The Darkest Day (9 page)

The Dominican Republic occupied almost two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola in the southern Caribbean, sharing the island with its neighbour, Haiti. Victor travelled by boat from the isle of Grand Turk to the north, having flown to Jamaica, and then on to the Turks and Caicos Islands before disembarking in Haiti.

The port was little more than a seafront, squalid and half-derelict through neglect and natural disaster. Children, underdressed and undernourished, played in the streets, their bare feet shielded with dead skin, thick and cracked. They seemed not to know of their poverty, kicking punctured footballs and chasing after stray dogs and cats.

He took a bus across the border to the town of Monte Cristi on the northwestern coast. A short domestic flight in a twin-prop chartered Cessna had brought him to the capital of Santo Domingo.

The circuitous route had added a day to the journey, but even without the imminent threat posed by Raven, he did not like to travel via direct routes if it could be avoided. She was far from the only enemy he had, and even associates like Halleck and Muir might one day turn on him. They already knew or suspected he would be heading to the country. Travelling there on a direct flight would expose one of his aliases with only the simplest of checks.

The Cessna pilot was a seventy-year-old American, a former naval fighter pilot who insisted Victor sit up front in the co-pilot seat while he recounted stories of the many air raids he’d taken part in during the Vietnam War.

‘What brings you to the Dom?’ the pilot asked him.

Victor said, ‘The women.’

They flew in a more-or-less southeasterly direction, over the lush greenery of the Cibao valley and then flying above the peaks of the Cordillera Central mountain range, passing through wisps of pure white cloud.

‘Look me up next time you’re in Monte Cristi,’ the pilot told him as they shook hands. ‘I’ll take you to a whorehouse that you’ll need dragging away from.’

‘Sounds delightful,’ Victor said.

Jean Claude Marte was a hard man to find. Both Christian name and surname were common in the Dominican Republic. He had been a tobacconist three years ago, but only as a cover. A name, an out-of-date face and profession were not a lot to go on.

Halleck had supplied Victor with the same photograph of the man Raven had been given three years ago. The photograph had been out of date then. It was a copy of a Polaroid. Marte was playing poker in a hot, smoky room. He was distinguished from the other poker players by the red ring that had been superimposed around his face. Halleck could not tell Victor when the photograph was taken, but it was easy enough to guess it was at least ten years old. The Marte pictured was a thin Haitian with dark skin highlighted white under a bare bulb ceiling light. Age was hard to determine: the picture was poor quality, a copy, or even a copy of a copy; the exposure was poor; the smoke acted as a filter. Marte could have been anywhere between twenty and forty, based on appearances.

Now, that made him at least thirty, but he could be in his forties. Not a helpful age range to hunt someone down. But he had done so with less before.

He fuelled up with a late breakfast of traditional Dominican fare: fried plantain with eggs and salami. The portion was so big he could only finish half of it. He assured the distraught bar owner it had been delicious.

It was hot and humid. He wore a cheap linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A T-shirt would have kept him cooler, but the ugly raised scar on his right triceps was too noticeable, as were the tan-less marks to his left biceps. He bore the evidence of many wounds, and though his ethnicity alone made him stand out, the scars marked him as more than just a tourist or aid worker. They invited curiosity and questions and were as identifying as fingerprints. He had scars on his lower arms too, but cosmetic surgeons had helped disguise them, and the hair on his forearms made them less noticeable.

He carried no weapon. It was almost impossible to sneak one through airport security and never worth the risk trying. He had no contacts in the Dominican Republic from whom to acquire one and no stash to draw upon.

He waved a hand to usher away flies and tried not to breathe in as he passed an open sewer. It was too warm to drink coffee, but he saw nowhere he trusted to purchase it from regardless.

He spent the day wandering around Santo Domingo, seeking out tobacconists. He spoke Spanish and made small talk with the people who sold him hand-rolled cigarettes. He lit up as he left each establishment, drawing smoke only into his mouth to encourage the tobacco to burn. He exhaled without first inhaling, and extinguished the cigarette. When the smouldering had stopped and the butt cooled, he smelled the remnants, then threw away the rest of the cigarettes.

After the third tobacconist his mouth tasted disgusting and he had made no progress either with the tobacconists or the cigarettes.

Beyond the modern hotel complexes and skyscrapers lay the old town of Zona Colonial. He walked down narrow alleyways only a fraction wider than his shoulders, past bright painted doors and under windows guarded with wrought-iron bars. He walked by buildings ruined by hurricanes, earthquakes or the unyielding degrade of time.

He carried a satchel and a guidebook to look like a tourist. He had broken the spine of the guidebook in several places and thrown it at his hotel room wall a few times to give it a well-used appearance.

His Spanish was good, but he was not familiar with the African influences of the local dialect and failed to understand some vocabulary, and sometimes struggled with the different grammar and syntax. Asking questions about Jean Claude Marte was proving problematic.

The streets were teaming with Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and Haitians, but also many migrants and tourists. He saw locals wearing baseball jerseys and caps with the logos of Dominican and American teams. The Yankees seemed to be the most popular.

Cigar and cigarette sellers were almost as common as gift shops and souvenir stalls. No one seemed to know a Jean Claude Marte, despite a liberal spending of funds. Victor carried a supply of Dominican pesos but also a substantial amount of US dollars.

He found himself in a square busy with locals, tourists and pigeons. Cigar smoke fragranced the air. Victor took a seat on an upturned plastic crate in the shade of a mahogany tree to let a boy of ten or eleven clean his shoes. They needed no attention, but the boy worked up a sweat scrubbing and wiping them until they looked new. The boy was shirtless and Victor could see every one of his vertebrae like the peaks of a mountain range.

While he worked, Victor’s eyes swept the area for signs of watchers. A man in mirrored sunglasses stood next to a bronze statue of Christopher Columbus and drank from a plastic bottle of sugar cane juice. After a minute, the man screwed the lid back on to the bottle and walked away.

When the boy had finished he rattled a tin cup of peso coins. Victor dropped in some coins, and then a folded one-hundred-dollar bill when the boy wasn’t looking.

Stone buildings surrounded the square. Arched walkways led off in several directions. To the south lay the double archway entrance of the Catedral Basilica Santa María la Menor. He stepped out of the heat and into the interior. There were a few tourists as well as locals inside. He admired the stained-glass windows while he waited to see who followed him in.

No one did.

He performed counter surveillance while he wandered around the shops and boutiques as any tourist might, stopping on occasion to peruse wares as part of the cover. Jewellery items made from amber or larimar stones were common.

He walked by outdoor cafés where tourists sipped fruit juices and cocktails. The old city had many squares where centuries-old colonial buildings stood proud and elegant, giving him an excuse to loiter in apparent admiration while scanning for watchers or shadows.

A skinny Dominican man in denim shorts and a yellow T-shirt approached him, announcing himself as an official tour guide. The man had bare feet and a huge smile. His hair was slicked back from a broad forehead. The beard was short but untrimmed with sparse and ragged growth up to his cheekbones. Small eyes peered at Victor from below eyebrows that were thick and wild. The nose was long and crooked through injury or unfortunate genes. His neck was dense with muscle but his shoulders were narrow. He was fit and strong, but only through hard work. Nature had made him weak, but hard work and hardship had overcome that disadvantage.

He had as close to zero body fat as anyone not starving to death could hope to achieve. His forearms were a maze of protruding arteries and veins made more prominent from the thump of rushing blood. His small hands were tanned and rough, nails bitten and torn down.

He was no guide. He was a hustler, out to scam tourists. He was perfect for Victor’s needs.

‘What’s your name?’ Victor asked.

‘I am the great Sylvester.’ He grinned. ‘You may call me Sylvester.’

‘How much do you charge, Sylvester?’ Victor asked.

‘Fifty dollars for the whole day,’ he answered with another huge grin.

‘You mean I hand over fifty dollars and you take me to the market and I just happen to lose you in the crowds and never see you again?’

The grin faded. ‘I would never —’

‘Spare me,’ Victor said, and took fifty dollars out of his wallet. ‘I need documents. A passport, that sort of thing. I hear there is a man named Jean Claude who provides such items. Do you know him?’

‘Maybe I have a friend who does?’

‘Well, turn that maybe into a definitely and I’ll pay you another hundred when you introduce us. Deal?’

Sylvester stuffed the fifty dollars into a pocket of his shorts and nodded.

‘Meet me at the Fortaleza Ozama in two hours. Bring your friend.’

After leaving Sylvester, Victor kept moving. He didn’t like to stay still, especially in a new town. He was a stranger here, ignorant of the rhythm of street life and melody of the inhabitants. Exploring meant acquiring knowledge that could prove useful, even essential, to both the task at hand and the more difficult job of staying alive.

He liked the city, despite the locals hassling him to buy snacks or worthless souvenirs. Everyone seemed to smile, as if even the most mundane of daily activities brought genuine joy.

With half an hour left before he was due to meet Sylvester, he walked down a pedestrianised street lined with cafés, bars and shops. He followed the street to the seafront and spend a while gazing at the bay. He turned into a tree-lined street where grand colonial buildings towered above him.

A trio of musicians played merengue music as they strolled along the boulevard. Dominicans sprang into impromptu dance as they passed by. He smiled and clapped in the same way he had seen tourists do. A local girl tried to take his hand so he would dance with her, but he shook his head and moved on. A roadside stall sold coconuts. For an extra dollar the seller let Victor use the machete to chop the top off one and he sipped the juice from a straw as he continued on his way to the grounds of the sixteenth-century Fortaleza Ozama.

Victor waited on the fort’s battlements, next to a deactivated cannon that faced the river and pirates and invaders from the previous millennium.

Sylvester arrived alone, and late.

‘He won’t come here,’ Sylvester was quick to explain. ‘You must go to him.’

‘That’s not what we agreed.’

‘I could not persuade him.’

Victor said, ‘You called yourself the
great
Sylvester.’

The man shrugged. ‘He won’t come to you.’

‘You mean you were not willing to share the money I gave you.’

Sylvester shrugged and repeated, ‘I could not persuade him.’

‘Let’s go,’ Victor said.

Sylvester led Victor to where a sun-bleached old VW Beetle was parked under the shade of a palm tree. Sylvester unlocked it with a key while Victor waited on the kerb to look out for watchers. No one seemed to be paying them any attention.

Metal squealed as Sylvester wrenched open the driver’s door. ‘Get in.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘My friend lives out of town. Like all the other cartel people.’

‘Where out of town?’

‘A village near the plantations,’ Sylvester replied. ‘Fifty or so kilometres north. Only half an hour if we are lucky.’

Victor regarded the Dominican. Being led away into the unknown was not his style, but he had little choice. He wasn’t going to find Marte without some help. He pulled open the passenger door, which made even more noise than the driver’s had a moment before.

‘Don’t worry,’ Sylvester said with a grin. ‘The car is as safe as the houses.’

‘If you’ve set me up in any way,’ Victor said, gaze locked on Sylvester, ‘I’m the worst enemy you’ll ever have.’

Sylvester said nothing, but the grin slipped away from his face.

‘You do know that I’m telling you the truth, right?’ Victor said.

The Dominican didn’t answer and climbed into the Beetle. Victor climbed in too. He was surprised when the car started on the first turn of the ignition.

They set off northeast, leaving Santo Domingo behind and heading into savannah. They passed
gua-gua
buses of tourists on excursions to the Cordillera Central mountains. After twenty minutes on the highway they headed off on to narrow roads winding through villages and sugar and tobacco plantations. Here people used mules as much as cars for transportation. Sugar plantations seemed to be everywhere.

They drove past market stalls set up along the side of the road selling fruit and sugar cane to passers-by, slowing down as the road became narrow with parked vehicles and mules. One stall sold leering carnival masks. It was noisy with locals and tourists alike bartering for better deals.

A traffic cop in mirrored sunglasses waved them over.

‘What’s wrong?’ Victor asked.

‘Do not sweat,’ Sylvester said. ‘He’s just seen your foreign face.’

‘Bribe?’

Victor’s guide only smiled and dropped out of the vehicle to hand over money to the smiling cop, who patted him on the back as if they were friends, before leaving.

‘All fine. Only ten dollars.’

‘A bargain,’ Victor said.

The sun sank down towards the horizon. Dust clouded and swirled in the breeze against a backdrop of blazing orange. Flamingos so bright they seemed to glow pink stood in the glassy waters of a shallow lake.

Sylvester stopped the Beetle on the outskirts of a ramshackle collection of buildings that formed a village in the centre of endless fields of tobacco.

Sylvester climbed out and Victor followed him into the village. Here the buildings were made of wood and painted in faded and cracked pastel colours. The streets were narrow and winding. Cars were rare. Two women hung out laundry on a line over a small balcony. One waved as he passed. Teenagers danced merengue to music emanating from their mobile phones.

He passed an area of grassland where spray paint had been used to make crude baseball markings. The grass had been worn away to bare dirt where every base was marked. A yellow house surrounded by a wall stood on a small hill overlooking the rest of the village. Generators rumbled and coughed fumes into the air. The power supply on the island was inconsistent at best and many relied on their own electricity instead. He passed young women who rolled cigars on their thighs from tobacco leaves while they laughed and joked with one another under a string of twinkling fairy lights.

They ducked under the low archway to enter the bar. Victor nodded to the patrons who looked his way and they nodded back, appreciating his manners. He knew a little of Dominican etiquette. The few dozen men and handful of women drank rum and coconut milk from dappled glasses. The chairs and tables were all made from dark-stained mahogany. Dominican rap music thumped out of speakers. Colourful paintings of famous national boxers hung from the walls. In one corner a blue Hispaniolan parrot cleaned itself inside a gilded brass cage. He could smell seafood cooking: shrimps grilling and kingfish frying.

Sylvester said, ‘Wait here,’ and went to speak to the bartender.

A bowl of mangoes, oranges and passion fruit sat on a nearby table. Victor selected an orange and used a thumbnail to pierce the skin in a line that followed all the way around its circumference. He peeled that half away and took a bite from the flesh beneath. With his free hand he stroked the chin of an iguana that lay on the same table.

A man said something in Haitian Creole as he passed towards the exit. Victor had no idea how the words translated but a drunken slur was the same in any language.

After a minute had passed, Sylvester waved Victor over and he approached the bar, where he used a napkin to wipe his fingers and deposit the orange skin. The man tending the bar had braided hair, brightened by colourful beads. He wore a necklace of blue and black amber stones.

‘You want passport?’ the man asked.

Victor nodded.

‘You have money?’

Victor nodded again.

The man with the braided hair nodded too and said, ‘Come with me.’

‘Go with him,’ Sylvester added. ‘But pay me first. One hundred dollars, please.’

‘Fifty,’ Victor said. ‘Because you didn’t bring him to me as agreed.’

Sylvester scowled but didn’t argue. He took the fifty dollars and settled on a stool. He waved a young woman over from where she sat at the end of the bar and ordered himself a drink.

The man with the braided hair and amber necklace guided Victor into the back of the bar and through the kitchen, which was so hot and humid Victor had trouble catching his breath. His face was damp with sweat by the time they had exited the back of the bar into a dusty courtyard behind the building.

Several dirt bikes and quads were parked in the courtyard. Near to them five Dominican and Haitian men sat at a bench, finishing a meal of white rice, red beans and fish, and drinking mango juice. None of the Haitians looked the right age or build for Marte.

One stood, a large Haitian in a white vest darkened with sweat and grime, and went up to the man with braids. They exchanged whispered words.

‘You want the passport?’ the Haitian asked Victor.

‘Yes.’

‘Show me your money.’

Victor said, ‘Where’s the forger?’

‘I’m the forger.’

Victor looked at the man’s hands. They were large and strong.

‘No, you’re not.’

The man with braids headed back to the bar. Victor would have followed his movements but he kept his gaze on the Haitian, because behind him the other four men stood and approached.

Victor heard the bar’s back door shut. He didn’t hear, but he sensed the lock engaging from the inside.

‘Show me your money,’ the Haitian said again as he took a machete from the tabletop.