“Magog. In an abandoned factory. Agent Nichol and Inspector Beauvoir found him by listening to the ambient sound.”
By listening to the spaces between words they’d found him.
“Please, Sylvain, go to La Grande. I’m begging you. If I’m wrong I’ll resign.”
“If we go there and you’re wrong I’ll bring you up on charges.”
Francoeur walked out of the office, out of the incident room. And disappeared.
Gamache glanced at the clock as he made for the door. One hour and forty-one minutes left. And Armand Gamache prayed, not for the first time that day, or the last.
“It could’ve been worse,” said Émile. “I mean, who knows who made this video? They could’ve made the entire operation look like a catastrophe. But it doesn’t. Tragic, yes. Terrible. But in many ways heroic. If the families have to watch, well . . .”
Gamache knew Émile was trying to be kind, trying to say the editing could have made him out to be a coward or a bumbling idiot. Could have looked like those who died had squandered their lives. Instead everyone had looked courageous. What was the word Émile used?
Heroic.
Gamache slowly climbed the steep stairs, Henri at his heels.
Well, he knew something Émile didn’t. He suspected who had made the video. And he knew why.
Not to make Gamache look bad, but to make him look good, too good. So good the Chief would feel as he did. A fraud. A fake. Lionized for nothing. Four Sûreté officers dead and Armand Gamache the hero.
Whoever had done this knew him well. And knew how to exact a price.
In shame.
TWENTY–FIVE
The storm blew in to Quebec City a few hours later and by two in the morning the capital was lashed by high winds and blowing snow. Highways were closed as visibility fell to zero in white-out conditions.
In the garret of the old stone home on St-Stanislas, Armand Gamache lay in bed, staring at the beamed ceiling. Henri, on the floor beside him, snored, oblivious to the snow whipping the windows.
Quietly, Gamache rose and looked out. He couldn’t see the building across the narrow street and could just barely make out the street lamps, their light all but blotted out by the driving snow.
Dressing quickly, he tiptoed down the stairs. Behind him he heard the clicking of Henri’s nails on the old wooden steps. Putting on his boots, parka, toque, heavy mitts and wrapping a long scarf around his neck Gamache bent down and petted Henri.
“You don’t have to come, you know.”
But Henri didn’t know. It wasn’t a matter of knowing. If Gamache was going, Henri was going.
Out they went, Gamache gulping as the wind hit his face and took away his breath. Then he turned his back and felt it shoving him.
Perhaps, he thought, this was a mistake.
But the storm was what he needed, wanted. Something loud, dramatic, challenging. Something that could blot out all thought, white them out.
The two struggled up the street, walking in the middle of the deserted roads. Not even snow plows were out. It was futile to try to clear snow in the middle of a blizzard.
It felt as though the city was theirs, as though an evacuation notice had sounded and Gamache and Henri had slept through it. They were all alone.
Up Ste-Ursule they trekked, past the convent where Général Montcalm had died. To rue St-Louis, then through the arched gate. The storm, if possible, was even worse outside old Quebec City. With no walls to stop it, the wind gathered speed and snow and slammed into trees, parked cars, buildings, plastering itself against whatever it hit. Including the Chief Inspector.
He didn’t care. He felt the cold hard flakes hit his coat, his hat, his face. And he heard it pelting into him. It was almost deafening.
“I love storms,” Morin said. “Any kind of storm. Nothing like sitting in a screen porch in summer in the middle of a thunderstorm. But my favorite are blizzards, as long as I don’t have to drive. If everyone’s safe at home, then bring it on.”
“Do you ever go out in them?” Gamache asked.
“All the time, even if it’s just to stand there. I love it. Don’t know why, maybe it’s the drama. Then to come back in and have a hot chocolate in front of the fire. Doesn’t get any better.”
Gamache trudged forward, his head down, looking at his feet as he plowed his way slowly through the knee-high drifts. Excited, Henri leapt up and down in the trail made by Gamache.
They made slow progress but finally found themselves in the park. Lifting his head the Chief was briefly blinded by the snow, then squinting he could just make out the shapes of ghostly trees reeling against the wind.
The Plains of Abraham.
Gamache looked behind and noticed his boot prints had filled in, disappearing almost as quickly as he made them. He wasn’t lost, not yet, but he knew he could be if he went too far.
Henri abruptly stopped his dancing and stood still, then he started to growl and slunk behind Gamache’s legs.
This was a sure sign nothing was there.
“Let’s go,” said Gamache. He turned and came face-to-face with someone else. A tall figure in a dark parka also plastered with snow. His head was covered in a hood. He stood quietly a few feet from the Chief.
“Chief Inspector Gamache,” the figure spoke, his voice clear and English.
“Yes.”
“I hadn’t expected to find you here.”
“I hadn’t expected to find you either,” Gamache shouted, struggling to make himself heard above the howling wind.
“Were you looking?” the man asked.
Gamache paused. “Not until tomorrow. I was hoping to speak to you tomorrow.”
“I thought so.”
“Is that why you’re here now?”
There was no answer. The dark figure just stood there. Henri, emboldened, crept forward. “Henri,” Gamache snapped. “Viens ici.” And the dog trotted to his master’s side.
“The storm seemed fortuitous,” said the man. “It makes it easier, somehow.”
“We need to talk,” said Gamache.
“Why?”
“I need to talk. Please.”
Now it was the man’s turn to pause. Then he indicated a building, a round stone turret built on the knoll, like a very small fortress. The two men and one dog trudged up the slight hill to the building and trying the door Gamache was a bit surprised to find it unlocked, but once inside he knew why.
There was nothing to steal. It was simply an empty, round, stone hut.
The Chief flicked a switch, and an exposed light bulb overhead came on. Gamache watched as his companion lowered his hood.
“I didn’t expect to find anyone out in this storm.” Tom Hancock whacked his snow-caked hat against his leg. “I love walking in storms.”
Gamache raised his head and stared at the young minister. It was almost exactly what Agent Morin had said.
Looking round he noticed there were no seats but he indicated the floor and both men sat, making themselves comfortable against the thick stone walls.
They were silent for a moment. Inside, without a window, without an opening, they could have been anywhere, anytime. It could have been two hundred years earlier, and outside not a storm but a battle.
“I saw the video,” Tom Hancock said. His cheeks were brilliant red and his face wet with melted snow. Gamache suspected he looked the same only, perhaps, not quite so young and vital.
“So did I.”
“Terrible,” said Hancock. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. It wasn’t quite as it looked, you know. I—” Gamache had to stop.
“You?”
“It made me look heroic and I wasn’t. It was my fault they died.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I made mistakes. I didn’t see the magnitude of what was happening until it was almost too late. And even then I made mistakes.”
“How so?”
Gamache looked at the young man. The minister. Who cared s
o much for hurt souls. He was a good listener, Gamache realized. It was a rare quality, a precious quality.
He took a deep breath. It smelled musky in there, as though the air wasn’t meant to be breathed, wasn’t meant to sustain life.
Then Gamache told this young minister everything. About the kidnapping and the long and patient plot. Hidden inside their own hubris, their certainty that advance technology would uncover any threat.
They’d been wrong.
Their attackers were clever. Adaptable.
“I’ve since discovered that security people call it an ‘asymmetrical approach,’ ” Gamache smiled. “Makes it sound geometric. Logical. And I guess in some ways it was. Too logical, certainly too simple for the likes of us. The plotters wanted to destroy the La Grande dam, and how would they do it? Not with a nuclear bomb, not with cleverly hidden devices. Not by infiltrating the security services or using telecommunications or anything that left a signature that could be found and traced. They did it by working where they knew we wouldn’t look.”
“And where was that?”
“In the past. They knew they could never compete with us when it came to modern technology, so they kept it simple. So simple it was invisible to us. They relied on our hubris, our certainty that state-of-the-art technology would protect us.”
The two men’s voices were low, like conspirators, or storytellers. It felt as it must have millennia ago, when people sat together across fires and told tales.
“What was their plan?”
“Two truck bombs. And two young men willing to drive them. Cree men.”
Tom Hancock, who had been bending forward toward the story and the storyteller, leaned slowly away. He felt his back against the cold stone wall. A wall built before the Cree knew of the disaster approaching. A disaster they would even assist, guiding the Europeans to the waterways. Helping them collect the pelts.
Too late, the Cree had realized they’d made a terrible mistake.
And now, hundreds of years later some of their descendents had agreed to drive huge trucks filled with explosives along a perfectly paved ribbon of road through a forest that had once been theirs. Toward a dam thirty stories high.
They would destroy it. And themselves. Their families. Their villages. The forests, the animals. The gods. All gone. They would unleash a torrent that would sweep it all away.
In the hopes that finally someone would hear their calls for help.
“That’s what they were told, anyway,” said the Chief, suddenly weary, wishing now he could sleep.
“What happened?” whispered Tom Hancock.
“Chief Superintendent Francoeur got there in time. Stopped them.”
“Were they—?”
“Killed?” Gamache nodded. “Yes. Both shot dead. But the dam was saved.”
Tom Hancock found himself almost sorry to hear that.
“You said these young Cree men were used. You mean this wasn’t their idea?”
“No, no more than it was the truck’s idea. Whoever did this chose things ready to explode. The bombs made by them and the Cree made by us.”
“But who were they? If the two Cree men were used by the bombers, then who planned all this? Who was behind it?”
“We don’t know for sure. Most died in the raid on the factory. One survived and is being questioned but I haven’t heard anything.”
“But you have your suspicions. Were they native?”
Gamache shook his head. “Caucasian. English speaking. All well trained. Mercenaries, perhaps. The goal was the dam, but the real target seems to have been the eastern seaboard of the United States.”
“Not Canada? Not Québec?”
“No. In bringing down La Grande they would have blacked out everything from Boston to New York and Washington. And not just for an hour, but for months. It would have blown the whole grid.”
“With winter coming too.”
They paused to imagine a city like New York, millions of frightened, angry people freezing in the dark.
“Home-grown terrorists?” asked Hancock.
“We think so.”
“You couldn’t have seen this coming,” said Hancock at last. “You speak of hubris, Chief Inspector. Perhaps you need to be careful yourself.”
It was said lightly, but the words were no less sharp.
There was a slight pause before Gamache responded. It was with a small chuckle. “Very true. But you mistake me, Mr. Hancock. It wasn’t the threat I should have seen coming, but once it was in motion I should have known the kidnapping wasn’t so simple much sooner. I should have known the backwoods farmer wasn’t that. And—”
“Yes?”
“I was in over my head. We all were. There was almost no time and it was clear something massive was happening. As soon as Agent Nichol isolated the words ‘La Grande’ I knew that was it. The dam is in Cree territory so I sent an agent there to ask questions.”
“Just one agent? Surely you should have sent everyone.” Only then did Hancock stop himself. “If you need any more suggestions on tactics, come to me. They teach it, you know, at the seminary.”
He smiled and heard a small guffaw beside him. Then a deep breath.
“The Cree have no love of the Sûreté. Nor should they,” said Gamache. “I judged one smart agent was enough. We have some contacts there, among the elders. Agent Lacoste went to them first.”
As the hours passed her reports had started to come in. She moved from community to community, always accompanied by the same elderly woman. A woman Chief Inspector Gamache had met years ago, sitting on a bench in front of the Château Frontenac. A woman everyone else had dismissed as a beggar.
He had helped her then. And she helped him now.
Agent Lacoste’s reports started to form a picture. Of a generation on the reserves without hope. Drunk and high and lost. With no life and no future and nothing to lose. It had all been taken. This Gamache already knew. Anyone with the stomach to look saw that.
But there was something he didn’t know. Lacoste had reports of outsiders arriving, teachers. White teachers, English teachers. Insinuating themselves into the communities years earlier. Most of the teachers were genuine, but a few had an agenda that went far beyond any alphabet or times table. Their curriculum would take time to achieve. The plan had started when the young men were boys. Impressionable, lost, frightened. Hungry for approval, acceptance, kindness, leadership. And the teachers had given them all that. Years it had taken to win their trust. Over those years the teachers taught them how to read and write, how to add and subtract. And how to hate. They’d also taught their students that they need not be victims any longer. They could be warriors again.
Many young Cree had toyed with the attractive idea, finally rejecting it. Sensing these were simply more white men with their own aims. But two young men had been seduced. Two young men on the verge of doing themselves in anyway.
And so they would go out in glory. Convinced the world would finally take notice.
At 11:18.
The La Grande dam would be destroyed. Two young Cree men would die. And, miles away, a young Sûreté agent would be executed.
Armed with this evidence Gamache had presented it, yet again, to Chief Superintendent Francoeur. But when Francoeur had again balked, instead of reasoning with the man Gamache had allowed his temper to flare. His disdain for the arrogant and dangerous Chief Superintendent to show.
That had been a mistake. It had cost him time. And maybe more.
“What happened?”
Armand Gamache looked over, almost surprised to find he wasn’t alone with his thoughts.
“A decision had to be made. And we all knew what that was. If Agent Lacoste’s information was right we had to abandon Agent Morin. Our efforts had to go into stopping the bombing. If we tried to save Morin the bombers would be warned and might move sooner. No one could risk that.”
“Not even you?”
Gamache sat still for a very long time. There was no so
und outside or inside. How many others had hidden in there against a violent world? A world not as kind, not as good, not as warm as they wished. How many fearful people had huddled where they sat? Taken refuge? Wondering when it might be safe to go out. Into the world.
“God help me, not even me.”
“You were willing to let him die?”
“If need be.” Gamache stared at Hancock, not defiantly but with a kind of wonder that decisions like that needed to be made. By him. Every day. “But not before I’d tried everything.”
“You finally convinced the Chief Superintendent?”
Gamache nodded. “With a little under two hours to go.”
“Good God,” exhaled Hancock. “That close. It came that close.”
Gamache said nothing for a moment. “We knew by then that Agent Morin was being held in an abandoned factory. Agent Nichol and Inspector Beauvoir found him by listening to the sounds and cross-referencing plane and train schedules. It was masterful investigating. He was being held in an abandoned factory hundreds of kilometers from the dam. The plotters kept themselves at a safe distance. In a town called Magog.”
“Magog?”
“Magog. Why?”
The minister looked bemused but also slightly disconcerted. “Gog and Magog?”
Gamache smiled. He’d forgotten that biblical reference.
“You will make an evil plan,” the minister quoted.
Once again Gamache saw Paul Morin at the far end of the room, bound to the chair, staring at the wall in front of him. At a clock.
Five seconds left.
“You found me,” said Morin.
Gamache took off across the room. Morin’s thin back straightened.
Three seconds left. Everything seemed to slow down. Everything seemed so clear. He could see the clock, hear the second hand thud closer to zero. See the hard metal frame chair and the rope strapped around Paul Morin.
There was no bomb. No bomb.
Behind Gamache, Beauvoir and the team rushed in. Gunshots exploded all round. The Chief leapt, to the young agent who sat up so straight.
One second left.
Gamache gathered himself. “I made one final mistake. I turned left when I should have turned right. Paul Morin had just described the sun on his face, but instead of heading to the door with light coming through, I headed for the darkened one.”