How the Light Gets In

TWENTY-SIX

“We have to go.”

Gamache stood up abruptly, and both Myrna and Thérèse looked at him. A moment earlier he’d been relieved, almost ecstatic, then something had shifted and his joy had turned to anger.

Myrna paused the recording. Five happy girls stared at them, apparently mesmerized by what was happening in Myrna’s loft.

“What is it?” Thérèse asked, as they put on their coats and walked down to the bookstore. “Who was on the phone?”

“Merci, Myrna.” Gamache paused at the door and strained to produce a smile.

Myrna watched him closely. “What just happened?”

Gamache shook his head a little. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you one day.”

“But not today?”

“I don’t think so.”

The door closed behind them and the cold closed around them. The sun was still up, but they were on the edge of the shortest day and there wasn’t much light left.

“You’ll tell me,” said Thérèse as they walked rapidly across the village green. Past Ruth on the bench. Past families skating on the frozen pond. Past the three ancient white pines.

Thérèse Brunel was not asking, but commanding.

“Beauvoir was sent on another raid today.”

Thérèse Brunel absorbed the news. Gamache’s face, in profile, was grim.

“This must stop,” said Gamache.

Up the hill they strode, Thérèse hurrying to keep pace. At the edge of the forest they found their snowshoes stuck in a snow bank where they’d left them. Strapping them on, they made their way back down the trail, though they barely needed the snowshoes anymore. The trail was hard packed and easy to find.

Too easy? Thérèse Brunel wondered. But there was no way around it now.

As they approached, they saw Gilles apparently hovering in midair, twenty feet up and five feet from the tree trunk. The woods were getting dark, but as the two senior officers got closer Thérèse could see the platform, nailed to the tree of peace.

Jérôme was standing at the base of the white pine, staring up. He glanced at them as they approached, then back up into the branches above their heads. It was then Superintendent Brunel noticed that Gilles was not alone up there. Nichol was standing on the platform, a couple feet back from Gilles as he worked to position the satellite dish on the wooden railing.

“Anything?” Gilles asked, his voice muffled by frozen lips. His red beard was white and crusty, as though his words had frozen and stuck to his face.

“Close.” Nichol was studying something in her mittens.

Gilles adjusted the dish slightly.

“There. Stop,” said Nichol.

Everyone, including Thérèse and Armand, stopped. And waited. And waited. Gilles slowly, slowly released the dish.

“Still?” he asked.

Then waited. Waited.

“Yes,” she said.

“Let me see.” He held out his gloved hand.

“It’s locked onto the satellite. We’re fine.”

“Give it to me. I want to see for myself,” snapped the woodsman, the biting cold gnawing at his patience.

Nichol handed over whatever she held and he studied it.

“Good,” he said at last, and unseen below them three streams of steam were exhaled.

Once back on firm ground, Gilles smiled. His crystalline beard made him look like Father Christmas, and as he grinned some of it cracked off.

“Well done,” said Jérôme. He was stomping his feet and all but blue with cold.

Yvette Nichol stood a few feet away, separated from the main body of the team by what looked like a long, black umbilical cord. The transmission cable.

Thérèse, Jérôme, Gilles, and Nichol, thought Gamache, looking at the glum young agent. And Nichol. Attached to their own quintuplet by a slender thread.

And Nichol. How easy it would be to cut her loose.

“Are we connected?” Gamache asked Gilles, who nodded.

“We’ve found a satellite,” he replied through lips and cheeks numb with cold.

“The rest?”

He shrugged.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Thérèse demanded. “Will it do the job or not?”

Gilles turned to her. “And what is the job, madame? I still don’t know why we’re here, except that it probably has nothing to do with watching the last episode of Survivor.”

There was a stiff silence.

“Perhaps you can explain it to Gilles back at the schoolhouse,” said Gamache. He spoke matter-of-factly, as though suggesting hot chocolate after an afternoon of tobogganing. “I expect you’re ready to get inside.”

The Chief turned to Nichol, standing alone a few feet away. “You and I can finish what was started.”

They were clear, cold black-ice words.

He wants us to leave them alone, Thérèse thought. He’s cutting her from the pack.

Seeing the slight smile on Armand’s face, and hearing his hard voice, an alarm sounded inside her. A deep, dark gap had appeared between what Armand Gamache had said and what he meant. And Thérèse Brunel did not envy this young agent, who was about to discover what the Chief Inspector kept locked and hidden, deep inside.

“I should stay too,” said Thérèse. “I’m not cold yet.”

“No,” said Gamache. “I think you should go.”

Thérèse felt a chill in her marrow.

“You have a job to do,” he said quietly. “And so do I.”

“And what job is that, Armand? Like Gilles, I’m wondering.”

“I’m simply doing my small part to make a crucial connection.”

And there it was.

Thérèse Brunel stared at Gamache, then over to Agent Nichol, who was untangling a twist in the frozen telecommunications cable and seemed oblivious. Seemed. Thérèse looked at the sullen, petulant, but clever young woman. Armand had sent her to the Sûreté basement to learn how to listen.

Perhaps it had worked better than they realized.

Superintendent Brunel made a decision. She turned her back on Armand and the young agent, and ushered her husband and the woodsman away.

Gamache waited until he no longer heard the crunch, crunch, crunch of snowshoes, until silence fell on the winter woods. Then he turned on Yvette Nichol.

“What were you doing in the B and B?”

“Bonjour to you too,” she said, not looking up. “Good job, Nichol. Well done, Nichol. Thank you for coming to this shithole, freezing your ass off to help us, Nichol.”

“What were you doing in the B and B?”

She looked up and felt what little warmth she still had evaporate.

“What were you doing there?” she demanded.

He tilted his head slightly and narrowed his eyes. “Are you questioning me?” Nichol’s eyes widened and the cable slipped from her hands.

“Are you working for Francoeur?” The words came out of his mouth like icicles.

Nichol couldn’t speak, but managed to shake her head.

Gamache unzipped his parka and moved it behind his hip. His shirt was exposed. And so was his gun.

As she watched, he removed his warm gloves and held his right hand loose at his side.

“Are you working for Francoeur?” he repeated, his voice even quieter.

She shook her head vehemently and mouthed, “No.”

“What were you doing in the B and B?”

“I was looking for you,” she managed.

“Why?”

“I was at the schoolhouse getting the cable ready for here and saw you go into the B and B, so I followed you.”

“Why?”

It had taken him a while to put it together. At first he thought he owed Nichol an apology, for slamming the door in her face. But then he’d begun to wonder what she was doing in the B and B.

Was she there for the same reason he’d gone, to make a quiet call? If so, who was she calling? Gamache could guess.

“Why were you in the B and B, Yvette?”

“To speak to you.”

“You could’ve spoken to me at Emilie’s home. You could have spoken to me at the schoolhouse. Why were you in the B and B, Yvette?”

“To talk to you,” she repeated, her voice barely a squeak. “Privately.”

“What about?”

She hesitated. “To tell you that this won’t work.” She gestured up toward the hunting blind and the satellite dish. “Even if you get online, you can’t get into the Sûreté system.”

“Who says that’s our goal?”

“I’m not an idiot, Chief Inspector. You asked for untraceable satellite equipment. You’re not building a robot army. If you were going in through the front door you could do that from home or your office. This is something else. You brought me here to help you break in. But it won’t work.”

“Why not?” Despite himself, he was interested.

“Because while all this shit might get you connected, and even hide where you are for a while, you need a code to get into the deepest files. Your own Sûreté security code will give you away. So will Superintendent Brunel’s. You know that.”

“How much do you know about what we’re doing?”

“Not much. I knew nothing until yesterday, when you asked for my help.”

They stared at each other.

“You invited me here, sir. I didn’t ask. But when you asked for help, I agreed. And now you treat me like your enemy?”

Gamache was having none of her mind games. He knew there was a far more likely reason she’d agreed to come down. Not loyalty to him, but to another. She was in the B and B to report to Francoeur, and had he not been distracted by his concern for Jean-Guy, he’d have caught her at it.

“I invited you because we had no choice. But that doesn’t mean I trust you, Agent Nichol.”

“What do I need to do to gain your trust?”

“Tell me why you were in the B and B.”

“I wanted to warn you that without a security code, none of this will work.”

“You’re lying.”

“No.”

Gamache knew she was lying. She didn’t need to tell him about the code privately.

“What have you told Francoeur?”

“Nothing,” she pleaded. “I’d never do that.”

Gamache glared at her. Once the computer was turned on. Once the satellite connection was made. Once Jérôme opened that door and stepped through, it was just a matter of time before they were found. Their only hope rested with the embittered young agent in front of him, trembling with cold and fear and indignation, real or forced.

Time was running out to save Beauvoir, and to find out what Francoeur’s goal was. There was a purpose here that went well beyond hurting Gamache and Beauvoir.

Something far bigger, put in place years ago, was maturing now. Today. Tomorrow. Soon. And Gamache still didn’t know what it was.

He felt slow, stupid. It was as though all sorts of clues, elements, were floating in front of him, but one piece was missing. Something that would connect them all. Something he’d either missed or hadn’t yet found.

He now knew it involved Pierre Arnot. But what was their goal?

Gamache could have screamed his frustration.

What role did this pathetic young woman play in all of this? Was she the nail in their coffin, or their salvation? And why did one look so much like the other?

Gamache brought his parka forward and zipped it up with a hand so cold he could barely tell he was holding the zipper. Putting his gloves back on, he scooped up the heavy cable at her feet.

As Nichol watched, Chief Inspector Gamache put the thick black cable over his shoulder and leaned forward, lugging it through the forest, in a direct route to the schoolhouse.

After a few steps he felt it grow lighter. Agent Yvette Nichol’s snowshoes plodded along in the trail he was making, picking up the slack.

She fell in behind him, puffing with the effort and relief.

He’d caught her. He might even suspect. But he hadn’t gotten the truth from her.

Thérèse Brunel got Jérôme and Gilles settled in the schoolhouse, in front of the woodstove. Heat radiated from it and the men stripped off their heavy parkas, hats, mitts, and boots and sat with their feet out, as close as they could get to the fire without themselves bursting into flames.

The room smelled of wet wool and wood smoke. It was warm now, but Gilles and Jérôme were not.

After shoving more wood into the stove, Thérèse went over to Emilie’s to get Henri, then to the general store, where she picked up milk, cocoa and marshmallows. The hot chocolate now simmered in a pot on top of the stove, and the scent joined that of wet wool and wood smoke. She poured it into mugs and topped each with a couple of large, soft marshmallows.

But the hot chocolate shook so badly in Gilles’s hands, Thérèse had to take the mug from him.

“You asked what this is about,” she said.

Gilles nodded. His teeth chattered violently as he listened, and he alternately hugged himself and held his hands out to the stove as she spoke. His beard had melted a wet stain on his sweater.

When she finished speaking, Thérèse handed him back his hot chocolate, the marshmallow melted to white foam on the top. He gripped the warm mug to his chest like a little boy, frightened by a scary story and trying to be brave.

Beside him, Jérôme had remained quiet while his wife described what they were looking for, and why. Dr. Brunel kneaded his feet, trying to get the blood flowing again. Pins and needles stabbed his toes as the circulation returned.

The sun was now barely visible over the dark forest, the forest that still contained Armand Gamache and Agent Nichol. Thérèse turned on the lights and looked at the blank monitors her husband had set up that morning.

What if this doesn’t work?

They’d have made a very poor Scout troop, she thought. Not only were they unprepared for this to fail, they were using stolen equipment to hack into police files. If there were badges for deception, they’d be covered in them.

They heard heavy footsteps on the wooden porch, and Thérèse opened the door to find Armand there, puffing with exertion.

“You all right?” she asked, though they both knew she was really asking, “Are you alone?”

“Never better,” he gasped. His face was red from exertion and the bitter cold. Dropping the cable on the stoop, he entered the schoolhouse, followed a moment later by Agent Nichol. Her face was no longer pallid. Now it was blotched, white and red. She looked like the Canadian flag.

Thérèse exhaled, unaware until that moment just how concerned she’d really been.

“Do I smell chocolate?” Gamache asked, through frozen lips. Henri had run over to greet him and the Chief was on one knee, hugging the shepherd. For warmth as much as affection, Thérèse suspected. And Henri was happy to give him both.

Space was made by the woodstove for the newcomers.

Thérèse poured them mugs of hot chocolate, and after Gamache and Nichol had stripped off their outerwear, the five sat silently around the woodstove. For the first couple of minutes Gamache and Nichol shuddered with cold. Their hands shook and every now and then they spasmed as the bitter winter, like a wraith, left their body.

Then the little schoolhouse grew quiet, except for the odd squeal of a chair leg on the wooden floor, the crackle of the fire, and Henri’s groans as he stretched out at Gamache’s feet.

Armand Gamache felt he could nod off. His socks were now dry and slightly crispy, the mug of hot chocolate warmed his hands, and the heat from the stove enveloped him. Despite the urgency of their situation, he felt his lids grow heavy.

Oh, for just a few minutes, a few moments, of rest.

But there was work to be done.

Putting down his mug, he leaned forward, hands clasped together. He looked at the circle huddled around the woodstove in the tiny one-room schoolhouse. The five of them. Quints. Thérèse, Jérôme, Gilles, Armand, and Nichol.

And Nichol, he thought again. Hanging off the end. The outlier.

“What’s next?” he asked.