Two black men jerk me up from the floor and slam me back in the chair. Rubber cords loop around my shoulders, waist, and feet.
Kolonèl Idamante sets a chair across from me and sits. His boot slides a doctor’s valise between us. To my left, a chain is hoisted through a hook in the ceiling.
“No. C’mon, man, don’t . . . don’t.”
“Yes, I know of the Krays. I am a professional policeman; I also studied in London, and in Paris.” Kolonèl Idamante opens the doctor’s valise. “Who was this student who could save you from a London crime syndicate?”
“Anne Bonny. Her family’s from Ireland and Jamaica. She arranged it.”
“Anne Bonny . . . a girl, by herself.”
“Her boyfriend helped her, with the Krays, not Jamaica. He was a Selous Scout in Rhodesia.”
Kolonèl Idamante sits back in his chair. His lips form a small, tight smile under his glasses.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shouldn’t have said Selous Scout. Be a rum salesman. Not a spy. Gulp. Swallow. Focus goddammit; you cannot be a spy.
Five pairs of white eyes are looking at me from the dark of medieval stone-basement jail . . . for doing amateur recon; for college friends and a good cause. Get paid, big adventure—
“Selous Scouts.” Kolonèl Idamante’s smile widens. He reaches inside the valise. One hand extracts a saw and he shows it to me. The other hand rises between us. He extends one finger and says: “Rhodesia’s Selous Scouts were counterrevolutionaries.” Kolonèl Idamante adds a second finger and says: “Jungle fighters,” then a third finger: “Mass murderers of black men, even by African standards. They have no country now. Are they the surrogates you and the CIA employ to kill my president? Before my president can accept Cuba’s support and appease the Rebelyon in our mountains?”
“No! Carel was with Anne. After the war in Rhodesia, he came to university, that’s all. I hardly knew him; don’t even know his last name. Coincidence—”
“No, Mr. Owens. In Haiti, we cannot abide coincidence. We are awash in the meddling of others. Our citizens die in the streets for causes they do not understand. All to achieve your CIA’s goals for America’s benefit. You are an American; we will show you what awaits the vampire and his surrogates.”
More men enter the room. They leer at me and grab their balls. Two drop their pants as the others unbuckle their belts. The first one steps toward me. The others begin some kind of screech, guttural, then high-pitched—
“You will learn to like black men . . . as your women do.”
“No! GODDAMMIT, no!”
***
Thursday?
I’m curled in the corner. Hurts to breathe. Blink. One eye half-focuses. Sewer stench. Loud voices echo somewhere in the dinge. Maggots crawl the stone floor past my fingers. Haiti will not kill me; I can take . . . more, stay curled up—my tongue licks at dried blood; two fingers touch at the swelling. I can take it; I can.
My mom says, “William?”
My dad died in a hole like this. No, he died at the Y on Chicago Avenue, and it was whiskey, not soldiers. No, these aren’t soldiers, these are night howlers. With no pants and loud white teeth. Dry swallow—pain shoots from ear to neck. Cringe. Ragged breath. Eye shut, then open. Blur . . . shadows . . . outside my iron bars.
I curl up tight. Eye closed. My head and heart pound. I push into the wall. Rusted hinges creak. Don’t be here—
“William.”
Blink. The tall, thin shape standing inside my cell door doesn’t have his pants down; doesn’t hit me or stink. Blink. He’s blurry and white, in a white suit and plantation hat. White devil; the fucking devil. All of me scrunches deeper into the corner. Both hands shake up and out to stop him—
Formal European accent. “William, can you stand?”
Two shapes laugh behind him and squeeze at their balls. “Orevwa, masisi.” Bye-bye, faggot.
“William.” The white man extends a hand. “Can you walk?”
“Wh . . . what d’you want?”
“To take you home. Can you walk?”
Blink. “Not going to hell. I didn’t do anything.”
“We must leave, William. Now.”
The shapes behind the white man have their dicks out . . . or maybe pistols. The tallest leans toward me and purses his lips into a kiss, says, “Ou gen SIDA.”
The white man forces/helps me up. Pain shoots down my legs, knees, back. Dry heave. The white man grabs my waist. “William, we must walk. Now.” His arm tightens around my waist. We straighten; he shuffles us past the blacks.
Wet, ugly Kreyol voice and another kiss. “Ou gen SIDA.”
“No; I’m not a spy.”
The white man shuffles me toward stone stairs and what might be sunlight above. “He said you have AIDS, their gift from the devil to America.”
***
Friday
My bed; my room; the Hotel Oloffson. Both hands tremble on the cotton bedsheets; the painkillers are working fine on the rest of me. A brownish doctor strips latex gloves above his scuffed leather valise, then tells me my condition has improved since I was brought here last night “from the prison at Fort Dimanche.”
All things considered, he says, the beatings and assaults should have killed me. He does not know if I have AIDS. He does not know if the men who raped me had AIDS, but he suspects that many people in Haiti are infected. From what he understands, the virus is transmitted by blood and body fluids. The doctor shrugs narrow shoulders. “Unfortunately, there is ample evidence you have been subjected to large amounts of both.”
My head turns away against the headboard. Swollen fingers hide my face, then pat shredded lips I can’t feel. I want to quit hearing the night howlers laughing and grunting, not feel their dirty hands in my hair; dirty cocks in my face. I want to be angry, make rage bury the weakness and disgust. AIDS is a gay man’s death sentence.
“I could get checked somewhere?”
“No, not under present conditions. Since your arrival to me last night, the streets of Port-au-Prince are crowded with gunfire. The fighting will become worse before it becomes better.” My doctor glances across the room to the white man who brought me here, then back. “President Duvalier has fled the island. The Rebelyon comes now, Communist rebels, your CIA, the Haitian army—”
“Monsieur Docteur.” The white man waves his hand to enforce the interruption, his European accent more pronounced. “Merci. I will explain . . . in time.”
My good eye still won’t focus.
The doctor hands me a bottle of blue pills and a small bottle of cooking oil. “Eat no solid food. If you must defecate, prior to defecation, one hour, take one tablet for pain; a half hour prior, sip the oil. Should the blood continue in your stool after seven days, I will come here; it is too dangerous for you to come to my clinic.”
He glances at the white man again, then back, “If you can be gone from Haiti—and my advice is that you are gone immediately—go to a hospital and be checked. You are badly damaged by the ra—” The doctor stops before he says rapes, tips his hat, and leaves.
The white man says, “Carel Roos wishes to speak with you.”
I force my feet off the bed, have to use both hands to balance against dizziness, then wince into sharp pain in my abdomen and rectum. I’m wearing new underwear I didn’t own yesterday. The cheap cotton covers parts of me that I don’t want to look at again. I wrap a towel around my bruised waist, wobble to the verandah’s tall louvered doors, take a breath that hurts, and lean for balance. Behind the hotel, the mountains that split the Dominican Republic from Haiti rise nine thousand feet and block the sky. “Never heard of him.”
“Nor have I. But he wishes to speak with you. Now.”
I limp to the hallway door, open it, don’t see a hallway full of green uniforms or Volontaires waiting to haul me back to prison.
“By telep
hone, from my office. It is more private.”
If calling Carel is truly where we’re going, then Carel already knows what happened, and so does Anne Bonny, and I don’t want anyone to ever know what happened, what those . . . did to me, made me do, over and over.
“William? If you would dress . . .”
Dressing is hard. Meeting people’s eyes will be harder; they’ll want to know what happened. No, they’ll know what happened to happy-go-lucky Bill, handshake for everyone, let me carry that package, ma’am.
I squint into the tall mahogany mirror—
Whoa, shit, Elephant Man.
The white man and I exit the Oloffson via a servants’ stairway. At the bottom, I trail him into the tall palms, fronds motionless in heavy air. His Citroën sedan is spotless; feels like a Hemingway ambulance, not a kidnap car.
We drive through my painkiller fog, then through a manned iron gate set in the old bluestone walls of a Frenchman’s plantation. The white man’s great house is not where we go.
His office is a separate building; one blurry room built of newer wood, not stone. The room is breezy and square under a high, peaked wood ceiling. Louvered hurricane shutters filter sunlight and humidity. The white walls are empty. I smell flowers I can’t see, not rapists. The white man points me to his desk chair, dials his desk phone, speaks French, hangs up, and waits for it to ring.
I listen under the hum of a ceiling fan’s rattan blades, then lean back in the man’s desk chair, the doctor’s painkillers beginning to wear thin.
The phone rings; the white man answers, listens, then hands me the receiver. The Rhodesian Afrikaner accent in my ear is emotionless. “Are you there, Bill?” This transatlantic call has none of the static it should have in a country whose phones never work. The clarity makes Carel’s precise questions worse. “What did you tell the kaffers in the prison? Each question, each answer, each assault.”
My good hand covers my face. “Have you told Anne . . . what happened . . . to me?”
“No.” Pause, no static. “Word for word, Bill; moment by moment—what do the kaffers know of our plans?”
I detail the questions I was asked, my answers, the beatings but not the rapes, and the one mistake, the Selous Scout reference.
“That’s the whole of it?”
“Yeah.”
Silence, then Carel says: “When we all swam at Brighton, you asked after my scars. I told you about Rhodesia, what the kaffer does in the bush. So I know the warders did more; know you told the warders more; I would have.”
“No. You wouldn’t tell the guards shit. And I didn’t; don’t ask me why or how, but I didn’t.”
“Hiding from what they did, what you did to stay alive, will not change what you told.”
“I told you the only slip: Selous Scout. That’s it. If you don’t want to believe me, don’t come.”
Silence. “Have you done the recon, the boats?”
“Just the airport and the outer road.” My teeth gnash at the pain in my side. “But I will . . . ’cause I said I would. If you’re still coming.”
“Can you still complete the job as paid?”
“I’ve stayed at the hotel nine times; know the hotel and grounds already. Arranging the backup and decoy boats will be harder, but I’ll get it done if the captains I know haven’t run.”
Silence while Carel considers his options, my veracity. “The one mistake, Bill, you’re certain? Willing to bet your life, and Anne’s as well?”
I look at my knees, covered by scuffed pants that the hotel washed, knees that knelt in front of one . . . after another. Tears dribble out of my eyes. “Don’t know what I want, Carel. Just wanna go home.”
“You might want to get even.”
My eyes shut. “Don’t think I’m up to it.”
“That’s good, Bill. Revenge is expensive even when you’re thinking clear. And you won’t be for a while.”
“Don’t want Anne to get hurt.”
“Good and proper, Bill.” In Afrikaans, Carel adds, “Then the Ncome River it is, mi boer bru; to Dracula’s castle.” The connection quits.
I blur-focus the white man’s office, then recradle his phone, a line that has to be secure or Carel Roos would never have spoken a word on it. The white man in his white suit reappears. He walks past me in his desk chair and sits opposite his desk. His long, thin legs cross at the knee. He doesn’t speak.
“How’d you get me out?”
“Friends in the government.”
“General Peguero?”
“General Peguero was executed last evening.”
Blink. Swallow. Semi-focus. “You and Carel are . . . friends?”
“I know no one named Carel.” The white man has no discernible accent beyond European, and it sounds learned.
“You don’t know Carel, but you know what he’s doing.”
The man’s hands fold together, patrician, calm and comfortable, no jewelry. He says, “A young woman in the UK called your employer in Kingston. Likely concerned about the Rebelyon and the peripheral matters at hand, although this is not for me to say. Your superiors at Fred L. Myers & Sons said you were here but not communicating as you should. Parties contacted me; I determined that you had arrived our airport but not your hotel. From there”—he opens both palms—“I found you at Fort Dimanche.”
“But you know about Carel and—” I don’t make another suicide amateur mistake; don’t say Anne’s name or Luckner Cambronne’s. “But you know about Carel.”
Headshake. “Again, William, in Haiti, there is no such man.”
***
Saturday
Forty-eight hours and I’m “better,” other than the blood on the sheets and headaches that make it hard to hear and see. I’m living on painkillers and cooking oil; on fear-sweat and terror jolts that now seem commonplace. The combination has improved me sufficiently that I have completed Carel’s recon, the small part that could still be done by someone in my condition.
Haiti has not improved. Down-mountain, Port-au-Prince has begun to burn, scenting the air with ash and oily rubber. This is the anarchy twilight—the descent into “the wild” as Carel Roos calls it, the reshuffling of the deck before the organized carnage of a three-way civil war begins. By now, Carel and his team are in-country, en route to the Grand Oloffson through Haiti’s mounting ethereal madness, undoubtedly bringing a special kind of hell with them.
Anne may have already arrived at François Duvalier International Airport. And will have to survive far worse scrutiny than I did five days ago. Carel, and whoever he brings with him, will enter Haiti illegally, I’m guessing by car, over the mountains from the Dominican Republic. Carel’s mission isn’t to help the CIA put Luckner Cambronne in the president’s chair, that much I do know. Carel’s mission is to effect a kidnap of Cambronne that couldn’t be done in America, then take Cambronne to the west coast of South Africa. And hang him.
Carel’s target is not to be taken lightly; on that the vodou houngans and mambos are not full of shit. When Luckner Cambronne was in power, he terrorized, kidnapped, and murdered the Haiti peasants to the point that the survivors believe he is a monster unscalable in Western culture until you confront the devil. They say Cambronne murdered thirty thousand of his own countrymen, harvested their blood, sold their cadavers for anatomy classes and prime chunks of their flesh to restaurants.
Carel’s employer would likely agree, but for different reasons. Although I don’t know the employer’s name, I do know he’s Rhodesian, the father of two students kidnapped and murdered in Haiti fifteen years ago. Anne described the father as a “million-hectare backvelder, a war-hardened, fire-breathing Calvinist rooted deep in the colonial era.”
Fifteen years ago, the father paid a massive ransom for his children. Three days before the transfer was to happen, Haiti’s then president, Papa Doc Duvalier, died. Haiti
fell apart. Cambronne and his Tontons Macoutes “lost” the children, then lost control of the country to the army and Bébé Doc, Duvalier’s psychotic son.
Rather than face Bébé Doc’s firing squads, Cambronne fled to the USA on a US military jet. Our president Nixon kept Cambronne safe, using him as Nixon’s—and now Reagan’s—War-on-Drugs, anti-Communist dictator-in-waiting should Bébé Doc get too twisted (which he did), or fall into Fidel Castro’s embrace.
According to Anne, the Rhodesian Afrikaner father did not retire in his grief; he prayed to his Calvinist God for a righteous man’s vengeance. When this vengeance was repeatedly refused in Washington, DC, then snuffed in a failed Miami gunfight, then snuffed again when Cambronne’s household domestic workers were uncovered as agents of the Rhodesian father, the father began sending money and emissaries in support of Haiti’s always boiling insurrections.
The father knew some of Washington’s plans, was certain that if Bébé Doc fell out of favor, Luckner Cambronne would be the CIA’s choice for control of the country. To do so, Cambronne would have to leave his protection in Miami. And then, for a brief window, while Cambronne incited the citizens and re-formed his army of murderous Tontons Macoutes, the vampire would be vulnerable.
Noise in the hall.
I grab the sharp dinner knife that I kept from room service. The door knock is followed by a voice announcing in Kreyol-accented English that I have a guest from the BBC.
I open my hallway door to a stunning Irish woman and a porter. Anne Cormac Bonny is the taller of the two, wearing a Balmoral regimental beret, BBC News T-shirt, and confidence she earned on the Falls Road in Belfast.
She tips the porter, adding her devastating smile, avoids looking at me a second time or my knife, and walks to my floor-to-ceiling verandah doors. A hint of her de la Renta perfume trails her, just like it did in London.
I shut the hallway door, double lock it, pocket the knife, then follow to the verandah.
Anne Bonny concentrates on the growing fires that dot the malaria valley below and the waterfront far beyond. Her eyes cut to the nearest threat, the torches dancing in the overgrown breadfruit, pine, and flamboyant trees at l’Habitation Leclerc, close enough that she can smell the pitch tar. Anne can’t see the freelance killers and rapists going tribal, but I don’t have to tell her that’s who’s there picking sides, preparing for the slaughter when the control-of-the-country presidential negotiations fail and the Castro-CIA three-way civil war cooks off with the rebels.
Privateers Page 14
