Chapter 35
As Armand bit into the cannoli, cream squeezed out of the pastry onto his fingers.
Reine-Marie shook her head in amusement as he licked it off. “I can see where Florence gets it from.” Their granddaughter loved being brought to Open Da Night by her grandfather.
They’d been joined by their son and daughter, Daniel and Annie, along with Jean-Guy and Isabelle. Evelyn Tardiff and Yvette Nichol, who seemed to be a couple, were also there for this very informal debrief two days later.
The door opened and Shona arrived, followed by a very familiar face. Paul Workman had come from Toronto. He and his protégée had been promised the exclusive.
They dragged over another round table and a couple of chairs.
So far, what had happened hadn’t gotten out. Prime Minister Woodford had assembled a hastily put-together committee, made up of all parties, to begin the task of investigating what had happened. And quickly assessing the fallout.
The PM had also prevailed on his people, and those in Washington, to allow the police and intelligence services to quietly finish their job before making anything public.
They didn’t want any of the conspirators to go to ground. Or South America.
But Armand trusted everyone at the table, including the journalists. Should anything go wrong, and there was a possibility it still could, the best protection wasn’t force but truth.
Transparency.
“How did you know?” Workman asked, placing his iPhone next to Shona’s. Both recording.
“That it was Lauzon all along?” asked Armand.
“No. We’ve read the document.” Shona nodded to the file on the table, sitting innocently among the demitasses of espresso and the plates of cannoli and bomboloni.
She looked haggard. She woke up screaming every night, and was followed every hour of every day by the image of being tossed out of the helicopter into the fire below.
It was a waking, walking nightmare. Made worse by the fear that it might still happen.
If they didn’t get this right. Shona had told no one about those dreams. But she didn’t have to. They knew.
The S?reté officers recognized the signs.
That terror that clung like a caul. It was called post-traumatic stress by doctors who had no idea what they were talking about.
There was nothing “post” about it. The trauma was still present, ever present.
Evergreen. A perpetual, perennial horror, relived every day and through the night.
It might lessen, but it never left.
“The document makes it clear that they meant to set up Woodford and the American President,” Shona continued.
“Did Marie Lauzon realize what the file was saying?” Paul Workman asked.
“That if it wasn’t Woodford, the Black Wolf was almost certainly her father after all?” asked Beauvoir.
“No, I don’t think she did,” said Gamache. “At least not consciously.”
It was one of the more difficult things he’d had to do. Tell Marie that they’d once again arrested her father, using the dossier she’d found containing the plans. And this time the evidence against him, including Jeanne Caron’s and the Minister of Public Safety’s testimonies, would stick.
“It’s obvious that once Woodford was either arrested or killed, Marcus Lauzon would be released from a wrongful conviction,” said Gamache, wiping the last of the cream off his hands.
“That was why we had to get him out of Parliament. It seemed the most likely course was to murder him so he couldn’t defend himself. ”
“Since Marcus Lauzon would be one of the few now beyond suspicion, he’d be placed at the head of the emergency government,” said Isabelle.
Her ribs were bound, and she was on painkillers and bomboloni.
“And Giselle Trudel?” asked Reine-Marie. “How does she fit in? This file was in her office, after all.”
“Robert Ferguson’s admitted he put it there,” said Jean-Guy. “Trudel had no idea. It was a perfect hiding place. People rarely go into paper files anymore.”
“But why did they even keep it?” Shona asked. “It seems foolish.”
“Electronic files can be hacked,” Nichol pointed out. “Hard copies are easier to control.”
Both Workman and Shona looked dubious, though the conspirators, who’d been so careful, had obviously made that one fatal mistake.
“I feel awful for Lauzon’s daughter,” said Isabelle. “Without her we’d never have survived.”
She herself had been barely aware of what was happening on the helicopter. It was only later she learned what Ferguson had planned for them. And that Captain Pinsent had been in the copilot’s seat. And the pilot was also on their side.
After Marie Lauzon had had Pinsent released, the Captain had rounded up her squad and waited in the tunnel for Marie and Armand to show up with Prime Minister Woodford. While she waited, she’d read the file they’d hidden there.
It had been a shock.
It had become clear to the senior RCMP officer, as the strange day had progressed, that something was very wrong.
But she never, ever expected this. A deliberate firebombing of the forests by elements within their own government and military.
In order to provoke an action by the United States.
And setting up the Prime Minister to take the blame.
Pinsent had gone to the airfield named in the report, leaving her lieutenant behind in the tunnel to wait for Gamache and Marie Lauzon.
Once out, Gamache had driven south to his rendezvous with Jeanne Caron in the Haskell Opera House, while Pinsent had assembled a team of trusted colleagues within both the RCMP and Canadian Armed Forces and headed to Mont-Laurier.
“How did you get Chief Petty Officer Flores to the opera house to arrest Caron?” asked Shona. “You couldn’t have had his contact information.”
“True. I wrote Bert’s number two and told him what was needed, and asked that Flores be sent.”
Jean-Guy smiled. There were many ways, he now knew, to be a poet. Not all of them rhymed.
Captain Pinsent had been invited to join them at Open Da Night, but was in Ottawa answering questions about her own actions. Defying orders and allowing prisoners to escape. No matter the happy outcome, it was still, to the RCMP, disturbing.
Armand had also been summoned and was heading there the next day to be grilled.
But nothing those on the quickly struck Parliamentary committee did to him could be worse than being dragged over the coals by Jean-Guy.
Nothing would be worse than seeing the look in those eyes.
Not anger but hurt when Jean-Guy realized Armand had withheld information and deliberately allowed him to go to the wrong airport.
Armand and Jean-Guy had sat in the bistro by the muttering fire, exhausted. Their limbs and lids heavy.
Marcus Lauzon had been sent back to prison. The Prime Minister had been sent back home to Ottawa. The Americans had been alerted. The conspirators were hearing knocks on their doors. Woken up with warrants.
But there was one more thing that had to be done before the two comrades could finally go to bed.
They were alone in the bistro. It was, in fact, closed, but Gabri had left them the key. Most of the lights around the village green were out and the villagers snug and safe in their homes.
“You could have told me.” Jean-Guy’s words came out black and blue with hurt.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I made a split-second decision not to. By then I’d grasped that Lauzon was, in fact, behind all this. I couldn’t take the chance that he’d see the message and realize that we’d found the file and knew about Mont-Laurier. About him.”
Armand watched Jean-Guy as he spoke, to see if his own words might act as a balm. They did not.
“Why not? Why couldn’t you take the chance on me? Trust me?”
Now the anger appeared. It bubbled to the surface and poured out of Jean-Guy in his expression. In the balled-up fists thrust into his lap. In the hunched shoulders of a wounded animal protecting its core.
Armand shook his head and heaved an exhausted sigh with the effort to remember his thinking. His reasoning. It wasn’t even that. It was instinct. Jean-Guy was standing beside the man responsible for all this. A man so cunning he’d seen and foreseen every twist and turn.
A creature who’d not only been one step ahead of them the entire time, from the moment that note had been slipped into Armand’s jacket pocket months ago, but who’d also been behind them, inching them in the direction he wanted them to go.
Toward Woodford.
Marcus Lauzon had been everywhere. In their heads, infecting their instincts and reason. Influencing their every thought. Choreographing their every step. Manipulating them.
Manipulating him. Armand now realized that.
He could not risk Lauzon seeing, sensing, even the slightest change in Jean-Guy. For all he knew, the Black Wolf was still playing them. Even now. The thought terrified him.
He held his suddenly cold hands toward the fire dying in the bistro grate.
Their only chance, Armand had felt, was to do the unexpected. Marcus Lauzon obviously knew him well. Well enough to know he would always, always trust Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Would always, always tell him everything.
And so, in a double sin of omission and commission, he’d withheld vital information and fed him false information. Only if Jean-Guy believed him to be an ally would Marcus Lauzon feel safe. And maybe, maybe lower his defenses.
As Inspector Beauvoir’s commanding officer, as the head of homicide for the S?reté, Chief Inspector Gamache did not need to explain his decisions to a subordinate. But as Jean-Guy’s father-in-law, as his friend, he did. Especially since his decisions had put the man beside him in danger.
He’d have felt the same way, had Jean-Guy done that to him. Rationally, he’d understand, but the head and the heart did not always align.
Armand quietly explained why he’d done it. When he’d finished, Jean-Guy nodded. Then he stood up to leave and Armand felt his heart sink.
He too got to his feet. They faced each other. Two tired warriors.