Chameleon (29 page)

‘You will soon find out,’ Joli said rather haughtily and left the room.

Cap-Haitien, the quiet city in the Basse Terre
—
the narrow strip of lowlands at the foot of the mountains of northern Haiti
—
was forty-five minutes behind them, as was thirty miles of the worst road O’Hara had ever seen. The Magician had taken it in stride, having spent the better part of ten years in the Caribbean. But as the dusty old Chevy growled and groaned up one of the many mountains that ridge the country’s northern seacoast, even the piano player began to show signs of nervousness. Black clouds lurked over the stiletto peaks, and rain had already begun to fall on the mountains beyond. The road ended abruptly at a stone wall. Beyond the wall was five hundred feet of nothing. A boy, no more than nine or ten, was waiting with three mules.

‘Those are donkeys!’ the Magician whispered. ‘Joli didn’t say anything about ridin’ a fuckin’ donkey.’

‘Joli didn’t say much of anything.’

‘That fuckin’ little chocolate frog. He’s got a very perverted sense of humor. This ain’t the first time he’s tied a can to my tail.’

‘And we’re not there yet,’ said O’Hara.

Billy, the guide, had said hardly a dozen words since he picked them up at the airport. He was not unfriendly, just uncommunicative. He was a tail man, rib-thin and the color of milk chocolate, with bulging muscles in arms and shoulders, and enormous, knobby hands. His face was long with hard angles and deep cheekbones. The youth with the mules looked enough like him to be his son.

Billy got out and motioned them to follow. He spoke briefly in French to the boy, and the youngster got in the car. Then Billy motioned them to get on the mules.

‘We should hurry. It would be best to get there before the storm hits.’

‘How far is it?’ the Magician asked.

‘Maybe thirty minutes up the mountain, not far.’

The Magician looked sadly at O’Hara.

‘Thirty minutes up a mountain on a mule and he says it’s “not far”?’

They clopped uneasily up the side of the cliff on the three mules. The sheer face of the mountain dropped straight down to the path, which was barely five feet wide. Then the mountain dropped away again, into the valley, hundreds of feet below them. Wind howled around the craggy face of the cliffs, carrying the damp promise of rain, and -thunder grumbled through the spires above and below them.

‘I’m gonna have Joli’s ass this time. This time I’m really gonna, y’know, rip a nice chunk of it off and nail it on the wall over my piano.’

‘Hell, Magician, he found Danilov for us.’

‘He didn’t tell us we were gonna ride fuckin’ donkeys up the side of a mountain on a path no wider than a slab of bacon. Some sense of humour. He’s like all them goddamn frogs — perverted!’

‘He’s not a frog, Magician. He’s a Haitian.’

‘He talks frog and he acts frog and he’s perverted and that makes him a frog t’ me,’ the Magician yelled.

‘And what would you do without him?’ O’Hara yelled into the wind.

‘Sleep better at night,’ the Magician yelled back.

The mules were just ornery enough to be scary. Billy led the procession. The Magician, bitching constantly, was in the middle, with O’Hara bringing up the rear. The wind howled at them, cutting through their summer windbreakers. The path became wet and slippery and then the rain started. And then the path got even narrower. Billy broke out a flashlight, sweeping it back and forth, keeping the path in view.

To the west La Citadelle, the mountaintop fortress built by King Christophe in the early nineteenth century, brooded over the northern coast, its high, grim walls capping one of the many jagged mountains around them. It soon vanished in the swirling rain and fading light.

They climbed higher.

The Magician passed the time griping about Joli while O’Hara preoccupied himself by thinking about Lizzie, about how soft and warm she had been in Montego Bay and how eagerly she had jumped at the chance to work with Izzy on the code while they were gone. The lady pulled her weight, no doubt about that. Thinking about her helped pass the time.

Forty-five minutes of hard riding through the storm brought them to the end of the trail, a tiny plateau protected only by a low earthen wall. Wind and rain lashed them. There was a hitching rail for the animals, room for the three mules and the three of them and not much more.

O’Hara looked up. The cliff disappeared up into the fog.

‘Now what?’ the Magician said woefully. ‘Do we fly the rest of the way?’

There was a bell attached to the face of the cliff and Billy rang it several times before a voice called down from above.

‘Oui? Qui est là?

‘C’est mol— Billy,’ the guide yelled back.

‘Ah, oui, Billee. Un instant.’ A moment later a thick rope dangled down from the darkness above with a basket attached to it. Above the basket was a loop of rope, like the strap in a subway.

‘Who will be first?’ Billy asked and he smiled for the first time.

‘We’re going up the rest of the way in that?’ the Magician exclaimed with alarm.

‘Oui,’ said Billy.

‘I’ll go second,’ the Magician said, hunching his shoulders against the wind and rain. ‘Or maybe I’ll wait here.’

‘A little nervous?’ O’Hara asked.

‘Sailor, I’m scared shitless,’ he said.

‘I will go up first,’ the gangly Haitian said. ‘So they will know everything is in order.’ He gave the flashlight to O’Hara and got in the basket, sitting on his knees and holding the rope strap with both hands.

‘Allez-y! he called to the man above and a moment later the basket rose into the darkness.

‘Allez, my ass,’ the Magician said. ‘What am I doin’ here, anyway?’

‘You told me you were bored and wanted to perk your life up. This is called perking things up.’

‘It’s called freezing things off, that’s what it’s called.’ He stared grimly up into the darkness, listening to the rope groaning and the slow, steady click of the pulley above.

Then the pulley stopped clicking. A few seconds later Billy yelled down, ‘Allez donc! Come up. It is safe.’

‘Merci,’ O’Hara yelled back.

The swing basket dropped out of the darkness. O’Hara helped the Magician into it. The musician clutched the rope handle and clung to the rope. His knuckles were white, his eyes squeezed shut. ‘Things aren’t bad enough, we had to pick the goddamn monsoon season for this gig!’ he cried. His voice was lost to the winds as the basket, buffeted about, was hefted into the rain and strobe-lit by the lightning that zigzagged above the mountain.

When the basket was lowered the third time, O’Hara settled into it and whistled through his fingers. He felt himself being drawn slowly up the cliffside. As he neared the top he could hear the steady clinking of the ratchet pulley. The basket was being raised and lowered like a bucket in a well.

When he reached the top, O’Hara was instantly overwhelmed by the eeriness. It was not so much the place as the ambience of the place: the hooded monk, a faceless spectre bent over the crank of the basket; the monastery itself, an adobe maze commanding the cramped mountain top like some medieval gaol, its squat, weather-scarred buildings, connected haphazardly by roofed walkways; and underscoring it all, a chilling and constant moaning pierced by an occasional scream that reminded O’Hara of Dante’s description of the torments of hell.

Billy and the Magician were huddled in the low arched doorway of what appeared to be the main building.

‘I am Frère Clef,’ the hooded monk said.

‘O’Hara. This is Mike Rothschild, and you know Billy.’

‘Oui. Bonsoir, mon ami.’

‘Bonsoir,’ the Haitian replied.

Frere Clef turned back to O’Hara. ‘You should know that those who have joined our order have taken a vow of silence,’ he said. ‘I am the gatekeeper. By tradition, I alone may converse with visitors.’

He spoke softly, his accent a hybrid. British, a touch of French, perhaps even a bit of Spanish.

‘We understand you are here to see the man with the umbrella and that you are sympathetic with his plight.’

‘That’s correct,’ O’Hara said.

‘Bon. Please follow me.’

Billy elected to wait in the grim anteroom while the monk led O’Hara and the Magician along walkways that protected them from the rain. They went down through the catacomb-like monastery, past doors with barred windows, and suddenly O’Hara realized where the wailing was coming from and why, and the name of the place made sense for the first time.

La Montagne des Yeux Vides: the Mountain of the Empty Eyes.

Well-named. Lifeless eyes peered out at them from behind bars, arms reached out to touch them, and with each crack of lightning, a chorus of woe arose from the lips of inmates.

The monastery was an insane asylum, the silent monks its caretakers.

The Magician cast O’Hara an apprehensive look and rolled his eyes heavenward.

Another crack of lightning, another chorus from the damned.

They entered the last of the buildings and went down a short flight of wide stone stairs. Torches flickered in sconces on the bare walls of the grim, winding hallway. The building, chilled by rain and wind, smelled dank and foreboding.

The hooded man stopped at the first cell. ‘I have told him you are coming,’ he said. ‘But his reaction may be ... a bit startling.’

‘Frere Clef, is Danilov insane?’

‘You didn’t know? Oh yes, Brother Umbrella is quite mad. He seeks repentance in his madness.’ The monk peered through the barred door. ‘You will find that he ... what is the word — meanders? He meanders in and out of the real world.’

‘Are you treating him?’ the Magician asked,

‘lam afraid those who have been sent to Les Yeux Vides are beyond treatment. Brother Umbrella was brought to us by friends, but he asked to be secluded here.’

‘He asked to be brought here?’ said the Magician.

‘Yes. He was suffering extreme paranoia and had become occasionally irrational. He thought everyone was trying to kill him. He even believes his umbrella is deadly.’

Believes! O’Hara thought. Obviously the monks of Les Yeux Vides did not know who Danilov really was. Or care. And they thought his deadly umbrella was harmless.

‘How long has he been here?’ O’Hara asked.

‘Four months. And since coming here, he has slipped further away from reality.’ He pointed to a bell beside the door. ‘You may ring the bell when you are finished. Oh, one other thing. He believes this is his home. He does not realize he is one of them. Good luck.’

The monk unlocked the door and slid back the large shot-bolt lock.

‘Monsieur, you have guests,’ he said and padded silently back up the stairs.

They entered the room cautiously, remaining near the door, and their eyes were assaulted by flickering candlelight. Candles were everywhere, casting a ghoulish yellow light over Danilov’s cell — or cells — for it was actually two cells connected by an arch carved through the stone wall. The main room was a surprise: there was a large oak table, pushed against the wall opposite the arch, covered with papers and notebooks; a large bookcase, choked with books in many languages against another wall; a cot with several down pillows opposite it; a small table beside the cot; a high-backed chair at the desk, and two others shoved haphazardly in corners. The walls were covered with maps, photographs of flowers and wild animals, and a small black-and-white photograph of downtown Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, which appeared to be a dismal, grim-looking city.

The other room contained a bed, a night table and a large, bulky free-standing closet. Nothing more.

There was a large vase of daisies on the floor near the desk, where Daniov was sitting, pen in hand, bent over a sheaf of papers and writing furiously.

‘Un moment, un moment,’ he said with the wave of a hand. And when he had finished what he was working on, he turned around. His face told the whole story, for here was a man haunted by his own ghosts, driven to insanity by age, conscience and fear; an assassin, urged further into madness by his own bizarre, self-imposed imprisonment; a madman sequestered among madmen, totally oblivious of his predicament. His cabbage-face was drawn and sunken. Self-destruction lurked in eyes that were listless one moment, bright as a diamond the next. His hair, what there was of it, had turned pure-white and clung, in sweat-matted disarray, to his skull. His palsied hands were knotted with arthritis. Beads of perspiration clung to his worn-out face. He was wearing a pair of soiled, hopelessly wrinkled white pants and a white dress shirt, open almost to the waist.

‘Parlez-vous francais? Habla Usted español? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’

‘English. We speak English.’

‘English’ he said, ‘so you are Englishmen, then?’ He spoke the language well, although with a guttural accent.

‘Americans.’

‘Americans!’ He stared at them suspiciously and then said, in a fevered and annoyed tone, ‘Yes, yes, what is it? I’m a busy man. Can’t you see I’m busy? Eh? Look at this desk, just look at it! Projects, projects, pro— Never enough hours in the day to get... My secretary... I haven’t seen ... uh, she’s off on holiday. That bitch.’

He frantically moved papers around on the desk.

‘Danilov?’ O’Hara said.

The haunted man peered at him through the flickering candlelight. ‘I know you,’ he said. There was panic in his voice. ‘You’re here to kill me.’ He backed into the corner of his cell-like room, whimpering like a scared puppy, holding his umbrella in front of him, its point gleaming dangerously. O’Hara backed away from the deadly weapon.

‘I want to help you,’ O’Hara said.

‘I don’t want help. Get away from me. You’re one of them.’

‘One of whom?’

Danilov’s mood changed suddenly. ‘Don’t try to-You think I’m a fool? How did you get— All right, all right, where’s Security? Security! How did you get— Security! They sold me sold me... Oh, those bastards.. .‘ He closed his eyes and

beat one fist on his knee.

‘Nobody sold you out, Danilov. I promise you, your secret is safe with us. I’ve been on the dodge myself — for over a year.’

Danilov’s mood changed again. He giggled and spoke in mock musical tones. ‘Don’t believe you,’ he said, as if he were singing a song. ‘You lie. Everyone lies. Did you know that lying is an art?’