“It is gone.”
“Perhaps the maid, turning down the bed.”
“She did that while you were waiting for me at the restaurant.”
Lang slid by her, squatting beside the door. He listened for several minutes before rejoining her. “Whoever it is is still there. I can hear someone moving around.”
“We will have the hotel call the police.”
Lang thought of the woman behind the desk who might be the only person in Cap Haitien unaware of the Citadelle, remembered his remark at dinner with the waiter hovering nearby that he intended to enjoy a cigar in the lobby afterward. “Not so fast. It might be the hotel.”
“Lang, we cannot just burst into the room. He might be armed.”
Just then, a shaft of light shone from the door. Whoever was in the room was coming out.
As though by prior agreement, both Lang and Gurt flattened themselves against the building. An indistinct shape exited their room, pulling the door closed behind it and furtively scurrying toward Lang and Gurt.
Lang waited until the person was almost abeam of him before sticking out a foot. Something tripped over it and went down amid what were understandable as curses in any language.
Lang was on top of the form, his knee pressing against shoulders as he held on to the wrists, jerking them upward. Once he had a firm grip, he stood, snatching the person to their feet. He was surprised at how light, how small, the would-be burglar was.
“Mr Lowen!”
“It is the woman from the front desk!” Gurt exclaimed just as Lang reached the same conclusion.
He spun her around to face him, pushing her toward the nearest gaslight. “Care to explain what you were doing in our room?”
Her eyes sparkled with either fear or fury. “To check your air-conditioning. Several of our guests have complained the units were not working. I knocked on your door, and when I got no answer…”
Lang had seen no other guests, had the distinct impression he and Gurt were the only ones. Nonetheless, he let her go.
She took a step back, rubbing her wrists. “You should be more careful who you attack,” she said angrily.
“You should leave the door open when you are in someone’s room,” Lang countered. “It might help avoid unpleasant surprises for both you and your guests.”
She gave him a glare, turned on her heel and was gone.
Inside the room, the window unit was doing a workmanlike job.
Lang glanced around. “I don’t see anything missing.”
Gurt held up a paper bag that held the afternoon’s purchases. “Perhaps not missing, but someone has moved the contents around.”
At the same time, on the deserted road beside the hotel, a woman stood, talking into a cell phone.
“Yes, I looked carefully. The woman’s clothes mostly have German labels. The man’s… His jeans are American, but that means nothing. The wealthy all have American jeans. Two of his shirts are French; they still have the price tag.”
She paused, listening.
“No, I found no weapons but I did find something interesting: several lengths of rope, a boat anchor-a small one-and flashlights. Whatever they plan, they plan it for tonight. They are scheduled to leave tomorrow. They saw me leaving their room, but I gave them an excuse.”
Another pause.
“Yes, tonight. I would expect them tonight.”
Milo
02:40 the next morning
The cab ride from Cap Haitien had been uneventful if expensive. Andre, operator of the vibrant blue Ford taxi, had asked no questions as to why anyone would choose to visit the little hamlet in the morning’s earliest hours. If he had curiosity, the hundred dollars pressed into his palm quenched it.
As bidden, he let them out at the bottom of the hill that rose to Milo and became a mountain as it reached ever upward to the Citadelle. Wordlessly, he wheeled the old car around and headed back the way he had come. Gurt and Lang shouldered the small backpacks they had purchased the previous afternoon.
Gurt was carefully picking her way in the ghostly light of a three-quarter moon. “You could have let him drive us into town,” she observed.
“And wake everybody? The car had no muffler, y’know.”
“Still, riding would not risk breaking our necks walking in the dark.”
“Easy enough for you to say. Last time you rode uphill, I pushed, remember?”
They finished the gentle slope in silence. At the top, the scattering of huts was dark. Somewhere, a dog barked, someone shouted and the animal went silent. To their left, a gentle whinny led them to a low wooden fence around the central corral. Lang slipped a saddle and bridle from the top slat and was approaching a horse made skittish either by the dark or the fact he was facing a stranger.
“It will give trouble if we are caught taking horses,” Gurt predicted.
“If we don’t have them back by sunup, being horse thieves will be the least of our problems.”
“Do they not hang horse stealers?”
Lang managed to slip a bridle over the horse’s head. “That was Lonesome Dove. Don’t know about Haiti. Whatever they do, we don’t want to be here when it gets light. Now, get one saddled up.”
Each leading a horse toward the increasing slope, Lang and Gurt waited until they were well past the last silent hut before mounting. The trail narrowed to the point of invisibility as it snaked upward. Lang had not been willing to follow a path he could not see with an abyss on either side, as would be the case approaching the Citadelle. Instead, he had remembered the little sure-footed horses and how they had needed no guidance from riders to find the Citadelle or home. He could only hope they knew their directions well enough to navigate without actually seeing their way.
The moon was playing peekaboo behind puffy, silver-lined clouds, drenching the mountainside in inky darkness for minutes at a time. The surrounding coolness was Lang’s first clue they had entered that part of the route that passed through tropical forest. One of the horses’ hooves struck a rock, and there was a sound from the side of the trail that could have been a sleeping human mumbling in one of the mud habitations beside the trail.
There was no doubt when they emerged from the canopy of trees. A panoply of diamond chips sparkled in the eastern sky, undimmed by the fickle moon. Like a stage setting, the Citadelle was an undefined mass of foreboding, black against the array of stars. For once the area was not cloaked in clouds. Lang would soon find out if the tiny horses could navigate by memory alone. Between here and the bastion the narrow path was a bridge across oblivion.
The both saw it at the same time: a pinprick of light flashed and died near the base of the fortress. Someone had lit a cigarette.
“If there’s one, there’s more,” Lang whispered, although the distance to the Citadelle did not yet mandate silence.
The shadow that was Gurt nodded. “But how many more?”
Lang slipped from the saddle. “With a little luck, we’ll never know.” He edged past her horse to stand behind it, placing a hand on its rump. “I’ll walk awhile, following your horse. When we get a little closer, you stop, hold my horse.”
“But you cannot see.”
“If I get close enough, I won’t have to. I’ll move on hands and knees, feel my way along.”
“But-”
“No buts. If we get any closer and one of the horses whinnies or strikes a rock…”
Although clearly unhappy to be relegated to the role of holding the horses, Gurt knew this was neither the time nor the place for an argument. Reluctantly, she rode ahead in silence until Lang touched her arm.
“Here, wait here.” He handed her the reins of his mount. “If I’m not back in an hour and a half, take the horses back to Milo and get to the hotel. I’ll need help.”
She started to offer a final protest, but Lang had slipped away into the darkness.
