Chapter 22 #3
No. He’d have dismissed him as a former cokehead with wet brain. As it was, it had taken Armand almost too long to believe there was a plot to poison Montréal’s water.
And now this.
“Another fire,” he said, working his way forward.
Staring into Bert’s eyes as he spoke. “We know there will be one, eventually. But … but…” Still he held the stare.
“But that’s not good enough. This thing has been planned.
Carefully. Over years. They wouldn’t leave anything to chance.
They wouldn’t wait, hoping another megafire would drop ash…
” He paused, thinking. Thinking. Inching toward the border between the state of happy ignorance and the truth.
“They could set a fire, of course. That would be easy enough, with incendiary bombs.” Whitehead’s eyes were pleading with him.
Begging him. To continue? Or to stop? “But how would they know when and where…”
Now his face turned ashen. Even his lips lost color.
“Chief, what is it?” asked Lacoste.
Gamache turned to her and Jean-Guy. “The isobars. The ones Charles left behind. They tell us the flow of air.”
“Or ash,” said Jean-Guy. “Jesus.”
Gamache turned back to Whitehead. “FEDS. That’s why it’s so important. FEDS can predict where ash from the next megafire will fall.”
“It can predict the future,” said Lacoste. “And all someone has to do is light the match. Set the forest on fire when the isobars and FEDS line up.”
“The lake.” Lacoste turned to Gamache. “That’s why Charles was so interested in that particular one. It’s the first example of what’s possible. If it can happen by mistake, it can happen on purpose. That’s what the so-called ‘second notebook’ was saying. Trying to say. Trying to warn us.”
But Charles Langlois’s notes and notations and drawings and maps had been written for himself, in a sort of shorthand.
He’d expected he’d have time to marshal his arguments, his evidence, and make it at least understandable and maybe even convincing.
But time ran out. He’d made one last trip into the wilderness.
To hide his laptop. Then he’d told Frederick that if something happened to him, to go there. To find it.
But Frederick had hesitated. Waited too long, and then asked the wrong person to accompany him.
“Is your President involved?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Our Prime Minister?”
“Not that I know of.”
Armand Gamache stared at Bert Whitehead and remembered what Reine-Marie had said, about how Animal Farm ended. Eventually, inevitably, the oppressed and the oppressors become indistinguishable. If not all of the oppressed, then enough.
Was Whitehead one of them? Was this meeting and everything Whitehead said part of the plan?
Am I making the same mistake Frederick Castonguay made, trusting the wrong person? Confiding in the wrong person?
Who better to be the Black Wolf than the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the one who controlled the hounds?
Armand had a decision to make. His days were filled with them, many of them life-and-death, but never had he been faced with one with such consequences.
“We need to figure out how to stop this, Bert.”
He’d come to his decision. And he really had no choice. If what Whitehead was saying was real, and it seemed to be, he had to trust him.
And if he was the Black Wolf? Well, that die was already cast.
“Agreed. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, but the bad actors aren’t just on my side of this border, Armand.”
“Agreed. You need to speak to your President, and I need to be clearer with Prime Minister Woodford.”
While Beauvoir and Lacoste made for the exit, General Whitehead and Chief Inspector Gamache shook hands over a line that should not be crossed.
Then they parted ways.
“Damn Americans,” said Beauvoir as they drove back to Three Pines.
“Why do you say that?” asked Armand.
“You heard what General Whitehead said.” He was astonished that the Chief would question his statement. “They plan to attack us, supposedly to defend the homeland.”
“It’s already happening,” said Lacoste. “Those posts. The news reports. Those are the first shots.”
“And you don’t think Canada would do the same thing?” said Gamache. “Don’t kid yourselves. If our lives were threatened? Do you think we’d just watch our children and grandchildren die of thirst, of starvation? We’d cross the border in no time. We’d fight tooth and nail for survival.”
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.
Once home, while Isabelle and Jean-Guy joined Nichol in the study to do more digging, Armand grabbed a book from their library, then called Henri, Fred, and Gracie and took them for a walk.
Reine-Marie was still in the bistro. He stood outside in the darkness and saw her in the light, talking earnestly with Clara and Myrna and Ruth.
With Gabri and Olivier. He tried to guess what they were saying.
To read their lips, their bodies. But he couldn’t.
It was chilly, and he was about to join her, to sit by the fire with a scotch and read, but he changed his mind and, pulling his coat more tightly around him, he whistled and heard the panting behind him.
Up the hill they walked in procession to the church.
Half an hour later he sensed a presence and turned. Reine-Marie was sitting at the end of the pew.
“How long have you been there?”
“Not long.” She slid over and handed him a scotch and a wedge of lemon meringue pie.
“Merci.”
“Can you tell me?”
And he did. When he finished, she put out her hand. He passed her back the glass. She took a swig and gave it back.
“Do you believe it?” she asked.
“Iraq comes to mind,” he said.
“Who’d have thought so many reasonable, intelligent people could be convinced to invade a country that had not attacked them?”
“Saddam was a tyrant,” said Armand. “A madman who used poison gas on his own citizens. It was not that difficult to convince people that he’d helped the 9/11 conspirators and had weapons of mass destruction.”
“But he didn’t. There was absolutely no proof.”
“There doesn’t need to be proof. Fear replaces facts.” He fell silent, staring ahead. Following his own train of thought.
It was then that Reine-Marie noticed the book on the pew, with his finger at a certain page. “Animal Farm?”
“Non.” He held it up.
“Nineteen Eighty-Four.” She understood. “Orwell.”
Armand opened it and read the section he’d been looking for.
“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.”
“Can it be stopped?” she asked, quietly.
“Yes.”
“You’re not a member of the Ministry of Truth, are you?”
He laughed. It felt good. “Non. I believe it. But keep that pitchfork handy.”
“I’ll do better than that. We can post Ruth at the border, then dare the commandos to come across.”
“Poor commandos.”
They sat quietly, and into that silence the dogs started snoring. And Armand started humming. It was a tune Reine-Marie recognized from a musical they’d seen together recently.
She sang, softly.
Friends ain’t supposed to die ’til they’re old.
And friends ain’t supposed to die in pain.
Driving through the night back to the Burlington airport, Bert Whitehead thought about the meeting and the play.
So when you fight, stay as calm as the ocean,
And watch what goes on behind your shoulder.
Remember war’s not a place for deep emotion,
And maybe you’ll get a little older.
Mostly the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff thought about the look in Armand’s eyes when he himself had stepped over the border. When he’d crossed the line. Went too far.
That look of determination. Of cold, calm resolve. Almost daring him to go further. And Armand’s two aides-de-camp standing firm behind him.
Any invasion might not be the cakewalk the computer models suggested. He’d have to run another scenario. After he reported to the President, that was.
In Three Pines, under the forgiving gaze of the stained-glass boys, Reine-Marie placed her hand on top of Armand’s.
No one should die alone when he is twenty-one.
And livin’ shouldn’t make you feel ashamed.