“Of course. But it was gone. The hill above it had tumbled down. The Cave was almost completely filled in and rocks now blocked the road.”
“And what did you do then?”
“What could I do?” He shook his head miserably. He was weeping now, in spite of himself. He wiped his nose and eyes against his sleeve. “I called my woman’s name and my children’s names. I called for my brother and his children. I called and called and scrambled over the rocks, climbing and calling and pulling at the rocks. God himself only knows how long. But there was no point. I knew there was no point. I could claw at the rock the rest of my life and get no closer. I knew the truth.”
“And what truth was that, sir?”
“They were dead. My woman. My children. All the People. They were dead. Buried alive. All four hundred of them.”
Although virtually everyone in the courtroom—the judges, the rows of prosecutors, the court personnel, the spectators behind the glass, and the few reporters with them—although almost all of us knew what the answer to that question was going to be, there was nonetheless a terrible drama to hearing the facts spoken aloud. Silence enshrouded the room as if a warning finger had been raised, and all of us, every person, seemed to sink into ourselves, into the crater of fear and loneliness where the face of evil inevitably casts us.
So here you are, I thought suddenly, as the moment lingered. Now you are here.
I.
The Hague
1.
Reset—8 January 2015
At the age of fifty, I had decided to start my life again. That was far from a conscious plan, but in the next four years, I left my home, my marriage, my job, and finally my country.
These choices were greeted with alarm or ridicule by virtually everyone close to me. My sister thought I was still recovering from the deaths in quick succession of our parents. My law partners believed I had never adjusted to life outside the spotlight. My ex dismissed it all as an extended form of middle-aged madness. And my sons were alternately flabbergasted and enraged that their stolid father had become as flighty as a teenager just when they seemed to have found their own footing as adults. I ignored them all, because my life had crashed against the rock of a large truth. For all of my success, in looking back I couldn’t identify a moment when, at core, I had felt fully at home with myself.
My exile to Holland and the International Criminal Court was not a guaranteed solution, but it was the proverbial door that opened as another one closed. What had actually appeared in my doorway was my law school friend, Roger Clewey.
“Boom!” he screamed and, on his way to seize my hand, picked a path among the open cardboard boxes that blocked most of the floor in my corner office. For three days now, I had been sitting with a trash can between my legs, largely stalled in my efforts to move out. Effective January 1, 2015, I had resigned as a partner at DeWitt Royster, where I had worked for the last fourteen years, heading the firm’s white-collar criminal defense practice. Someone with a more ruthless nature could have packed up in a matter of hours, but I found myself lingering over virtually everything I touched—law books, desktop tchotchkes, photos of my sons at various ages, and dozens of plaques and pen sets and hunks of crystal I’d been awarded during my four-year stint, a decade and a half back, as United States Attorney, the chief federal prosecutor here in Kindle County. Walloped by emotion and the force of time, I’d return from my memories to find myself staring down forty floors at the snowy patchwork of the TriCities and the thread of gray that was the River Kindle, frozen over in yet another lousy winter in our new climate of greenhouse extremes.
“They say you’ve cashed out here,” Roger said.
“Retired before they threw me out is more the truth of it.”
“Not their version. Your sons okay?”
“From what they tell me. Pete’s engaged now.”
“You expected that,” Roger said, correctly. “What’s with your personal life?” he asked. “Still enjoying the post-divorce fuckfest?”
“I think I’m past it,” I answered, a more convenient reply than telling him I had never quite gotten started.
Roger and I had met at Easton Law School more than thirty years ago. From there, Rog had entered the Foreign Service, acting as the legal officer attached to several embassies. For a while I thought I knew what he was doing. Then his assignments in various hotspots, like the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, left him with duties he could never discuss. Over time, I’d taken it for granted that he was a spook, although I was never sure which agency he worked for. Recently, his story was that he was back at the State Department, although if you’d been using a diplomatic cover, I’m not sure you could ever renounce it. He had the habit of turning up in Kindle County with little warning and an uncanny ability to know when I was in town, which I eventually realized might have been more than good luck.
“And what happens now?” he asked.
“God knows. I think I’m going to give myself a year of summer, follow the sun around the world. Swim and hike, work out every day, look up old buds, dine al fresco at sunset, then spend the evening reading everything I’ve always meant to.”
“Alone?”
“To start. Maybe I’ll meet someone along the way. I’m sure the boys will take a couple of trips, if the destination is neat enough. And I pay.”
“Want to know what I think?”
“You’re going to tell me anyway.”
“You’ll be bored and lonely in a month, a sour gloomy Dutchman wondering what the fuck he did.”
I shrugged. I was pretty sure it was going to be better than that.
“Besides,” said Roger, “there’s a terrific opportunity for you. Any chance you’ve spoken to Olivier in the last couple of hours?”
Olivier Cayat was another law school classmate. He had been far closer with Roger back then, but about ten years ago he had come down to Kindle County from Montreal to join me in the defense of a Canadian executive who’d shown striking imagination in the ways he’d pilfered his corporation’s treasury. We’d lost the trial but become far better friends. More recently, Olivier had gone off on a midlife frolic of his own to the Netherlands, where he’d consistently reported himself to be quite happy.
Roger said, “Olivier claims you’ve been ignoring his messages for a week.”
At year-end, I’d created automated replies on the firm’s voice and e-mail systems explaining that I’d resigned effective January 1 and would no longer be checking in regularly, which, at least for the first week, meant I had not checked at all. I thought it was better to go cold turkey. Nonetheless, with Roger watching, I turned to the computer behind me and poked at the keyboard until I’d located the first of what proved to be four e-mails from Olivier starting New Year’s Day.
“Mon ami,” it read, “please call. I have something to discuss that might excite you.”
I revolved again toward Roger.
“And remind me, Rog. Where the hell is Olivier working in Holland?”