They’d chosen a bad day for a stroll in an ancient forest.
The seconds ticked by. Five. Six. The agents were jumpy, staring back at him and glancing at each other. Unsure what to do.
Eight.
Of all the things they’d expected, this was not one.
Ten seconds passed before Gamache spoke. “Surrender your weapons. Put your Sûreté ID on your desks. It’s over.”
He spoke with authority. His voice deep and quiet and calm. As though he actually expected them to do it.
“Fuck you,” shouted the most senior agent. He stepped closer to Gamache, raising his weapon.
Oh, Reine-Marie, I’m so sorry …
Beauvoir heard Chernin inhale and saw her tense. Preparing …
Oh God, oh God, oh God, Jean-Guy prayed.
Gamache didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away from the gun practically touching his forehead. He’d expected to be dead already, so any hesitation on the part of his killers was a bonus.
“Let Dagenais go,” the agent shouted, his face so close Gamache felt a spray of spittle.
“And then what?” Gamache asked, as though they were having a reasonable conversation, a civilized disagreement. “You let us go? We all just walk away and pretend this didn’t happen?”
He had to lower the temperature. To do that, he had to sound like what he was not. Perfectly calm.
Half the agents in the room were prepared to shoot. Even, he thought, wanting to. Perhaps needing to. And he suddenly understood why.
Alexandre Dagenais was not the only one from this detachment who’d visited the Arsenault home.
This was a problem. A further complication.
Gamache’s mind raced. How to get out of this?
While it was true that three of the armed agents looked prepared to kill fellow Sûreté officers, the other three seemed less committed. More afraid.
Clearly this was not what they’d signed up for. Brutalizing the population. Stealing drugs and arms. Okay. Especially since it was sanctioned, rewarded, even organized by the leadership.
But this? Murdering not just other agents, but one of the most senior officers in the Sûreté? That was something different.
Still, Gamache knew he could not appeal to them. They were cowards and would always bend to whoever had the upper hand. And it was not him.
“Alexandre Dagenais is under arrest.” Gamache raised his voice for all to hear. “We will not give him up. But I will give you a choice. If you put down your weapons and surrender your Sûreté ID, I will let you leave.” He counted to five in his mind, letting that sink in. “Or you can shoot. And you know what will happen then. You’ll kill me, but Inspector Chernin and Agent Beauvoir will return fire and kill you. In the exchange, Dagenais will also die. Some of you will too. Or at least be badly wounded. Any of you who survive will be hunted down by the rest of my department. In fact, by every Sûreté officer in the province. Every police officer in the country. And when you’re found…”
He could see his words were having some effect. Partly what he was saying, but also how he was saying it. His voice was calm, matter-of-fact. Almost mesmerizing.
“Put down your weapons.”
There seemed a hesitation. A moment when it looked like that might happen.
But the senior agent, clearly the most desperate, knew he had to do something to regain control. He grabbed Gamache, hauling the Chief Inspector in front of him and locking his arm around his throat. His gun to Gamache’s temple.
“Drop your fucking weapons,” he shouted at Chernin and Beauvoir. “Or he dies.”
The arm tightened, cutting off his air supply, leaving Gamache gasping for breath. He didn’t buck or fight. He stared at Chernin. At Beauvoir. Willing them to stay the course.
Would they follow orders not to shoot unless the others shot first? Not to surrender.
A moment passed. Two.
Chernin did not move. Did not react. Her weapon remained trained on the cop holding Gamache. Poised to fire. And while Beauvoir’s eyes had grown so wide it seemed his eyeballs must fall out, he also remained perfectly still. His gun raised. Aimed. But not fired. Yet.
The seconds ticked by.
The buzz in Gamache’s ears had built to a roar. He knew it was just a matter of time, perhaps moments, before he blacked out. Suffocated. He could feel the tip of the gun pressed hard against his temple and wondered what would come first. The bullet or the strangling.
His legs were growing weak. But still he didn’t struggle, though every instinct was kicking in. He knew if he grabbed at the arm around his throat, the gun would probably go off. Triggering the one thing he was desperate to avoid. More killing.
He could feel his legs going out from under him, and his vision blurring as his brain began to shut down.
He heard from far, far away a shout: “Do it!”
Do what, Gamache wondered. Shoot. Or …
“Lower your weapons,” shouted Dagenais. “He’s right. No one wins if you start shooting.”
The senior agent still hesitated. Clearly, while Dagenais’s man, he also had his own agenda. And that was to survive. And not be arrested.
Finally, he loosened his grip. Not to save Dagenais, but to save himself.
Gamache fell to his knees, gasping. His hand to his throat. His vision swam and he slumped against a desk. He heard voices but could no longer make out the words. Then hands grabbed him and dragged him to his feet.
“You all right?” Chernin asked, staring into his eyes.
“Their weapons,” he croaked. “Get their weapons.”
“We have them.”
“More. There’ll be more. On them or in their desks.”
“We have them all,” said Agent Beauvoir.
Gamache fell back against the desk. He’d clearly blacked out for a minute or so, while Chernin and Beauvoir had taken control. Propping himself up, he saw Beauvoir practically festooned with firearms.
“Well done,” rasped Gamache.
“Merci,” said Jean-Guy Beauvoir. “Patron.”
CHAPTER 9
The party for Harriet Landers was in full swing on the village green.
Multicolored lanterns had been strung and a bonfire lit. There was music and dancing and a table full of food, where Henri and Fred and Gracie and all manner of other creatures, including children, lay, looking up every time one of the revelers took a brie burger or a honey-lime chicken kabob. Or a butter tart. There was a table for alcoholic and nonalcoholic punches, and a long metal feed trough of ice with beer and wine and soft drinks in impossible shades of purple and orange.
Many of the younger children were dozing off in sleeping bags, gummy bears stuck to their hands, and faces, and hair.
“Relatives?” Gabri asked Clara, who had mustard and chocolate down her sweater.
“Apprentices.”
Those not sleeping were chasing each other around and around the outer ring of the village green, ignored by parents who tried to pretend their progeny weren’t one jelly bean away from Lord of the Flies.
Three Pines smelled of charred hot dogs and sugar from the marshmallows that had melted off sticks and plunged, sizzling, into the bonfire.
While the younger people danced to keep themselves warm in the cool late-spring evening, the older ones sat in lawn chairs drawn up to the blaze.
“I remember my own graduation party,” said Robert Mongeau, the minister at St. Thomas’s.
“From divinity school?” asked Reine-Marie.
“No, I didn’t graduate from that until just a few years ago,” he said, with a laugh. “Late to the cloth. It was from Harvard Business School.”
“Really?” said Armand.
They’d been away in Paris when this new minister had been hired, and they hadn’t had much chance to talk with him. Though Armand and Reine-Marie had heard some of the broad strokes of this newcomer, who seemed both more worldly than the previous pious minister, and more caring. Here was a man battered to his knees, not by failure but by too much success.