The Nature of the Beast: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

Reine-Marie turned around and saw Jean-Guy in the doorway holding out the phone. She took it, perplexed. And listened.

As the two men watched, the lines of her face re-formed, and her eyes filled with wonder. And all thought of John Fleming, of the Supergun, of the Whore of Babylon vanished, overwhelmed by a far greater force.

Reine-Marie looked at Jean-Guy, who was overcome with emotion. Then she turned to Armand, who was smiling, his eyes glistening. Then Reine-Marie sat down at the old pine table, and wept.





AUTHOR’S NOTE

Gerald Bull was a real man, a scientist, Canadian, an arms designer. I first came across his remarkable story in the mid-1990s when I worked as the host of a current affairs radio program for the CBC. My producer at the time, Allan Johnson, mentioned this man who’d built a massive gun called Baby Babylon right on the border with the United States, in Québec’s Eastern Townships. It was, he said, the largest effin (Allan is a great journalist with a vast vocabulary) missile launcher in the world. And it was pointed into the United States.

It was believed that Gerald Bull was building this missile launcher, called Project Babylon, for Saddam Hussein, as the Iraqi dictator edged toward a regional war.

According to reports, Baby Babylon was built but did not work. It was a failure. But Gerald Bull was not put off, and there were rumors in the arms community that Project Babylon was actually two missile launchers, not one. There was a brother to Baby Babylon, called Big Babylon. This was a missile launcher so massive it would make the first one look puny. And all the problems of Baby Babylon had been solved.

Big Babylon would work. It would fire a missile into low Earth orbit. The West was not happy. A weapon of that sort could not fall into the hands of an unstable dictator.

In early 1990, Gerald Bull was murdered in Brussels. Five bullets to the head—though, true to his life, even the manner of his death is mysterious. His killers were never found, though they were rumored to be Mossad, the Israeli enforcers.

Dr. Bull’s life, his work, his death, was a sort of open secret at the time, though not well known outside a certain circle. With time, more and more information has come out.

Where we live, in Québec’s Eastern Townships, many people remember the man, and many worked on the huge missile launcher. Indeed, my assistant Lise’s husband, Del, drove us to the site of Baby Babylon, still fenced and chained.

Such was the power of the man that people hereabouts are not anxious to talk about him or his gun even now.





ABOUT THE AUTHOR




LOUISE PENNY is the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail bestselling author of ten previous Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels. She has won numerous awards, including a CWA Dagger and the Agatha Award (five times), and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. She lives in a small village south of Montréal.



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