Vince Lucas smiled and made a toasting gesture, encouraging Marcel to go along with the classroom charade.
Then Antoine motioned for Marcel to hold out his hands. The man looked perplexed, but Antoine was his boss making a point to impress his guest. So Marcel complied as Antoine removed the handcuffs from his belt and snapped one on his wrist. “Perfect trust, yes?”
Marcel nodded, then Antoine indicated for Marcel to turn around,
which he did, half-proudly presenting his other hand behind him in perfect obedience. Antoine snapped on the second cuff, still keeping up his patter, while Quentin watched in anxious fascination. “Without trust, friendship fails, families dissolve, empires crumble.”
He led Marcel to the portside edge. Across the water, Antoine’s villa glowed like a jeweler’s display. Above them spread an endless black vault fretted with a million stars and a crescent moon rocking just above the horizon. “And it is for all this,” Antoine continued. “A paradise island in a paradise sea under a paradise sky—the stars, the moon, the air. All the moments we steal from the gods. We are as close to immortality as one can get.”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Yes, monsieur,” Antoine echoed. He directed Marcel to look straight down into the water. “But not the face of deceit.”
Before Marcel could respond, Antoine nodded to Vince Lucas who in one smooth move heaved Marcel over the side.
Marcel bobbed to the surface, coughing and choking.
“You guarded the wrong body, my friend.” Antoine said.
Marcel shouted pleas to Antoine to drop a rope or ladder, aware that they were half a mile out with an offshore wind pushing him toward where the surf pounded the jagged reef to foam.
Vince pulled a pistol from under his shirt and aimed it at Marcel’s head to finish him off.
“No, let nature take its course,” Antoine said, “and prolong the pleasure.”
From below, Lisa climbed onto the deck. She had heard Marcel’s cries. “What happened? What did you do to him?”

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