“What are you asking me, monsieur?”
“I’m asking if you worked with Gerald Bull.”
Gamache saw the eyes flicker, wanting to drop, to break contact. But they held, and Michael Rosenblatt gave one curt nod.
“As I told your young colleague, Inspector Beauvoir, we worked at McGill at the same time, but I’m afraid I wasn’t completely honest. We did work together, not in the same department but on some of the same projects. Though no one really worked with Gerald Bull. It might start out that way, but eventually you found yourself working for him.”
“Were you working for him when he came up with the plans for the Supergun?”
“No. I left when he began using the Soviets as a back door to sell his arms. He wasn’t very smart.”
“Is that why you left? Fear you’d get caught?”
“No. I left because it was wrong. It’s one thing to design weapons for your own country, it’s another to sell them to the highest bidder. Gerald Bull was the consummate salesman, and completely without a conscience.”
“Why did you just say that he wasn’t very smart?” asked Gamache.
“He made some stupid choices, like cozying up to the Soviets. He had an outsized ego that told him he was smarter than other people.”
“The ego lied?” asked Gamache.
“Shocking, I know. Dr. Bull was bombastic. The perfect personality for a man who sold cannons and Bull was, as I said, a great salesman.”
“Why would he have the Whore of Babylon etched into the cannon? Was it a sort of calling card? A signature? Did Dr. Bull put it into all his designs?”
“Not that I know of. It was probably another sales tool. What else would appeal to a crazy despot like Saddam but a weapon etched with a symbol of the apocalypse? And one from ancient Iraq, no less. It was perfect.”
“But this wasn’t Saddam’s gun, was it?” said Gamache. “Gerald Bull didn’t build it in Iraq, he built it in Québec. And he etched the Whore of Babylon on it. Why?”
“Maybe it supports the mock-up theory,” said Rosenblatt. “He built it to show the Iraqis. After all, by then all the intelligence agencies in the world were interested in Bull and Project Babylon but they’d never think to look for it here. He could show it to the Iraqis and once the order was in, he could dismantle it, and ship it piece by piece to Baghdad.”
Gamache listened to this curiously detailed hypothesis. He had to admit, it fit. Québec was a showroom. Though there was still another possibility. The other one.
“Or it could’ve been meant for Québec all along,” said Gamache. “Saddam couldn’t strike U.S. soil with a Scud. Maybe the goal was never to hit Israel, or Iran, or any target in the region. Maybe the target was the U.S. Maybe those weapons of mass destruction that the Americans were so sure were there were actually here.”
Maybe, maybe, thought Gamache. All maybes.
It was frustrating. Though he felt they were getting closer. Maybe.
Gamache leaned against the banquette and looked across the table at his companion, remembering something else Reine-Marie had discovered while researching Gerald Bull.
“Dr. Bull got his Ph.D. very young,” said Gamache. “In physics. A remarkable achievement. But I understand his marks weren’t very good.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. I didn’t know him as a student.”
“No. But you knew him afterward. He’d have been about twenty years older than you, is that about right?”
“About.” Now Rosenblatt was watching Gamache closely. He’d not be tricked again, but he couldn’t shake the feeling they were again wandering into the minefield.
“His marks weren’t terrific,” said Gamache, musing almost to himself. “And you’ve described him a few times as a great salesman. Not a great scientist. But a salesman.”
And now Michael Rosenblatt knew he was indeed in the middle of the minefield. Drawn there by this calm, reasonable, kindly man.
And he waited for the next, inevitable, question.
Gamache leaned forward and seemed almost apologetic.
“Was Gerald Bull smart enough to design the Supergun? Or was he just the salesman? Was there another genius at work we don’t know about?”
Ka-boom.
CHAPTER 19
Clara Morrow turned into the Lepages’ driveway. It was long and rutted, as most of the dirt drives were in this area.
She glanced down at the passenger-side foot well, where a casserole covered in foil sat, along with an apple crisp. Still warm. She could smell the brown sugar and cinnamon, and wondered if it was a bad thing that she was salivating. And tempted to turn around. And eat it all herself.
She parked in front of the small farmhouse.
A curtain moved in an upstairs window and she saw Evelyn’s face, a look of distress glancing across it, as though Clara was a germ and Evie an open sore.
An old mongrel dog, Harvest, lay on the grass. He struggled to his feet, his tail wagging slowly.
“Clara,” Evie said, coming to the screen door, forcing a smile that looked painful.
“I didn’t want to disturb you,” Clara said, cradling the dishes. “But I know how much energy it takes to get out of bed in the morning, never mind shop and cook. There’re a couple bags of groceries in the trunk. They’re from Monsieur Béliveau. And Sarah sent some croissants and baguettes from her boulangerie. She says you can freeze them. I wouldn’t know. They never last that long in my house.”
Clara saw a hint of a genuine smile. And with it a slight relief, a loosening of the tight bands holding Evie Lepage in, and the world out.
Armand Gamache watched the old scientist leave the B and B dining room.
As soon as Gamache had asked about Gerald Bull’s real contribution to Project Babylon, Michael Rosenblatt had looked at his watch and slid awkwardly out of the banquette.
“I really must go. Thank you for the company.”
Armand had got up too.
Professor Rosenblatt offered his hand and Gamache, stepping into the handshake, had whispered in the scientist’s ear.
Then stepped back to look into the startled face.
Rosenblatt had turned and strolled away with forced leisure, and Armand had returned to the banquette, and his coffee, and his musings.
Had Gerald Bull designed his Supergun? Or was he just the clever front man? Was there another genius behind that one? Someone younger, smarter? And far more dangerous?
And perhaps still alive. According to Reine-Marie, Gerald Bull had been sixty-two when he’d been murdered. Gamache knew that most scientists did their best work, their most dynamic and creative work, by the time they were forty.
Did Bull have a silent partner? A scientist, a physicist, an armaments designer? Did they make the perfect team? One staying in the shadows, scribbling plans for a gun unlike any other? An elegant weapon? While the other schmoozed, moved about in powerful circles, made deals? Found buyers. Found Saddam?
Both brilliant and both commanding different fields.
Gamache did the math. Michael Rosenblatt would have been in his mid-forties when Gerald Bull was killed. The design of the Supergun must have been made half a decade earlier, perhaps more. Putting Rosenblatt in his thirties.
It fit. Was Michael Rosenblatt the father of the monster in the woods?
Armand Gamache noticed that Rosenblatt had left so quickly he’d forgotten the redacted papers. Armand gathered them up, and thought maybe it hadn’t been an oversight. Maybe there was nothing in them that could possibly be news to the elderly scientist.
Gamache sipped his coffee, and thought.
He had a sense that Rosenblatt was a scientist with a conscience. The question was, had Rosenblatt’s sense of right and wrong come too late? Had he already contributed to the balance of terror?