Honor Bound

by Robert N. Macomber

  —Oswald Durand is regarded as one of Haiti’s best poets. Hotel Colon no longer exists.

  —Wake’s description of the Polish Haitians is borne out by the historical records. Approximately 25,000 modern Haitians have Polish blood. It is an intriguing story.

  Chapter Twenty-Six—Hyppolite’s Decision

  —Lysius Salomon is regarded as one of Haiti’s best presidents. General Florvil Hyppolite comes down through history as one of Haiti’s more effective leaders. He subsequently became president and stayed in office longer than most. He and Wake will continue their acquaintance for many years.

  —The cathedral in Cap Haitian you see today was built in 1942 on the location of the old one, most of which was destroyed by fire. The central plaza (Place d’Armes) still exists, run-down and overgrown. For those who know what happened to the slaves there during the French days, it is a sad place.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven—The Citadelle

  —I strongly urge any visitors to Cap Haitien to make the effort to go inland and see the palace at Sans Souci and the great fortress of the Citadelle. They are nothing short of magnificent. However, I warn against leaving the road and going on the original path up the cliffs of Montagne Laferrière to the fortress—it is a dangerously steep and long climb, and I damned near died doing it trying to duplicate Wake’s journey.

  —Night Societies, based on African tribal cultures, still operate in Haiti. They are generally not violent—that is in the past—but they are an important part of life in rural Haiti.

  —Creole is a remarkable phonetic mix of French and African, and quite easy to learn.

  —Voudou is considered a religion in Haiti. The old saying, which is no longer true, was that 80 per cent of Haitians are Christian, but 100 per cent believe in voudou. It is a complicated and interesting subject, but a detailed look requires far more space than is available within this novel.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight—Revanj avék Pwazon

  —Poisons are very rarely used in voudou, but the ingredients are widely available in the tropics. I had intimate knowledge of a voudou death in Florida in 1985 that is still scientifically unexplained.

  —Bush medicine is widely used to this day in the Out Islands of the Bahamas and in Haiti. In most cases, it works, as it is based on natural remedies known for centuries.

  Chapter Thirty—Suh Ghul Wasa!

  —For more about Woodgerd and his friendship with Wake, read An Affair of Honor and A Different Kind of Honor

  —My research shows there was a cable ship, the CS Westmeath, at Cap Haitien when Wake was there and that a joint British-French concern had the contract with the Haitian government to run a telegraph cable to Cuba. It was completed in 1888.

  —Wake’s description of the Europeans’ military experiments with lighter-than-air craft is correct. The French were the leaders in the field, amazingly far along in the use of powered aircraft. La France’s original base, Hangar Y, still exists today at Chalais Meudon, near Paris, one of the few remaining airship hangars in Europe.

  Chapter Thirty-One—The Monster Revealed

  —There is no record of Sokolov or the Forteresse des Njajs in Haiti.

  —All of Sokolov’s apparatus portrayed here was available or feasible then, according to what we know today.

  Chapter Thirty-Two—Plan of Attack

  —The Alexander Ul’yanov to which Roche referred, was executed in 1887 for the assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander III. His younger brother Vladimir, greatly affected by Alexander’s execution, joined the revolutionaries himself and later changed his last name. We know him as the infamous Vladimir Lenin.

  Chapter Thirty-Six—Dead Reckoning

  —The Okhrana did exist and was quite efficient, probably the best at running agents provocateurs in European history. The Okhrana’s foreign section operated out of modest offices in the Russian consulate in Paris at 97 Rue de Grenelle. The name Kovinski is an alias Wake used to protect the Russian’s identity. I have decided to continue that practice. Kovinski went on to a distinguished career, right up to the Russian Revolution. Wake will work with him again in 1905.

  —The Russians did employ agents in New York and Washington, mainly to gain contacts with the Fenian supporters in America who might be of use against the British, should Russia and Britain go to war over Afghanistan. In the 1880s, the Fenians were exploding bombs in London.

  —The Narodnaya Volya, or People’s Will, was a long-time anti-tsarist revolutionary group. By the 1890s, most of its leaders were in prison or executed, the surviving members joining other groups. Many, like Lenin, joined the Communists.

  Acknowledgments

  The research for this novel involved delving into diverse background data; interviewing experienced people in some rather strange subject areas; and conducting my usual “eyeball recon” at some very unusual locales in Florida, the Bahamas, and Haiti. None of it was dull, some of it was downright scary, and all of it assisted me in understanding the facts and flavor of the places, people, and times in this story. As my longtime readers already know, I have developed a unique global organization I call the Subject Matter Advanced Resource Team, or SMART. Assisting me with detailed information on everything from religion to bush medicine to balloons, many of them helped me on this project.

  My academic research information came from the following:

  To understand Washington, D.C., and the naval culture in the latter 1880s, I turned to Jeffrey Dorwart’s classic The Office of Naval Intelligence:The Birth of America’s First Intelligence Agency, CDR John Alden’s The American Steel Navy, Donald Canney’s The Old Steam Navy, Peter Karsten’s The Naval Aristocracy, and Charles M. Pepper’s Everyday Life in Washington. The Smithsonian’s 1886 Visitor’s Guide was a rare view into that great institution.

  The photo and textual collections of the University of Florida George A. Smathers Library, and that of Gil Wilson, proved very educational about St. Augustine in the 1880s. Gregg Turner’s Florida Railroad History is the major work on that subject, and he personally assisted me regarding the railroads of northeast and central Florida.

  Cantor Brown’s Florida’s Peace River Frontier and Tampa, Lindsey Williams’ and U.S. Cleveland’s Our Fascinating Past, Tom Smoot’s excellent The Edisons of Fort Myers, Angie Larkin’s Old Punta Gorda, Betty Holt’s Sanibel’s Story, Charles Dana Gibson’s Boca Grande, and Elaine Jordan’s Tales of Pine Island and Pine Island, the Forgotten Island were instrumental in my understanding southwest Florida in the latter nineteenth century.

  Patsy West’s article in The Seminole Tribune explained the story of “Key West Billy.” Raymond C. Lantz’s census book, Seminole Indians of Florida: 1874–1879, helped me be aware of the clans. Clay MacCauley’s Seminoles of Florida, an 1884 status report to the U.S. Dept. of Ethnology, was a treasure trove of detailed observations in that period.

  My knowledge about Key West was enhanced by Walter Maloney’s 1876 A Sketch of the History of Key West, Jefferson Browne’s 1912 Key West: The Old and The New, Consuelo Stebbins’ City of Intrigue, Nest of Revolution, John Viele’s The Florida Keys: A History of the Pioneers, and William Rogers’ and James Denham’s Florida Sheriffs: A History 1821–1945.

  Nassau, Andros Island, and Great Inagua Island were studied in Gilbert Klingel’s Inagua: An Island Sojourn; L.D. Powles’ 1888 The Land of the Pink Pearl; Michael Craton’s A–Z of Bahamas Heritage and History of the Bahamas; Dr. Rosalyn Howard’s Black Seminoles in the Bahamas and Reverend Bertram A. Newton: Preacher, Teacher and Friend; the June 1888 issue of Littell’s Living Age Magazine; the December 1889 issue of Scribner’s Magazine; Martha Hanna-Smith’s Bush Medicine in Bahamian Folklore; Dr. Gail Saunder’s Historic Nassau; and many journals provided by Mr. David Gates of the Bahamas Historical Society.

  Haitian history and culture were illuminated by John Vandercook’s 1928 Black Majesty: The Slave who became a King, Hubert Cole
’s Christophe: King of Haiti, Wade Davis’ famous The Serpent and the Rainbow, and Webster University professor Robert Colbert’s excellent database. Facts on the French submarine telegraph cable efforts in Haiti were gleaned from Bill Burns’ and Bill Glover’s outstanding History of the Atlantic Cable database. Navigational information for the lower Bahamas and the coast of northern Haiti was found in Jerrems C. Hart’s and William T. Stone’s 1976 work, A Cruising Guide to the Caribbean and the Bahamas, which I recommend to all sailors.

  I was enlightened about the fascinating world of aeronautics in the 1880s by the September 1887 issue of Manufacturer and Builder, Jules Verne’s 1886 Robur the Conqueror, the April 1889 issue of The North American Review, the November 1884 issue of Littell’s Living Age Magazine, Octave Chanute’s 1894 book Progress in Flying Machines, and Richard P. Hallion’s excellent history of the early aeronauts, Taking Flight. Little-known facets and photos were found at Carroll Gray’s database. One of the Department of Defense’s experts on Lighter-than-Air (LTA) craft, LTC Michael Woodgerd, U.S. Army (Ret.), provided detailed information and critique on the subject, all while stationed in the very dangerous mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Further information was provided by Norman Mayer, an engineer who has worked in LTA all his life. They did their best to make it simple for me—any technical errors are mine.

  The particulars of imperial Russian counter-revolutionary operations in the 1880s were opened up for me by the CIA’s Ben Fischer and Rita Kronenbitter (an alias) in their work on the Okhrana, specifically Rachovsky’s foreign operations out of Paris. In addition, significant information was found in Ronald Hingley’s The Russian Secret Police, Stephen Wade’s Spies in the Empire, Richard Deacon’s A History of the Russian Secret Service, and from nineteenth-century media accounts in Cornell University’s Making of America database, which yielded several contemporary descriptions of the Russian revolutionary culture.

  During the “eyeball recon” portion of my research, the following people helped my understanding of their locales and cultures.

  In addition to answering a multitude of questions, Balloon Pilot Fred Vereb and Ground Crew Chief Hal Blethroad gave me a never-to-be-forgotten hot-air research flight over, and through, the trees of central Florida. I recommend them heartily: www.bigredballoon.com

  In St. Augustine, Reverend Jim Reeher gave me an insider’s tour of Grace United Methodist Church, including a scary climb up and down that belfry. Adele Wright was my gracious hostess at the historic St. Francis Inn (www.stfrancisinn.com), my favorite lodging in the United States’ oldest city.

  In Nassau, Venita Johnson of the Bahamas Historical Society (www.bahamashistoricalsociety.org) helped me on background information. At the National Archives of the Bahamas, Chief Research Officer Lulamae Collie Gray and her assistant Wendia Ferguson searched their considerable collection of colonial records and Guardian files to provide important information regarding the summer and fall of 1888. Enrico Garzaroli, current owner of the 260-year-old Graycliff House (www.graycliff.com), helped me understand the history of that wonderful place. If you visit Nassau, you must stay in Graycliff’s Woodes Rogers suite.

  “Eyeball recon” in northern Haiti wasn’t easy, to say the least. But that’s where friendships come in. Missionary Eva DeHart introduced me to import-exporter Tony Marcelli, who introduced me to Dr. Paul Louis Noisin, the pre-eminent anthropologist of Haiti and president of the Université Roi Christophe. Dr. Noisin lent me his valuable time and intellect so that I could better comprehend Haitian history and culture.

  After my research on the north Haitian coast, during which I traced Wake’s steps in the voudou caves and along the precarious cliffs of Picolet, an intrepid band of adventurers helped me on an expedition into the mountains of the interior to follow in Wake’s track there. Eva DeHart and Rob Irons of For Haiti With Love, the Christian medical, food, and housing mission I enthusiastically support (www.forhaitiwithlove.org) helped organize the expedition. Rob was also a driver; Racine Présumé, veteran commander in the Haitian National Police and dear friend, was the expedition’s outstanding chef de securité, also a driver, and kept things moving along. Charlot Althiery was senior guide at Sans Souci and Citadelle. Jocelyn Morisset was a driver, and both he and Jean Claude Aristil provided security. Roseline Présumé (also of For Haiti With Love) was chief translator/negotiator—no easy task. Rosemarlene Suprevil was admin assistant; Jean Moreau was the column’s flute player; Jon, René, and Edward were bearers; and Joseph Calixte was guide at Picolet. Cesar and Michelle, Frenchmen wandering through Haiti, joined the crew at Milot and helped get the vehicle up that daunting mountain to the base camp. René, Edward, and Rob helped me scale the cliff, just as Wake did, and barely cheat death one more time. In total I had fifteen people with me on that trek—a memorable experience that will last a lifetime.

  Back here in the U.S.A., several folks helped me in the actual writing of the novel. I began writing this book at Christine and Mark Strom’s high-altitude home of Maramonte in the Black Mountains of North Carolina. Mike and Renee Maurer’s place in the Florida Keys was another refuge de plume. Famous novelist Randy Wayne White helped with good professional advice and decent rum. And, of course, the lovely Nancy Glickman provided constant love, support, ideas, and very valuable critical reading as well. June Cussen, the executive editor at Pineapple Press, has edited all nine novels of the Honor Series. Along the way, she’s taught me more than anyone else in the business about the craft of creating interesting books. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to work with and learn from her.

  Most of all, I thank my readers around the world. Throughout the years, you have kept me filled with more than enough élan for each new project. You are the very best audience a writer could hope for, and I am profoundly appreciative of your considerable encouragement.

  Thank you all.

  A final word with my readers

  Haiti has fascinated me since my first visit in 1983. Her art, music, humor, and most of all, her people’s gentle amity, will find their way into your heart. It’s easy to be glib about Haiti, until you really get to know a Haitian. Once you delve into their history, you begin to understand how far they have come, against all odds. I have great respect for their accomplishments.

  In recent years, the Haitian people have endured hurricanes and earthquakes and starvation and disease. Many have lost everything except their pride and their humor. But somehow, they keep trudging onward and upward, with quiet dignity and courage.

  For years now, I’ve supported a Christian mission at Cap Haitien, in northern Haiti. For Haiti with Love provides medical care, food, and homes for the people in that area. I urge you to visit www.forhaitiwithlove.org and find out what they’ve been doing for the last four decades to make life more bearable for the people of Haiti. It’s quite a story.

  Perhaps you will end up like me, captivated not only by Haiti’s history and her culture and her people, but also her wonderful potential for the future.

  Robert N. Macomber

  Twin Palms Cottage

  Matlacha Island

  Florida

  About the Author

  Robert N. Macomber is an internationally acclaimed maritime lecturer, television commentator, and defense consultant. His honors include the American Library Association’s 2008 Boyd Literary Award for Excellence in Military Fiction. Each year he is guest author aboard Queen Mary 2 and other luxury liners, lectures in the Pacific and Europe, and circles the globe researching and writing. Visit him at www.robertmacomber.com.

  Robert N. Macomber’s Honor Series:

  At the Edge of Honor. This nationally acclaimed naval Civil War novel, the first in the Honor series of naval fiction, takes the reader into the steamy world of Key West and the Caribbean in 1863 and introduces Peter Wake, the reluctant New England volunteer officer who finds himself battling the enemy on the coasts of Florida, sinister intrigue in Spanish Havana and
the British Bahamas, and social taboos in Key West when he falls in love with the daughter of a Confederate zealot.

  Point of Honor. Winner of the Florida Historical Society’s 2003 Patrick Smith Award for Best Florida Fiction. In this second book in the Honor series, it is 1864 and Lt. Peter Wake, United States Navy, assisted by his indomitable Irish bosun, Sean Rork, commands the naval schooner St. James. He searches for army deserters in the Dry Tortugas, finds an old nemesis during a standoff with the French Navy on the coast of Mexico, starts a drunken tavern riot in Key West, and confronts incompetent Federal army officers during an invasion of upper Florida.

  Honorable Mention. This third book in the Honor series of naval fiction covers the tumultuous end of the Civil War in Florida and the Caribbean. Lt. Peter Wake is now in command of the steamer USS Hunt, and quickly plunges into action, chasing a strange vessel during a tropical storm off Cuba, confronting death to liberate an escaping slave ship, and coming face to face with the enemy’s most powerful ocean warship in Havana’s harbor. Finally, when he tracks down a colony of former Confederates in Puerto Rico, Wake becomes involved in a deadly twist of irony.

  A Dishonorable Few. Fourth in the Honor series. It is 1869 and the United States is painfully recovering from the Civil War. Lt. Peter Wake heads to turbulent Central America to deal with a former American naval officer turned renegade mercenary. As the action unfolds in Colombia and Panama, Wake realizes that his most dangerous adversary may be a man on his own ship, forcing Wake to make a decision that will lead to his court-martial in Washington when the mission has finally ended.

  An Affair of Honor. Fifth in the Honor series. It’s December 1873 and Lt. Peter Wake is the executive officer of the USS Omaha on patrol in the West Indies, eager to return home. Fate, however, has other plans. He runs afoul of the Royal Navy in Antigua and then is sent off to Europe, where he finds himself embroiled in a Spanish civil war. But his real test comes when he and Sean Rork are sent on a mission in northern Africa.