The Nature of the Beast

CHAPTER 41

“Good evening, I’m Susan Bonner and this is the World at Six.”

Adam Cohen could barely hear the words for the pounding in his ears.

“Our top story tonight, an astonishing find in Québec’s Eastern Townships.”

He checked his device. All electronics were blocked inside the penitentiary, but there was a code the guards used and Cohen had programmed it in. His device showed five bars. And no messages.

Closing his eyes for just a moment, Adam Cohen gathered himself and then got out of the car and walked, resolutely, toward the small door in the thick wall.

“Our top story tonight, an astonishing find in Québec’s Eastern Townships.”

“Merde,” said Isabelle Lacoste. The broadcast streamed over her laptop in the Incident Room.

It was six o’clock, and it was worse than they thought. The CBC did not yet know the exact location of Gerald Bull’s Supergun, but they’d narrowed it down to this region.

The story unfolded. One journalist had a report on Gerald Bull’s unlikely life and mysterious death. Another told the story of Project Babylon, and Saddam Hussein, and the coming together of two madmen.

Three, Lacoste knew. Three madmen.

“I heard you coming,” said Fleming in his soft, flawed voice. He studied the young man in front of him. “You used to be a guard here, didn’t you?”

But Adam Cohen heeded Gamache’s warning, not to tell Fleming anything. Not to engage the man.

“Does he need a change of clothes?” one of the five guards who’d accompanied Cohen asked.

“No,” said Cohen. “We won’t be gone for long. He’ll be back by midnight.”

“Before I turn into a pumpkin?” asked Fleming as they put the cuffs and restraints on him. “Or something.”

“You sure you want to do this?” asked another guard. The one who’d been Cohen’s friend when he’d worked at the SHU. The one Adam Cohen had gone to with the authorization. Because he knew this man would trust him.

And he had. He’d accepted without question the letter from the Sûreté authorizing Cohen to take Fleming.

Fleming was watching this exchange, his reptile eyes sliding from one man to the other, sensing, perhaps, a betrayal in progress.

Jean-Guy skidded to a stop. He’d turned the corner and was sprinting across the bridge to the Incident Room to tell Lacoste to call off Cohen.

“Where’re you going?” he called after Gamache, who’d missed the turn and was running, plans in hand, toward the bistro.

“We have to make sure these are the plans.” Gamache held them up but didn’t stop running.

“They say Project Babylon, patron. What else could they be?”

“Highwater, that’s what. More misdirection.”

Beauvoir looked at the old railway station behind him, then at Gamache in front of him.

“Shit,” said Jean-Guy, and raced to catch up with Gamache.

In the bistro, Armand hurried over to Professor Rosenblatt, who’d moved to the sofa by the fire.

“You found them?” the elderly scientist said, standing up.

“We hope so.”

Gamache opened the tube and tipped the scroll out. He sat down and unrolled it onto the blanket box. Rosenblatt joined him, bending over the paper.

“Is it them?” asked Beauvoir.

Rosenblatt didn’t answer. He made humming sounds, his finger tracing the lines of the schematic.

Come on, come on, thought Beauvoir. Behind them, the clock on the mantel said six minutes past six. Somewhere in the background he could hear the Radio Canada news. The French service also had the story of Gerald Bull and Project Babylon.

Olivier and Gabri must be in the kitchen, Beauvoir thought. Listening. Along with the rest of the world.

“Are these the plans?” he demanded.

Adam Cohen walked beside his friend down the long corridor. He felt sick and wondered if it was the flu, or the overpowering stink of disinfectant, or the memories conjured by that smell. Of eighteen long months in this hellhole, guarding these psychopaths.

Was it the thought of what he was about to do that was turning his stomach? Or was it more simple than all that? Less heroic. Was it just garden-variety fear, rooted and blossoming into terror?

Behind Cohen, with two heavily armed guards in front and two guards beside him, John Fleming was shuffling, his chains clinking. And mixed with that sound was humming. An old hymn.

By the waters of Babylon …

Agent Cohen walked on, his eyes riveted on the bright red exit sign. His hand in his pocket, clutching the device. Willing it to leap to life with a message.

Professor Rosenblatt studied one page, then the next, and the next. Looking at the schematics, pausing now and then to consider, then moving on.

“I see how they solved the trajectory problem, just here,” he said, pointing at a diagram.

“Are they genuine?” demanded Gamache, his own patience worn thin and finally worn through.

Rosenblatt straightened up and nodded. “I believe so.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” said a woman’s voice, and they turned to see Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme at the door. “We saw you come over from the church. Is that what I think it is?”

Gamache rolled the plans back up.

“Yes.”

Mary Fraser looked genuinely relieved. Then she held out her hand.

For an instant Gamache thought it was a peace offering. Shaking hands to signal a truce. Perhaps even congratulations for doing what she could not.

Then he saw her face and realized the hand wasn’t offering, it was demanding.

Gamache handed the scroll to Beauvoir, then walked wordlessly past Mary Fraser to the telephone on the bar. He glanced at his watch.

Twenty minutes past six.

He was halfway through dialing Lacoste at the Incident Room when he heard a tiny, familiar click.

He froze, then slowly turned and saw Sean Delorme holding a gun.

In his peripheral vision he saw Jean-Guy with his hands up in hasty surrender. He’d taken a few steps away from Gamache.

“It’s best that you hang up the phone.”

Gamache did and turned to Mary Fraser. “Not CSIS?”

“You really don’t understand our world, do you? And this is not the time for explanations.”

She still looked like Mary Poppins, right down to the oversized handbag and the spoonful-of-sugar expression.

“You took that picture,” said Gamache. “Of Gerald Bull and Dr. Couture. And John Fleming. You were the fourth person in Brussels.”

He’d stepped to within feet of them but she didn’t seem concerned. She knew he was unarmed. She had nothing to fear from Armand Gamache.

She nodded. “You’ve worked a lot out, Monsieur Gamache. I was young, of course. And now I’m making up for those mistakes. The plans, please.”

Beauvoir lowered the hand holding the scroll.

“No, you can’t,” said Professor Rosenblatt, stepping forward. Delorme and Fraser glanced over to him, and in the moment it took to turn back, Beauvoir had swung his arm behind him and was holding the plans for Project Babylon over the fire.

Delorme raised the gun and took aim, but Gamache stepped between him and his son-in-law, spreading his arms out.

“Non.”

The act was so unexpected, the sequence of events so rapid, that Delorme hesitated.

“You’ll have to kill us all,” said Gamache. “Are you prepared to do that?”

“If you’re prepared to die, we’re prepared to do it,” said Mary Fraser. “The few for the many, remember?”

“You have a warped idea of the greater good,” snapped Beauvoir. “For your information, this is what it looks like.”

He dropped the plans in the fireplace just as Professor Rosenblatt stepped in front of Gamache. Behind him, Armand heard a whoooosh as the design for Project Babylon went up in flames.

“Shit,” shouted Delorme, and shoving the professor aside, he scrambled toward the fireplace, but Gamache and Beauvoir grabbed him, knocking the gun from his hand.

It was over in a matter of moments, the time it took for the plans to be fully consumed by the fire. Beauvoir held on to Delorme while Gamache’s eyes swept the room.

Mary Fraser had taken a few steps forward but stopped when she saw it was too late. Now her eyes were on Professor Rosenblatt, who’d stooped and picked up the gun.

Gamache turned to him too, and there was a pause. As long as a breath, it seemed to last forever, as the elderly scientist held the weapon and looked at them. And they looked at him.

And then he handed the gun to Gamache.

“Well, it’s over,” said Gabri, walking into the bistro from the kitchen. “Almost the whole newscast on the goddamned gun.”

He stopped and Olivier, directly behind him, bumped into him and was about to say something when he saw what was happening.

Mary Fraser looked at them, then she turned to Gamache. Her face was pale and she trembled with rage. “You have no idea what you’ve just done.”

She looked from him to Beauvoir and finally to the elderly scientist.

“Gabri’s right,” said Beauvoir. “It’s over.”

He released Delorme, shoving him toward Mary Fraser.

“You’re a fool,” said Mary Fraser. “It’s not over. It’s barely begun.”

“Aren’t you going to stop them?” asked Rosenblatt as the CSIS agents made for the door.

“Let them go,” said Gamache, walking swiftly to the bar and the telephone. “There’s something more important right now.”

He dialed Lacoste.

John Fleming felt the full sun on his face for the first time in decades, without the shadow of bars and barbed wire and guard towers.

It was getting late, later than the young agent knew, thought Fleming as he followed him to the unmarked car.

Fleming had known this day would come. He knew he’d be free again, one day. He’d felt it in his bones. He’d waited patiently for it. Planned for it. And now he was about to execute that plan.

He watched the young man’s back and heard the tall grasses sway in the meadow and smelled the distant pine forest in the cool evening air. His senses, dormant for years, were sharper, more powerful than ever.

He could even smell the musky fear soaked into Adam Cohen’s uniform. Fleming drank all this in as he slouched toward the car.

Fraser and Delorme were barely out the door when Gamache heard Lacoste pick up the phone. Without waiting for hello, he spoke.

“We found the plans. Call Cohen. Stop him.”

In the Incident Room, Lacoste hung up and hit the speed dial. And listened to the first ring. The second.

“Wait,” said Cohen when they reached the car and the guard was about to transfer the prisoner into the backseat.

He brought out his device.

Still nothing.

Cohen replaced it in his pocket and nodded to his friend.

Lacoste tried again, this time punching in the numbers herself, carefully.

Cohen’s phone rang. And rang.

After the fifth ring, she hung up. It hadn’t even switched over to voice mail.

Then she tried texting. It bounced back.

“Well?” asked Gamache, as he, Beauvoir and shortly after them an out-of-breath Professor Rosenblatt arrived in the Incident Room.

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?” Beauvoir demanded.

“He’s not answering,” she said. “Not to the phone and the text bounced back.”

“What could that mean?” Beauvoir asked, but Gamache did not. He knew what it could mean.

John Fleming was locked into the backseat of the secure vehicle, handcuffed to the metal plate, restraints around his arms and legs.

The guard tested them, tugging on them to make sure they were secure.

“He’s all yours,” said Cohen’s friend, handing him the keys. “You’ll have to sign for him.”

He gave Cohen his own device and indicated where he needed to sign.

Cohen did. “That’s new.”

“I guess we got them after you left. Dedicated devices and network. Can’t be hacked.”

In the backseat Fleming smiled. You can guard against anything, except, of course, a betrayal.

“Merci,” said Cohen, shaking the guard’s hand. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“No rush.”

“Something’s blocking the transmission,” said Professor Rosenblatt.

“What does that mean?” asked Gamache.

“It means your young agent might not even realize he’s not getting messages. All the bars would light up, everything would look normal, and is, but the messages wouldn’t be registering.”

“How do we get around it?” Lacoste asked.

“You can’t. It’s not a software issue,” said Rosenblatt. “It’s the hardware. He’d have to have one of their devices.”

“Call the SHU,” said Gamache. “Get him back.”

Cohen put the car in gear, but kept his foot on the brake.

His device was sitting in the cupholder.

“Let’s go,” said Fleming. “What’re you waiting for?”

Picking up his device, Cohen decided to call Chief Inspector Lacoste, to confirm. He punched her contact number and saw Dialing on the screen.

And then the message Unable to Connect.

Of course, he thought. She’s in Three Pines. There’s no cell phone service.

“Come on,” said Fleming. “You’re wasting time. Your boss won’t like that.”

Cohen put his phone down and the car rolled forward. And stopped.

“Now what?”

Cohen picked up his device and called the landline in the Incident Room.

Dialing. Dialing.

Unable to Connect.

That was strange.

“Time’s a-wasting,” said Fleming. “Every moment counts. You know that.”

But his soft, flawed voice held an edge of anxiety.

Agent Cohen looked in the rearview mirror at the glowing eyes and eager, hungry face. Then he looked down at his device. All five bars were lit up. The network was connected. And yet there were no messages. None at all. From anyone, in over forty-five minutes.

And then he remembered his friend’s new device.

With hands that trembled so badly he almost dropped the phone, he punched into the utilities mode, took out the penitentiary code, put in his own, and the device started lighting up.

It vibrated, the red light flashed. And it started ringing.

In the backseat, John Fleming saw this and started pulling, yanking, on the chains binding him to the vehicle.

The operator put Lacoste through to the guard room. The phone rang, and was picked up, just as her line indicated an incoming.

She hung up and clicked over and for a moment all she heard, loud enough so that Gamache, Beauvoir and even Professor Rosenblatt, sitting at the next desk, heard …

A shriek.

Gamache’s face went white and his eyes widened, as the ungodly noise filled the Incident Room.

“Chief?”

They heard the young voice, straining to be heard over the scream.

“Is that you?” Cohen yelled.

“Where are you?” Lacoste shouted.

“I can’t hear you. I have Fleming.”

“Take him back,” yelled Lacoste. “We have the plans. Take him back.”

All they heard now was the shriek. And then it descended into a growl.

Some rough beast.

“Adam?” Gamache leaned into the phone, shouting, “Can you hear me?”

And then …

“I hear you, Monsieur Gamache,” shouted Adam Cohen. “He’s going back.”