Bury Your Dead (54 page)

“To do what? There’s no way the La Grande dam is going to be destroyed. We’ve heard nothing about it on the channels. No one has. Not the feds, not the Americans, not even the British and they monitor everything. No one’s heard anything. Except you and that demented Cree elder.”

Francoeur stared at Gamache. The Chief Superintendent was so angry he was vibrating.

“That dam is going to be blown up in one hour and forty-three minutes. You have enough time to get there. You know where to be and what to do.”

Gamache’s voice, instead of rising, had lowered.

“You don’t give me orders,” Francoeur snarled. “You know nothing I don’t and I know no reason to go there.”

Gamache went to his desk and took out his gun. For an instant Francoeur looked frightened, then Gamache put the pistol on his belt and walked quickly up to the Chief Superintendent.

They glared at each other. Then Gamache spoke, softly, intensely.

“Please, Sylvain, if I have to beg I will. We’re both too old and tired for this. We need to stop this now. You’re right, it’s not my place to give you orders, I apologize. Please, please do as I ask.”

“No way. You have to give me more.”

“That’s all I have.”

“But it doesn’t make sense. No one would try to blow up the dam this way.”

“Why not?”

They’d been over this a hundred times. And there was no time left.

“Because it’s too rough. Like throwing a rock at an army.”

“And how did David slay Goliath?”

“Come on, this isn’t biblical and these aren’t biblical times.”

“But the same principle applies. Do the unexpected. This would work precisely because we won’t be expecting it. And while you might not see it as David and Goliath, the bombers certainly do.”

“What are you? Suddenly an expert in national security? You and your arrogance, you make me sick. You go stop that bomb if you really believe hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake.”

“No. I’m going to get Paul Morin.”

“Morin? You’re saying you know where he is? We’ve been looking all night,” Francoeur waved to the army of officers in the outer office, trying to trace Morin. “And you’re telling me you know where he is?”

Francoeur was trembling with rage, his voice almost a scream.

Gamache waited. In his peripheral vision he could see the clock, ticking down.

“Magog. In an abandoned factory. Agent Nichol and Inspector Beauvoir found him by listening to the ambient sound.”

By listening to the spaces between words they’d found him.

“Please, Sylvain, go to La Grande. I’m begging you. If I’m wrong I’ll resign.”

“If we go there and you’re wrong I’ll bring you up on charges.”

Francoeur walked out of the office, out of the incident room. And disappeared.

Gamache glanced at the clock as he made for the door. One hour and forty-one minutes left. And Armand Gamache prayed, not for the first time that day, or the last.

“It could’ve been worse,” said Émile. “I mean, who knows who made this video? They could’ve made the entire operation look like a catastrophe. But it doesn’t. Tragic, yes. Terrible. But in many ways heroic. If the families have to watch, well . . .”

Gamache knew Émile was trying to be kind, trying to say the editing could have made him out to be a coward or a bumbling idiot. Could have looked like those who died had squandered their lives. Instead everyone had looked courageous. What was the word Émile used?

Heroic.

Gamache slowly climbed the steep stairs, Henri at his heels.

Well, he knew something Émile didn’t. He suspected who had made the video. And he knew why.

Not to make Gamache look bad, but to make him look good, too good. So good the Chief would feel as he did. A fraud. A fake. Lionized for nothing. Four Sûreté officers dead and Armand Gamache the hero.

Whoever had done this knew him well. And knew how to exact a price.

In shame.

The storm blew in to Quebec City a few hours later and by two in the morning the capital was lashed by high winds and blowing snow. Highways were closed as visibility fell to zero in white-out conditions.

In the garret of the old stone home on St-Stanislas, Armand Gamache lay in bed, staring at the beamed ceiling. Henri, on the floor beside him, snored, oblivious to the snow whipping the windows.

Quietly, Gamache rose and looked out. He couldn’t see the building across the narrow street and could just barely make out the street lamps, their light all but blotted out by the driving snow.

Dressing quickly, he tiptoed down the stairs. Behind him he heard the clicking of Henri’s nails on the old wooden steps. Putting on his boots, parka, toque, heavy mitts and wrapping a long scarf around his neck Gamache bent down and petted Henri.

“You don’t have to come, you know.”

But Henri didn’t know. It wasn’t a matter of knowing. If Gamache was going, Henri was going.

Out they went, Gamache gulping as the wind hit his face and took away his breath. Then he turned his back and felt it shoving him.

Perhaps, he thought, this was a mistake.

But the storm was what he needed, wanted. Something loud, dramatic, challenging. Something that could blot out all thought, white them out.

The two struggled up the street, walking in the middle of the deserted
roads. Not even snow plows were out. It was futile to try to clear snow in the middle of a blizzard.

It felt as though the city was theirs, as though an evacuation notice had sounded and Gamache and Henri had slept through it. They were all alone.

Up Ste-Ursule they trekked, past the convent where Général Montcalm had died. To rue St-Louis, then through the arched gate. The storm, if possible, was even worse outside old Quebec City. With no walls to stop it, the wind gathered speed and snow and slammed into trees, parked cars, buildings, plastering itself against whatever it hit. Including the Chief Inspector.

He didn’t care. He felt the cold hard flakes hit his coat, his hat, his face. And he heard it pelting into him. It was almost deafening.

“I love storms,” Morin said. “Any kind of storm. Nothing like sitting in a screen porch in summer in the middle of a thunderstorm. But my favorite are blizzards, as long as I don’t have to drive. If everyone’s safe at home, then bring it on.”

“Do you ever go out in them?” Gamache asked.

“All the time, even if it’s just to stand there. I love it. Don’t know why, maybe it’s the drama. Then to come back in and have a hot chocolate in front of the fire. Doesn’t get any better.”

Gamache trudged forward, his head down, looking at his feet as he plowed his way slowly through the knee-high drifts. Excited, Henri leapt up and down in the trail made by Gamache.

They made slow progress but finally found themselves in the park. Lifting his head the Chief was briefly blinded by the snow, then squinting he could just make out the shapes of ghostly trees reeling against the wind.

The Plains of Abraham.

Gamache looked behind and noticed his boot prints had filled in, disappearing almost as quickly as he made them. He wasn’t lost, not yet, but he knew he could be if he went too far.

Henri abruptly stopped his dancing and stood still, then he started to growl and slunk behind Gamache’s legs.

This was a sure sign nothing was there.

“Let’s go,” said Gamache. He turned and came face-to-face with someone else. A tall figure in a dark parka also plastered with snow.
His head was covered in a hood. He stood quietly a few feet from the Chief.

“Chief Inspector Gamache,” the figure spoke, his voice clear and English.

“Yes.”

“I hadn’t expected to find you here.”

“I hadn’t expected to find you either,” Gamache shouted, struggling to make himself heard above the howling wind.

“Were you looking?” the man asked.

Gamache paused. “Not until tomorrow. I was hoping to speak to you tomorrow.”

“I thought so.”

“Is that why you’re here now?”

There was no answer. The dark figure just stood there. Henri, emboldened, crept forward. “Henri,” Gamache snapped.
“Viens ici.”
And the dog trotted to his master’s side.

“The storm seemed fortuitous,” said the man. “It makes it easier, somehow.”

“We need to talk,” said Gamache.

“Why?”

“I need to talk. Please.”

Now it was the man’s turn to pause. Then he indicated a building, a round stone turret built on the knoll, like a very small fortress. The two men and one dog trudged up the slight hill to the building and trying the door Gamache was a bit surprised to find it unlocked, but once inside he knew why.

There was nothing to steal. It was simply an empty, round, stone hut.

The Chief flicked a switch, and an exposed light bulb overhead came on. Gamache watched as his companion lowered his hood.

“I didn’t expect to find anyone out in this storm.” Tom Hancock whacked his snow-caked hat against his leg. “I love walking in storms.”

Gamache raised his head and stared at the young minister. It was almost exactly what Agent Morin had said.

Looking round he noticed there were no seats but he indicated the floor and both men sat, making themselves comfortable against the thick stone walls.

They were silent for a moment. Inside, without a window, without an opening, they could have been anywhere, anytime. It could have been two hundred years earlier, and outside not a storm but a battle.

“I saw the video,” Tom Hancock said. His cheeks were brilliant red and his face wet with melted snow. Gamache suspected he looked the same only, perhaps, not quite so young and vital.

“So did I.”

“Terrible,” said Hancock. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. It wasn’t quite as it looked, you know. I—” Gamache had to stop.

“You?”

“It made me look heroic and I wasn’t. It was my fault they died.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I made mistakes. I didn’t see the magnitude of what was happening until it was almost too late. And even then I made mistakes.”

“How so?”

Gamache looked at the young man. The minister. Who cared so much for hurt souls. He was a good listener, Gamache realized. It was a rare quality, a precious quality.

He took a deep breath. It smelled musky in there, as though the air wasn’t meant to be breathed, wasn’t meant to sustain life.

Then Gamache told this young minister everything. About the kidnapping and the long and patient plot. Hidden inside their own hubris, their certainty that advance technology would uncover any threat.

They’d been wrong.

Their attackers were clever. Adaptable.

“I’ve since discovered that security people call it an ‘asymmetrical approach,’ ” Gamache smiled. “Makes it sound geometric. Logical. And I guess in some ways it was. Too logical, certainly too simple for the likes of us. The plotters wanted to destroy the La Grande dam, and how would they do it? Not with a nuclear bomb, not with cleverly hidden devices. Not by infiltrating the security services or using telecommunications or anything that left a signature that could be found and traced. They did it by working where they knew we wouldn’t look.”

“And where was that?”

“In the past. They knew they could never compete with us when it came to modern technology, so they kept it simple. So simple it was
invisible to us. They relied on our hubris, our certainty that state-of-the-art technology would protect us.”

The two men’s voices were low, like conspirators, or storytellers. It felt as it must have millennia ago, when people sat together across fires and told tales.

“What was their plan?”

“Two truck bombs. And two young men willing to drive them. Cree men.”

Tom Hancock, who had been bending forward toward the story and the storyteller, leaned slowly away. He felt his back against the cold stone wall. A wall built before the Cree knew of the disaster approaching. A disaster they would even assist, guiding the Europeans to the waterways. Helping them collect the pelts.