Mr. Clarinet

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 Cité 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—"ssssan-sssan / ssssan-ssssan / ssssan-ssssan," and then it grew louder as more people picked it up and gave the chant body and definition—"Vinnn-ssssan / Vinnn-ssssan / Vinnn-ssssan." He had become the focus of all attention, the place all eyes had turned to. The inhabitants of Cité Soleil had forgotten all about their hunger and misery and were crowding around Vincent Paul, surrounding him completely, yet leaving a broad, respectful halo of space around him so he could move with ease, shake hands, and accept embraces. Max noticed two striking women in military fatigues flanking him, watching the crowd, hands close to the pistols at their hips.