Authors: Leonard Rosen
All Cry Chaos (26 page)
>100t = 80t + 80. 20t = 80. t = 4. The commuter train travels (t + 1) hours = 5 hours at 80 mph and goes 400 miles. The commuter train left at 7 AM + 5 hours = 12 noon.The express train travels 4 hours at 100 mph and goes 400 miles. The express train left at 8 AM + 4 hours = 12 noon.
>Well done, Antoine! What's hard about this type of problem for you?
>Nothing, as long as you're helping me! I want to study math in college. I like how everything in math has an answer-— everything works out. Not much else does in my life.
>Go to college, Antoine. Always a good plan.
>I want to study with you--in Europe!
>Who said I was in Europe?
>You said it was dinnertime. That's Boston plus 4 or 5 hours, right? This spring we studied time zones in geography and I learned that at any one time somewhere on the planet, in a narrow band running north and south, people are eating dinner. So right now it's 3:15 PM along the east coast of the U.S. 3:15 + 4 or 5 hours = dinner time = Europe!
>Or Scandinavia or Africa. But good work. How old did you say you were?
>Fifteen.
>Going on 35! You can study with me anytime, online. But I'm not teaching in a school at the moment. There are good math teachers everywhere, though. Email me when it's time to set up another session. Got DINNER plans! Ciao.
Poincaré checked his watch again. He needed another three minutes.
>But we haven't talked about my question
yet from last time!
>Which was?
yet from last time!
>Which was?
>Math and real things. How do the x's and y's of math that I write on a piece of paper connect to real trains?
A visitor, this time without a stethoscope, stepped around the curtain into Poincaré's room with a smile and an ID badge that identified her as a chaplain. Poincaré greeted the woman half-heartedly, hoping that would turn her around.
"Mr. Poincaré? I'm Rita Collins, pastor at—"
"Thank you for stopping by Miss Collins, but I'm busy just now."
"We like to check with everyone in the unit, you know. I see you're scheduled for discharge. Feeling better?"
"It's kind of you. . . . But I'm in the middle of—"
"That's fine. I wanted to wish you well and leave you with a little something. You know, people who land in the cardiac unit often have questions. At a time like this, it's natural to feel depressed or wonder what you're doing with your life. You may think you've had a trauma only to your body, but the hurt often runs deeper." She laid a pamphlet on the table by his bed. "There's a phone number if you need to talk," she said, stepping back around the curtain.
>Now I remember! In math you use equations to represent--to stand for-something in the world. The x's and y's of math are like words, but a different symbol system. When you have a question about how things in the world behave, if you have a good equation you can use math to find answers without a lot of bother. Imagine if the only way to answer the train problem was to buy a ticket for a commuter train, wait for the express train to catch up (if you could find one going the same direction on a parallel track), and then look at your watch! That's a lot of effort, but doable for trains. For most problems, you can't buy a train ticket.
>Like what?
>Like if you need to know the reentry angle for a spacecraft so it won't burn up or skip off into space. You want to figure these things out ahead of time and not put people's lives at risk. Got to run, Antoine. Ciao!"
He placed a call to Lyon.
The satellite link from Europe was clear enough that Poincaré heard an announcer on a radio in Levenger's office reading the evening news.
"Hubert, did you get a trace?"
"I did, Henri. Trouble is, your subject used two proxy servers to log onto the Web site for this session. She doesn't want to be found, and she's being clever about it. We hacked the log file of the second server, the one that connected to the Math League site. That server's in Belgium—likely Brussels or Antwerp. We traced the first server to Italy, but that's as close as we could get because the log file was shielded. Of course, she could have logged onto that server from South America or Asia."
"It's not dinnertime in South America or Asia."
"What's that?"
"Never mind. I haven't scheduled the next chat, but I'll let you know."
"Try getting her to write an e-mail, Henri. An e-mail has to be sent from somewhere definite, and I can find definite."
"With or without a subpoena?"
There was a pause. "I couldn't quite hear you. You're breaking up."
"That was a hypothetical, Hubert."
"I thought so. Happy hunting."
Poincaré set down his phone and typed an e-mail to Ludovici.
Chambi's likely in Italy. Contact Lyon and refocus Blue Notice alert to Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and France. Still on for tomorrow in Québec. Breakfast at 8 AM, hotel.
He stretched and closed his eyes. At 3:30, he had nothing to do but wait for the results of a final blood test. Careless though he was with his own health, Poincaré did want to know if he had suffered a heart attack because that information would determine how hard he could push in the coming days. He needed time, and he did not want to collapse again before finding Chambi. So he waited, instead of walking out. With his briefcase missing and no files to review, he pointed a remote to a television bolted high on the wall, flipping through channels until he found a news station. He let that drone in the background as he reached for the pamphlet the chaplain had left: a single glossy sheet, folded once on itself and printed on four sides. From the title "Revelation Now!" he guessed its contents and read the first of eight passages, each a proof text that a day of reckoning approached:
"Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth— to every nation, tribe, language and people. He said in a loud voice, "Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water. A second angel followed and said, "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries."
In a critical care unit?
he marveled. Poincaré turned back to the television news. A woman with bobbed blonde hair who looked like every other newscaster with bobbed blonde hair was reading the day's headlines.
he marveled. Poincaré turned back to the television news. A woman with bobbed blonde hair who looked like every other newscaster with bobbed blonde hair was reading the day's headlines.
"The latest bombing in Baghdad killed 128 people, mostly children on a school trip to a local market. Police are bracing for a retaliatory strike. In the Caribbean, the hurricane season is well underway. Category four storm Elsa has already left 10,000 people homeless and another 200,000 without power in the Dominican Republic and is now bearing down on Florida. Elsewhere—"
He turned it off when a nurse entered with a piece of paper for him to sign. "You're discharged," she said. "The tests are negative for heart attack. Dr. Beck's instructions are here." The woman touched his shoulder. "Rest, Inspector. You'll find a taxi outside the main entrance. Good luck."
When she left, Poincaré bent over to tie his shoes and fought off a wave of nausea. Someone new stepped around the curtain.
"Damn but you gave me a good scare!"
It was Charles Bell himself, with a smile Poincaré would be pleased to forget one day. In his right hand, he offered a bouquet of irises. In his left, a mere hatchet stroke away from the object of his desire, was the briefcase. Before rising to thank the last man he wanted calling on him in a hospital or anywhere else, Poincaré checked the locks of the briefcase. Neither showed signs of tampering. More reassuring still, the wheeled tumblers—both right and left—were set as Poincaré had left them the morning before. In a ritual as routine as brushing his teeth, he had for decades changed the combination to his briefcase every week; and for the first time in a quarter-century that simple precaution returned the favor. He would need to check, for Bell was a clever and determined man; but Fenster's hard drive was likely safe. "Charles," he said, standing to receive the flowers. "I suppose I owe you my life."
CHAPTER 26
Bell had overheard the nurse's advice and insisted on driving Poincaré to his hotel. He accepted, then abruptly declined when Bell steered the conversation to their last meeting. "Inspector, I'm hoping we've settled your concerns. I don't like loose ends."
A car roared from an underground garage, and Bell peeled a tendollar bill from a clip for an attendant. Poincaré faced him and said, "You're prepared to spend hundreds of thousands in legal fees for a hard drive that's meaningless? And Harvard would do the same? I somehow doubt either of you would go to war over a principle."
"I'm spending the company's money, not mine."
"So much the worse," said Poincaré.
The attendant opened the passenger's door, and Poincaré promptly shut it. "You know, Mr. Bell. The more you talk, the more confused I get. I'm going to sleep, and then I'm traveling for a few days. But I'll be calling again. If business takes you out of town, tell your assistant where I can find you." He left the man slack-jawed at the curbside and walked to the head of a taxi queue without a backwards glance.
Let him twist in the wind
, thought Poincaré. Minutes later he opened his briefcase and found Hurley's envelope, untouched. W
ell, then,
he thought. If Bell were a killer, at least he was honest.
Let him twist in the wind
, thought Poincaré. Minutes later he opened his briefcase and found Hurley's envelope, untouched. W
ell, then,
he thought. If Bell were a killer, at least he was honest.
Poincaré postponed his flight until the morning and stopped at an electronics store for a cable that would let him connect his computer to Fenster's hard drive. He showered, ordered in food, and devoted hours to untangling what a team of data analysts, with powerful computers, could not achieve in months. But Poincaré had an advantage, he believed: the analysts had worked in a lab, running random numbers—brute force, Chambi would call it; Poincaré had seen Fenster's apartment and interviewed Roy and Silva and had a feel for the man himself. The odds of accessing the drive were still long, but he set to work and offered up an amateur's best.
First, he typed Fenster's home address, manipulating abbreviations and spacing until he counted sixty-seven characters. Nothing. In dozens of combinations, he typed the names of the foster families that had taken him in. He typed the names of courses Fenster had taught and their numerical IDs, and versions of his name and Madeleine Rainier's. Nothing worked. Exhausted, he shut down his computer and slipped the hard drive beneath his pillow— the way he had done once with a book in a failed high-school experiment the evening before an exam. This time, who knew? The information on that disk might somehow work its way into his slumbering brain.
In the darkness, Poincaré thought of Claire. There was no point calling to say he was ill. Instead, he thought of better times when a word was enough to bring her to his side, where he wished her to be now. He had sent a telex on his return from an assignment in Lebanon:
Air France. 10
AM
tomorrow. Flight 2113. Ticket bought.
Dress for five days on wine dark sea. HP. H
e sent nothing more, confident she would rearrange her life on impossibly short notice and step from the plane in Athens. She arrived wearing a sun hat and carrying her foldaway easel, a bathing suit, and little else. On the ferry from Piraeus, they retched in heavy seas. But no sooner had they landed and bathed then Claire handed him a pair of swim trunks and hailed a taxi from their balcony. "Perivolos," she told the driver, Poincaré having no idea who or what P
erivolos
might be. Thirty minutes later they lay on a stretch of black volcanic beach, Claire curled to his side as Poincaré contemplated the drift of clouds and a distinct impression that he was floating in time.
Air France. 10
AM
tomorrow. Flight 2113. Ticket bought.
Dress for five days on wine dark sea. HP. H
e sent nothing more, confident she would rearrange her life on impossibly short notice and step from the plane in Athens. She arrived wearing a sun hat and carrying her foldaway easel, a bathing suit, and little else. On the ferry from Piraeus, they retched in heavy seas. But no sooner had they landed and bathed then Claire handed him a pair of swim trunks and hailed a taxi from their balcony. "Perivolos," she told the driver, Poincaré having no idea who or what P
erivolos
might be. Thirty minutes later they lay on a stretch of black volcanic beach, Claire curled to his side as Poincaré contemplated the drift of clouds and a distinct impression that he was floating in time.
That evening, she sat across from him over a checkerboard tablecloth, not just the café but the town itself perched on a cliff above the sea-swamped caldera. For three days they drank too much wine and dozed, entangling themselves in a bed by a window that opened to the sea—both old enough to know it could not last. Life, or death, would intervene and their moment would be gone. But it was not gone then, nor was it now. Yet.
Q
UÉBEC IS the only walled city in North America. As the taxi approached one of its fortified gates, Poincaré imagined that the brief flight from Boston had somehow veered east and deposited him in medieval France.
UÉBEC IS the only walled city in North America. As the taxi approached one of its fortified gates, Poincaré imagined that the brief flight from Boston had somehow veered east and deposited him in medieval France.
"Où voulez-vous aller?" asked the driver.
"Chateau Frontenac."
The Chateau was several blocks from his hotel, and he wanted to see it again and walk. The morning was bright, and with the new medication taking hold, he felt his energy returning.
"C'est impossible, Monsieur."
Poincaré soon understood why. The first sign he saw read "G-8 Criminals Out of Québec!" Initially, he thought the number thirty-two posted on trees and nearby buildings had something to do with the summit; but then he recalled the Soldiers of Rapture. The newspaper folded in his lap was dated July 14
th
, which meant that Jesus, provided He did not get delayed by traffic, was due to redeem the world in one month. "A security cordon at the Frontenac?" he asked.
th
, which meant that Jesus, provided He did not get delayed by traffic, was due to redeem the world in one month. "A security cordon at the Frontenac?" he asked.
The driver nodded. Soon enough, Poincaré saw the show of force for himself. Six blocks out, Canadian military police with automatic weapons patrolled the streets. Closer to the hotel, army units had established command posts. In addition, Poincaré knew, national security services from each of the G-8 countries would provide their own protection for heads of state. The Old City was in lockdown, and not even Poincaré's Interpol credentials could get him within strolling distance of the hotel.
The summit of the Indigenous Liberation Front was a different matter. Quito and company wanted to attract as many people and as much press attention as possible. For three years the ILF had mounted a counter-summit to the G-8, enjoying the reflected glare of press lights on the world leaders whose economies dominated global trade. ILF spokesmen would make their case against trans-global power while conferees attended sessions on topics ranging from sustainable farming to preserving indigenous languages.
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