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.
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. Someone had to help them—and as it looked for sure that that someone wasn’t going to be the U.S. and the UN, why not the man people claimed to be the biggest drug lord in the Caribbean?
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 Cité Soleil. He had the power to pull it off and get away with it. He had the power to do almost anything he wanted.