In my experience, when people start using smoke and mirrors, the last thing you want to be looking at is the smoke and the mirrors. And as I sat smoking and looking at the stars, I slowly turned my mental eye away from those foggy reflections and it all started to slot into place. Things were not connected through some mysterious, Jungian synchronicity or quantum entanglement, but quite simply because they were actually connected. They were linked. Physically. They had the same causal root. And when I accepted that, most of the rest made sense. All I needed now was that cause, and I thought I knew what it was. I smiled at the stars.
It was as I was smiling at the stars and reaching that conclusion that a Jeep came rolling out of the night with my pal Colonel Fermin in the back. It ground to a halt by the roadblock, but he didn’t get out to greet me. Instead he sat watching me. Maybe he was being intimidating. I smoked back at him until he finally said, “Señor Murdoch, you are going to get into trouble, you know. There is a war and a curfew. You could get shot, if you are not careful.”
“I appreciate the advice, Colonel. Can I go home now?”
He looked me over and there was real contempt in his face. He shook his head and said, “No, you are under arrest. Get in the Jeep, Mr. Murdoch.”
I sighed and crushed out my cigarette.
We drove fast through the night, back past Maria’s house, where I couldn’t help noticing that the lights were still on, past a few desultory roadblocks, to a town called Sedella. There we stopped at a building that—from what I could see—had recently been a school. Now it was a Guardia Civil barracks. I followed the colonel into what must once have been a classroom. Now it had a desk and a couple of wooden chairs. He gestured to the one on my side and leaned his ass against the desk. I sat. He said, “Where have you been the last two days, Señor Murdoch?”
“I went to see a friend.”
He sighed and shouted in Spanish. After a moment two guardias came in and stood by the door. The colonel looked at me hard and said, “What is your friend’s name?”
I smiled at him. “I can’t remember.”
He was fast. The backhand came out of nowhere and caught me square. If I’d weighed twenty pounds less, it would have knocked me off the chair. I tasted the blood in my mouth and enjoyed the adrenaline that was smoldering in my belly. I met his eye. He said, “Where have you been, Señor Murdoch?”
“I went for a drive.”
He hit me again, harder, and I heard the chair scrape as it moved. I tasted the blood again and swallowed it. I looked up at him and, as I spoke, I knew I was going to kill him. I said, real soft, “Take it easy, Colonel. Maria and I had a row. I took some time to clear my head.”
It was kind of true, so he kind of believed me. He stared at me a moment and said, “A row? About what?”
I sighed and made a show of looking embarrassed. “I made advances on her, OK?” He frowned, confused. I said, “I tried to kiss her, Colonel. She didn’t like it. She told me to leave. So I took the car and went to Malaga for a couple of days while she calmed down.” He looked hard at me for a moment, then smiled. Then he laughed, gloating. He was enjoying the fact that I’d been rejected by her, like he had.
“I went to look for you there. She said she didn’t know where you are. She looked mad.”
I smiled in a way you could describe as rueful and said, “Yeah, she would. Now, Colonel, if we can cut the Third World torture bullshit, I need to talk to the head of the Hermandad. Tonight.”
His lip curled and his nostrils dilated. “You think because you are American and you have money that you can do what it pleases you. Make demands. I want this! I want that! Now!” He stabbed his chest with his finger and said, “But for you, now, I am the law! You understand? You do what I say, or I am shoot you like a bitch dog. And nobody miss you or know where you are. Comprendes, hijo de la gran puta?”
I nodded. “Sure. I comprende, Colonel. You’re the law. Now make the phone call.”
He shook his head again. “No. I take you there. Not because you are demanding it, but because he requires you.” He picked up the phone from his desk and punched a single button. After a moment he spoke softly into the receiver, “Lo tengo aquí. ¿Se lo traigo ya o vienen a por el?” I caught enough to understand he was telling someone he had me and wanted to know if they were coming to get me. After listening for a couple of seconds, he said, “De acuerdo.” And hung up.
He walked behind the desk and pulled a pack of Benson and Hedges from his tunic. He peeled it thoughtfully and lit up with a green Bic lighter. He let the smoke out through his nose, watching me. Finally, he said, “They are coming to get you, Señor Murdoch. You are the first person I have ever met who gets to meet the Leader.”
I laughed in his face. “The Leader? Are you serious? Who? Tejero? The Presidente?”
His face flushed, but then he laughed. “Tejero? No, Señor Murdoch, not Tejero. Tejero is a puppet—the leader of the Hermandad. He has ordered expressly to see you.”
“I’d like to tell you I’m surprised, Colonel, but I can’t. He had no choice. He had to see me.” Outside I could hear a car pulling up. I smiled at him. I knew it was hurting him like hell that this Yankee was getting to meet the big cheese when he, the colonel, never had. I said, “I bet you’d love to know how I did it, wouldn’t you? But you never will.” I stood, walked over to the desk and leaned over the little man with the pencil mustache and the jackboots. When I spoke, it was real soft. I smiled. “Because before you can ever find out, I will have killed you.” His face blanched. “I think this is my ride. Take it easy, Colonel. See you. Real soon.”
Nobody stopped me and, as I reached the door, it opened and I wasn’t surprised to see Rinpoche leaning on the doorjamb, smiling at me. “Hello, Rinpoche. Nice to see you again.”
He didn’t say anything, just stood back and let me go through.
It was hard to tell where we were going in the night. The road snaked and wove among the hills, and the darkness created impenetrable walls around us where the headlights picked out the sheer faces of the hills and the twisted, crippled stencils of trees and bushes. I was aware that death was riding with me in the car, and that made a tight knot in my belly. I wasn’t sure if I was enjoying it or not. I turned to Rinpoche. His face, lit by the dim green light of the dash, wasn’t even expressionless. It was more like he was empty of any feeling. I said, “Who do you work for, Rinpoche?”
Then he smiled, the way an iguana would smile. “Rinpoche.” His face creased and he laughed. “Why do you call me Rinpoche?”
I shrugged. “You look like a Buddhist.”
Then he said, kind of inconsequentially, “There are many Rinpoche. It is a title, not a name.”
“So who do you work for?” He turned to look at me. He was still smiling that weird, detached smile. I think he could have stayed smiling that way till Nirvana brought the cows home to roost. In the end I had to say, “Keep your eyes on the road, Rinpoche.” He smiled a bit more and turned back to the road. After a bit I said, “You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”
He showed some teeth to the windshield and said, “What to tell? What to do?” He shrugged. “Relax! Everything out of control!”
He laughed. I groaned softly and turned to look out of the black window at the black nightscape outside. After maybe half an hour of driving in silence, we came off the road onto a dirt track. We bumped and rocked along, twisting and climbing for another fifteen minutes through the dark until finally we stopped weaving and leveled off. I figured we had crested the hill, because the road went straight for a few minutes, and pretty soon I knew where we were. The headlights picked out a dry stone wall with an iron gate, and by the side of the gate was the wooden sign that read ‘Abbey of Thelema’. All roads lead to the Abbey of Thelema. I turned to Rinpoche. “You going to kill me?”
He turned his reptile smile on me, full of humor and devoid of feeling. You can’t learn that kind of thing. You’re born with it. He said, “Not now. Maybe later
, yah?”
We held each other’s gazes for a few moments. I knew he was calibrating me, visualizing how he would kill me when the time came. I said, “It’s hard to predict, isn’t it, Rinpoche, when everything’s out of control.”
His eyes creased and he laughed. Then he got out and opened the gate.
There was no moon, and in the dark the abbey looked like a castle, with its massive rotundas against the blue-black of the sky. I followed Rinpoche across the paved terrace to the huge arch of the front door, carved with serpents and Baphomets. He hammered on it and I heard footsteps approaching from inside. The door opened and I recognized the gorilla who’d been sitting next to Rinpoche in the Audi opposite my apartment a million years ago. I smiled at him as I stepped in ahead of Rinpoche. “Hey, Kerchak, how’s it hangin’?” His face screwed up in confusion. I’m pretty sure he was wondering if his name really was Kerchak.
We moved across the round hall, with its jet floor and erotic frescos, to a door that looked as if it were made of carbon fiber. It was real hard and looked real black, like it was designed to trap light and crush it out of existence. In the center was a complex Baphomet, also in black and almost invisible to the eye. Rinpoche tapped on the door and stepped in, closing it behind him. I smiled at The Hulk as he sagged his mouth at me. I said, “Had a thought recently?”
He frowned hard for a while, like he was trying to remember. Then he looked resentful and said, “You talk real weird. You’re a freak.”
“You may be right, friend. When weird is normal, then normal becomes weird. By that reckoning, you’re as normal as I am weird.”
Now he looked distressed, and when Rinpoche stepped out of the room, he sighed like he was relieved. The Dharma Lama said, in a weird, ingratiating sing-song voice, “You are going to meet the Master of the Hermandad de la Cabra. He is an Enlightened Being, and if you are able to put to one side your ego and open your mind to him, he can guide you toward consciousness and understanding. If you fight him and resist him, this cannot be good for you. You will suffer.”
I held his eye a moment, then said, “Can it, Rinpoche. Let’s cut the bullshit. Show me to your leader. I’ll talk to him.”
He gave me a big smile, like he thought I was real amusing, then led me through.
Serafino del Roble was sitting in a featureless, round white room at a shiny black table that could have been highly polished ebony or some mineral from the planet Krypton. He was eating what looked and smelled like caviar, with a bottle of Krug Clos d’Ambonnay 1998 in an ice bucket by his side. He didn’t look up, but I smiled at him and said, “Hello, Serafino. Does your mother know you’ve been starting wars?”
I pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down. He still didn’t look up. He chewed like he was ruminating and it occurred to me that not only was he a goatherd, but he kind of looked like a goat too. He had a long face and those dead, reptilian eyes. After a moment he said, “The violence was already there. I was the catalyst.”
“Not your fault, huh?”
He scooped some slimy, black eggs onto a cracker and looked up. “There is no fault, no right or wrong, but thinking makes it so.” He stuffed the cracker into his mouth and spoke with his mouth full. “Do as thou wilt shall be all of the law.”
“Is that your North Star? Do what the hell you like?”
“It is the Law of Thelema. Do you know what Thelema is, Murdoch?”
“Enlighten me.”
He smiled like I’d said something funny. “I doubt even I could do that, Liam. Thelema is will. Intention. The intention of the Self to consume and to possess. The intention of Yahweh. To act in accordance with that Will is to walk in the light.”
“Yeah? And who decides what that Will is? You?”
He smiled again. This time at my ignorance. “Nobody decides. All Will is the one Will. Do as thou wilt shall be all of the law. Do you know, Liam, what Yahweh means?”
“No, del Roble, but I fear you are going to tell me.”
“When God appeared to Moses, Moses asked him, ‘What shall I tell the people is your name?’ And God said, ‘Tell them my name is, Ehyeh, I Am,’ and Moses said, ‘They won’t understand,’ so God said, ‘Then tell them my name is Yahweh. He Is.’”
“Fascinating. What’s your point?”
“Humanity was offered the understanding that each one of them was God. God is ‘I Am’. But in their ignorance, they failed to understand. So God chose the third person of the Hebrew verb ‘to be’, and became ‘He Is’, and in this simple act they abdicated their power. They abdicated their power, Liam, in favor of any who is capable of understanding the Law of Thelema. I Am, and doing as I will shall be all of the law.”
There was a compelling magnetism about the completeness with which he seemed to believe what he said. Apparently the same was true of a lot of nuts throughout history. Hitler and Napoleon were but two who sprang to mind.
I said, “Did you bring me here to quote Shakespeare and Dashwood at me and discuss second-rate philosophy, del Roble? I think your lackey Rinpoche is probably better suited to that.” He glanced at me like he was surprised. Then he looked at Rinpoche and smiled. He thought it was funny too. He said, “Have a drink.”
“Irish. No ice.”
He said to his caviar, “Philosophy is for people who have no will. I Will. So I don’t waste time on philosophy.”
I said, “Good. I’ve come for Mary-Jane.”
He stuffed a cracker in his mouth. The action was oddly voracious. He spoke with his mouth full. “You’ve come because I sent for you. But what makes you think you will find Mary-Jane here?”
“She makes me think it. I spoke to her earlier. You know that. Why are we wasting time?”
He sat back in his chair and drained his glass. He watched me for a moment and there was a depth of insolence and arrogance in his face that was almost awe-inspiring. He said, “We are to strike some kind of deal, is that it?”
I nodded as Monobrow Man placed a generous measure of Irish whiskey in front of me. Del Roble said, “I told you I wanted Mary-Jane, Liam, and no sooner had I told you, she turned up on my doorstep. I have no doubt this was due in no small part to your good offices. We, La Obra, and the Vatican, will be very happy to pay you very generously for that.”
I sipped my drink and studied his face. He was the best poker player I had ever met. I said, “Where is she?”
“She is not here. She is at her beach house in Torrox.”
I pulled my cigarettes from my pocket and lit one. “You’re cool, del Roble. I’ll give you that. But if you’re holding her as a bargaining chip, you’re wasting your time. Let’s face it. The way I read it, you have the girl but you haven’t got the goods.” He gazed at me, steadily ruminating on caviar. I gave him a second then said, “And neither has she.”
He reached for the champagne and refilled his glass. After he’d sipped it he said, “The goods, Murdoch? What goods?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” I watched him ruminate a little more. Maybe he was chewing the cud. I said, “I can tell you what it isn’t. It isn’t a Bible, and it isn’t a photograph album.” He leaned back and I said, “The truth is, del Roble, I haven’t looked inside the box…yet.”
Something happened to his face. It seemed to go hard, like stone, and his eyes were like a komodo dragon’s. He was completely motionless. He said, “So, if Mary-Jane hasn’t got the box, where is it?”
I let the amusement crawl up one side of my face while I tipped the whiskey one way and another. “Did Mary-Jane tell you she had it?” I looked at his eyes. He looked like a toad aiming at a fly. “Only I know where it is, del Roble. You can have it Monday, unopened, for the right price.”
“The right price.” It wasn’t a question. He seemed to be savoring it. “What is the right price, Liam?”
His eyes explored my face and I remembered something Mary-Jane had said about him. That he was evil. I said, “Five hundred thousand pounds sterling.”
Monob
row Man turned to stare at me and, across the room, I saw Rinpoche laugh silently. Del Roble raised an eyebrow and before he could stop himself, he said, “Are you sure you don’t know what’s in the b—”
I smiled. “I just got a glimpse. And the price went up. One million pounds sterling.”
There was a world of rage behind his lack of expression, but I knew it wasn’t the money. I knew I was still well short of the mark. I hadn’t even begun to approach the real value of whatever was in that damned box. It was the fact that he’d been tripped that he couldn’t stomach. He said, “One million pounds sterling. Very well. How shall we make the exchange?”
“You give me Mary-Jane now, and next Monday we meet at my place in London and you make the transfer to my account in Belize. I’ll have the box nearby. When I see the transfer has been made, I give you the box.”
He was watching me carefully and I kept seeing his pupils turn into vertical slits. He said, “That’s it?”
I said, “That’s it,” and blinked hard, and my tongue felt thick. His eyes were definitely goat’s eyes—or a reptile’s eyes—and I was trying to work out what it was that linked goats and reptiles. Because goats shouldn’t be mammals, they really should be reptiles. And when I started thinking that swimming goats should be amphibian, I realized there was something in my drink. But by then it was too late. He could see it and smiled.
“You want the box. You want the money. You want sweet Mary-Jane. You’re very greedy, for a man who can’t even stand on his own two feet.”
I had the uncomfortable feeling that somebody had spread butter on my eyeballs. I squeezed them a couple of times but it didn’t help. I was sleepy and I could feel my will slipping away. I wanted to ask where Mary-Jane Carter was but my tongue wouldn’t get out of the way for the words. I leaned on the table and tried to stand, but I forgot to tell my legs what I was planning and I crashed onto the table, turning it over in the process, and landed in a heap on the floor. The last thing I remember seeing was Rinpoche’s face grinning at me, and behind him, Monobrow Man looking confused.
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