Chapter 16 #2
“That would mean when he got in the plane, he didn’t realize his companions were dangerous. But something happened either in the flight or once they’d landed. Someone said or did something to alert him to the danger.”
Armand nodded. “They might not have been Moretti’s soldiers, but someone else. Someone he trusted. Otherwise he’d never have gotten in the plane.”
He looked around, from the sparkling lake to the dark forest. “Whatever Charles hid here must be important.”
“And dangerous, for someone to kill for it. I’m a little afraid that they did find it, despite Frederick trying to fool them. Maybe that’s why we can’t. It’s no longer here.”
“That would be a shame,” he said, in a vast understatement. “They must think by killing Frederick they’ve covered their tracks. They obviously don’t know we have Charles’s map.”
“But what good is it, patron, if whatever he hid here is gone?”
“We don’t know that for sure. Besides, Charles wrote other things on the map.”
“Which we don’t understand.”
“But we will. What we can say with some certainty is that Charles believed that Frederick was on his side, or he’d never have confided in him.”
“And maybe he was. And maybe Frederick thought the people he was with were too.”
The Chief spent a moment staring at the base of the tree, then he turned and walked in the direction that arrow indicated.
After another hour of searching, he shook his head. “We need more people.”
But both senior officers knew they could not risk calling in a team to search since they did not know who to trust. Except themselves.
“We can only hope that if we can’t find it, neither did they,” he said as they walked back to the shore.
“If only we knew who ‘they’ were.”
“That would help,” he agreed.
While they paddled back to the float plane, Armand looked out across the vast expanse of fresh water. Isabelle was right. The map hadn’t yet given up all its secrets. Charles had written a series of numbers and symbols on this lake.
Armand had hoped they could decode it themselves. He hated the idea of letting that information out of their tight circle, but it seemed the time had come.
When they got to the plane, Armand asked the pilot to fly north, so he could see the damage from the recent fires.
He’d seen many in his life, from the air and on the ground.
He’d fought a few. A brutal, at times terrifying, experience as the winds created by the fire itself whipped around.
Making its path impossible to predict. Just hoping and praying he and his team weren’t suddenly surrounded by the flames.
But what he saw now was on a scale he could not imagine. It took his breath away. Mile after mile of devastation, as though some nuclear bomb had been set off. It was an end-of-the-world vision.
He remembered those apocalyptic photos of New York and Chicago and other American cities and towns, almost disappearing into the ash.
The sky orange as though the atmosphere itself was on fire.
The sun all but blotted out. It was what a nuclear winter would look like. Horrific. Horrifying. A warning.
Please, God, he thought, don’t let it happen again.
Though he knew it almost certainly would. Nothing could stop another wildfire now. He also knew that where they’d just stood was now the front line, next in line to be burned to the ground.
The plane was flying low over the charred remains of what had been an ancient woodland. Armand leaned forward and tapped the pilot’s shoulder.
“Okay, we can go,” he shouted.
He’d seen enough. He’d seen shame and sorrow made manifest. Now all he wanted was to go home.
The pilot made an A-OK sign with his fingers, then pointed up as the plane climbed. Armand opened his mouth to relieve the sudden pressure and watched as Lacoste hit the pilot on the shoulder and pointed down.
Seeing this, Armand sat back in the tiny float plane. His brow furrowed in what Lacoste assumed was pain but was, in fact, thought. He stared at the pilot’s back, then suddenly leaned forward again.
“Take us back to the lake.”
“Pardon?” the pilot shouted.
“The lake. Take us back.”
The pilot repeated what the Chief Inspector said, to confirm; then, with a shrug, he turned the plane around.
Isabelle cocked her head inquiringly at Gamache, but he was staring out the window looking down as the charred stumps slowly turned to healthy evergreens as they crossed the border between hell and heaven.
“‘FEDS’ stands for Fire Event Detection Suite,” said Whitehead, his voice low. The chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was obviously unhappy about needing to share this information, but was prepared to do so.
Jean-Guy had to lean across the Formica table to hear. When he went to write it down, Whitehead stopped him.
“Best to just remember it. It’s a new technology that tracks megafires.”
“I’ve never heard that term.”
“‘Megafire’? Not surprising. We had no words to describe what happened with those forest fires in Canada. There are now. I’m not sure if you can appreciate just how shocking, how horrifying it was for the millions of people in the path of those ash clouds.”
“I saw the news reports, those photos of New York—”
“Yes, that’s what people saw because that’s where the reporters live.
New York. Washington, Minneapolis. But other places were hit even worse by the toxic clouds from Canada.
Reservoirs for drinking water were poisoned.
Fertile fields ruined. Crops failed. Lives were ruined.
Health was ruined. The elderly. Babies with health conditions. ”
Whitehead suddenly stopped. After a long pause, in which he studied Beauvoir so intently the younger man felt stripped, he continued.
“It was different on the ground. In war it always is. The videos and photographs can never capture the horror. It’s being called, in some quarters, the worst assault on America since 9/11.”
“Now wait a minute, sir. I appreciate your job is to protect Americans and American soil, but this isn’t a war, and we didn’t attack you. There was nothing deliberate about it.”
“Perhaps not, but if you run down someone in an accident, they’re still dead.”
“There’s no ‘perhaps’ about it. Canada would never deliberately do that to the US.”
For some reason the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff seemed almost amused.
“Look, you and I both know that, but that’s not how it’s seen in many quarters, and not just by the crazy conspiracy theorists and the far-right lunatics. There’s a growing sentiment here, even among policymakers. They’re looking for an excuse.”
“To do what?”
“The Fire Event Detection Suite can tell us how and when and where the ash from the next megafire will land. And there will be a next. FEDS is predictive.”
His eyes again bore into Jean-Guy’s, asking him, begging him, to understand. But Jean-Guy was lost.
Finally, Whitehead decided to help him out. “What happens, son, if you can predict the future?”
Beauvoir took a deep breath and considered. “If you actually knew what was going to happen? That would be pretty powerful.”
“Not pretty powerful, it would make that person omnipotent. And then let’s take it another step. Suppose in knowing the future, you could also control it?”
Jean-Guy looked at the head of the most powerful military on earth and wondered if he was a madman. Because what he’d just said was lunacy.
“We’re in the real world, sir. What you’re describing is science fiction.”
“You think? The future is shaped every day by men and women who invent technologies. Often ones whose potential they don’t understand.
Often ones used far differently than their creators intended.
Technologies which to our grandparents would have been science fiction.
And what happens when that technology—AI, for instance, with its voice and image cloning—is fed to social media?
Public opinion is influenced, manipulated, changed, shaped.
Governments are elected, policies formed and implemented. The future is created.”
Jean-Guy was now trying to decide when the next flight back to a somewhat sane land might be. But General Whitehead was still talking.
“That plot to contaminate Montréal’s drinking water was about water security, right?”
“Right.”
“Have you been paying attention to that issue? Not how vulnerable cities might be to a terrorist attack like the one you almost had in Montréal, that’s certainly one thing. But there’s a larger issue. One facing almost every nation.”
“What larger issue?”
Despite himself, Jean-Guy found he was drawn into what the General was saying.
He could see that this man—who had been in wars, directed battles, had had to make terrible decisions with horrific consequences affecting tens of thousands under his command—was stressed.
And with that Jean-Guy felt his own anxiety rising.
“Listen, sir, please. Just tell me. What’s happening? What’s about to happen? You know something.”
“I don’t know, not for sure. But I am afraid.”
“Of what?”
Whitehead stood up and placed a hundred-dollar bill on the table, even though Beauvoir had only had a coffee and the General, from what Jean-Guy could see, had had nothing.
“Of what happens when this”—he held up his untouched glass of water—“runs out.”
Armand was so anxious to get to the shore he stepped out of the dinghy before it reached the shallows and went thigh-deep into the frigid water.
But he didn’t seem to notice the cold. He was completely focused on one thing.
Chief Inspector Gamache was, essentially, storming the beach. Plowing through the water. Eyes forward, desperate to get to land.
Once on the rocky shore, he sprinted to the tree line, with Lacoste close behind. It was as though the Chief was being pursued by all the demons in hell.
He made straight for the tree. Dropping to his knees, he grabbed up the stone and looked again at the etching in the tree bark.
His teeth were beginning to chatter, and his body tremble. The brutally cold water had quickly penetrated to his bones and was advancing on the marrow. Isabelle took off her pink tuque with the pom-pom and held it out, but he didn’t seem to notice.
Armand’s sole focus was on the arrow. He was bending over, studying it. Then something happened.
He started to laugh, with a slight edge of hysteria.
“What is it, patron?” She’d never heard him make quite this sound before.
He tipped his head back, and the laughing stopped. Now he almost sobbed. “Oh, dear God, thank you.”
“What?”
“The arrow isn’t pointing north, it’s pointing up. Like the pilot did. Up.” He pointed, and she followed his gaze.
There, high up and all but hidden among the branches and fragrant needles of the evergreen, was a sack. A green garbage bag. It was strung up, as campers did, as Lacoste herself had done, to keep food and dirty dishes out of reach of bears.
But what was far above them was not, they knew, food. And it wasn’t bears Charles Langlois was afraid of. But a wolf.
Lacoste dropped her astonished gaze to Gamache. The Chief Inspector was sitting back on his heels, his head now lowered into his trembling hands.