The Lord of Opium(111)

A fork-tailed hawk crested the trees in search of prey, and a family of quail sat as still as a painting in the dappled shade of a bush. Nothing was unduly alarmed by the people moving through their domain. The animals were cautious, as they would have been with one another, but not frightened. They had not been hunted for a century.

Matt saw a white building with stained-glass windows beyond a woven fence of reeds. “Is that a church?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” said Sor Artemesia with a crooked smile. “It’s the chapel of Jesús Malverde.”

There had been a small shrine in Ajo and near the nursery in Paradise, but this was a building as big as a church. A long room had pews on either side and an altar at the end. Storerooms and a kitchen were separate from the main chapel. This was a serious meeting place, and Matt wondered what sort of rituals were performed for a saint who answered the prayers of drug dealers. Stained-glass windows showed Malverde standing in a marijuana patch, giving money to the poor, casting blindness on a troop of narcotics agents, and warning a drug mule to flee.

The altar was covered with silver charms, candles, and gifts like the one in Ajo. On a dais behind it was the saint himself, sitting in a chair. A cactus wren had made a nest in the timbers over his head, and wisps of grass had fallen onto Jesús Malverde’s black hair.

This was a far better statue than the other ones Matt had seen. The saint’s hair was carefully combed, and his face was painted with care. He wore a white shirt and bandanna. His trousers were black and his shoes were polished and expensive-looking. In one hand he held a bag of money. In the other was a sheaf of dollar bills. At his feet was a carpet of gold coins.

“María!” squealed Fidelito, popping up from behind a pew. The little boy ran up and hugged her. “I was so worried about you. Are you all waked up? Did you see things when you flew through the wormhole?”

But María couldn’t tell him, because she had no memory of it.

“Be gentle with her, chico. She’s been ill,” said Sor Artemesia, untangling the little boy’s arms.

“Where’s Listen? I found dolls at the back of the altar. She’d like them.”

Sor Artemesia shuddered. “That’s brujería, mijo. Witchcraft. Those are voodoo dolls meant to curse someone, and it’s better if you don’t touch them. I couldn’t get Listen to leave Mbongeni.” The nun found the dolls and threw them away. She draped the altar cloth in the appropriate place and stood back to admire her work. “There!” she said. “That should take some of the curse off this place.”

Sor Artemesia had planned the refuge carefully. She had stashed bottles of drinking water along the walls, and crackers and beef jerky were stored in plastic boxes to keep them from the mice. She told Fidelito to fetch sleeping bags from a cupboard and lay them on the pews for beds.

“Won’t the saint be angry that we’re living in his house?” said the little boy.

“That saint,” said Sor Artemesia, “wouldn’t care if you turned the place into a nightclub.”

They made María lie down and propped her up with pillows. The nun insisted that she eat some jerky and drink a little coffee with lots of sugar. Matt also drank coffee, although he didn’t like it. He’d been fasting for days and felt light-headed.

“I don’t want to leave you,” he said.

“You have to, Don Sombra. You have duties,” said Sor Artemesia.

“I never asked for them,” he said wearily. “I’m tired of cleaning up El Patrón’s mess and watching the opium farms churn out drugs. I’m tired of watching eejits die. It’s like a giant machine with no off button. Why shouldn’t I stay here with people I love and forget the whole miserable thing?”

“You can’t, Brother Wolf.” María had been silent until now, but the food had brought life back into her eyes.

“The problem is too big, mi vida,” said Matt. Thousands of people and billions of dollars are involved. We need an army to deal with it, and I can’t trust anyone who has one.” He threw up his hands. “If I had such a force, who would I attack? What would I invade?”

“You must begin by freeing the eejits,” María said gently.

“Oh, sure! Like I haven’t been working on that.”

“I spoke with Cienfuegos before he went away,” Sor Artemesia said. “He says the Scorpion Star is the source of the power that controls the eejits. You have to destroy it.”

Matt looked at her in amazement. This was not the gentle, compassionate nun he was used to. “There are three hundred people on that space station.”