"Ivory Pearl" by Jean-Patrick Manchette
Above: "Ivory Peral - Jean-Patrick Manchette - 183 Pages.
By 1956, Ivy has seen every conflict of the post war world up to that point: Vietnam to East Berlin.
I completed reading this book today.
Out of the wreckage of WWII comes Ivory Pearl, a girl so-named by some British soldiers who made her their mascot. She was an orphaned survivor of the war who was fluent in French, English, smoking and drinking.
In Berlin she meets Samuel Farakhan, a rich "in the closet" British intelligence officer. To provide cover for his lifestyle, Farakhan proposes to adopt her and help her become the photographer she wants to be. Farakhan sends Ivory to private school in Switzerland.
The deal is struck. "Ivy" becomes a world renowned photographer. She keeps touch with Farakhan by visiting him at his home in Normandy on New Years Day each year.
By 1956, Ivy has seen every conflict of the post war world up to that point: Vietnam to East Berlin.
But, now she's bored. On the advice of her mentor, Farakahn, Ivy heads to Cuba.
She should have known she wasn't going to be able to take a break. Castro's insurrection intersects with a ten year old kidnapping of a little girl who stands to inherit half the business of her billionaire uncle.
In the jungles of the Sierra Maestra, the girl, now a tween, is held in the captivity of a French mercenary, who ten years previously had saved the girl's life from the attempted murder of her by her uncle. Ivory, holed up in the jungle while she photographs birds and wildlife, encounters (as planned by Farakahn) the now near feral girl and her mountain man captor. Her uncle believes his niece to be dead.
The "meeting" had been set up by Farakahn, now working for French intelligence, as a scheme to return the girl (Alba) to her uncle, then in Havana... to set up another attempted murder... but, in fact, to kill the uncle "for cause" as he once again sets out to end the life of his niece.
Uh... why bother to bring Alba out of hiding? Because the uncle is selling arms to the FLN Algerian resistance which is hampering France's efforts to maintain hegemony in North Africa.
"Ivory Pearl, written in French, was Jean-Patick Manchette's last book. It was to be the first of a series of ambitious historical thrillers. The book was left unfinished when Manchette died in 1995. The final section of the book has been completed from the author's notes by Doug Headline, the author's son.
The book, translated into English by Gary Indiana, is fast paced. At only 183 pages is a quick read.
I was tipped off to the book by reading a NYRB piece on the author. I noted that the setting for much of the narrative was in Cuba's Sierra Maestre mountains, through which I had motorcycled in March of 2013. It was in the Sierra Maestre that Castro and his revolutionary compatriots hid in 1956 before gaining sufficient military strength to overcome the Batista government to take over Cuba.
Below are a couple of images of taken on my motorcycle ride through the Sierra Maestre. One of the images alludes to a story of intrigue that matches that of "Ivory Pearl."
Above: Sierra Maestre Range. Eastern Cuba. March 2013. Image looks northeast over the windscreen of my BMW F800 GS motorcycle.
Above: Mildred poses in front of cannibalized MIG 23BN along the route in the Sierra Maestre Mountains between Santa Clara and Trinidad. March 2013
Mildred's father had acquired this jet to strip it of its aluminum, melt and cast the aluminum into ingots or other shapes for resale.
We were invited into the atelier cum house to see how the operation worked.
The cottage industry aluminum smelting operation is an example, unusual to be sure, of what we are told is a growing tolerance to allow for entrepreneurial, private initiatives in the Cuban economy.
There is an interesting story behind the plane, now a hulk, in the above image.
On 20 March 1991, Cuban Major Orestes Lorenzo Perez defected in his MIG 23BN to Naval Air Station Key West, Florida while on a training mission of the Cuban air force. On 19 December 1992 he returned to Cuba in a small, twin-engined 1951 Cessna 310, landing on the coastal highway of El Marney beach in Varader, Matanzas Province, 93 miles from Havana at the agreed time. His wife Victoria, and their two sons, Reyneil and Alejandro were already waiting on his order delivered through two Maxican ladies as messengers a few days before. Perez picked up his family and managed a successful safe return to Marathon, Florida. The MIG-23 BN was returned by US authorities to the Cuban Air Force. Mildred's family claims that the cannibalized jet shown in the image is the jet used in Perez' defection. It was not clear how the family acquired the jet.