The eyes of the young intelligence agent betrayed that he was not as composed as he would have liked the Haitian locals to believe. The strong, synchopated beat of the drums captured his panicy breathing. He wasn't afraid of the magical powers that they believed in. He was afraid of the unknown direction that these maniacal ceremonies could take. He assumed that, as a white boy, he could easily take the place the sacrificial goat tethered to pole inside the hot and sweet smelling mystery house, the houomfort. Outside the stucco-on-mud shack, the brush covered hills were silent but for the far reaching deep souled rhythm coming from inside. It was dark outside, and he was a good twenty kilometers out on the peninsula, southwest of Port-au-Prince, the only modern city in Haiti. He did not understand that the substitution went the other way. That the doomed goat held the soul of the semi-conscious girl writhing on the floor.
It had been essential for Agent Alex Briener to become commonplace and accepted by these atavistic blacks. He was very sure that he had convinced them that he was the grandson of Warren Westbrook, the only known _blanc_ to have been a member of the outlawed _culte_des_morts, the most outrageous of the voodoo sects in Haiti. His only failure had been in his lack of acceptance by Papa Theodore, the fig faced old farm hand that kept the houmfort and its alter in order, cleaning the drinking glasses and wooden bowls, dusting the little framed image of the Virgin Mary, and polishing the iron crucifix. Papa Theodore's affection was of little importance to Briener. His interests lay more with Maman Marianne, the robust sorceress draped in white cotton robes with her head wound with a scarlat turban, and with the young, machette wielding bandits that supplied this wretched community with its only source of money for rum and ceremonial vestments. These believers in mumbo jumbo were going to prepare and distribute the death charm _ounga_ packets directed at the presidential palace guards. Briener would be sure that the charms had their intended effect; the VX nerve agent in the metal polish oil would see to that. The deaths would be the way agent Briener prefered them: bloodless and leaving no external trace. The sun would neutralized the powerful poison in just a few hours, but a single drop of it assorbed through the skin would bring on a sudden convulsive death. All the guards polished their rifles and helmets as they sat in the open court yard.
So far, in his two years with the agency, Briener had been able to cover up his revulsion at the sight of blood. He more than made up for it with his expertise with drugs and poisons, chemical warfare. He knew beforehand that the ceremony that he was watching was going to test his mental fortitude, hopefully strengthen him. He looked to the other dozen members of the audience, feigning a pleasant smile, but realized, too late, that he was the only person smiling despite the tremendous quantity of rum they had all consumed. Before he could recover, the smile had become a frozen toothy gimace. His face had become a rigid grinning mask. He stare forward and hoped that no one could see his rediculous expression in the dim light from flickering candles and smokey oil lamps.
The drums changed beat: three slow, deep beats followed by a quick roll and a pause. With each heavy beat, the writhing girl convulsed, thrusting her belly and pelvis, arching her back. On each roll, she quivered and shook like a snake about to strike. Her white cotton turban had completely undone, and hair had become filled and matted with the dirt from the floor. The only vocal addition was a scream every time the sacrificial goat bleated, totally unrelated to the beat of the drums.
Maman Marianne began with a rooster. Wrenching its head from its body, she spun around like a dervish, she sprayed the blood in a wide circle as the birds wings and heart beat for the last time. More than a few drops spattered onto Briener's face. Then she held the hot carcass by the wing tips and feet so that the remaining blood could drain into a rectangular wooden bowl. Briener's stomach made a few involutary convulsions as Maman Marianne dribbled blood in circles and triangles on the ground, then inscribed a circle and cross on the forehead of the prostrate girl and the goat.
Briener's breathing became shallow and quick as the girl raised herself to her hands and knees and crawled to the goat which stared wide-eyed and panting. Every move the goat made, the girl mimicked so realistically that it soon became impossible to tell if the girl was copying the goat, or the goat copying the girl. To Briener's darkening mind, it appeared that the goat and girl had actually changle places as the sorceress waved a heavy knife in circles above the two quadraped figures. An acolyte held the wooden bowl under the goat's throat. The girl let out a death rattle scream as the knife slid across the throat of the goat. The bowl filled with blood and darkness covered Briener's mind.
Ten years later, Agent Alex Briener was again given an assignment that involved Haiti. That earlier mission had been a success. Fifty-four guards had suddenly died from voodoo. The army had retaliated by hacking to pieces every person in the "responsible" village. None-the-less, the president had fled to Jamaica. No one remained alive that had witnessed his embarrasing reaction to a little goat's blood.
With the changes in the intelligence agency's methods, there was little likelyhood that Briener would ever have to be that close his target. There could always be situations that called for such extreme measures, but the situations were very rare, and the subjects were seldom missed except by counter agencies. Cunning had been replaced by technology. Spies had been replaced by computer programs. Political intrigue had been replaced by control of electronic media. If you could control CNN, the cable network news, you controlled the world.
Maperl is the nickname for a boat, Mother of Perl. The boat is gone (see R/V Llyr), the name remains. The site is no longer limited to Mother of Perl, now includes art from members of the Smith family, and project notes of all sorts, and family tidbits.