Dennis Wheatley - Unholy Crusade

Chela made her genuflection, then knelt in silent prayer. While

she was doing so, Adam saw that people were queuing up in front the altar and he was quite touched to see a peasant, evidently to father of two small boys, who made them kneel beside him, then sprinkled their heads with Holy Water.

To Adam's surprise Chela remained on her knees for a good ten minutes. As they left the church he said, `I had no idea you were so devout. In people who lead the sort of life you do, that is unusual in these days.'

`It so happens that I am deeply religious,' she replied seriously. but even if I weren't, I should give all the support I could to the church, because it is the only body that strives to better the lot of our down trodden peasantry.'

In his youth, having been brought up as a Presbyterian, Adam had often heard it said that Catholic priests battened on their flocks and extorted the last sou from them to build grandiose churches or send as tribute to the Pope; so he remarked, a shade cynically. `That may be so here; but in Catholic countries in Europe the Church hasn't a record it can be very proud of. For centuries it has deliberately kept its followers in ignorance and played on their superstitions to wring money from them.' 'That is not true,' she retorted sharply. `Religion is a very necessary discipline. Its acceptance prevents the break up of families and enables people to resist many temptations from which, if they gave way to them, crimes would result. The teachings of the Church are based upon a combination of divine revelations and immensely long experience. Therefore, to allow them to be questioned is not for the common good. As for the money side of the poor have few pleasures and one of them is attending the great feasts of the Church. Their impressive pageantry must be paid for and the people make their contributions willingly. Anyhow, in Mexico, ever since the Conquest, the Church has done nothing but good.'

`How about the Inquisition? You must have had that here.' `For a time there were auto da fe, just as there were in Spain, but on nothing like so great a scale. Its only victims in the New World were Portuguese Jews and other European heretics. The Indians benefited so greatly under the rule of the Fathers that the vast majority of them accepted Christianity willingly, made it the focus of their lives and became, in their own way, very devout. Mentally, though, they were and are like children and not fully responsible; so the Church decreed that the Inquisition should not apply to them.'

`I find it surprising that the Indians should have given up their old gods so readily.'

`Well…' Chela hesitated. `They didn't exactly. The Church was clever about that. Just as happened in Europe hundreds of years earlier, it allowed its pagan converts to identify the more beneficent of their gods with Christian saints. That is why you often see statues of saints with Indian features and brown faces in the churches here. But there is no harm in that since their devotees practice the Christian religion.'

By half past three they were back in the city. Chela dropped Adam at his hotel and that evening took him to a party given by one of her friends. There he saw unmistakably that he was by no means the only pebble on her beach. Two good looking Mexicans and an American pursued her with unflagging ardour and she flirted outrageously with all three of them. Adam cut in whenever he could, but they were older friends of hers than he was, and he could not help wondering whether she was having a serious affaire with one or other of them. He tried not to show his jealousy, but doubted if he succeeded.

At this party he met a couple who invited him to one they were giving the following night and, on learning that Chela was going to it, he happily accepted. The following day he did not see her until the evening; so he spent the time visiting the Cathedral and the Museum of History.

On the Friday morning Chela called for him again and they set off for Cuernavaca. It lay some thirty miles away and the road took them up into the highlands south of Mexico City. They climbed to ten thousand feet through grasslands and, even at that height, occasional woods of pine and casuarina trees; then they descended the steep slope to five thousand feet and entered the city.

It too, was on a steep slope and very different from the capital. There were few big modern buildings; the streets were narrow and the houses mostly very old. That of the Enriquezes was near the castle like residence that Cortex had had built and lived in during his declining years. From the street the house appeared tall, narrow and by no means impressive; but it had great depth, with fine, lofty rooms inside, the furnishings of which contrasted strongly with those of the penthouse in the Avenida Presidente Masarik. Here there were Old Masters and fine tapestries on the time darkened wood panelled walls, Indian woven mats on the polished floors, chairs, tables and commodes that had belonged to Spanish hidalgos long since dead; so that Adam felt as though he had entered the house of a nobleman living in an earlier century.

Alongside the house and beyond it there was a charming garden with a large, irregular shaped swimming pool, across a narrow

neck of which was a broad wooden bridge supporting a summer house. As it was a lovely day, they decided to refresh themselves with a swim; so they changed into swimsuits at once and, for the first time, Adam saw Chela almost naked. Never, he decided, had seen a girl with a more beautiful figure and, from the way she arrowed her eyes slightly as she looked at him, he inwardly rejoiced at the thought that, almost certainly, she was admiring is own splendid proportions.

After their swim they sunbathed for a while then, still in their bathing things, lunched under an awning in the garden. It was then time for the siesta, although Adam begrudged the hours that he would be deprived of the sight of the lovely Mexican girl who had so swiftly become his divinity.

At five o'clock they met again downstairs and soon afterwards four other week end guests arrived, all young people who were friends of Chela's. The introductions were barely over when her father joined them. With him he brought a handsome, well set up man with dark, wavy hair and lustrous brown eyes, who looked to be about thirty. He had a strong likeness to Bernadino Enriquez, and Adam was not surprised when it transpired that he was Chela's half brother.

On seeing him she exclaimed, `Why, Ramon, what are you doing here? Why have you left Washington?'

Laughing, he kissed her. `I got in on this morning's plane. A big deal connected with plastics is being negotiated with the United States government, and our Ambassador thought it would be a good idea to send me down to discuss it with father.'

`I should have thought the United States have enough plastics of their own,' she remarked.

`Oh, it's not a deal in that sense,' he replied lightly. `It's a matter of exchanging information on certain secret processes.' After they had had drinks under the awning where Adam and Chela had lunched, all of them except Ramon and his father went up to change into bathing things. When they came out of the house Adam saw that father and son had settled themselves in the summer house on the bridge over the neck of the pool and were in earnest conversation. But he gave them only a glance, as his eyes were all for Chela.

For a while the six young people dived, laughed and plunged about in the broader end of the pool then, after a long swim under water, Adam surfaced to find that Chela had disappeared. Momentarily he was seized with an awful fear that she had perhaps

dived in where it was too shallow, hit her head on the bottom, knocked herself out and failed to come up. Grabbing the diving

board from below, he pulled himself out of the water, threw a leg over the board and swung himself up on to it. From there he could see the whole of that end of the pool. It was lined with blue tiles and the water was clear, but Chela was nowhere to be seen.