Caroline explained that Lieutenant Bacalou and his men had burst into the houngfor shortly after I, as Agarou’s human mount, had left it. The rain and my sudden leavetaking had forced their hand—they’d had to show themselves before assessing the entire situation to the lieutenant’s satisfaction. By accident, then, the macoutes had disrupted the vaudun ceremony at just the right moment to foil the efforts of the rain god Damballa and his bride Aïda Ovedo to possess Brian and Caroline. (I was glad to hear this. The idea of Caroline’s being the anthropologist’s consort, even in the twilight world of loa possession, revolted me.) The men under Bacalou’s command had entered the peristyle so unexpectedly that RuthClaire had screamed and the habilines had panicked. Toussaint was dead. He had attacked the first man into the tonnelle—not Bacalou, but an agent from the Pointe d’Inagua security post—and the agent had riddled his body with his submachine gun. In the resultant confusion, Alberoi and Dégrasse had broken through the wall behind the drum platform and escaped into the night.
“Erzulie? Hector?”
“They’re okay,” Caroline said. “They’re under guard in a dry corner. Brian and RuthClaire are with them down there, likewise under guard.”
I looked at Bacalou. “Did you bring a whole army up here with you?”
“Not even a platoon,” he said with easy irony. “At first, Monsieur Loyd, it was only Philomé and I who followed the two women and the Austin-Antilles man up here from Rutherford’s Port.” He swung his flashlight in an arc that illuminated his stocky partner’s face. “Monsieur Loyd, Philomé Bobo.”
“Enchanté,” said Bobo. But, frankly, he did not sound charmed.
“On the edge of the cigouave encampment,” Bacalou continued, “I sent Philomé back down the mountain to Pointe d’Inagua for reinforcements. Who could say looking at their hovels how many demons might dwell there? Soon, Philomé returned with Charlemagne and Jean-Gérard—almost in time to see you leaving the houngfor, a loa on your back. It was needed, monsieur, to summon enough help to be fully prepared.”
“You’d make a good Boy Scout,” I said.
Bacalou ignored the compliment. “We still have no idea how many cigouaves live up here. There could be dozens, couldn’t there? This caverne—it’s very big.”
“Not counting myself, only five of my people remained in the world,” Adam said. “You murdered Toussaint. Now there are only four.”
“Peut-être,” the lieutenant replied. “Maybe.” He nodded at his partner.
“And what Philomé did was not murder, Monsieur Montaraz, but a very quick-thoughtful defense of the self.”
Further talk revealed that while holding the remaining occupants of the houngfor at gun point, Lieutenant Bacalou and his men had decided to retrieve me for questioning. Adam and Caroline had volunteered to lead the macoutes to me, Adam because he knew where I was and Caroline because she feared for my safety in my possessed state. Negotiating the uplands had not been easy in the dark and the rain, nor had their journey through the palisade of dripping sablier trees, but at last they’d reached the cave entrance and here they were. Their torn and sodden clothes testified to the pains they’d taken. Now, Caroline said, we could all be under arrest together.
“Why are we under arrest?” I asked “What have we done?”
Lieutenant Bacalou considered. “You have aided and abetted the cigouaves, who, during the previous regime, did many treasons against the government of Papa Doc. The order to rid the island of them has never been officially put away. We could kill those two old ones down there, and you their cunning accomplices, and any other demons we might find in this impressive hole, and do it, you understand, with the blessings of Baby Doc and also, maybe, the present U.S. administration.”
“I doubt that,” Caroline said. “If RuthClaire and Adam disappeared, you’d have world public opinion, a dozen American Congressmen, and Amnesty International breathing down your necks to know why.”
“Probably,” Lieutenant Bacalou said. “And it makes me tremble.”
“And there’s no sense killing Hector and Erzulie, or Alberoi and Dégrasse, either. They’re the last of the Rutherford Remnant. When they die, Lieutenant Bacalou, their species will be extinct. They’re trying to hang on here, not overthrow the corrupt tub of butter who pays you to terrorize the citizenry.”
This sally offended the lieutenant. “We are not terrorists, Madame Loyd. We’re policemen. We keep the peace.”
“A goal that murdering Toussaint has greatly furthered,” Caroline said angrily. “Do you have any proof that he or his kinspeople have tried to bring about the collapse of the Duvalier government?”
“How could I?” Bacalou gestured with his flashlight. “Until this evening, I had no proof that he and the other cigouaves still existed.”
Adam interjected, “Please think for a moment about what you’ve just said.”
“Proof of the latter is proof of the former!” Somewhat less emphatically, Bacalou added, “At least in the eyes of my superiors.” He shone his flashlight to the left of the statue, picking out portions of the murals glistening on the cold rocks and undulating across their seams and crevices. “The acme of their criminality—theirs and yours, my friends—is that you have all conspired to keep this mighty national treasure a secret. You have worked to steal from the Haitian people a true marvel of their cultural heritage. And that is clearly criminal. It cries out for your arrest and punishment.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “This is a true marvel of habiline endurance and creativity. It belongs to Adam’s people, not to Baby Doc or the fat-cat foreigners who’ll pour in here to see the place if its secret is betrayed. Is that what you want, lieutenant? Pizza Huts and neon signs and helicopter overflights—right here on Pointe d’Inagua?”
“Mais non,” Lieutenant Bacalou said. He was very unhappy. His partner had shot Toussaint. He and the other macoutes had summarily arrested us for crimes that the lieutenant could not easily define, and now the poor man was beginning to regard these magnificently decorated catacombs as a potential threat to the beauty of this peninsula, the only finger on the island not already overlaid with Austin-Antilles coffee plantations and bean-washing facilities. Was it more patriotic to betray the secret of the caves to Baby Doc or to keep it from the government for the sake of the locals and the indigenous wildlife? An influx of new tourists would bolster Haiti’s economy, but it would also make fresh headaches for the security personnel charged with protecting the foreigners. Worse, leftist spies and agents provocateurs would use the influx as cover for their own nefarious activities. The ramifications of his dilemma weighed heavily on Bacalou.
“What are you going to do?” Adam asked him.
“For a man in this kind of work,” he said, “I have too much education. I am not ruthless enough.”
“Philomé is,” Caroline said. (Thank God Philomé had no English.) “Maybe you should let him do a ‘defense of the self’ against all three of us.” She smiled at the volontaire to imply his name had not been taken in vain… even though it had.
“Let me see more of this,” Bacalou said, ignoring Caroline’s barb. He marched into the rotunda at the end of the righthand corridor. We followed. Both Philomé and the lieutenant splashed their flashlight beams on the ceilings and walls of this vast chamber, and Adam used his battery lamp to supplement their feeble lights. For a long time, no one spoke. The macoutes were wonderstruck. Caroline slipped her arm around my waist and supported me because I was falling prey to dizziness, the peculiar sensory lag of one recently possessed.