All Cry Chaos

by Leonard Rosen

  A sudden heat rose through Poincaré's chest. His breath caught in his throat, his grip on the phone tightening. "How do you know this? He's locked in the most secure prison in the world. What harm can Banović do?"

  "Several of his lieutenants remain at large, as you know. His death squad was disbanded, but their money was never found. With those men and those millions, Banović can reach anyone he pleases—even from prison. Understand that our facility cannot acknowledge tape recording a privileged conversation between a client and his attorney, even if that meeting turns out to be a ruse. That would only confirm our violation of international agreements. But given the extreme circumstance, I am alerting you—off the record. Ask your questions, Sir. This is the last I can speak of the matter."

  "Banović would go after my family?" Poincaré yelled, forgetting where he was. He spun, dazed, and saw Ludovici, De Vries, and Laurent staring, their faces slack. Quito studied the photographs.

  "Who knows what this man will do?" answered the director. "His contact is Aleksandr Borislav. From what we can gather, he flew to The Hague for this one visit, arriving three nights ago, and returned to Bosnia just after the interview with Banović. Borislav's so-called law offices were located in Mostar. We have since discovered that this address is a cafeteria. We surmise that Borislav knew Banović from the war. My own view is that since we photographed and fingerprinted him, as we do everyone who enters this facility, and since Banović knows as much, Borislav is not himself the contractor but rather the agent who will procure contractors. I suggest that you begin with him. We will fax you his photograph, his prints, and a transcript of the conversation. You know where to find Banović and can have access to him at any time—quietly, of course. As for Borislav, we can be sure this is not his real name. He left The Netherlands on a flight to Bosnia; beyond that, we don't know where he is. I'll leave it to you to bring this information to Interpol. They will shield you."

  Poincaré stared into the dead space below the ballroom's chandeliers. All his life he had labored to keep the brutality of his work from Claire and Etienne. And now a threat not of his making, that he could not control, had intruded. What had Banović to lose? Adding a few more murders to scores already committed, heaping new agonies on old, would mean little at his sentencing. The most severe punishment the International Court could pronounce was life in prison, and Banović was already assured that. As long as his life was forfeit anyway, Banović must have reasoned, why not have his fun?

  "This interview is over," said Poincaré.

  Quito looked up from the photographs. "Some unpleasantness? I couldn't help but overhear, Inspector. Only the worst sort of man would threaten innocents."

  "Forget what you heard."

  "Consider it forgotten. But let me say that Indigenes have endured centuries of brutality. Our great mistake was not meeting force with force. How else could Pizarro and 180 soldiers have conquered an empire of millions?" Quito shouldered his backpack. "Protect your innocents, Inspector. Meet this threat with force. It's all the barbarian understands."

  Poincaré walked to the door and opened it. The contract would take weeks, possibly months, to put in place. He had time, but not much time. He reached to meet Quito's outstretched hand and heard a voice that sounded like his own say, "Thank you for your visit."

  Quito took a long, last survey of the room and of Poincaré. "Meet force with force," he said. "Brutality only understands itself."

  CHAPTER 10

  Car horns breaking pitch, an onrush of lights. Pounding Afropop and Poincaré's heart revving to speeds fearful to contemplate. Not dangerous he told himself. Not dangerous. But the beast clawing to burst free of his chest would not listen. The dream had come fast and hard. He could only have been asleep in the taxi for seconds; but that brief span returned him in vomitous detail to the killing fields of Bosnia. His eyes rolled to resist the vision. He moaned. His heart protested with such violence that he bit his lip to keep from passing out.

  He was sitting in the rear of a UN truck, with a driver and guard. In the lead truck, two more peacekeepers well-armed and guided by maps and GPS systems negotiated a firebreak through deep forests south of Banja Luka. Rain earlier that week had muddied the trail. Wheels spun, mud flew. The truck bounced and slid sideways, lurched and stalled. Pine trees to either side of the firebreak stood thick enough on a cloudless day to reduce the sunlight to dusky shadows on the forest floor. The rear window of the lead vehicle bobbed before them, festooned with clots of mud that obscured the blue UN logo.

  At any point on their journey, rogue militias could have attacked. Though the war was over, disaffected young men continued to prowl the area and, based on alliances that shifted daily, decided for themselves whom to kill or kidnap and hold for ransom, including representatives of the UN. One entered these forests reliant on the goodwill of known murderers. Five hours into the mountains, the lead vehicle stopped. Three observers—Nigerian, Japanese, and Canadian—wearing identical fatigues and berets stepped from their trucks and consulted a topographical map. As Poincaré and his driver exited their vehicle, the Nigerian pointed into the forest. "Less than a kilometer," he said. "Due east. Banović marched them through here."

  Under intense questioning and backroom methods no one cared to discuss, a captured lieutenant from Banović's death squad described how, the previous October, with the ground frozen hard but the snows still weeks away, they had rounded up the men and boys of a village to the south, tied them one to the next like slaves meant for market, and piled them into open air trucks. Some had died of exposure from the trip. At this spot, according to UN intelligence, the dead were cut from the line and their bodies dumped several meters into the forest. The Canadian peacekeeper consulted a map and walked twenty or so paces off the firebreak. "Here we are," he called, his voice as alien in that wilderness as the ticking truck engines and the squawk of military radios. "I count the remains of four bodies. Bring bags."

  A week of mild weather had broken the back of a hard winter, and the air smelled sweet. Poincaré approached the skeletal remains. Exposure and gnawing animals had stripped the bodies, leaving a few tendons and wisps of hair. No one spoke. Tarps were laid in an effort at posthumous dignity, as the officers marked positions on their maps. One of the peacekeepers consulted a compass and pointed: "This way."

  They walked single file, Poincaré last in line. Aside from the sound of boots sucking in ankle-deep mud and the men's labored breathing, there was nothing to be heard in the false twilight of the forest floor. Where were the birds, Poincaré wondered. High above, the wind tousled the treetops. He stared at his boots to distract himself from the effort, one muddy step at a time, with no thought but a dark anticipation of what lay ahead.

  Nothing could have prepared Poincaré. Breathing hard, eyes focused on his boots, he bumped the man in front of him, who had stopped abruptly. Before them opened a ravine, at the bottom of which lay an open grave with too many bones to count. Old bones and young ones, some poking through a few remaining patches of snow like tree limbs broken in a storm. The forensic anthropologist who would later map the scene explained how the positioning of bodies suggested that the men had tried shielding the boys from the gunfire. DNA analysis confirmed what the villagers had said: every victim was male. Their crime? Nothing but a potential to threaten Serbian purity by fathering a new generation. Every man and boy, Muslim.

  At Poincaré's feet, shell casings from automatic weapons glittered like precious metal on a blanket of pine needles. Nearby, a series of rocks formed a ledge, a table of sorts, where Banović's commandoes had left the remains of their lunch: sardine tins, trash, and balled up aluminum foil that suggested the sandwiches had been prepared elsewhere, with forethought. Poincaré dropped to his knees. He closed his eyes against a screaming that rose from the ravine in a language the killers did not understand. Husbands called for wives, boys for mothers, old men to heaven, as all went dark in a hail of gunfire, smoke, and steaming blood. Poincaré rocked for
ward, his forehead touching the cool earth. He had seen the worst of man's depravity, but never this. He retched, moaning God, dear God, God, God, not this, tell me it isn't so. But it was so, and he retched until his stomach emptied and the bile rose in his throat.

  The peacekeepers turned away, leaving Poincaré to his grief. After a few minutes, when his heart had hardened sufficiently to stand and resume his role as witness, he noted how the yellow, nylon ropes binding the victims waist-to-waist lay slack and snaking through the bone pile. Photographs were taken and signs posted in four languages: International Criminal Court. Evidence. No Trespassing. No Tampering. And so it was decided: Poincaré would search for Stipo Banović and would not rest until the man stood to answer for his crimes.

  He woke from this dream at the point he often did, as the Nigerian peacekeeper was pounding a sign into the earth above the ravine. This particular evening, each hammer blow struck at his chest until he lurched in the rear seat of the taxi thinking he might die from the building pressure. He woke, music pounding in his ears. Not in Bosnia then but here, on his way home from Saint Exupéry airport. Lyon. Home. He reached as calmly as shaking hands would allow into his suit pocket for his pill case. Two multi-coloreds, two when things got bad. A sip of water, always at hand. And then the waiting, who knew how long, for the beast in his chest to stop.

  The driver exited the highway and wended his way to the Presqu'île peninsula, where Poincaré directed him through a maze of streets and paid him to carry his bags five flights to the apartment. An hour later, as he lay in bed, he turned on his side and wished he could have held Claire and been permitted to say nothing. It would have saved him that night to know she was safe. Poincaré drifted away, words bobbing to a darkening surface: brutality only understands itself. Was it true, he wondered. He feared he was about to find out.

  THE NExT morning, the newspaper lay unread at the breakfast table. Poincaré sipped his coffee, staring across the Rhône as if he might find answers to his predicament in the broad, troubled sky. Just as he reached for the phone to dial the director of Interpol, having earlier faxed the transcript of Banović's interview and the photograph of Borislav, the phone rang. It was Albert Montforte himself.

  "Henri, this is an outrage! We will hunt down this Borislav."

  "Yes, Albert."

  "It can't be you, Henri. Someone else . . . Ludovici, I think. We just assigned him to a drug case in Spain, but I'll pull him this morning and he'll be in Bosnia tonight. If Banović has targeted your entire family, there would have to be more than one contractor involved, and they would need to strike simultaneously. I don't think that kind of coordination is possible without a substantial network in place. Our biggest advantage is that they do not know we know. Let Paolo find Borislav and extract information. Meanwhile, your grandchildren, your son, his wife, and Claire will get twenty-four- hour coverage, with a desk agent in Lyon to coordinate—indefinitely, until we have settled this business. This Banović strikes at the very heart of civil order. I'm putting every resource I have on the line."

  Poincaré said nothing.

  "Henri, you will give my assistant photographs and addresses of your family. We will handle the rest. Where is everyone now?"

  He told him. "Give me a few days, Albert. Nothing will happen that quickly. Borislav will need some time to recruit."

  "Acceptable. And what about you? When you're with Claire, you'll be protected. But not when you're on assignment. We should have someone shadow you, I think."

  Poincaré had not considered the possibility of working while under this cloud. But the timeline for any attempts on Claire and the others was indefinite. Would they forfeit their lives for a month? A year? Would they go into hiding or assume new identities? "Banović wants me to suffer," he said. "He has every intention of keeping me alive so that I can witness the destruction of my family. Maybe, after that, he'll dispatch someone to end my misery."

  "Assuming he can be believed."

  "Believe him," said Poincaré. "My death would take the fun out of his little divertissement." He could find no way to be hopeful, notwithstanding the director's forceful response. Opposed even by all of Interpol's resources, an experienced killer would simply wait for an inevitable opening. Unless he moved his family to a fortress or entered a program that gave them new lives elsewhere, they were not safe and could never be safe.

  NOTHING TO do but walk. He turned his collar up, hands thrust deep into his jacket, and roamed the streets of the old city. He was hours at it. He walked through the old Saint Just and Saint Irénée quarters, the former necropolis. He sought out the old places, the traboules, the narrow, covered passageways built so many centuries ago, which Claire adored. He walked through neighborhoods that layered Renaissance palaces upon medieval bulwarks upon Roman baths, past the fountains and shuttered markets, up the cobbled streets and familiar alleys until he stopped, finally, before the Cathedral of Saint Jean.

  When Etienne and his family visited from Paris, Poincaré would take the twins and Chloe on walks that would often as not end in the nave of Saint Jean, where they would sit as quietly as children could, contemplating the vast empty spaces and stained glass until the sun set. At six, Émile and Georges were young for religious sentiment; but like their grandfather they were drawn to the vaulted darkness of cathedrals. Chloe, by contrast, sat listening as if she heard spirits conversing in the shadows. The four would sit on simple caned chairs and, by unspoken agreement, not stir until the red of the apostles' robes winked and went dark—at which point the squeals of Papi, ice cream! would coax from Poincaré what no house of worship, on its own, ever had: a prayer.

  He walked inside. Though he had tried over the years, he never understood Claire's faith. He attended church occasionally because she asked and because he was comforted, for her, as she slipped a hand into his when the priest, in defiance of orders from Rome, reverted to the Latin mass. She had insisted Etienne be baptized, and he agreed though he thought the ceremony little more than voodoo. How surprised he was, then, at the emotions rising in him when the priest offered a blessing and sprinkled holy water on the forehead of his son. That some could consider water holy; that Etienne, who was holy in Poincaré's sight, would be blessed by another in the name of mysteries larger than them all; that this sacrament could take place in a cathedral built when oxcarts plied the muddy streets of Lyon; that his wife and her family, without embarrassment, could welcome Etienne into a fellowship two thousand years old; that he, Poincaré, a rank non-believer, could be moved so nearly to tears at the ceremony that he forced himself to turn away, sharply, in search of control—all this stood as evidence to a single fact: that Henri Poincaré was a man who longed to believe, a man who was moved by mystery and beauty but a man for whom belief was impossible. He was too much a scientist, ever the investigator in a world bound up in webs of cause and effect that had served him well in every regard save one: that at the hour between dusk and darkness, when the sky slid from deepest cobalt into night, he suspected something large, momentous even, was out there just beyond his reach, the shape of which flashed into his awareness now and again but vanished whenever he tried to grasp it.

  He stood and nodded to a priest, whose footsteps clicked in the great silence. He had time enough to return home and shower before catching a train south. There was time, yet, before he would face the ones he loved to explain the chaos that he, in an effort to do a difficult job well, had heaped upon their innocent heads. What would he say? He thought of the man in the old story who had wept himself dry and, in the process, filled a lake with his tears. A child of the district woke the next morning and approached the man: "Monsieur," she said, "this is a wonder. Why are you sad?"

  Seeing the goodness in her, he told the truth: "Because life is so sweet."

  The child tugged at his sleeve. "Monsieur, I don't understand."

  And the man, weeping anew, said: "Neither do I."

  CHAPTER 11

  He arrived in Fonroque after everyone h
ad gone to bed. Half-roused from sleep, Claire opened her arms. For several hours he lay awake and, finally giving up, checked on the children before stepping outside to lose himself in the mists that gathered over the vineyards before sunrise. Poincaré was in trouble, and he knew it. The transcripts from Banović's interview with his so-called attorney were both explicit and chilling. "Lay not a finger on Poincaré," Banović had instructed his lieutenant with the diction of an eighteenth-century divine. "But touch the others. Touch them all."

  The moon lingered above the horizon like a condemned man above a gallows door. Poincaré began to walk: one row down, the next row up. Down and back he walked, casting a long shadow in the spectral light until he ran out of rows at a stone wall that marked the ancient property line. An hour had passed and as the moon died, birds woke. Jacques, their mean-spirited but fertile rooster, shattered the morning with his cockle-do, and pheasants answered from a nearby copse. Down valley, undulating fields lay beneath a mist so thick that a stranger might have mistaken this corner of the Dordogne for lake country.