Dust Up: A Thriller (16 page)

“Blan?”

“White guy.”

“Oh. Just as well I waited here, then, huh?”

“Do you do things like that often?”

I stayed quiet, and he rolled his eyes with an exaggerated sigh.

“Portia said she thought you were trouble.”

42

As we drove away from the airport, I kept an eye on the rearview mirror, waiting for the guards to come after us because someone had seen me or recognized me. But they didn’t, and I felt great relief as the airport was obscured by the dust rising up from the road behind us.

I turned to Baudet. “What did you mean when you said there was another reason whatever happened at Saint Benezet couldn’t have been an allergic reaction to Soyagene?”

His foot eased off the accelerator as he turned to study my face. “Ron and Miriam thought they could trust you. Can I?”

“To do what?”

“To keep a secret.”

“Sure.”

“This has been declared a state secret. I could go to jail for telling you.”

I waited.

He lowered his voice. “Something else hit Saint Benezet. A calamity.” He lowered it to a whisper. “Ebola.”

“
Ebola?
” I said, struggling to keep my voice down even though we were alone in the car.

He nodded solemnly.

“There’s Ebola in Haiti?”

“Just this one outbreak. Apparently a very bad strain. There were no survivors. But it was totally contained. No more cases, and now it is over.”

“Jesus. I’m so sorry. How many deaths?”

“Thirty-four. Luckily, Saint Benezet was a tiny village and very isolated. It was a particularly virulent strain. The Interior Ministry, the police, they discovered it and took control immediately. They sealed off the village and sent in their medics, but it was too late to help anyone. All they could do was comfort the sick and … contain the outbreak.”

“Contain it how?”

“Fire,” he said, staring straight ahead as we drove back into the main part of Cap-Haïtien. “After the villagers all died, the police incinerated the village … Saint Benezet no longer exists.”

“They burned it down? Jesus, is that what you’re supposed to do?”

We stopped at an intersection, and he went quiet for a moment, letting the traffic cross in front of us. “It’s not what I would have done, no. They said there were no survivors…” He looked up at me with haunted eyes. “It is possible they overreacted. But I understand.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, sadly. A motorcycle came up behind us, honking. It swerved around us and shot through the intersection without slowing down. “Do you know Haiti had been free of cholera for 150 years until just a few years ago?”

I shook my head.

He resumed driving, through the intersection and around an old pickup truck piled high with sacks of some kind of produce. “The UN brought it in. Their soldiers. A tragic mistake, and one we were unprepared for. Nine thousand dead. Seven hundred thousand sick.” He sighed again. “Haiti has enough plagues. We do not need Ebola, as well. So I understand.” He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as me.

“Why was the Interior Ministry in charge? Shouldn’t you have been there?”

He nodded but remained quiet for several seconds. “Yes, we should have. Ducroix, the interior minister, he said it was a national security issue, which it was. My boss, Rene Dissette, the minister of health, he is a feeble old man. He didn’t want to get into a turf battle. I don’t think he wanted to deal with Ebola, either. By the time President Cardon got involved, the village was gone.” I could hear the bitterness in his voice, the frustration.

“What about Miriam?” I asked. “What about you? You were both there earlier, right? Shouldn’t there be a quarantine? Shouldn’t there be announcements, to warn people?”

“The incubation period had passed before I even knew about it. I tried to contact Miriam as soon as I found out. I admit, I was concerned when I couldn’t reach her. I am very sorry to hear about Ron, about Miriam’s current troubles, but I am relieved her health is okay, as I knew it would be. My people are all fine. The same with the Energene people who were in the village when we were. Everyone is fine—everyone but the villagers. They are all dead.” He let out a deep, sad sigh. “So it was not the stolen soybeans that made people sick.”

“The entire town had Ebola, and none of it showed up in the blood tests you ran?” It didn’t make sense to me.

He shook his head. “The tests we have for Ebola don’t work until you are symptomatic for several days. No symptoms, no positive results.”

“But there were symptoms, right? That’s why you were there. That’s why you and Miriam were there, right?”

He looked at me a little longer than I would have liked as we lurched along the fractured road.

“There were respiratory symptoms,” he conceded quietly. “But not necessarily Ebola symptoms. Maybe that was something different. I don’t know.”

I felt something cold, dark, and horrible deep down inside my chest, like something had collapsed and left a tiny black hole in its place.

43

“Ron was pretty sure the Soyagene was causing the allergic reactions, and he even suspected that people at Energene knew it and were hiding it,” I told Baudet. “Before the police took them, I read some of those secret memos. There was plenty in there about allergenicity issues.”

“And you understood what they were saying? What they meant? Miriam is very smart and a trained nurse, and you tell me she says she didn’t understand it.”

“Maybe not. But she also said Ron was sure there was a connection between the grain hijacking and the illness at Saint Benezet. And it scared the hell out of him.”

“So you think the Soyagene was hijacked and distributed locally, and that’s what caused the respiratory distress syndrome?”

I shrugged. “That’s what Ron and Miriam thought. Makes sense.”

We drove quietly for a minute. “Well, I tested it, and there was virtually no reaction. It’s possible perhaps by coincidence some other fate also befell Saint Benezet, something that coincided with the hijacking. Perhaps a pesticide exposure. Something else made them sick, and then they also suffered the Ebola outbreak.”

A hell of a coincidence
, I thought. I could feel the cold spot in my heart swell. My stomach grumbled loudly, as if in agreement.

“If we could find out if any of the stolen soy ended up anywhere else, we could see how those people were doing, if they were exhibiting any of the same symptoms.”

He glanced at me, then thought for a moment. As he turned back to look at the road, he mumbled under his breath, “Toussaint Casson.”

“What’s that?”

“Toussaint Casson. A local gang leader. If there was a hijacking anywhere near Saint Benezet or Cap-Haïtien, he would be behind it, or at least aware of it. He could tell us if it ended up anywhere else. My nephew Toma, unfortunately, is Toussaint’s right-hand man.”

Baudet pulled over and took out his phone. Looking out the window, he muttered a staccato stream of Kreyol.

Seeing him on his phone reminded me I needed to call Nola.

“I left Toma a message,” he said as he put the phone in his pocket. “Hopefully, he’ll call back soon.”

My stomach grumbled even louder this time. Baudet raised an eyebrow. “You are hungry?”

I was about to say I was starving, but it struck me that I was in a place where that could be a literal concern. “Very. But I need to call home and let my girlfriend know I’m okay.”

Baudet offered to let me use his phone, but we’d passed several places that sold prepaid cell phones, so we stopped in one, a corner store selling a bit of everything: phones, rum, coffee, cigarettes, groceries, even clothing.

I noticed a row of five-pound bags of cornmeal. At the bottom of each bag, tucked into the corner, was the Stoma-Grow logo. Miriam said they were everywhere.

I gestured at the small display of plastic-encased cell phones behind the counter. “Prepaid cell phone?” I asked.

Baudet translated, and the man behind the counter reached back and grabbed one off the rack, putting it on the counter between us. He scrunched up his face for a moment, then said, “Three thousand five hundred gourde.”

The gourde was the Haitian currency. I don’t know what it was worth in dollars. The phone was an old-fashioned flip model. It looked like it had just gotten out of some kind of cell phone time machine.

“Can I call the States with this?”

Baudet again translated, and the man sighed and grabbed another one off the rack and switched them. “Four thousand gourde.”

I wasn’t crazy about using a credit card, especially after having taken such pains not to go through the airport, but I needed a phone, and it was all I had. While I was at it, I got cash at an ATM in the corner. I didn’t like being broke, either. Looking at the prices for the soft drinks, I estimated it was 50 gourde to the dollar, so I got 5,000 gourde, a thick sheaf of 250-gourde notes.

Before I left the store, I activated the phone. I paused for a moment, debating the safety of it. I didn’t know for sure whether my iPhone was being tapped, but I knew this one wasn’t. As we stepped back onto the crowded street, I called Nola.

She answered on the first ring, her voice tentative and suspicious. “Hello?”

“It’s me,” I said.

“Thank God. Are you back?”

“I’m still in Haiti. They took my phone—”

“Who?”

“It’s a long story. Miriam never turned up. We’re trying to find out what happened to her. And still trying to figure out what happened to Ron.” Baudet was standing by his car, waiting. I turned away from him and lowered my voice. “Did you get the fax?”

“Yes, just a little while ago. The fax machine ran out of ink, and it took me all day to find a cartridge. I have it now, though, and I have the Mikel Group’s address in New York. I’ll send it out first thing in the morning. What does he have to do with all this, anyway? What’s going on?”

“I’m trying to figure that out. Ron and Miriam thought Energene was up to something bad. Mikel’s people are trying to help Miriam.”

“And now Ron is dead and Miriam has disappeared.”

“Tell me what you know about Beta Librae.”

“Not much. Mikel’s a billionaire, but also an environmentalist. He funds Beta Librae. They’re quiet, but they’ve done some impressive things. They financed an indigenous group in Peru who fought off a logging venture. There was a town in India they helped get restitution when a sugar manufacturer ruined their lake. But like I said, they’re pretty quiet. There were rumors they were involved in releasing secret documents exposing an illegal e-waste operation in Nigeria and illegal benzene dumping in Texas. I don’t know what else they’re up to.”

“Do you think I can trust them?”

She laughed weakly. “Doyle, I don’t know. They seem well-intentioned, but if you could trust a billionaire, would he be a billionaire?”

“Right. Are you someplace safe? Don’t tell me where.”

“I’m staying with a friend who I’ve been really meaning to spend some more time with.” She said it with a touch of sarcasm. She was staying with Laura.

“Sorry.”

“It’s just the two of us, until later.” Danny was back in town tonight.

“Okay, good.”

“When are you coming home?”

“I don’t know. Tomorrow, I hope. I miss you.”

“I miss you too. Doyle, I worry about you.”

“I’m fine. You stay safe.”

“You too.”

“Okay. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you soon.”

The phone connection had felt like a physical attachment, something concrete connecting me to the woman I love, to my home, to the familiar world. As I watched the connection icon fade, I felt myself snapped back to this alien, unfamiliar world.

When I looked up, Baudet gave me a warm smile. “Everything okay?”

I nodded.

“Good, good. I called someone I know with the local police. He will see what he can do about getting your phone and those files, but it may not be until tomorrow. Best I can do.” He gestured to the car. “Let’s get you some food while we wait to hear back from Toma.”

44

Baudet pulled over two blocks away next to a jumble of plastic tables and chairs out on the sidewalk. Behind them, under a narrow awning, a sign on the wall read
BBQ CENTRAL
.

“Best food in Cap-Haïtien,” he said, adding, with a grin, “plus, my sister works here.”

I unfastened my seat belt and reached over to open my car door, but Baudet put his hand on my forearm.

“Wait one moment,” he said.

I followed his gaze and saw that there was a lone customer, a man in a military uniform. Then I noticed a sleek black SUV parked out in front.

“What is it?”

He didn’t answer at first. A bear of a man wearing a white T-shirt and a nervous smile came out of the restaurant. The man in uniform stood and shook his hand, slapping him on the shoulder. They stood and chatted for a moment.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“That’s Marcel, the owner. The other man is Dominique Ducroix, the interior minister.” He looked at me and smiled apologetically. “I don’t like him very much.”

I nodded. My stomach grumbled again.

Marcel and Ducroix shook hands once more, then Ducroix slapped him on the shoulder one last time, put on his shades, and got into the back of the SUV. As soon as the door was closed, the vehicle sped past us down the street.

Baudet watched it in the rearview mirror, and when it turned the corner, he smiled and unfastened his seat belt.

I looked at him as we got out.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I just didn’t want to talk to him.”

We crossed the road, and Baudet gestured for me to take a seat. As we were sitting, a high-pitched squeal made me jump.

“Regi!” said the voice. I turned to see a woman maybe ten years older than Baudet, with glasses and a cloth over her hair. Her face beamed as she closed on him with hugs and kisses.

“
Bonswa,
Elena,” Baudet said, grinning. He introduced me to her in Kreyol, and then in English said, “This is my sister, Elena.”

She grasped my hand in both of hers and kissed me on the cheek.