The Nature of the Beast

CHAPTER 38

“That’s insane.” Then, after a tense pause, Isabelle Lacoste added, “Sir. Even if we could get Fleming out of the SHU and bring him here, it would be like releasing a plague.”

“We have”—Gamache looked at the clock on the train station wall—“three hours and five minutes until the news breaks and there’s no going back. It takes two hours to drive to the SHU. Agent Cohen will have to leave now.”

“I can tell the time, patron,” said Lacoste. “What I can’t tell is if you’ve lost your mind. I understand the equation, I really do. But I agree with Inspector Beauvoir. There’s a better-than-average chance Fleming’s lying. That he has absolutely no idea where the plans are. And then what? Arms dealers might still find the plans before we do, and John Fleming will certainly kill again once he escapes. Because he will escape. And you know who his first victim will be?”

They looked over at Agent Cohen, who was watching them from across the room. He dropped his eyes and pretended to wipe something off his slacks.

“It has to be done,” said Gamache.

“Fleming gets what he wanted,” said Lacoste.

“And we get what we need. Look,” said Gamache. “You know what will happen if someone else finds the plans to Project Babylon first. Fleming will seem like a cartoon character compared to what would happen then.”

He glanced over at Adam Cohen.

“If I could go in his place I would, but only Adam can do what we need done. Only he can get Fleming out. He worked there for eighteen months. He knows the SHU, he knows the guards and the system. It gives me no pleasure, but this task falls to him. It has to happen, Isabelle.”

Gamache tried to mask his frustration. For years, decades, he’d consulted his team, but the final decision was always his. Now, though, he needed Isabelle Lacoste to agree, and to act.

“You’re talking about getting John Fleming out of the SHU?” asked Adam Cohen. He was leaning toward them. “I’m sorry, but I overheard.”

They turned to the young man and Gamache took a step toward him.

“Do you think you can do it?”

Cohen considered, then nodded.

“I think so.”

He looked both determined and about to run away. His eyes were wide, his pupils dilated, his skin was not just pale but gray. A man about to jump off a cliff, hoping he’d sprout wings.

“I’m sorry to ask, sir, but are you sure it’s such a good idea?”

“We just need to know if you think it’s possible,” said Gamache reassuringly. “No decision has been made yet.”

“But John Fleming,” said Cohen. “He’s not…” Cohen searched for the right way to put it. “He’s not a normal person.”

It was such an understatement it was almost funny. But the look of sheer terror on the young man’s face made amusement impossible.

“Let me go with him,” said Beauvoir. “We can’t send him alone.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt again,” said Cohen, again leaning into their conversation. “There’s one flaw in the SHU security. We were trained to expect riots, breakouts, but not a break-in. So it might work. But it needs to be someone they know and trust. Someone they’d never expect would cause trouble. Me. Alone.”

His words said one thing, but his eyes were begging them to disagree. To not send him there at all, and certainly to not send him alone.

“Excuse us,” Lacoste said to Agent Cohen with exaggerated courtesy, and took the other two deeper into the Incident Room. “We have to come to a decision.”

She looked at Beauvoir, at Gamache. She glanced over at Agent Cohen, then up to the clock.

“All right. We’ll send him to the SHU. As you said, it’ll take two hours for him to get there, and we have just over three until the broadcast. We don’t have to decide about Fleming until later, but Agent Cohen will at least be in place.”

Gamache and Beauvoir nodded and Isabelle Lacoste walked back to Adam Cohen.

“This is not sanctioned,” she said. “If you go, you need to be aware of what will almost certainly happen. Even if we’re successful, and you get Fleming out and return him, we will all be fired and probably brought up on charges. Do you understand?”

“My uncle has a poutine stand,” he said. “I think I can get us all jobs there.”

He spoke with such sincerity, Beauvoir didn’t know if Cohen was serious. And he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Or to tell him the real truth. That young Adam Cohen might very well lose more than his job.

Chief Inspector Lacoste wrote up a letter of authorization, printed it out on Sûreté letterhead, and handed it to Agent Cohen. Then they walked him to the car.

“If you haven’t heard from me by six you need to go into the SHU, do you understand?” said Chief Inspector Lacoste. “The moment the Gerald Bull story airs on CBC.”

“Yes, sir. Mom. Ma’am.”

“Oh God,” Beauvoir whispered.

“You’ll be fine, son,” said Armand. “Just don’t give Fleming any information. Not your name, not where you’re taking him. Nothing. He’ll try to engage you, just ignore him.” He put out his hand. “Shalom aleichem.”

Adam Cohen looked surprised and pleased. He took Gamache’s hand. “And peace be upon you too, sir. How did you know?”

“I was raised by my Jewish grandmother,” said Gamache.

“B’ezrat hashem,” said Cohen, releasing Gamache’s hand and getting into the car.

They watched him drive off.

“What did he say to you?” Beauvoir asked.

“He said, God willing,” said Gamache.

“I don’t think God has much to do with anything that’s happening,” said Lacoste. Then she turned to the two men. “If the location of the plans really is hidden somewhere in that play, we need to go through it, closely and quickly.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” said Gamache. “Both Jean-Guy and I have already read it and found nothing.”

“You need new eyes,” said Lacoste. “Do you want me to read it?”

“No, I want the village to read it,” said Gamache. “A play’s meant to be performed.”

“We’re going to put on the play?” asked Beauvoir. “Wait a minute. It can be done. Mom can do the costumes and we can use Uncle Ned’s barn.”

“Calm down, Andy Hardy,” said Gamache. “I meant a read-through. We need people to read it while we listen.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” said Lacoste. “But it’ll take time. An hour and a half at least by the time you even start. By then it’ll be almost six o’clock. If you’re wrong—”

“If we’re wrong we have Agent Cohen in place,” said Gamache.

“Well, it might all work,” said Lacoste. “Don’t these things usually turn out well?”

Gamache gave a single gruff laugh. “Always.”

He started walking rapidly toward the village. “I think we should do it in our home. More private. I’ll round up some people we know we can trust. What is it?”

He’d noticed her hesitation and stopped.

“And who can we trust?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Let me ask you this,” she said. “If someone arrived in Three Pines two weeks ago and met you walking Henri or sitting on your porch with Madame Gamache, would they know who you were and what you’d done?”

He smiled slightly. She had a point.

Who could know that Myrna hadn’t always run a used bookstore, but was once a prominent psychologist in Montréal? Who knew the woman with wild food-infested hair was a great artist?

How many of the people in Three Pines were on their second or third acts? People had hidden depths, but they also had hidden pasts and hidden agendas.

Who could really be trusted?

Jean-Guy had asked about Monsieur Béliveau. It seemed unlikely he had anything to hide, but was it any more unlikely than that the quiet man walking the shepherd with the extravagant ears had once hunted murderers for a living? Or that the burly organic gardener was a war criminal?

“Someone here killed Laurent,” Lacoste reminded him. “And Antoinette. Someone is not who they appear to be.”

“Once again, though,” said Gamache, “we have no choice. We need help. We need their help,” he said, gesturing toward the village.

He waited, poised to act, until Chief Inspector Lacoste gave a curt nod, then he hurried across the bridge.

“I’ll get the scripts,” said Beauvoir. “You coming?”

Isabelle Lacoste was standing still. She met his eyes and shook her head.

“No, I think you and the Chief are enough.” She looked at her computer where, like Beauvoir’s, the screen saver was rotating photographs of Laurent and Antoinette. “I have work to do here. You look for the plans, I’ll look for the murderer. We’ve gotten sidetracked by the gun. More misdirection, and I fell for it.”

“Not complete misdirection,” said Beauvoir. “Laurent wasn’t killed because he was Laurent, he was killed because he found the weapon, and Antoinette was killed because her uncle designed it. The gun is at the center of everything that’s happened.”

“True, but the focus has become finding the plans, and we’ve taken our eyes off the murderer. He’s in here somewhere.” She tapped the dossier on her desk. “Mary Fraser said we don’t understand her world, and she’s right. This is the world we understand. This is what I should’ve been doing all along. I need to go back over the basics. The interviews, the forensics. Who knows, we might end up at the same place.”

“B’ezrat hashem,” he said, and left while Lacoste opened the dossier and began reading.

There was more than one path to the truth.

Armand went to the bookstore first. There he found Ruth, Myrna and Clara and invited them over to his place. He was vague and they were curious. It was a perfect fit.

Next he went to the bistro, where he found Brian having a beer with Gabri. It was now just past four. Gamache hesitated a moment, then invited them both. Brian might be a suspect, but he was also their greatest asset. He knew the play inside out and backward.

“Bring Olivier,” said Armand over his shoulder, as he hurried to the bistro door.

He was about to leave when he noticed Professor Rosenblatt in a corner, gesturing to him.

“What’s happening?” he asked when Gamache arrived at his table. Lowering his voice, he said, “Is it something to do with the CBC story?”

Gamache could have kicked himself. He’d been so intent on who to invite he hadn’t properly scanned the room for who not to. Rosenblatt was certainly a retired professor. Their background check bore that out. But Gamache was far from convinced he wasn’t more than that. Just as Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme were almost certainly file clerks. And much more.

“Can I help?” asked the elderly professor.

“Non, merci. I think we have it covered.”

Rosenblatt examined him, then looked around the bistro at the people chatting over drinks.

“They have no idea what’s coming their way once word of the gun gets out.”

“None of us can tell the future,” said Gamache. It was an intentionally banal response. He just wanted to get away and wasn’t interested in wasting precious time on some esoteric conversation.

“Oh, I think some can, don’t you?”

Something in his tone made Gamache refocus and give the scientist his attention. “What do you mean?”

“I mean some can predict the future because they create it,” said Rosenblatt. “Oh, not the good things. We can’t make someone love us, or even like us. But we can make someone hate us. We can’t guarantee we’ll be hired for a job, but we can make sure we’re fired.” He put down his apple cider and stared at Gamache. “We can’t be sure we’ll win a war, but we can lose one.”

Gamache was very still, examining the scientist. Then he sat down.

“So many people make the mistake of thinking wars are fought with weapons,” said Rosenblatt, almost to himself. “But they’re really fought with ideas. The side with the most ideas, the best ideas, wins.”

“Then why kill the person with those ideas?” asked Gamache. “I take it we’re talking about Gerald Bull. Someone thought he was the genius and had him shot in the head.”

“You know the answer to that. To stop anyone else from getting him. Having him on our side might not guarantee we’d win a war, but giving him to an enemy just about guarantees we’d lose it.”

“And when it became apparent you got it wrong?” asked Gamache.

“Me?”

“A manner of speech, monsieur. I meant nothing by it.”

“Of course.”

“When it was clear the wrong person was killed?” asked Gamache. “That Gerald Bull wasn’t the ideas man at all, but just a fake front?”

“Ah, then there’s a problem. A big one. A very big one. That would need to be taken care of.”

“Are you saying what I think you are?” said Gamache. It was the closest Michael Rosenblatt had come to admitting involvement in the death of Gerald Bull. And more.

“I’m saying nothing. I’m an old man, who can’t even dress himself.” He looked down at his disheveled clothing.

“You are not your clothes, monsieur,” said Gamache. “They’re a costume. Perhaps even a disguise.”

“I’m glad you think so.” Rosenblatt looked amused, but then his face turned serious. “You think I had something to do with it? I’ve been sitting here thinking about what would happen if those plans are found. All those lives lost. I think only very old men appreciate what a terrible thing it is to die before your time.” He leaned across the table toward Gamache. “It is not something I could ever be part of.”

“Unless it was to save even more lives,” suggested Gamache.

“Maybe that’s what old men are for. To make decisions that no young man can.” He was watching Gamache closely. “Or should have to. I’m old enough to be your father. I wish I was. Perhaps you’d trust me then. I have no children of my own.”

“But David? Your grandson?”

When Rosenblatt didn’t answer, Gamache nodded.

“Fictitious?”

“I find people are less suspicious of grandfathers,” Rosenblatt admitted. “So I created David. But I’ve spoken of him so often, I can almost see him. He’s skinny and dark-haired and smells of Ivory soap and bubblegum, which I give him behind his mother’s back. Some days he’s more real to me than people who actually exist.”

Michael Rosenblatt looked down at his hands. “That goddamned gun in the woods is real but my grandson isn’t. What a world.”

Armand glanced at the clock, ticking. “There’s something you should know. I spoke to John Fleming this morning.”

It was Rosenblatt’s turn to grow very still.

“I know he worked with Gerald Bull,” said Gamache. “I know he was here in Three Pines. I know he was in Brussels with Dr. Bull and Guillaume Couture. And I know he killed Gerald Bull. But I also believe it was not his idea.”

Gamache once again brought out the old photograph of the three men, the unholy trinity.

“I showed this to you once before. There’s Dr. Bull, Dr. Couture, and John Fleming. But someone else was there that day, wasn’t there? The person who took this picture and ordered the death of Gerald Bull.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think. It was long ago. It’s done.”

“It’s not done,” Gamache snapped, lowering instead of raising his voice, so that it came out a growl. “What has happened here is a direct consequence of that decision that day. The war wasn’t won, it went dormant. And now it’s flaring up.”

“You must understand—” Rosenblatt began.

“I don’t need justifications, I need clear answers. Who was there that day? Who took this picture? Was it you? Who’s behind all this?”

“It wasn’t me,” said Rosenblatt. “I swear. If I had anything to tell you I would. The thought of those plans falling into someone else’s hands sickens me.”

“John Fleming is coming here,” said Gamache, his voice struggling back to normal. He picked up the photograph and got to his feet.

“What?”

“If we don’t find the plans by six, he’ll be brought here. And all will be revealed. The plans, and everything else.”

“You can’t,” Rosenblatt rasped. “The man’s a monster.”

“Oui. Man-made. And whose idea was he?”