All the Devils Are Here

CHAPTER 25

“What was that about?” Monique asked as they got in their car.

“The Horowitz case,” said Claude, tossing the laptop into the back seat.

“I know that, but there was tension. More than tension. Is something wrong?”

“Non.” But her husband was distracted. Enough to actually get lost for a moment in the narrow streets of the Marais. “I’ll drop you at home. I need to speak with Irena.”

“At this hour? It’s almost eleven. Claude, what’s going on?”

“Nothing. I need to get her the laptop, now that we have the password. I’ll be home before midnight.”

He dropped her at the door to their building and made sure she got in safely, then drove off.

Monique walked up the stairs slowly. Thinking. Her husband’s scent, even more rank than she remembered it, clung to her clothing.

Beauvoir opened the door.

Once in, Reine-Marie hugged Jean-Guy.

“You all right?” Armand asked, noticing the scrapes on Jean-Guy’s hand.

“A bit shaken, to be honest. It really is different when it’s your own family.” His eyes were wide. “Thank you for coming.”

“Annie?” asked Armand.

“Asleep. So’s Honoré.”

Despite the reassurance, Reine-Marie and Armand walked to the bedrooms, peered in, then returned to the living room.

“We brought this.” Reine-Marie held up the pastry box. “I’ll make some tea.”

They followed her into the small kitchen and put out the tea things.

“What happened,” Armand asked.

Jean-Guy described it, then said, “I’ll tell you, Armand, that guy barely touched the wall as he went over. That’s no ordinary guard. And I’m pretty sure he wanted me to recognize him.”

“Bit of psychological warfare,” said Armand.

“But the good news is, his orders were to follow me, not to do any harm to Annie or Honoré. There’s something else. He works for SecurForte.”

“The same company that has the contract with the George V,” said Gamache. “Who almost certainly doctored the tapes.”

“It gets worse. SecurForte is owned by GHS.”

Armand paused for a beat, taking that in. “How do you know?”

“I found an old article in some American mercenary magazine. Let me show you.”

They returned to the living room and took seats side by side on the sofa, in front of the laptop.

Armand read, then looked up. “What are you thinking?”

“That GHS is using SecurForte to spy on other corporations.”

“And Stephen found out. It’s possible.”

Annie walked, waddled, into the room in her bathrobe.

“What time is it? Is it morning? What’s going on?” She looked at the clock on the mantel. “It’s eleven thirty. Why’re you here? Has something happened?” Her eyes landed on the cake. “Is that an Ispahan?”

“She seems to be giving birth to questions,” said Jean-Guy.

“Careful.” Annie placed a hand over her stomach. “You don’t want the baby to join the conversation, do you?”

Once they were all sitting down, Jean-Guy told her about the GHS guard.

Annie turned white. “You chased him? Are you crazy? Are you all right?” She took his hand. “You’re hurt.”

“No, no. I’m fine. They’re just trying to scare us.”

“Are you sure?” She looked at her father, who’d been silent. “Daddy?”

She only used that word when something awful had happened, or was happening.

Just then there was a knock on the door.

Jean-Guy went to it and returned a minute later. “It’s the cop, come to guard us.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Armand said, “that maybe you need to move into Stephen’s suite at the George V.”

“But will it be any safer?” asked Reine-Marie. “SecurForte’s there, too.”

“Mom’s right,” said Annie. “They’ll be all over the George V. Why would we be safer there?”

“Because you wouldn’t be alone,” said her father. “There’ll be other guests, staff. Support.”

“You mean witnesses? I see your point.” Annie turned to Jean-Guy. “A few days in a luxury hotel? If we must…”

“Just don’t order the caviar, dear,” said Reine-Marie. “Or toast. Or anything.”

“I need to show you something on the security cameras,” said Jean-Guy. “Something they didn’t erase.”

They huddled around his laptop while he showed them the clip, gone in the blink of an eye, of a woman arriving at the George V.

“This was yesterday, late afternoon,” he said.

“It’s the head of GHS,” said Reine-Marie. “I recognize her from the annual report.”

Eugénie Roquebrune was indeed recognizable. The only woman in the lobby, perhaps in the entire hotel, maybe in all of Paris, with gray hair.

“Now,” said Beauvoir, bringing up the next clip. “This’s half an hour later. Look at the reflection in the tray the waiter’s holding.”

They watched as the uniformed waiter put a teapot and a three-tiered tower of little sandwiches and petit fours on a table. While he spoke to the guests, he lowered the large silver tray to his side. So that it reflected the guests at another table.

They watched it twice through before Armand hit pause.

“It’s Claude Dussault,” he said, and sighed, staring at the screen. “Meeting with the head of GHS. That’s it then.”

His fear confirmed.

Despite the tension that evening, and Armand’s growing discomfort with his old friend and colleague, he’d still held out hope that he’d gotten it wrong.

But he could no longer hide from the truth.

Having afternoon tea with the head of an engineering giant was hardly a crime. But he was the Prefect of Police for Paris. And GHS appeared up to its neck in this business.

The business of murder. Attempted murder. And whatever it was Stephen had discovered.

Besides, when asked directly if he knew the CEO, Claude Dussault had denied it.

He’d looked Gamache in the eye and lied.

“Who’s the other man?” asked Annie.

They could see the back of his head and a bit of his face as he turned to listen to Madame Roquebrune.

Dark hair, close-cropped. Clean-shaven.

“Madame Roquebrune’s security?” asked Reine-Marie.

“I don’t think so. A security guard wouldn’t sit down for tea with a client,” said Armand. “He’s part of whatever meeting’s happening.”

“But what is happening?” asked Reine-Marie. “I can’t imagine the CEO herself is telling the Prefect of Police, in a public place, to go kill a man.”

“They obviously didn’t know that Stephen was actually staying right there,” said Jean-Guy. “Was just a few flights above them.”

Armand leaned closer to the image. And remembered the grainy photo of Himmler in bar Joséphine.

Terrible things were discussed by confident people in public places. And there was a reason this recording had been erased. When the killings and search were bungled, they had to kick over all trace.

Innocent people holding innocent meetings didn’t erase the evidence. As SecurForte had done. And deny that it ever happened. As Claude had done.

“What would they have to offer, to get him to do it?” asked Reine-Marie.

“He talked tonight about retirement,” said Armand. “They must’ve offered him more money than he could ever make as a cop. A lifetime of peace and security for himself and his family.”

Armand rubbed his forehead, his fingers naturally finding the long, deep scar at his temple.

What would it take?

“Ummm,” said Reine-Marie. “There’s something you should know. I asked Monique—” She turned to Annie and Jean-Guy and explained, “Dr. Dussault. Claude’s wife. I asked her tonight about his cologne. I’m sorry, Armand, but it seemed the only way.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’m sure you were careful.”

“I think I was. I found out that it’s called 4711. I have a bottle of it at home that I bought this afternoon at the BHV.”

“You found it?” said Armand.

“Oui. I wanted to be able to confirm it really is the same scent we smelled, and that Claude really does use it. I didn’t show Monique the bottle, I just said I was looking for a gift for you, Armand,” she said, turning to face him directly. “It is Claude’s cologne. Monique confirmed it.”

He gave a very small nod.

“She told me his second-in-command bought some for him and for herself,” Reine-Marie continued, “when they were on a trip together in Cologne. They toured the place where it’s made. Monique says Claude only puts it on when they’re going to meet.”

There was silence as they took that in.

“That means,” Reine-Marie said, deciding they were taking too long to get there, “that it could’ve been Irena Fontaine we interrupted in Stephen’s apartment.”

“It could also mean they’re closer than we realized. We need to find out more about her,” said Jean-Guy.

“And SecurForte,” said Reine-Marie.

She took over the laptop and put the name in. Up came a website.

It was spartan, to say the least. All they could see was the home page. They needed a security code to access more.

The home page photo showed a handsome, well-groomed, muscular man in a suit standing alert beside a Maybach, while a woman, smiling but also alert, held the door open for a little girl and her mother.

In the bottom right corner was their logo.

“That’s the same emblem I saw on the guard’s uniform,” said Jean-Guy. “The same one in that article.”

“It looks like a snowflake,” said Annie. “Why would they have a snowflake as a corporate logo?”

“Look closer,” said Reine-Marie, doing just that. “Those are spears, tridents, in a circle.”

The spears were radiating out from a central point, as though protecting it.

“That’s no snowflake,” said Reine-Marie. “That’s a promise, and a warning. Clever.” She smiled. “Making it look like one thing while actually being something else. Hiding its real nature. An insignia like that is more than just a corporate logo. It’s a symbol. It means something. Most paramilitary emblems do.”

After a few dead ends, she sat back and turned the screen to the others. “Voilà. The Helm of Awe.”

“You’re kidding, right?” said Annie, leaning in. “Sounds like a comic book.”

“The Helm of Awe,” Reine-Marie read, “is an ancient Norse symbol of protection and overwhelming might.”

“What’s the Sûreté du Québec logo again?” Jean-Guy asked as they stared at the Helm of Awe. “A kitten?”

“Playing with a ball of yarn, oui,” said Armand.

Annie laughed. They all knew the Sûreté logo was a fleur-de-lys. A flower. Appropriate, but hardly awe-inspiring.

Fortunately, they didn’t need a symbol to be inspired.

“Does it say who runs SecurForte?” asked Armand.

“No,” said Reine-Marie. “But I’m sure I can find out.”

“Actually, there’s something else we need you to look into,” said Armand.

He told her and Annie about the documents Irena Fontaine had produced, questioning which side Stephen was on in the war.

“But that’s ridiculous,” said Annie. “There’s no way he was a Nazi.”

“Those documents were supposedly suppressed by the Allies, you say?” said Reine-Marie. “Hidden in the Archives nationales. I have experience with those archives. They’re immense. If those documents were buried seventy-five years ago, they wouldn’t be easy to find. And yet she had them within hours of the investigation beginning. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Go on,” said Armand.

Reine-Marie thought. “They must’ve already had them, ready to use if necessary.”

“By ‘they,’ you mean Fontaine’s boss. The Préfet de Police,” said Beauvoir.

They were back to Claude Dussault. All leads led them there.

“Looks like it, yes,” said Armand.

“But why?” asked Annie.

“Suppose Stephen found out that GHS was, for example, stealing corporate secrets,” said her father. “They’d have to stop him before he exposed them. How would they do that?”

“They could kill him,” said Annie.

“Yes, that would do it. But it’s pretty drastic, and risky. I think they’d try something else first.”

“Blackmail,” said Jean-Guy. “They went looking for some dirt to hold over him. Maybe something criminal.”

“They found those documents from the war,” said Reine-Marie. “And threatened to use them. If he exposed them, they’d tar him as a collaborator.”

Jean-Guy nodded. He’d been in France long enough to know that the Second World War was never that far away. Especially the tender issue of who worked for the Resistance, and who claimed to but actually worked for the Nazis.

He’d learned early on that he should never suggest “collaborating” with a colleague. It was an incendiary word.

“Well, if that was the strategy, they don’t know him,” said Reine-Marie. “That would just make him more determined than ever.”

“So they moved to plan B.” Armand turned to Reine-Marie. “Is there a record of who asks for which files at the archives?”

“There is, and I can look it up.” She paused. “But I have to be there. There’s something else, Armand. Something Annie found out.”

“I asked a colleague at my law firm to look into the work we did for Alexander Plessner,” said Annie. “He got back to me late this afternoon. Monsieur Plessner had an agreement drawn up, to form a limited partnership here in France. This was earlier this year.”

When Annie hesitated, Armand said, “Go on.”

“The agreement was with a newly created department within the Banque Privée des Affaires. The venture capital division.”

“Daniel?” Armand said and saw Annie nod. “But maybe he didn’t actually know Plessner.”

“He did. His name’s on the incorporation certificate.”

Daniel had lied.