by Jon McGoran
Toma followed my gaze, then held up his own phone. “You can use my phone,” he said, looking around to see if anyone was coming. “But we have to go. Now.”
As we ran up the steps, we heard angry voices behind and below us, but they quickly faded away. When we reached the top, we jogged along the trail, slowing to a brisk walk as we entered the woods. As soon as I was confident we were out of earshot, I checked the phone again. For whatever reason—maybe we were out of range or out of time, or maybe the phone on the yacht had been discovered—but the app had stopped recording and the call disconnected.
I stopped walking and went to Nola’s voice mail. “Doyle—” she said, and then the screen went dark except for a little circle spinning for a second before winking out.
“Fuck!” I said. Out of juice. At least it had held out until now.
“What is it?” Toma said.
“I do need to borrow your phone.”
He handed it over without question, but I think he might have had one or two when I dialed the thirteen digits of the country code and Nola’s number.
The call went straight to voice mail. “It’s Doyle,” I said. “Call me at this number.”
I tried to stay focused and positive, not dwell on the fact that she hadn’t answered. I tried to remember the sound of her voice on her message, the tone as she said my name. She hadn’t sounded desperate, I told myself, or upset or even urgent. She’d sounded fine. She’d sounded okay.
I took a deep breath and called Regi. He answered almost immediately. “Allo?”
“It’s Doyle.”
“How did it go?”
“I don’t know exactly. Bourden was there, the guy from Energene. He wasn’t happy to see me, but I said my piece, told Pearce what Energene was up to, then I got the hell out of there. They’re definitely not friends like they used to be.”
“How bad?”
“Pearce’s men shot one of Bourden’s, right there in front of me. There was another shot after I left.”
“Woy!”
“It might have been Bourden himself, but probably not. Pearce is keeping them on the boat while his men try to prevent the Soyagene rollout.” I told him about the phone and how it kept recording, even after I left. “The battery died before I could listen back. But I’m pretty sure we got something.”
He laughed. “Doyle, that’s great. I didn’t think it would work.”
“We’ll see what it picks up. And I don’t know if this will slow down their other plans for the CASCATA vote. Did you talk to Cardon? Is there any word on Miriam?”
“Miriam is okay. I spoke to the DCPJ. They are holding her for extradition, but she is safe and being treated well.” He paused. “I found Cardon right where I thought. It’s not good. He is holed up in the mountains near Limbe with a few hundred Presidential Guard. Ducroix evacuated him from the capital. He was supposed to meet up with UN troops in Plaisance, but it was a trap. Cardon’s men realized it was an ambush and went elsewhere, but they have no communication, no cell service. Even the satellite phone isn’t working. As I was sneaking out, I saw Ducroix’s troops massing around the mountain. At least a thousand of them. There will be a coup, and it will be soon.”
“Do you think the new situation between Stoma and Energene could slow things down?”
“I doubt it matters at this point. Ducroix will just deal with whoever comes out on top. Even if they try to call it off, I don’t see him backing away from a shot at power, not when he is this close. And not after he has shown his colors.”
“The trade vote is tomorrow.”
“Exactly.”
“What about the trade minister, the guy we saw at Ducroix’s compound? Do you think he’s in on it?”
“Vincent Adrien? I believe so, yes.”
“So if they control him, do they even need a coup?”
“Not to place the vote but for it to stand. They can’t place the vote and then have Cardon disavow it and say it was a dirty trick.”
“So they might wait until right after the vote, so there is no question about its legitimacy.”
“That’s right. The vote will be made during the Cardon regime. Afterward, they can just say they are upholding the will of the previous regime.”
“But won’t Cardon say otherwise?”
He sighed into the phone. “Not if they kill him.”
75
Toma had heard enough of my conversation with Regi to get the gist. I could feel the heat coming off him as it stirred up the anger and frustration he’d expressed on the way out there. His jaw ground in silent fury as we hiked through the night.
When we got back to the gang’s hideaway, two of his men were waiting for us, Janjak and Westè, the two who had been making fun of Cyrus before. They looked scared and angry, aiming rifles at us until they saw it was Toma.
The larger of them, Janjak, stepped closer. He leaned forward to speak in a loud whisper. “Cyrus mouri.”
Toma took a deep breath, puffed out his chest. “Mwen touye Cyrus. I killed him.”
Janjak and Westè looked at each other, thinking.
Janjak said, “Poukisa?”
Toma stepped closer to him, looked him in the eye. “Because he challenged me. So I had to. Sa se yon pwoblèm?” I think he was asking if they had a problem with that.
Janjak thought for a moment, then stepped back and shook his head. “No, boss.”
“Bon.”
Toma spoke to them both in Kreyol. I picked up enough to realize he was leaving Janjak in charge.
As we came around the hilltop to where we had left the Jeep, Cap-Haïtien opened up below us. It looked worse than before—a haze of smoke hanging over twice as many fires, accompanied now by dozens of flashing police and emergency lights.
As we were about to get into the Jeep, Toma paused and sighed, looking out at the city. His eyes looked sad and tired, old beyond their years. “I don’t know if Haiti can go through this once again,” he said.
I didn’t know what to tell him. All the reassurances that came to mind sounded hollow and baseless even before I said them out loud. So I said nothing. I got in the Jeep and waited for him to do the same, wondering what I could do to somehow help make this time different.
Toma got in beside me, and I took off down the hill. The dust rising behind us drifted away, merging with the haze of smoke over the city. We zigzagged through the chaos of Cap-Haïtien, keeping our distance from both police and protestors.
After what felt like hours, we got to Elena’s. Toma had a key. He opened the door, and we paused. Lights were on, and we could hear the sound of movement upstairs.
He looked at me. A shrug was the best I could offer.
“Matant, Elena?” he called tentatively.
The movement stopped, and for a moment, we all froze—Toma, me, and whoever was upstairs.
Then a thin voice called down the steps, “Toma?”
“Wi, Matant…”
Elena hurried down the stairs and ran to Toma, kissing his face, caressing it. Her cheeks were wet with tears. I couldn’t tell if she was crying from relief that he was safe or if there was something else.
They spoke to each other in Kreyol, both of them upset. I felt like I was intruding, but I also felt like something was going on, and I needed to know what. “Is everything okay?” I asked.
Elena nodded and wiped her eyes.
Toma looked worried. “The men from the Interior Ministry came back, the ones who told them they have to cook for the troops. Now they tell them they have to go to Mouelle and cook there for even more troops.”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s a tiny little village south of Limbe,” Toma said, his voice edged with worry and frustration. “It’s not right. They shouldn’t be able to just tell them they have to.” There was a vulnerability in his eyes, and I glimpsed the little boy in him.
Elena reached up and cupped his cheek, reassuringly.
“Did they say why? Why do they have to go there?”
I asked.
Toma seemed almost annoyed at the irrelevance of the question, but he translated for me.
She shook her head and replied.
“They wouldn’t say,” he explained. “But she thinks the troops are gathering there for some big operation. She says she has to meet Marcel in two hours, and then they have to leave in order to get down there in time to have breakfast ready for two thousand men before dawn.”
South of Limbe. That’s where Cardon and his men were hiding. Elena and Marcel were being forced to feed the men who were going to kill the president.
“Ask her what they have to cook for them.”
Toma looked at me sideways, his forehead wrinkled like he thought it an odd question. But he understood I might be onto something. He asked her, and she waved her hand dismissively as she replied.
“Just mayi moulin,” he said. “It’s like a corn porridge, or polenta. She says it’s a simple dish but a big job to cook for so many.”
Polenta. Corn polenta.
Elena went into the kitchen, and I pulled Toma aside. “You told Regi you weren’t there when that food aid was stolen. Is that true?”
He looked at me indignantly. “Of course it’s true. If I said it, it’s true.”
“No, it’s not. You’re lying. Tell me the truth. You were there, weren’t you?”
He glared at me with the familiar smoldering resentment cornered felons reserve for badgering cops who have something on them. He was my only ally, and I didn’t want to damage the rapport we’d developed. But I needed to know. “Fuck you. No, and it’s none of your business, anyway. I don’t need to tell you anything.”
“I’m not judging,” I told him, and that was true. “I’m not a cop here; I can’t arrest you. And frankly, I don’t even think what you did was totally wrong, considering. But right now, for the sake of Regi and your aunt and everyone else, you need to tell me if you had any direct involvement with the theft of that aid shipment.”
He glared at me another moment, then rolled his eyes and exhaled. “Okay, yes. So what? It was Toussaint’s idea, but I was with him when he broke in and stole it. You satisfied?” His eyes were half daring me to do anything about it, half afraid that maybe I would.
“Great,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Do you think you could do it again?”
76
A slow grin spread over Toma’s face when I told him what I had in mind. It faded when I got to the part his aunt and Marcel would have to play, but he sucked it up and agreed, anyway. It was touch and go as he explained it to Elena, especially when he had to admit why he knew where the Soyagene was. She was a little more judgmental than I had been, and disapproval of what he had done was plain on her face.
When Toma finished explaining to her what I had in mind, I made sure he told her she was under no pressure, that she didn’t have to do it if she didn’t want to, and that she could be in some danger.
She nodded thoughtfully, and I was relieved she didn’t say yes right away. She said she would talk to Marcel about it, and she needed to talk to Regi.
I asked if I could speak to him first, so I could talk him through the plan to make sure it was scientifically and practically sound. I’d feel a lot better about getting Elena and Marcel involved if Regi was behind it, as well. She dialed the phone and handed it to me.
He answered in a hushed voice. “I am halfway home,” he said.
“It’s Doyle,” I said. “There’s some new developments. I have a plan.” I told him about Elena and Marcel being sent to Mouelle, cooking for two thousand troops. I told him my idea to enlist her help. “So, before anything else, do you think it could work?”
“It’s clever,” he said begrudgingly. “I’m not crazy about it, but the science is sound.” He let out a sigh. “I guess it’s a good plan.”
“If we’re going to try it, we need to do it now, as soon as possible.”
“It could be very dangerous.”
“I know. And I don’t want to push Elena and Marcel into doing it, but it could be our best shot at stopping this.” I thought about Nola, about the faxes and the calls, about the risks I had taken, the danger I had put her in. The fact that she wasn’t answering her goddamned phone. “It could be our only shot.”
I could hear him breathing. “She’s my only sister, Doyle. I don’t know if I can lose another … I can’t lose her.”
“I understand.” I did. And I wondered for a moment if maybe I was somehow becoming obsessed with these guys, chasing them like a white whale. But I hadn’t gone looking for them. I hadn’t gone looking for Ron Hartwell. I might have gone looking for Miriam, but I hadn’t found her. She found me. “Anyway,” I said, “Elena wants to talk to you about it, as well. I just wanted you to hear from me what it was I had in mind.”
“Let me talk to her. Maybe we have enough there we don’t need to do anything else. And Doyle … I know this isn’t your fight. Thanks for what you have done.”
“I’ll talk to you soon.”
Elena took the phone into the kitchen. As Toma followed, I asked to borrow his phone once more.
He nodded and handed it over without hesitation.
I tried calling Nola. The first time the call didn’t even go through. The second try took forever—lots of clicking and hissing. It crossed my mind that maybe the line was tapped, but more likely it was just a bad international connection. When I finally connected, it went straight to voice mail. I took small comfort knowing that the four men I was most afraid might come for her were being held on a boat here in Haiti—and at least one of them was dead. But I still felt the fear and frustration of not being able to reach her.
“Fuck!” I muttered, just as Elena and Toma walked in from the kitchen.
Elena scowled and tutted.
“Sorry,” I said.
Toma smirked. “She talked to Regi, and she talked to Marcel,” he said, looking down at his aunt.
She nodded. “We do it.”
77
When we drove up the alley behind his restaurant, Marcel was loading the back of a battered van with sixty-pound sacks stenciled CORNMEAL, with the Stoma-Grow logo beneath it. He looked worried but determined. He gave me a curt nod, like he knew that what we were doing was important but he wasn’t crazy about it.
When Elena got out of the Jeep, she went to him and they hugged. Then he cupped her face and kissed her. It dawned on me then that their relationship was more than just professional.
It might not have been news to Toma, although he didn’t seem too concerned one way or another. Marcel gave him a nod a few degrees colder than the one he gave me, no doubt because of the past worry Toma had put his aunt through.
“We leave in two hours,” Marcel said. “If we doing this thing, you need to go now.”
I nodded.
Toma spoke briefly to Marcel. The big man listened and nodded, then he ducked back into the restaurant, returning moments later with a coil of rope, a crowbar, and a small rolled-up rug. The rug was a runner of some kind, long and narrow. It was filthy, and I could smell the mustiness coming off it.
Toma nodded and said, “Trè byen,” taking them from him and putting them in the back of the Jeep. As I turned to follow him, Marcel put his massive hand on my shoulder and pulled me close.
“I don’t like that thug,” he said, tilting his head at Toma. “But Elena loves him. Bring him back safe.”
* * *
I drove, and Toma directed me across the city and toward the docks. I’d been back and forth through Cap-Haïtien enough times that I was starting to get my bearings. The city and the landscape around it seemed to be shrinking from sheer familiarity. Or maybe it was the fact that the streets were all but deserted.
There were a few fires lingering here and there and police cars speeding back and forth, but it was almost midnight, and things were settling down.
As we approached the water, I could see the cranes on the ships and the docks rising above the buildings. I looked back at the
hills looming behind us, south toward Gaden and Saint Benezet, north toward Labadie and Labadee and Archie Pearce’s megayacht out in the water.
An hour and a half had passed since I’d told Pearce about Bourden’s plan. It would take him some time to determine where the Soyagene-X was located, to put together a plan to intercept it. But he would act fast. In all likelihood, some of his men were already headed to the same place we were.
I drove faster, swerving around a darkened corner on two wheels.
Toma touched my arm. “Slow down,” he said quietly. I thought for a moment my driving had made him nervous, but he pointed down the block toward a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. “That’s it.”
I pulled over and killed the lights.
It was across the street from the dockyard, the gate facing the docks. Inside the fence was a small warehouse, a concrete yard, and two white guys with rifles.
Toma whispered in my ear, “Park over there,” pointing at a side street that doglegged from the one we were on and ran behind the warehouse property, uphill from it.
I rolled slowly forward, turned left, then right. When Toma nodded, I put it in reverse and backed right up to the fence.
He leaned his head close to mine and whispered, “The guards weren’t here before.”
That wasn’t his fault, but I was still annoyed. He might have seen it on my face. He shrugged in response.
We got out silently and walked up to the fence. It circled the entire property. The tiny building stood between us and the front gate, effectively hiding us from the guards patrolling it.
Toma had said that the fence was serious but the building itself was flimsy, and that appeared to be the case. It was constructed entirely of corrugated metal.
The fence was ground level where we were standing, but there was a four-foot drop on the inside, so although the fence was eight feet tall, it was a twelve-foot drop on the other side. There was a narrow space maybe two feet wide between the back of the shed and the wall beneath the fence.
Toma pointed out the newly repaired rear corner of the shed, where he and Toussaint had broken in before.
