Chapter 22
“The United States is going to attack Canada?” said Lacoste. “Come on.”
Gamache was studying the General. “What do you know, Bert?”
“I know the necessary first step in any war. And so do you. How do you get young people to sign up and fight? How do you get their parents to let them? How do you motivate them to risk and perhaps lose their lives?”
“You create a common enemy,” said Gamache, quietly. “A threat.”
“A clear and present danger, yes.”
“But why do it?” asked Beauvoir. “Why would anyone want to provoke a war between us?”
“For the water, of course,” snapped Whitehead. “Haven’t you been paying attention? The US is running out.”
Armand Gamache turned to Lacoste. “Call Nichol. Have her find out who’s behind the .family posts.”
To Beauvoir he said, “Contact the Chief Meteorologist. Send her that sequence of numbers and symbols from Charles Langlois’s map.”
“The password?”
“They’re not just a password, they’re an isobar. We need to know what specifically the sequence says. But don’t tell her where we got them.”
“I wouldn’t,” said Whitehead, and Beauvoir, his phone out, hesitated and looked at Gamache.
“Why not?” Armand asked.
“Because the isobar your young biologist put on his map must have come from some document he found. One that scared him. Someone in the know had to provide the sequence to whoever’s behind this. Who better than a meteorologist?”
“He’s right,” said Gamache, and Beauvoir clicked off his phone. “Come on, Bert. We need more. What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know, not for sure. Not really.
Or maybe I just refuse to believe it. Like January 6.
We had warning, we saw the posts, we just never…
” He wiped his hand across his face, then gave a huge exhale.
“But this? I suspected something was up when you first asked for help with the poisoning plot. In digging deeper, I found those messages about a possible aggression by Canada. They were so in lockstep and yet so unbelievable. Hardly worth noting. But then they began spreading, appearing outside far-right conspiracy sites. It seemed someone powerful was trying to make Canada appear as our enemy. A threat. But why? And then I remembered the plan.”
“Plan?” said Gamache. “There’s a plan?”
But Whitehead was focused on his own train of thought. “Someone high up in our government, someone with clearance, must have found it and seen the possibilities. Though, of course, it doesn’t have to be our—”
“Wait.” Armand put up his hand and the General stopped. “Are you saying there’s an American plan? To what? Invade Canada for our water?”
“Of course we have one,” snapped Whitehead. “The fact a plan exists isn’t the point.”
“Really?”
“Don’t be so na?ve, Armand. What makes you think the most powerful nation on earth wouldn’t have contingency plans for everything?
Attack from North Korea, Russia, China. Terrorists.
Nuclear and conventional attacks. Cyberattacks.
We’ve had war games in case extraterrestrials invade, for God’s sake.
And now there’s global warming. Heating.
And with it extreme weather. Cat 5 hurricanes and predictions we’ll have to raise our measuring to Cat 6 and even 7.
Tornadoes, earthquakes. Forest fires. Floods and, yes, drought.
You think we wouldn’t be prepared for that?
We will do what is necessary to survive. As would you.”
Whitehead’s own levee had broken and out poured this no-doubt classified information.
“Be prepared?” said Gamache. “You make it sound reasonable, as though you’re leading a Boy Scout troop. You hoping to get your ‘invading an innocent country’ badge, Bert? Oh, wait, you already have that.”
All-out war threatened to break out now between the two men. But both got to where they were by choosing their battles carefully. And controlling their emotions. This was not a fight either wanted.
Both stepped back.
“Désolé,” said Armand, with a tight smile. “That went too far.”
“And so might we,” General Whitehead admitted. “If someone has their way.”
“Do you have any idea who?”
“No. But having a plan and implementing it are two very different things. Is the US going to invade Canada tomorrow? No. No chance. Will we if necessary? I think so. Don’t look so shocked.
We’re both realists, we have to be. What happens when you’re low on water but have missiles up the yin-yang?
You use one to get the other. What would you do, Armand, if you and your family were dying of thirst and your neighbor had plenty of water? ”
“I’d knock on the door and ask for whatever they could spare. I wouldn’t organize a home invasion.”
“We’d do the same thing. Ask for help, politely.
And I’m sure Canada would share. Even open its doors to the first few thousand environmental refugees.
The first hundred thousand. Maybe even the first million Americans who came knocking, asking for a cup of your pure spring water.
But ten, twenty, a hundred million Americans needing your water?
Your food? Your power? Your hospitals and housing?
” He shook his head. “No, Armand. We know what would happen.”
“Okay, walk me through it.”
General Whitehead hesitated. Armand was asking him to go even further. To divulge their invasion plan. To give the enemy forewarning. To commit treason.
Whitehead took a deep breath, then took the plunge.
“We’ve run the scenarios. It would be little use asking for your help.
We would at first, mostly to show the international community we’re reasonable.
But eventually, as I said, we’d be forced to take what we need.
Ninety percent of your population lives within a hundred miles of the border.
” He looked down at the black line on the floor that, to Armand’s tired eyes, seemed to be thinning. “It would not take long.”
Armand was quiet. Trying to absorb what was being said. Trying, he knew, to marshal arguments. And he found one.
“But you have the Great Lakes. Why would the US need to take over Canada when it has the largest supply of fresh water in the world right there?”
“And what would Canada do if we started to drain the Great Lakes? It’s a shared resource, as you know.”
“What could Canada do?” Armand’s voice had risen slightly in pitch. “We wouldn’t shoot you.”
“Not at first, no.”
“We’d protest, but we’d be powerless to stop it. We would not attack. What? Did I say something funny?”
Whitehead was smiling. “We’ve run the scenarios in war games.
Not, of course, on the ground, but in computer models.
I’ve played all sides many times. Sometimes I’m in charge of the American response to the crisis.
Sometimes I’m Canada. I’ve been the UK. Once I was the UN.
That was boring. I just sat there writing stern letters of protest. The outcome was always the same. Shall I tell you?”
Armand wanted to decline. Wanted to pick up his coat and go home to Reine-Marie and the dogs. And Gracie. To have a drink by the fire and read a book. And not know.
He nodded.
“In our war games, when Canada found out we were taking huge amounts of water from the Great Lakes and other sources, there’d first be a diplomatic response.
A polite, then not-so-polite request from your country to stop.
When that didn’t work, there’d be a trade war.
We depend on you for more things than most know.
Minerals, for instance. Cement. Imagine if we no longer had cement? But more than that—”
“Oil,” said Armand, with some sadness, seeing where this was going.
“Yes.”
“If you started to drain the Great Lakes, we’d turn off the tap.”
“Bingo.” Whitehead tapped the side of his nose, then turned his finger toward Armand, like a pointed gun.
“And that would be it. The trigger. Even the threat of it would be enough to provoke an invasion. You’d be framed in our media as the aggressors.
As the enemy. Not helping an ally in need.
Not sharing your abundant water, and even turning off our supply of oil.
Stopping shipment of valuable minerals. We get most of our uranium, aluminum, nickel, potash from Canada.
When faced with drought, with abandoned cities, with an energy crisis and food shortages?
When looking north and seeing the ready riches just on the other side of the longest undefended border in the world?
” Once again General Whitehead looked down at the black line between them.
“Don’t you think desperate people pushed to the limit would readily, happily even, get behind taking those resources?
To survive? People break into homes when they’re starving.
This would be framed as the same thing. Just a very big home. ”
Gamache was shaking his head. “I refuse to believe it.”
“For God’s sake, man, take your head out of your own ass before it’s too late.”
“If you crossed our border in an armed invasion, Canada would push back. It would be a losing proposition, we could never hold out, but we’d try.”
“I know you would. That happened every time in our war games. And you know what happened next? The first image of a Canadian soldier killing an American, and even those against an invasion would come onside. It’s human nature.
Our nature. You kill one American and a hundred more take their place.
It would quickly degenerate into all-out war, all along the border, from New England—”
“The Maritime Provinces.”
“To Washington State.”
“British Columbia.”
“And everywhere in between. They want you to push back. It would justify the invasion.”
“Who are ‘they’?” demanded Gamache. “You must have some idea.”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know.” Whitehead was exhausted and exasperated. “I’ve tried to find out, but…”
Gamache studied the large man in front of him. His friend. His colleague. Was he telling the truth? Did he really not know?
“Guess,” said Armand.
“I do wonder…”