Amazonia
Louis keyed open his door and pushed inside. Two things struck him immediately. First, a familiar and arousing scent filled the room. It came from a pot on the small gas stovetop, boiling ayahuasca leaves that produced the powerful hallucinogenic tea, natem.
Second, he heard the whine of the fax machine coming from the study. His new employers were certainly efficient.
“Tshui!” he called out.
He expected no answer, but as was customary among the Shuar tribespeople, one always announced one’s presence when entering a dwelling. He noticed the door to the bedroom slightly ajar.
With a smile, he crossed to the study and watched another sheet of paper roll from the machine and fall to the growing stack. The details of the upcoming mission. “Tshui, I have marvelous news.”
Louis retrieved the topmost printout from the faxed pile and glanced at it. It was a list of those who would comprise the U.S. search team.
10:45 P.M. UPDATE from Base Station Alpha
I. Op. AMAZONIA: Civilian Unit Members (1) Kelly O’Brien, M.D.—MEDEA
(2) Francis J. O’Brien—Environmental Center, CIA
(3) Olin Pasternak—Science and Technology Directorate, CIA
(4) Richard Zane, Ph.D.—Tellux Pharmaceutical research head
(5) Anna Fong, Ph.D.—Tellux Pharmaceutical employee
II. Op. AMAZONIA: Mil. Support: 75th Army Ranger Unit CAPTAIN: Craig Waxman
STAFF SERGEANT: Alberto Kostos
CORPORALS: Brian Conger, James DeMartini, Rodney Graves, Thomas Graves, Dennis Jorgensen, Kenneth Okamoto, Nolan Warczak, Samad Yamir
III. Op. AMAZONIA: Locally Recruited (1) Manuel Azevedo—FUNAI, Brazilian national
(2) Resh Kouwe, Ph.D.—FUNAI, Indigenous Peoples Representative
(3) Nathan Rand, Ph.D.—Ethnobotanist, U.S. citizen
Louis almost missed the last name on the list. He gripped the faxed printout tighter. Nathan Rand, the son of Carl Rand. Of course, it made sense. The boy would not let this team search for his father without accompanying them. He closed his eyes, savoring this boon. It was as if the gods of the dark jungle were aligning in his favor. The revenge he had failed to mete upon the father would fall upon the shoulders of the son. It was almost biblical.
As he stood there, he heard a slight rustle coming from the next room, the master bedroom. He let the paper slip from his fingers back to the pile. He would have time later to review the details and formulate a plan. Right now, he simply wanted to enjoy the serendipity of the moment.
“Tshui!” he called again and crossed to the bedroom door.
He slipped the door open and found the room beyond lit with candles and a single incense burner. His mistress lay naked on the canopy bed. The queen-sized bed was draped in white silk with its mosquito net folded back. The Shuar woman reclined upon pillows atop the ivory sheets. Her deep-bronze skin glowed in the candlelight. Her long black hair was a fan around her, while her eyes were heavy-lidded from both passion and natem tea. Two cups lay on the small nightstand, one empty, the other full.
As usual, Louis found his breath simply stolen from him at the sight of his love. He had first met the beauty three years ago in Equador. She had been the wife of a Shuar chieftain, until the fool’s infidelity had enraged her. She slew him with his own machete. Though such acts—both the infidelity and the murder—were common among the brutal Shuar, Tshui was banished from the tribe, sent naked into the jungle. None, not even the chieftain’s kinsmen, would dare touch her. She was well known throughout the region as one of the rare female shamans, a practitioner of wawek, malevolent sorcery. Her skill at poisons, tortures, and the lost art of tsantza, head-shrinking, was both respected and feared. In fact, the only article of adornment she had worn as she left the village was the shrunken head of her husband, hung on a twined cord and resting between her br**sts.
This was how Louis found the woman, a wild, beautiful creature of the jungle. Though he had an estranged wife back in France, Louis had taken the woman as his own. She had not refused, especially when he and his mercenaries slew every man, woman, and child in her village, marking her revenge.
Since that day, the two had been inseparable. Tshui, an accomplished interrogator and wise in the ways of the jungle, accompanied him on all his missions. She continued to collect trophies from each venture.
Around the room, aligned on shelves on all four walls, were forty-three tsantza, each head no more than a wizened apple—the eyes and lips sewn closed, the hair trailing over the shelf edges like Spanish moss on trees. Her skill at shrinking heads was amazing. He had watched the entire process once.
Once was enough.
With the skill of a surgeon, she would flay the skin in one piece from the skull of her victim, sometimes while he or she was still alive and screaming. She truly was an artist. After boiling the skin, hair and all, and drying it over hot ashes, she used a bone needle and thread to close the mouth and eyes, then filled the inside with hot pebbles and sand. As the leathery skin shrank, she would mold its shape with her fingers. Tshui had an uncanny ability to sculpt the head into an amazing approximation of the victim’s original face.
Louis glanced to her latest work of art. It rested on the far bedside table. It was a Bolivian army officer who had been blackmailing a cocaine shipper. From his trimmed mustache to the straight bangs hanging over his forehead, the detail of her work was amazing. The collection was worthy of the finest museum. In fact, the staff of the Hotel Seine thought Louis was a university anthropologist, collecting these specimens for just such a museum. If any thought otherwise, they knew to keep silent.
“Ma chérie,” he said, finding his breath again. “I have wonderful news.”
She rolled toward him, reaching in his direction. She made a small sound, encouraging him to join her. Tshui seldom spoke. A word here or there. Otherwise, like some jungle cat, she was all eyes, motions, and soft purrs.
Louis could not resist. He knocked off his hat and slipped from his jacket. In moments, he was as naked as she. His own body was lean, muscled, and crisscrossed with scars. He swallowed the draught of natem laid out for him while Tshui lazily traced one of his scars down his belly to his inner thigh. A shiver trembled up his back.
As the drug swept through him, heightening his senses, he fell upon his woman. She opened to him, and he sank gratefully into her warmth. He kissed her deeply, while she raked his back with sharpened nails.
Soon, colors and lights played across his vision. The room spun slightly from the alkaloids in the tea. For a moment, it seemed the scores of shrunken heads were watching their play, the eyes of the dead upon him as he thrust into the woman. The audience aroused him further. He pinned Tshui under him, his back arching as he drove into her again and again, a scream clenched in his chest.