“Thank you. It was excellent,” she told Roselle. The woman smiled sweetly.
“You need strength, Mademoiselle,” she said, glancing at Soulavier.
Mary took her case from the bedroom—hairbrush and makeup kit within—and stood by the couch in the living room. Soulavier glanced up, leaped to his feet, bowed and opened the screen door for her. The limo waited at curbside.
Seated across from her, Soulavier instructed the car in French and they turned around in the broad asphalt street to exit the compound. As they drove to the bayfront he described history and legend in a steady patter that Mary only half heard. She had read much of the same information the night before, delivered with almost as much enthusiasm.
Throughout Port-au-Prince with few exceptions the buildings were no older than the arrival of Colonel Sir to Hispaniola. The Great Caribbean Quake of ‘18 had provided John Yardley with a gilt-edged opportunity, and had also saddled his youthful tyranny with an enormous burden of reconstruction. A few of the newer buildings made half hearted efforts at recapturing the gingerbread spirit of old Haiti; most started afresh year one with a new style of architecture best described as Efficient Institutional.
The hotels were conspicuous exceptions; here, at the center of tourist cash flow the architecture was flamboyant and festive, wastefully imaginative. Mary had been to Las Vegas several times and was reminded of its daytime drab and night-time excess. Architects from around the world had converged in Hispaniola beginning in 2020, “year of Great Vision,” as Colonel Sir had flamboyantly named it, and had tried to create hotels in the shape of ocean liners, mountains to match the island’s, seabirds with wings spread as well as fearfully unsupported structures that sat on the shore and in the bay like fanciful space stations with spinning hubs and twisting arms.
The two years previous to this “year of Great Vision” had been hard ones. Colonel Sir had fought off four counterrevolutions, three Dominican and one Haitian; he had lost his best friend, geologist Rupert Henshaw, in the second of these. Before his death Henshaw had helped revitalize the old copper and gold mines and find new ones; he had also unlocked the secrets of massive oil reserves heretofore considered too risky to exploit. In those days, on the edge of the nano breakthroughs, petroleum had still been a necessary raw material, not burned but converted into thousands of byproducts. Henshaw had served Colonel Sir well.
Most of the island’s records for those years were not available to the general public or world historians. At the very least thousands had died in the consolidation. Colonel Sir had emerged with a reputation for extreme ruthlessness in the tradition of dozens of previous rulers of Hispaniola’s two nations. Unlike those rulers, however, once secure on his seat of power he had also shown himself to be extraordinarily capable and selfless.
Colonel Sir cared nothing for personal riches. He had a vision. He applied that vision with insight and eventually, with regards to Hispaniolans, even with gentleness, never again taking reprisals upon opponents or enemies; always allowing them to go into well-endowed exile. Under Colonel Sir’s controversial judicial system, by 2025 Hispaniola had the lowest crime rate of any nation of its population density and income level in the world.
Colonel Sir John Yardley had broken the cycle of the island’s cruelty. Over three centuries that cycle, that curse, had exercised its force; the force could not be denied it could only be rechanneled, and Colonel Sir had pointed it outward, exported it from the island.
The Citadelle des Oncs, Citadel of the Uncles—police headquarters—was less fortresslike than some of the businesses and public buildings of the city. Situated near the bay, four long red brick buildings formed a square connected by wood and stone walkways, the middle courtyard smoothly planted with well manicured grass. In the center of the courtyard rose a huge twisted humprooted tree, its base festooned with bougain-villea and frangipani.
“That is a baobab,” Soulavier said, pointing proudly. “From Guinée. Colonel Sir brought it here from Kenya to remind us of our true home. My father told me it is occupied by a loa who watches over all of this state, Manna Jacques-Nanci by name. Manna Jacques-Nanci when she chooses rides Colonel Sir as a horse. But I have never seen that and it is most unusual for a white man, even Colonel Sir, to be so ridden.”
Mary tried to penetrate Soulavier’s manner, to decide what he believed and what he related merely as fable, and failed. He was a man raised to be clever and hide all important things, to know all the slides and traps of political life as a magician knows signs and symbols. His voice seemed sincere; she could not believe him sincere. How successful (or sincere) had Colonel Sir’s campaigns against vodoun been?
Soulavier behaved like a solicitous brother as he spoke, face betraying a flow of emotions quick and open, childlike. “The Noncs,” he said, “the Oncs we call them also, the Uncles, they are not bad men but they have jobs to do, sometimes jobs very difficult. Do not be dismayed by them. They are proud, handsome, dedicated. Many fought with Colonel Sir in their youth; they are his brothers.”
“Do you know whom I’m meeting with?” she asked.
“Alejandro Legar, Inspector General of Hispaniola des Caraïbes, state of Southern Haiti. In attendance will be his two assistants, Aide Ti Francine Lopez and myself.”
Mary smiled at the surprise, almost relieved by this turn, seeing a path through the manner to something approaching truth. “You’re an assistant to the Inspector General?”
Soulavier as if sharing a child’s secret returned her smile delightedly, nodded vigorously and tapped the arm of his seat. The limo rolled quietly under the Citadelle entry arch. “It is an excellent job,” he said, “the job my mother raised me for. It helps me be an even better avocat for visitors as I know the laws, the ins and outs.”
Straightbacked oncs in black and red uniforms stood silent rigid suspicious at the glass doors. They did not blink at Soulavier or his companion. A beautifully colored serpent in tile meandered down the cool quiet hall beyond the glass doors, its broad popeyed head debouching the triple door of the office of the Inspector General Legar.
In an anteroom that smelled of disinfectant and old fashioned floorwax, Mary sat in an institutional plastic chair at least a decade old, seat edges cracked and worn, arm bolsters patched. No expense wasted on show here.
Soulavier remained standing but mercifully had stopped talking. He occasionally smiled at Mary and twice left her with muttered apologies to vanish through a narrow fog etched glass door into the inner sanctum. A woman’s voice came through speaking Creole, swift and dulcet, impossible to catch.
“Madame Aide Ti Francine Lopez will see us,” Soulavier said after his third shuttle. Mary followed him past the cold hard fog and into a modest side office. Bright folk paintings from the past century crowded the walls. Behind a small mahogany desk sat a tall woman, her features handsome but not especially feminine, her frame tall and slender, with thin hands and thickly painted red fingernails. Aide Ti Francine Lopez smiled broadly.
“Bienvenue,” she said. Her voice was the voice of a large young man, a tenor. “Monsieur Aide Soulavier tells me you have come from Los Angeles. I have a cousin who lives there, also police—you say public defender. Do you know of him—Henri Jean Hippolyte?”
“Sorry, I don’t think so,” Mary said.
Aide Lopez had weighed and measured her within the first glance. “Both please sit. I am to ask you what help we can provide.”
Mary glanced above the aide’s head at her collection of paintings. “I seem to be stuck here,” Mary said. “I don’t think I can do my job under these circumstances.”