Hettie didn’t answer. There was no answer to a girl who lost her father a week ago.
“She is very smart, Mama, do you want to see her sit?”
“I want to see it out of here. And what would people say if they saw a dog come into our house, Yousy? I’ll tell you what they would say. They would say those Bakers think they are like royalty giving roof and food to a scavenging mongrel.”
Hettie sat down heavily next to Yousy, pulled the big hairpin Pioche had made of whalebone from Yousy’s hair and watched it fall to her daughter’s shoulders. She hadn’t stopped wearing it since the day Pioche was murdered. The dog looked up at both of them, tail wagging, eyes moving between them. “Of course we haven’t seen a neighbor all week so maybe we shouldn’t care what they think,” she added tiredly.
Yousy’s face softened. It was the first expression of any kind that Hettie had seen all week. Hettie put her arms around the girl and held her as the dog looked on. “We’re going to be all right, Miss Yousy,” Hattie said. “We’re going to be all right, I promise you.”
She pushed Yousy away and looked into her eyes. “Your father was a very good man, Yousy. More special than you could ever know.”
Yousy began to cry and Hettie pulled her to her shoulder. “No more tears, my Yousy, no more tears now. Pioche will rest peacefully soon and when his spirit rises in a year and day, we will take it with us to Miami, what do you say?”
Yousy looked up at her, looked in her eyes for the truth, and when she saw it she smiled. “Really, Mama?”
“Really,” Hettie said firmly, “but you mustn’t talk about it. Do you understand how important that is? How important when I say that you must tell no one? Talk is bad in Haiti. Bad things happen to those who talk.”
Yousy nodded.
Hettie smiled down at her, and stood.
“We must get ready to visit your father soon, but first I will check with Etienne to make sure he will take us tonight. You promise me you will stay in if I let the dog be with you?”
Yousy nodded. “I will stay in,” she said. “I promise.”
Yousy picked up a tattered copy of Time magazine and lay down next to the dog, using a lime green cassette player for her pillow. The cassette function had never worked, but Yousy caught FM waves from the Dominican and Jamaica and sometimes Cuba when conditions were right.
The dog was cute, Hettie thought, cute and smart and playful; it was the kind of thing Pioche would have approved of. Hettie had first seen it under her sleeping daughter on the brick terrace the first night she returned from delivering Pioche’s body to the houngan. The dog had been hanging around their door waiting for Yousy to wake each morning and now today after school.
This wasn’t the time to take anything else away from her. Let the neighbors talk. She was sure they talked enough as it was.
Morne Mansinte was as dissimilar from Tiburon harbor as night was from day, Hettie recalled—as all villagers surely recalled—her first trip to Mansinte as a child and the terror that accompanied that steep climb to the cemetery. To a mere child what lay above the serene ocean harbor was dark and mysterious. The bags of bones and magic spells, the row of wooden coffins leaning against the cemetery fence, sometimes waiting for bodies yet unknown. As children they used to compare the lengths of coffins to their size, but any laughter as they played the game veiled a fear that one of the coffins was really their own.
The road hugged walls of volcanic rock that twisted upward. Etienne inched the old Toyota carrying them and Yousy slowly up the mountainside.
“Do you know what I heard today?”
“No, Etienne, but I know you will tell me.” Hettie looked out the window.
“There is a story…” He hesitated.
Hettie smiled weakly. There was always a story in Haiti. In other lands they called it the grapevine, in Haiti they called it telejaw. For a country widely lacking electricity and telephones, word managed to travel quite efficiently. Rumors moved on the tongue of every truck driver and merchant, social workers and nuns and policemen and missionaries. It went down every road and across every mountain until what was said in the east was known by nightfall in the west.
“The lady who cooks for the Jesuits, Mrs. Lambert, her son works for the drug police in Port-au-Prince.”
Hettie nodded, eyes on roots clutching at the mountainside above them.
“He is in charge of maintaining their computers.” Etienne nodded, hands gripping the vibrating wheel. “His boss called him today and told him to look up the name of a woman. She was on a passenger list coming by bus to Haiti from the Dominican Republic. He said the woman was on the Internet. She is like a mambo from the United States. A white mambo.”
“Speak plainly,” Hettie said, “and keep your eyes on the road.”
“She touches the dead.”
Hettie looked at Etienne.
He shrugged. “I am only telling you what Mrs. Lambert said.”
Hettie looked up to see a basket of bones hanging from the limb of a mapou.
The mapou are sacred trees in Haiti, and the spirits of ancestors are believed to dwell in their roots. The few that were left standing in Haiti the villagers feared to burn. Offerings to the spirits are commonly tied to their branches.
The truck passed beneath other trees, straw haversacks of rotting fruit, empty bottles of rum, hardened sugar candies, pieces of colorful cloth, seashells, and pictures of saints and past presidents pasted on cardboard.
“And what can she do when she touches the dead?” Hettie tried not to sound curious.
“She knows what they are thinking.”
“She talks to them?”
Etienne shrugged. “She holds their hand, he told Mrs. Lambert. He said she is blind.”
“Blind,” Hettie whispered, immediately thinking of Tam-Tam Boy, who also held hands.
Etienne nodded. “Crazy, huh? What if she is coming to see Pioche?”
“Etienne,” Hettie said, shocked, “why would you say that?”
Etienne shrugged. “She is coming to Tiburon, Mrs. Lambert said. It is what was written on the customs form.”
Hettie’s heart skipped a beat.
Near the craggy summit of Morne Mansinte, the road snaked away from the sea, skirting boulders through hollows of dense jungle growth and saplings growing out of the stumps of felled trees. The road beneath the shantytown was wide enough for a single car, so Etienne had to pass the path leading up to it and park near the gates to the parish cemetery.
It was a lesson of the Caribbean ancestors that the dead were as vulnerable to hurricanes as the living. No one wanted their family’s bones washed to sea with the bones of pigs and goats, so cemeteries were placed in the cradles of mountains.
Etienne looked at the crude gates to the cemetery. Few visited the bodies within, caring less that the graves were attended than that the bodies remain behind the magic of the black cross and beneath the earth where they belonged.
Pioche would have had none of this, but Hettie still believed. The soul spent a year and a day in dark waters, then it could be reclaimed by ritual—at a price—by the houngan and put in a bottle called a govi. Later, if she wished, she could release Pioche to join the ancestors in the cosmos, as the bones and flesh were now released to occupy the natural world, roots and rocks and rivers.
The obligation to a soul was a serious undertaking in voudon. Souls left to wander the earth might bring illness and disaster to a family. The struggle for Pioche’s soul to rest would be over in days; he would be able to pass by the crossroads and Hettie could begin to prepare for the day when she would purchase Pioche’s soul and release Yousy from this place forever.
They walked along the road to a well-worn path, climbing the hillside to the outlines of shanties.
Hettie could smell boiled meat and the decay of rotting carcasses. There would be two sacrifices at Pioche’s service tonight, both a chicken and a goat she had bought as offerings to the spirit of Papa Ghede. But Pioche was not t
he houngan’s only concern this day. The parishioners of another village were here; a small crowd had already gathered around the temple.
The temple—hounfor—was decorated with flags of red, yellow, and green. A bucket of pink water sat at the edge of the pavilion, which was open on two sides but covered with a thatched roof. A toy plastic boat hung from the ceiling. Someone had put the torn vinyl seats of a car in one corner and a stand-alone ashtray stood before them. Drummers in red shirts and blue jeans and hounsis in white dresses circled a boy on the floor. Hettie and Etienne joined the villagers from Morne Epine, who watched as Tam-Tam Boy pulled a corncob plug from the neck of a decapitated chicken and sprinkled blood over the feet of a crippled boy, which had been tied together with black ribbon. A moment later Tam-Tam Boy knelt in front of the boy; arm extended, searching for his head until he found it and drinking from a bottle of rum, he stared at the roof with his milky white eyes and then leaned down to face the boy and spit the rum upon his face.
Hettie backed away, leaving Etienne with the gathering, and retreated to the clearing’s edge, where Pioche lay in his open coffin. He didn’t look or smell so much like Pioche anymore, was already beginning to leave this world, she thought. His hair was collecting dirt and loose grass, his skin bloated and stained with paint and blood and the houngan’s magic oils meant to keep the bocor away. She looked at the hole in his stomach that had leaked his intestines into the street for all in the village to see.
She was worried about the white mambo Mrs. Lambert’s son had said entered the country. Her whole life had changed in the course of a week because Pioche had seen something he should not have, because Pioche’s heart was too big to turn his head away and to mind what business was his own.
Was it only coincidence a white mambo would be coming to Tiburon harbor?
She thought about Yousy. Yousy had always preferred the company of Linda, the World Freedom worker from America, to the children of her own village, and reading to hide-and-seek, or listening to English radio stations instead of playing kickball on the beach.
Hettie remembered the night Pioche told her what he had seen in a cellar where he was drilling to place explosives. Yousy was playing her radio that night, her music filling the small house and out the back windows; they’d whispered on the terrace, except that when they got up to go back inside, Yousy was not there. Not lying by her radio.
Pioche had run outside and found her sitting on the beach in the dark, just beyond the terrace where they had been talking. He’d wanted to admonish her for spying on them, but when he asked her if she heard them talking she had said not. Hettie knew he wasn’t sure. Hettie knew that he was worried about what Yousy might have heard.
And now that Hettie had heard the story about the uniformed men in jeeps she was worried, too, about something that had been bothering her since the day Pioche’s body was found.
Why had Yousy’s American friend Linda been so insistent about where Pioche had been working?
Had Yousy overheard Pioche’s story after all?
Had Yousy placed them in danger without knowing it?
26
CIA HEADQUARTERS
LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
Graham paced his office in Langley, Virginia, as a phone rang in Lyon, France. He snatched it off the cradle.
“Helmut?”
“What have you got?”
“One of the ships in Gdansk when Warrant Officer Aleksandra Goralski went missing belonged to Jean Jasmine’s fleet. DEA boarded it a couple of years ago in Caracas when he went down for distributing cocaine. It was later sold to a straw corporation, but DEA says it was definitely Jean Bedard’s and Jean Bedard had ties to the Mendoza cartel.”
“How did Bedard operate?”
“He exported goods from Central and South America, stuff like bauxite, soybeans, and mahogany, also his own produce and coffee from Haiti.”
“Going to?”
“Mainly Bulgaria and Russia on the Black Sea. He brings back farm tractors, small engine parts, and appliances.”
“Which translates to drugs trafficked east and women trafficked west,” Dantzler said.
“And everything hubbed out of Haiti to places like South and Central America,” Graham added.
“Which fits the Bulgarian’s story last year. Women imported to South America from ports on the Black Sea. Bedard was the Tonton Macoute commander, right?”
“The same. I got aerials of his compounds in Colombia and Haiti, but it’s this second one that’s interesting, Helmut. It’s in the mountains of de Cartache, in jungle about thirty kilometers north of Tiburon harbor. The ruins of an old cathedral converted to a mansion, but it’s got these balustrades. It looks like a fucking castle, Helmut.”
“Lord Jesus, what have we done? Have you raised the colonel yet?”
“I’ve been calling him for an hour and still nothing. I got a security officer from the embassy to try to find him through local channels. There is no one at his home or office. The police weren’t very helpful; they say that colonels make their own schedules.”
“What’s your take?”
“He may have been compromised.”
“My God,” Dantzler said. “How did we manage to let civilians into Haiti? Does this castle or whatever look active?”
“It’s active. Security fencing, vehicles on the property, there’s a helipad on the lawn.”
“Why hire a blast engineer? You see any new construction going on, forest being cleared?”
“None, but the original cathedral is historically documented. It was built above a marble quarry used to construct the interior in the 1700s. The whole side of the mountain is hollow under it.”
“He’s getting ready to bring it down.”
“It’s all we can guess.”
“Then we have a time issue, too. Can you get Ambassador Sanderson to the palace?”
“Already made the call. I’m expecting her any moment.”
“She’s not going to be happy we have people in Haiti.”
“Christ’s sake, Helmut, they’re not ours. Tourists go there every day.”
“Yes, tourists, and one would question their judgment, too, but I don’t think Carol Bishop and a psychic investigator will qualify as tourists. You’re going to have to tell the ambassador about Jill Bishop and how she was found and why Carol and Sherry are in Haiti. Ambassador Sanderson has got to convince President Préval to send troops to Bedard’s compound and now.”
“Well, if you can possibly imagine how little I look forward to that conversation, imagine how well Garland Brigham’s going to take it when I tell him we can’t reach the escort.”
27
HAITI
Sherry had checked in with him just before leaving Pétionville, a little over thirty minutes ago. Ten minutes later Graham called to say Interpol had not been able to reach Colonel Deaken for the last two hours and that a structure like the one Sherry Moore had described in both Denali and Jamaica had been located less than twenty miles from Tiburon. It was owned by a former commander of Papa Doc’s secret police.
Brigham, furious, had had the bad feeling ever since. This was exactly the kind of thing that happened when people went off half-cocked. How could they be so stupid, inserting civilians into hostile territory with an unknown entity for support? How could he have witnessed it all himself and done nothing? Was he getting senile, for Christ’s sake? And Sherry, how stubborn she could be while leading him around by the nose; support me, support me, she liked to say. Civilians, he thought. Fucking civilians.
He was just about to dial her number when his phone rang. Once. No more. He looked at the number on the screen, then at his watch, feeling his heart pound in his chest. He crossed the hotel’s terrace to a deserted balcony and dialed a number. It was 7:12 P.M. There were five more hours before she reached Tiburon. If she reached Tiburon.
Beyond the jagged coastline overlooking highway A-1, a beautiful wooden schooner glided toward Port Antonio; she had three sails and
towed a rubber skiff in her wake.
“George,” the inspector answered.
“Something’s happened. They’re in trouble. Your boat is fueled?”
“Use the hotel’s courtesy van. Two miles down the road to Frenchman’s Cove, the Bertram sportfisherman, she’s named Zuben’Ubi, you can’t miss her. But I’m still forty minutes away.”
“I’ll need it,” Brigham growled. “I have calls to make.”
The men had talked after the women boarded their flight to the Dominican Republic yesterday afternoon. They talked about boats—Rolly King George was terribly impressed when he learned that Brigham was a retired admiral—and they talked about politics and the dangers for women going into Haiti alone. Brigham had told Rolly King George about the signal he had arranged with Sherry Moore. They agreed that if anything were to happen, they would never be able to fly into Haiti and reach Tiburon in time, even if they could get past customs and God knows what else lay in store. But Tiburon harbor was on the near western coast of the island, only three hours by sea. If they could get to Tiburon harbor, Brigham had told the inspector, the Bertram sportfisherman was large enough to accommodate the second part of Brigham’s plan.
Sherry’s unease about the colonel continued to build after he insisted on taking their cell phones. She wasn’t completely convinced they were in trouble, but Brigham had been adamant about erring on the side of caution. She had dialed his number and let it connect on her lap behind the driver’s seat before she hung up and turned the phone over to Colonel Deaken. She had no idea what Brigham could do if she was in trouble, probably there was little more he could do than call the American embassy, which would cause a lot of political consternation over Carol Bishop’s being in Haiti.
In retrospect, they should have come to Haiti alone. She should have told no one what she was doing. She could have hired a car to take her to Tiburon and back. She could have tried to reason with the dead man’s family on her own; someone in Tiburon had to speak English. Someone had to be willing to help her.
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