“...and Collette knew about it, we’ll back up outta there so fast they’ll think hurricane season came early. I mean that, C.A. We won’t compromise on something like that.”
“And what about Denis St. Almain? Suppose there are drugs on the island but he’s not involved?”
Jake snorted and resumed his pacing, stopping once to look at the heat rising from the pavement of the parking lot, wavy, hazy, and vaporous. Then he strolled back toward Carole Ann who was perched on the edge of his desk, watching and waiting.
“I don’t have to tell you, C.A., how much I don’t give a shit about Denis St. Almain, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to try to locate him and hear his side of the story. After all, the DEA was paying him to do something.” He paused and allowed the implication and his disdain for the Federal drug-fighting agency to sink in. “What I do care about is Isle de Paix and our contract with them. Dammit, C.A., I don’t want Collette and his wife and all those people we met down there to be scumbags. I’m sick to death of scumbags and low-lifes. I really want them to be decent people and I want us to be able to do some good for them.”
She was silent for a while, largely out of respect for Jake’s emotional display. She’d never before witnessed him display care and concern for someone not related to him. She knew he loathed scumbags and low-lifes and she knew he loved making money and until this moment she’d believed that his concern for Isle de Paix was motivated purely by profit.
“That’s what I want, too, Jake,” she finally responded as she began clearing her desk, “but suppose we don’t. Or can’t.
“Then we do exactly what they hired us to do: Oversee the construction of a new governmental center, supervise the installation of a security network and the establishment of a law enforcement, and establish make-nice links with the U.S. Government. We do those things and we get the hell out and let them do and be what they’re gonna do and be.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” Jake replied, slapping his hands together in an up and down motion.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bobbing gently in the azure waters of the Old San Juan harbor, the sixty-foot luxury cruiser could have been a toy in a pond, so easily did it roll and sway with the waves. But then the Caribbean was a gentle sea, Carole Ann thought, hurricane season notwithstanding, and boats like this one were made to be one with the water. It’s not a boat, it’s a yacht, some voice inside her head whispered, and she crossed the metal gangway and boarded the elegant craft.
“Permit me to show you to your quarters, Madame.” The steward who had appeared silently behind her was as polished and elegant as the yacht he served. He was extremely dark-skinned, his eyes and face so flawlessly clear that it was not possible to guess his age with any accuracy—between thirty and fifty, she guessed. He was powerfully built and his white uniform seemed painted on him. He spoke with a clipped British accent that she expected had been born in Barbados and nurtured in London. He removed his hat and tucked it beneath his left arm, awaiting her response. She nodded and he bowed slightly, executed a military turn, and led her toward a stateroom that seemed to be one with the ocean, owing to the expanse of glass that constituted the exterior wall. Carole Ann was wondering whether she wanted to sleep surrounded by so much water when the steward touched a button on a panel of buttons adjacent to the door. A heavy curtain glided soundlessly across the glass, obliterating the view and plunging the room into inky darkness. He touched the button again, opening the curtain, and demonstrated that the next button opened the center glass panel to the sea air. The other buttons operated the lights, the stereo system, the television screen, summoned the maid, and rang the kitchen. He showed her the fully stocked refrigerator, bar and pantry, and the walk-in closet, where her suitcases rested neatly on padded benches. After ascertaining that he could do no more for her, he saluted, replaced his hat, turned, and left, quietly closing the door.
Carole Ann remained motionless for a long moment, looking out at the sea but not really seeing it. She tossed her purse on to the bed and sank down into a chaise facing the gently rippling blue-green vista before her. She allowed her body to relax fully, caressed by the gentle breeze. She could, she thought, fall instantly and deeply asleep. ‘And be wide awake at three in the morning,’ the voice inside her warned, and she almost replied, ‘so what?’ out loud; she could take a nap later if she got sleepy. She was beginning a two-and-a-half-day vacation cruise of the Caribbean. No matter that the original intent of the voyage had been to gain a nautical familiarity with the string of islands between Puerto Rico and Isle de Paix. She needed the time alone to sort out the disturbing and complex circumstances involving Isle de Paix.
She also needed to clarify in her mind what her response would be if she encountered Denis St. Almain and how far she’d go to assist him. This was a personal conflict. Jake had said—and he had meant—that he didn’t give a shit about St. Almain. He was concerned only for Isle de Paix. She, on the other hand, was concerned not so much for Denis personally, but for his legal rights. If they disagreed about a contract, it was their shared beliefs that bound them: They believed in the law. Not necessarily in the way the legal profession practiced it or in the way police agencies enforced it but in what the law could represent if practiced and enforced honestly. No police agency had charged Denis St. Almain with the murder of Steve Campos; he was wanted for questioning only. Jake Graham might hate scumbags and low-lifes, but he hated injustice more, and he had allowed Carole Ann to convince him that Denis St. Almain deserved to be heard, especially if he was or had been an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency. But he steadfastly refused to make equals of St. Almain and Isle de Paix on the scale. And she couldn’t separate Denis and Hazel Copeland.
She stood and stretched. A change of clothes and a cold drink were called for. She surveyed the contents of the refrigerator and the bar and concluded that what she wanted was rum-based, and that she wanted lots of it. She pressed the button that rang the kitchen and ordered a jug of Planter’s Punch, guessing that it would arrive by the time she got changed. She ordered dinner from the waiter who brought the Punch and settled down in the lounge before the open door to watch the sunset and to not think. She was, she decided, tired of thinking, tired of wondering and worrying. At least for today.
Carole Ann knew nothing of knots and nautical miles or of how islands came to exist in the vast stretches of ocean or of how people managed to find the islands in order to inhabit them. On the map, some of the islands they passed seemed little more than spots, and cruising past them in the magnificent morning light did little to change that impression.
She breakfasted with the ship’s captain, a dapper, light brown man with wind-weathered and lined skin named Lionel Métier, who spoke French-accented English and who readily and easily answered all her questions with scholarly detail. Though he was Haitian by birth and a veteran of the French navy, he knew Isle de Paix and its history as well as the history of most of the islands in the chain from Haiti south to Trinidad and Tobago. He spoke with sadness of the turmoil that plagued his homeland and a tinge of despair crept in when he spoke of the increasing violence visited upon these pristine, almost primitive cultures, due to drug trafficking.
“Ah, oui, Madame. It is true,” he said sadly at Carole Ann’s reaction, though he only partially misread her response. At the moment that he mentioned drug trafficking, she was wondering how she could delicately broach the subject with him, and he had opened the door himself. “Six times this vessel has been stopped and boarded by authorities looking for the drug dealers.”
“Good Lord!” she exclaimed, genuinely shocked. “Why?”
“We were mistaken for the traffickers.”
“Drug dealers travel in such luxury?”
“Oh, certainment, Madame! The drug dealers have more money than anyone, and therefore can buy more luxury than anyone, though the craft they prefer usually are smaller and faster than this one.”
“
Do you own this boat, Monsieur?” she asked, and was surprised by the suddenness of the grin that opened his face and reminded her of Jake when he smiled: The smile transformed the gravity of his face and made him handsome. In this moment, Lionel Métier was happily handsome. He thanked her for thinking that he, a sailor, could own a million dollar vessel, then explained that he worked for a French company that owned cruising yachts in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean. He worked nine months of the year, the exception being the hurricane spawning months of August, September and October. This yacht—Le Splendide—was “his” craft in that he piloted it exclusively and with the same crew, and had done so for a dozen years. The yacht could be rented in its entirety by a group or individual, though usually, as was the case currently, the individual staterooms were rented by couples or individuals for cruises of various durations.
“At the moment, Madame, there are three couples and yourself aboard. We will pick up two couples at St. Maarten and a family of six at Antigua. We leave you, unfortunately, at Isle de Paix, and we pick up another couple at Martinique. Then we cruise for two weeks, stopping at Bridgetown in Barbados, Port of Spain, Trinidad, and around the top of Venezuela to the Lesser Antilles. Then we come back to do it all again,” he said with a smile.
As interested as she was in the life of the captain of a Caribbean luxury yacht, she needed to return him to the subject of drug trafficking; and once again, he obliged as if privy to her thoughts. “Our passengers are, almost exclusively, wealthy Europeans. They fly to the islands and then spend a week or two cruising the Caribbean. They resent the intrusion of the police. They don’t like being mistaken for the criminal element.”
“I can imagine,” Carole Ann replied dryly, then asked quickly, “Should I be concerned about conducting my business on Isle de Paix?”
He shook his head quickly and smiled brightly. “Oh, mai, non, Madame. Isle de Paix is quite safe. No, I regret to say, Haiti is considered one of the more significant problem areas, along with the Dominican Republic and Jamaica and Trinidad. Some of the smaller islands are sometimes used as hiding places for the drugs or for the boats and, on occasion, for the traffickers themselves, but it is the larger islands that create the problems.” And he proceeded to relate, in the kind of detail that marked his historical discourse, the increasing severity of the anti-drug raids in which literally hundreds of drug traffickers were arrested and tons of drugs worth many millions of dollars were confiscated. “But always it is the peons who are arrested. The man who is crazy enough to drive a boat at forty knots across the open sea at night, risking his own life and the lives of all who work on the sea at night. The man who owns the boat, he is safe at home, unseen and unknown. So the ignorant, illiterate peon spends half a lifetime slowly going mad in a rotting prison while the real drug dealer buys a faster boat and hires another peon to risk his life. It is truly a scourge on our society, Madame.”
Carole Ann thanked Captain Métier, in French, both for his hospitality and for the information he shared with her, and was rewarded with a wide smile, a bow, and a kiss of her hand, along with the pledge to be eternally at her service. She returned to her stateroom disquieted by her conversation with the captain and reluctantly opened the file on Caribbean drug trafficking that she had pledged not to read until she arrived in Isle de Paix. She read the first paragraph of the report compiled by one of the GGI researchers and closed the file. The single paragraph told the tale: Along with the land route through Mexico, the Caribbean sea lanes are the primary paths for the transport of illegal drugs from their South American production points into the United States. She opened the map provided by the researcher and spread it out on the table. The horseshoe-shaped loop from Miami, down through the islands of the Caribbean, across the top of Venezuela and on to the unbroken land route through Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and, finally, into the United States, could have been designed by an outlaw. Instead, it was the result of a million-year-old seismic upheaval.
She closed the map and folded it and placed it with the report and was prepared to return them both to her briefcase when some thought or idea or urge took over. Suddenly tense and on edge, she began pacing. The stateroom was long enough for pacing but too crammed with furniture to allow for an uninterrupted flow, so she stood in the open window and stared out at the water. They were, she knew, because Captain Métier had told her, cruising the Caribbean side of the islands, close enough to see hints of green trees and white sand beaches. And on the other side of the islands, the Atlantic Ocean. Pirate ships once roamed these same waters, she mused, their intentions and activities as lethal and evil as those of modern-day drug traffickers. And armies and navies chased the pirates then just as anti-drug agents and the Coast Guard chased the drug dealers now.
She returned to the desk and the file and the map. Lionel Métier was certain that Isle de Paix was no haven for international drug traffickers. At least two agencies of the United States government believed otherwise. It was in Carole Ann’s best interest that the yacht captain be correct; and why couldn’t he be believed? The islands were his business. But Isle de Paix was Carole Ann’s business. She sat down at the desk and opened the research file on Caribbean drug trafficking. For not the first time in her almost twenty years of proximity to what social scientists called “the criminal element,” Carole Ann imagined what a different place the world would be if criminals used their cunning and intelligence to produce good instead of evil, because the skill and determination required to out-wit and out-run the DEA and Coast Guard was formidable.
Le Splendide glided into the harbor at Ville Paix, the capital city of Isle de Paix, as if she were glad to be home after a long journey. It was the first time Carole Ann had approached the island by sea, and the view was breath-taking. Marie-Ange Collette had told her and Jake that one of the features that attracted the wealthy, even during the dictatorship of Henri LeRoi, was the island’s deep water harbor on its Caribbean side. Until this moment, Carole Ann hadn’t appreciated what that meant. Now she knew: LeSplendide was by no means the grandest dame in the harbor. Despite her splendor, she appeared almost tiny and shabby compared with some of the craft moored there. Was there a nautical mandate that all sea-going vessels of a certain size be white? Or was it purely aesthetics? For all of the houseboats, cabin cruisers, and yachts gleamed white in the bright sun light, and reflected their brilliance off the pale green water. And, she knew, it wouldn’t be long before the cruise ships returned to Isle de Paix— now that the reign of the communist dictator, peaceful though it may have been, was over.
Cobblestone streets and walks led from the dock into the town, and Carole Ann could see that the new government had been busy since her last visit three months ago. The government buildings, up a slight rise directly away from the sea, had all been freshly painted white and they glittered like diamonds in a raised setting: Government House in the center, the court house to the left, the post office and tourist board to the right. On either side of the street, flanking the governmental structures like soldiers and leading up to them from the docks, and behind them further up the hill, were shops and stores, restaurants and banks, hotels and guest houses, all freshly painted in a variety of pastels: Pale pinks and yellows and greens and corals and blues. The entire impression was of some kind of toy with a wide center and legs extending front and back on both sides.
As they entered the harbor and docked, Carole Ann read the names and registries of the other craft in the harbor, paying particular attention to the larger ones. About half of them were registered in Isle de Paix; the others from as far away as Newport, Rhode Island, Annapolis, Maryland and Charleston, South Carolina, and as near as Miami and Nassau. Two, she noted, were from Kingston, Jamaica, and one each from Barbados and Trinidad. Only white-clad crew were visible on the decks of any of the large craft. Could any of them belong to drug traffickers? Would a drug-running craft be parked— anchored— at the front door of the Isle de Paix government for all to s
ee? Her wondering stopped when she looked up to see “her” car speeding down the hill toward the harbor, bumping up and down on the cobblestones, followed closely but more sedately by a black sedan with a discreet governmental flag on it antenna.
On each of her prior visits to the island, her guide had been Jacqueline LaBelle, a niece of Philippe Collette and a recent graduate of George Washington University’s Graduate School of Foreign Service. Jackie drove a raggedy turquoise Volkswagen convertible; drove it at break-neck speed in defiance of her elders, who begged the young woman to behave either like the high-born that she was, or like the diplomat she was to become. Instead, Jackie behaved like a normal twenty-five year old, which meant she defied her elders at every opportunity. She and Carole Ann had become fast friends, owing largely to the fact that Carole Ann expressed a preference for being driven by Jackie in the ugly Beetle rather than by a liveried chauffer in an air conditioned Peugeot.
By the time LeSplendide was tied up at the dock, the steward had her luggage on a cart and followed her up the ramp to Jackie and the VW.
“Bonjour, Carole Ann! Comment ca va?” Jackie greeted her with hearty kisses on both cheeks, and a warm American-style hug. “I’m so glad you’re back.
“I’m glad to be back, Jackie,” Carole Ann said with a return of the girl’s greeting, “though the reason for my speedy return makes me more than a little sad.”
Jackie sobered immediately. “Everyone is in a state of shock and disbelief, Carole Ann. Murder! It’s unthinkable! This is not America, after all”
Carole Ann ignored the comment and watched as her luggage was loaded into the sedan, the driver of which assured her that everything would be at her residence when she arrived. Jackie either misread Carole Ann’s silence or failed to notice it, for she asked whether Carole Ann wanted to see “where it happened.”
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