Entangled (33 page)

Horrified, she held up her hand to silence him. ‘Please tell me you’re
not
suggesting I go to the Amazon and actually drink this – what did you call it? – this witch’s brew?’

‘You got it!’ said Bannerman.

Ever since she could remember, Leoni had been afraid of jungles. Insects from hell. Venomous reptiles. Exotic diseases. She didn’t want to know about them. Nevertheless, as she listened to Bannerman’s proposal to
get her to the biggest jungle in the world, she had to admit that it made a weird and unexpected kind of sense. There was no way they were going to be able to continue with any kind of legal DMT research in the United States, and breaking the law would pose huge additional risks for Bannerman’s career. But Ayahuasca was basically DMT and the fact that it was legal in the Amazon meant that he could carry on supervising and analysing her sessions there much as he would have done if the project had continued at Irvine. It would be an unorthodox way to gather data but at least he’d be on the right side of the law.

Another advantage was that it would be easy to arrange.

Bannerman had a colleague in Peru, an American anthropologist named Mary Ruck who for five years had been doing fieldwork amongst the
mestizos
– people of mixed indigenous and Spanish descent, often living in extreme poverty, who make up the majority of the inhabitants of the modern Amazon. Mary’s special interest was the use of Ayahuasca by
mestizo
shamans, a subject on which she had become a great expert. But she herself also sometimes arranged Ayahuasca sessions for visiting academics at a jungle lodge she had established on the banks of the Amazon, twenty miles upriver from the city of Iquitos. If Mary could be persuaded to make it available to them it would offer a discreet, controlled setting in which Leoni could be given Ayahuasca under the guidance of an experienced shaman.

‘So what do you think?’ Bannerman asked.

‘I think yes,’ Leoni replied at once. The Amazon was a hideous prospect but she was willing to go there if it got her back to the Blue Angel. ‘The only condition is that Matt comes as well.’

Bannerman looked at Matt and appeared to be asking him a silent question.

‘It’s OK,’ Matt told him.

Leoni felt confused. ‘What’s OK?’

‘To tell you something you don’t know yet,’ Bannerman said. ‘Matt’s a bit more than just a volunteer on the DMT project. Actually he funded the whole thing.’

Leoni’s confusion deepened. Matt was Bannerman’s
funder?
How could that possibly be? ‘But you’re broke,’ she protested.

David laughed and Leoni turned on him: ‘What’s so funny?’

‘The idea of Matt being in any way broke,’ David replied. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper: ‘He’s low-profile,
but he’s loaded.’

‘Loaded’ could mean anything but Leoni also remembered Bannerman saying his funder was a ‘very rich guy’. So did Matt have millions? Hundreds of millions? Billions?

‘I feel deceived,’ she told him.

‘I didn’t deceive you,’ Matt protested. ‘If you made judgements about me because of how I look that’s your problem, but I never claimed to be broke.’

Leoni thought about it. ‘I guess you didn’t,’ she admitted after a moment. She grinned: ‘So how rich are you?’

Matt winced. ‘Look, I have some money. It’s no big deal and I
really
don’t want to talk about it. But I’m excited about taking this research to the Amazon and I’m honoured you asked me to come along.’

‘Oh, shit.’ A sudden thought struck Leoni. ‘I don’t have my passport. This is bad …’

But David was already waving her to calm down. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘When I did the legal work to get you out of Mountain Ridge I made sure that Sansom gave us all your documents back.’ He pulled a large envelope out of his briefcase. ‘Your passport’s right here.’

David couldn’t leave his one-man law office at such short notice and remained in Los Angeles, but Leoni, Matt and Bannerman caught the six a.m. flight from LAX to Peru.

On the journey Leoni told Bannerman everything she’d already told Matt about her childhood: the rapes she’d suffered, the mysterious connection between Jack and her adoptive parents, and the long-term interest the Blue Angel appeared to have taken in her life.

Gritty-eyed from lack of sleep, they landed in Lima and connected from there to the Amazonian city of Iquitos on a creaking LAN Peru Airbus. After they crossed the Andes – jagged white peaks under a clear blue sky – it was just jungle, jungle, jungle in all directions, as far as the eye could see, until the plane began to lose height. It went into a long turn, the pilot made an announcement in Spanish and English, and Leoni had her first look at the wide muddy swirl of the great river Amazon. It made her feel sick. She could only imagine what sort of creatures, large and small, with and without teeth, lay in wait beneath those waters.

The plane banked again and an implausible landscape came into view. On the west bank of the Amazon, at a bend where the river seemed
miles wide and looped around a pair of islands, the primal jungle gave way without warning to a city. Maybe she’d been taking too many drugs but just for a moment, as she sat poised in the sky looking down at it all, she could have imagined that the buildings, square and blocky, painted in pastel shades, with glittering tin roofs, weren’t even made by human hands but were some sinister new growth that the forest itself had brought forth.

The plane was coming in for its final approach. Leoni leaned over Matt and peered out of the window. From this new angle she could see a clear reflection of Iquitos in the waters of the Amazon. It was almost as though there was a city above and a city below the river. Two different cities in two different worlds.

She shivered. Which one would she end up in?

There was a commotion near Grine, shouts and exclamations, a ripple of movement, and Hond burst forth from the crowd, naked from the waist up, his thick brown curls dishevelled, his body streaked with fresh blood. He brandished a stabbing spear tipped with a heavy flint spike and at once plunged it into Grine’s shoulder, bearing him down and pinning him squealing to the ground. Without interrupting the single continuous flow of his attack he stepped in on the fallen man, kicked down hard into his face with his heel, stooped to retrieve the brand – it had fallen only a hand’s breadth short of the pyre – and threw it far into the crowd.

Grine was still conscious, whimpering and flapping like a harpooned fish. Hond stamped on his face again, this time silencing him, jerked the spear out of his body, and loped towards Murgh holding the dripping weapon at the ready. Murgh had been caught off guard and seemed frozen with shock. Now he grabbed Ria’s arm, almost jerking it from its socket, and pulled her in front of him, while Melam, a thickset warrior of his faction, charged at Hond, swinging a battleaxe. As the two men closed Melam bellowed, raised his axe and brought it whistling down on Hond’s head. Ria held her breath but Hond sidestepped the blow and tripped Melam with an outstretched foot as the other man hurtled past him, bringing him down with a crash that shook the ground.

More braves rushed forward to protect Murgh, blocking Hond’s approach and jabbing at him with spears. But then Bont roared ‘Enough!’ and in three paces he and Ligar were at Hond’s side. Bont held no weapon, but this would not be the first time he had killed men with his bare hands. Smaller and quicker on his feet, Ligar had unslung his bow and strung an arrow.

There was an instant of silence as the two groups squared off. They were so intent on one another that none of them saw Rotas rise from his
stool. Then he stepped between them. ‘Stop!’ he shouted, a thunderous look on his face. ‘Stop now. I command it. Lower your weapons.’

Murgh’s braves weren’t ready to obey. One of them lashed at Hond with a dagger only to be felled by a single prodigious blow to the side of the head from Bont’s fist. In the same moment, wriggling like an eel, Ria broke free of Murgh’s grasp and dashed away from him, allowing Ligar to aim an arrow at his heart.

The morning air, filled with tension and pent-up hatred, seemed to seethe and boil. ‘STOP THIS, I SAY!’ Rotas ordered again. ‘Step back. Lower your weapons.’ Murgh looked at the arrow nocked against the string and at the fully stretched bow. Ria could see his mind working – Ligar had never been known to miss a shot, let alone at such close range. She wasn’t surprised when Murgh signalled his men to stand down.

At once Ria ran to Hond and embraced him: ‘Brother, you live! I knew it!’ Her hands went to the place in his side where the Illimani blade had pierced him but there was no longer any puncture wound between his ribs, not even a scar, only a livid black-and-blue bruise, spreading across his chest. ‘You were right,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. ‘The Uglies are our friends. They healed me with their magic. They brought me back to life.’

Bont was shouting at Murgh: ‘You told us Hond died during the night. What was that about?’

‘A simple mistake,’ the older man replied.

‘Mistake, my arse!’ Hond exclaimed with a bitter laugh. Giving Ria a parting squeeze of encouragement, he looked Murgh in the eye: ‘You shitball. You ordered my murder.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Murgh spluttered.

‘Lisin, Imdug, Baba and Uras.’ Hond named four men well known as Murgh’s bully boys. ‘They’re the ones you sent to kill me.’ He pointed to the smears of blood drying on his body: ‘I killed them instead.’

‘What’s this about?’ snapped Rotas. ‘Why is Clan blood being spilled?’

Hond indicated the elders’ ceremonial ivory stools: ‘First tell me why my sister is on trial.’ He turned and pointed at the bonfire. ‘And why you’re planning to burn those Uglies.’

The five elders whispered to one another and Rotas reeled off a summary of Grigo’s accusations.

‘It’s all lies,’ Hond said when he was finished. ‘Ria is innocent. The Uglies are innocent. A savage people called the Illimani killed Duma and Vik, they killed my brother Rill, and the Uglies fought beside us against them. Many of them died for us. They should be welcomed as heroes here in our camp, not treated as enemies. So long as I live, I swear to you, I will never see them burned!’

Murgh tried to regain the initiative by stepping in on Hond and crowding him. ‘IT’S YOU WHO’S LYING,’ he shouted, spraying spit. ‘It’s obvious. You’d do anything to protect your sister.’

‘There’s a way we can settle this,’ Hond snapped back. And with a wolfish grin he backhanded the older man across the face.

Hond meant single combat. The ancient answer to all disputes.

In a trial, legal arguments might drag on for ever, but when one brave called another a liar, and neither would back down, it was the view of the Clan that a fight to the death would determine the truth. Ria knew that by striking Murgh in such an insulting way, in the presence of so large a crowd, Hond had made it impossible for him to refuse the challenge.

Murgh called Grigo and whispered in his ear. Grigo whispered back.

Rotas loomed over them. ‘You’ve been challenged, Murgh,’ he said. ‘What is your reply?’

Murgh and Grigo both turned to stare towards the south-east, over the heads of the crowd, as though distracted by something happening outside the meeting ground. Then their eyes met and Ria saw a strange expression pass from one to the other. Finally Murgh shrugged: ‘I accept the challenge, of course.’

Such duels were governed by a code of honour. No weapons used: only bare hands and feet. No mercy sought or given. Loser dies. Winner takes all.

‘State your terms,’ said Rotas.

‘The Uglies burn with Ria beside them,’ spat Murgh, wiping blood from his mouth.

‘The Uglies and Ria go free,’ said Hond. He pointed at Grigo: ‘And after I kill your father I’m going to kill you.’

There were no more formalities. To a great roar of excitement from the crowd, the combatants faced off.

Ria felt confident of the outcome; she had absolute faith in her brother’s fighting skills. Hond was lean and hard, head and shoulders taller than his opponent, powerfully muscled and of prime fighting age, while Murgh was twenty years his senior, squat, with bandy legs. But then she saw that Murgh’s short legs gave him a natural wrestler’s stance, his upper body was enormously muscular and strong, and his arms, culminating in massive hands, were unnaturally long – more than compensating for Hond’s greater height.