The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (22 page)

Armand Gamache wasn’t sure he believed the scientist, but he knew he would not, at this point, get a clearer answer.

“The good news is we found the Supergun before it could be fired, if that was the intention,” said Gamache. “Unfortunately, it cost Laurent Lepage his life.”

Professor Rosenblatt looked closely at his companion. “You’re retired. What’s your interest in this?”

“Laurent was my friend.”

Rosenblatt nodded. The statement was simple. Elegant. And as powerful as the gun.

“And now you’re out for revenge?” asked Rosenblatt.

Gamache tilted his head slightly. “I hope that’s not it.”

Now it was Rosenblatt’s turn to tilt his head. “But you’re not sure.”

“Anything interesting in the papers you borrowed?” Gamache asked, his voice clipped.

Rosenblatt looked at him for a moment, then dropped his gaze to the pages.

“A shame about the blacked-out bits, but I don’t think there’s really anything in here that isn’t common knowledge.”

“Common?”

“Since Bull’s death and with the passage of time, some information has come out about his work,” said Rosenblatt. “I’m sure you’ve found some yourselves now that you know the key words. But there’re still some things only people in the field know, or guessed.” Rosenblatt paused a moment. “Theorized.”

“And what field would that be?”

Rosenblatt realized, too late, that his initial impression had been right. Here was a dangerous man. And he’d led him into dangerous territory.

Rosenblatt’s formidable mind raced, but kept coming back to the same place.

He could lie, but it would be found out eventually.

“The field of armament design,” said Professor Rosenblatt, and noticed that Gamache showed absolutely no surprise.

“It would have to be, wouldn’t it?” said Gamache, being equally open with Rosenblatt. “After all, why else would you be here?”

The two men stared at each other. Not challenging, not threatening each other. There was no power struggle. Just the opposite.

There was recognition.

Here was someone else best in his field. And that field was pitted, and weedy, and pocked with land mines. You didn’t get to the other side without some wisdom, and without some wiles. And without some scars.

“What are you asking me, monsieur?”

“I’m asking if you worked with Gerald Bull.”

Gamache saw the eyes flicker, wanting to drop, to break contact. But they held, and Michael Rosenblatt gave one curt nod.

“As I told your young colleague, Inspector Beauvoir, we worked at McGill at the same time, but I’m afraid I wasn’t completely honest. We did work together, not in the same department but on some of the same projects. Though no one really worked with Gerald Bull. It might start out that way, but eventually you found yourself working for him.”

“Were you working for him when he came up with the plans for the Supergun?”

“No. I left when he began using the Soviets as a back door to sell his arms. He wasn’t very smart.”

“Is that why you left? Fear you’d get caught?”

“No. I left because it was wrong. It’s one thing to design weapons for your own country, it’s another to sell them to the highest bidder. Gerald Bull was the consummate salesman, and completely without a conscience.”

“Why did you just say that he wasn’t very smart?” asked Gamache.

“He made some stupid choices, like cozying up to the Soviets. He had an outsized ego that told him he was smarter than other people.”

“The ego lied?” asked Gamache.

“Shocking, I know. Dr. Bull was bombastic. The perfect personality for a man who sold cannons and Bull was, as I said, a great salesman.”

“Why would he have the Whore of Babylon etched into the cannon? Was it a sort of calling card? A signature? Did Dr. Bull put it into all his designs?”

“Not that I know of. It was probably another sales tool. What else would appeal to a crazy despot like Saddam but a weapon etched with a symbol of the apocalypse? And one from ancient Iraq, no less. It was perfect.”

“But this wasn’t Saddam’s gun, was it?” said Gamache. “Gerald Bull didn’t build it in Iraq, he built it in Québec. And he etched the Whore of Babylon on it. Why?”

“Maybe it supports the mock-up theory,” said Rosenblatt. “He built it to show the Iraqis. After all, by then all the intelligence agencies in the world were interested in Bull and Project Babylon but they’d never think to look for it here. He could show it to the Iraqis and once the order was in, he could dismantle it, and ship it piece by piece to Baghdad.”

Gamache listened to this curiously detailed hypothesis. He had to admit, it fit. Québec was a showroom. Though there was still another possibility. The other one.

“Or it could’ve been meant for Québec all along,” said Gamache. “Saddam couldn’t strike U.S. soil with a Scud. Maybe the goal was never to hit Israel, or Iran, or any target in the region. Maybe the target was the U.S. Maybe those weapons of mass destruction that the Americans were so sure were there were actually here.”

Maybe, maybe, thought Gamache. All maybes.

It was frustrating. Though he felt they were getting closer. Maybe.

Gamache leaned against the banquette and looked across the table at his companion, remembering something else Reine-Marie had discovered while researching Gerald Bull.

“Dr. Bull got his Ph.D. very young,” said Gamache. “In physics. A remarkable achievement. But I understand his marks weren’t very good.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. I didn’t know him as a student.”

“No. But you knew him afterward. He’d have been about twenty years older than you, is that about right?”

“About.” Now Rosenblatt was watching Gamache closely. He’d not be tricked again, but he couldn’t shake the feeling they were again wandering into the minefield.

“His marks weren’t terrific,” said Gamache, musing almost to himself. “And you’ve described him a few times as a great salesman. Not a great scientist. But a salesman.”

And now Michael Rosenblatt knew he was indeed in the middle of the minefield. Drawn there by this calm, reasonable, kindly man.

And he waited for the next, inevitable, question.

Gamache leaned forward and seemed almost apologetic.

“Was Gerald Bull smart enough to design the Supergun? Or was he just the salesman? Was there another genius at work we don’t know about?”

Ka-boom.

CHAPTER 19

Clara Morrow turned into the Lepages’ driveway. It was long and rutted, as most of the dirt drives were in this area.

She glanced down at the passenger-side foot well, where a casserole covered in foil sat, along with an apple crisp. Still warm. She could smell the brown sugar and cinnamon, and wondered if it was a bad thing that she was salivating. And tempted to turn around. And eat it all herself.

She parked in front of the small farmhouse.

A curtain moved in an upstairs window and she saw Evelyn’s face, a look of distress glancing across it, as though Clara was a germ and Evie an open sore.

An old mongrel dog, Harvest, lay on the grass. He struggled to his feet, his tail wagging slowly.

“Clara,” Evie said, coming to the screen door, forcing a smile that looked painful.

“I didn’t want to disturb you,” Clara said, cradling the dishes. “But I know how much energy it takes to get out of bed in the morning, never mind shop and cook. There’re a couple bags of groceries in the trunk. They’re from Monsieur Béliveau. And Sarah sent some croissants and baguettes from her boulangerie. She says you can freeze them. I wouldn’t know. They never last that long in my house.”

Clara saw a hint of a genuine smile. And with it a slight relief, a loosening of the tight bands holding Evie Lepage in, and the world out.

*   *   *

Armand Gamache watched the old scientist leave the B and B dining room.

As soon as Gamache had asked about Gerald Bull’s real contribution to Project Babylon, Michael Rosenblatt had looked at his watch and slid awkwardly out of the banquette.

“I really must go. Thank you for the company.”

Armand had got up too.

Professor Rosenblatt offered his hand and Gamache, stepping into the handshake, had whispered in the scientist’s ear.

Then stepped back to look into the startled face.

Rosenblatt had turned and strolled away with forced leisure, and Armand had returned to the banquette, and his coffee, and his musings.

Had Gerald Bull designed his Supergun? Or was he just the clever front man? Was there another genius behind that one? Someone younger, smarter? And far more dangerous?

And perhaps still alive. According to Reine-Marie, Gerald Bull had been sixty-two when he’d been murdered. Gamache knew that most scientists did their best work, their most dynamic and creative work, by the time they were forty.

Did Bull have a silent partner? A scientist, a physicist, an armaments designer? Did they make the perfect team? One staying in the shadows, scribbling plans for a gun unlike any other? An elegant weapon? While the other schmoozed, moved about in powerful circles, made deals? Found buyers. Found Saddam?

Both brilliant and both commanding different fields.

Gamache did the math. Michael Rosenblatt would have been in his mid-forties when Gerald Bull was killed. The design of the Supergun must have been made half a decade earlier, perhaps more. Putting Rosenblatt in his thirties.

It fit. Was Michael Rosenblatt the father of the monster in the woods?

Armand Gamache noticed that Rosenblatt had left so quickly he’d forgotten the redacted papers. Armand gathered them up, and thought maybe it hadn’t been an oversight. Maybe there was nothing in them that could possibly be news to the elderly scientist.

Gamache sipped his coffee, and thought.

He had a sense that Rosenblatt was a scientist with a conscience. The question was, had Rosenblatt’s sense of right and wrong come too late? Had he already contributed to the balance of terror?

Or perhaps his sense of what was right was different from Gamache’s.

“
We sat down and wept,”
Gamache had whispered into Rosenblatt’s ear, as they’d said good-bye. And then he provided the next line of the psalm. The one not written on the weapon. “
When we remembered Zion
.”

Dr. Bull and Professor Rosenblatt might have their weapons of mass destruction, but so did Armand Gamache. And judging by the look on Rosenblatt’s face as they’d parted, he’d made a direct hit.

Had Rosenblatt had a hand in creating Project Babylon, and then, when he realized that it was intended for Saddam, and that Saddam intended to use it against Israel, had he also had a hand in trying to stop it? By killing Gerald Bull. Perhaps he hadn’t actually pulled the trigger, but who else would have intimate knowledge of Bull’s movements, except a close colleague? A whispered word was all it would take.

Mossad, the CIA, the Iranians, CSIS would do the rest.

But that was a twenty-five-year-old murder case. Armand Gamache’s responsibility wasn’t to the gun, and it sure wasn’t to Gerald Bull. It was to Laurent. Who’d warned them all, and been ignored.

*   *   *

Isabelle Lacoste was running out of village and villagers to interview.

The Sûreté investigators could finally talk openly about the Supergun, and while wildly interested, the villagers were not even remotely helpful.

Most had been either too young at the time the gun was built, or hadn’t lived there then. Like Myrna. And Clara. And Gabri and Olivier.

And now Isabelle took the black-and-white photograph of Dr. Bull and her questions into the general store, to speak with the last person on her list. The second oldest resident, Monsieur Béliveau, while Jean-Guy got the short straw and was interviewing the oldest resident.

*   *   *

“Like some, numbnuts?”

Ruth tilted the Glenfiddich bottle toward Beauvoir.

“You know I don’t drink anymore,” he said.

“This isn’t alcohol. I took it from the Gamaches’,” she said. “It’s tea. Earl Grey. They think I don’t know.”

Beauvoir smiled and accepted, though part of him still felt uncomfortable seeing the amber liquid flow from the Scotch bottle into his glass. He smelled it. There was no medicinal scent of alcohol.

Nevertheless, he pushed the glass away from him and slid the photograph he’d had copied toward her.

It was black and white, and showed a substantial man in a suit and narrow tie, a coat slung over one arm. The image of a businessman, whose business was in trouble. While the stance might be casual, there was no mistaking the anxiety in his face, as though he’d heard a shot in the distance.

“Do you know this man?”

Ruth studied it. “Should I?”

“You know about the gun?”

“I heard something. Everyone’s talking about it.”

“That man built it. His name’s Gerald Bull.”

“Then it’s true. About the gun, I mean.”

Jean-Guy nodded.

“They’re calling it a Supergun,” said Ruth.

Again he nodded. “Bigger than any weapon I’ve ever seen.”

“Laurent was telling the truth,” said the old poet.

To Jean-Guy’s eyes she’d never looked older.

“It was built in the mid to late eighties,” he said. “You were here then. Do you remember anything? It must’ve made a racket in the forest. You couldn’t miss it.”

“It’s a question only a city person would ask. You think the countryside is silent, but it isn’t. It would put New York City to shame some days. Chain saws are going around here all the time. Clearing land, cutting down trees, sawing off branches hanging too close to Hydro lines. People getting wood for the winter. Between the chain saws and the lawnmowers it can be deafening. And don’t get me started on the frogs and beetles in spring. No one would notice, or remember, a particular racket in the woods thirty years ago.”

Beauvoir nodded. “He didn’t hire locals?”

“Well, he didn’t hire me,” said Ruth. She slugged back the tea.

*   *   *

Monsieur Béliveau looked more morose than ever.

“
Désolé
, I wish I could help. I was here at the time and running the general store, but I don’t remember anything.”