Knowing that to be on the safe side.
He’d been wrong.
He’d brought six agents with him. Chosen them. Handpicked. And he’d brought Inspector Beauvoir. But not Agent Yvette Nichol. She’d stood there, her tactical vest already on. Her pistol on her belt. Her eyes keen. She would go with them into the factory. The place she’d found by following the sounds. By listening more closely than she’d ever listened in her life.
To the trains. To their frequency. To their cadence. Freight trains. A passenger train. A plane overhead. A hoot in the background. A factory.
And whispers. Ghosts in the background.
Three of them, she’d said.
With Inspector Beauvoir’s furious help they’d narrowed and narrowed. Winnowed, whittled. Pored over train timetables, over flight paths, over factories old enough to still use whistles.
Until they knew where Agent Paul Morin was being held.
But there was another goal. The La Grande dam. To save the young agent would be to alert the suspects that their plot against the dam had been discovered. And if they realized that they might destroy it right away, before the tactical squad could be moved into place.
No. A choice had to be made. A decision had to be made.
Gamache could see Agent Nichol standing by the door. Ready. And her rage when told his decision.
“Are you going to watch?” Beauvoir asked.
Gamache thought. “Yes. You?”
“Maybe.” He also paused. “Yes.” There was a silence as both men considered what that meant. “Oh, God,” sighed Beauvoir.
“When you do, don’t be alone,” said Gamache.
“I wish—”
“So do I,” said Gamache. They both wished the same thing. That if they had to relive it, they could at least be together.
Sitting heavily in one of the leather wing chairs of the St-Laurent Bar, Chief Inspector Gamache asked for a glass of water and called Reine-Marie.
“I was trying to get you.” She sounded stressed, upset.
“I know, I’m sorry, I’ve been in a meeting. Jean-Guy just told me. How did you hear?”
“Daniel called from Paris. A colleague told him. Then Annie called. It apparently appeared about noon and has gone wild. Journalists have been calling for the past half hour. Armand, I’m so sorry.”
He heard the strain in her voice and he could have happily killed whoever had done this. Forcing Reine-Marie to relive it, forcing Annie and Daniel and Enid Beauvoir. And worse. The families of those who died.
He wanted to reach down the line and hold Reine-Marie, hug her to him. Rock her and tell her it would be all right, that this was just a phantom from the past. The worst was over.
But was it?
“When will you be home?”
“By tomorrow.”
“Who would do this, Armand?”
“I don’t know. I need to watch it, but you don’t. Can you wait until I come home? If you still want to see it we can watch together.”
“I’ll wait,” she said. She could wait.
She remembered fragments of that day. Armand hadn’t been home. Isabelle Lacoste had contacted her and explained the Chief was working on a case and couldn’t even, in fact, speak with her. Not for a day.
She’d never gone twenty-four hours without hearing her husband’s voice. Not once, in more than thirty years together. Then, next morning, at just after noon a coworker at the Bibliotheque Nationale arrived at work, her face stricken.
A bulletin on Radio-Canada. A shootout. Officers of the S?reté among the dead, including a senior homicide officer. The race to the hospital, not listening to the reports. Too afraid. The world had collapsed to this imperative. To get there. To get there. Get there. Seeing Annie in the emergency room, just arrived.
The radio said Dad—
I don’t want to hear it.
Comforting each other. Comforting Enid Beauvoir, Jean-Guy’s wife, in the waiting room. And others arriving she didn’t know. The grotesque pantomime, strangers comforting each other while secretly, desperately, shamefully praying the other will be the one with bad news.
A paramedic appearing through the swinging doors from the emergency room, looking at them, looking away. Blood on his uniform. Annie grabbing her hand.
Among the dead.
The doctor, taking them aside, away, separating them from the rest. And Reine-Marie, light-headed, steeling herself to hear the unbearable. And then those words.
He’s alive.
She didn’t really take in the rest. Chest wound. Head wound. Pneumothorax. A bleed.
He’s alive was all she needed to know. But there was another.
Jean-Guy? she’d asked. Jean-Guy Beauvoir?
The doctor hesitated.
You must, tell us, Annie said, far more insistent than Reine-Marie expected.
Shot in the abdomen. He’s in surgery now.
But he’ll be all right? Annie demanded.
We don’t know.
My father, you said a bleed, what does that mean?
From the head wound, a bleed into his head, the doctor had said. A stroke.
Reine-Marie didn’t care. He’s alive. And she repeated that to herself now as she had every hour of every day since. It didn’t matter what the damned video showed. He’s alive.
“I don’t know what could be on it,” Gamache was saying. And that was the truth. He’d forced himself to remember, for the inquiry, but mostly what he was left with were impressions, the chaos, the noise, the shouting and screams. And gunmen, everywhere. Far more than expected.