The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (36 page)

“And do they still strike you that way?” asked Beauvoir.

“No.”

“Me neither.”

“Will your contact at CSIS dig some more?” asked Lacoste.

“She said she would, but I could tell it was getting more delicate,” said Gamache. “And if Fraser and Delorme really are field agents, then it might be best left as is.”

They heard the sound of a printer in the background.

“Isn’t the deputy head of CSIS a woman?” Beauvoir asked. “She’s not your…?”

“There are a lot of women who work for CSIS,” said Gamache.

“Right,” said Isabelle Lacoste. “As file clerks. But there is one high up enough to get this information. You said you’d been speaking with her recently.”

“This afternoon,” said Gamache.

“No, I mean before that. Did she offer you a job? Her job maybe, once she moves up?”

“We had a pleasant catch-up, that’s all. We’ve known each other for years. Worked a few cases together.”

“Of course,” said Lacoste.

Beauvoir had been listening closely, watching his old boss. He’d make a very good intelligence officer, Jean-Guy realized. He suspected Gamache had been approached, maybe even for the top job, and was considering it.

Welcome to CSIS.

Gamache was just about to tell them what he’d found in Highwater, when Adam Cohen interrupted.

“I have information on Al Lepage,” he said, sitting down. “Do you want me to give it to you now?”

Lacoste looked over at Gamache, who gestured to the young man to continue. Cohen seemed so anxious, any delay might make him combust.

“Laurent’s father is not Al Lepage.”

“
Quoi?
” asked Beauvoir, rocking forward in his chair and leaning across the table toward Agent Cohen. “Then who is Laurent’s father?”

“No, sorry, I put that badly. I didn’t mean biologically…”

He could see he’d already confused them.

“Let me start again. Al Lepage is not his real name. We sent his fingerprints to police across Canada and into the U.S., and since he was a draft dodger, we also sent them to the Department of Defense in Washington.”

“Right,” said Lacoste. “It turned up nothing.”

“Which was strange,” said Cohen. “He admits he’s American, a draft dodger. There should have been something. But then I tried the Judge Advocate General’s office. It’s the legal part of the U.S. Army, based in Washington, and look what I found.”

He handed a printout to Chief Inspector Lacoste, who read it, her face growing graver and graver. After taking a deep breath, she handed it to Beauvoir, and then turned to Cohen.

“Show me.”

She followed him to his computer while Beauvoir read, then handed the page to Gamache.

Al Lepage’s real name was Frederick Lawson. A private in the U.S. Army.

“Not a draft dodger,” said Gamache, looking at Beauvoir over his reading glasses. “A deserter.”

“Keep reading,” said Jean-Guy, his face solemn.

Gamache did. He could feel his cheeks grow cold, as though a window had been left open a crack and an ill wind had slipped in.

“Not just a deserter,” said Beauvoir, when Gamache had lowered the page to the table. “He was about to be tried for his part in a massacre.”

“The Son My Massacre,” said Gamache. “You’re too young to remember, but I do.”

Isabelle Lacoste had sunk into a chair and was scrolling through photographs on Cohen’s computer. Beauvoir joined her, as did Gamache, reluctantly. He’d seen them once before, as a young man, barely more than a child. Photographs of the atrocity were on the evening news in the late 1960s. It was something you never forgot.

The four of them, three seasoned homicide detectives and one rookie, looked at the pictures, almost too horrific to comprehend. Hundreds and hundreds of bodies. Little limbs. Long dark hair. Bright clothing put on by men, women, children, infants that morning, not knowing what was approaching over the ridge.

“Al Lepage was one of the soldiers who did this?” asked Lacoste.

“Frederick Lawson was,” said Agent Cohen. “And he became Al Lepage when he came across the border.”

“Not running from a war he didn’t believe in, but from justice,” said Beauvoir.

Beside him he heard Gamache take a deep, deep breath and then sigh.

“We now know Al Lepage’s capable of killing a child,” said Beauvoir.

“What do we do with this information?” Adam Cohen asked Chief Inspector Lacoste.

“We keep it to ourselves for now,” said Lacoste. “Until our investigation’s over. And then we decide what to do.”

As they walked back to the conference table she glanced at Gamache, who gave her a subtle nod. It was what he’d do.

“What’s this?” asked Beauvoir, reading another printout.

“That’s the other thing I found,” said Cohen. “You asked me to look into Dr. Couture’s will, which I did. He left everything to his niece. That’s pretty clear, but then I got to wondering what ‘everything’ was. The contents of his home, a twenty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy and a bit of savings, and the house itself. But the real estate search showed he once owned another property.”

“Just outside Three Pines?” asked Lacoste. “Where the gun is?”

“No. A distance from here,” said Agent Cohen. “In a place called Highwater.”

“Ahhhh,” said Gamache, putting his hands together on the table. “That is interesting.”

“Isn’t that where the CSIS agents went the other day?” asked Lacoste.

“And where I went after leaving you at the Knowlton Playhouse,” said Gamache. “I retraced their route. And this is what I found.”

He handed his device with the pictures on it to Lacoste, and described what he’d done. And what he’d seen.

“But what is it?” asked Lacoste, handing the device to Beauvoir via Cohen, who snuck a quick peek.

“You remember the redacted information Reine-Marie found on Gerald Bull?” asked Gamache. “Most of the interesting information had been blacked out, but there was the one word the censors missed.”

“Superguns,” said Beauvoir, his brows rising. “Ssssszzzz.”

“Plural.” Gamache nodded toward the device in Jean-Guy’s hand. “I think that was another one of Gerald Bull’s, or Dr. Couture’s, missile launchers. A much smaller version, maybe a test model before building the real thing.”

“Project Babylon wasn’t one gun, but two,” said Lacoste. “And the land belonged to Dr. Couture?”

“Until he sold it to a numbered company,” said Cohen. “I’m trying to track it down.”

“I think we’ll find it’s the Space Research Corporation,” said Jean-Guy. “Gerald Bull’s company.”

“I think you’re right,” said Gamache. “But why abandon what looked like a perfect site on the top of a hill looking directly into the U.S.? Why move everything here? I’ve asked Reine-Marie to use her archive access and see what she can find out.”

“And I’ll keep looking, if it’s okay with you,” Agent Cohen said, looking at Gamache, then over to Lacoste, then back again, like a confused puppy.

Gamache however was not confused. He looked at Chief Inspector Lacoste, who nodded to Cohen.

“Can your contact at CSIS help?” Beauvoir asked Gamache. “I know you don’t want to press her, but it seems important to know what CSIS really does have on Gerald Bull. The agents clearly knew about Highwater, or suspected.”

But Gamache shook his head. “If Fraser and Delorme are who we suspect, then they’ll be monitoring things very closely. I don’t want them to know that we know.”

“But you asked your contact at CSIS about their work and their real jobs,” said Beauvoir. “Aren’t you worried that Fraser and Delorme will find out about that?” He watched Gamache, then smiled. “I see. You want them to find out that you’ve been asking.”

“I want them to think we’ve been, to once again use Mary Fraser’s word, misdirected. I think the one thing they don’t want us to find out about is that.”

He pointed to his device with the photographs of another Babylon.

Come hell or high water
, he thought.

“Hello?
Bonjour?
”

They heard the voice before they saw the man, though they knew who’d called out. A moment later Professor Rosenblatt appeared around the big red fire truck that shared the space with the homicide unit. He wore a rumpled black raincoat and held a dripping umbrella that he’d furled up.

“Am I interrupting?” he asked, shaking his umbrella. “I can come back.”

“Not at all,” said Lacoste. “We were just finishing.” She got up and walked over to him. “How can I help you?”

“This is so trivial I’m a little embarrassed.” And he looked it. “I was just wondering if I could use one of your computers? My iPhone won’t receive or send messages in the village.”

“No one’s does,” said Beauvoir, joining them. “It’d be relaxing if it wasn’t so infuriating.”

The professor laughed, until his attention was caught by the image on Agent Cohen’s screen.

“Is that—?”

Cohen quickly stepped in front of it.

“Why don’t you use this computer, Professor,” said Lacoste, directing the elderly scientist to a desk across the room. “It’s hooked up but not in use right now. Need to check your email?”

He might have laughed again, but all humor had withered in the face of the fleeting image on Agent Cohen’s computer.

“No, no one really writes to me. I wanted to look up a reference.” He turned to Gamache. “You might know where it’s from.”

“Is it obscure poetry?” asked Beauvoir.

“As a matter of fact, it is,” said Rosenblatt, and saw the alarm on Beauvoir’s face. “Though I don’t think it’s all that obscure. I just can’t place it. The Bible, I think, or Shakespeare. Your friend Ruth Zardo wrote it in her notebook when we were told about that woman’s murder.”

“One of hers, probably,” said Lacoste.

“No, I don’t think so. Something about some rough beast moving toward Jerusalem.”

“It sounds familiar,” said Gamache.

“Oh, we’re in luck,” mumbled Jean-Guy.

“But I don’t think it’s Jerusalem,” said Gamache.

“No, you’re right,” said Rosenblatt. “It was Bethlehem.”

The two men pulled chairs up to the terminal, and while the others investigated murders and massacres, they looked up poetry.

“Any luck finding the plans?” Rosenblatt asked, as they typed in a few words:
rough beast, Bethlehem
. Then hit search.

“Not so far,” said Gamache. “We found some things belonging to Dr. Couture, but no plans and no firing mechanism.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Would you like to have a look?” Gamache asked, and brought over the box while they waited for the dial-up to download.

Professor Rosenblatt poked through the things without great interest until he came to the Manneken Pis. He picked it up and smiled.

“I bought one of these for my grandson. My daughter wasn’t impressed. David spent six months urinating in public after that. That child could pee for Canada.”

He then picked up the desk set. Taking out the pens, he studied them, then rummaged through the box until he found the bookends. He turned one over, put it down and picked up the other. By now Lacoste and Beauvoir had joined the elderly scientist, watching as he toyed with the items.

“What are you—” Lacoste began but stopped, not wanting to break his concentration.

They watched as the professor manipulated the items, and then there was a small click. Rosenblatt frowned, then, picking up the two pens, he inserted them into holes at the base of the bookend.

After studying it for a moment, he held it out, as a bright child might who’d made something for Mother.

“Is it…?” Lacoste asked, taking it from him.

“The firing mechanism? I think so,” said the professor, as astonished as everyone else. “Ingenious.”

Gamache stared at the piece in Lacoste’s hand while she turned it over and over and around. It looked nothing like a pen set and bookend now. Just as the pen set and bookend had looked nothing like a firing mechanism.

“How did you know?” asked Beauvoir, taking it from her and also turning it around and around, studying it.

“I didn’t, I just tried. A prerequisite for being a physicist, I think. Good spatial reasoning. But the first clue was the pens, of course.”

“The pens?” asked Beauvoir.

“They don’t work,” Rosenblatt pointed out. “No nibs. They wouldn’t write.”

Lacoste and Beauvoir looked at each other, then over at Gamache, who was staring at the firing mechanism in Beauvoir’s hand. Then he dropped his eyes to the computer screen, where the poem had appeared.

In his line of sight, forming a tableau, were the firing mechanism, the Son My Massacre, John Fleming’s play on Beauvoir’s desk, and the words on the computer:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

CHAPTER 31

“The clock is ticking,” Gamache said quietly as he and Rosenblatt took seats at the back of the bistro. “Isn’t it?”

Around them, young waiters set the tables for the dinner service. Out the window, dying leaves shuffled in the wind and rain, and two chipmunks sat up on their haunches, alert.

Were they hearing it too? Gamache wondered. On the wind.

The tick, tick, ticking of time running out.

“Yes,” said the old scientist. He raised a hand and caught the attention of a server. “
Chocolat chaud, s’il vous plaît
.”

“Have you considered a nice warm apple cider?” Olivier asked. “Please?”

“Sounds good,
patron
,” said Gamache.

“And one for me too. Nonalcoholic. I’m still recovering from last night,” he said to Armand once Olivier had left. “You know, I ordered a hot chocolate yesterday and they brought an apple cider.”

Professor Rosenblatt extended his hands to the fire in the hearth, rubbing them together as though the warmth was water.

“That was quite a trick,” said Gamache, when the cider arrived. He stirred the drink with the cinnamon stick, the warm apple and cinnamon scent mixing with the musky wood smoke. “Finding the firing mechanism.”

“A trick?” Rosenblatt studied the man in front of him.

They’d left the Sûreté officers to continue their research, galvanized by the findings, and Gamache had brought the elderly scientist to the bistro. People were beginning to arrive for drinks before dinner, but their table was tucked nicely away and few would even notice they were there. To be certain of privacy, Gamache had asked Olivier not to seat anyone too close.