The Nature of the Beast

CHAPTER 15

“You’re back,” said Reine-Marie.

She turned from the computer to look at Armand and Henri, who were standing at the door into the study.

“Oui,” said Armand. “What’re you up to?”

“Research,” she said, getting up to greet them. “How bad is the play?”

He tossed it onto the table by the door. “As a play? It’s not bad at all. In fact, Antoinette was right. It’s brilliant.”

He looked like he’d just eaten something foul.

“I didn’t finish it, but I will later. Just needed a break. Drink?”

“Please,” she said, returning to the computer. He heard the printer working and glanced in on his way to the cleaning closet, where they hid their best brands from Ruth.

“Lysol or Mr. Clean?” he called.

“Actually, a Spic and Span sounds good. But a light one.”

He handed her a gin and tonic, with extra tonic and a wedge of lemon, and noticed she had the McGill site up and was reading.

Armand slipped a CD into the stereo and the unmistakable voice of Neil Young came out. Then he took his Scotch and a book over to an armchair.

He read the familiar first lines of the book and felt the calm come over him, like a comforter. He lost himself, even momentarily, in the familiar world of Scout and Jem and Boo Radley.

Reine-Marie found him half an hour later sitting by the window, his finger in the book, staring into their garden and listening to the music. Henri by his side.

“Happy?” she asked.

“Peaceful,” he said. “Find any interesting courses?”

“Pardon?”

He waved to the sheaf of printouts in her hand.

“You were looking on the McGill site. Are you also going to check out the Université de Montréal? They have some terrific courses. Will you audit classes, or go for a degree?”

“I wasn’t looking up courses, Armand. I was looking up Gerald Bull. For a man whose work was supposedly secret, there’s a surprising amount out there about him if you know the keywords, like Project Babylon. The public search engines like Google have a fair amount, all saying much the same thing. But it gets really interesting once you go into the private records.”

“Private?” he asked, sitting up.

“I’m an archivist,” she reminded him. “Like a priest, we never really retire.” She held up the sheaf of papers. “And I have the codes to the private McGill archives.”

“Bless you,” said Armand, reaching for the printouts and his glasses. “What did you find?”

“Well, Gerald Bull was considered a bit of a failure in both his own academic record and his work. He seems to have been a great big pain in the derrière. According to his personnel file at McGill, he sort of muddled along, alienating everyone who came into contact with him. He was a big personality, with big and what were considered crazy ideas. No one wanted to work with him.”

“Why didn’t they get rid of him?”

“They did eventually, though it’s couched in all sorts of diplomatic, nonactionable terms. But they kept him on for a long time in the hopes that one of his outlandish ideas might work.”

“Which, of course, it did,” said Armand. He studied the papers, then looked up at her. “But by then he was long gone. When was he born?”

Reine-Marie scanned her notes. “March 9, 1928.”

Gamache did a quick calculation. “That would put him well into his eighties now. Almost ninety.”

Reine-Marie looked at him, puzzled. “But he’s dead. You know that. Dr. Bull was killed in 1990, at the age of”—she worked it out—“sixty-two.”

“Yes,” said Armand, leaning back in his chair.

“What’re you thinking?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s ridiculous.”

“You’re wondering if Gerald Bull is still alive?” she asked, astonished.

“I’ve spent too many years being suspicious,” he said with a smile. “Forget I said anything.” He held up his weak Scotch. “Blame it on the Lysol.”

“Armand, there is something odd in the files.”

She took a couple of the sheets from his hands and lowered her glasses from the top of her head where they rested, to her eyes. Words and sometimes whole lines had been blacked out, redacted, on the pages. Even the secret files continued to hold some secrets.

“I’m used to seeing this,” she said. “Notes and papers are sent to the archives, but are edited by security first. It’s often the personal diaries of politicians or scientists, so I wasn’t particularly surprised.”

“No,” said Armand. “Neither am I. Dr. Bull was doing research that obviously had weapons applications.”

“Right. What surprised me is this.”

Reine-Marie sifted through the pages. She’d put a pen behind her ear and her glasses had now slipped down her nose. She looked like Katharine Hepburn in Desk Set. All smart and efficient and completely unaware of how beautiful she was. Armand could watch her all day long.

Reine-Marie found what she was looking for, and handed him one of the sheets. It had been heavily blacked out.

“It’s part of an internal report on Dr. Bull’s work. It was written after his murder. Look at that.”

She pointed to one line. He put on his glasses and read it, then reread it, his brows drawing together. He sat up straight in the chair.

The censor had missed one reference to the Supergun. Not a huge omission, since Dr. Bull’s effort to create one was a kind of open secret.

“Do you think it’s a typo?” she asked.

“I hope so.”

He looked back down at the report. At the word. That should have been blacked out.

“Superguns.” Plural.

Jesus, he thought. Could there be more than one of them?

Reine-Marie pushed her glasses back up her nose and took the pen from behind her ear.

Katharine Hepburn was gone. Spencer Tracy was gone. This was no comedy. Armand and Reine-Marie looked at each other. Then Armand got up, and started pacing. Not frantically. He took long, measured, almost graceful steps, up and down the living room.

“It might mean nothing,” he said. “It might be just a typo, as you said. Almost certainly is. Let’s stick to what we know to be true.”

“Well, according to the files, we know Dr. Bull worked at McGill, doing research into long-range artillery. We know he moved to Brussels in the early eighties and was killed there on March 20, 1990.”

“Do the reports you found say who was responsible?”

“The main theory is Mossad. Gerald Bull was apparently also working on the Scud missile program for the Iraqis. But the main thrust of his work was to build a cannon for Saddam that could shoot a missile into low orbit.”

“And from there travel just about anywhere,” said Armand.

“Project Babylon,” said Reine-Marie. “The Supergun was for the Iraqis after all.”

“Gun or guns,” said Armand. “He was killed on March 20, 1990, you say?”

“Yes. Why?”

Armand took a few more agitated paces, then stopped and shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense. I know it doesn’t.”

“What doesn’t?”

“John Fleming’s first murder was in the summer of 1990.”

There was a pause as Reine-Marie absorbed that, and tried to compose herself. “Are you suggesting there’s a link? How could there be?”

Armand sat down, his knees touching hers. “Gerald Bull built Project Babylon, and etched onto it not just the Whore of Babylon but lines from a psalm, ‘By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept.’”

He looked across their living room to the front door, where the goddamned play lay.

“John Fleming writes a play quoting the same line, or near enough. She Sat Down and Wept.”

“It’s a famous line, Armand.” She tried to sound supportive without sounding patronizing. She could see the intensity in his eyes. “There’ve been lots of literary references to it, even music. Didn’t Don McLean write a song with that lyric?”

Then she saw what he was thinking and felt her concern spike.

“You’re wondering if John Fleming could be Gerald Bull? But surely that couldn’t be hidden.”

He picked up the blacked-out sheets. “You can hide anything, depending on who ‘you’ are.”

Reine-Marie leaned forward and took both his hands in hers. She spoke slowly, quietly. Holding his gaze. “You’ve just been reading the play. It’s brought up all sorts of memories of John Fleming. Do you think it’s possible that your grief for Laurent has somehow gotten all mixed up with the trauma of the Fleming trial? I don’t know what happened there, and maybe one day you’ll tell me, but this isn’t making sense, Armand.” She paused to let her words sink in, penetrate, and perhaps even overpower this delusion. “The two aren’t connected, except by a very common quote from the Bible. Do you see that? Fleming has gotten under your skin, or up your nose,” she smiled, and saw a small upturn at the corners of his mouth, “but however he got there, he’s in your head and you have to get him out. He doesn’t belong there, and he doesn’t belong in the murder of Laurent. It’s just muddying things.”

Armand got up and stood by the fireplace, his back to her, looking at the flames. Then he turned around.

“You’re right, of course. John Fleming is in his early seventies now. Far too young to be Gerald Bull. That was foolish of me. My imagination run wild again.”

He ran his large hands through his hair and smiled an apology.

“Still, I’d like to know more about that play. How it came into the possession of Antoinette’s uncle, for instance.”

“Does it matter? Antoinette said he probably picked it up at a flea market. People collect strange things. Maybe he collected the macabre. Items associated with crimes or criminals.”

“But neither Brian nor Antoinette mentioned a collection,” said Armand. “Why would an engineer who showed no interest at all in the theater buy any script, never mind one by the most brutal killer in the country?”

Reine-Marie stared at him. It was, she had to admit, an interesting question.

He took a deep breath and shook his head, then smiled at her. “You have a lot of patience, ma belle.”

“Not as much as you might think.”

He smiled again. “Nor should you. You’ve put up with all this for far too long. It’s supposed to be over.”

He kissed her and walked to the door, inviting Henri along.

“I think I’ll get some fresh air. Clear my head.”

“It has gotten a little crowded in there. Why don’t I meet you at the bistro for tea in, say, twenty minutes?”

“Parfait. By then the eviction notices will have been served.”