“You let me worry about that,” said Gamache. “Focus on your own jobs tonight, and I’ll focus on mine.”
He’s not going to let that happen, Jean-Guy realized. One way or another, the head of one or both cartels would be brought to justice, if Armand Gamache had to drag them back across the border by the hair.
“Chief Inspector Lacoste is on site?” Gamache asked.
“She’s monitoring the head of the Québec cartel, and will let us know any movement,” said Toussaint.
“Bon. Inspector Beauvoir, you have the tactical plans?”
“I do.” He pointed to the ordnance maps on which he’d laid out where each of them would be positioned and what their objective would be. Plans every person in the room was very familiar with.
Their lives, and those of their comrades, depended on knowing exactly what would be expected of each of them. What each of their targets and objectives would be. Both primary and secondary.
They’d be a small force, so each agent had to be perfectly placed. Every person, every movement, precise.
The tactical team had been alerted, briefed, weeks ago, without being told the objective.
The S?reté had two great advantages. They knew, after months of monitoring, exactly where the drugs would cross the border. And the syndicates had been lulled into believing the S?reté was completely useless.
There was, though, another great advantage, Beauvoir knew. One perhaps less obvious. Motivation. Desperation even. Their backs were to the wall, to the ocean. This had to work.
But now something unexpected, though not unwelcome, had been added.
The head of the East Coast syndicate would also be there, and would no doubt bring his own small army.
A series of unknowns had been thrown into their carefully constructed plan.
The stakes had just gone higher, and the rewards had become almost inconceivable. But so had the dangers.
“They might not be relevant anymore,” Beauvoir warned, gesturing toward the maps.
“The American head might change the drop-off point,” Toussaint said. “There might be another one they prefer.”
Gamache could feel the tension rising. And he could sense the mammoth efforts each agent was making to keep their anxiety under control.
“They might. Or they might not. We can’t know. All we can do is go with what we do know, and be prepared to pivot. D’accord?”
“D’accord, patron,” they said as one.
Gamache thought for a moment, going over the strategy laid out in the plans. Then he turned to Beauvoir. “Do you think there’s a better way to do this?”
Beauvoir had also been quickly reviewing the plans, now indelibly in his head.
“I’ll need to adjust it,” said Beauvoir. “With the head of the syndicate there, there’ll be more security. And they’ll be more alert. But”—he thought about it—“I think the plan is still solid. As long as nothing else changes.”
“Your informant is with them?” Gamache asked, and Toussaint nodded.
“Bon,” said Gamache, getting to his feet. Everyone in the room rose with him. “If we have to makes changes on the fly, well, it won’t be the first time, will it?”
That brought laughter and knowing nods. Though the more veteran members of the team weren’t laughing so much anymore.
“I’ll be in my office if anyone needs me.”
As soon as the Chief Superintendent left, Beauvoir bent over the plans he’d worked on at home, for months, hoping this day would come.
When Honoré awoke in the night, he’d fed and soothed him while Annie slept. Rocking his son gently, and poring over the map, murmuring plans of attack.
How to hunt, arrest, and if necessary kill.
Not exactly Winnie the Pooh. Or Pinocchio. Not the bedtime story he’d hoped for his child. But if they were successful, it did increase Ray-Ray’s chances of growing up healthy and safe. Of never having to find out what happens when the straight road splays.
“All right.” Beauvoir got the attention of the assembled agents. “Let’s go through this.”
He glanced again at the large clock on the far wall.
Twenty to six.
Then he looked at the closed door. He had to speak to Gamache, before whatever was going to happen that night happened. There could be nothing left unsaid between them.
*
Armand Gamache loosened his tie and he pulled his damp shirt out of his slacks. Going over to his desk, his hand went to the drawer where he kept his clean shirts.
But then he hesitated and, instead, he dug into his pocket, and bringing out a key, he unlocked the top drawer. Sliding it open, he saw the notebook and napkin.
It had been a while, months in fact, since he’d looked at either.
Many lifetimes ago, many lives ago, he’d written those words on the crumpled napkin.
How many had died since then, because of them? Because of him? He hadn’t turned a blind eye to the drugs and violence. He’d seen perfectly clearly what was happening. Had asked for reports every day. Had counted the cost of lives ruined, lives lost. Because of what he’d let happen.
And still, he hadn’t acted.
But tonight he would.
Setting the napkin aside, Armand opened the notebook and forced himself to read what he’d written, what he’d begun, that cold November evening with Henri and Gracie curled by the fire, and Reine-Marie beside him on the sofa.
When he’d looked into that fire and considered doing the inconceivable.
He wondered if the Spanish conquistador Cortés had done the same thing, on the long journey to the New World. When had the thought first come to him? Had he considered the consequences, when he considered those fateful orders? Burn the ships. Did he know what slaughter lay ahead, for his soldiers and sailors and for the Aztecs, whose entire civilization was about to be wiped out?
And Gamache wondered if, when the conquerors’ feet hit the sand, and smoke filled the air, some other creature had come on shore with them.
Had the conquistadors noticed a dark figure following them? A terrible witness to the terrible deeds.
But, of course, the deeds would not be considered terrible for hundreds of years. Cortés was a hero, to everyone but the Aztecs.
In his quiet moments, later in life, as his own death approached, did Cortés wonder what he’d done? Did doubt creep into the room? Was an ageless cobrador standing at the foot of the bed?
And Churchill? Did doubt tickle him awake, the night Coventry was bombed? Or the night the great city of Dresden was firebombed, in retaliation for something that was not their fault?
Gamache picked up a pen and, turning to a blank page, he started to write.
He wrote about the huge shipment of drugs he’d let through the border the night before. When he could have stopped it.
He wrote about the lives that would be lost, because of that decision. His Coventry. His Dresden.