All Cry Chaos

by Leonard Rosen

  The nurse listened with bland, professional concern. "I'm sorry," she said. She was not sorry and Poincaré told her so. She said, "The rules are clear." He produced his Interpol credentials to trump the rules. She said: "Forgive me, but there's been no crime committed here."

  "Get your superior," he snapped.

  Her exit gave Poincaré the opening he needed. He recognized Etienne's signature on the facsimile and knew that he was within his rights to bar him from Chloe's room. He quickly scrubbed, pulled on a pair of gloves and a gown, adjusted his goggles and then secured his mask and hat. On entering the room, he understood that he would have perhaps five minutes with his granddaughter before others could properly scrub and gown themselves. When they came for him, he would leave quietly.

  He stood just inside the door, watching her chest rise and fall with the whirr of the ventilator. Then he stepped to the bedside and drew the curtain so that they would be alone. The sheets were white and the curtains, which ran in a track from the ceiling, were white and Poincaré's hospital scrubs and mask were white for once, not hospital blue, such that he could imagine the two of them cushioned by clouds well above the world and its troubles. He heard a commotion and knew time was short.

  "Chloe," he said. "It's Papi."

  There was no part of the child he could touch without risking infection, so he held his arms above his granddaughter as if to cradle her. Which he did in a fashion—recalling the newborn Chloe in his arms, in a corner of her nursery as Claire and Etienne and Lucille laughed and wept and pointed because Poincaré could not face them, holding his first grandchild, without losing his composure. He had turned his back to them that day to be alone with her, as he was alone with her now with the curtain drawn in room 2C of the burn unit. He began to rock back and forth, and a melody rose of its own from some quiet, peaceful place. Poincaré sang low and sweetly, cradling the empty air with such tenderness that when the security staff finally pulled the curtains wide they stared for a moment and listened. "She understands," he said as they led him away. "She heard me."

  POINCARÉ SAT on a bench before the hospital, struggling to absorb the fact that he could no longer visit Etienne or the children, not even as they slept. The late June sun punished the people in the plaza. Heat rose in waves off the pavement. From his bench, Poincaré had a good view of the second floor windows but could not see Chloe's room because the isolation units were situated along an inside corridor. Still, he had a clear enough image of the ward and its layout to know the rough position of her bed. If need be, he would keep his vigil in the plaza and project himself to her side. Etienne could not prevent that.

  Poincaré had not slept in close to fifty hours. A bad case of nerves at the farm had kept him awake the night before his departure for Paris, and he had remained awake on the trip north and through the evening with Etienne and the children. Now, in the heat, he let himself doze with the knowledge there were some hours yet before his scheduled return to Fonroque. He closed his eyes and, whether five minutes had passed or twenty, he woke with a start to the sound of an alarm ringing as people streamed from the main entrance. When he looked for evidence of a fire, he was horrified to see smoke billowing from a second-floor window, very near Chloe's room. He sprinted toward the open doors but was stopped by a security guard.

  "Interpol," he said, flashing his badge.

  "I'm getting people out," the man yelled.

  Poincaré backed away as firefighters in full gear ran past. He sprinted the length of the hospital and, turning a corner, found an emergency exit—its stairwell packed with staff and visitors moving in the opposite direction. He edged sideways, fighting current and curses, and overheard one man say, "It's a trashcan fire in the burn unit—somebody's sick joke. If it were real trouble, we'd be evacuating patients. I think they've already handled it with a fire extinguisher."

  As if on cue, the alarm stopped and the river of evacuees reversed itself, carrying Poincaré to the second-floor landing. He calmly walked through an emergency door that had been propped open and smelled the smoke, which was being exhausted through a window facing the plaza. He was relieved by the sight of hospital security standing casually around a charred trashcan, mid-corridor. Aside from scorch marks along the wall, Poincaré could see no damage. A prank then, or carelessness. He was turning to leave when a nurse exiting a utility room ran past him clutching a tube in sterile plastic sheathing. The tube, he thought, looked very much like part of the ventilator system that kept Chloe alive. He followed the nurse, quickening his pace, and this time when he showed his badge he was motioned through. The nurse who had given him such difficulty was seated atop a gurney, dazed. On turning the corner, Poincaré saw the doors to his granddaughter's room thrown wide and at least six staff in white coats standing over her bed.

  "What!" he yelled, entering the room.

  A woman probing Chloe's chest with a stethoscope turned on him savagely. "Out!"

  Chloe's ventilator tube had been cut and the power cord ripped from the machine. A doctor on the far side of the bed was inserting another tube that was attached on one end to a blue plastic ball, which an attendant began pumping as soon as she heard the words I'm in. Chloe's chest began to rise and fall once more as a third doctor with a stethoscope abruptly stopped her probing and said: "No pulse." She interlocked her hands over the child's breastbone and rocked forward and back in a rapid motion. "Paddles!"

  They worked on her for thirty minutes.

  The doctor who had called for security found Poincaré in the visitor's lounge, head slumped in his hands.

  "I'm so sorry," she said.

  He opened his eyes, he closed them. He opened them. No difference. "We don't fully understand what happened," the woman continued. "Someone set a fire along the ward, and in the commotion your granddaughter's ventilator tube . . . was sliced. We didn't get to her for eight minutes." The woman's voice broke. "The police are investigating. I'm so very sorry, Monsieur—" she looked down at a card—"Poincaré."

  Chloe's room was now a crime scene, and he would be denied entry. He asked the doctor to leave and close the door behind her. Staring out the window across a plaza shimmering in the heat, he thought of the child—hand extended, leading him to the barn and an old door with cracked paint. Look, Papi! He looked, not at the paint but at his granddaughter. He kissed her eyes and offered her up to the clouds. Then, all business, he called Etienne's hospital and Albert Monforte to advise the posting of extra security. He left the building, for the first time in weeks with a purposeful step. He would mourn her later. For now at least one of Banović's men remained, and Poincaré would find him—after, that is, he concluded a bit of business in The Hague.

  CHAPTER 19

  Poincaré did not wear the turmoil of his life on the outside like a new jacket or wristwatch. To pass him on the street by a flower stall in The Hague, one would think the man merely exhausted—or possibly ill. But beyond the wrecked exterior—to see him as he saw himself, as Claire would have instantly seen him were she well enough to open her eyes and yell Stop!—was a man reduced to raw nerves and a scream. He had come with murder on his mind, and he had planned with care.

  If, that is, one who had not eaten or slept in a week could be called careful. Closing his eyes meant seeing the child, so Poincaré did not sleep. Food was for the living and, inasmuch as something essential in him had died—not just his dreams for Chloe but some fundamental belief that life is fair and that people are decent—he did not eat. Palpitations racked him. He ate pill after pill, attempting to silence the beast clawing in his chest. His hand shook as he attempted to shave. He cut himself and when the blood ran, he flew into a rage for more. Banović would pay. Banović's wife and children would pay. Poincaré would kill them all, curse God, and die. He cleaned and oiled his gun a third time. Then he stepped from his hotel room to plan the final act of a wretched life.

  "A STRAIGHTFORWARD assignment, Monsieur Depaul," said the man, handing Poincaré a folder. "You'll find everythi
ng you requested on a disk—a summary document with a daily timeline, a separate folder of photographs, and a spreadsheet integrating the two. You can open any cell, locate where Madame Banović and her children are likely to be at a given time on a typical day, and then click to see them in situ—with pertinent photos, addresses, and phone numbers. It's all here." He patted the folder. "She's an unusually punctual woman. Sundays to church, a tram to the prison, then to a park by the sea with the children. Weekdays she walks them to and from school. I don't exaggerate: she does not let go of their hands, not for a moment, until they reach the schoolhouse door. Then it's to the stationer's where she works as a clerk. Market day is Tuesday, after picking up her son and daughter. I've listed her typical purchases in the spreadsheet—mostly pasta, beans, potatoes, and milk powder. At the butcher she'll buy bones or fatty scraps for soup. Her margin is rather thin, I must say. I've checked with the government agencies, and she has not applied for assistance. They live in a one-room apartment with a shared bath in the hallway. It's all in the file."

  "You broke into their apartment," Poincaré said matter-of-factly.

  The man sniffed. "I was repairing the lock when the door opened."

  Using an assumed name and a bogus e-mail account accessed from a cash-only Internet café in Paris, Poincaré had hired Dominicus Groot sight unseen, without references, from an online registry of private detectives in the Netherlands. At the Groot Investigative Services Web site, he found an ad that boasted: "Infidelity Our Specialty!" and "We find persons gone missing in The Netherlands!" The man himself made an unlikely investigator, hardly someone who could blend easily into a crowd. He was a head taller than Poincaré, with long legs, a thatch of gray hair, and thin enough that a puff of wind might have lifted him away like the bird he appeared to be. Groot was also strangely robust for someone so brittle-looking, with the ruddy face and the strong, chapped hands of a man who worked outdoors for a living. To see Dominicus Groot once was memorable; to see him more than that would arouse suspicion. He must have been good, however, because his report about Banović's family had required steady surveillance. Apparently, the wife had no idea she was being followed.

  The private investigator opened a package of hulled sunflower seeds and popped a handful into his mouth, throwing another handful to the pigeons in the square—which prompted a commotion of cooing and pecking. "A straightforward assignment," he repeated. "As for your e-mail inquiry last night, this would not be a typical Thursday because Monsieur Banović, of course, will appear in court this afternoon. The wife did not take the children to school today, so I would expect them in court. From what I could tell, they were walking, which would be unfortunate because the ICC would be far for the little ones. Public transportation from their part of the city won't be of much use. And a taxi for someone on her budget is out of the question. No, they'll walk twelve kilometers—and for not much gain, I'm afraid. The reading of charges won't last an hour, including the statement of the accused. The trial begins next month, and I can't imagine Madame Banović would take the children each day." When Groot paused to eat another handful of seeds, the pigeons gathered at his feet. "Altogether an unusual circumstance," he continued, "hardly in line with my typical assignment. There's nothing wrong here, Monsieur Depaul, unless you object to a young mother and her children living in poverty. Perhaps you are a philanthropist?"

  Poincaré handed him an envelope. "There's no need to count it," he said.

  The man opened the envelope and began counting. "In my line of work—"

  "In your line of work," said Poincaré, "you should know better than to ask clients why they hire you." He collected his things and placed the folder, with its disk, in his briefcase. "But to satisfy your curiosity—yes, I'm a philanthropist."

  AS THE agent of record in Stipo Banović's arrest, Poincaré was granted entry to the courtroom and was allowed to carry his firearm into the gallery. He had called ahead to inform court security of his attendance, and the staff had reserved a seat for him in the second row, as it turned out directly behind a woman flanked by two curlyhaired children wearing their Sunday best. Poincaré smiled grimly. By design, he arrived late so that he could take his seat unnoticed by either Banović or his wife, who would be directing their attention toward the three judges on the dais. At a table to Poincaré's left, the chief prosecutor's assistants sat attentively, ready to produce any of a hundred tabbed files on demand. Banović sat alone at the defendant's table, a single yellow legal pad and a pencil before him. The court had granted his request for self-representation, with the understanding that an appointed defense team would be waiting in the wings to assume the case should his efforts fall short of standards required to ensure a just verdict.

  Poincaré recalled the ravine in Bosnia—for that alone he should have shot Banović instead of arresting him; and with the blood of his family now crying for relief, he considered jumping the gallery barrier and putting a gun to Banović's head. Why had he not killed the man months ago? Poincaré made no move just yet, because in this case the demands of justice and revenge conflicted. Justice demanded death; revenge demanded that Banović witness the murder of his wife and children before he himself died. Poincaré wanted revenge, so he forced his attention to the chief prosecutor, who was just now completing his reading of the charges:

  . . . In sum, the accused stands before this Court for the crime of killing seventy-three men and boys of Muslim descent, the torture and inhumane treatment of said victims in transport to the ravine in a forest south of Banja Luka, the destruction of property prior to said transport and murder, the rape of women and girls, some as young as six years, in the presence of family members prior to said transport, and the intentional launching of an attack against a civilian population in village dwellings. Under Article 8 of the Rome Statute, Stipo Javor Banović, as leader in name and in fact of the paramilitary group known as Patriots for a Greater Serbia, stands accused of Crimes Against Humanity. With respect, the Prosecution will seek a sentence of seventy-three consecutive terms of life imprisonment.

  The prosecutor returned to his seat. Banović, appearing much the same as when Poincaré saw him last, in a plaid shirt and wirerimmed glasses, rose to address the court. The former librarian made no gesture to his wife or children. From the rear, one could see him slowly scanning the room from prosecutor, to judges, to clerks and guards. Here was Stipo Banović the commander: supremely self-possessed with a bearing that showed contempt for anyone's law but his own. His voice rang strong and clear:

  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.