CHAPTER 9
Peru's Ministry of Tourism would have done well to paste Eduardo Quito's likeness on brochures meant to separate rich North Americans from their hard-earned vacation dollars. He walked into the temporary Interpol headquarters every bit a son of the Andes, wearing the clothes of an alpaca herder—his job and the job of his father and grandfather before him. With a calico shirt, bandanna knotted at his throat, waxed-cotton jacket, and fedora over silver-flecked hair, Quito looked more the herdsman than the scholar or political gadfly. Improbably, he was all three. With equal ease he could argue before the International Monetary Fund, lead street protests, and navigate remote mountain trails. One week might find him in Paris speaking, in fluent French, at a forum on indigenous rights; the next, in Berlin shouting down G-8 ministers in flawless German. And then a flight home to the Andes like a condor returning to its nest. He was compact and powerfully built, with piercing black eyes.
Poincaré had turned the matter over in his mind but was still not sure how to engage Quito, who would have remained a herder save for an alert priest who recognized a talent for numbers in the child. This led to a series of schools and, eventually, an endowed chair at the University of Lima where he specialized in the economics of colonialism. At least one European country had put Quito on a terrorist watch list; several others, calling him a provocateur, routinely denied him entry. And then there were the whispered conversations among academics that he was Nobel material. The problem, detractors claimed, was that he allowed a stunningly original mind to be corrupted by politics. Quito's supporters celebrated that same influence. At the height of his powers, he abruptly quit his academic post, returned to Pisac, the village of his birth, and launched what he called the Indigenous Liberation Front, or ILF. Using the Internet, a tool appropriated from the Enemy, Quito reached 300 million indigenous peoples worldwide and became the voice of a surging political and human rights movement. Poincaré had read the profiles in Le Monde, the Guardian and the New York Times; he had studied Quito's now classic papers on the systematic economic destruction of native peoples; and he fully doubted anyone could be so prolific or instantly charismatic—until, that is, the man stepped into the room. Without removing his pack, Quito walked directly to his host as if arriving for a long-sought audience.
"Your reputation precedes you, Inspector."
Bright, probing eyes met Poincaré's, followed by a firm handshake and a kind of preemptive friendliness that put one simultaneously on alert and at ease. The man had an undeniable force.
"My reputation?" Poincaré responded.
"No one who knows Interpol can afford not to know you."
The spell broke the instant Quito closed two hands over Poincaré's outstretched hand, a touch that recalled bricks thrown in Seattle and cars burned in Rotterdam. At the WTO riots in Paris, a policeman lost sight in one eye—all protests directed by the man who greeted Poincaré so warmly now. Yet Quito had never once been named in a complaint. He was that clever.
"Yours is the reputation," said Poincaré.
"I'll take that as a compliment," he said laughing. He dropped his pack and followed his host to the conference table. "Nearly every major security service in the world has found a reason to interview me, save Interpol. This meeting was inevitable, Inspector, so I prepared—just as you have. When this young man"—Quito pointed to Ludovici— "asked me to stop by to talk, I agreed. I also made additional inquiries and came across the name Poincaré time and again."
"The Internet?" asked Poincaré.
"Obviously. And other sources. Three decades at Interpol. Twelve different commendations for heroism. Invitations to London, Washington, and Moscow to speak on transborder crime. Success where others failed. And more than once, I understand, you rejected promotions so that you might remain in the field. Bravo!"
"I don't read my press clippings, Professor."
"And modest! The quality that fascinates me most is that you're said to be like these English dogs that bite and never let go. I once read of a dog that needed to be hit in the head with an iron bar to release its grip. The animal died not letting go."
Poincaré watched his guest slap at the table, enjoying himself as if among friends at one of Amsterdam's brown cafes. "We must have a common ancestor because my wife calls me the most stubborn donkey alive. In our village this is known as tenaz." He laughed again but stopped short upon noticing the photographs Laurent had cleared to one end of the table. "Lovely. What are these?"
"Just some pictures, Professor."
"No, I don't think just some pictures. Fractals, yes?"
At that instant Poincaré had been studying Quito's hands— which, in fact, confirmed that he earned his living, at least part of the year, working outdoors. "We've been puzzling over these," he said. "Could you shed some light?"
"I'm no expert, Inspector." But it was a false show of modesty because Quito was soon positioning the images for a closer inspection. After a few minutes, his interest clearly piqued, he looked up: "With fractals, you can't determine scale—that is, the size of an object. Take this one." He was holding before them the photograph of Christchurch, New Zealand. "If I photocopied the edge of this peninsula as you see it from space, then took a close-up photograph of, say, one meter of the same coast—and if I resized both photos, you would not be able to tell the 300 kilometer image from the one-meter strip. With a fractal, the geometries of part and whole are the same. The whole is visible, as it were, in the part. Do you eat cauliflower, Inspector?"
"Excuse me?"
"Cauliflower—also broccoli. Do you eat them?"
"Yes."
"Both fractal. A single floret of either looks like the whole. Do you see?"
Poincaré did. "The world in a grain of sand," he said. "You knew Fenster."
Quito nodded. "I'm an economist, and he was a mathematician. Sometimes odd ducks will dance."
Nearly a minute passed, not a word spoken. When it occurred to Poincaré that his guest thought he was done with explanations, he opened his hands as if shortchanged at the market. "That's all? I'm conducting a murder investigation. I need something more than ducks."
"What can I say?" answered Quito. "It wasn't a happy period. James and I collaborated for a time and very nearly published a paper, but then—" He paused to align the photographs. "I'll try to explain. Mathematicians write equations; they play with numbers and symbols that do not, necessarily, attach themselves to things in the world. They love the purity of that. Economists model real events, and reality—it's such a mess."
Poincaré was thinking of the blue tarp flapping over the remains of James Fenster—of that and the jewel box of shattered glass around the Ambassade. "I've noticed. What were you working on?"
In all seriousness, Quito folded his hands and said: "A mathematical model of love."
Laurent erupted as if someone had set a torch under him. His laughter set off a spasm of coughing that turned his face bright red.
"Go on," said Quito. "Have your fun. We were developing a concept—a notion that mathematics could model the most unruly, unpredictable of human behaviors. If we could model love, we could model anything. We tried representing lovers' affections symbolically, and then we set out to graph outputs that might predict behavior in famous literary relationships. Our first paper was to be an analysis of Romeo and Juliet."
"Finally," Laurent gasped, struggling to catch his breath, "I know why my marriages failed. I never understood nonlinear equations!" He began coughing again and excused himself to find a cup of water.
This time Quito joined the laughter at his own expense. "I've endured worse. So few people take this seriously, I'm afraid. But there is a mathematics of the heart. My parents understood it, yet they were illiterate."
"And what's that?" said Ludovici, who until this point was content to watch.
"Among those who love, one plus one rarely equals two."
"Amen to that!"
"For better and worse, young man."
&nb
sp; Quito turned to Poincaré: "The premise is not as absurd as it sounds—although I admit it was calculated to get people's attention. James and I were attempting to make a larger point. How to illustrate it?" Poincaré followed his glance out a window, to the square. A truck horn blared, and Quito snapped to attention. "Fine," he said. "A typical example. Traffic. Imagine traffic in a city of your choice during the summer on a Friday afternoon at five o'clock. Describe what you see, Inspector."
"Gridlock," answered Poincaré. "A parking lot."
"Exactly. It's a human system: humans at the wheel, humans in cars that other humans built, humans on highways that other humans laid. Will you grant me this—the cars and the gridlock are a purely human system?"
Poincaré nodded.
"Good. Traffic engineers use mathematics—principles of fluid dynamics—to study traffic flow. Tell me why, Inspector, an equation that describes the speed, volume, and flow of a river should also describe the flow of traffic during rush hour? One is a human system, one is natural. In one we have minds at work—humans controlling every vehicle—in the other only laws of gravity. And yet humans behave enough like water for traffic engineers to use fluid dynamics in designing highways. Why should the two be related—at all? It makes no sense, but they are."
Poincaré could only shrug. "I've never considered these things."
"Well, James and I did. We set out to show that human behavior can be modeled mathematically, just as any complex, dynamic system in nature can be modeled—a weather system, for instance. We intended to push the thesis and suggest that the same rules that describe complex systems in nature can also describe complex human behavior."
"I doubt that," said Poincaré. "Maybe fluid dynamics describes traffic flow. What kind of mathematics describes love?"
Quito shifted in his seat. "We never got that far."
Ludovici snorted and, under his breath, said little wonder.
Quito's eyes flashed.
"He's offended you. Paolo, apologize."
"Don't patronize me, Inspector. The idea was sound. We worked for several months before James lost interest and the collaboration ended. I had no idea he was scheduled to deliver a paper at the WTO conference, but I see from his title that he didn't lose his interest in mathematical modeling. So perhaps I had an effect on him after all. I'd like to think so."
A mathematics of globalization. Poincaré did not think it likely. But then, from what he had gathered, Fenster was a special breed of brilliant. As was Quito. Who could guess what might come of their collaboration? "I imagine," he said, "that you came to Boston to study the behavior of markets, not love."
"Of course," said his guest. "James was an intuitive with equations. He could watch a fly buzzing around a room, write an equation to describe its movement, graph that equation—and the graph, rendered in three dimensions, would reproduce the fly's movements. He had an astonishing, first-order mind—quite evident in his papers—so I sought him out. This was three and a half years ago."
"A disappointment, I'm sure."
Poincaré reached for the photograph of the bacteria growing in a Petri dish. Speaking to it, not to the president of the Indigenous Liberation Front, he asked whether in a single part of the economy one could find the whole. "Like the floret of cauliflower," he suggested. "I bought a cup of coffee this morning. In that exchange, could you see the entire global economy, Professor?"
Quito quietly applauded. "That would be the holy grail. If you're asking whether or not the global economy can be described using fractal mathematics, I've never given it much thought."
Absurd! Poincaré did not believe it for an instant and could tell that Quito knew—which apparently made no difference. Calm, as composed and affable as the moment he entered the ballroom, he pointed to the photos and said: "It's clear from these and from his paper's title that James was set to argue the global economy is related, at the deepest level, to the geometry of nature. He was pushing our thesis. He must have made progress since our split."
Quito arranged the images into a neat pile. "I assume we're done, Inspector. I've told you everything I know. I'm sorry James died, though I'm glad we've met. I can't say I care much for your choice of venue, however. This place disturbs me. I really do need to leave."
Poincaré had no plans for Quito to leave just yet. But rather than push the point, he tried coaxing his guest into further conversation. He had learned long ago to keep his subjects talking because talking was better than not talking and sometimes talking, even idle talking, led to a fragment of a hunch that might take months to formulate and months more to prove. Quito was pointing to a chandelier. "Built in the early 1700s, I should think. The timing's about right. You've heard of the Dutch East India Company, I assume?"
"Traders," said De Vries. Poincaré could see her fascination with the man, even with his transparent effort to end the interview. She played along. "The architects of Amsterdam's Golden Age," she said. "Dutch children can't finish grade school without learning all about it."
"Architects would be one description," said Quito. "There are others. Have you any idea of what made all this possible?" He opened his arms to the room. "This ridiculous place and all the Rembrandts and Vermeers and those paintings of plump Dutch burghers in the Rijksmuseum? Dutch wealth and Dutch tolerance were built on the backs of slaves in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, from Curaçao to Madagascar. This ballroom exists because of a carefully planned program of state-sponsored rape. The Spanish, the Dutch, British, French, Belgians, Germans, and Americans: one after the other, they unbuckled their pants and robbed the Indigene of everything sweet and worthy. You summon me here, Inspector, and I see suffering. I hear whip cracks and screams. James saw numbers."
Poincaré had found his fragment, sooner than he expected. "And this is why your collaboration failed," he said.
Quito studied him, the gay mask gone: "The Indigene is done asking nicely. What is it that you people want? An advertisement in Angkor Wat for iPods? The times are too subtle for rape, but nothing else has changed in 500 years. Now you pay us two dollars a day to build your cell phones and televisions. I'm done here. This room disgusts me." He reached for his backpack.
"Please, another moment," said Poincaré. "Did you and Dr. Fenster discuss your political views?"
"Why? Our paper was to be an analysis of Romeo and Juliet."
"You mean to say that your philosophical differences never—"
Quito looked to the corners of the room; when he turned back to Poincaré, he had mastered his emotions: "The Indigene will be equal partners now, with our own cultures, or we will make your lives miserable until we are. Don't misunderstand," he added pleasantly. "I hold dear the Western love of learning, your willingness to question, to challenge received wisdom. But I really have taken too much of your time. James and I worked together, then we didn't. Our schedules overlapped in Amsterdam, true. He was killed. But unless the rules of logic and evidence have totally abandoned me, you cannot connect one to the other. It's been a pleasure just the same." Quito stood to leave.
The phone rang. De Vries crossed the room to answer and then motioned Poincaré to his desk. He excused himself to take the call and asked Quito to stay one last moment. There were no private offices in the ballroom, just four desks and a conference table spread across the huge expanse. The only privacy one could hope for was a turned back.
"Please hold for the director of the Scheveningen prison," a voice said. Odd, Poincaré thought. He believed he had seen the last of that place with his visit to Banović. Possibly he might be called back to The Hague for the trial, but that would not be for months.
"Inspector Poincaré?"
By reputation, Roman Skiversky was a humorless administrator for whom a good day meant the prison cages remained locked and no inmate enjoyed himself too thoroughly.
"I'll be direct," Skiversky said. "Intelligence we cannot acknowledge suggests that prisoner Stipo Banović, whom you visited last Thursday morning and placed in our
custody this past January, has put the lives of your family at risk. It's a serious matter, Inspector. Our people just translated a conversation surreptitiously recorded between the prisoner and his so-called attorney, and Banović has ordered the . . . elimination of your wife, your son, and his wife and children." A pause. "This is an unusual development, to be sure. Banović said that you were not to be harmed."
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