The Nature of the Beast

CHAPTER 12

“My God,” Rosenblatt whispered.

But he didn’t seem to Gamache, who stood beside the elderly professor, like a man who’d seen his God. Just the opposite.

“Can I go closer? Am I allowed to touch it?”

“Yes. But be careful,” said Lacoste.

He handed his briefcase, no longer all that important, to Gamache and approached the gun. Slowly, carefully. His hands out in front of him, as though worried he might scare it off.

“The main thing we need to know from you, Professor,” said Lacoste, as they followed him, “is whether it can be fired. We’d need to disable it.”

“Yes,” said Rosenblatt, in a dream state.

He walked up to the etching, and stopped. Considering the monster. Then he laid his palms flat on it. Feeling the cold metal. Almost expecting to feel a pulse.

He leaned into it, and Gamache thought he heard a whisper, but couldn’t make out the words.

Then Professor Rosenblatt stepped back. And back again. And another step. Craning his neck, dropping his head back until it could go no further. His mouth open, his eyes wide, he tried to take in the magnitude of what he was seeing. Not simply the size of the weapon, but the very fact of it.

He turned his head to look along the barrel as it disappeared into the darkness. Not even the floodlights could reach to the end.

Gamache watched as the professor closed his eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, then with one last exhale he turned to his companions.

“I need to find the firing chamber, to see if it’s armed.”

He was all business now.

“It’ll be around here,” he said, walking to the rear of the gun. “Did you open this?”

He pointed to a round metal door, large enough to walk into.

“We tried, but couldn’t make it open,” said Lacoste. “We stopped, afraid we might inadvertently fire it.”

Professor Rosenblatt was nodding. “You wouldn’t have. The firing mechanism is somewhere else. This is the breech. If there’s a missile, it would be in here.”

They watched as the professor ran his hands over the latches and handles and knobs.

“Careful,” warned Beauvoir, but Rosenblatt didn’t respond. He was too focused on the mechanism.

“Do we know for sure he knows what he’s doing?” Lacoste asked Beauvoir.

Before Beauvoir could answer, they saw the professor reach out and grasp a lever. Leaning into it, the elderly man pulled but nothing happened.

“I need help,” he said. “It’s stuck.”

Beauvoir joined him, and between them they pulled and pulled until it gave with such suddenness both men leapt back.

There was a whirring, grinding sound, then a loud hiss.

Gamache tensed. Afraid Rosenblatt had just set it off, but not at all sure what to do if he had.

Then the massive door swung open, like a mouth. Like a maw. Inviting them in.

The four of them stared. Gamache could hear heavy breathing and knew it came from Jean-Guy. Not because the effort had winded him, but because he was staring into his nightmare.

While Gamache was afraid of heights, Beauvoir was terrified of holes. Armand stepped over to him.

“Stay here,” he said. “If the door closes, please open it again.”

Beauvoir didn’t answer, but continued to stare.

“Do you need to write that down?” asked Gamache.

“Huh? Pardon?” said Jean-Guy, coming out of his reverie. “Right. Wait, are you going in there?”

He waved to the opening, where Professor Rosenblatt was already standing.

“I am. And if we need to climb up on the thing?”

“I’ll go,” said Beauvoir, with a smile.

“You’d better.”

Gamache followed Rosenblatt and Lacoste into the chamber.

In the beams of their flashlights, Gamache could see the professor’s face. His eyes. Bright, but not overexcited. He seemed almost calm, in control.

This was his natural environment. The belly of the beast. This was where the little professor belonged.

“Incredible,” Rosenblatt murmured, shaking his head. “No electronics.” He looked back at his companions. “It’s like a Meccano set.”

“But is it armed?” asked Lacoste. She was beginning to get antsy. She’d never suffered from claustrophobia, but then she’d never been crammed into the firing chamber of a giant weapon with two other people before.

“No,” said Rosenblatt, and pointed toward the great long tube stretching out in front of them.

Rosenblatt was studying the wall of the borehole.

“Empty. There’s never even been a missile in here. It’s unmarked.”

Gamache reached out and touched the side. It felt slightly greasy.

“It’s been prepared,” he said.

Rosenblatt looked at him and nodded. “You know guns.”

“Sadly, yes,” said Gamache. “We all do. But never anything like this.”

“No one has known anything like this,” said Rosenblatt, and even by the limited beam of the flashlight Gamache could see the wonder in the professor’s eyes.

“Can it be fired?” Lacoste asked.

“I need to find the firing mechanism before I can answer and for that, we need to leave.”

He did not need to say it twice. Lacoste was out in a flash, following the professor around to the side of the machine.

“That’s interesting. The trigger should be here.” He placed his fist in a large hole. “But it’s missing.”

“Maybe it’s somewhere else,” Beauvoir suggested.

“No, it would have to be here, given the configuration inside.”

He looked behind him, toward the back wall of the camouflage netting, and shook his head.

“But the main thing is,” said Lacoste. “It isn’t armed, and even if it was, it can’t be fired.”

“Not without the mechanism, no.”

“What would it look like?” Gamache asked.

“The trigger would have cogs that fit onto this wheel.” The professor pointed to a circle with teeth, about a foot wide. “There’s nothing electronic on this thing. Not even the guidance system. It’s all done manually.”

“Could it have fallen off?” asked Beauvoir, looking on the ground.

“This isn’t a LEGO set. Things don’t just fall off. It’s intricate, perfectly made. Each piece fits snugly, exactly.”

“So, no?” said Beauvoir.

“No,” said Rosenblatt. “If it’s gone, someone took it, and by the looks of it, not recently. I need to see the etching again.”

The elderly man spoke with determination and Gamache realized that while he was afraid of heights, and Beauvoir was afraid of confined spaces, Professor Michael Rosenblatt was afraid of the etching.

They walked back to it, and Rosenblatt stepped back, taking in the winged monster as it reared and bucked. Its seven heads were straining, its long necks intertwining like serpents. There was a woman on its back, holding reins. Controlling the beast. She stared out at them, a strange expression on her face. It wasn’t wrath, thought Gamache. It wasn’t vengeance or blood lust. It was more sinister. Something Gamache couldn’t quite define.

Professor Rosenblatt whispered under his breath.

“What did you say?” asked Gamache, who was closest to the scientist.

Rosenblatt pointed to what looked like scales on the monster’s body.

Gamache stepped closer, then, putting on his glasses, he bent in. Straightening up, he looked at the professor.

“Hebrew?”

“Yes. Can you read it?” asked Rosenblatt.

“No, I’m afraid not.”

Rosenblatt looked again at the creature. At the detailing, which were not scales at all, but words. And he read, out loud.

Then he turned to his companions in this dark place. He looked both triumphant and terrified. As though his worst fear and greatest wish were one and the same. And had come true.

“By the waters of Babylon,” he said, “we sat down and wept.”

The blood rushed from Gamache’s face. In front of him the gun glowed, unnaturally, supernaturally, in the floodlights. Shadows were thrown on the canopy, a false sky above, a grotesque constellation.

“Now,” said Professor Rosenblatt, “I can tell you what this is.”

They sat in the living room of the Gamache home, around the fireplace where flames leapt and danced and threw cheerful light on the somber faces.

It had been cold in the forest, and the decision was made to return to someplace warm. And private.

They sat with mugs of tea, warm and comforting, and plates of madeleines Armand had picked up at Sarah’s boulangerie as they’d passed by.

“What you’ve found,” said Professor Rosenblatt, “is Project Babylon. When we spoke this morning and you described it, I barely believed you. Project Babylon is a tale physicists told to scare each other. It’s a Grimms’ tale for scientists.”

He took a deep breath and tried to cover his discomfort by reaching for another pastry. But his unsteady hand betrayed him.

Gamache couldn’t decide if the tremble was caused by fear or excitement.

“What you have is a Supergun. No, not ‘a’ Supergun, it’s ‘the’ Supergun. The only one of its kind. Within the armaments community it’s a sort of legend. For years we’d heard rumors that it’d been built. Some people tried to find it, but gave up. Then the talk died away, as time passed.”

“When you first saw it,” said Gamache, “you whispered, ‘He didn’t.’ Who did you mean?”

Armand leaned forward, forearms on his knees, his large hands forming a sort of bow in front of him. Like a ship plowing through the seas.

“I meant Gerald Bull,” said Rosenblatt, and seemed to expect some sort of reaction. A gasp, perhaps. But there was nothing beyond rapt attention.

“Gerald Bull?” Rosenblatt repeated, looking from one to the other to the other.

They shook their heads.

“Look on my works, ye Mighty,” said Rosenblatt as he drew his battered leather briefcase toward him. “And despair.”

“Oh no,” sighed Beauvoir. “Now we have two of them.”

“‘Ozymandias,’” said Gamache, looking at Jean-Guy with despair. “The professor was quoting a sonnet by Shelley—”

“—of course he was.”

“—that speaks of arrogance, of hubris. A king who thought his achievements would stand for thousands of years, but all that remained of him was a broken statue in the desert.”

“And yet he was finally immortalized,” said Rosenblatt. “Not because of his power, but because of a poem.”

Beauvoir looked about to say something smart-ass, but stopped. And thought.

“Who was Gerald Bull?” he finally asked.

Professor Rosenblatt had unbuckled the briefcase and, after sorting through the contents, brought out some papers.

“I found these in my files after we spoke. I thought they might be needed.”

He put the papers, held together by a staple, on the coffee table.

“This is Dr. Bull.”

Isabelle Lacoste picked them up. What the professor had brought was yellowed and typewritten. There was also a grainy black-and-white photograph of a man in a suit and narrow tie, looking put upon.

“He was an armaments engineer,” said Rosenblatt. “Depending on who you speak to, Dr. Bull was either a visionary or an amoral arms dealer. Either way, he was a brilliant designer.”

“He made that thing in the woods?” asked Lacoste.

“I think so, yes. I think it was part of what he called Project Babylon. His goal was to design and build a gun so powerful it could launch a missile into low Earth orbit, like a satellite. From there it would travel thousands of miles to its target.”

“But don’t those exist?” asked Beauvoir. “ICBMs?”

“Yes, but the Supergun is different,” said Rosenblatt.

“The Meccano set,” said Lacoste. “No electronics.”

“Exactly.” The professor beamed at her. “No computer guidance systems. Nothing that depends on software or even electricity. Just good old-fashioned armaments, not that far off the artillery used in the First World War.”

“But why was that such an achievement?” asked Gamache. “It sounds like a step back, not forward. As Inspector Beauvoir says, if there’re ICBMs that can send nuclear warheads thousands of miles accurately, why would anyone want or need Gerald Bull’s Supergun?”

“Think about it,” said Rosenblatt.

They did, but nothing came to mind.

“You’re too mired in the present, in thinking that newer must be better,” he said. “But part of Gerald Bull’s genius was recognizing that ancient design could not only work, but in some cases, work better.”

“Did he also build a giant slingshot?” asked Beauvoir. “Should we be looking for one of those?”

“Think,” said Rosenblatt.

Gamache thought, and then he looked around their home. At the useless smartphone on the desk in the study. At the dial-up connection that barely worked.

He looked at the crackling fireplace, feeling its heat, and he thought about the woodstove in the kitchen. In Clara’s kitchen. In Myrna’s bookstore.

If the power went out they’d still have warmth and light. They could still cook. No thanks to modern technology. That would be rendered useless, but they’d have power because of old, even ancient, tools. Woodstoves. Wells.

Three Pines might be primitive in many ways, but unlike the outside world, it could survive a very long time without power. And that itself was powerful.

“The weapon needs no power source,” said Gamache slowly. Coming to the realization, and the implication. “It can send a missile into orbit without even a battery.”

Professor Rosenblatt was nodding. “That’s it. The brilliance and the nightmare.”

“Why nightmare?” asked Beauvoir.

“Because Dr. Bull’s Supergun meant any terrorist cell, any extremist, any crazy dictator could become an international threat,” said the scientist. “They didn’t need technology, or scientists, or even electricity. All they’d need was the Supergun.”

He let that sink in, and as it did even the cheery fireplace couldn’t take the chill out of the room, or wipe the alarm from their faces.

“But maybe he didn’t do it,” said Lacoste. “Maybe he wasn’t successful. Maybe Bull abandoned it because it doesn’t work.”

“No,” said Professor Rosenblatt. “He abandoned it because he was killed.”

They stared at him.

“How?” asked Gamache.

“He was murdered in 1990. Some describe it as an assassination. He was living in Brussels at the time. Five bullets to the head.”

“Professional,” said Lacoste.

Rosenblatt nodded. “The killers were never caught.”

Gamache’s eyes narrowed in concentration.

“I seem to remember this,” he said. “Gerald Bull was a Quebecker—”

“Actually, he was born in Ontario and studied at Queens University. It’s all in there.” Rosenblatt waved at the papers he’d brought them. “But he did much of his work here in Quebec. At least, at first.”

“Did you know him?” asked Gamache.

“Not really. He was at McGill for a short while. Considered a bit of a crank. Difficult.”

“Unlike physicists?” asked Gamache, and saw Rosenblatt smile.

“I’m afraid I’m not brilliant enough to be difficult,” he said. “That’s reserved for geniuses. I was just an academic, teaching students about trajectory. Or trying to. When sophisticated systems came in, students realized they didn’t really have to know these things. Computer programs would do it all for them. I might as well have been using a slide rule and an abacus.”

“Dr. Bull never came to you for advice?” Gamache prodded.

Now Rosenblatt laughed outright. “Advice? Gerald Bull? No. And he wouldn’t have come to me anyway. I was much too lowly.”

The two men regarded each other before Gamache finally smiled and dropped his eyes. But Michael Rosenblatt took warning, and wondered if he might have just overdone it.

“The chatter after he’d died was that Bull had in fact built the Supergun,” said Rosenblatt. “And it was ready to be tested. But no one knew where it was. And it was all just gossip. People like drama but no one really believes it.”

“Why was he killed?” Beauvoir asked.

“No one knows for sure, of course,” said Rosenblatt. “The assumption was he was killed to stop him from building the gun.”

“By the waters of Babylon,” Gamache quoted, his eyes on the elderly scientist, “we sat down and wept. There’s more to tell, Professor. We’ll find out eventually, you know. Why was that etching, the beast, carved into the gun? Why did Gerald Bull put it there? And why that quote?”

Professor Rosenblatt looked around in a glance that would have been ludicrously furtive had they not been talking about a gun whose very existence had killed at least two people. Its maker and Laurent. And whose intent was to kill far more.

Michael Rosenblatt realized, too late, that he had vastly underestimated all three of them. And certainly Gamache. It was true, they would find out eventually.

But perhaps, he thought, his mind racing, not everything.

He might as well tell them. But perhaps, he thought, not everything.

“Gerald Bull was a Renaissance man,” he said, and heard Beauvoir snort. He turned to the Inspector. “The Renaissance created amazing works of art, of innovation. But it was also a brutal time. I’m not unaware of the fact that this is a weapon.”

“Of mass destruction,” said Gamache, who was also having none of this glorification of an arms designer, an arms dealer.

Professor Rosenblatt studied him to see if there was any other agenda, anything else behind the exact words Gamache had just chosen. But there didn’t seem to be.

“True. But he was also a classicist. A man who loved music and art and history. Dr. Bull knew perfectly well what he was building. Stories circulated within the armaments community that he’d not only built the Supergun, but carved a seven-headed beast on it, as a reference to the Book of Revelation.”

He looked at them. Isabelle Lacoste was thinking, trying to remember her Bible classes as a child. Beauvoir shook his head impatiently. And Gamache just stared in a way the professor found disconcerting.

“The Whore of Babylon?” said Rosenblatt.

“Just tell us,” said Beauvoir, his patience at an end.

The professor took out his iPhone, punched at the screen, then put it on the table. Beside the golden madeleines glowed the image of a monster rearing up with seven heads on long serpentine necks springing from the body.

And riding the monster was a woman, not looking out to where the beast was taking her, but staring back at whoever was staring at her.

“Who’s the Whore of Babylon supposed to be?” Beauvoir demanded.

Professor Rosenblatt was about to answer, but then turned to Gamache. “I think you know.”

Gamache hadn’t taken his eyes off the image. “The Antichrist.”

Beauvoir sputtered in amusement. “Oh, come on,” he said, his handsome lean face breaking into deep lines of laughter. “Really?”

He looked at them, his eyes finally resting on the elderly scientist.

“Are you seriously saying that thing in the forest is the devil?”

“I’m not saying that, but you asked about the Whore of Babylon and that’s the answer. You can look it up yourselves or ask any biblical scholar. There’re all sorts of interpretations about what the beast and the seven heads represent, but most come to the same conclusion. She’s heading for Armageddon.”

“As was Gerald Bull,” said Lacoste. “In building the Supergun he was courting the end of the world.”

“Well now,” said Rosenblatt. He looked down at his feet, then up at her. “The community is divided on that. Many, probably most, think Dr. Bull was a mercenary. An arms dealer. A one-stop shop. He’d design, build and sell any weapon to the highest bidder.”

“And the others?” asked Gamache. “The minority?”

“They think Dr. Bull was a hero. That he was very clear about why he was building the Supergun, and who he was making it for. They believe he carved the beast on it as a sort of gesture. Like pilots in the Second World War often painted frightening images on their planes.”

“He called it Project Babylon,” said Gamache. “Why?”

“Who was the devil in the late 1980s?” Rosenblatt asked.

“The Soviet Union,” said Lacoste, remembering her history.

“The Cold War was waning,” said Gamache. “Yeltsin and President Gorbachev were bringing in glasnost.”

“Exactly,” said Rosenblatt. “But there was someone else. An ally who was fast becoming an enemy. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, to use another biblical image.”

“Babylon?” said Gamache. “Are you saying Gerald Bull built that thing for Saddam Hussein?”

He didn’t even try to keep the incredulity out of his voice, and he could only imagine the look on Jean-Guy’s face.

“You don’t believe it?” asked Professor Rosenblatt. The words fell into the silence in the room and drifted into the fireplace, to be burned.

“Would you?” asked Isabelle Lacoste, regarding the elderly man and wondering just how crazy he might be. The gun itself was hard enough to swallow, but she could at least see it, touch it. She knew it was real. But this was a step too far.

“I don’t suppose it really matters if you believe it or not,” said Rosenblatt, gathering up his papers. “You asked me here to tell you what I know. That’s what I know.”

He got up and Gamache rose with him.

“You didn’t believe the boy either,” said Rosenblatt quietly. “And look what happened.”

Gamache felt himself go numb, for a moment. As though the life had been snuffed out of him. And then he took a breath and sat back down.

“Please,” he said, indicating the seat beside him. Professor Rosenblatt hesitated, then took his seat again. “Tell us what you know about Project Babylon and Gerald Bull.”

Professor Rosenblatt looked at them, still seeing disbelief, but now also seeing a willingness to try. To be open to the possibility that what he was about to tell them was the truth.

“It was no secret that Saddam wanted to destroy Israel,” said Rosenblatt. “And start a full-scale war. He wanted to control the whole region.”

Gamache nodded, remembering the late 1980s, early nineties. To Beauvoir and Lacoste it was history. To him, and Rosenblatt, it was a memory.

“To be fair, there are all sorts of theories about Project Babylon,” said Rosenblatt. “Some more outlandish than others.”

No one looked at Beauvoir who, with a mighty effort, was keeping his mouth shut.

“Some even believed Dr. Bull was building the Supergun for the Israelis. To hit Iraq first. They’re pragmatists. They believe in God, but how do you fight the devil? With prayers? Well, Gerald Bull was the answer to a prayer.”

“But the Israelis have all sorts of sophisticated weapons,” said Lacoste. “Why would they need the Supergun?”

“They wouldn’t,” said Gamache. “But Saddam Hussein would.”

Across from him, Armand saw Beauvoir’s brows come together as logic began to penetrate disbelief.

“Yes,” said the scientist. “A weapon of mass destruction that could be assembled anywhere, the middle of a desert, for instance. Without need of electronics or expertise.”

“How would the missiles be aimed?” Gamache asked, remembering images of Israeli citizens wearing gas masks and huddling in their homes as the sirens wailed during the Gulf War.

“There’s a guidance system,” said Professor Rosenblatt. “But without electronics it’s difficult to be completely accurate, especially at a distance. It’s the one possible flaw in Bull’s design.”

“Flaw?” asked Gamache. “I’d call it more than that, wouldn’t you?”

The professor, under the sharp gaze, reddened.

“And that means?” Gamache pushed.

“It means from a distance the Supergun could not be guaranteed to hit just military targets.”

“It means more than that,” said Gamache. “It was never designed to hit military targets, was it?”

“Then what was it designed to hit?” asked Lacoste.

“Cities,” said Gamache. “The biggest, crudest bull’s-eye. It was meant to destroy Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It was designed to kill men, women, children. Teachers, bartenders, bus drivers. It was meant to wipe them out. To bomb Israel back to the Stone Age.”

“Or Baghdad to the Stone Age,” said Lacoste. “If the buyer was Israel. After all, that inscription on the etching was in Hebrew.”

Beauvoir had been quiet, except the initial grunts as he fought to keep scathing comments in.

“What are you thinking?” Armand asked him.

“I’m thinking about Armageddon,” he said.

“The movie?” asked Lacoste, and saw him smile.

“Non. If that thing in the woods works, this Bull fellow made a gun that would fling a missile into orbit with the intention, the hope, of wiping out entire cities. Anywhere.”

Professor Rosenblatt nodded. “Anywhere.”

It was now clear who the real monster was. Not the Whore of Babylon, not even the Supergun. But the man who had made them.

Gamache and Beauvoir left the house a few paces behind Lacoste and the professor.

Rosenblatt was heading home to pack a few things and return to the B and B, to be on hand to help. Lacoste and Beauvoir were going back to the Incident Room, to see if the forensics reports were in. And Gamache was going to join Reine-Marie at the bistro.

Beauvoir fell in beside Gamache.

“Do you believe him?” asked Beauvoir. “About the Iraqis?”

He was unconsciously mimicking Gamache by clasping his hands behind his back and falling into the rhythm of his walk.

“I’m not sure,” said Gamache.

“Well, even if it’s true, it can’t possibly matter anymore. The intended target, or buyer, is long gone. Saddam Hussein was executed years ago. Any danger is long gone.”

“Hmmm” came from Gamache.

“What is it?”

“Someone killed Laurent to keep the gun a secret,” Gamache reminded him. “I think the danger might’ve been dormant.”

They walked for a few more paces in silence.

“But now it’s back,” said Jean-Guy.

“Hmmm,” said Gamache again. Then after a few more paces, “Did you notice where that gun is pointed?”

Beauvoir stopped then and looked toward the stone bridge and the forest.

“It’s not pointing to Baghdad, that’s for sure,” said Beauvoir.

“No. It’s pointing south. Into the United States.”

Beauvoir turned to stare at Gamache, who was watching the elderly scientist get into his car.

“I wonder what Project Babylon was really about,” said Gamache. “And if it really died with Gerald Bull.”