“The trial?”
“Oui.”
“Are things going your way?”
He rubbed his forehead and considered the question. “It’s hard to tell. So many things have to come together just right. There seems such a fine line between falling into place and falling apart.”
Reine-Marie had seen him worried about court cases, the testimony of certain witnesses especially. But in this case, he was the only witness so far. What could worry him so soon?
“Will you get a conviction?”
“Yes.”
But his answer was too swift, too certain, for a man usually so measured and thoughtful.
“What are you doing for dinner?” she asked.
“Grabbing something here at the office.”
“Alone?”
Armand glanced through the crack in the door into the conference room, where Jean-Guy, Isabelle and the other officers were bent over maps. Mugs of coffee and platters of sandwiches from the local brasserie sat on the long table, along with jugs of water, laptops and papers. Beyond all that, he saw the lights of Montréal.
“Oui.”
Chief Superintendent Gamache rejoined the team and, putting his glasses back on, he bent over the large map of Québec.
Transparencies were layered on top of it. Each with different patterns, in different colors.
Bold slashes. Of red. Of blue. Of green. Of black Magic Marker. Though hardly, Gamache thought, examining the patterns, magic.
Held up on their own, the bright lines on the transparencies were meaningless. But once laid on top of each other, and then on top of the map of Québec, the lines coalesced. A casual observer might think it was a subway route map. A very large subway and an extremely busy route.
And they wouldn’t be far wrong.
It was, in effect, a map of the underworld.
Lines snaked down the St. Lawrence River. Others came down from the north. Many branched from Montréal and Québec City. But they all made for the border with the United States.
Superintendent Toussaint, the new head of Serious Crimes, picked up a blue marker from the cup on the conference table.
It was, for some of the younger members of this inner circle, like picking up a hammer and chisel, so crude was this method of mapping. They were used to laptops and more precise, more powerful, tools.
But the map, and those transparencies, had a great advantage. No one could hack them. And, when separated, no one could decode what they meant.
And that was vital.
“Here’s the latest information,” said Madeleine Toussaint. “Our informant on the Magdalen Islands says a shipment arrived two days ago on board a cargo ship from China.”
“Two days?” asked an agent. “Why’s it taken so long to get the information?”
“We’re lucky to get it at all,” said Toussaint. “We all know what’ll happen if they find our informant. And he knows too.”
She lowered the pen until a blue blotch appeared on the islands, hanging out in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
“Do we know how much?” asked Beauvoir.
“Eighty kilos.”
They looked at her in silence.
“Of fentanyl?” asked Isabelle Lacoste.
“Oui.” Toussaint lifted the marker. Blue for fentanyl.
They looked at each other. Eighty kilograms.
It would be the largest shipment in North America. By almost double. Certainly the largest they knew of.
The cartels were growing bolder and bolder.
And why not? They went almost unchallenged.
Everyone in that room turned to Chief Superintendent Gamache, who was staring at the tiny group of islands floating in the salt water between Gaspé and Newfoundland. A prettier spot would be hard to find. Or a more perfect place for trafficking.
Windswept, isolated, sparsely populated. And yet on a major trade route for cargo vessels from, and to, the whole wide world.
It was a port of entry into Québec. Into Canada. A kind of back door. A revolving door. Given short shrift by authorities who were busy investigating the major ports, air and sea.
But the tiny, achingly beautiful Magdalen Islands were the sweet spot.
And from there?
Gamache looked at the various bold lines in different colored marker. Originating in different points of Québec, but all heading in the same direction.
The border. La frontière.
The United States.
Almost all the lines, all the colors converged, and went straight through a tiny village not even on the map. Gamache had had to pencil it in.
Three Pines.
But it was now obliterated by the Magic Markers making for the border.
Drugs flowed into the United States through that hole in the border, and money flowed back.
Tons of cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin had moved across the border there. For years.
When Gamache assumed the leadership of the Sûreté and realized the extent of the drug problem in and through Québec, he realized something else. Only a fraction of the trafficking could be accounted for through the traditional routes.
So how was the rest getting across?
Armand Gamache, the new Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec, had assigned teams to investigate those drugs made in Québec, and those imported. Those consumed here, and those destined for a more lucrative market.
He set up teams. Scientists, hackers, ex-cons, informants, marine and aviation experts, biker gang infiltrators, dock workers, union officials, packagers, and even marketers were recruited. Most had no real idea what the end goal was, or even who they were working for. Each formed a small cell, with a single problem to solve.
And while the drugs were funneled to one point, so was all this information.
Chief Superintendent Gamache.
A decisive blow had to be landed. Not a series of small irritants, but a hard, fast, effective strike. At the heart.
After almost a year of intense investigation, the lines on the transparencies had grown. Intersected. Entwined. And a pattern had appeared.
But still Chief Superintendent Gamache didn’t act.
Despite pleading by some of his senior officers, Armand Gamache waited, and waited. Bearing the brunt of increasing private and professional and political criticism, from a public and colleagues who saw only a growth in crime and inaction on the part of the Sûreté.
Then, finally, the team had found what they were looking for. The person at the head of all this.
The break had come through collaboration, intelligence, courage on the part of undercover agents and informants.
And the appearance of a dark figure on a sleet-slashed village green.
Though few people knew that was the pivot point, and Gamache was desperate to keep it that way.
The officers looked at Chief Superintendent Gamache. Waiting for him to say something. To do something.
Superintendent Toussaint lowered the bright blue Magic Marker and drew a line on the transparency, from the harbor on the Magdalen Islands, around the curve of the Gaspé Peninsula. The marker squealed as it slowly traveled down the great St. Lawrence River. Finally turning inland. And down, down.
Until the blue line hit the border.
There Toussaint’s hand stopped.
She looked at Gamache. Who stared at the map. At the mark.
Then he looked up, over his glasses. Past his officers to the wall, and the schematic.
A map of a different sort. It showed not how the drugs, and money, and violence flowed, but how the power flowed.
Photographs were affixed to the chart. Some mug shots, most clandestine photos taken by a high-powered lens.
Men and women going about their lives. Apparently quite normal. On the outside. Their skin stretched across the void inside.
And at the top, where all the lines and images converged, was simply a dark silhouette. No picture.