Three Tales From the World of Cotton Malone by Steve Berry

overwhelming poverty spoiled any further comparisons. Streets, where they existed, suffered potholes and puddles, their gutters trickling with stinking sewage. Hundreds of tin-roofed shacks crumbling in the heat dominated bare mountain slopes. Two hundred years ago the harbor would have been filled with merchant ships, here to load coffee and sugar from French planters. Now the bay loomed empty save for a few small boats, its waters ruined by pollution. A strong odor of decay filled the humid afternoon air. Yesterday,after what had happened in the Browns’ apartment and at the airport south of Atlanta, he’d questioned his sister-in-law about the envelope.
    â€œWhat were you doing in my apartment?” Ginger asked
.
    â€œI sent him,” Pam said. “I gave him my key and told him to look around.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œYour husband’s dead. Don’t you want to know what happened?”
    â€œOf course, but—”
    â€œDo you have any idea what this means?” he asked her, showing her the sheet from the envelope
.
    Ginger shook her head. “It came from Haiti a day or so after Scott died. He told me on the phone he sent me something. But he didn’t tell me what it means.”
    â€œAnd you never mentioned this envelope to me,” Pam said, with an irritation that he’d come to know
.
    â€œI didn’t think it was important. Come on, Scott drowned.”
    â€œBut he said someone was after him,” Pam said
.
    â€œI know. But I have to confess, I didn’t believe him.”
    Pam had continued to reprimand Ginger for not telling anyone about the letter, but all that brought was tears. For safety, she’d insisted Ginger stay at their house, though he doubted there’d be any more visits.
    Whatever was going to happen, would happen here, in Haiti.
    Before leaving Cap-Haïtien’s airport, he located the private hangars and learned that the plane from Atlanta was there. Inside, $50 U.S. bought him the name of the hotel where Zachariah Simon and Rócha were staying. Hotel Creole. The same one noted on the envelope Scott had sent. He could start with the police, or with the charter boat Scott had used, or with the two men who’d come to Atlanta. He decided that the charter boat seemed the best bet, so he bartered for a cab into the congested mess of central downtown.
    Haiti filled the west half of an island Columbus discovered in 1492, which he named Hispaniola. Populated first by native Tainos, then the Spanish, then by slaves brought to work the cane fields, the island fell under the control of the French in 1697. Forty thousand colonists lorded over 500,000 Africans. By 1790 it was one of the richest places on earth—France’s number one revenue source—thanks to immense profits from sugar, coffee, and indigo. It was also one of the most picturesque, with dense tropical forests, sparkling clear water, and towering mountains. Palm-shaded châteausfilled with Parisian furnishings were common. Its
Code Noir
established rigid social rules, making it one of the world’s most efficient slave colonies. Eventually, though, freed mulattos, offspring of colonists, and female slaves combined forces with thousands of other slaves and expelled the French, establishing the only nation ever born of a black revolt.
    Then the turmoil started.
    After two hundred years Haiti was now the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, its forests gone, waters ruined, poverty an accepted way of life. He’d read an article recently about how the cruise ships had stopped coming—simply because passengers complained at how depressing the place could be.
    The cabdriver dropped him at the waterfront, where crumbling docks jutted from a narrow mud beach. Tin-roofed wooden sheds stood at their base, a small crane at the end of one. A pale green sea, splashed with shades of blue, stretched to the horizon. Soft white waves lapped the shore. From the