Journey of a Lifetime. Alan Whicker

       2 A TALK WITH SOMEONE WHO’S NOT TREMBLING

      I passed a couple of restless days in Miami—a place quite easy to dislike. I was bracing myself to fly somewhere even worse. Far worse. I had just completed a series of Whicker’s Worlds in South America. All the fun and excitement of filming in Argentina (brilliant), on to Peru (druggy), then up among the volcanoes outside Quito in Ecuador (enchanting) and finally coming to rest in downtown Miami for a couple of apprehensive days awaiting PanAm’s lifeline flight to the kidnap capital of the world: Haiti.

      Miami Beach was the place where, waking one morning in a vast white hotel totally surrounded by avarice, I took a taxi to the airport and asked for a ticket to anywhere. They thought I was mad—and probably by then I was, a little.

      Now—ice-cold sane—I was approaching a far more dangerous destination: Haiti. The first black republic was only some 700 miles away, but its reputation made trigger-happy Floridians seem cool and chummy. This poorest country in the Western hemisphere survives with 80 per cent of its population below the poverty line.

      I was on my reluctant way to examine Papa Doc’s republic—and Papa Doc, I had heard, was about to examine me. Not everyone walked away from those check-ups, our pilot told me cheerfully. In the world’s kidnap centre the dungeons were active, with Papa Doc as a frequent spectator.

      Our jet, not surprisingly, was almost empty. It was a good plane to miss. We flew across the fringe of the Sargasso Sea, which seemed a suitable setting for any adventure, landed at François Duvalier Airport in Port-au-Prince, and drew breath. So far, so still alive.

      This despairing nation was under the lash of a President for Life whose years of absolute power had brought terror to his people and ruin to his country. As I walked through the damp heat towards the decrepit arrivals building I saw, seared across the peeling white plaster of the wall that confronted me, a pockmarked line of bullet holes.

      This was a fairly emphatic take-it-or-leave-it statement. It didn’t say whether it was a gesture from the Tourist Division of the Chamber of Commerce, but it was surely more arresting than the traditional view of Port-au-Prince from the mountains. It was the only airport welcome Haiti offered its rare visitors, and it was right in character.

      Inside the building, a more friendly reception from the Pres-ident’s official greeter, Aubelin Jolicœur. This small, unctuous executive silenced the customs men who had scented rich pickings from us with a wave of his ivory-handled cane. I recognized him instantly: he had been drawn to perfection as Petit Pierre in Graham Greene’s frightening The Comedians.

      He may have been smiling, but the Haitians watching us in the arrivals hall were expressionless, which suggested he wasn’t all that funny. Tontons Macoutes no longer stripped or frisked arrivals, though I was uncomfortably aware that the airport had just experienced one of those dramatic bloodlettings which would have seemed improbable fiction from Graham Greene.

      The eldest of Dr Duvalier’s three daughters, his favourite Marie-Denise, had just married the 6′3″ Commander of his Palace Guard, Captain Max Dominique, who instantly became a Colonel. Then Papa Doc, acting upon different advice, decided his new son-in-law was involved in the plot against him for which he had just executed nineteen brother-officers.

      Having considered the pleas of his wife and daughter, then pregnant, he spared Col. Dominique, but sent him into exile and out of the way as ambassador to Spain. As they left for Madrid, the President and Mrs Duvalier came to the airport to bid a sorrowful farewell to Di-Di.

      For the traditional VIP goodbye picture the young couple stood at the aircraft door, waving to parents, friends and staff. As the door was closing upon the happy couple, there came a nod from Papa Doc. Their chauffeur and two bodyguards were shot down in front of them. Dr Duvalier was making his own farewell gesture of disapproval.

      He turned and left the bloodstained tarmac without another glance at the dying men. They lay in the sunlight under the eyes of the few horrified passengers en route from Miami to Puerto Rico. The aircraft then departed abruptly. An American airman who had seen it all told me, “That captain practically took off with the door open. They just wanted to get out of there.”

      There were no further executions on the evening of our arrival, but the scarred walls were adequate reminders. Outside we were distributed among waiting taxi drivers. They were all Tontons Macoutes, Papa Doc’s private army licensed to extort. Driving a cab was the best-paid job in the land at the time—the only one in which a Haitian could get his hands on foreign currency.

      My personal Tonton was silent and sinister, with a Gauguin face. He had the poetic name of Racine. He also had red eyes.

      There was no question of hotel selection; you went and lived where you were put. Racine drove us skilfully through the bumps and up the hillside to the white concrete Castelhaiti Hotel, overlooking the town. It was empty—but ready for us.

      That evening ours was the only occupied table as we tackled some stringy chicken. Groups of listless waiters stood around in the gloom, watching and whispering while a piano and violin wailed mournfully in the shadows. Outside the fearful town, hushed and tense, awaited its regular power cut.

      My