The fear and confusion. The shock, the pain. The searing pain as he clutched at his abdomen. And the loneliness.
On the screen he saw his own face watching, pleading, as Gamache left him. Bleeding and alone. And he saw Gamache’s agony, at having to do it.
The view changed and they followed the team, chasing gunmen through corridors. Exchanging fire. A Sûreté officer wounded. A gunman hit.
Then Gamache taking the stairs two at a time, in pursuit, the man turning to fire. Gamache throwing himself at him and the two struggling, fighting hand to hand. From the screen came a confusion of arms and torsos, gasps, as they fought. Finally the Chief grabbed for the weapon that had been knocked out of his hand. Swinging it at the terrorist he caught him with a terrible crunch to the head. The man dropped.
As the cameras watched, Gamache collapsed to his knees beside the man and felt for a pulse, then he cuffed him and dragged him down the stairs. At the bottom the Chief staggered a bit, catching himself. Struggling to stand upright, Gamache turned. Beauvoir was sprawled against the wall across the room. A bloody bandage in one hand and a gun in the other.
There was a rasping, gasping.
“I . . . have . . . one,” Gamache was saying, trying to catch his breath.
Émile hadn’t moved since the video began. He’d only twice in his career had to fire his gun. Both times he’d killed someone. Hadn’t wanted to, but he’d meant to.
And he’d taught his officers well. It was an absolute, you never, ever take out your gun unless you mean to use it. And when you use it, aim for the body, aim to stop. Dead, if need be.
And now he watched Armand, his face bloody from the fight, sway a bit, then step forward. From his belt he grabbed his pistol. The gunman was unconscious at his feet. Shots continued all round. Émile saw the Chief Inspector turn, react to shooting above him. Gamache took another step forward, raised his gun and took shots in quick succession. A target was hit. The shooting stopped.
For a moment. Then there was a rapid fire.
Gamache’s arms lifted. His whole body lifted. And twisted. And he fell to the ground.
Beauvoir held his breath. It was what he’d seen that day. The Chief lying, unmoving, on the floor.
“Officer down,” Beauvoir heard himself rasp. “The Chief’s down.”
It seemed forever. Beauvoir tried to move, to drag himself forward, but he couldn’t. Around him he heard gunfire. In his headphones officers were calling to each other, shouting instructions, locations, warnings.
But all he saw was the still form in front.
Then there were hands on him and Agent Lacoste kneeling, bending over him. Her face worried and determined.
He saw her eyes move down his body, to his bloody hand clutching his abdomen. “Here, over here,” she shouted and was joined by a medic.
“The Chief,” Beauvoir whispered and motioned. Lacoste’s face fell as she looked.
As medics leaned over Beauvoir, putting pressure bandages on his wound, sticking needles into him, calling for a stretcher, Beauvoir watched Lacoste and a medic run to the Chief. They moved toward him but shooting erupted and they had to take cover.
Gamache lay motionless on the concrete floor just beyond their reach.
Finally Lacoste raced up the stairs and from her camera they saw her trace the shots to a gunman in a doorway above. She engaged him, eventually hitting him. Grabbing his gun she shouted, “Clear!”
The medic ran to Gamache. Across the floor Beauvoir strained to see.
Émile watched as the medic leaned over Gamache.
“Merde,” the medic whispered. Blood covered the side of the Chief Inspector’s head and ran into his ear and down his neck.
The medic looked up as Lacoste joined him. The Chief was coughing slightly, still alive. His eyes were half closed, glazed, and he gasped for breath.
“Chief, can you hear me?” She put her hands on either side of his head and lifted it, looking into his eyes. He focused and struggled to keep his eyes open.
“Hold this.” The medic grabbed a bandage and put it over the wound by Gamache’s left temple. Lacoste pressed down, holding it there, trying to stop the bleeding.
The Chief stirred, tried to focus, fighting for breath. The medic saw this, his brow furrowed, perplexed. Then he ripped open the Chief’s tactical vest and exhaled.
“Christ.”
Lacoste looked down. “Oh, no,” she whispered.
The Chief’s chest was covered in blood. The medic tore Gamache’s shirt, exposing his chest. And there, on the side, was a wound.
From across the room Beauvoir watched, but all he could see were the Chief’s legs, his polished black leather shoes on the floor moving slightly. But it was his hand Beauvoir stared at. The Chief’s right hand, bloody, tight, taut, straining. And in the headset he heard gasping. Struggling for breath. Gamache’s right arm outstretched, fingers reaching. His hand grabbing, trembling, as though the breath was just out of reach.
As medics lifted Beauvoir onto a stretcher he whispered over and over again, pleading, “No, no. Please.”
He heard Lacoste shout, “Chief!”
There was more coughing, weaker. Then silence.
And he saw Gamache’s right hand spasm, shudder. Then softly, like a snowflake, it fell.
And Jean-Guy Beauvoir knew Armand Gamache was dying.
On the uncomfortable plastic chairs, Beauvoir let out a small moan. The video had moved on. Shots of the squad engaging the remaining gunmen.
Ruth stared at the screen, her Scotch untouched.
“Chief!” Lacoste called again.
Gamache’s eyes were open slightly, staring. His lips moved. They could barely hear what he was saying. Trying to say.
“Reine . . . Marie. Reine . . . Marie.”
“I’ll tell her,” Lacoste whispered into his ear and he closed his eyes.
“His heart’s stopped,” the medic called and leaned over Gamache, preparing for CPR. “He’s in cardiac arrest.”
Another medic arrived and kneeling down he grabbed the other’s arm.
“No wait. Get me a syringe.”
“No fucking way. His heart’s stopped, we need to start it.”
“For God’s sake do something,” Lacoste shouted.
The second medic rifled through the medical kit. Finding a syringe he plunged it into the Chief’s side and broke the plunger off.
There was no reaction. Gamache lay still, blood on his face and chest. Eyes closed.
The three stared down. He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
Then, then. There was a slight sound. A small rasp.
They looked at each other.
Émile finally blinked. His eyes felt dry as though they’d been sandblasted and he took a deep breath.
He knew the rest of the story, of course, from calls to Reine-Marie and visits to the hospital. And the Radio-Canada news.
Four Sûreté officers killed, including the first by the side of the road, four others wounded. Eight terrorists dead, one captured. One critically wounded, not expected to survive. At first the news had reported the Chief Inspector among the dead. How that leaked out no one knew. How any of it leaked out no one knew.
Inspector Beauvoir had been badly hurt.
Émile had arrived that afternoon, driving straight from Quebec City to Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Montreal. There he found Reine-Marie and Annie. Daniel was on a flight back from Paris.
They looked wrung out, nothing left.
“He’s alive,” Reine-Marie had said, hugging Émile, holding him.
“Thank God for that,” he’d said, then seen Annie’s expression. “What is it?”
“The doctors think he’s had a stroke.”
Émile had taken a deep breath. “Do they know how bad?”
Annie shook her head and Reine-Marie put her arm around her daughter. “He’s alive, that’s all that matters.”
“Have you seen him?”
Reine-Marie nodded, unable now to spea
k. Unable to tell anyone what she’d seen. The oxygen, the monitors, the blood and bruising. His eyes closed. Unconscious.
And the doctor saying they didn’t know the extent of the damage. He could be blind. Paralyzed. He could have another one. The next twenty-four hours would tell.
But it didn’t matter. She’d held his hand, smoothed it, whispered to him.
He was alive.
The doctor had also explained the chest wound. The bullet had broken a rib which had punctured the lung causing it to collapse and collapsing the second. Crushing the life out of him. The wound must have happened early on, the breathing becoming more and more difficult, more labored, until it became critical. Fatal.
“The medic caught it,” the doctor said. “In time.”
He hadn’t added “just,” but he knew it to be the case.
Now the only worry was the head wound.
And so they’d waited, in their own world of the third floor of Hôtel-Dieu. An antiseptic world of hushed conversations, of soft fleet feet and stern faces.
Outside, the news flew around the continent, around the world.
A plot to blow up the La Grande dam.
It had been a decade in the planning. The progress so slow as to be invisible. The tools so primitive as to be dismissed.
Canadian and American government spokesmen refused to say how the plan was stopped, citing national security, but they did admit under close questioning that the shootout and deaths of four Sûreté officers had been part of it.
Chief Superintendent Francoeur was given, and took, credit for preventing a catastrophe.
Émile knew, as did anyone who’d had a glimpse inside the workings of major police departments, that what was being said was just a fraction of the truth.
And so, as the world chewed over these sensational findings, on the third floor of Hôtel-Dieu they waited. Jean-Guy Beauvoir came out of surgery and after a rocky day or so, began the long, slow climb back.
And after twelve hours Armand Gamache struggled awake. When he finally opened his eyes he saw Reine-Marie by his side, holding his hand.
“La Grande?” he rasped.
“Safe.”
“Jean-Guy?”
“He’ll be fine.”
When she returned to the waiting room where Émile, Annie, her husband David and Daniel sat, she was beaming.
“He’s resting. Not dancing yet, but he will.”
“Is he all right?” Annie asked, afraid yet to believe it, to let go of the dread too soon in case it was a trick, some jest of a sad God. She would never recover from the shock of being in her car, listening to Radio-Canada and hearing the bulletin. Her father . . .
“He will be,” said her mother. “He has some slight numbness down his right side.”
“Numbness?” asked Daniel.
“The doctors are happy,” she assured them. “They say it’s minor, and he’ll make a full recovery.”
She didn’t care. He could limp for the rest of his days. He was alive.
But within two days he was up and walking, haltingly. Two days after that he could make it down the corridor. Stopping at the rooms, to sit by the beds of men and women he’d trained and chosen and led into that factory.
Up and down the corridor he limped. Up and down. Up and down.
“What are you doing, Armand?” Reine-Marie had asked quietly as they walked, hand in hand. It had been five days since the shooting and his limp had all but disappeared, except when he first got up, or pushed too hard.
Without pausing he told her. “The funerals are next Sunday. I plan to be there.”
They took another few paces before she spoke. “You intend to be at the cathedral?”
“No. I intend to walk with the cortege.”
She watched him in profile. His face determined, his lips tight, his right hand squeezed into a fist against the only sign he’d had a stroke. A slight tremble, when he was tired or stressed.
“Tell me what I can do to help.”
“You can keep me company.”
“Always, mon coeur.”
He stopped and smiled at her. His face bruised, a bandage over his left brow.
But she didn’t care. He was alive.
The day of the funerals was clear and cold. It was mid-December and a wind rattled down from the Arctic and didn’t stop until it slammed into the men, women and children who lined the cortege route.
Four coffins, draped in the blue and white fleur-de-lys flag of Québec, sat on wagons pulled by solemn black horses. And behind them a long line of police officers from every community in Québec, from across Canada, from the United States and Britain, from Japan and France and Germany. From all over Europe.
And at the head, walking at slow march in dress uniform, were the Sûreté. And leading that column were Chief Superintendent Francoeur and all the other top-ranking officers. And behind them, alone, was Chief Inspector Gamache, at the head of his homicide division. Walking the two kilometers, only limping toward the very end. Face forward, eyes determined. Until the salute, and the guns.
He’d closed his eyes tight then and raised his face to the sky in a grimace, a moment of private sorrow he could no longer contain. His right hand clamped tight.
It became the image of grief. The image on every front page and every news program and every magazine cover.
Ruth reached out and clicked the video closed. They sat in silence for a moment.
“Well,” she finally said. “I don’t believe a word of it. All done on a soundstage I bet. Good effects, but the acting sucked. Popcorn?”
Beauvoir looked at her, holding out the plastic bowl.
He took a handful. Then they walked slowly through the blizzard, heads bowed into the wind, across the village green to Peter and Clara’s home. Halfway across, he took her arm. To steady her, or himself, he wasn’t really sure.
But she let him. They made their way to the little cottage, following the light through the storm. And once there, they sat in front of the fireplace and ate dinner. Together.
Armand Gamache rose.
“Are you all right?” Émile got up too.
Gamache sighed. “I just need time alone.” He looked at his friend. “Merci.”
He felt nauseous, physically sickened. Seeing those young men and women, shot. Killed. Again. Gunned down in dark corridors, again.
They’d been under his command. Hand-picked by him against Chief Superintendent Francoeur’s protests. He’d taken them anyway.
And he’d told them there were probably six gunmen in the place. Doubling what he’d been told. What Agent Nichol had told him.
There’re three gunmen, the message had said.
He’d taken six officers, all he could muster, plus Beauvoir and himself.
He thought it was enough. He was wrong.
“You can’t do this,” Chief Superintendent Francoeur had said, his voice low with warning. The Chief Superintendent had burst into his office as he’d prepared to leave. In his ear Paul Morin was singing the alphabet song. He sounded drunk, exhausted, at the end.
“Once more please,” Gamache said to Morin then whipped off his headset and Chief Superintendent Francoeur immediately stopped talking.
“You have all the information you need,” the Chief Inspector glared at Francoeur.
“Gleaned from an old Cree woman and a few sniff-heads? You think I’m going to act on that?”
“Information gathered by Agent Lacoste, who’s on her way back. She’s coming with me, as are six others. For your information, here are their names. I’ve alerted the tactical squad. They’re at your disposal.”
“To do what? There’s no way the La Grande dam is going to be destroyed. We’ve heard nothing about it on the channels. No one has. Not the feds, not the Americans, not even the British and they monitor everything. No one’s heard anything. Except you and that demented Cree elder.”
Francoeur stared at Gamache. The Chief Superintendent was so angry he was vibrating.
“That dam is going to be blown up in one hour and forty-three minutes. You have enough time to get there. You know where to be and what to do.”
Gamache’s voice, instead of rising, had lowered.
“You don’t give me orders,” Francoeur snarled. “You know nothing I don’t and I know no reason to go there.”
Gamache went to his desk and took out his gun. For an instant Francoeur looked frightened, then Gamache put the pistol on his belt and walked quickly up to the Chief Superintendent.
They glared at each other. Then Gamache spoke, softly, intensely.
“Please, Sylvain, if I have to beg I will. We’re both too old and tired for this. We need to stop this now. You’re right, it’s not my place to give you orders, I apologize. Please, please do as I ask.”
“No way. You have to give me more.”
“That’s all I have.”
“But it doesn’t make sense. No one would try to blow up the dam this way.”
“Why not?”
They’d been over this a hundred times. And there was no time left.
“Because it’s too rough. Like throwing a rock at an army.”
“And how did David slay Goliath?”
“Come on, this isn’t biblical and these aren’t biblical times.”
“But the same principle applies. Do the unexpected. This would work precisely because we won’t be expecting it. And while you might not see it as David and Goliath, the bombers certainly do.”
“What are you? Suddenly an expert in national security? You and your arrogance, you make me sick. You go stop that bomb if you really believe hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake.”
“No. I’m going to get Paul Morin.”
“Morin? You’re saying you know where he is? We’ve been looking all night,” Francoeur waved to the army of officers in the outer office, trying to trace Morin. “And you’re telling me you know where he is?”
Francoeur was trembling with rage, his voice almost a scream.
Gamache waited. In his peripheral vision he could see the clock, ticking down.