A Great Reckoning

CHAPTER 2

Michel Brébeuf could see the car approaching along the cliff highway for quite a distance. At first he watched through his telescope and then with the naked eye. There was nothing to obscure his view. Not a tree, not a house.

The wind had rubbed the land down to its essence. Some rough grass, and rock. Like a worry stone. Inundated in the summer by tourists and part-time residents who came for the rugged beauty of the area and left before the snow moved in, only a rare few appreciated the glories the Gaspé had to offer the rest of the year.

They clung to the peninsula because they had no desire to leave, or nowhere else to go.

Michel Brébeuf was among the latter.

The car slowed and then, to his surprise, it stopped at the foot of his drive, pulling onto the soft shoulder of the provincial highway.

It was true that he had a particularly spectacular view of Percé Rock, out in the bay, but there were better and safer places to pull over for a photograph.

Brébeuf grabbed his binoculars, sitting on the windowsill, and trained them on the car. It was a rental. He could tell by the plates. There were two people in it. Man and woman. Caucasian. Middle-aged, perhaps in their fifties.

Affluent, but not flashy.

He couldn’t see their faces, but quickly, instinctively, surmised this by their choice of rental and their clothing.

And then the man in the driver’s seat turned to speak to the woman beside him.

And Michel Brébeuf slowly lowered the binoculars and stared out to sea.

The snow that had whacked central Québec had arrived the day before in the Gaspé Peninsula as heavy rain. The sort of drenching common in the Maritimes in November. If it were possible to render sorrow, it would look like a November gale.

But then, like sorrow, it too passed and the new day arrived almost impossibly clear and bright, the sky a perfect blue. Only the ocean held on to the distress. It churned and broke against the stones of the shoreline. Out in the bay, standing all alone, was the magnificent Percé Rock, the Atlantic Ocean hurtling against it.

By the time he dragged his eyes back, the couple had turned the car into his driveway and were almost at the house. As he watched, they got out. And stood there. The man had his back on the house and stared out to sea. To the great rock with the great hole worn through it.

The woman went to him and took his hand. And then, together, they walked the last few yards to the house. Slowly. As reluctant, it would appear, to see him as he was to see them.

His heart was throbbing now and he wondered if he might drop dead before the couple arrived at his porch.

He hoped so.

His eyes, trained to these things, went to Armand’s hands. No weapon. Then to his coat. Was there a bulge there by the shoulder? But surely he hadn’t come to kill him. If he’d wanted to do that, he’d have done it before now. And not in front of Reine-Marie.

It would be a private assassination. And one Michel had, privately, been expecting for years.

What he hadn’t expected was a social call.

After making sure no blood would be spilled, Reine-Marie had gone inside, leaving Armand and Michel to sit on the porch, wrapped in sweaters and jackets, on cedar chairs turned silver by time and exposure. As had they.

“Why are you here, Armand?”

“I’ve retired from the Sûreté.”

“Oui, I heard.”

Brébeuf looked at the man who’d been his best friend, his best man, his confidant and colleague and valued subordinate. He’d trusted Armand, and Armand had trusted him.

Michel had been right. Armand had not.

Armand stared out at the massive rock in the distance, its center hollowed out, worn away by eons of the relentless sea, until it was a stone halo. Its heart gone.

Then he turned to Michel Brébeuf. The godfather to his daughter. As he was godfather to Michel’s firstborn.

How often had they sat beside each other, as inspectors, discussing a case? And then across from each other, as Michel’s star had risen and Armand’s had waned? Boss and subordinate at work, but remaining best friends outside.

Until.

“All the way here I was thinking,” said Armand.

“About what happened?”

“No. About the Great Wall of China.”

Michel laughed. It was involuntary and genuine, and for the brief life of that laugh the bad was forgotten.

But then the laugh died away and Michel again wondered if Armand was there to kill him.

“The Great Wall of China? Really?”

Michel tried to sound disinterested, even irritated. More intellectual bullshit on the part of Gamache. But the truth was, as with all apparently irrelevant things Armand said, Brébeuf was curious.

“Hmmmm,” said Armand. The lines around his mouth deepened. Evidence of a very slight smile. “It’s possible I was the only one on the flight thinking about it.”

Brébeuf was damned if he was going to ask why the Great Wall.

“Why?”

“It took centuries to build, you know,” said Armand. “They started it in 200 BC, or thereabouts. It’s an almost unbelievable achievement. Over mountains and across gorges, for thousands of miles. And it’s not just a wall. They didn’t just slap it together. Effort was made to make it both a fortification and a thing of beauty. It kept China safe for centuries. Invaders couldn’t get past it. It’s an absolutely astonishing feat.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“But finally in the sixteenth century, fifteen hundred years after it was started, the Manchus broke through the Great Wall. Do you know how they did it?”

“I’m thinking you’re going to tell me.”

But the veneer of weariness and boredom had worn away, and even Michel could hear the curiosity in his voice. Not simply because he wanted to know about the Great Wall of China, something he had not spent a moment thinking about his entire life. But because he wanted to know why Armand was thinking of it.

“Millions of lives were lost building the wall and defending it. Dynasties went bankrupt paying for it and maintaining it,” said Gamache, looking out to sea and feeling the bracing salt air on his face.

“After more than a thousand years,” he continued, “an enemy finally broke through. Not because of superior firepower. Not because the Manchus were better fighters or strategists. They weren’t. The Manchus breached the Great Wall and took Beijing because someone opened a gate. From the inside. As simple as that. A general, a traitor, let them in and an empire fell.”

All the fresh air in the world surrounded them, but Michel Brébeuf couldn’t breathe. Armand’s words, their meaning, clogged his passages.

Armand sat with apparently infinite patience, waiting. For Michel to either recover or pass out. He would not hurt his former friend, at least not at the moment, but neither would he help him.

After several minutes, Michel found his voice. “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household, eh, Armand?”

“I doubt the Manchus would quote the Bible, but it does seem universal. Betrayal.”

“Have you come all this way to taunt me?”

“Non.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want you to come work for me.”

The words were so ridiculous Brébeuf couldn’t understand them. He stared at Gamache in undisguised confusion.

“What? Where?” Brébeuf finally asked.

Though the real question, they both knew, was why.

“I’ve just taken over as the commander of the Sûreté Academy,” said Armand. “The new term starts right after Christmas. I’d like you to be one of the professors.”

Brébeuf continued to stare at Armand. Trying to grasp what was being said.

This was no simple job offer. Nor, he suspected, was it a peace offering. There’d been too much war, too much damage, for that. Yet.

This was something else.

“Why?”

But Armand didn’t answer. Instead he held Brébeuf’s eyes, until Michel lowered them. Then Gamache shifted his gaze back out to the view. To the vast ocean and the massive rock it had worn down.

“How do you know you can trust me?” asked Michel, to Armand’s profile.

“I don’t,” said Armand.

“You don’t know, or you don’t trust me?”

Armand turned then and gave Michel a look he’d never seen before. There wasn’t loathing there. Not quite. It wasn’t quite contempt. But it was close.

There was certainly knowing. Gamache saw him for what he was.

A weak man. A Percé man. Hollowed out by time and exposure. Worn down and misshapen. Pierced.

“You opened the gate, Michel. You could’ve stopped it, but you didn’t. When corruption came knocking, you let it in. You betrayed everyone who trusted you. You turned the Sûreté from a strong and brave force into a cesspool, and it has taken many lives and many years to clean it out.”

“Then why invite me back in?”

Armand got up and Brébeuf rose with him.

“The weakness in the Great Wall wasn’t structural, it was human,” said Gamache. “The strength, or weakness, of anything is primarily human. Including the Sûreté. And it all starts at the academy.”

Brébeuf nodded. “D’accord. I agree. But again, even more so, why me? Aren’t you afraid that I might infect them?”

He studied Gamache. Then smiled.

“Or is there already an infection there, Armand? That’s it, isn’t it? Did you come all this way for the antidote? Is that why you need me? I’m the antivirus. The stronger infection sent in to cure the disease. It’s a dangerous game, Armand.”

Gamache gave him a hard, assessing look, then went inside to get Reine-Marie.

Michel accompanied them back down the drive. And watched them drive away, back to the airport and the flight home.

Then he went inside. Alone. No more wife. No more children. No grandchildren. Just a magnificent view, out to sea.

On the flight, Gamache looked down at the fields, and forests, and snow, and lakes and considered what he’d done.

Michel was right, of course. It was dangerous, though it wasn’t a game.

What would happen, he wondered, if he couldn’t control it and the antibiotic, the virus, went viral?

What had he just sent in? What gate had he opened?

Instead of going back to Three Pines when they landed, Armand drove to Sûreté headquarters. But first he dropped Reine-Marie at their daughter’s home. Annie was four months pregnant with her first child and was showing now.

“Coming in, Dad?” she asked from the door. “Jean-Guy will be home soon.”

“I’ll be back later,” he said, kissing her on both cheeks.

“No rush,” called Reine-Marie, and closed the door.

At headquarters, Armand pressed the top button in the elevator and was swept up to the office of the Chief Superintendent.

Thérèse Brunel looked up from her desk. Behind her, the lights of Montréal spread out. He could see three bridges and the headlights of cars filled with people heading home. It was a commanding view, and behind the desk was a commanding presence.

“Armand,” she said, rising to greet her old friend with an embrace. “Thank you for coming in.”

Chief Superintendent Brunel indicated the sitting area and they both took seats. In her late sixties now, the slight, elegant woman had come to policing late in life and had taken to it as though she had been born to investigate crime.

She’d risen fast through the ranks, passing her old professor and colleague Chief Inspector Gamache, until she could rise no further.

Her office had been redecorated in soft pastels since the former chief superintendent had been, what? “Replaced” was not really the word.

While she’d been promoted beyond Gamache, they both knew it was a function of the politics within the Sûreté, and not competence. But still, she held the rank and commanded the office and the force with confidence.

Armand handed her his dossiers and watched as she read. He got up and poured them both drinks, giving her one and taking his to the wall of glass.

It was a view that never failed to move him, so much did he love Québec.

“There’s going to be hell to pay, Armand,” she finally said.

He remained where he was but turned and saw that while her face was serious, stern even, there was no criticism. It was simply a statement of fact.

“Oui,” he agreed, and turned back to the view as she returned to the documents.

“I see you’ve changed some of the students,” she said. “I’m not surprised. The problem will come from the faculty. You’re replacing at least half of them.”

Now he walked back to his chair and sat, placing his almost untouched drink on the coaster and nodding. “How could there be significant change if the same people are in charge?”

“I’m not disagreeing or arguing with you, but are you prepared for the blowback? These people will lose their pensions, their insurance. And they’ll be humiliated.”

“Not by me. They’ve done it to themselves. And if they want to sue, I have the proof.” He looked not at all concerned. But neither was he triumphant. This was the tail end of a tragedy. And there was a sting in it.

“I doubt they’ll sue,” she said, replacing the last file on the pile. “But neither will they go without a fight. It simply won’t be in public, or in the courts.”

“We’ll see,” he said, sitting back. His face grim and determined.

Armand watched as she turned to the final stack of dossiers. These were the files on the men and women he planned to invite to teach at the academy. To replace the men and women he was about to fire.

Showing the list to Thérèse was a courtesy on his part. Chief Superintendent Brunel had no authority over the academy. The academy and the Sûreté were two separate entities, connected theoretically by a common belief in the need for “Service, Integrity, Justice.” The motto of the force.

But the previous head of the school had commanded in name only. The reality was, he bowed to, then bent and finally broke under the demands of the former head of the Sûreté, who ran the school as his personal training ground.

But Chief Superintendent Francoeur was no longer the head of the Sûreté. No longer with the force. No longer on this earth. Gamache had seen to that.

And now Gamache was cleaning up the merde the man left behind.

The first step was to establish autonomy, but also a courteous collaboration with his counterpart at the Sûreté.

Commander Gamache watched as Chief Superintendent Brunel made her way down the pile of proposed professors, occasionally making notes or small comments, mumbling to herself. Until she reached the final dossier. She stared at it, then, without even opening it, she looked up at Gamache and held his eyes.

“Is this a joke?”

“No.”

She looked back down but didn’t touch the manila file. It was enough to see the name.

Michel Brébeuf.

When she looked up again, there was anger, bordering on rage, on her face.

“This is madness, Armand.”