SEVEN
Armand Gamache turned off the lights, then he and Henri walked down the corridor, but instead of pressing the down button, he pressed up. Not to the very top floor, but the one just below it. He looked at his watch. Eight thirty. Perfect.
A minute later he knocked on a door and went in without waiting for a response.
“Bon,” said Superintendent Brunel. “You made it.”
Thérèse Brunel, petite and soignée as always, rose and indicated a chair next to her husband, Jér?me, who was also on his feet. They shook hands and everyone sat.
Thérèse Brunel was beyond the S?reté retirement age, but no one had the stomach, or other organs, to tell her. She’d come late to the force, been trained by Gamache, then rapidly lapped him, partly through her own hard work and ability, but partly, they all knew, because his career had hit a wall, constructed by Chief Superintendent Francoeur.
They’d been friends since the academy, when she was twice the age of any other recruit and he was her professor.
The roles, the offices, the ranks they now enjoyed should have been reversed. Thérèse Brunel knew that. Jér?me knew that. And Gamache knew that, though he alone didn’t seem to care.
They sat on the formal sofa and chairs, and Henri stretched out between Gamache and Jér?me. The older man dropped an arm, absently stroking the shepherd.
Jér?me, hovering on the far side of seventy, was almost completely round, and had he been slightly smaller, Henri would have been tempted to chase him.
Despite the difference in their ranks, it was clear that Armand Gamache was in charge. This was his meeting, if not his office.
“What’s your news?” he asked Thérèse.
“We’re getting closer, I think, Armand, but there’s a problem.”
“I’ve hit a few walls,” Jér?me explained. “Whoever’s done this is clever. Just when I get up a head of steam, I find I’m actually in a cul-de-sac.”
His voice was querulous, but his manner was jovial. Jér?me had rolled forward, his hands clasped together. His eyes were bright and he was fighting a smile.
He was enjoying himself.
Dr. Brunel was an investigator, but not with the S?reté du Québec. Now retired, he’d been the head of emergency services for the H?pital Notre-Dame in Montréal. His training was to quickly assess a medical emergency, triage, diagnose. Then treat.
Retired a few years now, he’d refocused his energy and skills toward solving puzzles, cyphers. Both his wife and Chief Inspector Gamache had consulted him on cases involving codes. But it was more than a retired doctor passing the time. Jér?me Brunel was a man born to solve puzzles. His mind saw and made connections that might take others hours or days, or never, to find.
But Dr. Brunel’s game of choice, his drug of choice, was computers. He was a cyber junkie, and Gamache had brought him uncut heroin in the form of this gnarly puzzle.
“I’ve never seen so many layers of security,” said Jér?me. “Someone’s tried very hard to hide this thing.”
“What thing, though?” Gamache asked.
“You asked us to find out who really leaked that video of the raid on the factory,” Superintendent Brunel said. “The one you led, Armand.”
He nodded. The video was taken from the tiny cameras each of the agents wore, attached to their headphones. They recorded everything.
“There was an investigation, of course,” Superintendent Brunel continued. “The conclusion of the Cyber Crimes division was that a hacker had gotten lucky, found the files, edited them, and put them on the Internet.”
“Bullshit,” said Dr. Brunel. “A hacker could never have just stumbled on those files. They’re too well guarded.”
“So?” Gamache turned to Jér?me. “Who did?”
But they all knew who’d done it. If not a lucky hacker, it had to be someone inside the S?reté, and high enough up to cover his trail. But Dr. Brunel had found that trail, and followed it.
They all knew it would lead to the office right above them. To the very highest level in the S?reté.
But Gamache had long since begun to wonder if they were asking the right question. Not who, but why. He suspected they’d find that the video was simply the disgusting dropping of a much larger creature. They’d mistaken the merde for the actual menace.
Armand Gamache looked at the gathering. A senior S?reté officer, past her retirement age. A rotund doctor. And himself. A middle-aged, marginalized officer.
Just the three of them. And the creature they sought seemed to grow each time they caught a glimpse of it.
Gamache knew, though, that what was a disadvantage was also an advantage. They were easily overlooked, dismissed, especially by people who believed themselves invisible and invincible.
“I think we’re getting closer, Armand, but I keep hitting dead ends,” said Jér?me. The doctor suddenly looked a little furtive.
“Go on,” said Gamache.
“I’m not certain, but I think I detected a watcher.”
Gamache said nothing. He knew what a watcher was, in physical as well as cyber terms. But he wanted Jér?me to be more precise.
“If I have, he’s very cunning and very skilled. It’s possible he’s been watching me for a while.”
Gamache rested his elbows on his knees, clasping his large hands in front of him. Like a battleship plowing toward its target.
“Is it Francoeur?” Gamache asked. No need to pretend otherwise.
“Not him personally,” said Jér?me, “but I think whoever it is is within the S?reté network. I’ve been doing this for a long time now, and I’ve never seen anything this sophisticated. Whenever I stop and look, he fades into the background.”
“How do you even know he’s there?” asked Gamache.
“I don’t for sure, but it’s a sense, a movement, a shift.”
Brunel paused and for the first time Gamache saw in the cheerful doctor a hint of concern. A sense that as good as he was, Dr. Brunel might be up against someone better.
Gamache sat back in his chair as though something had walked by him, and pushed. What have we uncovered?
Not only were they hunting the creature, it seemed the creature might now be hunting them.
“Does this watcher know who you are?” he asked Jér?me.
“I don’t think so.”
“Think?” asked Gamache, his voice sharp, his eyes hard.
“No,” Jér?me shook his head. “He doesn’t know.”
Yet. The word was unspoken, but implied. Yet.
“Be careful, Jér?me,” said Gamache, as he rose and picked up Henri’s leash. He said his good-byes, left them, and headed into the night.
The lights of the cities and towns and villages faded in his rearview mirror as they drove deeper into the forest. After a while the darkness was complete, except for the beams of his headlights on the snowy roads. Eventually he saw a soft glow ahead, and knew what it was. Gamache’s car crested a hill, and there in the valley he saw three huge pines lit with green and red and yellow Christmas lights. Thousands of them, it seemed. And around the village cheery lights were hung along porches and picket fences and over the stone bridge.
As his car descended, the signal on his device disappeared. No phone reception, no emails. It was as though he and Henri, asleep on the backseat, had fallen off the face of the earth.
He parked in front of Myrna’s New and Used Bookstore and noted the lights still on upstairs. So often he’d come here to find death. This time he’d brought it with him.