Chapter 21
Armand stopped just inside the door and exhaled a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
“Bert.”
“Armand.” They shook hands.
The General, on seeing Beauvoir, greeted him like an old comrade, though Jean-Guy’s greeting was less warm.
On the way there, as he drove and Isabelle worked in the back seat, Jean-Guy had wondered if he should say something. Prepare the Chief for disappointment. Though he knew that probably wasn’t necessary.
While Armand never gave up hope, neither did he divorce himself from reality. And the reality was that General Albert Whitehead, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would not show up. Again.
“I know,” said Armand.
“Know what?”
“What you’re thinking. And that you’re right. General Whitehead probably won’t show. But we have to try.”
When does “trying” become a waste of precious time? When does hope become delusion?
And then Armand said something completely unexpected: “I’m not sure I would, if I was him.”
In the rearview mirror, Jean-Guy saw Isabelle look up.
“Why not?”
“Do you wonder why he hasn’t told us all he knows? Because he clearly knows something.”
“It must be sensitive information,” said Beauvoir. “Classified?”
“I think so. Otherwise he’d have given it to you, or sent it to me.”
“In sending him the theater tickets, you’re asking him to commit treason,” said Lacoste.
“Oui.”
A few kilometers passed in darkness, and silence, except for the tap of Isabelle’s fingers on her keyboard.
“So no,” said Armand, quietly, “I don’t expect him to show.”
And yet, when they walked through the door, there he was. Not in uniform, of course. Bert Whitehead had his coat folded over his arm and was wearing a plaid flannel shirt and cords. He looked like a lumberjack meeting a university professor.
General Whitehead turned his incisive gaze on Isabelle and offered his hand. “You must be Inspector Lacoste. Armand speaks of you often. And highly.”
He held her eyes, and the two recognized each other, if not physically, then as veterans of similar battles. Then he spoke quietly to Armand. “I envy you them. I had two young adjuncts. Once.”
Once. Before. And now the eternal “after.”
Introductions over, Whitehead glanced around in astonishment. “What is this place?”
“Take your seats please,” said the elderly usher. “The show’s about to begin. If you can just…”
He reached out with his foot and tried to shove the General’s boot back over the thick black line painted across the floor of the ornate theater. Then the usher gave Gamache a stern look.
Without realizing it, the General was standing half in and half out of the United States, while the Chief Inspector was perfectly aware that he was standing half in and half out of Canada.
Whitehead raised an eloquent brow, and while staring, glaring, at Armand, he very slowly moved his foot. As did Gamache. For a moment the two large men, mirroring each other’s movements, looked like they were line dancing.
The Canadian head of homicide for the S?reté du Québec had invited the American Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the only place he could think of, the only place he knew of, where they could meet in person, anonymously, without crossing a border.
“Welcome to the Haskell Opera House,” said Armand.
“An opera house, here? In the middle of nowhere? You brought me all the way from DC for an opera?”
“I brought you here so we could talk, of course. The music is the cherry on top.”
“Maraschino,” said Jean-Guy and got a laugh from the General, which no one else understood.
“Here” was the village of Stanstead, Québec. And also the small town of Derby Line, Vermont. The Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddled the two communities, and therefore the US-Canada border.
It had been built more than a century earlier, a collaboration between the two communities, the two countries, when borders were disregarded, essentially meaningless. People moved back and forth at will. That all changed with 9/11.
“Your seats, please,” said the usher, getting vexed even though they were essentially alone in the theater.
Isabelle and Jean-Guy sat on the Canadian side, while General Whitehead and Chief Inspector Gamache took seats behind them, side by side, on either side of the black line of the international border.
The lights went down, two actors took the stage, one sat at a piano, and they started to sing. The performance of Billy Bishop Goes to War began.
The colonial boys are lining up, we’re lining up for war …
“Did you get the links we sent?” whispered Armand.
“Yes. We’re aware. I was going to tell you about .family, but you’ve found it on your own. What they’re saying on those sites has begun to spread all over the dark web.”
Armand looked at him. “They’re saying that Canada is about to attack the US. Some say we already have, in the form of the wildfires. These are marginal people on marginal sites. Please tell me you don’t take it seriously.”
“You look dubious.”
“Dubious doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“Remember January 6.”
“Yes, of course.” It was the argument everyone used when discussing the power of social media to distort and manipulate. The example was getting old, though no less true.
“So-called patriots stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the government,” Whitehead continued anyway.
“To overturn a legitimate election. Here. In the United States.” He swept his hand around, though he was actually indicating Canada.
Armand did not correct him. “And they almost succeeded. Good, reasonable people, and some idiots, were made to believe a lie, then act in the most unconscionable way. Never, ever underestimate the power of social media, of groupthink, Armand. Or the power of toxic nationalism. Combine the two and you have—” He lifted his hands in exasperation.
“Had you told me months earlier such a thing was possible, I’d have been … dubious.”
Armand was bewildered and disappointed. He had hoped Bert Whitehead had more to say than rehashing the bizarre conspiracy theory about a Canadian invasion that was patently never going to happen. They needed substance, not an unnecessary lesson in human dynamics and misguided patriotism.
We were off to fight the Hun, and it looked like lots of fun.
Somehow it didn’t seem like war at all, at all, at all.
General Whitehead stared at the stage; then, raising his formidable brows, he looked at Gamache. “A musical about the First World War?”
“About Billy Bishop. A Canadian pilot. Oui.”
“He existed?”
“Yes.”
“I’m talking about an attack, Armand. But not the one on the websites you found.”
Armand was relieved. He hadn’t really thought there was anything to that insanity about Canada invading the US, but as Bert had said, equally unlikely things had happened in the recent past.
“What are we talking about?”
“What happens when the water runs out?”
“You’ve already asked Jean-Guy that. And I asked our Prime Minister.”
“You spoke to James Woodford about this?”
“I did. You look worried.”
Bert Whitehead was quiet for a moment. “What did he say?”
“The Prime Minister? What could he say? When I asked if there were plans to attack the US, he thought I was crazy. When I then asked what happens when the water runs out, I thought he was going to call the guards. He did admit that he had had some foreknowledge of the poisoning plot but had dismissed it.”
“He was dubious?”
“That’s one word for it, yes.”
“I think you’re doing the same with these latest rumors, Armand. Dismissing them too quickly.”
“But you just said we aren’t talking about a war between the US and Canada.”
“That’s not exactly what I said. Wars come in different shapes and sizes today. You know that.”
Armand thought for a moment, then leaned forward and said to Isabelle, who was clearly listening, “You said something similar earlier today.”
“I did?”
“You suggested what was happening wasn’t a prelude to outright battle, but something more covert.”
“And I think you’re right,” Whitehead said to Lacoste. “At least, that’s the first thrust.”
Armand was staring at his companion. “The first thrust? Are you saying there’s a second? An attack actually planned?”
“Not just planned. From what I can see, it’s already started.”
I’m dreamin’ of the trees in Canada, Northern Lights are dancing in my head.
If I die, then let me die in Canada, where there’s a chance I’ll die in bed.
“Come with me.” Gamache rose to his feet. “We need to talk privately. Beauvoir. Lacoste.”
“With you, patron.”
One of the actors in the two-person play was now pretending to be Lady St. Helier, in a meeting with Billy.
You’ve been making rather a mess of it, haven’t you. You’re a rather rude young man, behaving like cannon fodder. Perfectly acceptable characteristics, in a Canadian.
There was scattered laughter in the near-empty theater. On stage now, Lady St. Helier announced she’d written a poem in Billy’s honor.
Isabelle paused at the exit, to listen.
So don’t be so na?ve, and take that heart off your sleeve,
For a fool and his life will soon be parted.
War’s a fact of life today, it will not be wished away,
Forget that fact, and you’ll be dead before you started.
The door swung shut.
Once out of the opera house, they found themselves in the free library. Armand and Bert were sweeping the walls with their hands, looking for the light switch, when the usher appeared. He’d clearly followed them.
“You can’t be here. The library’s closed. Please return to your seats.” He’d turned on the overhead lights and was looking at them like a father at disappointing children.
Armand had hoped not to have to do this, but there was no choice. He brought out his ID, and the usher, fortunately on the Québec side, opened his eyes wide, looked up at the Chief, and nodded.
“Désolé. I should have recognized you, Monsieur Gamache.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. Please keep this between ourselves.” Gamache held the man’s eyes and the usher nodded.
“Absolument.”