DuPaar ignored his guest’s obvious discomfort, continuing. “The dish, lambi, is a meal of the common person. The conch, of course, come from the sea and are available to all. Many of the spices grow wild.”
Diem was now mopping the back of his neck.
“And the pepper… it is a small one.” DuPaar held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “Small but quite potent. I believe it to be peculiar to Haiti.”
Diem passionately hoped so.
The president for life was already smoking a cigar when Diem finished moving enough food around his plate to give the maximum illusion of having eaten it. It was a trick most diplomats learned early.
He was reaching for his Marlboros when duPaar slammed a fist down on the table hard enough to overturn the beer bottles.
“It is a fraud!” he screamed. He leaned over so that his face was inches from Diem’s, close enough to smell the alcohol on his breath. “Did you not think I would not run tests? Do you take me for a fool?”
The transformation from affable host to outraged victim was so sudden, the undersecretary was reduced to a stammer. “F-fraud?”
“The package, the one you retrieved from Venice.”
Diem swallowed his discomfort, both from food and company, and regained his composure. “Mr. President, I can assure you…”
Another fist hit the table, this time making the plates jump. “Assure? Assure what, that you have given me a worthless collection of partial bones?”
“But…”
Leaning even closer, duPaar lowered his voice to a near whisper that Diem found more disquieting than the outburst. “As soon as I received the package, I sent small parts of it to the States for testing of DNA. The bones were of a man, a Semite, who lived in the first century AD.”
Diem thought for a moment, remembering what he had learned of Western history and religion. “The Christians’ Saint Mark?”
Again, the thumping on the table and raised voice. “Saint Mark? Of course it may be Saint Mark. It did, after all, come from his tomb. It was your idea that the occupant of that tomb was someone else!”
Diem made a mental note to find the person in the Foreign Office who had made that determination. If he (or she) were lucky, they would end their career in what had been Tibet. If not lucky, in prison.
“Mr. President, I understand a mistake has been made. I can assure you my government will do everything in its power…”
Again, the menacing lowering of the voice. “And I can assure you that not one additional Chinese worker, not one more Chinese soldier, will set foot in Haiti until your promise is fulfilled. It was by my show of good faith there are any here now. I should have waited until your part of the bargain was complete. Do you understand me?”
“Perfectly, Mr. President. But the, er, material already…?”
“They can and will be removed!”
Without another word, duPaar stood, immediately flanked by the two uniformed bodyguards. He turned and stalked from the restaurant. It had definitely been one of the most bizarre evenings of Diem’s diplomatic life. But then, Diem had been spared dealings with North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, who certainly had a number of things in common with Haiti’s leader. Both lived sumptuously while their people starved. Both imagined they were well loved. They shared another trait: lunacy.
Port-au-Prince International Airport
(Formerly Francois Duvalier International Airport)
Thirty minutes later
Jerome Place had the specially modified cell phone hidden under the mangoes. Even at this hour at night, no one questioned the man in the ragged clothes who was wandering the airport’s perimeter road in an effort to sell his produce. Many such vendors had no homes, lived wherever they fell asleep.
Not Jerome. Six years ago, he had joined twenty-some other people in a voyage to America on a craft consisting of little more than boards tied across worn-out truck inner tubes and propelled by oars and a ragged sail. Few, if any, could swim.
The first day, before they even reached the Turks and Caicos Islands, two women and one of their infants had gone overboard. There had been nothing anyone could do as they sunk below the foaming waves. By the time the makeshift craft had reached the southern Bahamas, the slot between Great Exuma and Long Island, the fresh water had run out. The survivors argued: was it better to put ashore and be sent home by the Bahamian government or continue and risk death by thirst? A vote was taken.
Dehydration won over repatriation.
The third night three people died and two more simply were not present at dawn.
They were in the tongue of the ocean, that deep Atlantic trench off the eastern shore of Andros, when the high winds of a squall broke the makeshift craft apart. Fortunately for those few who had managed to somehow stay afloat, a cutter from the United States Navy Experimental Base on southern Andros happened to be in the area and fished the seven survivors from the water more dead than alive.
Refugees picked up at sea were routinely returned to their port of origin, particularly those obviously headed for illegal entry into the United States.
Not Jerome.
To his surprise, he was separated from his comrades and packed onto a helicopter that landed on a military base he guessed was somewhere in Florida. He also guessed, correctly, that this was because he was the only survivor who could both speak and read English, a language he had studied hard during the few years he had been allowed to attend the small Catholic school in his native village before his father determined work in the little family plot was more important.
Jerome’s new friends, the Americans, fitted him with new clothes, fed him and tutored him in basic computer skills, something Jerome doubted he could use in a country too poor to buy such equipment should he return home. He need not have worried. Two weeks later, he was in Port-au-Prince, equipped with a digital camera with night-vision lens, a small computer with a solar recharging unit and a thousand dollars American, more cash than a Haitian peasant would see in several lifetimes.
And promise of more. All he had to do was find a reason to hang around the airport, take and transmit pictures of arriving foreign passengers.
That was what he was doing tonight, taking and sending a series of digital photos of the man who had arrived after dark and was now returning to the aircraft. A few phone calls from people with whom Jerome had shared his wealth had alerted him to the dinner in Petionville and the fact that this man had failed to deliver something to the president for life, information he had just passed along to the Americans. Jerome had no idea who he was or why the Americans were willing to pay for pictures of him or information as to his activities in Haiti. He could not have cared less. The money was good, but better yet, his American friends had promised him he could eventually come to the United States, bringing little Jerome, his two-year-old son, and Louisa, the child’s mother.
Life would be good. People who worked hard in the United States became rich, and Jerome was certainly willing…
His euphoria over his good fortune had deafened him. He paid no attention to the sound of the automobile pulling up behind him. He suddenly heard the sound of a car door opening and closing.
Turning, his heart dropped into his stomach. In the lights from the airport, he could see two men approaching him. Limned by the glare of the airfield, he could not see their faces but he could tell both wore the aviator-style sunglasses that were the badge of President duPaar’s Secret State Security Police. The Duvaliers’ Tonton Macoute had been abolished when young Baby Doc abdicated to France in the early 1980s, but their replacement was just as feared. People who spoke unfavorably of their president for life, or who were suspected of doing so, still disappeared without a trace.
Jerome looked over his shoulder, considering making a run for it. No chance. The road circling the airport was fenced on both sides. He was not going to outrun the car whose engine was idling.