Chapter 8: Getting Settled

Back in Cassandra’s room, he discovered that another patient had been moved in and was asleep. The curtain had been drawn around that bed, so they spoke quietly.

“My doc was here and told me that I should be ready to leave on Monday. My burns are mostly closed up and the seeping’s stopped. Their worries about infection are mostly over. He said that was because of the very good initial care you did. They’re using these ... um ... impregnated gauzes so they don’t have to be changed so often, which is good...”

A nurse had bustled in and took her blood pressure and checked her temperature.

“Okay, sweetie,” she told Cassandra, “Your IV can come out now. We stopped your antibiotics twelve hours ago and it looks like you’re clear of any systemic infection. We just need to watch for any local infection now. We’ll keep observing you for two days, and if there’s no change, we can release you to outpatient care. Tomorrow we’ll get someone from Physical Therapy to work with you to show you how to get around with crutches. You need to keep any weight off that left leg for probably six weeks. The doctor put in your chart that if there’s no change, he’ll release you on Monday. Mr Bernard, will you be able to check and possibly change her dressings between outpatient visits, if necessary?”

“I can.”

“Someone will show you what to do on Monday, then. I’m so happy you’ve done so well here, Mrs Bernard. I’ll be checking back later, just before the end of my shift.”

Five minutes later, another nurse came in and disconnected the IV apparatus and pulled the catheter.

Jonas looked at his watch. “Say, since you’re getting out, I should get a head start on looking for an apartment while you’re an outpatient and Fab ... Tamara is recovering. Would two bedrooms be enough? In the U.S., most standard apartments will have a kitchen, sometimes a separate dining area, living room, bedrooms, one or two bathrooms, and sometimes even a laundry area.”

“That sounds like a palace, darling,” Cassandra told him. “Whatever you think is good and yes, two bedrooms. That would be better than the little house we had in Haiti.”

Jonas left and the first thing he did was to go to the closest bank. He needed to open an account immediately. He got one set up and had some funds transferred electronically from his bank in the Dominican Republic. He decided to leave the Cayman Islands account untouched. Then he got a temporary debit card. He had an adequate nest egg, he thought, but getting a job soon was essential.

Then he stopped by a real estate office to check on temporary apartment rentals in the medical center area. He found several very close by which were in his price range, so he made an appointment to view them on Saturday. He and Cassandra could continue to stay at the VA family house while Tamara was still an inpatient.

Monday morning was hectic. Cassandra had been cleared to check out. Jonas decided that having her at the FBI meeting was important, so he arranged with his FBI contact to have the meeting at the VA hospital instead of at the field office and they were given the use of a conference room.

When the meeting time drew close, the attendees began arriving. They were Andrew Johnson and Sarah Wilkins from the FBI, Evan Masters from the State Department, and Wilbur Zane from the CIA.

The FBI agents took the lead in running the meeting.

Wilkins began. “The reason our agency is involved with this case is that we have a number of unsolved crimes in Miami and New Orleans, and two in New York City, which all seem to have a common association with someone or someones from Haiti. Going back some 36 years, Mr Bernard’s father was shot here in Miami and we know that this was a political assassination, ordered by the Jean-Claude Duvalier administration in Haiti. There were other murders of expat Haitians which occurred roughly during that same period in cities with a large Haitian population. These murders always involved people who had requested political asylum.

“Now, most recently during the last year, there have been a few murders which again seem to be targeting Haitians living here, but these crimes seem to also be targeting religious figures, practitioners of the Haitian Vodou religion, plus of politically connected people. We’re hoping, from what we have heard about Mr and Mrs Bernard’s situation, that they may be able to give us some leads to the possible perpetrators.”

Then Masters spoke. “This ties into information we’ve collected from Haiti’s current political situation, so let me play the recording which Mr Bernard provided to our attaché in the U.S. embassy there. They were speaking French, so I have a transcript if you need it.”

He passed out the transcript and played the recording.

The CIA agent, Zane, spoke after the recording finished.

“This shows that there’s an effort being mounted to organize some kind of magical assault to either take over or supplant the current government. But how can magic actually work to do that? I’m sure that the idea of voodoo dolls and zombies and such can’t induce educated people to become influenced by threats of magic.”

“That’s where you’re really wrong, Mr Zane,” Cassandra told him. “First, most Haitians, despite their education, have a deep-seated respect for their ancestors and Vodou is their ancestral religion, although Catholicism has, in large, replaced it. But for most Haitians, their Catholicism is heavily overlaid with the folk practices which make up many Vodou beliefs. And despite their education, superstition still affects many people’s beliefs and behavior.

“Second, as the recording showed, Vanessa and her followers or supporters are trying to recruit people who have a certain skill, one which has been bred into a number of my countrymen and women over the many generations since our ancestors were brought to the New World as slaves. Our Vodou rites are based upon getting our adherents to attain a certain state of mind where they can become one with a spiritual figure with whom they identify. You probably know that many Catholics say that they have an affinity for, or hold a special attraction to, a certain saint. A ‘patron’ saint, as they believe.

“During our ceremonies, worshipers can become very susceptible to suggestion or psychological manipulation by a skilled priest or priestess. Some of these practitioners may be so skilled that they can influence other people’s thoughts or behavior, or even both. Some religious practitioners may even use their skill to influence the believer that they are ill, in pain, in danger, or will have bad fortune. This is a dangerous power to hold over someone, if used improperly.

“I have seen examples in my own practice of how powerful psychological suggestion can be, especially when the worshiper is a devout believer. I know that I myself can commune with residents of the spirit world. They give me guidance and support. How does my ability differ from that of the Catholic priest who says ‘Jesus answered my prayer and gave me guidance’? We all worship the One God, and God manifests God’s self in many different ways, according to the beliefs and cultures that the believer was raised in.

“My mother was an extremely powerful priestess and could influence a person to do whatever she wanted them to do. I personally saw her power. She was approached by Vanessa, perhaps twelve years ago now, and was probably asked, or perhaps forced, to join her. I’m sure she rejected Vanessa, so she was killed. I no longer feel her presence in this world, but have seen convincing spiritual evidence that she now resides in the spirit world.

“So you must not denigrate the skills and power of people who wield such abilities because it first, damages your reputation among those who know that these abilities are real, and second, discounting an opponent’s abilities and power is a sign of your own weakness.”

The group was listening to her raptly and sighed when she apparently finished talking.

Jonas looked around at their shocked faces and remarked, “Right. What she said.”

They all chuckled, but nervously.

Jonas went on, “You see why I wanted you to meet Cassandra. You might think she’s just an uneducated Vodou practitioner, but she’s actually a highly educated, brilliant analytical thinker and an astute student of human relationships.”

“That was ... was ... an incredible presentation, Ma’am, if I may say so,” Zane remarked. “I had no idea...”

“ ... that Vodou wasn’t some kind of new age magick—with a ‘k’—for tourists and movie plots?” Cassandra smiled.

“Err ... exactly, Ma’am. So how come people associate voodoo with dolls stuck with pins and that nonsense?”

Cassandra nodded. “Nonsense, exactly. In the New World, Vodou has basically two main traditions. Mine is obviously Haitian. West African people were brought to the Caribbean as slaves to work in the sugar plantations, mainly by the French. The French also brought their slaves to Louisiana, New Orleans, to tend sugar and cotton crops, and when the Haitian slaves revolted during the period of 1791 to 1803, many Haitian planters fled to New Orleans with their slaves. But what most people don’t know is that the idea of using pins to stab dolls comes mainly from medieval Europe, not Africa.

“I studied the history of France and learned that, in the French court of the thirteenth century, the practice of putting pins into wood or wax dolls was well known and was being written about. The best known work describing the practice was by a French courtier who was a protegé of Catherine de Medeci. It was an example of European folk magic—a sympathetic magical attempt to harm or kill the king or the barons and had been practiced throughout Europe for many years. Other examples of this practice actually exist in cultures throughout the world.

“In fact, many of the magic and sorcery practices attributed to Vodou and Africa actually were exported from France with the colonists who came to the Caribbean and then to New Orleans in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The colonists were mostly from the Berry, Picardy, Limousin, and Normandy provinces—they’re in central and coastal France. Some of those European magic practices were adopted into Haitian Vodou, but there appeared to be little interest in the doll-and-pins practice. That idea never took hold in the New Orleans Vodou branch; many of their other ritual practices differ from the Haitian ones.

“When pro-slavery activists began slandering the black citizens of New Orleans in the early nineteenth century, fearing that they would foment a slave revolution in the South in a manner similar to what had happened in Haiti in 1791, those pro-slavery people began slandering and sensationalizing Vodou, claiming that its practitioners held orgies, engaged in cannibalism, and stuck pins in dolls. Those were only a few of the false claims that were made about the religion. Then, beginning in the late nineteenth century and even to the current day, Vodou is being commercialized by people selling these trinkets and producing horror movies. But the pin-in-doll practice doesn’t even exist in New Orleans; in Haiti we sometimes saw it. But basically, the practice is a historical artifact from medieval Europe.

“Oh dear, I got carried away. I’m so sorry for the lecture...”

“No, no. That was extremely interesting and very informative,” Zane responded. “Could I be so bold as to ask if the CIA could call on you when we have an issue in understanding your culture and belief system? If that’s not against your religion, that is.”

“Ditto for the State Department,” Masters interjected.

“Hmm. I’m afraid that the FBI probably couldn’t use guidance like that, Ma’am; Our methods are somewhat more direct,” Johnson said with a grin and the others chuckled.

“I’d be delighted to help in any way which shows my beliefs in a positive way,” Cassandra agreed.

Wilkins looked around at the group. “Mr Zane, is the CIA satisfied with the information that Mrs Bernard provided?”

“Absolutely. I took notes and I’m going to have the section do some intensive research on Haiti, its history and culture, and Vodou itself. I’m sure we’ll come up with questions that we’ll ask Mrs Bernard about?”

“Certainly,” Cassandra replied.

“Then there’s no further need for me here since the rest of the meeting is internal U.S. and we’re not supposed to poke our noses into internal stuff,” he grinned, picked up his papers, and left, shaking hands as he came around the table.

“What kind of details can you give us about your experiences with this ‘Vanessa’ or her associates that the recording didn’t provide?” Johnson asked.

Cassandra nodded. “She came to my ounfò—temple—one day when I was alone. She must have been watching until our compound was unoccupied, since I have at least one person visiting, all during most days. I’m a faith healer and provide herbal folk medicines to my congregation; I do religious and spiritual counseling too.

“I didn’t know at first who she was but she had an enormously powerful persona and her speech seemed to me to be deliberately hypnotic. An unsuspecting person would have come under her influence quite quickly, I thought. She asked me trivial questions about the area and my congregation but I became alarmed when she began asking about my family.

“Then she began talking about the ‘old days,’ when a person of ‘real power’ was Haiti’s ruler and the priests and priestesses had real political power because the people of Haiti worshiped them like the ancestor spirits and the lwa—they’re spirits who correspond to the Christian saints. If there’s anything in the Vodou tradition that’s sacrilegious, it’s the idea that the priests and priestesses should be worshiped.

“She told me that she could tell that I had real power and should join with her so that I could learn—you’d call it black magic—and learn to commune with the baka, the malevolent spirits. I told her that I could never do evil, that my guardian lwa, Papa Legba, would not allow it either. She told me that wasn’t any difficulty and that she could exorcize any lwa easily.

“When I further refused, she threatened my life and family. She said that she’d give me three weeks to decide; if I didn’t join her, she would make me wish I hadn’t rejected her offer.”

Jonas looked at the notes he had prepared.

“When Cassandra told me about the threat, I checked Vanessa out. She has a very secure compound in a city just south of Port-au-Prince in an area where the wealthiest Haitians live. I thought possibly with my Marine training I could ... well ... since I left the Marines, I’ve become somewhat of a pacifist and deliberately harming someone would be repugnant. But if there was a direct physical threat ... whatever.

“That recording. We were very lucky getting it. The son of the guy I worked for was doing a repair for this rich person on an estate just south of Port-au-Prince, not far from Vanessa’s compound. He was on the floor of a van inside a garage, doing some electrical repairs under the dash, when someone pulled into the garage. Vanessa was in that car. They began to talk and when the mechanic heard Cassandra’s name, he started the recording. He had his phone out and was using its flashlight. You heard what they all said. He said he got almost everything they said, up to when their car pulled out.

“My boss’s son packed up his stuff and hightailed it back to his home and my boss called me. We got the recording onto my phone. You heard the three voices on the recording and the fourth, which was too low to make out, but he didn’t say much. The son thinks that the people were, besides Vanessa, the estate owner, who’s a government minister, and two of Vanessa’s muscle.

“Using the info from the recording, we watched our daughter carefully, since they had cased us and knew our travel patterns. On the date they had planned to do the kidnapping, we watched, and sure enough, they had a van stationed at an isolated corner where she would pass. They were there the two following days as well. They also drove into our compound where we lived on those second two days and looked around. Then it was the weekend and our own compound was busy. The earthquake hit on that following Monday.

“Finally, when I was at the embassy getting the official paperwork to come to the States, the security officer told me that my wife and daughter were being searched for by some men who had their photos. That’s when I had the idea to fake their deaths. Later I heard from my boss there, that men had been seen in Aubry, our town, and asking about the funeral.”

“Listening to that and knowing the past history of Haitian violence to its expats, clearly you’re all in danger,” Wilkins told them.

“I think we need to set up a variant of a witness protection scheme here,” Johnson said.

“Agreed,” Wilkins replied. “Mr Masters, we’ll need help from the State Department.”

“We can do that,” Masters agreed.

Jonas and Cassandra looked from one person to the next. “Do what?” Jonas asked.

“We need to change your identities,” Wilkins said. “Name changes, record changes, whatever. Fortunately instead of three histories, we need to change just one: Jonas’. The others just need new records created.”