Mischa Berlinski - Peacekeeping

* * *

Judge Célestin told the UNPOLs that there was nothing he could do to prosecute the Sénateur, who, like all members of the Haitian legislature, enjoyed the privilege of parliamentary immunity. The phrase “parliamentary immunity” rankled Terry: no one should be above the law. Still, the judge’s dossier had potentially broad ramifications. You can’t ignore a thing like that, not even in Haiti. In the worst case, it might cause the American embassy to invoke the Oxblood rule, which limited the dispersal of American money to foreign governments known to be involved in the trafficking of narcotics. The U.S. secretary of state was required to certify to Congress that this was not the case — how could she do that with a report like the judge’s on record? No one wanted to see that happen here. This was the kind of case that causes the embassy to start suspending visas.

The judge told the UNPOLs that he was looking to arrest the mayor, who still remained at large, and convince him to testify under oath against the Sénateur. Such testimony, the judge felt, might compel the sénat to lift its esteemed member’s immunity and allow him to be prosecuted.

Terry knew that the judge had long ago issued a mandat for the arrest of the mayor, but he also knew that no one had succeeding in getting Fanfan in the bracelets. The local PNH had been ordered to arrest him but, themselves frightened of the mayor and his henchmen, failed to produce him. Twice pickup trucks of armed PNH had been sent from Jérémie to arrest the mayor, but both times he had been tipped off to the operation and slipped into the hills, coming back down when the coast was clear. Rumor held that Sénateur Maxim Bayard was the mayor’s informant.

At the conclusion of Johel’s presentation, Terry invited the judge for a beer. His own run-in with the Sénateur in the parking lot of the Bon Temps had made him sympathetic to Johel’s work, and he was curious about this earnest young Haitian judge. More than once in the course of his investigation, Johel told Terry, he had received telephone calls in the middle of the night, only to hear the sounds of a funeral Mass played on the other end of the line. Then there had been an incident just a week before, when Johel came home to find the cadaver of a dog on his front steps. The judge’s courage moved Terry and made him feel a little ashamed: here was somebody doing what Terry came to Haiti to do. He gave the judge his card and told him to call, day or night, if there was anything he could do to help.

* * *

There were varying accounts of just what happened the night that Johel called Terry, and far and away the most modest was the account offered by Terry himself. The judge’s house was up in Calasse, where Johel, a few years back, had bought a plot of land. Terry drove up in the darkness, high beams shining and siren wailing, and the way he told it, the sound of the siren alone was sufficient to drive off the two men on a motorcycle who had been firing their pistols at the judge’s concrete house. By the time Terry arrived, he said, all he could see was the bouncing crimson of their receding taillight.

When Kay heard this story, she thought it sounded heroic in and of itself. But the judge, when she finally met him a few months later, told her that there was not one motorcycle, but two, four armed men in total. And they weren’t firing pistols, he said, but assault rifles. When Terry’s headlights hit them, they turned from firing at the judge’s house to firing in the direction of his oncoming vehicle — and still he kept coming. Only the fact that they were lousy shots prevented them from shooting Terry or his vehicle. Then they fled on their bikes.

Whatever the precise details, it was a fact that when Terry finally came back from the judge’s house late that night, he was shaking with adrenaline. Kay poured him a healthy glass of rum and took one for herself. Then she gave him a long massage, concentrating first on his shoulders and aching back, then kissing all the places where the muscles were knotted and hard. “My hero,” she said. Other women might have been frightened by Terry’s story, but Kay was exhilarated. That night he made love to her with a ferocious intensity, as if the two of them were breaking rules.

The two stayed up most of the night talking. They talked about Haiti, about all the strange twists of fate and odd coincidences, the setbacks and victories that had brought them to this place at this moment: they were in a town neither of them, six months before, had ever heard of, in a country they had barely known existed.

“Maybe you were here just to answer that phone call tonight,” Kay said.

“Maybe,” Terry said. “But can I tell you something? And you won’t laugh or—”

Kay replied by kissing Terry. He could feel the softness of her breasts on his chest.

“I got here — and you know, I wasn’t good here. But ever since I got here, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m meant to be here. That this is it.”

They were silent for a moment. Somebody observing them might have seen nothing but a couple lying quietly and supposed that they were drifting off to sleep. But Terry was telling Kay, no words necessary, that something important had been missing and he thought he had found it. It was something even more important than happiness: it was something you would give your happiness to obtain. And Kay was telling Terry that this time, finally, they weren’t going to waste their opportunity, that she would be with him every step of the way, wherever this new road might lead.

Finally Kay said, speaking out loud, “Have you felt that way before?”

“Only once,” he said. “When I met you.”

Kay didn’t know if Terry was telling the truth, but even if he wasn’t, she liked that he loved her enough to lie.

* * *

The morning after the attack, Johel Célestin came to Mission HQ, where he asked Marguerite Laurent, the head of the UNPOL program, what the Mission could do to protect him. The judge made it clear that should the Mission be unable to guarantee his security, his inquiries regarding Les Irois would end.

The situation in Les Irois was now a matter of national interest. The radio engineer from Port-au-Prince who lost a leg had filed a complaint with Amnesty International, and soon thereafter Le Nouvelliste , the newspaper in Port-au-Prince, ran an article on the rogue mayor of Les Irois. At Port-au-Prince cocktail parties foreign donors mentioned the case to their Haitian counterparts; terms like “judicial impunity” were bandied about in high circles. The American ambassador mentioned the situation in Les Irois to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in their weekly meeting; the SRSG considered the situation an embarrassment and a hindrance to his own personal project of one day becoming a Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, and he directed his subordinates to take all necessary measures to bring the situation to an expeditious conclusion.

For all of these reasons, Marguerite Laurent knew that it was important to assist the judge in any way she could. Because the Mission had no executive power in Haiti, and because the Mission’s mandate extended only to monitoring and mentoring, she could not directly assign UNPOLs as bodyguards, but she soon spoke with the directeur départemental of the PNH, who reluctantly agreed to create a four-man VIP protection unit, with the Mission offering monitoring, mentoring, and support. Then she agreed to Johel’s other request, and she assigned Terry to lead the squad.

The organizational chart of a large bureaucratic entity is like some baroque habitation, a Sicilian palazzo, say, in which might exist for decades forgotten and unexamined rooms, suites of rooms, and even wings, a film of dust coating equally the ormolu dresser, a bloodstain on the marble floor, and the skeleton of a cat. Once a box exists on an org chart — in this case the box read “Close Personal Protection”—the box will exist forever: no one will question the box’s right to exist. With Terry White now assigned to the box, it was understood by all that it was his to occupy indefinitely. No one thought to question him overmuch on his activities, provided that he supply a weekly précis to be included in the situation report. As long as no one complained — and for a very long time no one did — he was allowed to continue occupying the box.