The Babylon Rite (31 page)

‘We’ll do exactly what he did, today. That church, then Sagres; then we get out of Portugal. We have to hide somewhere else, anywhere else. And we need to solve this puzzle fast.’

‘One last chance then.’ Her voice was melancholy.

The moonlit Atlantic silvered in the distance. A glow of towns and cities, and nocturnal sea. They had reached the southwest extremity of Europe, where the continent ended, where the Templars lived out their final years, and became the Order of Christ, the sect of journeyers – medieval knights becoming Renaissance explorers, like dinosaurs evolving into birds. And then those knights lit out for the oceans, carrying the Templarite cross on their white-sailed caravels, heading west, always west, to the distant empty shores of a bold New World.

There was a beauty to it.

It was Christmas Day and they were on the Algarve. The church was just twelve kilometres short of Sagres, the most southwesterly point of all.

Empty roads led to the darkness of the ocean. Behind them the rosy-green caress of dawn was now visible, above the orange lights of distant Faro. The first light of Christmas Day.

He parked. The little church was tucked down a lane off a side-road. The church was so humble it had no gate, no car park, no nothing: just a tiny chapel in the middle of a field, off a farm lane.

She flicked the light again and read the book.

‘“The secret chapel of Henry the Navigator, and built to his precise instructions, the chapel of Senhora de Guadalupe is drenched with Templar associations. Local legends attest that French knights, fleeing the suppression of the Order in France, took to their boats at La Rochelle, then sailed south, bringing their notorious secret treasure with them. Supposedly they landed here, on this safely remote part of the Algarve coast, and built the first church on this site.”’

‘Go on,’ said Adam.

‘“These fanciful speculations aside, it remains an object of puzzlement as to why Henry the Navigator, a leading figure of the Order of Christ, the direct descendants of the Templars in Portugal, ordered this tiny chapel to be built, in secret, in this immensely lonely part of his vast estates. It is said he came here to worship in private, whenever he was able.”’

She closed the book and they stepped out of the car into the hushed pink light of Christmas dawn. It was cold but the sky was clear. The endless west wind was slicing along the coast.

The church was disappointingly small and empty. A timorous light shone through the unstained windows on to empty pews and bare walls. The only point of interest was a curious gargoyle, or boss, in the ceiling: it showed a human face licking a leaf. Another Green Man image, yet different, less stylized, more direct. A man licking a leaf, or a plant.

Licking?

Nina stared for a long time at the gargoyle, her face drawn into a deep frown.

Back in the car, Adam rubbed his tired eyes, then looked at his hands. Now the sun was coming up he could see the torn knuckles, and he still had a peppering of dried red blood on his shirt. He felt properly sickened now at what he had done. Where had the violence come from? All that terrible aggression. Locked inside him. Was he as bad as Ritter, in his own way? It was a close call between righteous anger and pure sadistic pleasure. He shuddered at the memory of his own glee, swinging a boot, aiming for the face.

In the silence of the car, Nina said, ‘Vikings.’

‘What?’

‘You fought like a Viking. Mad. Crazy.’

He shook his head. Embarrassed. ‘Did I?’

‘Don’t you remember, when we were talking about America, you said the Vikings were famous – for fighting like madmen?’

‘Guess I did …’

‘Adam.’ Her voice had taken on a strange, portentous quality. ‘Tell me. Wasn’t there a particular kind of Viking who fought with special ferocity?’

He mused. ‘You mean – the berserkers?’

‘Yes. Them. I remember studying Vikings in school, Eric the Red and all that. The berserkers would get so crazy before battle that they would bite their own shields in bloodlust. Waiting to kill.
Yearning to kill.
’

She toyed with the glove box, opening and closing it. Carefully yet pointlessly. The movement of the world seemed to slow to a stop, here in the car, in the rose-amber dawn, on the most southwesterly point of Europe – till she spoke again.

‘And they took drugs, didn’t they? The berserkers, they were rumoured to take drugs. I remember that too. They took drugs, but no one knows what drug it was …’ Slowly she turned and gave him the brightness of her eyes, fierce and gazing. ‘Adam it’s a fucking drug. It’s drugs. It’s always been a drug.’

He didn’t understand. But she looked triumphant. ‘The Babylon rite wasn’t ritual hypnosis, it wasn’t a sexual trance:
they took a drug
. Yes?
The Templars had a drug, some secret drug.
That was their secret treasure! That’s why people thought they buried it: they
planted
it. A seed, that made a golden flower. A flower that made a drug. A drug that made them stronger, more violent. Increased aggression, increased testosterone. Hence the gay sex. It’s a drug! Hence the gargoyle in the church, the man licking a leaf.’

His pulse raced at the idea; yet he calmed himself. Slowly, quickly, slowly, Adam ran the numbers. Did the maths. She was possibly right. She was
probably
right. ‘That explains the Grail!’ he said at last. ‘They must have taken it as a liquid, in a ritual, like holy sacrament, late at night.’

‘Yep. Drinking the Babylon drug.’

‘From a Grail, in liquid form: hence the Templar worship of the Grail; hence the woman with the alembic, in Domme. That’s a vessel used in medieval alchemy, or chemistry, as we discussed, and that was for preparing the drink … But what about the pentagram?’

She shook her head. ‘Dunno! But
this
is why we keep seeing the Green Men. Eating foliage, with vines in their mouths, Adam. Likewise the vines in Tomar, and that gargoyle in the church. That’s exactly what they did: prepared a drug from a plant and ate it. Drank its liquor. Secretly at night, in the Babylon rite. The Templars weren’t pagan, Ad: they were just addicted to the high of this substance, which made them brave but also violent, sexually violent to the point of self-destruction. Adam it’s the case. We found it—’

He was shivering. The idea was deliciously good. But there was a problem. A deep flaw. Adam voiced it.

‘DCI Ibsen told us he’d tested
everyone
for drugs. That’s one of the first things he did, and he got no results.’

‘But what if it was a
new
drug? Or at least one not seen in a thousand years? What if it produced a … an alkaloid, that no one had seen since medieval times? Then you couldn’t test for it, could you? They’d have no idea
what
to test for!’

She was right. She was so right it was rhapsodic.

He started the car and began the last drive. They talked urgently as he motored the last few kilometres to Sagres. Thoroughly and diligently they worked through the scenarios. Someone had elucidated the existence of the drug and its links to Templar history. Someone, the Camorra maybe, had paid her father to trace or rediscover the drug, using his Templar knowledge.

Nina was so excited she rushed her words. ‘Dad must have found the drug in Peru. Then he brought it back.’

‘However, most of the drug he sold to the Mafia gangs, who paid for it handsomely—’

‘My dad? Gangsters?’ She shook her head. ‘But it’s gotta be true. Though he kept some of the drug for himself. It probably helped with his cancer: made him happier? Able to face death. Like a berserker. Like a Templar knight. Facing death. That’s why his moods were so weird.’

Adam added, ‘But the drug he kept – a small amount no doubt – was wanted by a rival gang, and they came looking for it, stole the remaining drug, or most of it, and asked him where they could get more. That must’ve been the argument Sophie Walker heard. But he refused to hand his theories over. So they stole his notebooks and attempted to find out where he’d got the drug for themselves.’

‘But why the kids?’ Nina interrupted. ‘Why did they have to die, Nikolai Kerensky and Klemmer?’

Adam already had the answer. ‘Don’t you see, Nina? The drug that the second gang obtained, they needed to test it, so it was tried on willing victims.
They tested the drug.
We know that Ritter got an in with the rich kids, the experimental set, the swingers. These people were into new thrills, new drugs, so he must have said:
here try this, it’s great, a real turn-on.
’ He swerved the car, then continued, the story playing out in his mind. ‘The rich young Londoners loved the drug. But the drug worked too well, if anything. They killed themselves, they became too aroused, too fatally sexualized. And then Ritter gave some to …’

‘Hannah.’

‘I’m sorry, but yes. He must have. Ritter was also on the drug himself, of course. Hence his sexualized sadism.’

Nina sighed, bitterly. ‘So it wasn’t rape.’

‘It
was
rape: she was drugged, Nina. It wasn’t her fault. No more than if she’d been unconscious. He raped her.’

‘Then it must work incredibly fast, Adam. He must have given it to her there and then. In the bedroom: is that even possible?’

‘DMT.’

‘What?’

‘Businessman’s acid, I used to do it in Oz, with Alicia, we tried everything. DMT. Dimethyltryptamine. It’s a kind of short-acting, very strong hallucinogen. It’s found naturally in plants in the Amazon jungle, ironically enough.’ He searched the wide coastal horizon: nearly there. ‘Anyway, you inhale it, and it works in microseconds. They call it businessman’s acid ’cause you get extremely high instantly, then hallucinate wildly for ten minutes, then you come down at once. You can do it in a lunch break if you like: you can go to the moon and back, instead of having a sandwich. There’s no reason our drug couldn’t do the same. Act instantaneously.’

At last, he pulled up at the cliff edge of Sagres. They climbed out of the car and stood, and stared, momentarily rapt by the view. The sun was shining on the vast, cold Atlantic. They were parked at the ends of the earth, on the flatness of Cabo de São Vincente, jutting out into the churning seas. This was the great embarkation point for the Portuguese explorers, who lifted anchor in the coves below, and set white sail for the treasures of the Unknown.

‘That’s it,’ said Adam. ‘That also explains why there are so many conquistadors from here, from Portugal and Extremadura.’

Nina frowned.

‘The Templars’ last redoubt in Spain was Extremadura, right?’ Adam went on. ‘Their last redoubt in all Europe was Portugal. And this is the same place, Extremadura, that bred the
Spanish
explorers. It was from towns like Trujillo and Cáceres and Badajoz and Jerez de los Caballeros, that Balboa and Cortés and Pizarro and the rest of them emerged, determined to go west, to find a city of gold, buried treasure; their El Dorado.’

Her thoughts followed his. ‘They were looking for the Templar drug? So … maybe it was lost over time, that’s why the Templars declined. But the legends remained. Of a great golden drug. From a land far away. That made men superbly warlike, yes, peerlessly brave. These men were warriors. They wanted it again – the golden drug—’

The seagulls wheeled, white and crying in the Christmas light.

‘It must have motivated them, motivated them all, including Henry the Navigator, to find it again. Because the drug must have disappeared: maybe they couldn’t grow it any more, maybe medieval climate change affected them? It was lost but the legends lived on, the myth of Templar treasure.’

The two of them stared out to sea, watching the mighty waves. The fortress of the Order of Christ sat on the very furthest promontory, urging the bravest to go and find, to explore.

Nina said, ‘We have to get away.’

They both knew where ‘away’ would be. They were going to find it again. To find the Templar drug.

He nodded, and said, ‘Peru.’

Deck the halls with boughs of holly …

Jessica Silverton sat in the lobby of her hotel. It was Christmas Day: the PA was playing endless carols on a loop. She’d rung her mother. She’d rung her brother. She’d told them very little of her predicament; she couldn’t bring herself to regurgitate all the misery. For a second she felt like asking about Dad –
how did he really die? –
but of course she didn’t: the fear of hearing the wrong truth was too great.

Now she was pounding her laptop, oblivious to the warbling voices of the festive muzak. Here. She scrolled up the page once more and read it for the third time this afternoon.

Ololiúqui. ‘
Turbina corymbosa
(syn.
Rivea corymbosa
), also known as the Christmas vine, is a species of morning glory native throughout Latin America from Mexico in the north to Peru in the south and widely naturalized elsewhere.’

Tra la la la la la la la la …

‘It is a perennial climbing vine with white flowers, often with five petals, shaped as a star. It secretes copious amounts of nectar, and the honey the bees make from it is very clear and aromatic.’

Don we now our gay apparel …

‘
Turbina corymbosa
is also known to natives of north and central Mexico by a Nahuatl name
ololiúqui
and by the south-eastern natives as
xtabentún
(in Mayan). Its seeds were perhaps the most common hallucinogenic drug used by the natives of pre-Columbian Mexico, and elsewhere in Mesoamerica.’

Tra la la la la la la la la …

‘In 1941, Richard Evans Schultes of Harvard University first identified ololiúqui as
Turbina corymbosa
and the chemical composition was first described on August 18 1960, in a paper by Dr Albert Hofmann. The seeds contain ergine (LSA), an ergoline alkaloid similar in structure to LSD. The psychedelic properties of
Turbina corymbosa
and comparison of the potency of different varieties were studied in the CIA’s MKULTRA Subproject 22 in 1956.’

Follow me in merry measure