The sun was easing into a feather bed of clouds on the western horizon as the Learjet 45 banked over Le Golfe de la Gonâve and lined up on the main runway of Toussaint L’Ouverture International. It was a little after 4 p.m. local time.
Aided by a strong tailwind, the thirteen hundred mile flight from New Orleans to Port-au-Prince had taken just over two hours. They could have made even better time than that, but they had to avoid Cuban airspace.
Mas had been squinting out the portside windows during the entire descent, as they approached from out of the north and skirted around Cuba. She could just make out the glint of windows and sheet metal at Gitmo, the U.S. garrison at Guantanamo Bay. Gitmo occupied an isolated patch of beachfront property near the barren eastern tip of the island, a bastion of democracy on the last communist holdout in the western hemisphere. When Fidel took over the island in 1959, he was smart enough to leave Gitmo alone.
Mas knew some of the agents who had tangled with the Marines over the infamous interrogation methods they used there. But the Marines had their own way of doing things and the FBI wasn’t welcome at Camp Delta, even though the Feds had been in the interrogation business long before Joe Kennedy was making his fortune as a rum-runner in these very waters.
The mountainous island of Hispaniola was a massive, jungled hulk to the east, set in a royal blue sea. Aside from the cities of Gonaïves and Saint-Marc and the carpet of corrugated roofs and wood smoke that was the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, urbanization in Haiti was intermittent at best. Mas had read in her briefing book that when night came, long stretches of coastline would lie in darkness, and the clusters of electric lights that did huddle on the beaches would dissipate as soon as they ventured inland.
The satellite photos in her State Department briefing book were starkly revealing. Aside from the occasional town or village square and the rare highway, much of the inland regions were lit in a dim yellow, almost red. As they descended and the lay of the land became more pronounced, Mas realized that the faint smudges of light she had seen in the photos must have been the glow from a million wood fires and charcoal braziers in the shantytowns and hamlets that dotted the countryside below.
The briefing book explained that the rural poor of Haiti had been cutting down their forests for decades to cook and keep warm. If that didn’t change soon, the entire western third of the island, in contrast to the lush Dominican Republic that made up the center and the eastern part of Hispaniola, would eventually become a desert savannah as bleak as Easter Island.
The jet touched down lightly on the concrete runway, and then braked with a tremendous rush of exhaust as the twin fanjets were thrown into reverse. Within moments, the Learjet was taxiing off the runway at a leisurely pace, heading for a spot on the taxi tarmac at the north end of the international terminal.
They taxied to a halt at the corner of the long two-story stucco and glass building. It struck her as being much like a regional airport from mid-century America. Passengers had to disembark down rollaway staircases and set foot on solid ground and then walk in the open air to the terminal.
It was her kind of place. She never liked the bustling commuter hubs like D.C. and Dallas and New Orleans. She preferred an airport that was more like an overgrown bus station, in which you knew that the place where you arrived was markedly different from the place you just left. It was much better than shuttling from one bland air-conditioned sky mall to another.
Just south of where they were parked, an American Airlines jet was disgorging its passengers before the main entrance of the terminal. Ekaso was on board, and a screaming throng of his fans was pressing up against a phalanx of local cops guarding the bottom of the rollaway staircase. The other passengers were disembarking first, and they had a tough time threading their way through the excited fans who had come to see their hero.
He appeared at the threshold behind them with his manager Ivey Johnson, an Irish-American woman with green eyes, and the young star waved to his cheering fans below. They responded with a surge of boisterous enthusiasm. Ekaso’s bodyguards stepped out of the airliner and flanked him and his manager, signaling to the crowd to mind their manners. It didn’t seem to do much good.
The officers below parted the rowdy crowd again for the last few passengers, who streamed toward the entrance of the immigration building where other arrivals were lining up. They got in back of the immigration line and collected themselves, getting their bearings and taking in the lush tropical air, settling in for a slow advance as the line inched its way forward.
To keep their spirits up, the Boukman Experience was on hand playing kompa music for them. The women of the troupe were dressed in white and dancing barefoot, and encouraging the long line of tourists and returning locals to step to the rhythm, while the Boukman drummers kept up a syncopated chant.
Mas smiled, surveying the scene through a cabin window of the Learjet. There was a party going on, and the island was inviting everybody to come.
John opened the clamshell hatch and the dense tropical air rushed in, embracing them both. He breathed in deeply and smiled. No matter how often he flew, he never quite got used to the amine tinge of a pressurized cabin. And there was no point trying to cover it up with yet another vile chemical.
Energized by the fragrant humidity wafting through the hatch, he picked up her luggage and went down the staircase first, and then stood beside it and offered a gentleman’s hand to help her disembark.
Mas angled around Ekaso’s jubilant fans and headed for the back of the line at the immigration building, rolling her carry-on behind her with her briefcase strapped on top. She drank in her surroundings with each step, letting the place seep into her any way it chose. She loved to travel, and the first five minutes in a new place were always among her favorite moments.
The weather was a lot like New Orleans, only more so, she thought. It was the best way she could conceptualize her first impression. Like Southern Louisiana, Haiti was a fecund environment in which anything could take root and flourish, and usually did, for good or for ill. Western Civilization was invented in a temperate clime; the closer it got to the equator, the strands that held all the pieces in place became more and more tenuous.
Her ruminations were interrupted when a handsome black gentleman in a white linen suit approached her with a gracious smile. “I am Isaac La Croix,” he said. “Welcome to Haiti.”
Mas stopped and offered a smile in return, but it was tempered with hesitation. She had no idea who he was.
“Good afternoon, monsieur. Are you my liaison?”
“At your service,” La Croix said with a slight bow.
Mas had to admit to herself that she was charmed. She extended her hand and La Croix shook it. Behind him, she noticed an officer of the Palace National Police coming out of the Salle Diplomatique door of the immigration building. The man stepped up beside her new liaison and nodded a polite hello, as La Croix gestured to the officer, keeping his eyes on Mas.
“Your passport, if you please,” La Croix said to her, indicating that she should hand it to the PNP officer. She took it out of her jacket pocket and handed it to the man. He flipped through the pages quickly and carefully, and then he glanced at her with a perfunctory smile.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Mas. Suivez-moi, s’il vous plait.”
He gestured toward the door he had just come out of, and La Croix took the handle of Mas’ rolling luggage. As she started for the door, the officer finally glanced at La Croix. La Croix nodded an imperious hello, and they fell into step behind Mas, La Croix wheeling her luggage behind him.
Captain Felix of the PNP had recognized Isaac La Croix at once. Delatour, the Interior Minister, briefly visited the Salle Diplomatique office with the man earlier that day, and he showed the stranger every courtesy. Captain Felix had no idea who he was exactly, but he was certain that La Croix was not to be trifled with.
Just to be on the safe side, the officer stepped ahead of them and opened the door for the pair. In Haiti, it was always prudent to presume that someone had far more power than you or anyone you knew could possibly wield. Captain Felix lived through several coups, and retained his rank through each of them by keeping that simple guideline firmly in mind.
La Croix thanked him with a brief tip of his head, and then gestured for Mas to please enter first. They were making her feel like royalty. Welcome to Haiti, she thought, and stepped inside the Salle Diplomatique.
The Immigration Officer behind the counter stamped Mas’ passport and handed it back to her with a smile.
“Voici votre passeport.”
“Merci,” Mas replied, and prayed that the lady didn’t think she knew much more French than that. Ordering food was one thing; conversing was quite another thing entirely.
“De rien,” the woman said.
Mas just smiled, and then turned to La Croix before she could get drawn into any small talk. “Where’s Agent Francine?” she asked him.
Mas glanced around the office to make her point. Everyone there was wearing a local uniform. They were either officers of the PNP, the local police, or they were immigration officials. And they were all busy as bees, as if they actually worked there. There was no one around who looked anything like a female FBI agent, other than herself.
La Croix just smiled, standing close beside her with her carry-on. Before she could press him further, a senior officer of the PNP stepped up to them and nodded.
“Mademoiselle Mas?” the colonel inquired.
She nodded back.
“Please follow me,” he requested, and turned toward a back door. Mas glanced at La Croix for a clue, but he just gripped the handle of her carry-on and gestured for her to go first.
The taxi tarmac and the main runway beyond gave up their last flourish of rippling heat as the sun eased behind the gauzy western clouds for its final hour of daylight. The crowd at the Immigration gate was a tired, sweltering throng, but they found their second wind when the late afternoon haze finally brought some relief. The doorway was jammed with people who by and large were in a buoyant mood from having just been greeted by the kompa band and from learning that they had flown in with an actual celebrity. A Babel of languages echoed off the walls and the high ceiling inside the building as the arrivals pressed forward and chatted about their flights, the weather, where they were from, where they were staying, and what their itineraries were.
FBI Special Agent Nadege Francine was late. She came straight from her office at the U.S. Embassy, in a Jeep Cherokee from the motor pool. The mid-size SUV was just the thing for whipping through the streets of Port-au-Prince in air-conditioned comfort, or racing on the twisting roads east of the city. But it couldn’t fly over traffic jams.
Francine – nobody called her Nadege – was an exotic beauty of Haitian descent, and if people didn’t notice the Jeep’s license plate, they would routinely mistake her for a local rich girl rather than a Fed who was born and raised in Baton Rouge.
She walked briskly out of the terminal and headed for the Learjet taxied at the north end of the tarmac. The fuel truck was already there, and the clamshell door was open. She had a description of Christine Mas firmly in mind, courtesy of her old friend Mark Kaddouri, and expected Mas to step out of the plane at any moment.
Instead, the fuel truck crew disengaged their hose, hopped in the cab of their truck, and drove away as the steward in the Learjet closed the clamshell door. A moment later, the engines spooled up, the pilot released his brakes, and the jet began to taxi toward the runway.
Francine stopped in her tracks and looked around, then scanned the throng of people behind her on the tarmac. Damn, she thought, and dialed Mas’ number from the text message Mark sent her.
Mas heard her phone softly ringing in its holster on her belt, but she was busy chatting with La Croix at the moment, and didn’t want to seem rude. She turned off the ringer and let the call go to voicemail.
Francine let it ring, until the message came on. “Hi, Christine” she said, “Agent Mas? This is Agent Francine, pick up...” She was a firm believer in short and sweet messages, and ended the call, looking around for Mas as she speed-dialed Mark Kaddouri.
She had a fair idea of what Mas looked like, from the detailed description Kaddouri had already given her. He emailed Mas’ picture to Francine earlier that day, but the ISP in Port-au-Prince suffered another one of its infamous glitches, and she couldn’t get his email down from the server before she had to leave for the airport.
She got up on her tiptoes for a better look, but it was pointless; she wasn’t a tall woman to begin with. Mark was already on the line, describing Mas’ outfit to her.
“Hang on, Mark... No, I don’t see any woman dressed like that.”
She kept the phone to her ear, although it was almost impossible to hear above the din, and scanned the crowd.