The Bonaparte Secret (2 page)

“The people,” I noted, “might adversely view such an adornment
.”

By the flickering light of the boat’s sole torch, I saw him smile. “Such is the reason I wear it under rather than outside of my tunic. It is dear to me, not as a object of religion, but as a reminder of my origins. On Corsica I was also given life and with that life I was also given a fierce love for my ill-starred homeland
.”
⁶

He held the cross up for a moment to catch the shifting light of the torch before returning it inside his tunic. “It is but an ordinary object but one I shall always treasure greatly, along with a few others from the past. I wore it that day when, as a mere general, my epaulets still new, I defended the Convention
.”
⁷

It was a rare moment when the general actually spoke tenderly about his life before some star of destiny called him to lead his nation’s army and one I would have enjoyed, had we been attacking rather than fleeing the British.

1
The French Revolution worshipped “logic” over religion. Consequently, the Gregorian calendar was scrapped and the Jacobin system adopted. The year was proclaimed to begin on September 22, with twelve months of thirty days each. Leap year included a five- or six-day holiday. Even the names of the months were changed to words more “natural,” such as Vendemiaire, or “vintage,” for late September-October, followed by the words for mist, frost, snow, rain, wind, seed, blossom, meadow, harvest, heat and fruits. Napoleon abandoned the system in year XII, 1804. In this translation I have used the actual dates rather than the Jacobin.

2
The battle, August 1, 1798, was close enough to Alexandria that the explosion of the French gunship
L’Orient
lit up the night sky of the city.

3
Whether Napoleon was needed or not was made moot by his coup d’etat on November 9. In 1804 he crowned himself emperor.

4
Not only did Napoleon take an army and navy to Egypt. He included 160 “savants,” scholars in fields as diverse as botany, languages and art. One of them was the father of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal. Another preserved the Rosetta Stone for the future translation by Champollion, a feat that unlocked the secret of hieroglyphics. The studies of the savants were published in the monumental, multivolume
Description de l’Égypte
in 1809. The ancient glories of Egypt were generally unknown in Europe before then. Each volume caused a sensation.

5
The French Revolution not only overthrew the monarchy but the powers of the Catholic Church, whom the revolutionaries viewed as much an oppressor of the people as the king and nobility. The official policy of the French government even today is regarded by many as anticlerical.

6
Despite such language, Napoleon did little to further the cause of Corsican independence. The island is still French today.

7
A royalist uprising in Paris almost disrupted the National Convention. Napoleon, who had recently been promoted to general but was out of favor, was the closest officer available. He dispersed the royalists with what he would later describe as “a whiff of grapeshot,” killing about a hundred of them. Most scholars attribute his rapid rise to this incident.

C
HAPTER
O
NE

Pétionville, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
November of last year

Chin Diem, undersecretary for foreign relations of the People’s Republic of China, admired the view. Spread out below the mansion’s picture window was the city, its lights cradled below the mountain like a handful of jewels. Fortunately, far below. Far enough that the stench of open sewers, uncollected garbage and burning charcoal that had assaulted his nose upon his arrival could not reach him. Neither could the flies and mosquitoes that seemed the country’s most populous fauna. Up here the residences were multimillion-dollar mansions on multiacre lots. Their owners shopped regularly in Paris or Milan. The residents of Pétionville owned over 90 percent of what little wealth Haiti possessed. And that had come largely from offshore, untraceable investments originally funded mostly from foreign aid, money that had seen the beginnings of schools, the foundations of hospitals, projects never finished as funding trickled into well-connected pockets.

There was no din of hucksters up here, selling everything from carved figures with grotesquely enlarged penises to fly-ridden food to black market–discounted gourdes, the national currency, which proclaimed itself to equal twenty-five cents American but was actually without value outside the country.

The night and distance also blotted out the movement. Port-au-Prince was a city in constant action. No Haitian, from naked children to shirtless men to skirt-wearing women, young or old, was ever still. Not unless they were squatting beside the ubiquitous charcoal fires on which they prepared every meal on the filthy, noisy streets in front of rickety shacks or apartments.

Or, perhaps, were dead.

But Chin Diem had not come to this diminutive country for socioeconomic observations. His government jet had intentionally arrived after dark, when the prying eyes of what few foreign news correspondents remained in this poverty-ridden corner of the Caribbean would be unable to see who was disembarking. A Mercedes with darkly tinted windows had met him on the tarmac and he had been whisked here rather than to the alabaster capitol building in downtown Port-au-Prince. Had anyone been curious enough to check the aircraft’s number against flight plans, a process made ridiculously easy by the Internet, they would have ascertained the aircraft, registered to a Swiss company, had departed Geneva, its previous stop.

Nothing more.

Secrecy was imperative if his visit to this humid, stinking place was to be successful. Secrecy and a great deal of diplomacy, for he was dealing with a madman, a leader of a country, every bit as volatile, egotistic and unpredictable as that lunatic China could barely control in North Korea. Fortunately, though, Tashmal duPaar, another in the dreary and endless procession of Haiti’s “presidents for life,” lacked power outside his tropical domain. He had but a small army and no nuclear weapons. In short, he lacked what Diem was prepared to provide.

It was not particularly remarkable that duPaar had managed to seize power from the duly elected president. He had been the senior officer of the country’s military. As such, he simply marched a dozen men armed with outdated but deadly U.S. Army–surplus rifles into the capitol building and dismissed the president, his cabinet and the sitting parliament. It had been an all-too-familiar move in Haiti and one of which the rest of the world, particularly America, had grown weary. Demands that the United Nations peacekeeping force withdraw were complied with in an eager expeditiousness that bespoke the futility with which the international community viewed the country. A condemning resolution ricocheted around the halls of the UN, the world’s most useless debating society. The former Haitian ambassador to the United States, along with his UN counterpart, had sought sanctuary rather than return home, and the matter had died a short and unproductive death. Countries that exported little other than their own citizens tended to attract little attention. As for the people of Haiti, they were far more concerned about the next meal than the next politician to occupy this sumptuous home above Port-au-Prince.

Diem’s thoughts scattered as an Uzi-carrying bodyguard entered the room, followed by a small black man in a uniform literally sagging with the weight of medals—duPaar.

Diem turned from the window and bowed deeply. “Mr. President.”

The president for life acknowledged him with a wave of the hand before sliding behind a mammoth, gilt-edged Boulle partners desk that made him look even smaller. “Good evening, Mr. Secretary.”

Since duPaar spoke no Chinese and the Chinese diplomat certainly knew no Creole, the blend of mangled French and West African dialects that is the language of Haiti, the men would converse in English.

Diem nodded toward the armed guard. “My understanding was that this meeting would include only us.”

DuPaar shrugged. “My enemies will do anything to get at me, even a suicidal attempt. The man is deaf. He will hear nothing to repeat.”

Chin Diem refrained from pointing out that even his casual appraisal of the presidential palace on arrival had revealed security befitting the leader of a country under siege. Nothing less than an armored or airborne division could penetrate the walls, gun emplacements and security cameras he had seen. He assumed there was a lot he had not seen, too. Instead, he indicated a French wing chair, one of a pair upholstered in blue silk that was showing both stains and its age. He raised an eyebrow in a question.

“Yes, yes, of course. Please sit.”

Chin did so, reaching into a pocket inside his black silk suit.

Instantly, he was looking down the muzzle of the guard’s Uzi. Gingerly, he removed his hand, holding a pack of American Marlboros. “May I?”

In reply, duPaar opened a desk drawer and produced an ashtray with the words
Fontainebleau Hotel Miami Beach
on two sides. He smiled slyly as he slid it across the desk’s inlay top. “As you can see, I, like you, have traveled widely.”

Once again, Diem said nothing as he busied himself with lighting a cigarette.

Then, nodding to a painting behind duPaar’s head, he asked, “That is a Bazile, is it not?”

For the first time the president for life smiled, showing teeth the color of old ivory. “You know Bazile?”

“I know of several of your country’s painters. Bazile reveals himself by his use of several shades of green, more green than all other colors combined.”

DuPaar produced a cigar from somewhere, bit off the end and spit out the tip. He spoke between puffs as he applied a wooden match. “The green mirrors the lushness of the country.”

Not if the pictures of Port-au-Prince’s neighboring countryside Chin had seen were accurate. The surrounding mountains were eroded dirt, the trees having been long ago stripped away to make charcoal. “I see.”

DuPaar leaned back in his chair, his feet on the desk. Chin noticed his short legs barely reached. “Well? You did not come this distance to speak of artists.”

Chin’s inhale nearly turned into a choke on the smoke of his cigarette. Most diplomatic conversations started with a compliment to the host or his country, meandered through the participants’ families and their comparative health, took a leisurely stroll along a simple outline of the problem to be addressed, all before the business at hand was even mentioned.

DuPaar’s feet hit the floor as he snapped forward. “I am a busy man, Mr. Secretary. Please come to the point.”

Chin Diem could not remember being addressed in such a manner, but he swallowed his indignation. His mission was to come away with what he wanted, not put this pennyante tyrant in his place.

“My country has long wished to expand its business interests to this hemisphere. We would like to begin in Haiti . . .”

DuPaar was leaning forward, feet firmly planted on the floor, his hands clasped on the desktop. He spoke around the cigar clamped between his teeth. “You have already begun. The company that operates the Panama Canal is owned by your government. Specifically, your army.”

The man might be crazy but he was no fool.

“True,” Chin conceded, “but the Canal Zone is quite small. Our international competitors, the Russians, for example, already are forming alliances with Venezuela, Nicaragua, even preparing to return to Cuba.”

“Countries where the United States is disliked by those in power. Chavez in Venezuela, for instance, would do business with the devil to stick his thumb in the Americans’ eyes.”

Chin shifted in his chair. “My country is more interested in economic expansion than sticking fingers in eyes. I am authorized to propose opening manufacturing plants in your country.”

“Manufacturing what?”

“Clothes, textiles, light manufacturing to begin with.”

He definitely had duPaar’s attention. “And then?”

“And then we will see.”

DuPaar made a steeple of his fingers and rested his chin on it. “And what would I get?”

“Get?” Chin pretended to be puzzled, knowing full well what the president for life meant. “You would have employment for a number of your people, money they lack today.”

DuPaar made a guttural sound, a sound of dismissal. “Do not play me for an idiot, Mr. Secretary. You know precisely what I mean.”

Chin took the opportunity to stub out his cigarette. “Well, for starters, as our American friends would say, I would anticipate five or six thousand Chinese soldiers would be stationed here to protect my country’s investment, prevent any further, er, abrupt changes in government.”

DuPaar shook his head. “The Americans would never allow Chinese soldiers on their doorstep.”

Chin smiled. “The Monroe Doctrine, the policy that the United States would tolerate no country out of this hemisphere to meddle in the affairs of a country in the Western Hemisphere, died in 1962 when Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba again if the Russians would remove their missiles from the island. Their present president believes talk, not action, is the solution to all problems. In the end, the Americans will do nothing.”

DuPaar’s eyes narrowed. “These troops, who would command them?”

Now came the time for the vagueness that characterizes the accomplished diplomat.

“They would, of course, serve under their own officers. But who commands the officers . . .” He trolled the idea implicit in the unfinished sentence like a baited hook.