The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (43 page)

“You think they’d harm me?” Fleming asked. “I’m their creation. I might’ve made my own Whore of Babylon, but they made me. They need me to do what they will not.”

“They don’t need you. You’ve been discarded, left here to rot.”

“How much more rotten do you think I can get?” asked Fleming with a grin, and Gamache could almost smell the decay. “If I’m the child, what must the parent be like? If I’m a branch, imagine the taproot.”

The words seemed whispered directly into Gamache’s ear, on warm fetid breath.

“There’s a purpose to everything under the sun. Isn’t that what you believe?” Fleming said. “I have a purpose. And so do you. Now go back to your pretty little village with all those hiding places and think about that. And then I want you to come back and let me loose so I can give you the plans for Armageddon, and then disappear. Never bother you again. You said I’ve been waiting for someone, and you were right. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Gamache got up. It was over.

CHAPTER 37

Jean-Guy wanted to say something, but couldn’t find any words that would make this better. And so he just drove while Gamache stared out the window.

The Chief had once told him about the behavior of gorillas when faced with an attack. They met it head on, staring down the enemy. But every now and then they’d reach out to touch the gorilla beside them. To make sure they were not alone.

Keeping his eyes on the road, Jean-Guy reached out and touched Gamache’s shoulder.

Armand turned and smiled at Jean-Guy.

“You all right?” Beauvoir asked.

“Are you? At least I knew what we were in for.”

“Did you?”

“No,” Armand admitted with a tired grin. “I thought I did, but you can’t really prepare for that. Still, we learned some things. Fleming was the one who killed Gerald Bull.”

“On someone’s orders. The ‘agency.’ I don’t suppose there’s much doubt which agency. He must mean CSIS.”

Gamache nodded but seemed distracted. “Maybe. Probably. He certainly knew about Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme.”

“Was one of them in Brussels?” asked Beauvoir. “Did Fraser or Delorme take that picture and then order the murder of Dr. Bull?”

“I was wondering the same thing, though there are other possibilities.”

“Professor Rosenblatt,” said Beauvoir. The elderly scientist who stood on the edge of so much of what had happened in the past, and was happening now. He glanced over at Gamache, whose eyes were narrowed, following a path, but not the road they were on.

“Is there someone else,
patron
?”

“There is one other person, Jean-Guy. Another possibility.”

Beauvoir went through all the people in the case who were of the right age to have been active in Brussels in the early 1990s.

“Monsieur Béliveau?” he asked. “He seems to know a lot about this, and really, what do we know about him? No one but Ruth even knew his first name.”

“I wasn’t thinking of him,” said Gamache. “I was thinking of Al Lepage.”

And as soon as he said it, Beauvoir could see the logic of it. In fact, it now seemed so obvious as to be almost unmissable.

Frederick Lawson might have snuck across the border with the help of Ruth and Monsieur Béliveau, but he’d been able to stay, to make a life for himself, to become Al Lepage, get married. How did a deserter about to be tried for a war crime manage that except with the blessing of the government, or one of its agencies?

Was that the price of admission to Canada? Every now and then Al Lepage would be called upon to do some of the government’s dirty work?

Lacoste had let Lepage return to his home, but assigned agents to watch him around the clock.

“
Pardon
,” said Gamache, taking his phone out of his pocket, where it must have vibrated, because Beauvoir hadn’t heard anything.

Gamache looked at who was calling, then answered.

“Chief Superintendent,” he said.

“I take it you’re not alone, Armand,” said Thérèse Brunel. “I have some news.”

“
Oui?
” By the tone of her voice he could tell he probably hadn’t won the lottery.

“I had a call just now from the executive producer of the CBC national news.”

Gamache took a deep breath, steeling himself.

Beauvoir glanced over. The Chief was alert, tense.

“Go on.”

“It’s what you think,” she said. “They’ve found out about the gun.”

“How much do they know?”

“They know about Project Babylon, about Gerald Bull, they know the gun’s somewhere in Québec, which is why they called me.”

“But they don’t know where it is?”

“Not yet. They’re holding the story until the six o’clock national radio news tonight. By then they might know everything. And even if they don’t, it’ll still hit the headlines like a bomb. Every journalist will be all over the story. They’ll find out everything eventually. You might have a day from the time of broadcast, or you might have hours.”

“Can you stop it?” he asked.

“You know what’s involved in censoring the press, Armand. I have an urgent request in for an injunction but judges are loath to give them. We have to assume the story will run.”

Gamache looked at his watch. It was already one thirty.

“They don’t know about Guillaume Couture?” he asked.

“No, but you found out within a matter of hours. They’ll have that soon enough. Once it airs, someone in the village will talk. It’s shocking that word hasn’t leaked before now.”

Three Pines was good at keeping its secrets, thought Gamache. But this one was about to escape.

“
Merci
.” He hung up. “Stop the car, please.”

Beauvoir pulled over and Gamache got out, bending over, one hand on the car, one on his knee, as though he was about to retch.

Jean-Guy hurried around the car. “Are you all right?”

Gamache straightened up and caught his breath. Then he walked away, along the dirt shoulder of the back road.

“What’s happened?” asked Jean-Guy, pursuing him, but stopping when Armand waved at him to give him space.

Beauvoir had only heard Gamache’s end of the conversation, but it was enough to get the gist.

Armand turned to Jean-Guy, his face pale and haggard. “We have four hours before word of the gun is all over the CBC national news.”

“Shit.”

Beauvoir felt his own stomach lurch. They both knew what that meant. Within moments of the broadcast it would be all over the Internet, social media, other media. NPR, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera. News of Gerald Bull’s gun would be blasted around the world.

“They don’t yet know where it is,” said Gamache. “They don’t know about Three Pines. I’m not sure they know about Highwater yet. But they will. And when they do…”

Pandemonium, thought Jean-Guy.

Beauvoir studied his father-in-law and felt light-headed.

“My God, you can’t be considering…”

But he could tell by the expression on Gamache’s face that was exactly what he was considering.

“You’d release Fleming?” asked Beauvoir, barely able to make the words audible.

“We have to find the plans before the broadcast. The problem won’t be journalists or curiosity seekers. Every arms dealer, every mercenary, every intelligence organization, every terrorist group and corrupt dictator will hear about it. These people aren’t bumbling opportunists. They’re smart and motivated and ruthless. And they’ll be coming here. Jesus, Jean-Guy, you know what’ll happen if an arms dealer finds the plans before we do.”

“If, if,” shouted Jean-Guy. “It might not happen, but we know for sure what’ll happen if Fleming’s let out of that hellhole. He’ll kill again. And again.”

“Don’t tell me what Fleming will do. You have no idea what that man’s capable of. I do.”

“Then tell me, for God’s sake. What did he do? What is that man capable of?”

“He made the Whore of Babylon,” shouted Gamache.

“The etching, I know.”

“No, the real thing. Out of his victims.”

Beauvoir stepped back, away from Gamache. From the words that had come out of his mouth and the image that came with them. Of what Fleming had done. Of what had been so horrific it was kept from the public.

“Ohhhhh” escaped Beauvoir, a sigh, as though his soul had withered and was sliding out.

“The children?”

“Everyone. All seven victims,” said Gamache, and bent down again, his hands on his knees.

Beauvoir sank to his knees in the dirt. He watched Gamache trying to catch his breath. He’d had no idea of the weight this man had been carrying all this time. The images he must have seen. There were even rumors of a recording. Gamache had stood in that courtroom and absorbed it so that no other citizen had to. A few sacrificed for the many.

Gamache straightened up, stiffly, until he stood tall and resolute.

“If there was any other way, Jean-Guy…”

“You can’t let him out. I’m begging you.” Beauvoir, still on his knees, lifted his arms toward Gamache. “It won’t even do any good. He was probably lying to you. He might not even know where the plans are.” Beauvoir got up, angry now. “You were too close, you couldn’t see it. He was playing with you, messing with you.”

“You think I don’t know that?” shouted Gamache. “You think I don’t know he was probably lying, and even if he does know where the plans are, he almost certainly won’t tell us? I know that.”

“Then why do it? Why even consider it?”

“What happens if we leave Fleming where he is and those plans are found by another arms dealer?”

He stared at Beauvoir, challenging him. Daring him to go where Gamache himself stood. In the whirlwind.

The two men were ten feet apart, glaring at each other.

“You think,” growled Gamache, “I want to release Fleming? To bring him to Three Pines? It sickens me. But we might have no choice. Fleming might not tell us where the plans are. And yes, he might escape. But I don’t know where the plans are. You don’t know where they are. God knows I’ve been desperate to find them.”

“And Fleming probably doesn’t either. He’d say anything to get out of there.”

“But he might. He might know. He could be our only hope.”

Beauvoir stared at him, appalled. “You’re pinning hopes on that creature? What if the lives he takes next time belong to Madame Gamache, or Annie, or your granddaughters? Would you be so cavalier then?”

“Cavalier? You think that’s what I am? If those plans are found, how many more wives and husbands, children and grandchildren will be killed? Tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands. No one would be safe.”

It was a grotesque equation, and Gamache looked like he was about to pass out. He was contemplating being an accessory to a slaughter, for the greater good.

Mary Fraser had been wrong about Gamache. He’d done it before, and he’d do it again. Send a few to possible death, to save the many. Those decisions had finally torn him to shreds, and he’d crawled to Three Pines to heal. But not, it would appear, to hide.

Beauvoir opened his mouth, his breathing heavy, his eyes wide.

“Annie’s pregnant, Armand.”

It took a moment for the words to penetrate Gamache’s defenses, to get through his turmoil. But then his shoulders dropped, his face softened.

And he understood.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

In long, swift strides he covered the distance between them, and gathering Jean-Guy in his arms, he held the sobbing man.

“We’ll find the plans,” he repeated over and over, until Jean-Guy had calmed down. “We’ll find them.”

Though he didn’t know how.

*   *   *

Armand drove the rest of the way home, giving Jean-Guy a chance to recover and to talk about the new baby. And Annie.

“Please don’t tell Madame Gamache,” said Jean-Guy. “Annie would kill me. She wants to do it herself.”

“I won’t, but you have to tell her soon because she might pry it out of me. She’s very cunning.”

As they talked about this happy news, Gamache could almost forget where they’d been, and what lay ahead. After a few miles they once again lapsed into silence.

Gamache went back over his interview with Fleming, struggling to bring it into focus.

“Fleming admitted he knew Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme,” he said, and Beauvoir nodded. Jean-Guy had also been replaying the meeting with Fleming, with growing urgency, pursued by the ticking clock and the realization of just how monstrous Fleming really was.

“But he said something,” said Armand. “Something I thought at the time I needed to remember, but then it got lost.”

“Misdirection,” said Beauvoir. “Fleming probably knew he’d said too much and tried to hide it under a pile of crap.”

“But what was it?” asked Gamache.

They racked their brains. Al Lepage? Brussels. The agency. What was it Fleming had said?

Jean-Guy got there first. It wasn’t something Fleming had said. It was something Gamache said.

“The play,” he said. “You mentioned the play, and put it on the table, remember?”

“That’s it,” said Gamache. “He asked if I’d read it.”

“You said it was beautiful, and that surprised him, but it was something else.”

Beauvoir reached behind him to the backseat and, picking up the satchel, he took out the worn and dirty script.

“He touched it and said if you’d really understood it, you wouldn’t need to be speaking with him.”

“Yes, yes,” said Gamache. “We wouldn’t need to visit Fleming because we’d have the answer.”

“The hiding place of the plans is in the goddamned play,” said Beauvoir, looking down at
She Sat Down and Wept
. “You read it, I read it. I don’t remember anything about plans or papers or anything hidden, do you?”

Gamache thought, scouring his memory. The play was set in a boardinghouse. The main character was a sad-sack fellow who kept winning the lottery. He’d lose all the money and end up back there. Then win again. And lose again. It was excruciating but also sensitively observed, insightful and very funny.

“The winning ticket wasn’t hidden or lost, was it?” asked Beauvoir.

Gamache shook his head. “No, he kept it on the chain around his neck, remember? Where the crucifix once was.”