biological world, two of the geological. One was so small as to be invisible to the naked eye; another, so massive that its structure could be appreciated only from earth orbit. One was a plant on a forest floor; the other, a colony of living organisms gorging on laboratory agar—a pinwheel galaxy in a Petri dish. Poincaré sat quietly.
"Look at the leading edge of each image," said Laurent. "They're cousins. Each is at some level a version of the other." He twirled a massive ring as he spoke, a present from his third wife prior to his final, failed effort to quit smoking. It was less a ring than a nugget of raw silver with a hole bored through the middle. During his six months of fighting insomnia and night sweats, the hope was he would reach for the ring instead of a cigarette. "Better than prayer beads," he said at the time. "Ella wanted those, but I decided to leave God out of the equation."
The silver worked no magic, unfortunately, and all Laurent could show for the effort was a new habit to accompany the old: he now smoked three packs of filterless cigarettes each day and twirled the ring. "I made copies for you," he said of the photos. "I'd give my left testicle to know how Fenster was going to work these into a talk on globalization."
The ballroom door squealed open, and in walked Ludovici and De Vries on either side of the last protester to be interviewed in connection with the bombing. Poincaré resisted settling on single suspects early in a case. He had set a worldwide net for Rainier through electronic postings, but he was also looking to others—in this case the anti-globalists. One of them, he reasoned—possibly in league with Rainier—may have targeted Fenster, whose promised talk on a one-world economy might have made him a target. Yet no one Poincaré interviewed thus far had any plausible link to the mathematician. None even admitted to having heard of him, let alone knowing his work well enough to plan and execute a murder. Last on the list, Eduardo Quito, was a former academic and their likeliest prospect. Poincaré looked forward to this meeting both because Quito was famous in his own right and because the interview was all that stood between another night in Amsterdam and a flight home to Lyon. Claire had left to prepare the farmhouse and welcome the children, but still it would be good to drink familiar wine and sleep in his own bed. The photos, he figured, could wait.
CHAPTER 9
Peru's Ministry of Tourism would have done well to paste Eduardo Quito's likeness on brochures meant to separate rich North Americans from their hard-earned vacation dollars. He walked into the temporary Interpol headquarters every bit a son of the Andes, wearing the clothes of an alpaca herder—his job and the job of his father and grandfather before him. With a calico shirt, bandanna knotted at his throat, waxed-cotton jacket, and fedora over silver-flecked hair, Quito looked more the herdsman than the scholar or political gadfly. Improbably, he was all three. With equal ease he could argue before the International Monetary Fund, lead street protests, and navigate remote mountain trails. One week might find him in Paris speaking, in fluent French, at a forum on indigenous rights; the next, in Berlin shouting down G-8 ministers in flawless German. And then a flight home to the Andes like a condor returning to its nest. He was compact and powerfully built, with piercing black eyes.
Poincaré had turned the matter over in his mind but was still not sure how to engage Quito, who would have remained a herder save for an alert priest who recognized a talent for numbers in the child. This led to a series of schools and, eventually, an endowed chair at the University of Lima where he specialized in the economics of colonialism. At least one European country had put Quito on a terrorist watch list; several others, calling him a provocateur, routinely denied him entry. And then there were
"Look at the leading edge of each image," said Laurent. "They're cousins. Each is at some level a version of the other." He twirled a massive ring as he spoke, a present from his third wife prior to his final, failed effort to quit smoking. It was less a ring than a nugget of raw silver with a hole bored through the middle. During his six months of fighting insomnia and night sweats, the hope was he would reach for the ring instead of a cigarette. "Better than prayer beads," he said at the time. "Ella wanted those, but I decided to leave God out of the equation."
The silver worked no magic, unfortunately, and all Laurent could show for the effort was a new habit to accompany the old: he now smoked three packs of filterless cigarettes each day and twirled the ring. "I made copies for you," he said of the photos. "I'd give my left testicle to know how Fenster was going to work these into a talk on globalization."
The ballroom door squealed open, and in walked Ludovici and De Vries on either side of the last protester to be interviewed in connection with the bombing. Poincaré resisted settling on single suspects early in a case. He had set a worldwide net for Rainier through electronic postings, but he was also looking to others—in this case the anti-globalists. One of them, he reasoned—possibly in league with Rainier—may have targeted Fenster, whose promised talk on a one-world economy might have made him a target. Yet no one Poincaré interviewed thus far had any plausible link to the mathematician. None even admitted to having heard of him, let alone knowing his work well enough to plan and execute a murder. Last on the list, Eduardo Quito, was a former academic and their likeliest prospect. Poincaré looked forward to this meeting both because Quito was famous in his own right and because the interview was all that stood between another night in Amsterdam and a flight home to Lyon. Claire had left to prepare the farmhouse and welcome the children, but still it would be good to drink familiar wine and sleep in his own bed. The photos, he figured, could wait.
CHAPTER 9
Peru's Ministry of Tourism would have done well to paste Eduardo Quito's likeness on brochures meant to separate rich North Americans from their hard-earned vacation dollars. He walked into the temporary Interpol headquarters every bit a son of the Andes, wearing the clothes of an alpaca herder—his job and the job of his father and grandfather before him. With a calico shirt, bandanna knotted at his throat, waxed-cotton jacket, and fedora over silver-flecked hair, Quito looked more the herdsman than the scholar or political gadfly. Improbably, he was all three. With equal ease he could argue before the International Monetary Fund, lead street protests, and navigate remote mountain trails. One week might find him in Paris speaking, in fluent French, at a forum on indigenous rights; the next, in Berlin shouting down G-8 ministers in flawless German. And then a flight home to the Andes like a condor returning to its nest. He was compact and powerfully built, with piercing black eyes.
Poincaré had turned the matter over in his mind but was still not sure how to engage Quito, who would have remained a herder save for an alert priest who recognized a talent for numbers in the child. This led to a series of schools and, eventually, an endowed chair at the University of Lima where he specialized in the economics of colonialism. At least one European country had put Quito on a terrorist watch list; several others, calling him a provocateur, routinely denied him entry. And then there were
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