Voodoo Eyes (47 page)

The boat was an ageing Russian patrol vessel – one hundred feet of chipped and patchy grey paint and dents, a bridge with two boarded-up windows and a third cracked down the middle by what could have been a bullet. At the prow was a stubby barrelled artillery gun, so rusted and archaic, it resembled a rejected museum artifact bolted on for show.

Rosa sat with him checking her gun. She racked back the slide, caught the ejected round, then popped out the clip. The spare round went back in the clip, the clip went back in the gun, the slide snapped back in place with the round in the chamber, and she depressed the hammer, flicked on the safety and reholstered the piece. She paused for a few moments, breathed, and then began again. It got irritating after the third time, but he said nothing. Although her face was mask-like in its calm, she was avoiding all eye-contact, occupying her mind to stop from thinking, keeping her hands busy to stop them from shaking. In times like these he’d chain-smoked. Joe had used wrist presses.

Marco was up on the bridge, the only crew.

He was a regular piece of work, a good foot taller than his ex-wife, with short greying black hair, heavily freckled features and lucent blue-green eyes – the kind commonly referred to as ‘Irish eyes’. Sandra used to say Max had them – especially when he got mad or drunk or both.

Not that he and Marco had bonded over shared ancestry. The man greeted Max with a blunt territorial suspicion that bordered on hostility, mentally sniffing him out and sizing him up, trying to ascertain what he was doing with and to Rosa, and if he could handle himself in a fight, should it occur. Max offered a handshake all the same, just to keep things civil. Of course, Marco ignored him, looking at the hand like it was a shit-covered mop. Rosa intervened. She and Marco got talking. He spoke his native tongue in a way that stripped the language of its every musical nuance, packing his words into wads so tight that the sentences came out in extended grunts. Oafish as he sounded, it was obvious he still tended an out-of-control bonfire for Rosa. It was in his eyes, going all puppy sweet, and in the hopeful smile he couldn’t keep off his mouth as she spoke to him; he was a fool in love, knowingly jumping for tactically withheld bait, thinking the effort alone might be enough to melt the heart. But Rosa was cold, all business. Max guessed it had been a young love on her part, one she should have outgrown before they’d had kids and tied each other down.

That was the Marco who collected them in his fucked-up Lada jeep. Once on the boat, he’d changed. He became a nervous wreck, stammering a little and sweating a lot. It was obviously his first time breaking the law. And he wasn’t getting any kind of induction in the shallows. He was going off at the deep end. Rosa snapped at him, determined where he was indecisive and doubtful. She was using him too. Maybe she’d even hinted at reconciliation. Whatever she said worked. Marco grew back his balls and started the boat.

They went down to the storeroom, four grey walls veined with rust, blue jackets and caps hanging on pegs. They each put on a cap and jacket. Max noticed the insignia on the round badge sewn on to both sleeves – a mariposa over the sea with a flying fish in its beak. He understood the meaning – and the bleak irony.

‘If we get company, say nothing and look busy,’ Rosa had said as they sat down. These were her only words to him.

Company came within the first ten minutes at sea. A helicopter flew over and shone a spotlight on the boat. Max kept away from the porthole. Upstairs, the radio crackled on the bridge and Marco answered in grunts. The chopper hovered over them a moment, then took off, swerving westwards.

Next they sailed close to a moored frigate and stopped, the engine turning. Another powerful light landed on the boat and reached into the storeroom. Neither Max nor Rosa moved. The radio spilled static and a voice. Marco grunted. Then they were on their way again, but at reduced speed, inching over the water.

Max stared up at the starry sky, which seemed a little closer than it had been moments before. He knew they were getting closer to Haiti. That was the thing that had struck him about that country, the way the distance between heaven and earth appeared halved – but not in some glorious, beatific way. Haiti had a feeling of celestial oppression about it, like God’s kingdom was close to caving in on its very head.

They passed between a pair of cone-shaped buoys topped with blinking bright-red lights. Sirens suddenly sounded and a pair of speedboats roared out of the darkness, full-beam headlights on, hurtling towards them, a voice yelling over a loudspeaker.

Marco stopped the boat and killed the engine. There was clambering on both sides of the boat and then heavy feet moving above them, wandering up and down. Someone was asking Marco questions. He stammered answers.

Rosa went into panic mode. Her eyes darted around the storeroom looking for an exit or a hiding place. Max crept up to the porthole. He couldn’t see the boats.

The feet paced the deck. The questions kept coming and Marco kept stammering, every word faltering.

Then they heard feet clanking down the stairs. Two pairs. Rosa drew her gun, but Max shook his head. She holstered the weapon.

Someone tried the door.

Marco had locked them in. A harsh voice called up the stairs.

Marco stammered.

‘Rápido!
’

Marco tried to say
‘Si
’, but sounded like he was imitating a cartoon snake.

They heard another set of feet on the stairs, the sound of keys jangling.

They were fucked.

Rosa knew it. She was saying nothing, but looked panicked.

The radio crackled. It was answered by the voice that had been questioning Marco. As Rosa listened, tension eased off her face a little.

The feet went back up the stairs.

The two people outside the door followed suit.

There was sudden activity above, as bodies moved left and right across the deck and climbed down the side. Someone somewhere laughed.

Then it became quiet. Nothing but the waves slapping the side of the boat. Max and Rosa exchanged glances, Max looking at her for an explanation or a theory as to what had just happened. She offered neither.

But her panic was gone.

The engine started up, the water churning under the boat, and they resumed their journey.

The speedboats followed. Max peeked through the porthole. He saw four people in each launch, one manning a mounted machine gun.

They passed more buoys – green lights, blue lights. He remembered the same order of lights on the route to Vanetta Brown’s place in Calle Ethelberg. They were on another kind of
camino muerto.
The island was very close.

After a short while the boat slowed and they came to a stop. The escort turned and headed away.

They could hear Marco moving around above, walking first to the prow and then the stern. The radio stayed silent.

Then he came downstairs and opened the door.

‘Hemos llegado,’
he said to Rosa.

55

The island was no one’s idea of paradise: two miles of back-to-back trees, its extremities fringed by sharp, square boulders which served as both coastline and barricade.

No sign of the hospital or the house.

The only lights came from the place where they’d stopped, a jetty lit by parallel lines of bulbs strung around poles, all joggling in the breeze.

A large hut with a corrugated-iron roof overlooked the harbour. Two men came out and walked down to Marco’s boat. One was in shirtsleeves and wore his coastguard cap back to front, the other sported a vest and khaki shorts. They weren’t armed. Their manner was relaxed and friendly, even welcoming, as if they were in dire need of company. Marco talked from the prow, speaking in his usual compressed grunts. He even managed a laugh.

After ten minutes of banter, the men left with a wave and returned to the hut.

Max and Rosa crouched low on the bridge, peeking through the window, watching everything, waiting.

Marco came back and mumbled something to Rosa.

Moments later, Max followed her over the side of the boat and on to the jetty. They tiptoed quickly across the wooden beams, keeping their heads down.

As they passed the hut, they saw through the half-open door: four men playing cards and smoking, another strumming a guitar.

Once out of the harbour, they found themselves on an asphalt road, which curved off around either side of the island. Rosa suggested heading right. Max said the hospital might be to the left, facing Cuba.

She agreed.

They took the left road and began walking quickly, sticking close to the side. They hadn’t gone far before they spotted headlights coming their way.

They ducked into the woods.

A jeep rolled past, full beams on. It turned into the harbour with a blast of its horn and crunched to a stop. A man got out and went into the hut. He was greeted with a cheer.

Rosa led the way through the trees, flashlight in hand, rucksack on her back.

It was baking hot. The thick and clammy air reeked of compost and methane, nature cannibalising itself and belching heartily. They could hear the crush of their own feet over the sodden and steaming ground. Unseen creatures squirmed under layers of dead leaves and debris; and it was percussive too, with the landings of frogs and bewildered birds, the sudden dash of rodents, the tramplings of heavier animals.

Rosa navigated with purpose, not once stopping or even hesitating, at ease weaving through the thicket of towering palms and the twisted trunks of ficus trees. Max wasn’t so adept. He tripped on exposed roots, slipped on fungi and got his face and arms lashed by air roots. He was soon out of breath and sweating, irritated and on edge, his heart pumping overtime, his legs aching.

The ground gradually began to dip and then gravity tugged them forward gently. They moved a little faster. The trees thinned and sharp sea air cut through the smell. And then they saw a row of small yellow lights.

The hospital made Max think of a steel-capped shoe with the leather ripped off the end and the metal exposed. Given the patients the place had originally catered for, he figured the design may have been wholly intentional on the part of the architect – an ironic comment on the system he or she was serving. But then again, for all he knew, the structure could simply have been another example of Soviet bad taste, like the embassy in Havana.

A trio of low-lying cubes connected one to another by short, covered glass walkways. Each building was four storeys high, but of a slightly differing shape. The first had a bulbous, brightly lit glass dome appended to its end, the middle structure was longer and sleeker, and the last stood taller and more compact than the others, more of a low-rise. Lights were burning on all the ground floors.

By contrast, the surroundings – a sprawling, sloping park dotted with benches, parasols, a sundial, a giant chessboard, pretty flowerbeds and a fountain – were as idyllic and serene as they were cosmetic.

‘Not even a fence or a wall?’ Max said from their vantage point at the edge of the woods. He’d guessed the dome was the entrance: a few vehicles were parked nearby, in the forecourt – two white ambulances and a pair of jeeps.

‘It’s not a prison,’ replied Rosa.

‘I was expecting more security.’

A guard sat outside the entrance, a rifle across his lap.

‘More than you’ve seen already?’ she said sarcastically.

It was quiet and eerie, and above all unnerving. He could hear the breeze stealing through the trees behind them and in the distance, waves breaking on the rocks. But in between, silence. There should have been some kind of noise coming from the hospital, a trace of the people and machines that kept the building operational.

‘What did Marco tell that speedboat crew?’

‘He said he’s picking someone up.’

‘Who?’

‘He doesn’t know. They don’t know either. It’s anonymous here, remember?’

‘If this gets traced back to him, he could get into some serious fucken’ trouble – which means you could too.’

‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘If his name is Marco.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘To you – and to them – it is.’

Max let it go. Marco had blagged his way in on a phoney ID – plus a surfeit of adrenaline, balls, terminal blind love and pure stupidity. Who were they fooling? The secret police would no doubt catch up with Marco real quick. And then they’d come for Rosa – unless she worked her scam in time. But none of that was his problem.

‘Any ideas for getting inside?’ he said.

‘There’s only one way in. Through the front.’

‘That’s crazy. We’re going to … just …
walk in?’

‘Think,’ she said. ‘It’s early morning. It’s dark. No one is awake. We’re in uniform – kind of. We can pass. And they are not expecting outsiders.’

Close up, the entrance turned out to be impressive – a perfectly round, very bright, latticed glass house, with all the light coming from three crystal chandeliers. Clouds of insects swam around the dome, their tiny massed bodies forming a misty, swaying halo.

Max and Rosa crouched behind one of the parked ambulances and checked on the guard sitting near the double doors. He wasn’t moving.

They approached quietly.

The guard was slouched on a wooden chair, his legs stretched out and parted, feet pointing east and west. His head was propped up against the glass, and his cap pulled down over his face, brim overlapping his nose. He was fast asleep, breathing slowly and contentedly, the cap sucking in and puffing up in time with his lungs, like a bellows.

They’d planned for the challenge: they’d walk up to the door confidently, like they were meant to be there. If the guard asked them their business, Rosa would say they’d come to collect someone. If the guard let them pass without question, he’d be fine. If he didn’t, they’d take care of him.

But he was asleep, so all that changed.

They edged closer. The guard was wearing the same kind of jacket they were, only he had on heavy black boots while they wore sneakers. His hands were folded across his stomach, inches from the automatic rifle.