All Cry Chaos (37 page)

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Authors: Leonard Rosen

BOOK: All Cry Chaos
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O
N HIS way to Ludovici's office, Poincaré placed a call to Fonroque. Claire was napping, Eva told him. She had had a quiet day, sitting on the terrace. "Would you like me to wake her, Monsieur?"
    "No," he said. "Tell me. Did she speak at all while I've been gone? In her sleep, has she made sounds?"
    Levenger passed him in the corridor, holding the Tyvek envelope and offering a thumbs-up sign. "Handing it off now, Henri. I'll contact you when I have something."
    Poincaré waved his thanks.
    "No, Monsieur. Nothing."
    "Has Etienne called?" On his way to Lyon, Poincaré had stopped in Paris to inquire after Etienne and his family, and to visit Chloe at the Montparnasse Cemetery. He stayed for a time, sweeping the granite slab, and turned at a sound to see his son in a wheelchair, pushed by an attendant. Etienne met his father's eyes. Poincaré moved to speak, but his son made a motion and the attendant rolled him away.
    "Yes, Etienne called and asked about Madame."
    "And she said nothing?"
    "That's right, Monsieur."
    "Did he ask for me?"
    "It was a brief call," said the girl. "Try in an hour if you want me to put the phone to Madame's ear."
    Ludovici sat in his office, reading a case file—propped back in his chair, snakeskin cowboy boots on his desk. "Do you like them?" he asked after Poincaré knocked and let himself in. "The Italians kicked ass, Henri. And yours truly took first honors."
    "You shot the fuzz off your peach?"
    "I goddamned shot the fuzz
off
the fuzz!"
    "Congratulations, Paolo." He set his briefcase on the desk, opened it, and handed over a tall stack of files. Everything I own on the Fenster—the ammonium perchlorate case," he said, which was not quite true. The hard drive Poincaré was holding for himself and Eric Hurley. "I've prepared an executive summary with an index to the files. You know the highlights, in any event, and should have no trouble." He emptied the contents of his pockets onto the desk in a show of full disclosure. There were paperclips, gum wrappers, loose change, and a jeweler's loupe. "For you," he said, handing Ludovici the loupe. "So that you don't overlook any details. And the coins . . . your first cup of coffee and beignet are on me." Poincaré counted out several euros and smiled when he came across an American buffalo nickel, which he returned to his pocket.
    "Henri, this is no easier for me than—"
    "It's all fine, Paolo. Really."
    "Will you take the position?"
    "I'm not sure," he said.
    "I don't know if I hope you do or don't. You'll need to stay busy, in any event. Maybe you should, so your mind doesn't rot."
    "That's thoughtful advice for a retiree. Thanks."
    "Go to hell . . . and keep your phone on. I may need you."
W
HETHER POINCARÉ did or did not take the position, he was gone from the field—a long chapter closed for him by executive order, a decision made without sentiment. Perhaps Robinson had done him a favor by preempting a slide into caricature. The last thing he or any agent wanted was to become the prize fighter who lacked the grace and good sense to leave.
    He walked to his office. In his four hours remaining as a credentialed Interpol agent, he studied the surveillance loop of Dana Chambi yet again. The loop lasted just over two minutes, and he replayed it another hundred times—bringing his total well into the thousands. With digital zoom, he had identified the handbag she carried, a lead that produced nothing useful. He could read the physician's name on the white jacket she had stolen. He could even see that the stocking on her left leg was torn. Hundreds of details were known to him; but no matter how many times he watched the loop, he could not square what he saw with what those who knew Chambi said of the woman: accomplished researcher, teacher with a sense of theater and humor, volunteer at the Math League, dedicated keeper of James Fenster's flame.
    She must be all one thing or all the other, he decided. The world of the assassin did not overlap the world of the scholar. And yet here she was on the surveillance loop, setting the diversionary fire and proceeding off-screen to murder a child. And there she was in Amsterdam in the days and hours preceding the explosion. Poincaré could not puzzle it through. At 4:29, thirty-one minutes left in a career that spanned three decades, he played the tape once more.
Frames 000-025: Subject enters from bottom of screen.
 Frames 026-058: Subject looks right, looks left, opens bag. 
Frames 059-102: Subject drops paper into can, pours accelerant.
Frames 103-114: Subject looks right, looks left. Frames 
115-120: Subject lights match, sets fire. 
Frames 121-136: Flames. Subject exits.

Poincaré enhanced the image at Frame 107. It showed Chambi checking the corridor to confirm no one would see her striking a match, her face and neck clearer here than in other frames. Allowing for the distortions of a pixilated enhancement, it was Dana Chambi. He had compared every photograph found of her with the images on the screen. Interpol's own facial recognition software confirmed the match, and yet Poincaré felt compelled to devote his final minutes to a fresh analysis. Again, an indisputable likeness—save for a detail too obvious even for comment: in the video Chambi wore no scarf to hide the angry-looking, amoeba-shaped island of purple on her otherwise unblemished neck. In the twelve photographs Poincaré had collected, she wore a scarf. Add to this the time they met in person outside the lecture hall, where she nervously adjusted the scarf when the discussion turned to Fenster, and the contrast was clear. Scarf, no scarf.

    
Look harder,
he told himself
.
What he saw this time was an assassin taking care to avoid detection. No assassin intends to be caught in the act, and none intends to be caught after. The rhythm of such a life was to kill, escape, collect payment, and kill again. Yet the woman in the video made no effort to hide the port-wine stain, the single marker that functioned, in effect, as a name-tag that read: "Hi—my name is Dana Chambi!" She checked the corridor— twice—because she did not want to be caught. She let her port-wine stain show precisely because she wanted to be seen.
    Poincaré looked across his desk to a photo of Claire and the children. Once again, the answer had been hiding in plain sight. It was not Chambi. It could not have been Chambi. Ludovici swore that Banović, with his reliance on ex-Stasi types, did not order this final brutality. Someone else, then—someone who wanted to annihilate
him b
y crushing what he loved best. The mistake had been in not killing Poincaré. For now he would find this person and render a severe justice. This time he would be working alone.
PART IV

•

W
ho endowed the heart with wisdom or gave understanding to the mind?

— JOB 38:36

CHAPTER 37

Poincaré composed a brief e-mail:
Ms. Chambi. I know you didn't
kill my granddaughter. We need to meet. Contact me.
He pressed
send
and walked to the terrace.
    The storms that rumbled through the valley the previous week had scrubbed the air clean. The harvest was coming; and without money to pay the migrant workers, Poincaré would watch the year's fruit rot on the vine. But he did not worry about that now. In a few hours, when the sun rose, he would kiss Claire and open a safe in the cellar, where he kept a gun. He would pack that and, before leaving, would kiss her again—this woman without whom he had no wish to live. Yet one day he would live without her or she without him because that was the way of this world: we love, if we can, and lose what we love.
    From Munich, Poincaré took the first train to Innsbruck and stepped off at the village of Scharnitz, in Austria. Julie Young had not wanted him to go, yet here he was with just enough daylight to call on Father Ulrich at Pfarrkirche Maria Hilf. Poincaré hoped he might learn about his parishioners Lewis and Francine Young before meeting them himself. He arrived with little more than an address and the name of the parish priest copied off an Internet directory.
    Scharnitz was an idyll of meadows and pastures ringed by the Tyrolean Alps. At that hour, the peaks blazed with a westering sun that left the valley deep in shadow. There was snow at the higher elevations, and already Poincaré had seen promotions for ski lodges hoping for an early season. Evergreens prickled from the humps of the lower slopes. Heavy-beamed houses with steep roofs and large woodpiles huddled on the valley floor. It was the Tyrol Poincaré knew from his youth, where Randal Young, according to his wife, had spent happy years.
    He entered the simple church and found a basement office where a man in shirtsleeves sat with his back to the door. When Poincaré knocked, without turning the man said: "Confessions will be heard in fifteen minutes."
    "It's not that sort of visit, Father."
    The priest rose. "Ah—a visitor! Forgive me."
    Poincaré introduced himself and explained his business, omitting the detail that he was no longer a credentialed agent. When he finished, Ulrich said: "Please, Inspector, spare Lewis and Francine further trauma. It's a terrible thing to lose a child."
    Poincaré said nothing. At the priest's back, a window opened to a cemetery.
    "A sad case," Ulrich continued. "Randal, in the prime of life— married, two children. They arrived in early March, I believe. One look and you knew the end was near. He had spent a good deal of his youth skiing in Karwendel Park. I came to Scharnitz only two years ago, fresh from seminary. When I learned that he was returning to visit his parents, I wrote to my predecessor. Apparently, Randal was a well-regarded skier. I understand several of his records still stand in the youth division. At the time, his father was posted in Munich with the U.S. Department of State. The family purchased a home here. They visited in all seasons, Inspector, but it was winter they loved best. When Lewis was posted to the Far East, they kept the house and returned when they could. They've retired here.
    "I never met Randal until his final illness," said the priest. "Lovely people, his parents—but thoroughly broken. They hadn't given up hope when Randal arrived. He and his wife had come with the name of a spa near Garmisch-Partenkirchen that offered unorthodox therapies for his type of cancer. Nothing sanctioned by the medical community apparently, but by this point they had exhausted all other treatments. They went to the spa and returned within a week or so—then left for the States. Very sad. But it's not ours to understand why a young person dies. One trusts there's some good that comes of it."
"I doubt that," said Poincaré.
    "Surely we don't know, Inspector. A child dies. Perhaps a sibling or parent devotes years to finding a cure—and tens of thousands are saved. The single loss is real. One does not minimize that. But the good that may come of loss can also be real. These are ebbs and flows beyond our understanding."
"
W
HO IS it?" Her German was correct, but the accent was American.
    Poincaré answered through the closed door, in English. "Mrs. Young? I work for Interpol," which was true until he decided to reject Robinson's offer. "I've come with some questions concerning Randal." He heard footsteps, then whispering.
    The door opened: "Our son died months ago," the man said.
    "I know," said Poincaré, "and I'm sorry for your loss. But he may have been connected with a case I'm investigating, so if you wouldn't mind . . . But perhaps this is a bad time. I could return in the morning."
    "A case? What case?"
    The loss of Randal Young had not been kind to his father. Aside from a pallid face, grief had colored the man gray. The light in his eyes had dulled, and Poincaré wondered which was worse: to be father to a son who pronounced you dead or to have a son who had, in fact, died.
    The Youngs had organized their simple living room around a wood stove and what could only be called a shrine to Randal, consisting of photographs from his toddler years through to adulthood. Every combination of the boy and his parents smiled in these photos. Randal, a tiny package bundled against the cold, on skis. Randal making a precarious turn in the giant slalom. Randal with his mother on horseback in an alpine meadow. An underage Randal hoisting beer steins with his parents. And then, leaping years, Randal in a gown-and-mortarboard and Randal with a young, red-haired woman at his side. Then one red-haired child, and two. Poincaré drank tea as Mrs. Young worked him through the chronology.
    "You know, he got up on skis the first try and aimed himself straight down the training slope into the hay bales. He jumped up, saying, 'More! More!' In winter, it was all he wanted to do. When Lewis got posted to Japan, Randal was twelve and wanted to stay on here, with neighbors. We brought him with us but promised to keep this house."
    "Why," said Lewis Young, "are you here?"
    Poincaré prepared himself to gouge an already disfigured man. He respected Young's loss enough to speak directly. "I understand that your son was a propulsions expert."
    "That's right."
    "And also expert at setting explosives."
    "He worked summers for a mining company in Wyoming. What of it?"
    "When he returned to Scharnitz in March, Mr. Young, did Randal bring with him any materials from his job in Pasadena? Chemicals, perhaps. In particular, a white crystalline substance that looked like table salt?"
    "He could barely stand," said the woman. "No, there was nothing like that. He brought one small suitcase. He had a book on birding, which he left for me. Do you want to see it?"

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