Age of Voodoo by James Lovegrove Page A

SUN HAD burned off the mist. They sat at a parasol-shaded picnic table in the garden.
    “So you know nothing about me,” Albertine said to Lex.
    “Beyond your name, no.”
    “Black sheep of the family, huh, Wilberforce?”
    Wilberforce huffed. “Just because some of us have standards...”
    “What can you tell about me, Lex, just by appearances?”
    “Aside from the obvious, you mean?”
    “The obvious?”
    “You’re stunning.”
    She laughed. Wilberforce, by contrast, scowled.
    “Lex,” he growled.
    “Just a statement of fact,” Lex said. “You’ve spent some time in the States. College?”
    “Not bad,” said Albertine. “I did my master’s degree at Cornell. What else?”
    “You have a decent job. Accountant?”
    “IT consultant. I help run and maintain the government systems. The servers, the websites, the software for the power grid.”
    “High flyer.”
    “I do okay.”
    “But you’re careful with your money. You couldn’t have splashed out much on that Suzuki.”
    “What’s the point? Manzanilla roads are so atrocious, only a fool would have a decent car. Better an old banger, something that’s easy to fix when it goes wrong and doesn’t matter if it picks up a few extra scrapes and dents.”
    “You’re conscious about your appearance.”
    “Show me the islander woman who isn’t. Is that all you’ve got?”
    Lex shrugged. “I could go back to telling you how gorgeous you are, if you like.”
    “Feel free,” said Albertine.
    “Don’t,” said Wilberforce.
    “You’ll have to forgive my cousin, Lex. He still thinks I’m the little girl in bunches and spectacles who he had to keep the bullies away from in school.”
    “It’s very sweet, the way he looks out for you,” Lex said.
    Wilberforce gave him a glare that would have curdled milk.
    “It’s very sweet, the way you look out for him ,” said Albertine. “Especially last night. I warned Wilberforce not to get into bed with the Garfish. But oh, no, big fat smartypants, he knew better. He thought it would never come round to bite him on the backside. Thank God he has you for a friend. His own guardian angel.”
    Lex was only too happy to take the praise.
    “So you have the measure of me, yes?” Albertine said.
    Lex nodded. “I think so. Unless there’s something I’m missing.”
    “What if I told you I’m into vodou ?”
    “ Vodou ? Is that the same as...?”
    “...what you would call voodoo? Yes.”
    Lex frowned. “What, so it’s a hobby of yours? Something you study for fun?”
    “No. Oh, no. Lex, I’m a mambo. A vodou priestess. I worship the loa —the spirits. I talk to them and they talk to me. And they are telling me that you, Lex Dove, are in the greatest danger of your life.”

 

    SEVEN
    A MESSAGE FROM THE LOA
     
     
    “R UN THAT BY me again,” said Lex.
    “A little context first,” said Albertine. “My—and Wilberforce’s—family hail from Haiti originally. Our mothers came over here in nineteen seventy-seven with our grandparents, fleeing the reign of Jean-Claude Duvalier, Baby Doc as he was known.”
    “A lovely chap, by all accounts.”
    “Not a patch on his father, Papa Doc, but a monster all the same. Baby Doc inherited one of the most corrupt regimes on the planet at the time, his position reinforced by the private militia his father created, the Milice de Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale.”
    “Better known as the Tontons Macoutes .”
    “You know your Caribbean history.”
    That, and one of Lex’s fields of expertise was dictatorships. “The Tontons Macoutes were some of the biggest bastards ever to walk the earth. They made the Stasi and Pinochet’s DINA look like girl scouts. Twenty thousand Haitians dead at their hands, is that right?”
    “Some estimates put it as high as fifty thousand. Dissidents and opponents of the regime, slaughtered in their droves. People would disappear in the night and be found the next morning, or rather their mutilated corpses would.