Faceless. Featureless. Not quite human.
Armand Gamache knew who it was. Could indeed have placed a face there. But chose not to. In case. He stared for a moment into that dark, blank visage, then shifted his attention back to Superintendent Toussaint. And nodded.
She hesitated, perhaps to allow him time to change his mind.
There was utter silence in the room.
“You can’t,” said Toussaint quietly. “Eighty kilos, sir. It might be on the move already. I haven’t heard back from our informant. At least let us put people in place.”
Chief Superintendent Gamache took the marker from her hand, and without hesitation he drew one final line.
A slash across the border, as the opioid poured out of Québec and into the United States.
Armand Gamache put the cap back on the marker with a firm click and looked up into the faces of his most trusted officers and saw the same expression there.
They were appalled.
“You have to stop it,” said Toussaint, her voice rising before she was able to modulate it. “You can’t let it cross the border. Eighty kilos,” she repeated, her outrage threatening to break free again. “If you don’t—”
Gamache stood up straight. “Go on.”
But she fell silent.
He scanned the other faces and didn’t have to ask who agreed with her. Clearly it was the majority opinion.
But that didn’t make it the right one.
“We stay the course,” he said. “I made it clear when we set up this operation almost a year ago. We have a plan and we stick to it.”
“No matter the consequences?” demanded another of the officers. “Yes, we have a plan. But we have to be responsive. Things change. It’s crazy to stick to a plan just because we have it.”
Gamache raised his brows, but said nothing.
“I’m sorry, patron,” said the officer. “I didn’t mean crazy.”
“I know what you meant,” said Gamache. “The plan was made before we had all the information.” The officer nodded. “It was made in a cold, clinical, logical environment.” More nods.
“Why are we bothering to risk lives to get this information?” Another officer waved at the map. “If we aren’t going to act on it?”
“We are acting,” said Gamache. “Simply not in a way the cartels expect. Believe me, I want to stop the shipment. But this entire operation is about the long view. We hold firm. D’accord?”
He looked at each of them, one at a time. Handpicked. Not because they’d bend to his will, conform, but because they were smart and experienced, ingenious and creative. And courageous enough to speak their minds.
And speak they did. But now it was his turn.
Gamache considered before speaking. “When we go on a raid and bullets are flying and chaos threatens, what do we do?”
He looked at all of them, each of whom had been in that situation. As had Gamache.
“We keep our heads and we keep our nerve. And we keep control of the situation. We focus. We do not give in to distractions.”
“Distractions?” said Toussaint. “You make this sound like a noise off to the left.”
“I’m not trivializing this shipment, the decision or the consequences, Superintendent.”
He glanced over, briefly, at the schematic on the wall. Drawn to the dark face.
“Never lose sight of the goal,” he said, returning his gaze to his subordinates. “Never.” He paused to let that sink in. “Never.”
They shifted, but began to stand a little straighter.
“Every other officer in your position has abandoned the strategy,” continued Gamache. “They’ve bailed. Not because they were weak, but because the consequences were so great. There was a screaming need for action. And it is screaming.” He put his finger on the fresh mark. “And it is a need. Eighty kilos of fentanyl. We need to stop it.”
They nodded.
“But we can’t.”
He took a long, deep breath and focused briefly on the lights of the city behind them. And beyond that, in the long view, the mountains. And the valley. And the village.
And the goal.
Then he brought his eyes, and his thoughts, back to the conference room.
“We monitor,” said Chief Superintendent Gamache, his voice brisk now. “From a distance. We do not interfere. We do not stop the shipment. D’accord?”
There was just a moment’s hesitation before first one, then all said, “D’accord.”
Agreed. It was grudging, but it was given.
Gamache turned to Superintendent Toussaint, who had been silent. She looked down at the map. Then over at the chart on the wall. Then back to her boss.
“D’accord, patron.”
Gamache gave a curt nod, then turned to Beauvoir. “A word?”
Once back in his office, with the door firmly closed, he turned square to Beauvoir.
“Sir?” said the younger man.
“You agree with Superintendent Toussaint, don’t you.”
It was not a question.
“I think there must be a way to stop the shipment without letting them know that we’ve worked it out.”
“There might be,” agreed Gamache.
“We’ve seized smaller shipments,” said Beauvoir, taking advantage of what he saw as an opening, a softening of his boss’s position.
“That’s true. But they were headed through the traditional routes, crossing the border at a predictable place. If all seizures stopped, the cartels would know something was up. This one is huge and almost certainly headed right to the place they think we don’t know about. If they trust the route with this much fentanyl, it means they feel it’s safe, Jean-Guy. But it only works if we allow them to believe it.”
“You’re not saying this is good news.”
“It’s what we hoped would happen. You know that. Look, I know this is particularly difficult for you—”
“Why does it always come down to that?” demanded Beauvoir.
“Because we can’t separate our personal experiences from our professional choices,” said Gamache. “If we think we can, we’re deluding ourselves. We have to admit it, examine our motives, and then make a rational decision.”
“You think I’m being irrational? You’re the one who’s always accusing me of not trusting my instincts. Well, you know what they’re telling me now? Not just my instincts, but yes, my experience?”
Beauvoir was all but shouting at Gamache.
“This is a huge mistake,” said Beauvoir, lowering his voice to a growl. “Allowing that much fentanyl into the U.S. could change the course of a generation. You want to know about my personal stake? Here it is. You’ve never been addicted,” he said. “You have no idea what it’s like. And opioids? Designer drugs? They get right into you. Change you. Turn you into something horrible. Everyone keeps repeating, ‘eighty kilos.’” He waved toward the door and the conference room across the hall. “What’s heading for the border isn’t a weight, isn’t a number. There’s no measure for the misery that’s heading our way. A slow and wretched death. And not just for the addicts you’re about to create, but how about all the other lives that’ll be ruined? How many people, alive today, healthy today, will die, sir, or kill? Because of your ‘rational’ decision?”
“You’re right,” said Gamache. “You’re absolutely right.”
He waved toward the sitting area of his office. After a moment’s hesitation, as though weighing if it was a trap, Jean-Guy took his usual chair, sitting stiffly on the edge.
Gamache sat back, trying to get comfortable. Abandoning that, he too sat forward.
“There’s a theory that Winston Churchill knew about the German bombing of the English city of Coventry before it happened,” he said. “And he did nothing to stop it. The bombing killed hundreds of men and women and children.”