Corny cautioned everyone, “I don’t know exactly how to do this with an unconscious man. I’m now thinking that we don’t put it in the eyes—that’s for another poison. This one goes in the throat and nose. I hope I’m remembering this right. Look, we’ve got to be careful not to accidentally drown him. Be ready to turn him on his side if I tell you.”
Corny then slowly poured the solution of belladonna into my mouth from one of the silver spoons on the dining room table. It didn’t work. They tried again, but I remained slack, a dead weight, the fluid running out my lips. That was when Absalom started praying aloud in his Bahamian-accented school-learned English, joined by the Haitian sergeant. They kept repeating the words of Jesus in Mark 16: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and they will drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
Absalom and Yablonowski placed their hands on my shoulders, continuing their prayers, tears falling from them, their voices getting more desperate with each reiteration. My body did not respond.
“We try again!” yelled Corny. Rork came and held my head steady as Corny reached inside my mouth and wedged my swollen tongue away from my palate. Then he dripped in more solution, this time getting it past the obstruction and down my throat.
“It’s in. All right, now for the membranes—a drop under the tongue and one in the nasal passage.”
They were rewarded seconds later with a twitch of my eyes. Evidently the atropine from the powdered plant somehow roused my internal organs into action. The second symptom of life in my body was a tangible pulse, followed quickly by a shallow breath. A faint moan arrived as the fourth evidence of life. Thus, I am very happy to report that the initial impressions of my heinous demise turned out to be, quite understandably (and, of course, obviously), a misdiagnosis.
Amid the subsequent cheering, Corny shushed everyone. “Listen—we’ve got to get that original poison out. I’m going to try something here. Not sure it will work, but I’m trying to reach the soft palate. If I can reach it, that involuntary muscle might get Peter to react.”
My throat dutifully constricted slightly when he touched it, the gagging reflex being stimulated. Corny called for Cynda to pour snakeroot broth into me, then they rolled me over to allow a route of egress for vomit.
I gagged and coughed, to the accompaniment of more cheers and “Thank you, Lord!” in French, Creole, and English. But no vomit.
“Again!” Corny commanded.
It took three times, but my body at last acted upon its mechanical instincts and followed Corny’s wishes, purging the contents of my stomach. Some of the broth was poured into my nostrils, and that was what finally procured my system’s cooperation—I sneezed into a semi-wakeful state. Snakeroot is a highly unpleasant weed and will, as one now knows, get the attention of the dead.
An hour passed until a more definitive indication of recovery was seen. I opened my eyes and tried to talk. I am told by several of the witnesses that my first slurred communication was less than profound. “I . . . sick.”
Over the ensuing days, I was interrogated ad nauseum by my companions about my experiences of the afterlife. Of course, they were searching for a cosmic meaning, a discovery of the Creator’s grand plan, with a view toward their own futures. That was completely reasonable. I was trying to make sense of it, too. Sorely tempted to create an eloquent account to satisfy their needs, my honesty compelled me to report truthfully that I had no memory of that period. Spreading a deceit, no matter how kindly well-intentioned, about the interaction of earthly life and that of the hereafter, and therefore possibly incurring the displeasure of the Almighty, is far beyond my level of courage.
But what happened during that space of several minutes is a subject that Rork cannot abandon and occasionally still brings up, usually under the stars, usually after several glasses of rum. But, alas, my mind and memory are lamentably mute. The great mystery of life remains unsolved by me.
Sergeant Yablonowski summed it up best of anyone the next day.
“Dosye lanmò, mwen zanmi, andedan un longè lavi. Mèsi ou, Bondye! It was a brief death, my friend, within a long life. Thank you, God!”
***
My recovery took four days. The second day I was eating and walking, and by the third I was ready to go, but Rork refused, insisting on remaining another day for me to get stronger. In those four days we gathered food and provisions from the kitchen and storerooms, maintained a constant guard, and readied ourselves as much as we could for whatever might await us. Conversation revolved around three main topics: finding Luke, discovering Sokolov’s plans, and exacting revenge upon Laurent.
One pleasing discovery was that Yablonowski’s ten men were loyal to him and demonstrated no ill will or hesitation toward their white retinue. They were mainly Kongo people, I learned, with eight of the ten of them true Christians, and thus had no affection for either the Bizango culture or the voudou religion.
Rork and I examined the primary question in our minds—why did Laurent do it? He harbored strong racial animosity, yes, but was that enough? Or was he under orders? From whom? By this point I had to assume Sokolov knew of our presence and motive. Did he control Laurent, through the Bizango men? Laurent owed his promotion and plush assignment to his old comrade and boss General Hyppolite, so would he do harm against a person under the protection of the general? Or was he following the order of the general? Were we allowed into the interior of the country so I could die an apparent accidental death by tropical ailment, so the others would be frightened and flee, going back to America? If so, did that mean the general ordered it? Was his aide Yablonowski part of the conspiracy?
Such convoluted thinking is part of my profession, for events are frequently never what they first seem. But it leads to a certain ambiguity of analysis and ultimately, decision-making, for the potential combinations of motive and capability are always unending. Rork thought Hyppolite the master of this drama, but I thought not. My money was on the Russian. I determined to move forward in our mission, presuming Yablonowski was loyal to me and the general, that the general wished us no harm, and that Laurent was under the control of Sokolov.
We were now well past the point of return anyway; the bonds among our multi-ethnic members having been forged by the death of Claire and Henri, Luke’s undeniable peril, Laurent’s treachery, my mortal escape, and the all-pervading terror of our environs. Those bonds were translated into a thirst for action, a determination to see this through and get it done. And, I must report, the inability of Laurent to kill me had boosted my image among the Haitians.
So, at sunrise on Thursday, the thirtieth of August, 1888, we walked out of the giant fortress. Leaving the Citadelle, we saw a ridge to the east, as tall as the one the fortress occupied. I picked a gap in the ridge as our first transit point and we entered the dark forest. Immediately we became as wet from perspiration as the trees from the rain. Thirty seconds after leaving the open space around the fort, we were enveloped by the tangle of foliage, descending a steep slope into a valley, and only able to see thirty feet ahead at the most. The path was an overgrown animal trail, barely discernible.
With the soldiers chopping a way through, our procession of eighteen blacks and whites became a tiny organism snaking its way into an alien region of the country, which even our Haitians hadn’t visited before. Yablonowski and I took the lead, his crude map and my pocket boat compass our only guides. We’d left the modern nineteenth century behind upon departing Cap Haitien. At the fortress we had entered the eighteenth. Now, as we slowly fought our way east toward an imprisoned boy, we crossed into a primordial world, where time was forgotten and nature ruled without compassion.
Everyone felt it. We were being watched, and were very much on our own.
30
Suh Ghul Wasa!
Mountains of the Chaîne de Vallières
Northern Haiti
Sunday, 2 September 1888
The pace was excruciatingly slow and painful for the next several days. After crossing the Grand Rivière du Nord, we stopped and made camp on the fourth night. My dead reckoning indicated we were approximately twenty rhumb-line miles east of the Citadelle. Of course, actual course over ground was probably closer to fifty or more.
Having slung our hammocks—no one sleeps on the ground in a jungle if you can help it—we were about to settle into a circle and partake of a fish dinner from the river when one of the soldiers on guard came running to report to his sergeant. A couple of men were approaching down the trail. One was white.
As this was being translated for me, we heard a deep voice echo through the canopy of trees. The words were angry but unintelligible to any of our party: “Suh ghul wasa! Wo dar di kona.”
It wasn’t French, Russian, or Creole. Was the white man part of Sokolov’s gang? The advance section of an attack on us? Any man other than my present companions I considered an enemy.
We heard it again, a disgusted tone, someone obviously cursing.
“Suh ghul wasa!”
“Everyone get away from the camp,” I ordered. “Set up a defensive line over there,” pointing to a thicket of bushes. To Yablonowski I said, “We’ll make an ambush. Get your soldiers on each flank. Roche, Rork, and I will hold down the center.”
Now I suppose that it is incumbent upon me to reiterate here that the sergeant knew nothing in detail of my or Rork’s background, or Roche’s for that matter. He thought Rork and I were merchant seamen and the Frenchman an acquaintance of ours, all of our party engaged from the start to find the boy.
So how did he respond to my commands? Well, I have discovered over the years that the human instinct is to herd together in times of danger and follow the lead of anyone who shows decisive guidance. Yablonowski did as told, like the others in our group. Our position was thus formed into a concave ambuscade. The campsite and cooking food served the role of bait, and consequently, the killing ground.
It gets dark in the jungle fast. We were losing the last of the light when I saw movement on the trail. Then it stopped—they’d caught a whiff of the cooking fire. Slowing their advance to a step-by-step reconnaissance, they were within twenty feet of the fire when one of them, he looked light-skinned, stumbled on a ground root and uttered yet another of those strange curses, this time as a whisper.
I checked our line. The soldiers were aiming their muskets at the white man. They looked nervous and about to fire, but I hesitated to give the order. Rork and Roche had the second in line calmly centered in their sights. It would be over quickly. But apparently it wasn’t an attack, there were only two of them. Probably scouting for a larger body behind them. Or maybe they were really alone. What if we could capture and interrogate them?
Rork glanced at me, his face showing impatience with the delay, but at that instant I thought I recognized the white man. But it couldn’t be—it was impossible.
“Woodgerd?” I called out. “Is that you?”
“Who the hell is that out there?” the shadowed figure replied in unmistakable Midwestern American English. He had a pistol in his right hand, leveled at the sound of my voice. I focused on the build, then the face. It was him, all right.
I called out to my companions, “Everyone put down your weapons—he’s a friend! I know him.” I repeated the word “friend” in French, and also in my recently learned Creole: “Un ami, un zanmi.”
They lowered their weapons, obviously perplexed by this stranger and his relationship to their de facto leader. To Woodgerd, I said, “It’s Peter Wake, Michael. And Sean Rork.”
Another outlandish phrase erupted from him, ending in English with, “Good God, what the hell is a squid like you doing in this forsaken friggin’ hellhole, Wake? Don’t tell me Uncle Sam’s navy sent you here? You must be in deep trouble with some desk-bound admiral for them to send you to this sewage pit.”
I’d last seen Colonel Michael Woodgerd three years before, when he was home in Alexandria, Virginia, from a mercenary stint as a military instructor to the Hermit Kingdom of Korea. We’d initially met in 1874, at Genoa, in Italy, then worked together in North Africa. In 1880, I was on assignment in South America and we’d met again, surviving some perilous times on the run from rather irate Chileans. I’d had the impression that he was currently in India, working for some rich maharaja as a military consultant, living a life of dissolute luxury.
His physique still looked the same—tall, barrel-chested, wide-set penetrating eyes—but there the resemblance ended. Now his trimmed goatee had straggled forth into a salt-and-peppered shaggy full beard, his close-cropped hair into long gray waves tied back into a ponytail. He looked like one of those mad intellectual European artists instead of a professional military man and veteran of the Army of the Potomac’s campaigns. He also appeared to have been in the swamps for days, his clothes tattered and filthy. The black man with him was the same.
Rork and I strode forward and shook Woodgerd’s hand.
“I’m on leave from the navy, Michael. This is a personal trip to assist a friend.”
“A personal trip to Haiti?”
“Long story. What about you? You look in bad shape.”
He looked grimly at me and said, “Ha, so do you, squid, but I’m damned glad to see you. I need some help, Peter.”
“Well, so do we, Michael. You start, but first let me tell you who’s who here.”
I introduced him to my people. The Haitian with Woodgerd was named Lucien Aubrac. He stayed quietly in the background, wary of us. Everyone sat down and listened to Woodgerd explain how he was in Haiti as the meal of salt-dried fish and rice was doled out.
It was quite a tale. It turned out that Woodgerd hadn’t been in India. That’s where he thought he was headed, but the intermediary had misled him. Instead, he ended up in Afghanistan, northwest of India. Working in the mountains as a military advisor to a mercurial warlord loyal to the infamously tyrannical king of the country, Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, Woodgerd fought the emir’s enemies for three years. It was no easy task, and one completely without the norms of war expected by Europeans and Americans. Also without any of the luxuries I’d imagined him having in India.
The violent phrases we’d heard as he approached were Pashto curses he’d picked up from his men during the campaign. Suh ghul wasa was a vulgarity that could be more politely translated into “What the hell happened?”
The Afghan contract lasted until the previous January, when he came back to his wife in Virginia and cast about for another mission. Through a friend, he heard of a European on a cattle farm in Haiti who needed a man to run security for the place, evidently against rustlers. An easy job for a man like Woodgerd, one of only a few highly reputable mercenaries in the world who can demand, and get, substantial fees to form and lead large military formations. The term of the contract was until October. The tropics sounded good after the cold of Afghanistan, and it was a short-term commitment, so Woodgerd headed south to the Caribbean. He arrived in May and immediately realized this was no ordinary cattle enterprise. The German name of the farmer he’d been given was an alias—the man was really a Russian named Sokolov.
Cynda gasped. I put my hand on her arm, whispering in her ear, “Let him tell the story. Then I’ll ask about Luke.”
Woodgerd took a breath and continued. “I know you won’t believe this, Peter. I was there and saw it and I didn’t believe it. Sokolov’s farm is a façade for a private military operation that is conducting experiments with aerial warship machines. They’re part of a European revolutionary group and intend to use them against the monarchy in Russia, or anyone who gets in their way.�
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“Revolutionaries,” muttered Roche. “It may also be of interest that the word ‘Sokolov’ means ‘falcon’ in Russian. Aerial warships. Ironic, no?”
“So what happened with you?” I asked Woodgerd.
“Sokolov and his Europeans heard I left the U.S. Army under a dark cloud during the war, so they assumed I was like them—beyond any sense of honor or affiliation. Wrong assumption. Once I saw what was going on, what they planned, I didn’t want any part of it. But there I was, in the middle of this—” He gestured to our miserable surroundings. “—so I figured to string them along, find out what they’re doing, and nip out when they weren’t looking. I bided my time, doing my job training the guards, sort of a militia force.”
Woodgerd indicated the man beside him. “Aubrac here was a sergeant in the guards. They’re all Bizango men from another part of Haiti, except for him. Turns out he is a Christian from another tribal group.”
“Mandique,” said Aubrac. He went on in broken English. “I in south when blancs get Bizango men. I have time in army, so blancs ask me join too. I need money, so I go.” He shook his head. “Bad place. No Christian. Voudou très mal.”
Cynda’s fingers gripped my arm when he said that, and I asked, “Michael, did any new people, whites, arrive recently?”
He leaned back in surprise at my question. “Yes. They brought in an old man they’d misled to come to Haiti, then captured. Businessman from New York. Fellow named Kingston took this man and his friends on his schooner through the Bahamas. The others got off at Nassau, but Kingston got the last one to come along to Haiti, ostensibly to find some treasure the old king here buried. It was a sham, of course. Once they were in the middle of the jungle, the Bizangos ended the pretense, scared the wits out of the old man and put him under guard as a hostage at Forteresse du Nyajs. That’s Sokolov’s name for his place.”
Honor Bound Page 24
