‘It’s a prisoner exchange in the jungle in the middle of the night,’ Tripp Warren replied, his voice low too. ‘How right is it supposed to smell?’

The two junior CIA field agents scanned the thick vegetation in front of them before turning back to the mouth of the cave behind them. Theoretically they were supposed to be guarding it, but with only one pistol and one torch between them they wouldn’t be able to do much if what was about to happen went sour.

Inside the cave were more CIA agents, with more torches and more guns, and a bruised and drugged Haitian man.

It was a heavy, sweltering night, and the only thing that stopped Bennett from feeling entirely bitter about being left out in the open, and being the one holding the torch and not the gun, was that it was a fraction of a degree cooler in the clearing.

The cave was just north of the town of Banica, and just on the right-hand side of the border that divided the island of Hispaniola between Haiti to the west and the Dominican Republic to the east. It was a sacred place, the Cerro de San Francisco, where Christians from all over the Caribbean pilgrimaged to stand under the water that dripped from its roof and smear their faces with the limestone dust from its walls. But this evening it was being used for purposes far less holy.

Bennett flashed light at a sudden movement in the trees, but dropped the beam when nothing emerged into the open. In fact, they hadn’t seen a single startled boar or curious bat since they’d arrived over an hour ago. Nature, it seemed, was giving the Cerro de San Francisco a wide berth this evening.

The two junior agents looked like inverts of each other. Bennett’s tanned skin and dark hair revealed her part Kiowa Native American heritage, while Warren’s ice blond hair and alabaster complexion betrayed his Northern European ancestry. The only feature they shared was piercing blue eyes. Bennett was also about a decade older than Warren, but her diminutive stature and short, pixie haircut went some way to obscuring the age difference.

‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ Bennett said.

Warren shrugged. ‘Sometimes the enemy of our enemy is our friend.’

‘But we’re friends with the Dominicans, and Papa Doc hates both of us.’

François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, the leader of Haiti, who had made himself President For Life two years ago, had never had a good relationship with the Dominican Republic or the United States, who he thought lavished an unfair amount of attention—and financial aid—on his next-door neighbour.

‘I meant Castro. We still owe Papa Doc for supporting the trade embargo,’ Warren said, adding ‘even if he is a nutjob tinpot’ under his breath.