Chapter 23
“What do you want?”
“To apologize.” Nichol was whispering into the phone. It was the next morning and the others had left, and left her alone. Of course. Still, she needed to be careful. “And—”
“Apologize?” demanded Evelyn Tardiff. She didn’t need to whisper. She was in her office at S?reté headquarters with the door closed. And no assistant out front. Of course. “For which part? Spying on me? Leaving me? Betraying me?”
“But you knew that’s why Gamache put me in your office. You wanted me to report back to him.”
“That doesn’t make what you did any better. And now you’re with him. You said you were sick, but instead, you deserted me.”
“But we’re all on the same side, non? How can I desert to my own side?”
“You know what I mean.”
Nichol did, and she didn’t. She understood that she’d lied to her Chief. But then Chief Inspector Tardiff had lied to her.
Earlier that morning, before the sun was even up, the four of them had sat at the long pine table in the Gamaches’ kitchen.
A fire was lit in the woodstove at the far end of the room, taking the damp and chill off. The old percolator was bubbling away on the counter, sending coffee vapor into the air.
“No, patron, there’s no way to find out who’s feeding those sites,” Nichol had said, in answer to his question. “That’s the whole point of them. .onion is deep enough, encrypted and protected. But .family is something else.”
“Keep trying.”
“Waste of time, but okay.”
“There are other lines of inquiry,” said the Chief Inspector.
“Thank God for that,” muttered Nichol.
“Any luck tracking the plane that flew Castonguay and his killers to the lake?” Gamache asked.
“Not yet,” said Beauvoir. “We’re scouring the airports and flying clubs. Especially the fish and game clubs. It would help to have some idea of the date.”
Lacoste was shaking her head. “He’d been in the ground too long.
You saw the report. Dr. Harris just said weeks.
” She turned to Gamache. “I’m trying to track down the corporations that paid to take over Canadian primary industries.
We know it was billions and the money was laundered through Action Québec Bleu. Anything from Agent Fontaine?”
“Not yet.”
“From Shona Dorion?”
“Only the isobar information. We’ll stop on our way up to Ottawa and take her with us.”
“Willingly?” asked Jean-Guy.
“If not…” Lacoste showed him what was on her phone.
“Don’t you just hate people who make life difficult?” asked Nichol.
Beauvoir no longer knew when she was kidding. And no longer cared.
“And you, Jean-Guy, need to get up to Archambault and interview Marcus Lauzon again. Get him to admit the payments and tell us who they were from.” Armand leaned forward, his eyes intense.
“I think that’s our best hope, our way in.
We just need one of those corporations. One Chief Executive.
One comptroller to testify. One witness. ”
“But they’d never admit it,” said Lacoste. “For no other reason than that they’re terrified of Moretti. They know what he’ll do to them, and their families, if they talk.”
“We need to convince them that he’s going to kill them anyway. Their only hope is to help us stop this.”
“But why would Lauzon give us a name now?” asked Jean-Guy. “He’s denied everything so far.”
“Why would he warn us about FEDS?” asked Gamache.
It was rhetorical. He really didn’t know. What he did know was something no one else had seen: the former Deputy Prime Minister’s eyes as he’d stumbled into Armand and whispered his warning about FEDS. Armand knew terror when he saw it, and he’d seen it then, in that split second.
“Lauzon obviously didn’t want Tardiff to hear him,” said Beauvoir.
“That must be a mind-fuck,” said Nichol. “Trying to throw suspicion on her.”
“Maybe,” admitted Gamache. “You’ve worked closely with Chief Inspector Tardiff. What do you think of her?”
“You’re asking if she can be trusted?” There was silence while Agent Nichol considered. “I would. I do.”
Gamache turned to Isabelle. “Agents are still watching Margaux Chalifoux’s home?”
“Oui,” said Lacoste. “They reported a few minutes ago. She isn’t up yet.”
Gamache looked at his watch, then got up. “I need you to come with me. Jean-Guy?”
“I’ll head up to Lauzon.”
“What about me?” asked Nichol.
“You stay here.”
Of course, thought Nichol with a scowl.
“Keep trying to get into those last .family sites. They must be important if they’re so protected.”
She heaved a sigh so forceful, her lips fluttered in a raspberry.
“Gamache thinks there’s a chance you’re working for Moretti,” said Nichol.
“And you?”
“No. I know you’re trying to stop him. I called because I don’t think Gamache will tell you, and you need to know what we’ve found.”
“Go on.”
When Yvette Nichol finished, Tardiff said, “So he has the laptop. No, he didn’t tell me. Has he found Charles Langlois’s map?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck. I need that password.”
“Oui, patronne.” Though there had been a slight hesitation.
“You aren’t doubting me, are you? Gamache hasn’t gotten into your head.”
“Non, patronne.” Yvette Nichol hung up and hit send on the password, then sat back in her chair in the Gamaches’ study and took a sip of the Gamaches’ coffee, then looked at the remains of the Cap’n Crunch cereal with chocolate milk Madame Gamache had made her.
And Yvette Nichol wondered why she felt so uncomfortable.
Then she rifled through the desk and found the copy of Charles Langlois’s second notebook.
Here was the document that everyone had dismissed, thinking it contained Charles Langlois’s initial notes. Thinking it was unimportant, and not, as it turned out, the most important.
That was until Gamache had gone back and reread it and realized their mistake. His mistake. And understood it contained a warning of something much bigger than the poisoning.
And yet, read and reread it as the Chief Inspector might, as the others might, they could not figure out what Charles was warning them about.
Yvette Nichol took the sheafs of worn paper into the kitchen, and sitting in front of the woodstove, she began to read. Once finished, she returned to the study and got the other one. The first one … the one they now dismissed, believing it had already coughed up all its secrets.
Many kilometers away, in Montréal, Chief Inspector Tardiff placed a call.
“We need to meet.”
“Agreed,” said Moretti.
Prime Minister Woodford stared at the three people in his office. His sharp gaze went from Gamache to Lacoste to that intense young woman who was introduced to him as Shona Dorion.
He’d listened to what they had to say. Now he opened his mouth, then closed it again. When the Prime Minister of Canada finally did speak, it was not what anyone expected.
“Mein Kampf.”
While Lacoste and Dorion looked at each other, perplexed, Armand Gamache opened his eyes wide in surprise. “My struggle?”
“Yes.”
Of all the things a leader might say when told of a possible plan by a foreign power to invade, the title of that book was not one.
“Why are you quoting Hitler, sir?”
Now Dorion mouthed “Hitler?” and Lacoste frowned. Both turned to Gamache, who seemed to know the what but clearly not the why of it.
“His book, Mein Kampf—” the PM began.
“I’m familiar with it.”
“Then you probably know about the Big Lie.”
Oh, shit, thought Lacoste. He doesn’t believe us. Though she didn’t dare say anything.
“Are you calling us liars?” Shona asked and watched as the Prime Minister of Canada turned to her.
When she’d woken up that morning, she’d never expected that this would be part of her day. Her week. Her life. That within hours she would find herself in a private meeting with the PM. That he would be looking at her. At her. Shona Dorion.
Granted, his expression was one of annoyance, but still …
Indeed, Shona was trying to catch up with everything that had happened so far that young day.
She’d just showered and dressed, getting ready to go into Action Québec Bleu, when there was a knock on the door. Her phone said it was just after seven. This could not be good. Had she paid the rent? Yes. Had she given her neighbor back her dishes from two nights ago?
Yes.
So who could—
“Ms. Dorion, it’s Armand Gamache.”
Oh, fuck. Not him.
“Go away, you dirty old man. I told you I’m not putting out again.” She grinned, imagining his face turning a bright red. She hoped he wasn’t alone.
“I have something for yoooou.” The singsong voice of the Chief Inspector came through the door, and despite herself Shona laughed.
“Is it candy?”
“Better. It’s a warrant for your arrest unless you open this door in twenty seconds.”
His voice had gone from playful at the beginning of the sentence, to neutral, to actually menacing. It was both impressive and more than a little disconcerting.
She opened the door.
“Merci,” he said and introduced Inspector Lacoste. “May we?”
“Can I stop you?”
His answer was to step inside her tiny, tidy studio apartment in the Petite-Bourgogne quartier of Montréal.
“All this to stop me from going into AQB? You do know that because of what I did there you’re so much further along.
I found out that those numbers on the map are isobars.
And I got into Chalifoux’s computer and found the money being laundered through Action Québec Bleu.
And I’m sure there’s more to find. I can do what you cops can’t. ”
“And that is?” Lacoste asked. The bed was so tightly made, there was no give when she sat on it.
“Break the law,” said Shona.
“Nice that you think we won’t,” said Gamache, taking a chair at the table by the compact kitchen and waving her to join him.
Shona stood for a moment, then realized she just looked mulish. “You’re in my place.”
To her amazement, he got up and moved. She’d lied. It wasn’t where she normally sat, though he was now in her actual place.
Gamache was staring at her with such intensity, it almost frightened her.
She sat down. “What? What’s happened?”
He was trying to decide how much to tell her.