multiplied by two: month-old dead bodies, fermenting trash, human shit, animal shit, stagnant water, stale oil, stale smoke, crushed humanity. Max started to feel sick. He pulled on one of the masks he'd bought in the supermarket before he'd set out that morning.
He crossed over the 'Boston Canal' on a makeshift bridge made of lashed-together metal girders. The thick sludge river of used oil split Cite Soleil down the middle, a permanent wound on the slum's poisoned soul, bleeding its black venom into the sea. It was simply the worst place he'd ever seen?a circle of hell served up to earth as a warning. He couldn't believe that the UN and U.S. had occupied the country for two whole years and done nothing about Cite Soleil.
He was looking for signs of Vincent Paul?cars, jeeps, things that worked, things that didn't belong here. All he could see was misery living in misery, sickness sucking on sickness, people trailing their shadows.
He reached an elevated stretch of ground and got out of the car to look around. Mindful of what Chantale had told him about walking in the slum, Max had bought some throwaway footwear?a pair of scuffed army boots with ground-down heels?from a woman selling a basket of the things on the sidewalk near the Impasse Carver. He was glad he had, because with every step he took, his feet were sucked a little into the ground, which, in spite of the raw, blistering sunlight, was soft and gooey instead of baked rock-solid.
He looked over the chaotic mess all around him, at the multitude of hovels erupting from the ground like metallic pustules, giving the landscape the texture of a battered and corroded cheese-grater. The place was home to over half a million people, yet it was eerily quiet, with barely a noise heard above the sound of the sea, a quarter of a mile away. It was the same cowed stillness he recognized from the worst parts of Liberty City, where death struck by the hour. Here, he supposed, it came by the second.
Could Vincent Paul really have a base here? Could he live in a place so defiled?
His feet suddenly plunged deep into the ground with a thick, slurping sound and he was instantly up to his ankles in muck, feeling it pulling at his soles. He yanked his feet out and got back on solid ground. The deep footprints he'd left where he'd gone down immediately began to disintegrate as the ground corrected the break in its smooth, sticky surface, and oozed thick, poisonous treacle over the blemish.
Max heard the sound of approaching cars.
In the distance, off to his left, he saw a small convoy of military vehicles?three army trucks topped and tailed by jeeps?heading off toward the sea.
He ran back to the Land Cruiser and started the engine.
Chapter 27
HE FOLLOWED THE convoy to a clearing near the sea, where a semicircle of large, olive-green tents had been erected. Two of them flew Red Cross flags.
Hundreds of Cite Soleil inhabitants were queuing for food that soldiers were dishing out to them from behind long foldaway tables. The people took their paper plates and ate where they stood, many walking to the back of the line to eat and go back for more.
Elsewhere, others waited their turn in front of a water truck, empty buckets, cans, and gallon containers in their hands. Farther on, there were three more trails of people, ready to receive rations of rice, cornmeal, or coal. The queues were surprisingly orderly and quiet. There was no pushing or shoving, no fighting or panic. Everyone would receive what they were waiting for, as in communion.
Max started thinking he'd been wrong, that the UN was actually doing something to relieve the suffering of these desperate people it had freed in the name of democracy, but when he looked a little more closely at the vehicles, he noticed they were all unmarked. None of the soldiers were wearing the sky-blue headgear of the occupying forces, and neither were any of them carrying matching ordnance. Instead they had a miscellany of gangbanger hardware?Uzis, pumps, and AKs.
Max realized he was looking at Vincent Paul's band of brothers moments before he got his first clear view of the man himself, emerging from a medical tent. Like his men, he didn't wear a mask, surgical gloves, or temporary shoes. He was dressed top-to-toe in black?T-shirt, combat trousers, and paratrooper boots. He was towering, hulking, dark and bald.
The big man moved to one of the food tables and helped out, serving people, talking to them and laughing with them. It was the laughter?deep, booming rolls of joviality, the sound of a formation of incoming jets heard from afar?that confirmed Vincent Paul's identity. Max recognized the voice from two nights before, when he'd been saved from the street robbers.
After he'd dished out a few platefuls to the food queue, Paul went among the people. He talked to children, squatting down so he could be at eye level with them, he talked to men and women, stooping down to listen to them. He shook hands and accepted hugs and kisses. When an old woman kissed his hand, he kissed hers right back and made her laugh. People stopped moving forward in their lines and stood where they were to watch him. Some started to leave their places and walk toward him.
And then Max heard it?a hissing murmur at first, the scraps of a song?
Paul raised his hands and the crowd fell quiet. He stood a good few inches above the tallest person there, so most had a good view of his huge, domelike head. He addressed them in a deep baritone that reached Max, although he couldn't understand a word Paul was saying. The crowd lapped it up, breaking out into cheers, applause, whistles, foot-stamping, and hollering. Even Paul's own men, who must have heard it all a million times over, were clapping with unforced enthusiasm.
Max had seen this kind of shit before, on the streets of Miami. Every few years, the biggest homegrown dealers?the ones who'd managed to stay alive and out of jail through luck, ruthlessness, money, and good connections?would decide to 'give something back' to the community they'd helped decimate with their drugs and turf wars. They and their crews would roll into the 'hoods on Christmas Day and hand out roast turkeys, presents, and even money. It was what happened toward the end of their street-lifespans, the last grand gesture before they got taken down by rivals or cops. They'd got everything their limited minds had ever dreamed of?wealth, pussy, petty power, fear, cars, and clothes. Now they wanted love and respect too.
Here Max admired Paul's philanthropy, irrespective of his long-term ulterior motives. He'd begun to understand that this was a part of the world where everything he knew and took for granted had either long broken down or never existed. The only way people could help themselves was by leaving the country altogether, like thousands did every year when they took to the seas and risked their lives heading for Florida. Those who remained were doomed to a life lived on their knees, slaves to the kindness and mercy of strangers.
Watching Paul lapping up the adulation, pressing more flesh, Max was sure he was looking at Charlie Carver's kidnapper. He could quite easily have snatched the kid and hidden him in Cite Soleil. He had the power to pull it off and get away with it. He had the power to do almost anything he wanted.
Chapter 28
IN THE LATE afternoon, Vincent Paul got into a jeep and left the slum. A truck and two more vehicles followed him out.
Max tailed them out of town, through dusty, arid flatlands and clumps of buildings that were either half-built or half-ruined. Then, as night fell, they headed up into the mountains, clinging to a steep, meager crust of dirt road, which was all that separated them from hundreds of feet of thin air.
The last stretch of the journey took them across a plateau. They made for a small bonfire, near where the convoy came to a halt. The vehicles then positioned themselves so that they were facing each other, and their headlights intersected and lit up a square of rough, rocky earth.
Max killed his lights, rolled a little closer to the place where they'd stopped, and got out of the car. He established his bearings so he could find his way back, then he approached the convoy.
The back of the truck was opened. There was fierce shouting both inside and out, and then a man was thrown out. He hit the ground with a thud, a scream, and the thick jingle of chains. One of Vincent's men picked him up and slammed him up against the truck.
Then more men were pushed out of the truck, all landing on top of one another. Max counted eight of them. They were marched into the lit-up space between the vehicles.
Max got a little closer. A group of a dozen or more civilians were watching what was happening.
Max walked off to the left, staying in the
