SIXTEEN
Jean-Guy glanced round. The bistro was quiet. Placing his hands on the arms of his chair he hauled himself forward. The chair felt warm from the fire. In the grate the large logs popped, sending embers bouncing against the screen to glow on the stone hearth then slowly die away.
The maple logs smelled sweet, the coffee was strong and rich, the aromas from the kitchen familiar.
Not of home but of here.
He leaned forward and stared into the cold, blue eyes across from him. Winter eyes in a glacier face. Challenging, hard, impenetrable.
Perfect.
He paused and in an instant he was back there, since “there” was never far away.
“My favorite season is autumn, I think,” Gamache was saying.
“I’ve always loved winter,” came the young voice over the monitors. “I think because I can wear thick sweaters and coats and no one can really see how skinny I am.”
Morin laughed. Gamache laughed.
But that was all Inspector Beauvoir heard. He was out the door, through the Incident Room and into the stairwell. There he paused for a moment. Opening his fist he read the note Gamache had scrawled.
Find Agent Yvette Nichol. Give her this.
There was another note, folded, with Nichol’s name on it. He opened it and groaned. Was the Chief mad? Because Yvette Nichol almost certainly was. She was the agent no one wanted. The agent who couldn’t be fired because she wasn’t quite incompetent or insubordinate enough. But she sure played around the cliff. And finally the chief had assigned her to telecommunications. Surrounded by things, not people. No interaction. Nothing major to screw up. No one to enrage. Just listening, monitoring, recording.
Any normal person would have quit. Any decent agent would have resigned. Like the witch trials of old. If she sank she was innocent, if she survived she was a witch.
Agent Nichol survived.
But still, he didn’t hesitate. Down the stairs he ran, two at a time, until he was finally in the sub-basement. Yanking open a door he looked in. The room was darkened, and it took him a moment to make out the outline of someone sitting in front of green lights. On oval screens lines burst into a frenzy as words were spoken.
Then a face was turned to him. A green face, and eyes glowing green. Agent Yvette Nichol. He hadn’t seen her in years and now he felt a tingling under his skin. A warning. Not to enter. This room. This person’s life.
But Chief Inspector Gamache had wanted him to. And so he did. On the speaker he was surprised to hear the Chief’s voice, talking now about various dog toys.
“Have you ever used a Chuck-it, sir?” Agent Morin asked.
“Never heard of it. What is it?”
“A stick thing with a cup on the end. It helps toss a tennis ball. Does Henri like balls?”
“Above all else,” laughed Gamache.
“Idiotic conversation,” came the female voice. A green voice. Young, ripe, filled with bile. “What do you want?”
“Have you been monitoring the conversation?” Inspector Beauvoir demanded. “It’s on a secure channel. No one’s supposed to have access to it.”
“And yet you were about to ask me to start monitoring it, weren’t you? Don’t look so surprised, Inspector. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. No one comes here unless they want something. What do you want?”
“Chief Inspector Gamache wants your help.” He almost gagged on the words.
“And what the Chief Inspector wants, he gets. Right?” But she’d turned back into the room. Beauvoir felt on the wall and found the light switch. He turned it on and the room was flooded with bright fluorescent lights. The woman, who had seemed so menacing, so otherworldly, suddenly became human.
Staring at him now was a short, slightly dumpy, young woman with sallow skin marked by old blemishes. Her hair was dull and mousy and her eyes squinted to adjust to the sudden light.
“Why’d you do that?” she demanded.
“Sir,” he snapped. “You’re a disgrace but you’re still a S?reté officer. You’ll call me ‘sir’ and the Chief Inspector by his full rank. And you’ll do as you’re ordered. Here.”
He thrust the note at the agent who now looked very young, and very angry. Like a petulant child. Beauvoir smiled remembering his initial disquiet. She was pathetic. A sorry little person. Nothing more.
Then he remembered why he was there.
She might be a sorry little person, but Chief Inspector Gamache was risking his entire career in bringing her secretly into the investigation.
Why?
“Tell me what you know.” She lowered the note and stared Beauvoir in the eye. “Sir.”
It was a disconcerting look. Far smarter, far brighter, than he would have expected. A keen stare, and deep inside, still, a flash of green.
He bristled at her use of words. At that particular phrase. “Tell me what you know.” It’s what the Chief always asked when first arriving at a murder scene. Gamache would listen carefully, respectfully. Thoughtfully.
The antithesis of this willful, warped agent.
Surely she was mocking the Chief. But there were more important things than challenging her on that.
He told her what he knew.
The shooting, the kidnapping, the claims of the farmer to have attached a bomb. To go off the next morning at 11:18.
Instinctively they both glanced at the clock. Ten past six in the evening. Seventeen hours left.
“Chief Superintendent Francoeur believes the kidnapper’s a frightened backwoods farmer, probably with a small marijuana operation, who panicked. They think there’s no bomb and no other plan.”
“But Chief Inspector Gamache doesn’t agree,” said Agent Nichol, reading from the note. “He wants me to monitor closely.” She looked up after a moment digesting the Chief’s instructions. “They’re monitoring closely upstairs I presume?”