Amazonia. Part 7

"I understand and accept," Louis said. "I'll need to see half the fee in my usual account by close of business tomorrow. Furthermore, any and all details of the U.S. team and its resources should be faxed to my private line s soon as possible." He gave the number quickly.

"It will be done within the hour:"

"Tres bon."

The line clicked dead, the business settled.

Louis slowly replaced the receiver in its cradle and sat back. The thoughts of the money and the thousand details in setting up his own team were pushed back for now. At this moment, one name shone like burning magnesium across his mind's eye. His new employer had glossed over it, unaware of the significance. If he had been, St. Savin's offer probably would have been considerably less. In fact, Louis would have taken this job for the cost of a cheap bottle of wine. He whispered the name now, tasting it on his tongue.

"Carl Rand."

Seven years ago, Louis Favre had been a biologist employed by the Base Biologique Nationale de Recherches, the premier French science foundation. With a specialty in rain forest ecosystems, Louis had worked throughout the world: Australia, Borneo, Madagascar, the Congo. But for fifteen years, his specialty had been the Amazon rain forest. He had journeyed throughout the region, establishing an international reputation.

That is, until he ran into the d.a.m.nable Dr. Carl Rand.

The American pharmaceutical entrepreneur had found Louis's methods of research to be a bit suspect, after stumbling upon Louis's interrogation of a local shaman. Dr. Rand had not believed cutting off theman's fingers, one by one, had been a viable way of gleaning information from the stubborn Indian, and no amount of money would convince the simpering American otherwise. Of course, the pile of endangered black caiman carca.s.ses and jaguar pelts found in the village had not helped matters. Dr.

Rand seemed incapable of understanding that supplementing one's work with black market income was simply a lifestyle choice.

Unfortunately, Carl and his Brazilian forces had outnumbered his own team. Louis Favre was captured and incarcerated by the Brazilian army. Luckily, he had connections in France and enough money to ply the palms of a few corrupt Brazilian officials in order to slip away with no more than a slap on the wrist.

However, it was the figurative slap to his face that had stung worse. The incident had blackened his good name beyond repair. Penniless, was forced to flee Brazil for French Guiana. There, always resourceful and with previous contacts in the black market, he scrounged together a mercenary jungle force. During the past five years, his group had protected drug shipments from Colombia. hunted down various rare and endangered animals for private collectors, eliminated a troublesome Brazilian government regulator for a gold-mining operation, even wiped out a small peasant village whose inhabitants objected to a logging company's intrusion onto their lands. It was good business all around.

And now this latest offer: to track a U.S. military team through the jungle as they searched for Carl Rand's lost expedition and steal whatever they discovered. All in order to be the first one to obtain some regenerative compound believed to have been discovered by Rand's group.

Such a request was not unusual. In the past few years, the race for new rain forest drugs had become more and more frantic, a multibillion- dollar industry. The search for "green gold," the next new wonder drug, had spurred a new "gold rush" here in the Amazon. And in the trackless depths of the forest, where millions of dollars were cast into an economy of dirtpoor farmers and unschooled Indians, betrayals and atrocities were committed daily. There were no spying eyes and no one to tell tales. Each year, the jungle alone consumed thousands from disease, from attack, from injuries. What were a few more-a biologist, an ethn.o.botanist, a drug researcher?

It was a financial free-for-all.

And Louis Favre was about to join the game, championed by a French pharmaceutical company.

Smiling, he stood up. He had been delighted when he heard about Carl Rand's disappearance four years ago. He had gotten drunk that night, toasting the man's misfortune. Now he would pound the final nail in the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's coffin by stealing whatever the man had discovered and laying more lives upon his grave.

Unlocking the salon's door, Louis stepped out.

"I hope everything was satisfactory, Dr. Favre," the concierge called politely from his desk.

"Most satisfactory, Claude," he said with a nod. "Most satisfactory indeed:" Louis crossed to the hotel's small elevator, an antique cell of wrought iron and wood. 1t hardly fit two people. He pressed the b.u.t.ton r the sixth floor, where his apartment suite lay. He was anxious to share the news.

The elevator clanked, groaned, and sighed its way up to his floor. Once the door was open, Louis hurried down the narrow hall to the farthest room. Like a handful of other guests who had taken up permanent residence in the Hotel Seine, Louis had a suite of rooms: two bedrooms, a cramped kitchen, a broad sitting room with doors that opened upon a wrought-iron balcony, and even a small study lined with bookshelves. The suite was not elaborate, but it suited his needs. The staff was discreet and well accustomed to the eccentricities of the guests. Louis keyed open his door and pushed inside. Two things struck him immediately. First, a familiar and arousing scent filled the room. It came from a pot on the small gas stovetop, boiling ayahuasca leaves that produced the powerful hallucinogenic tea,natem.

Second, he heard the whine of the fax machine coming from the study. His new employers were certainly efficient.

"Tshui!" he called out.

He expected no answer, but as was customary among the Shuar tribespeople, one always announced one's presence when entering a dwelling. He noticed the door to the bedroom slightly ajar.

With a smile, he crossed to the study and watched another sheet of paper roll from the machine and fall to the growing stack. The details of the upcoming mission. "Tshui, I have marvelous news:"

Louis retrieved the topmost printout from the faxed pile and glanced at it. It was a list of those who would comprise the U.S. search team.

10:45 P.m. UPDATE from Base Station Alpha

I. Op. AMAZONIA: Civilian Unit Members

(1) Kelly O'Brien, M.D.-MEDEA

(2) Francis J. O'Brien-Environmental Center, CIA

(3) Olin Pasternak-Science and Technology Directorate, CIA

(4) Richard Zane, Ph.D.-Tellux Pharmaceutical research head

(5) Anna Fong, Ph.D.-Tellux Pharmaceutical employee

II. Op. AMAZONIA: Mil. Support: 75th Army Ranger Unit CAPTAIN: Craig Waxman

STAFF SERGEANT: Alberto Kostos

CORPORALS: Brian Conger, James DeMartini, Rodney Graves, Thomas Graves, Dennis Jorgensen, Kenneth Okamoto, Nolan Warczak a Samad Yamir

III. Op. AMAZONIA: Locally Recruited

(1) Manuel Azevedo-FUNAI, Brazilian national

(2) Resh Kouwe, Ph.D.-FUNAI, Indigenous Peoples Representative

(3) Nathan Rand, Ph.D.-Ethn.o.botanist, U.S. citizen

Louis almost missed the last name on the list. He gripped the faxed printout tighter.Nathan Rand, the son of Carl Rand. Of course, it made sense. The boy would not let this team search for his father without accompanying them. He closed his eyes, savoring this boon. It was as if the G.o.ds of the dark jungle were aligning in his favor. The revenge he had failed to mete upon the father would fall upon the shoulders of the son. It was almost biblical.

As he stood there, he heard a slight rustle coming from the next room, the master bedroom. He let the paper slip from his fingers back to the pile. He would have time later to review the details and formulate a plan. Right now, he simply wanted to enjoy the serendipity of the moment.

"Tshui!" he called again and crossed to the bedroom door.

He slipped the door open and found the room beyond lit with candles and a single incense burner. His mistress lay naked on the canopy bed. The queen-sized bed was draped in white silk with its mosquito net folded back. The Shuar woman reclined upon pillows atop the ivory sheets. Her deep-bronze skin glowed in the candlelight. Her long black hair was a fan around her, while her eyes were heavy-lidded from both pa.s.sion andnatem tea. Two cups lay on the small nightstand, one empty, the other full.

As usual, Louis found his breath simply stolen from him at the sight of his love. He had first met the beauty three years ago in Ecuador. She had been the wife of a Shuar chieftain, until the fool's infidelityhad enraged her. She slew him with his own machete. Though such acts-both the infidelity and the murder-were common among the brutal Shuar, Tshui was banished from the tribe, sent naked into the jungle. None, not even the chieftain's kinsmen, would dare touch her. She was well known through-out the region as one of the rare female shamans, a pract.i.tioner ofwawek, malevolent sorcery. Her skill at poisons, tortures, and the lost art of tsantza, head-shrinking, were both respected and feared. In fact, the only article of adornment she had worn as she left the village was the shrunken head of her husband, hung on a twined cord and resting between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

This was how Louis found the woman, a wild, beautiful creature of the jungle. Though he had an estranged wife back in France, Louis had taken the woman as his own. She had not refused, especially when he and his mercenaries slew every man, woman, and child in her village, marking her revenge.

Since that day, the two had been inseparable. Tshui, an accomplished interrogator and wise in the ways of the jungle, accompanied him on all his missions. She continued to collect trophies from each venture.

Around the room, aligned on shelves on all four walls, were forty-threetsantza, each head no more than a wizened apple-the eyes and lips sewn closed, the hair trailing over the shelf edges like Spanish moss on trees. Her skill at shrinking heads was amazing. He had watched the entire process once.

Once was enough.

With the skill of a surgeon, she would flay the skin in one piece from the skull of her victim, sometimes while he or she was still alive and screaming. She truly was an artist. After boiling the skin, hair and all, and drying it over hot ashes, she used a bone needle and thread toclose the mouth and eyes, then filled the inside with hot pebbles and sand. As the leathery skin shrank, she would mold its shape with her fingers. Tshui had an uncanny ability to sculpt the head into an amazing approximation of the victim's original face.

Louis glanced to her latest work of art. It rested on the far bedside table. It was a Bolivian army officer who had been blackmailing a cocaine shipper. From his trimmed mustache to the straight bangs hanging over his forehead, the detail of her work was amazing. The collection was worthy of the finest museum.

In fact, the staff of the Hotel Seine thought Louis was a university anthropologist, collecting these specimens for just such a museum. If any thought otherwise, they knew to keep silent.

"Ma cherie,"he said, finding his breath again. "I have wonders She rolled toward him, reaching in his direction. She made a small sound, encouraging him to join her.

Tshui seldom spoke. A word here or there. Otherwise, like some jungle cat, she was all eyes, motions, and soft purrs.

Louis could not resist. He knocked off his hat and slipped from his jacket. In moments, he was as naked as she. His own body was lean, muscled, and crisscrossed with scars. He swallowed the draught of natem laid out for him while Tshui lazily traced one of his scars down his belly to his inner thigh. A shiver trembled up his back.

As the drug swept through him, heightening his senses, he fell upon his woman. She opened to him, and he sank gratefully into her warmth. He kissed her deeply, while she raked his back with sharpened nails. Soon, colors and lights played across his vision. The room spun slightly from the alkaloids in the tea. For a moment, it seemed the scores of shrunken heads were watching their play, the eyes of the dead upon him as he thrust into the woman. The audience aroused him further. He pinned Tshui under him, his back arching as he drove into her again and again, a scream clenched in his chest.

All around him were faces staring down, watching with blind eyes.

Louis had one final thought before being consumed fully by his pa.s.sion and the exquisite pain. A final trophy to add to these shelves, a memento from the son of the man who had ruined him:the head of Nathan Rand.

ACT TWO - Under the Canopy.

PERIWINKLE.

FAMILY:Apocynaceae.

GENUS:VInCa.

SPECIES:Minor, Major.

COMMON NAMES:Periwinkle, Cezayirmeneksesi, Common Periwinkle, Vincapervinc

PARTS USED:Whole Plant PROPERTIES/ACTIONS:a.n.a.lgesic, Antibacterial, Antimicrobial, Antiinflammatory, Astringent, Cardiotonie, Carminative, Depurative, Diuretic, Emmenagogue, Febrifuge, Hemostat, Hypotensive, Lactogogue, Hepatoprotective, Sedative, Sialogogue, Spasmolytic, Stomachic, Tonic, Vulnerary

CHAPTERFOUR.

WauWai.

AUGUST 7, B:12 A. M.

EN ROUTE OVER THE AMAZON JUNGLE.

Nathan stared out the helicopter's windows. Even through the sound dampening earphones, the roar of the blades was deafening, isolating each pa.s.senger in his own coc.o.o.n of noise.