The Babylon Rite (32 page)

Fa la la la la …

‘The plant is called
coaxihuitl
, “snake-plant”, in Nahuatl, and
hiedra
or
bejuco
in the Spanish language. The seeds, in Spanish, are sometimes called
semilla de la Virgen
(seeds of the Virgin Mary).’

While I tell of Yuletide treasure

Fa la la la la la la …

She’d had enough. Taken at face value, this sounded as if she had solved the problem in one go. And yet maybe she hadn’t. An hour ago she’d telephoned her old tutor, in Iquitos: Boris Valentine. He was, after all, an ethnobotanist, working in the Amazonian capital of ethnobotany: he had the expertise. And he had sent his reply by email, and it provided a very different perspective.

‘It’s a moot point, Jessica. The story is famous of course, how, after several weeks Schultes found
Turbina corymbosa
growing around the porch of a witch doctor’s house in Santo Domingo Latani, south Mexico. But in recent years, yes, some have questioned his identification: various other forms of morning glory (
convolvulae
) have been suggested as alternative candidates, or other plants entirely.

‘To my mind it is actually unlikely that
ololiúqui
was
Turbina corymbosa:
the descriptions of Aztec intoxication by
ololiúqui
do not match the effects of
Turbina corymbosa.
So it is quite possible that you are looking for a different plant. If your theory is correct, you could disprove the mighty Schultes! Find the real ulluchu and the real ololiúqui! That would be a remarkable achievement. Indeed I’d love to help you out. It’s likely this entheogen comes from the jungle out here: that’s where the ancient Peruvians sourced all their drugs. We have the best pizza these days, as well. Bx’

The holly and the ivy, / When they are both full grown / Of all the trees that are in the wood, / The holly bears the crown …

She sipped her iced coffee, and wrote some notes in her pad. The coffee was decaff; the caffeine of excitement inside her was quite sufficient. Jessica sensed she was in danger of running away with herself. So she slowed down and reviewed what they already knew for sure.

To start with, it was generally accepted that the Moche – like most pre-Columbian societies – took mind-altering drugs. They had found cocaine-taking implements in most Moche tombs: bird bones for tooting, elaborate snuff-boxes. The sacrificed children were probably given
nectandra
before they were killed: an analgesic and mild psychedelic derived from the laurel. So there was no doubt the Moche experimented with intoxicants.

Now there was tantalizing evidence of a different intoxicant, an underlying drug, the ur-drug; the secret drug, so sacred it could only be symbolized iconically, in the shape of its seeds.

Her thoughts halted at the obstruction, which was yet a way through. Like a car at a locked gate.

The seeds!

Of course. Why hadn’t she done this before?

Speedily, she Googled ‘morning glory seeds’. Then stared at the screen of images, her eyes quite wide.

The seeds of morning glory, in almost all species, looked like little drops of blood. Like ovals or commas. Just like the iconic blood drops, in all the Moche murals and pottery.

The holly bears a blossom, / As white as lily flower, / And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ, / To be our sweet Saviour …

Ulluchu was therefore, very possibly a
kind
of morning glory, like ololiúqui, but perhaps not the precise one identified by Schultes. It was likely to be a more powerful and maybe volatile drug, a drug that stimulated the sex drive and induced violent cruelty. It was probably given to prisoners before the sacrifice ritual. Which was why the men had erections in the murals of El Brujo.

Who else gave drugs to people before executions?

She found another web-page. ‘The Sacrificial Customs of the Aztecs’:
‘
Many Aztec sacrificial ceremonies were small, with the sacrifice of a single slave or captive to a minor god. Others were savagely spectacular, involving hundreds or even thousands of doomed and shuffling captives. Aztec history claims that Ahuitzotl (1468–1502), the ruler before Moctezuma II, sacrificed twenty thousand people after a battle in Oaxaca.

‘Whatever the size of the rite, the sacrificial ceremony was nearly always conducted with the same brutal ceremonies. Four priests held the victim on an altar at the top of a pyramid or temple while the presiding official made a cut below the rib cage with a blade of obsidian – a black volcanic stone – and pulled out the living heart. Commonly the victim was given a drug, before the ritual, which meant he went more willingly to the altar.’

The victims were given a drug.

Surely
this
was ulluchu. The drug that made you want to cut off your own hands and lips; the drug that made you accept being led up a pyramid to have your pumping heart torn out by Aztec priests. The drug of sex and violence, the drug that led people in a state of erotic and psychotic bliss to kill others or mutilate themselves, to drink their brother’s blood, to permit their own destruction.

Jessica’s fingers were trembling. Entheogenic and psychedelic drugs united
all
the cultures of pre-Columbian America. The Aztec and the Inca, the Maya and Mazatec, the Zapatec and the Mixtec, the Chan Chan and Zuni, and Hopi and Chimu, and Nazca and Navajo and beyond. The practice stretched far north: the Kiowa of Oklahoma took peyote cactus buttons; it reached west into the deserts, where the Tarahumara ate mescal; it reached deep into the jungle, where Amazonian tribes took
ayahuasca
; it reached unto the Olmec, who delighted in datura; it reached long into the Great Plains, where Apache imbibed nicotine, and down the Andes, where virtually all cultures sniffed and chewed cocaine. It reached into the Sonora wilderness, where ancient men licked the cane toad, and into the pampas, where Argentine tribes endured psychedelic enemas of liquidized snuff made from the ground seeds of
Anadenanthera peregrina.

The Aztecs even gave hallucinogens to their
jaguars.

The holly bears a berry

As red as any blood

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

To do poor sinners good

Jess sat back. She had her proof; or, at least, an excellent theory. Drug use was
the
unifying factor that underlay all pre-Colombian cultures from Patagonia to Canada, and therefore perhaps all their rituals and religions. And maybe their iconography, too: perhaps they all hallucinated in the same way, because of this unknown plant, explaining the similarity of pre-Columbian art from the Maya to the Aztec to the Inca and Muchika.

A universal proto-drug that eroticized sadism or masochism would also explain the terrible cruelty of all these religions and cultures: the obsession with sacrifice and blood letting, with blood drinking and decapitation.

The words of the carol were still spinning in her mind, though the PA had been switched off, long ago.

The holly bears a prickle

As sharp as any thorn

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ

On Christmas Day in the morn.

So what happened to this precious and terrible drug? It must have gone north, from Peru to Mexico, and then gone to ground. But now, it seemed, ulluchu had re-emerged. Someone had found it, taken it, used it. Others were looking for it.

Jess felt a tiny frisson of exultation, but then her epiphany passed, and the fear returned. Who would be the most likely people to want such a powerful and dangerous drug? Who would be prepared to kill to get it? To murder indiscriminately?

They were all in much more danger than they had ever realized. She reached for her phone. This time she wasn’t going to be fobbed off with cached Facebook pages and unanswered emails.

Getting put through to the right person took an hour, and it probably cost her two hundred dollars. But she didn’t care.

Finally a warm but wary British voice answered her query. ‘Yes, I am Detective Chief Inspector Mark Ibsen. I’m in charge of the McLintock case. But who are you?’

‘Carlos “El Santo” Chicomeca Monroy.’

Jessica looked at the besuited man in front of her. He was young: about thirty; his head was close-shaved, his eyes were piercingly blue, the shirt was the whitest shirt she had ever seen. Clearly he was CIA or FBI, or Drug Enforcement Agency. DEA. She asked, ‘El Santo?’

‘The Saint.’ The man smiled. Very briefly. ‘It’s a joke, Mexican black humour. Carlos Monroy is about as far from a saint as you can imagine. Even by the sick standards of the Mexican drug wars, he is a sicko. Pathologically violent. We think he drinks blood.’

Jessica had phoned the embassy with her theory just after she had spoken with the British police, and made several other connections to cover her bases. The embassy had immediately asked her in for an interview the following day. But now it was their turn to talk.

The official pulled out a sheet of paper from a file on the desk and swivelled it so that Jessica could see. ‘This is the best image we have of Monroy.’

She leaned to look. ‘He’s handsome. Very young?’

‘It was taken a few years ago, when he was at Harvard.’

‘I don’t understand.’

The DEA guy leaned back, steepling his fingers, as if in prayer. ‘How much do you know about the Mexican drug wars? The drug cartels? You told us that you suspect the drug gangs are somehow involved in the events in Zana, and Europe. But what else do you know?’

‘Well.’ She shifted in her seat. The room was airless. Windowless. Featureless. Buried deep inside the embassy, like a safe room. ‘Not that much. I’ve been abroad the last three years. India, then Peru.’ She shrugged, awkwardly. ‘I mean – I hear about the awful murders of police. I know it is seriously violent across the border. I know that if the Mexican drug gangs are involved in all this, then it’s important. And dangerous.’

‘Indeed.
Seriously violent
is something of an
understatement
. Since 2003 at least
fifty thousand people
have died in the conflict between the various drug cartels of Mexico, who are competing to supply cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin, primarily to the USA. Moreover, in recent years the death rate in this drug war has actively
worsened.
The death toll is far higher than, say, the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The rate of killing is actually higher than the Afghan war. One city alone, Ciudad Juárez, on the Texan border, sees thousands of murders a year: it is the most dangerous city on earth.’ A terse pause. ‘And the violence is unbelievably brutal. People are tortured to death on YouTube. Victims are beheaded and mutilated and stripped naked and strung up from bridges in Juárez, with obscene notices slung around their necks. Women are mercilessly raped and tortured, then killed. In 2009 a series of victims were dissolved in acid by the “stewmaker” – so called because that’s what he did, he made human stew. A stew of dissolved humans.’

The young man frowned, stood up, and walked to the side of the room. ‘One reason for the violence is the vast amounts of money provided by the narcotics industry. We estimate the drug trade in Mexico generates at least forty
billion
dollars in profits a year. One cartel leader, Chapo “Shorty” Guzman, was listed amongst the world’s richest men by
Forbes
magazine. The income these guys make is phenomenal, and they will fight to the death to own the “plaza” – the place of trade. They will kill indiscriminately. They will walk into a wedding and spray the place with machine guns just to show they can. Just to terrorize.’ He gazed at a wall, as if it were a window. ‘The drug lords, of course, become famous. Even glamorous. Songs are sung about them – about the narcos, the enviable billionaire drug bosses, these songs are so popular have their own genre,
narcocorridas
. There is a whole culture of narco this and narco that. When the drug lords die they are buried in elaborate
narcotumbas
. Their beautiful teenage mistresses are called
narcoesposas
– narco-wives. There is a narco-architecture: the vast lurid villas they build. You get the idea. It is an entire civilization of cruelty and killing, based on the misery of addiction.’

He turned. Talking directly at her.

‘A couple of years ago, straight into this maelstrom of horror, walked Carlos Monroy. His family is aristocratic: they can trace their descent from the Aztec royal family, and from the conquistadors. This is not uncommon, of course. There are many descendants of the Aztec Emperor Montezuma living today; some went to Spain, to Europe. President Chávez of Venezuela was descended from Montezuma. Similarly, the conquistadors had many children, when they interbred with the Aztec and Inca royal families. But it is unusual for the leader of a drug cartel.’

Jessica felt a need to speak now, to interrupt this ceaseless flow of knowledge. To show she existed. ‘I don’t understand. Why is his lineage so important?’

‘Because it meant he got a very good education. Most cartel bosses are from the slums, the barrios. They fight and kill their way to the top. But Monroy went to Harvard, where he studied history and science. He is extremely intelligent, cultivated and educated, and his family is already wealthy. Why then did he become a cartel boss? He seems to be motivated by some hatred of the West. Of the gringos. A resentment which makes him particularly vicious. His Harvard education has also given him a business acumen and, we believe, a skill at drug synthesis. His meth, for instance, is some of the best on the market. He is ruthlessly superb at his chosen career. When he returned to Mexico, he took over a small cartel, the Catrina cartel. And since then, by utilizing a brutality that is shocking even by Mexico’s appalling standards, he has turned Catrina into one of the most powerful cartels of all, such that they are challenging the supremacy of the Zetas.’

‘Who are?’