THIRTY-NINE
Armand Gamache drove onto the Champlain Bridge. There was no sign, yet, of any effort to close it but he knew if anyone could do it, it would be Isabelle Lacoste.
The traffic was heavy and the road still snowy. He passed a car and glanced in. A man and a woman sat in the front and behind them an infant was strapped into a car seat. Two lanes over he could see a young woman alone in her car, tapping her steering wheel and nodding to music.
Red brake lights appeared. The traffic was slowing. They were now creeping along. Bumper-to-bumper.
And ahead, the huge steel span rose.
Gamache knew almost nothing about engineering. About load tests and concrete. But he did know that 160,000 cars crossed this bridge every day. It was the busiest span in Canada and it was about to be blown into the St. Lawrence River. Not by some enraged foreign terrorist, but by two of the most trusted people in Québec.
The Premier and the head of the police force.
It had taken Gamache a while, but finally he thought he knew why.
What made this different from the other bridges, the tunnels, the neglected overpasses? Why target this?
There had to be a reason, a purpose. Money, maybe. If a bridge came down, it would have to be rebuilt. And that would put hundreds of millions more dollars in pockets across Québec. But Gamache knew it was more than money. He knew Francoeur, and what drove the man. It was one thing. Had always been one thing.
Power.
How could bringing down the Champlain Bridge give him more than he already had?
One lane over, a young boy looked out his window and stared directly at the Chief Inspector. And smiled.
Gamache smiled back. His own car slowed to a stop, joining the column of stalled cars in the middle of the bridge. Gamache’s right hand trembled a little, and he gripped the steering wheel tighter.
Pierre Arnot had started it, decades ago, on the remote reserve.
While up there he’d met another young man on the rise. Georges Renard.
Arnot was with the S?reté detachment, Renard was an engineer with Aqueduct, planning the dam.
Both were clever, dynamic, ambitious and they triggered something in the other. So that over time, clever became cunning. Dynamic became obsessed. Ambitious became ruthless.
It was as though, in that fateful meeting, something had changed in each man’s DNA. Up until then, both had been driven, but ultimately decent. There was a limit to how far they were willing to go. But when Arnot met Renard, and Renard met Arnot, that limit, that line, had vanished.
Gamache had known Pierre Arnot, had even admired parts of the man. And now, as he inched along the bridge toward the highest point of the span, Gamache wondered what might have become of Arnot, had he not met Renard.
And what might have become of Renard, had he not met Arnot?
He’d seen it in others, the consequences of failing to choose companions wisely. One slightly immoral person was a problem. Two together was a catastrophe. All it took was a fateful meeting. A person who told you your meanest desires, your basest thoughts, weren’t so bad. In fact, he shared them.
Then the unthinkable was thought. And planned for. And put into action.
Georges Renard had put up the great La Grande hydroelectric dam. He could bring it down. With Pierre Arnot’s help.
Arnot’s part was simple and painfully easy. Recruiters, for terrorist cells and police forces and armies, relied on this simple truth: if you got people young enough, they could be made to do just about anything.
And that was what Arnot did. He’d left the Cree reserve years earlier and had risen to Chief Superintendent of the S?reté du Québec. But he still had influence in the north. He was respected. His voice heard and often heeded.
Arnot put key officers in place on the reserve. Their task was to find, and if necessary create, the angriest, most disenfranchised native kids. To nurture that hatred. Reinforce it. Reward it.
Kids who didn’t buy into it, or threatened to expose them, had “accidents.” Committed “suicide.” Disappeared into the bush forever.
Two abused and desperate children, nurtured into violent, glue-sniffing young men, were chosen. They were the angriest. The emptiest.
They were given two trucks loaded with explosives and told where to hit the dam. They would die, but they would die heroes, they were told. Celebrities. Songs would be written. Their brave stories told and retold. They would become legend. Myth.
Renard had provided the information on where to hit the dam. Where it was vulnerable. Information only someone who’d actually worked on the dam would know.
That had been the first plan, but Gamache had stopped it. Barely. And lost many young officers doing it. Had almost lost Jean-Guy.
Perhaps he had lost Jean-Guy, Gamache thought.
They were almost at the very top of the bridge now. The massive steel girders rose on either side of him. The boy in the next car had fallen asleep, his blond hair pressed against the window. His head lolling. In the front seat, Gamache could see Dad driving and Mom holding a large wrapped gift on her lap.
Yes, he’d stopped the dam from being brought down, but he’d failed to get at the rot. The dark core was still there and spreading. Recovering from the setback, it had grown darker and stronger.
Arnot had gone to prison and his second in command had taken over. In Sylvain Francoeur, Georges Renard had found his true muse. A man so like him they were two halves of a whole. And when put together, the results were catastrophic.
The target had shifted but not the goal.
What made the Champlain Bridge such a perfect target was finally very simple.
It was a federal bridge.
And when it came down, with a shattering loss of life, the government of Canada would be blamed for years of mismanagement, neglect, substandard materials, corruption.
All documented by the provincial Ministry of Transportation.
Audrey Villeneuve’s department.
Footage of the dreadful event would run day and night on screens around the world. Photos of the parents, the children, the families who perished would stare out from newspapers and magazines.
Gamache’s eyes swept the vehicles around him, and rested, again, on the boy in the car beside him. He was awake now. Staring out. Eyes glazed with boredom. Then he noticed his breath on the cold window. The boy brought his finger up, and wrote.
ynnaD, Gamache read.
His name was Danny.
This boy had the same name as his own son. Daniel.
If death came right now, would it be swift? Would Danny know?
Yes, their photographs would be on endless rotation on the news. Their names etched on monuments. Martyrs in the cause.
And the people responsible for the bridge, the Canadian government, would be villainized, demonized.
Je me souviens, Gamache read on the slushy license plate of the car ahead. The motto of Québec. I remember. They would never, ever forget the day the Champlain Bridge fell.
This was never about money, except as a means to corrupt. To buy silence and complicity.
This was about power. Political power. Georges Renard was not satisfied with being the Premier of a province. He wanted to be the father of a new country. He’d rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.
And to do that all he needed to do was to manufacture rage, then direct it at the federal government. He’d convince the population that the reason the bridge had come down was that Canada had willfully used substandard material. That the federal government did not care for the citizens of Québec.
And his words would carry great weight, not because he was himself a Québec separatist, but because he wasn’t. Georges Renard was a lifelong Federalist. He’d built a political career as a supporter of Québec staying in Canada. How much stronger the argument for separation would be when coming from a man who’d never espoused it, until this hideous event.
By the New Year Québec would have declared its independence. The day the Champlain Bridge fell would be their Bastille Day. And the victims would pass into legend.