Gamache had hit on something.
“You helped create Project Babylon,” Gamache pressed. “On the orders of someone who wanted you to keep an eye on Gerald Bull. The same person who took the photograph. Who was there with you all in Brussels. But you lied to them, didn’t you, John? You told them about Highwater, but not the other. You killed Bull when he got too dangerous, started talking, starting hinting there was another gun. Then you stole the plans and hid them. Believe me, John, you don’t want freedom. You wouldn’t live a day outside these walls. You’re a polio victim and this is your iron lung.”
“You think they’d harm me?” Fleming asked. “I’m their creation. I might’ve made my own Whore of Babylon, but they made me. They need me to do what they will not.”
“They don’t need you. You’ve been discarded, left here to rot.”
“How much more rotten do you think I can get?” asked Fleming with a grin, and Gamache could almost smell the decay. “If I’m the child, what must the parent be like? If I’m a branch, imagine the taproot.”
The words seemed whispered directly into Gamache’s ear, on warm fetid breath.
“There’s a purpose to everything under the sun. Isn’t that what you believe?” Fleming said. “I have a purpose. And so do you. Now go back to your pretty little village with all those hiding places and think about that. And then I want you to come back and let me loose so I can give you the plans for Armageddon, and then disappear. Never bother you again. You said I’ve been waiting for someone, and you were right. I’ve been waiting for you.”
Gamache got up. It was over.
CHAPTER 37
Jean-Guy wanted to say something, but couldn’t find any words that would make this better. And so he just drove while Gamache stared out the window.
The Chief had once told him about the behavior of gorillas when faced with an attack. They met it head on, staring down the enemy. But every now and then they’d reach out to touch the gorilla beside them. To make sure they were not alone.
Keeping his eyes on the road, Jean-Guy reached out and touched Gamache’s shoulder.
Armand turned and smiled at Jean-Guy.
“You all right?” Beauvoir asked.
“Are you? At least I knew what we were in for.”
“Did you?”
“No,” Armand admitted with a tired grin. “I thought I did, but you can’t really prepare for that. Still, we learned some things. Fleming was the one who killed Gerald Bull.”
“On someone’s orders. The ‘agency.’ I don’t suppose there’s much doubt which agency. He must mean CSIS.”
Gamache nodded but seemed distracted. “Maybe. Probably. He certainly knew about Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme.”
“Was one of them in Brussels?” asked Beauvoir. “Did Fraser or Delorme take that picture and then order the murder of Dr. Bull?”
“I was wondering the same thing, though there are other possibilities.”
“Professor Rosenblatt,” said Beauvoir. The elderly scientist who stood on the edge of so much of what had happened in the past, and was happening now. He glanced over at Gamache, whose eyes were narrowed, following a path, but not the road they were on.
“Is there someone else, patron?”
“There is one other person, Jean-Guy. Another possibility.”
Beauvoir went through all the people in the case who were of the right age to have been active in Brussels in the early 1990s.
“Monsieur Béliveau?” he asked. “He seems to know a lot about this, and really, what do we know about him? No one but Ruth even knew his first name.”
“I wasn’t thinking of him,” said Gamache. “I was thinking of Al Lepage.”
And as soon as he said it, Beauvoir could see the logic of it. In fact, it now seemed so obvious as to be almost unmissable.
Frederick Lawson might have snuck across the border with the help of Ruth and Monsieur Béliveau, but he’d been able to stay, to make a life for himself, to become Al Lepage, get married. How did a deserter about to be tried for a war crime manage that except with the blessing of the government, or one of its agencies?
Was that the price of admission to Canada? Every now and then Al Lepage would be called upon to do some of the government’s dirty work?
Lacoste had let Lepage return to his home, but assigned agents to watch him around the clock.
“Pardon,” said Gamache, taking his phone out of his pocket, where it must have vibrated, because Beauvoir hadn’t heard anything.
Gamache looked at who was calling, then answered.
“Chief Superintendent,” he said.
“I take it you’re not alone, Armand,” said Thérèse Brunel. “I have some news.”
“Oui?” By the tone of her voice he could tell he probably hadn’t won the lottery.
“I had a call just now from the executive producer of the CBC national news.”
Gamache took a deep breath, steeling himself.
Beauvoir glanced over. The Chief was alert, tense.
“Go on.”
“It’s what you think,” she said. “They’ve found out about the gun.”
“How much do they know?”
“They know about Project Babylon, about Gerald Bull, they know the gun’s somewhere in Québec, which is why they called me.”
“But they don’t know where it is?”
“Not yet. They’re holding the story until the six o’clock national radio news tonight. By then they might know everything. And even if they don’t, it’ll still hit the headlines like a bomb. Every journalist will be all over the story. They’ll find out everything eventually. You might have a day from the time of broadcast, or you might have hours.”
“Can you stop it?” he asked.
“You know what’s involved in censoring the press, Armand. I have an urgent request in for an injunction but judges are loath to give them. We have to assume the story will run.”
Gamache looked at his watch. It was already one thirty.
“They don’t know about Guillaume Couture?” he asked.
“No, but you found out within a matter of hours. They’ll have that soon enough. Once it airs, someone in the village will talk. It’s shocking that word hasn’t leaked before now.”
Three Pines was good at keeping its secrets, thought Gamache. But this one was about to escape.
“Merci.” He hung up. “Stop the car, please.”
Beauvoir pulled over and Gamache got out, bending over, one hand on the car, one on his knee, as though he was about to retch.
Jean-Guy hurried around the car. “Are you all right?”
Gamache straightened up and caught his breath. Then he walked away, along the dirt shoulder of the back road.
“What’s happened?” asked Jean-Guy, pursuing him, but stopping when Armand waved at him to give him space.
Beauvoir had only heard Gamache’s end of the conversation, but it was enough to get the gist.
Armand turned to Jean-Guy, his face pale and haggard. “We have four hours before word of the gun is all over the CBC national news.”
“Shit.”
Beauvoir felt his own stomach lurch. They both knew what that meant. Within moments of the broadcast it would be all over the Internet, social media, other media. NPR, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera. News of Gerald Bull’s gun would be blasted around the world.
“They don’t yet know where it is,” said Gamache. “They don’t know about Three Pines. I’m not sure they know about Highwater yet. But they will. And when they do…”
Pandemonium, thought Jean-Guy.
Beauvoir studied his father-in-law and felt light-headed.
“My God, you can’t be considering…”