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TWENTY-TWO

Saturday, 8.10am, Port-au-Prince, Haiti

These days he came down to check only once a week. The Secret Chamber now seemed to run itself, needing only the lightest supervision. These visits of his were less practical than sentimental: it gave him pleasure to see his little invention working so well.

He had designed things before of course. Down at the docks, he had come up with a new roll-on, roll-off method for unloading the boats that came in from Latin America and went on to the US. He had not planned it this way, but his new system was said to have revolutionized the country’s drugs trade. He had only been trying to improve the efficiency of import-export. But thanks to him, cocaine could come in from Colombia and be bound for Miami with the shortest possible turnaround. From there, and in a matter of hours, the parcels of white powder would spider out to America’s cities – Chicago, Detroit, New York. Haiti’s drugs bosses boasted that if ten lines of coke were snorted into the nostrils of a US citizen at any given moment, it was certain that at least one had passed through Port-au-Prince.

In his social circle, that gave Jean-Claude Paul prestige. Among the well-heeled dollar millionaires of Petionville, each in their armour-fenced, high-walled villas, no one fussed too much as to the ethical origins of one’s wealth. That you could drive a Mercedes and send your wife to Paris to replenish her wardrobe and re-tint her highlights was enough. When the Americans invaded in 1994 they called the mansion-dwellers of Petionville MREs – morally repugnant elites – and Jean-Claude was classed among them.

Maybe that was why his brain had come up with the Secret Chamber, as a way to make amends. He could not imagine where else the idea could have come from: it seemed to arrive in his head fully formed, nothing to do with him.

The chamber was, in fact, a single-storey building, painted white. It looked like a glorified hut, no more noticeable than a bus shelter. Crucially, there were entrances on all four sides which were open at all times.

The system was simple. At any moment, the rich could come in and leave money inside the chamber. And, also at any moment, the poor could come in and take what they needed.

The beauty of it was its anonymity. The doors operated on an automatic-locking system that ensured only one person could be inside the chamber at any one time. That way a giver and a receiver were guaranteed never to meet. The wealthy would not know who had benefited from their largesse; the deprived would not know who had helped them. Port-au-Prince’s well-off would not get the chance either to lord it over their beneficiaries or to judge them insufficiently needy. And the city’s impoverished would be spared the sense of indebtedness that can make charity so humiliating.

The four doors were the finishing touch. It meant that there could never arise, not even informally, a givers’ entrance or a receivers’ entrance; it was too random for that. And so, if you saw someone walking in or out, you had no idea what kind of errand they were on.

There was only one more thing Jean-Claude had to do to make it work. He had to exploit a Haitian national trait, one that applied as much to the SUV-drivers of Petionville as the searingly poor of Cité Soleil: superstition.

He spoke to the healers and voodoo priests whose writ ran among the MREs, slipping a few dollars to those with a knack for spreading the word. Before long the wealthiest folk in Port-au-Prince came to believe that they would be cursed if they did not visit the Secret Chamber and do the right thing.

So Jean-Claude smiled as he stood inside the chamber now, looking at a bowl filled with US dollars as well as local currency and even the odd item of jewellery. Those outside assumed he was another visitor; his own role in setting up the chamber had remained unknown to all but the handful of holy men whose PR skills he had enlisted.

He was picking up a discarded food wrapper from the floor when the lights flickered and went off. With all four doors closed, the room was now in complete darkness. Jean-Claude silently cursed the electric company.

But it did not stay dark for long. Someone struck a match, just behind him. The power failure must have short-circuited the automatic locks, allowing this man to gain access.

‘I’m sorry, sir. Only one at a time, that’s the rule.’

‘I know the rule, Monsieur Paul.’ The voice was unfamiliar; speaking French not Creole.

‘Well, perhaps I’ll leave and then you can do what you need to do.’

‘For that I need you here.’

‘No, no. It’s all private and confidential, my friend. That’s why we call this the Secret Chamber. It’s secret.’

The match had burned out now, shrouding the chamber once more in perfect black.

‘Hello? Are you still here?’

There was no answer. Not a sound, in fact, until the gasp of Jean-Claude’s own breath as he felt two strong hands on his neck. He wanted to protest, to ask what he had done wrong, to explain that this man could take all the money he needed – there were no restrictions, no maximum. But the air would not come. He was rasping, a sandy, dry exhalation that barely sounded human. His leg was trembling, his hand clinging onto the forearm of this man who was strangling him.

But it was no good; darkness came upon darkness. He slumped to the floor. The stranger lit a new match, crouched down and closed the dead man’s eyes. He murmured a short prayer, then straightened himself up and shook the dust off his clothes. He headed for the door he had used to come in, taking care to reconnect the circuit he had broken a few minutes earlier. And then he stepped out into the night, anonymous and unseen, just as Jean-Claude Paul had intended.