by Andy Maslen
“Hey, no problem,” she said, smiling brightly again. “We leave our negative energy at the door when we enter Eden, right? That’s what Père Christophe teaches us. And here’s a funny thing. When I was shopping in Nova Cidade—that’s our nearest town—I saw a newspaper. We don’t have them at Eden, but it’s sort of allowed if you peek at one in a bookstore or a gas station. My stepdad? He was killed by a minivan a month after I arrived here. A hit and run, right outside their house. Who knew? It was, like, divine retribution. So, how about you? What’s your story?”
“Me? Oh, you know, I lost my way, I guess, after the Army. Started wondering what I’d been fighting for. Then I went to a meeting at the place in Sloane Square. Do you know it?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I mean, I know we’ve got other places outside of Brazil, but I’ve been here for the last five years straight. Never want to leave. Père Christophe’s, like, so cool. As long as you follow the First Order, you know?”
“Serve God through Père Christophe’s will?”
“That’s the one! And, I mean, we all do, right? From morning prayers right through to bedtime. I just hope one day he gives me the Second Order.”
“What’s that?” Gabriel said.
“Didn’t they teach you that in England, yet? Maybe you got invited out here before they had the chance. OK, so the Second Order is the ultimate test of your devotion. There are so many evil forces in the world, Gabriel. That’s what Père Christophe teaches us every day. Governments, big corporations, trade unions, organised crime, law enforcement agencies, universities, the UN, NATO: they’re all a massive international conspiracy. Even the so-called world religions are in on it.”
OK, here it comes, the nut at the centre of the cake. “In on what?”
“Trying to prevent ordinary people from touching God, of course! I mean, look at us, right? No possessions, no property, no stabbing each other in the back to climb some corporate greasy pole. Just love for God. That’s a subversive message, Gabriel, it really is. Père Christophe teaches that if everyone was just allowed to love God, they’d stop buying all that worthless stuff and cluttering up their lives with fear and hatred. All the drug companies peddling their tranquillisers and antidepressants? They’d go out of business overnight.”
“Oh, yeah. I mean, of course. That’s what’s really wrong with the world. The conspiracy.”
“Exactly! So, like, the Second Order is when Père Christophe asks you to give your life for God. ‘Give your life to cleanse the world of sin,’ is, like, the official version. He doesn’t want to do it, on account of, obviously, you’re leaving him, and he loves you so much, but he knows even he has to submit to God’s will. It’s such an honour, when you go to your glorification. And then you’re there, actually there, in heaven, with God. One of the chosen. Père Christophe says in the end we’ll all have to follow the Second Order, and we’ll be reunited in God’s love. Till then, we just obey Père Christophe in all things.”
She smiled at him again and patted him twice, lightly, on the thigh.
“So, have many of us received the Second Order? I mean, here, in Eden?” he asked.
“Wow, you ask a ton of questions. But, yeah, six this year. It’s not, like, an everyday thing, you know? But there is a lot of sin that needs burning out of this world.”
Gabriel had a sudden flashback: a burning tangle of twisted, blackened metal, draped with body parts, and ball bearings rolling to a stop in pools of blood. He clamped his lips together to stop himself saying anything.
They turned off the main road into a little industrial estate—just a handful of workshops with smashed up cars outside and a few warehouses—and drove along an access road that snaked through the buildings. As the Range Rover emerged from between the last two warehouses, Gabriel gasped. Ahead of them was nothing but hundreds of miles of forest, stretching into the distance in bands of green that lightened progressively with each range of hills. Directly in front of them was a hangar, its massive doors open to reveal a handful of small, white planes including a couple of twin-prop models with space for maybe six passengers apiece. The airfield was just that: a close-cropped landing strip of grass, maybe a third of mile long and a couple of hundred feet across.
Eve killed the engine and unbuckled her seat belt. “I’m going to find José; he’s our pilot. Have a look around if you like, but stay where we can find you, OK?”
“Sure, you’re the boss.”
She flashed him another dazzling smile and walked back towards the hangar. Her white shorts and T-shirt did amazing things for her, not least revealing most of her smooth, brown skin. As he watched her disappear into the hangar, he noticed a small group of people checking parachutes. Members of a club, presumably. Nice place for that kind of hobby. Gabriel thought back to his early days in the Parachute Regiment. All those hundreds of jumps. Everybody had their favourite, but his was the LALO—Low Altitude Low Opening. A burst of wind in his face as he left the plane at around six hundred feet, then he yanked the ripcord and was down before he’d had time to take in the scenery. No time to deploy his reserve chute if the main chute failed. A real death or glory jump.
The weather had settled after the earlier squall. It was hot again, but the humidity had gone. There was a light breeze blowing towards him and he stood facing into it, feeling the sweat evaporate off his face and arms. The place smelled of aviation fuel and the heady perfume of a huge flowering vine smothered in dark purple blossoms that sprawled over the corner of the hangar and along a low breeze-block wall that ran away from it at right angles. Gabriel went to sit on the wall. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath in, then let it out through his open mouth. Rotating his head on his neck he took the moment of quiet to prepare for his inevitable meeting with the man who had summoned him here, to a cult compound in the depths of the rainforest in Amazonas State. Questions. And answers.
Who are you? I am Child Gabriel.
Why did you join the Children of Heaven? Nothing in my life made sense any more.
What is the First Order? Do God’s bidding through you, Père Christophe.
Are you a spy? Or a journalist? No. I am, I was, lost. Now I am found.
Would you give your life for me? For God? I would do anything for you, Père Christophe. Especially help you on your way to meet Him.
38
Target Acquired
A CALL FROM EVE ROUSED Gabriel from his meditation. She’d shouted his name and when he opened his eyes, he saw her walking back towards him and waving. He levered himself off the wall, its surface rough under his fingertips, suddenly aware of a great fatigue dragging at his muscles, and went to join her in front of the hangar.
“José’s basically ready to leave. He says the weather’s OK. It’s the Cessna with GZ108 on the side, the one nearest the door.” She pointed to the plane. “Come on. I bet you can’t wait to meet Père Christophe.”
“You’re right, I can’t. It feels like I’m meeting someone I was always meant to connect with.”
“That is so weird. That is exactly how I felt.”
Ten minutes later, they were flying fifteen hundred feet over the rainforest. Below them, the Rio Negro twined through the millions of trees, a silver ribbon woven into a tapestry of emerald, sage, lime, light, dark, pea, mint—more shades of green than Gabriel had thought possible. Beside him, Eve sat silently, her eyes closed, her lips moving. Praying, he guessed. For guidance, maybe. Or else she was just a nervous flyer. But the little plane was stable, not even a bump from clear-air turbulence or a slewing dip from a crosswind. He enjoyed flying in light planes and he craned his neck to see the river beneath them. At one point, it widened out into a lake, maybe a few hundred yards long, and he could see alligators, or crocodiles, massed in the shallows, their long, dark bodies recognisable from a thousand nature documentaries. There wouldn’t be much left of you if you ended up dumped in their dining room. Nothing at all, in fact.
Thirty minutes’ more flying brought them
directly over Eden. Gabriel realised he’d been expecting something akin to a large farmhouse and maybe a couple of acres of land around it. As José banked the plane round to give him the tour it became clear just how vast this jungle paradise really was. How did you get to own that much land out here? Who did you have to bribe? And with what?
Eden’s airfield was another strip of mown grass with a corrugated iron hangar abutting it and a prefabricated office building off to one side. José brought the Cessna in for a perfect three-point landing, and a few minutes after that, Eve and Gabriel were inside the office waiting for their lift to the village in the centre of the cult’s land, named The Heart of Eden.
The ride into The Heart of Eden wasn’t quite as pleasant as their air-conditioned trip in the Range Rover. This was a beaten-up, old, American Jeep that looked as if it had first seen active service in Korea, if not World War II. Its olive-green paintwork was giving way to rust, and there were numerous bullet holes in the bodywork. The driver was a young man Eve introduced as Child Soren. He was Danish, with blonde hair and bright, pale-blue eyes. He drove skilfully, but the Jeep’s failing suspension was no match for the ruts in the track that led from the airfield to the village. Eve had her left hand clamped to the open side of the car; her right was squeezing Gabriel’s left forearm.
Five minutes of bouncing into and out of potholes and juddering across the corrugated red earth brought them to the centre of the village. A cluster of adobe huts with colourful fabrics in the windows faced a central square that also housed a larger building with a huge wooden cross outside—some sort of meeting hall or church, Gabriel assumed. Behind the square, down a beaten-flat, earth path, stood an imposing, single-storey, timber-framed building. Dismounting from the Jeep and shouldering his bag, Gabriel wondered whether this was the dwelling of Père Christophe.
His suspicions were confirmed when a man with long, greyish-blond hair and matching beard and moustache came out of the house’s front door and waved to him.
“Look,” Eve said, nudging Gabriel in the ribs. “It’s Père Christophe. He’s come to greet you personally.
The man Gabriel had been sent to kill ambled down the path towards him. He held Gabriel’s gaze the whole way, like a snake approaching its prey, and walked so slowly it took him a full minute to close the thirty yards between them. As he got closer, Gabriel used the time to study his target. Jardin wasn’t tall, an inch or so shorter than Gabriel. His build was slight, though as a breeze blew his loose white robe against his torso, neatly defined abdominal muscles became briefly visible. You work out, then.
Arriving, finally, in front of Gabriel, he held his arms wide. Gabriel stepped into the embrace, letting himself slump against the older man, and relaxing his own muscles. Jardin kissed him on both cheeks, then held him by the biceps, at arm’s length. He had thin, delicate, pianist’s fingers tipped with long nails that gave his hands the appearance of claws. His face was disfigured with deep, pitted acne scars on his cheeks. His eyes, still burning into Gabriel’s, were an unsettling deep purplish-blue, and his nose was straight and classically fine.
“Child Gabriel,” he said, speaking English in a breathy voice still coloured by his upbringing in Paris. “Welcome to Eden. Aunt Christine told me of your background. You were sent by God to me, and I am grateful.”
Feeling that some sort of obeisance was required, Gabriel sank to his knees and kissed the other man’s sandaled foot, whispering, “Père Christophe, you are my saviour”. He stayed down, counting the hairs on the big toe and wondering whether he had overdone it, until Jardin more or less hauled him to his feet again, a flicker of a grin chasing itself off his thin lips.
“Come now, my child. I am nobody’s saviour. I am just a lowly messenger, a servant of God.” He turned to Eve, who was standing, entranced, her green eyes glistening. “And you, Child Eve. Thank you for bringing Child Gabriel to us. Your flight, it was not too frightening?”
She looked down, but he lifted her chin with a delicate grip of thumb and forefinger.
“It was fine, Père Christophe. I was much less frightened than last time.”
“Good, good. We will cure you of your phobia yet. Now, I wish to spend some time with Child Gabriel, alone, so forgive us. I am sure you have chores to attend to.”
She smiled at him. “Of course, Père Christophe. And yes, I mean, I have chores. It is my turn to help prepare the evening meal.”
“Very good. God be with you.” He waved her way with a languid flap of his hand, his attention focused entirely on Gabriel. “Come, then, Child Gabriel. I have many questions I want to ask of you.”
They walked back up the path together, Jardin placing his arm across Gabriel’s shoulder. All around was the sound of birdsong. Not the garden birds familiar to Gabriel from his life in rural Wiltshire. These were louder, brasher, more strident calls, and exotic songs full of trills and fluting sounds. He looked up just as a flight of half a dozen blue and yellow macaws clattered out of a palm tree and swooped into the branches of another on the other side of the village.
Inside the timber house, the air was at least thirty degrees cooler than the temperature outside. Gabriel shivered as gooseflesh prickled along his arms and over his chest. The entrance hall was dark after the bright sunlight outside, and Gabriel’s eyes took a few moments to adjust to the gloom. Jardin steered him by the elbow into a room at the far end of the corridor. Another adjustment was needed, psychological this time, rather than visual. It was a huge room, lined with books, CDs and, in the spaces between the rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves, some extremely valuable works of art. Gabriel would make no claims to scholarship in matters cultural, but he recognised a couple of the works as being by Andy Warhol and another as one of Picasso’s paintings of his muse, Dora Maar.
Jardin watched as Gabriel turned a full circle, taking in the magnificence of his surroundings compared to the rudimentary architecture and fittings of the adobe huts outside. He was smiling and stroking his beard as Gabriel returned his gaze to his own.
“What are you thinking, Child Gabriel?” he asked.
“That God truly has smiled on you, his servant, Père Christophe. The paintings are exquisite.” He pointed to the Picasso. “Is that a Renoir?”
Jardin snorted. “A Renoir? Do they teach you nothing in that country of yours? Such philistines. No, that is by the master himself, Pablo Picasso. Now, sit there and relax and let me bring you some tea.”
He pointed to a vast sofa piled with silk-covered cushions in shades of rust and gold. Gabriel sat, grateful both for the rest and the chance to conduct a fast situational analysis while Jardin was out of the room. Standing beside the sofa was a three-foot-high sculpture of a naked woman, cast in bronze from what appeared to be an assemblage of thumb-sized lumps of clay. She was as slender as a baseball bat. He caressed the top of her head and took an experimental grip around her elongated neck. Could he beat the man to death and begin the clean-up operation before he’d even had a meal in Eden? He stood and picked up the sculpture, hefting it in his hands. No. No martyrs; that was Don’s order. A straightforward bludgeoning would definitely create one. He replaced the sculpture on the floor and resumed his seat.
Jardin reappeared at this moment with two yellow gourds, each the size of a grapefruit, with wisps of water vapour curling off the liquid within. Silver straws rested against matching silver rims. He gave one to Gabriel, who looked down at a floating mat of beige leaves, and took his own to sit at the other end of the sofa, where he twisted round to face Gabriel.
“This is chimarrão,” he said. “Elsewhere in Latin America, they use the Spanish name yerba mate. It will perk you up a little. I know you have had a long day.”
Gabriel bent his head and sucked on the silver straw. The hot liquid that spurted into his mouth made him first wince, then gasp. The flavour was an unpleasant combination of wood smoke, dried grass, and very weak coffee. Almost instantly, he felt his pulse pick up and settle at an elevated rate of maybe eighty or
eighty-five. He broke out in a sweat and put the gourd down on a side table to wipe his forehead.
“It’s very strong,” he said, as the blood rushed in his ears and his heart jumped and stuttered in his chest.
“Caffeine. Lots of it. Some say it has a bigger hit than amphetamines … for the uninitiated. Now,” Jardin said, putting his own gourd down, untouched, “tell me, Child Gabriel, why did you really join the Children of Heaven?”
Gabriel tried to formulate an answer, but something was wrong with his tongue. It seemed to have swollen inside his mouth and he couldn’t get it to move. Jardin’s face was blurring then swinging back into focus. He tried again and heard a stranger’s voice as if through a thin hotel bedroom wall, “I was in crisis. I was lost. I felt life had no purpose.” He’d rehearsed the mantra thousands of times on the flight from Heathrow to the airport in Rio.
“Really,” Jardin said, not even trying to conceal the contempt in his voice. “How unfortunate for you. Was the security business not fulfilling your spiritual needs?”
39
Exposed …
“WHA-WHAT YOU MEAN, SECURITY BUSINESS?” Gabriel said, trying to steady himself by gripping the armrest of the sofa and aware, as he stared at Jardin, that red light didn’t normally emanate from people’s eyes.
“Wolfe and Cunningham. Your business card. Very nice website by the way. Very … professional.”
“But we, in the fire. Everything. We freed ourselves from, you know. Everything.”
“Yes, you did. And when you left the ceremony, we extinguished the flames to check your identities. Running a cult leaves one open to prying from all kinds of undesirable people.”
Gabriel could feel his heart hammering in his chest. It took on a samba rhythm as Jardin’s face wavered in front of him.
“I don’t feel well, Père Christophe.”