Diem stood just in time to see a tiny shape, all but indistinguishable against the night, as it flitted away. A bat! The little creature was drinking from the pool in midflight. Diem gritted his teeth. He hated rodents, winged or otherwise.
His revulsion was quickly forgotten at the sound of footsteps. Another man behind mirrored sunglasses, this one perhaps the supposedly deaf bodyguard he had seen on his last trip, followed by two men in uniform with holsters on their belts.
Behind them, President for Life Tashmal duPaar, in what Diem guessed was dress uniform. More like Gilbert and Sullivan, complete with a galaxy of medals. He strode to the table as though marching to his own coronation.
As Diem stood, duPaar waved a hand, indicating the restaurant. “A good choice, is it not? Beautiful view, pleasant surroundings. And the food!” He touched his lips.
“I’m sure, Mr. President. But there are no other customers…”
“Aha!” DuPaar waved a dismissive hand. “Of course there are no other customers! I had the place cleared. Few are worthy of dining with the president of Haiti, and besides, other customers present security issues.”
“Ah, of course.”
As the two men were about to sit down, a figure dashed out of darkness to take the back of duPaar’s chair. A man, a Haitian of indeterminate age, seated duPaar and said something in what Diem guessed was Creole.
“The owner. He says it is a privilege to have me dine here tonight,” the president for life translated before replying in the same tongue. “I have ordered us a cocktail, as the Americans say, a taste of Barbancourt, our world-famous rum.”
Diem drank little, even less when on business, but like so many diplomats, he had learned how to take the tiniest of sips, enough to be able to comment on, say, a fine wine, but far too little to reach any stage of inebriation.
When duPaar had thrown down his second glass of the amber liquid, two beer bottles appeared. Though bearing the same label, one was green, the other brown. One long necked, the other not. One was certainly, or had been, a Budweiser. Haitian brewers, it seemed, recycled the bottles of their peers in other countries.
“Good Haitian beer,” duPaar announced. “Unlike some here in Petionville who drink the finest of French wines, I am a man of the common people, drink what they drink. One of the reasons they love me so. Besides, beer will go better with the dinner I have ordered prepared.”
The undersecretary saw no reason to mention the fact that few of those “common people” in the city below could afford to spend more than the national average annual income in an establishment like this, nor would he inquire why such security was necessary for a man so beloved.
The proprietor and another man placed platters before each man.
“ Lambi with rice,” duPaar announced. “Small, er, conchs dried in the sun and cooked with a spicy sauce. It goes well with beer, does it not?”
It would have gone better with CO 2 out of a fire extinguisher. The small, experimental bite Diem had taken singed his tongue and was now consuming his entire mouth. He was afraid to swallow for fear he would incinerate his intestines and stomach. Szechuan Chinese food was hot but a mere summer zephyr compared to the inferno he was experiencing.
He grabbed the beer bottle and emptied half of it at a gulp.
“As I said, the beer goes with the food, do you not agree?”
Diem was using his linen napkin to stanch the tears running down his cheeks. In his diplomatic career, he had been subjected to cuisine including hummingbird tongues, raw monkey brains and fried insects, but he had never suffered anything so painful.
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.
