Age of Voodoo (34 page)

“Backstabbing weasel-ass piece of shit,” Buckler hissed.

“I’m giving them to you as a peace offering,” Seidelmann continued, disregarding him. “They’re yours, and all I ask in return is that you let me go. You don’t have any argument with me. I just want to leave this place alive. Come on, we’re colleagues, aren’t we? I’ve treated you with respect. I gave you everything you needed to execute this...
coup
of yours. Fair’s fair, eh? Do me this favour, in return for the many favours I’ve done you.”

Lex couldn’t decide whether Seidelmann had genuinely played them for fools or he was desperately, cravenly concocting a story in order to save his own skin. Either way, the sheer shamelessness of it was breathtaking.

“As I recall, Gulliver,” said Couleuvre, “you never acted like I was your equal. To you I was just some dumb Third Worlder with some handy bits of knowledge you could use. Now I’m the one calling the shots. The shoe is on the other foot. How does that feel? Not so nice, I imagine.”

“François, I’m begging you...”

Couleuvre cut him off with a slash of the hand. “I will deal with you later. Hmm, now what is this?” He had turned his attention to Albertine. “I am liking what I see. I am liking it very much.”

Albertine said nothing, just met his scrutiny with a hostile, imperious glare.

“But wait. There is the smell of mambo on you.” Couleuvre put his face close to hers and took a lengthy, theatrical sniff. “Oh yeah,
ma cherie
. You reek of the
sevis loa
and the Rada
nachon
, the slow, cool spirits. Nice and safe, that is how you like it. Who are your husbands? Damballah maybe? Yeah, I think so.” He snorted in derision. “A loa who cannot even stand the sight of blood. You have to take the sacrificial animals to another room before cutting them up. Cannot do it in front of him. How pathetic is that? A snake loa, but a snake without venom or fangs. You would be better off being married to a mouse!”

He chortled long and hard at his joke. Albertine simply said, “Compassion and wisdom are not weaknesses. Mock Papa Damballah at your peril.”

Couleuvre found this amusing too. “I mock who I want, when I want. There is nothing I fear. I have power like you wouldn’t believe. And
you
.” He swung round, bringing himself back to Lex. “Pick him up,” he said to the two zuvembie Marines.

They dragged Lex upright.

“Who
are
you?” Couleuvre sounded quizzical, intrigued. “I sense the Baron all over you. These soldiers from America, they have killed, of course, but not as much as you have and not in the way that you have. Yes, you have been the Baron’s ambassador for many years. You may not realise it but it is true. You are unique in that it is all you have done—brought death to others. Death has been your living.”

Lex acted nonchalant. Legba, after all, had said much the same to him that very morning.

“The Baron smiles on men like you,” Couleuvre went on. “You venerate him with every trigger you pull, every knife you slide in, every bomb you detonate. Oh, I do like you.”

“The feeling,” Lex said, “is not mutual.”

“It does not have to be. But is it not pleasing to know that someone appreciates your talents? I doubt you have ever been thanked or congratulated for your work.
Au contraire
. You are a grubby little secret,
n’est-ce pas
? Your country would never admit to knowing you, let alone giving you your orders. And what is worse is, you are so good at it. Murder. If you had not been able to do it for a living, legitimately, how would you have coped, I wonder? What would you have done with yourself? Where would you have channelled that ability to switch off your conscience and kill?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know me.”

“I know
me
,” said Couleuvre, “and I know the Baron, and I know that the three of us have much in common,
monsieur
. That is enough.”

“Well then, since we’re so alike,” said Lex, “you surely won’t have a problem with me telling you that I will find a way of making you next on my list of victims.”

Couleuvre opened and closed his hand in the air like a yapping mouth:
big talk
. “You cannot lay a finger on me. Your fate is in my hands. Same goes for all of you. I can snuff you out, all of you, easy as a candle flame. Want proof?”

He swivelled back round to Professor Seidelmann.

“This man.”

Seidelmann cringed.

“This scientist.” He spat the word like a curse.

“François, please...” Sweat had popped out on Seidelmann’s brow.

“Who believed I was working for him when actually he was working for me. A user who got used. A man who thought his test tubes and microscopes were somehow superior to my spells and potions.”

Couleuvre pointed to one of the pair of zuvembies who were holding Seidelmann between them.

“Show
monsieur le professeur
the parts of him he never expected to see. Show him how complacent and blinkered he has been. Show him the error of his ways.”

“François, I helped you. I gave you the opportunity to achieve something you’d never have been able to alone—V.I.V.E.M.O.R.T. And I paid you well, goddammit. Don’t do this, I implore you. I’ll—”

The zuvembie plunged a hand into Seidelmann’s abdomen like a blunt sword. Seidelmann’s eyes bulged. The zuvembie’s arm disappeared into him, halfway to the elbow. Seidelmann’s mouth gaped soundlessly. The zuvembie twisted hard and drew its arm out, clutching a fistful of glistening innards. It held them up to Seidelmann’s face, obeying Couleuvre’s orders to the letter. Then it dumped them on the floor and delved into the professor’s belly again.

Albertine choked in horror. Buckler, Morgenstern and Sampson looked on pale-faced and aghast.

Seidelmann didn’t even scream. It was as though this obscene intrusion went beyond pain. The torment overloaded his nerve endings. His mind was unable to process the magnitude of the signals it was receiving. He gazed down at himself in disbelief as the zuvembie fetched out more and more of his soft slippery vitals. The creature, which was in part his own creation, was ferreting around inside him as though he were a lucky dip, a bran tub full of prizes.

Because he did not scream, it was not clear at what point during the process Seidelmann died. It was over within a minute. There was at least that.

Throughout, Papa Couleuvre simply smiled.

And kept his eyes fixed, not on Seidelmann, but on Lex.

THIRTY-TWO

THE PERFECT WORKERS

“I
MPRISON THEM
,”
SAID
Couleuvre to his zuvembies. “I can always do with more workers but I do not have time to perform the transformation ritual right now. Take all of their weapons away, put them in a room, and guard them well. I will come for them later.”

The zuvembies started relieving the Thirteeners of their guns, knives and grenades. They did it brusquely, as though stripping fruit from trees. The weapons formed a sizeable heap on the floor beside the sprawled, hollowed-out remains of Professor Seidelmann.

The zuvembies then herded the SEALs and Albertine into a knot. Lex was shoved forward to join them.

“Not him,” said Couleuvre. “The Baron’s man interests me. I would like to have a little chitchat with him.” He beckoned to Lex. “This way.”

Lex threw a quick glance at Albertine:
It isn’t over. Don’t give up. While I’m alive, there’s always something I can do
. Albertine nodded, understanding, though not believing. He noted that she still had her shoulder bag. Good. Not all of their weapons had been confiscated, then.

The zuvembie Marines frogmarched him off.

“So, you have a name, Baron’s man?” Couleuvre asked as their little procession descended the stairs.

“Dove.”

“A first name?”

“Not for you.”

Couleuvre chuckled. “Okay, Monsieur Not For You Dove. If that is how you prefer it. There is no need to be unfriendly. I believe you and I have much more uniting us than dividing us. You just have to be shown.”

“Having seen how you treat your friends,” Lex said, “you’ll forgive me if I keep my distance.”

“Seidelmann, you mean? A fool and a failure. So arrogant, so convinced of his own greatness.”

“And you’re not?”

“I have reason to be arrogant,” said Couleuvre matter-of-factly. “You only have to consider what I have accomplished, not just at Anger Reef but in my entire life. I was born in Cité Soleil, the largest slum in Port-au-Prince, not to mention the largest slum in the western hemisphere. My mother was a prostitute and my father a petty criminal. She succumbed to AIDS and he to the Tonton Macoutes, both when I was small. I grew up with what they call ‘battery acid insides’—the perpetual gnawing hunger that comes from having never enough food to eat. I foraged and fought. I had nothing, nothing at all, except rage and a will to better myself, to become feared and powerful, able to command respect. And that I have achieved, through my determination, my inner strength, and my
engagement
—my pact of loyalty—with Baron Samedi.”

“A self-made madman.”

“
Peut-être
.” Couleuvre sounded genial, but Lex caught a flash of malevolence in his eyes. He should, he realised, be careful not to goad the bokor too far. Not if he wished to survive this encounter. “Within my community, I am regarded as a force for good. People come to me when the authorities fail them—and the authorities always fail them. They know I can get things done. If you are being hassled by some thug, if your daughter has been raped or your son shot, if thieves have broken into your home and stolen everything, who do you turn to? Not the police. Not the courts. They are worse than useless. The police are in the gangsters’ pockets. They are fat, lazy and corrupt. And the courts serve no one, except maybe the lawyers and their wallets and their egos. All over Haiti it is the same. Only someone like me can right wrongs. Only someone with real power like me can get you the justice you crave.”

“And in return you take people’s money.”

“Of course. Of course. Who works for free? Certainly not you, Monsieur Dove. It is no disgrace that I get paid for my services. It does not diminish what I do. The loa themselves demand tribute—gifts, food, trinkets. Why should not I? It is the same when I heal the sick. Believe me, I charge less than some doctors, and I am more likely to get results. If you have talked to Professor Seidelmann, you probably have an image of me as a wicked creature, a hyena in human form. This is far from the truth.”

“What are you, then?” Lex asked.

“A dreamer. A schemer. An idealist. A man who intends to hold to account those who should be held to account.”

“Meaning...?”

They had reached Sublevel 3, identical to the two sublevels above but dingier and noisier. Sounds of thumping and crunching reverberated along the passage from far away, and the air was tinged with a fine, powdery dust that tasted and smelled like concrete.

“Meaning I am prepared to confront and challenge someone whose acts of violence have blighted the world,” said Couleuvre.

“I hate to break it to you, but Osama bin Laden’s dead.”

“I am not talking about any mere terrorist. Not someone who has snuffed out a few hundred lives here, a few hundred there. No, my target is the greatest source of injustice there has ever been.”

Jigsaw pieces started to slot into place in Lex’s mind. A vague outline of an idea was taking shape. He could almost grasp what Couleuvre was getting at, and it seemed as absurd as it was appalling.

They passed doors marked LAB 1 and LAB 2. No doubt it had been in one of those rooms that Seidelmann had brewed up his V.I.V.E.M.O.R.T. and Couleuvre had hijacked the formula for his own esoteric purposes. The taste and smell of concrete was growing stronger, the pall of dust thicker.

“I heard him calling out to me,” said Couleuvre, almost dreamily. “Every time I was down on this level, the voice came to me, louder, clearer. It was not simply in my mind. It was an actual sound, in my ears. As real as anything. How could I not listen? How could I ignore it?”

And now they rounded a corner, and before Lex’s eyes there appeared a scene that was both industrious and hellish.