The Devil's Garden

by Edward Docx

  ‘What about the Judge?’ Kim’s voice had lost all vitality. ‘What about the registration?’

  Lothar shook his head slowly. ‘Because of previous actions from the pressure groups, the oil companies also ask for the cover of the vote. The registration is real but only so far: they want to collect all the new voters possible – so they can fix a referendum and make it look OK if they need to. But they will only start bribing the Indians once they have cleaned up the drugs people. What is happening right now is that the traffickers are fighting back – and they have some very good weapons and plenty of money.’ He scoffed. ‘And – oh yes – I am told that the oil people will be setting up health-care centres, too,right next door to Tord’s schools.’

  ‘What about the Matsigenka and the others?’ I asked. ‘What’s happening to them?’

  ‘It is the same as it is every time – the Indians are caught in the middle. Some of them are being paid by the traffickers to come out of the forest and kill the soldiers. Some of them are being paid by the soldiers to go back into the forest and kill the traffickers. Some of them – Sole’s people – are furious because they are organized and they have already been made to buy their own land rights off a government that is nothing to do with them – only to find that this same government can still sell the subsoil out from under them. Others are happy for the oilmen to come and pay them for what they cannot use themselves – after all money is always money.’ The mobility had gone from Lothar’s face; it was as though his rubbery features had finally set hard. ‘Half a village maybe wants the white man’s bribes and half a village maybe wants the white men dead. There are disputes even between families – never mind the different tribes.’ He took off his hat and laid it down slowly. ‘It is a total mess. Everybody is fighting everybody. And of course, the traffickers and the soldiers cannot distinguish between one tribe and another. So people are being murdered for all the small wrong reasons as well as all the big wrong reasons.’

  We were both silent.

  Lothar looked at the roof that he had helped Quinn to build. ‘Then there are still a few Indians – some Yora, the Mashco Piro – who never wanted to buy or sell anything. And they are disappearing deeper into the forest to get away – disappearing straight into the territories of other Indians . . . Which means more displacement and more fighting between groups . . . More of what we seem to be best at: Scheiße and death.’

  Kim glanced sideways at me. ‘How does this end, Lothar?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘It doesn’t. It just goes on and on. When there is nothing left, there will be nothing more to fight for. We are not a moderate species. We are swarming across the world.’

  I swung my legs back over the bench. ‘Listen: we need to go out to the storage hut now and collect our stuff. We need to go together and we need to stay together. I will see if Felipe can help us. Then we must start packing things up here and—’

  The door was thrown open and Cordero entered followed by three men.

  The lab seemed to shrink – close and full with human bodies. I felt the sudden, tight-keyed, animal concentration of the others.

  Heavy booted, procedural, the soldiers took up station either side of their leader, their eyes incurious beneath their caps.

  Cordero hooked his thumb through his belt as he assessed our workplace. His gaze halted a moment on the dry room beyond.

  ‘You are well kitted out here,’ he said. ‘Impressive.’

  Nobody spoke.

  ‘You are powered by the main generator? Or you have your own?’

  He already knew the answer.

  ‘We use communal power,’ I said. ‘Oil.’ He nodded slowly.

  ‘What do you want, Colonel? This is a scientific laboratory. We’re working.’

  ‘So I see.’ He thinned his nose. ‘Very well, let me ask directly: are the prisoners dead?’

  ‘We do not—’

  ‘Dr Forle, if you don’t mind. I would like to have a simple answer.’

  Kim spoke. ‘What prisoners?’

  ‘Please, Miss Van der Kisten, I’m extremely busy. One of my men has been seriously injured. Now I’m told the prisoners have gone.’

  ‘Miss Van der Kisten went to bed,’ I said, ‘last night – before your soldiers came in.’

  Kim looked at me and then at Cordero. ‘I went to bed before Tupki arrived, if that is who you are talking about.’ She was careful to use his name – and placed a world of defiance in the emphasis with which she pronounced it. ‘Your Judge was drunk again. He assaulted me. So I left. I don’t know what happened afterwards.’

  The Colonel inclined towards his aide, who stood, vaguely effete, and nodded assent – he must have been one of those who had arrived with Lugo.

  ‘Good,’ Cordero said. ‘And you? What is your name?’

  Lothar had replaced his hat. ‘I am the same. I was at the comedor. I left a little later when the Judge went to collect some beer. I didn’t come back.’

  ‘I did not ask you if you came back.’

  Lothar was silent. Beneath his brim, I could not tell where his eyes were. He had not given his name.

  Again Cordero looked to the other. Again the nod.

  ‘And so we are back to you once more,Dr Forle. What happened to you last night? Where are my prisoners?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I took them to my hut. I dressed their wounds. I took pictures of their injuries. And gave them what painkillers I had. Naturally, I did not sleep in there myself.’

  ‘Where did you sleep?’

  ‘That’s not relevant. I didn’t sleep with the prisoners – with Tupki and Kanari.’

  For the first time, I saw the contours of anger in Cordero’s features.

  ‘Dr Forle, are my prisoners alive?’

  ‘I would be very surprised after what your men did to them.’

  ‘Let me explain something to you.’ He passed his tongue from cheek to cheek. ‘There are several lawless groups in this area – well supplied with arms and transportation. They seek to sabotage our efforts to ensure that the people here are registered and that some sort of order is created and maintained. But I am determined not to let that happen. This country will develop wherever and however it can. But my job is not made any easier by the fact that these terrorist groups are somehow being told of our positions and our plans ahead of time. My men were ambushed yesterday and again on tour this morning.’ He took out a white handkerchief and dabbed at his crown. ‘Now, I understand that you have chosen to take the side of these two drunks for some reason. I had thought them inconsequential. But this morning . . . I am forced to reconsider. Another of my men has been shot and this time seriously wounded. The situation is deteriorating.’ A second dab, of his neck. ‘You see the problem: we have an informant in our midst and had the prisoners still been here, we might have been able to eliminate them as suspects. Likewise if we knew them to be dead.’ He put away the handkerchief, folding it down deep into his groin pocket. ‘But now – because of my stupidity in allowing you to play the doctor – we are unable to draw that conclusion. You are helping nobody, Dr Forle. So, please, one more time: what did you do with the prisoners? Is that boy alive?’

  One of the other men cleared catarrh from his throat and for a moment I thought he might spit.

  ‘The boy is dead,’ I said. ‘And when he left my sight the father was in no fit state to give anyone any information about anything. I hold you personally responsible for what has happened.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘About two hours before dawn.’

  ‘Good. Thank you. That is something.’ Cordero hoisted up the muscles around his mouth before releasing them just as suddenly. ‘We can be sure that this morning was nothing to do with those two at least.’

  ‘Not unless the dead have learned to speak,’ I murmured.

  ‘Which means that we will have to look somewhere else for our spy. What is in there?’

  ‘
That is our dry room.’

  ‘Who uses that computer?’

  ‘Everybody within a radius of fifty miles who can type and quite a few that can’t.’ I shifted so that I was more squarely on to him. ‘Colonel, we are leaving the Station today.’

  ‘I’m afraid that I cannot let you leave.’

  ‘All the same, we will be packing up and leaving today. Unless you intend to keep us here by force.’

  ‘It is too dangerous for you to go anywhere at the moment. And there are now questions that we do not have the answers to.’

  ‘Then you’d better ask them quickly,Colonel, because we will be gone as soon as we have collected and packed up our equipment. These people are my responsibility. Just as your men are yours.’

  ‘Captain Lugo will be back in the hour. I will know more then.’ He smiled his mechanical smile. ‘I will see you at the comedor in two hours, please, with Miss Van der Kisten and the German.’

  ‘We won’t be here in two hours.’ A monkey was running across the roof. ‘As I said, we will be out collecting our equipment.’

  ‘Then you will be accompanied there and we will speak after you return,’ he said. ‘To be clear: you do not leave the Station without my order. For your own security. The captain will detail some men to come with you on the river.’

  ‘I doubt that whatever you are afraid of hunts scientists, Colonel.’

  He stepped forward towards me and in that moment I saw the strange disunity between the heaviness of his frame and the delicacy of movement. And I saw how violence might breed in the cracks between.

  ‘Is this the camera that you took your pictures of the prisoners on?’ he asked.

  ‘That is the camera that we use for our exp—’

  I got no further. Carefully, so as to avoid an unnecessary splash, he placed the camera into the wooden pail of water Felipe had so recently filled.

  III

  On the far side of the kapok tree, we saw that the comedor had been all but overrun. There were people everywhere – milling, mustering. A temporary shelter had been erected in front. Beneath its blue tarpaulin, there was a wooden bench on which metal cooking trays, plates, mugs and pots had been placed; and behind this bench stood . . . Jorge. He was wearing uniform. He had pulled down his cap regulation-low on the brow, mirroring the men he served and preventing him seeing too much of what went on about him.

  The soldiers slouched forward in a desultory line, their plates held like idle tambourines, until they reached the front and they offered them up, suddenly attentive. There must have been a dozen – all of them armed.

  To our left, two smaller temporary shelters now flanked the mouth of the river path. More tarpaulins. Two desks; at one sat the Judge; and at the other, Felipe. Men, mostly tribesmen, grouped and drifted around, many of them holding incongruous pieces of paper, careful not to go near the soldiers or the comedor. Felipe appeared to be admitting them; one by one, they sat in the chair opposite him while he took their pictures. The Judge, meanwhile, looked like he was then discharging them – more or less immediately. A soldier was handing out parcels.

  My eyes went back to the comedor and fixed themselves above Jorge’s galley. Cordero was enthroned at the top of the steps. He had moved our dining table to the very edge and there he sat behind it, not facing outwards like the Judge but sideways on, as though the whole clearing were his office and the entire forest his barracks. He raised his head like a grazing bull disturbed.

  Sole was serving him coffee. She was wearing one of Tord’s baseball caps – also pulled down low. We had spoken. There was no question that she would be leaving with us as soon as we came back. She just had to get through the next four hours.

  I stopped. The mud was cracking from the lack of rain. I knew that it would be foolish to draw attention to her in front of Cordero and his men. But, still, it cost me to turn away.

  As we approached the river path, Felipe looked up and tried to smile but guilt and self-reproach were asphyxiating him and his grin looked more like some twisted choke. The Judge did not pause in his work.

  IV

  We took both of our boats. Three of Cordero’s men followed us. They watched us beach the first and then they turned and sped off. I had agreed to a second meeting with Cordero. There was nothing to be gained from refusing and – now that he knew about Tupki and Kanari – there was nothing he could ask me that I could not answer directly. I wanted only to be able to secure our equipment and the lab and then leave. If he was going to arrest us, then I assumed he would arrest us regardless. If they escorted us out, then so be it.

  Paradoxically, the river seemed friendlier than before – busier, certainly. Canoes passed. There were families, groups of three and four – many of them presumably travelling to the registration in the hope of whatever was being handed out. Some of them waved. Some of them did not. There were hand-paddled craft as well as peque-peques. But nobody paid us any special attention. And we were not unduly worried about being in the forest. As Lothar said, while the soldiers were based at the Station, then that was the most dangerous place to be; and everybody for dozens of miles around knew exactly who we were and what we were doing.

  We had decided to work in relays for speed. Lothar carried from the storage hut and dropped off on our grey tarpaulin – roughly halfway along the path; I picked up from there and ferried almost as far as the river. Kim waited on a clay rise, standing on a second tarpaulin from where she could see the boats, then, as I dropped off, she took things down to stow. All the kit that we had taken out to the store haphazardly, one day at a time, now had to be brought back in a single trip. Besides the DNA amplifier, I wanted to collect the field scopes, the spare GPS, the camping gear, the emergency and first-aid bags. Everything that we used was owned by our department – under-resourced, under-funded – and I was determined to do my duty even if I was leaving my post. But after two relays – each a full fifteen minutes there and back – I was changing my mind. I wanted to be going.

  I reached the tarpaulin where Lothar had left another load and stood a moment beneath a great cumaru tree. Ants were streaming up and down and around the trunk in thin diagonals like shiny black necklaces strewn by passing spirits. Odontomachus bauri. Trap-jaw ants; 130 microseconds to spring shut their mandibles and no living creature in the world that moved quicker. I had never seen them in the field before.

  I resolved to do this relay and then wait for Lothar on the next return. I slung the additional pack over my shoulder and picked up the box of field scopes and the GPS and set off back down the trail. The jungle was rinsing every last mineral from my body. At a fallen trunk, I put down the box to swig my water.

  Something ripped my shirt over my head.

  Or this – in the quarter second – was all that I could think had happened. There was darkness – intense heat – but even before the panic had detonated, I was pushed over by a forceful weight – a body – or arms – or shoulders – some kind of animal – something that had barrelled into me with great force. And so I went down in worsening confusion – blind – crashing into the trunk ahead – calling out – my wrist twisting against some branch I could not see. I struggled to move, to find my feet – and now my mind came racing into the moment, chasing my body, and hot fear flooded my veins. What animal so big? Pain bloomed. I felt myself being yanked up and my head jerked back so that I thought my neck was about to be broken. I began to fight and flail and still I could not properly stand. Voices. And then horrified, understanding . . . that this was a hood and that I was a prisoner. The sweat on my back ran cold and I stood at last, dead still, sucking hotter and hotter air closer and closer about my face while a strange reason – or wild irrational shock – numbed the pain and shut the panic. And already I was assessing, bargaining, pleading – as my tongue found a rough mouth hole and my ears strained and I felt a rope being bound over my wrists.

  V

  Cracks of light. I was standing in a rough storage hut – similar to our own. The floor wa
s dirt and little else. The roof sloped: as I faced the door, it reached up to my right no more than a foot higher than myself; to my left it came down as low as my knees into the deeper darkness. I paced carefully as my eyes adjusted: three and a half strides long, two and a half wide – though I must bend and then crouch to guess the width. Further into the gloom, where the roof was lowest, there were piled plastic sacks of the kind used for chemicals or fertilizer.

  Moving spider-fingered down the wall, I put my eye to each light. If I was anywhere near another building, I could not see it. My guess was that I was in a clearing – though not a large one; nothing more than where two paths met, perhaps.

  Panic swept through me like a storm again. I yelled and gripped the cross beam with my hand and shook and juddered at the door. But nothing gave. I threw my shoulder at it. Nothing. I kicked – again and again and then with my heel. The door moved a quarter of an inch each time – no more. My foot began to throb with the pain and I stopped, resting my hands on my knees, sweat dripping off me, breathing hard.

  I forced myself to consider. I forced myself to be rational.

  They had removed the hood so that I could walk. I had stumbled barely thirty paces and yet already my eyes recognized nothing of where I was – the same path, some other? With my hands roughly bound, I had followed the bare, brown, sweat-covered back of the anonymous man in front. He had never once turned. I had not been able to tell what kind of man he was or how old. He had not stopped, but somehow, though forever ten steps ahead, he had measured his pace to slow a little as I slowed and speed up whenever I did the same.

  I could not be sure how long we walked. They took my watch along with my pack. My only gauge was that it had not grown dark. Twice I attempted to look around to see the faces of the men behind me, but each time I was met with a blow to my shoulder blade that sent me stumbling forward, crying out with pain.

  When, at last, the figure stopped, I automatically did the same – as if mesmerized into mirroring his every action. But before I could shake off this spell the hood was back on my head. Then they cut the cord that bound my wrists and led me blindly by the hand – something momentarily tender and out of place in the gesture – before they kicked me inside the hut.