All Cry Chaos (21 page)

This Court does not sit to adjudicate so-called acts of genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, or War Crimes but rather cases that are politically useful to the signatories of the Rome Statute. I therefore reject the Court's jurisdiction. The Chief Prosecutor has never charged China for Tiananmen Square or the United States for Guantanamo Bay. Yet you devour freedom fighters like me, men elected by God to cleanse the world of filth! The United Nations sits idly by as Yugoslavia implodes, then you create The Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to salvage a guilty conscience. I spit on your empty gestures. I spit on charges spun from thin air. I spit on a verdict that was sealed before this trial ever began!

    Banović stood long enough to let his brief statement echo and die in the corners of the room. Poincaré eased himself into a crouch and reached beneath his jacket.
Shout his name, wait for him to see
you, then squeeze off three quick rounds. Grin. Make sure he sees you
grin
. Here was the plan, finalized even as he walked into court. In normal times, poised on the balls of his feet, to think for Poincaré was to act. But with his body on the verge of collapse, he lost his balance and tipped a knee against the chair before him. Banović's daughter turned and stared at him and at the bulge of his hand beneath his jacket. Rich, auburn curls. Dimples. Large brown eyes. Was she even six years old? The child smiled, her cheeks flush from a long walk
.
Could she understand the doom he had pronounced?

    
She's someone's Chloe
, he realized in a whip crack of clarity.
A
perfect, beautiful child
. His hand slipped from the gun as he groaned and slumped forward, jostling the mother, who turned and recognized him: "You!" she screamed at the author of her sorrows—the man who had read charges against her husband, in their home, in a language she did not understand, and who led him away in shackles. "You!"

Two hundred people flinched.

    He had seconds before a rush of guards ruined his firing angle. He crouched once more and watched Banović turn and lunge in a single predatory motion. But the guards tackled him midair, and the prisoner let loose a howl at once so vicious and heartsick that for an instant the very earth stalled on its axis. Poincaré
knew
that sound—a howling that called to him from across the vineyards when he touched Claire and found stone where once there was flesh. It was the howling that knotted his gut when Etienne cried:
Get out,
the roar that rose from his own breast at Chloe's death.

    Had he actually tracked a blameless woman and her children in order to kill them—for what? To restore Chloe? To restore his family, as if grief heaped upon grief could yield anything but grief. For an instant, Poincaré's own howling mingled with Banović's over a wasteland so far from human settlement there could be no return— that is, if he pulled the trigger. He saw Banović's son in his sailor suit; the girl, in her pinafore starched and ironed that morning; the woman, wearing a brooch, her one treasure, desperate at the prospect of raising a son and daughter fatherless, in poverty.

    The brooch—a little turtle, gold with bits of colored glass. There had been another turtle . . . Lucien running from the woods by the soccer field, crying "Look!" as Poincaré and his mates crowded their friend saying
What, show us!
A common box turtle was all, its shell a miracle of diamonds, yellow and orange, its scaly head and legs retracted for safety. "Watch!" cried Luc as he held the turtle aloft then slammed it against a rock, its diamonds shattering as the children held their breath. There was life yet, a wriggling and oozing. The boys drew closer and Luc said, "It's pink!"

    Poincaré's hand fell from the gun once more. He could not kill this way—not even Banović. Not if he wanted to live in the world of men. He dropped to his knees as the defendant's wife set upon him with her fists and as Banović himself screamed and kicked at the guards who carried him from the courtroom. "Irina! Casimir! Nora! I love you!" Other guards detained the wife and children. But Poincaré, wearing his credentials on a lanyard, was left alone.
The
end,
he thought,
the absolute end. H
e rested his forehead against the seat before him, whatever strength he had summoned for this work spent. His family was gone, revenge useless. Through it all, the gun never left its holster.

    He heard footsteps and felt a hand at his shoulder.

    "Henri."

    He opened his eyes and saw a pair of expensive Italian loafers.

    "What just happened?"

    "Go away."

    "The moment I heard about Chloe, I rushed to Paris. When I couldn't find you, I tried Etienne's ward. I called Fonroque. And then I gambled you were here. The man deserves to die, Henri, but his people didn't kill your granddaughter. Look at me." Poincaré did not lift his head, not even as Paolo thrust a photograph before him. "The hospital's surveillance system caught everything. We have an image—a woman impersonating a doctor. We've got her entering the unit, pouring an accelerant into the trashcan, and then striking a match before walking down the corridor towards Chloe's room. We haven't put a name to the face yet, but I'm certain she's not one of Banović's agents. She's Mesoamerican—about as far from ex-Stasi as you can get. Henri, look at me!"

    Slowly, Poincaré lifted his head and saw a hand come into view. It held a photograph. "What," he said, his eyes rolling in the direction of Ludovici.

    "Christ! You need a doctor!"

    "What surveillance? A photo?"

    "We're leaving—now." When Ludovici reached under Poincaré's arm to hoist him up, he bumped the shoulder holster—and jerked Poincaré to his feet. "You brought a gun—
here
? You were going to shoot him in open court? My God, Henri—who's going to save you from yourself?"

    Poincaré tore the photo from Ludovici's hand, enraged that he had no reading glasses. The image would not focus, and he extended his arm far enough to see someone in a white hospital jacket standing along a familiar corridor. A woman. Squinting, he thought she looked familiar: medium height, honey-nut skin, dark hair braided in a thick cord. He wiped his eyes on a sleeve and looked more closely at her neck, at a port-wine stain. It was Dana Chambi.

   "
C
laire? . . . Dearest, can you hear me?"

     Silence.

    "Claire, I'm leaving on a trip. Business. I'll be home soon." He imagined he could hear her breathing across the phone lines. That would have to do for now.

    "Alright, then. I'll call. I'll call every day."

    And with that Poincaré emerged, as if from a crypt, to find his granddaughter's killer. For ten weeks he had read no newspapers, watched no television, and listened only occasionally to the radio in a futile search for music that might calm his nerves. His shuttling between Fonroque and Paris took no account of a world that continued to turn, indifferent to the catastrophe of his life. It came as something of a surprise, then, that media of every sort had seized on August 15 as the day on which Christ was to redeem His faithful. Improbably, in two short months the Soldiers of Rapture had so focused attention on their prophesy of the Second Coming that whatever one thought of End Times theology it was now impossible to regard August 15 as just another day on the calendar. Somehow, the Soldiers had become modern-day Isaiahs sent to prepare the world for a New Day, and there was simply no avoiding their battle cry that "God is Near!" They shouted hosannas across twenty-four time zones, on highway billboards and city streets as if repeating August 15th loudly enough, and often enough, could itself bring about the hoped-for deliverance.

    By the time Poincaré stumbled back into the world, the Rapture had become news for being news, which guaranteed media coverage that would build to a crescendo on the appointed day at 11:38 AM. Rapture parties were planned for public venues in Tokyo, London, New York, and Amsterdam, and already one could find calendars and clocks counting down the days and seconds. In Poincaré's absence, the Rapture had gone viral—a pandemic transmitted via broadcast news, e-mail, and word of mouth. He could only stare and wonder, not the least reason being that the assassinations Laurent was investigating had intensified, following the model of the murdered social worker in Barcelona: a bullet to the back of the head, a passage of Scripture pinned to the clothing, and the clear message that doers of good works were no longer welcome because their virtue delayed the Tribulation and, therefore, the Second Coming. As if this logic weren't strained enough, Christian-inspired suicide bombers, following the example set in Milan, had continued detonating themselves for Christ in hopes of actually hastening the Rapture. Since Redemption would come only amidst great troubles, they reasoned, more troubles would lead to Redemption sooner.

    Poincaré blinked hard at all this, as if he had walked into a collective hallucination. Facts that were essentially the case two months earlier—the same civil strife, the same global warming, the same famine and disease—were now called definitive signs of the End Times. Millions believed the Rapture was near because millions of others believed. Millions more, agnostic on the question of Christ's return, still wondered if they should be concerned for the disposition of their souls. And most everyone else had grown wary of people wearing white robes in public and possibly concealing bombs. Serge Laurent would know more, Poincaré decided. Laurent had been investigating this madness and would have something useful to say.

    "I'll be frank," said Monforte. "I don't want you going anywhere before you spend another few weeks recuperating. You look like hell."

    "And a very good morning to you, Albert," said Poincaré.

    "Not really. The directorate has advised me to retire. . . . Forty years at Interpol is enough, they said. And thirty should be for you, Henri. Let this Fenster business go. Claire and the children need you."

    On this point Poincaré was very clear. "In fact, they don't. Not at the moment."

    "I can't believe that."

    "Suit yourself. I leave this afternoon." He handed Monforte an itinerary.

    "I won't stand in your way—although the next director might unless you wrap this up quickly. There's talk of moving old timber out the door. Take my advice and quit on your terms."

    Poincaré said nothing.

    "Alright, then . . . for the moment. You'll be searching for rocket fuel?"

    "What else? That's what this case is all about."

    "NASA, then—begin with the Jet Propulsion Lab. While you were in Fonroque these several weeks, I started a file of reports directed to you from the JPL and Lieutenant De Vries—assuming someone else would take over the case." Monforte pulled a folder from a stack on his desk. "It appears you're looking for someone who's got a background in chemistry, who can grow specialized crystals called HMX that were used to doctor the ammonium perchlorate, and who works with propellants. We're talking a few thousand people in the world who meet the criteria—a relatively small set. But your job's made easier because the precision placement of the explosive charge suggests someone with a background in mining. Think about it. The pictures of that hotel in Amsterdam show a room more or less sliced whole out of the top floor. This takes skill. So you can narrow your set of about three thousand down to a few hundred. Of that subset, you want to know who was away from their lab bench in mid-April—from NASA, the European Space Agency, Russia, and China. And of
that
sub-subset, who traveled to the European Union? There can't be more than eight people on the planet who meet all the criteria. You'll find names here, and some of the candidates are from JPL. One who looked promising on paper died three weeks before the Amsterdam bombing."

    Poincaré took the file and turned to leave, but Monforte was not finished.

    "I've got nothing new on Rainier."

    "I understand," said Poincaré.

    The director stared across a parking lot to a stand of trees on the edge of the Interpol campus. "You know, I could actually be fine with leaving—but not like this. The executive committee demanded explanations for how Banović's men got into the country and attacked your family—and later got to Chloe. I couldn't tell them because I don't understand myself. Banović's men were dead. Ludovici thinks this last attack came from a different direction."

    Monforte looked like a man resigned to being hanged in the morning. The tremor in his hand had worsened. "All I could tell them was that we're investigating our system breakdowns and will report back. The directors don't want reports, and I don't blame them."