TWENTY-SEVEN
“Next?” asked Jér?me.
He never expected it to get this far. Looking across the room at the bank of blank monitors, he knew what had to happen.
Beneath the thick sweater he felt a trickle of perspiration, as though his round body was weeping. If Three Pines was their foxhole, he was about to raise his head. Armand had given them a weapon, but it was a pointy stick against a machine gun.
He walked away from the warmth of the fire and felt the chill again as he approached the far reaches of the room. Two old, battered computers sat side-by-side, one on the teacher’s desk, the other on the table they’d dragged over. Above them, glued to the wall, was the cheerful alphabet, illustrated with bumblebees and butterflies and ducks and roses. And below that, musical notes.
He hummed it slowly, following the notes.
“Why’re you singing that?” asked Gamache.
Jér?me started a little. He hadn’t realized Armand was with him and he hadn’t realized he was humming.
“It’s that.” Jér?me pointed to the notes. “Do-re-mi is the top line, and then this song is beneath it.”
He hummed some more and then, to his surprise, Armand started quietly, slowly, singing.
“What do you do with a drunken sailor…”
Jér?me examined his friend. Gamache was staring at the music and smiling. Then he turned to Jér?me.
“… early in the morrrr … ning.”
Jér?me smiled in genuine amusement and felt some of his terror detach and drift away on the back of the musical notes and the silly words from his serious friend.
“An old sea shanty,” Gamache explained, and returned to look at the notes on the wall. “I’d forgotten that Miss Jane Neal was the teacher here, before the school was closed and she retired.”
“You knew her?”
Gamache remembered kneeling in the bright autumn leaves and closing those blue eyes. It was years ago now. Felt like a lifetime.
“I caught her killer.”
Gamache gazed again at the wall, with the alphabet and music.
“Way, hey, and up she rises…” he whispered. It felt somehow comforting to be in this room where Miss Jane Neal had done what she loved, for children she adored.
“We need to get the cable in here,” said Jér?me, and for the next few minutes, while Gilles drilled a hole in the wall to snake the cable through, Jér?me and Nichol crawled under the desks and sorted out the wires and boxes.
Gamache watched all this, marveling that they’d begun the day thirty-five thousand kilometers from any communication satellite and now they were just centimeters from that connection.
“Did you make your connection?” Thérèse Brunel asked as she joined him. She nodded toward the young agent.
Her husband and Nichol were squeezed under the desk, trying not to elbow each other. At least, Dr. Brunel was trying not to—it looked as though Agent Nichol was doing her best to shove her bony elbows into him whenever she could.
“I’m afraid not,” Gamache whispered.
“But you both made it back, Chief Inspector. That’s something.”
Gamache grinned, though without amusement. “Some victory. I didn’t gun down one of my own agents in cold blood.”
“Well, we take our victories where we can get them,” she smiled. “I’m not sure Jér?me would’ve passed up the chance.”
By now the two under the desk were openly elbowing each other.
The hole in the schoolhouse wall was completed and Gilles shoved the cable through. Jér?me grabbed it and pulled.
“I’ll take it.”
Before Jér?me knew it, Nichol had grabbed the cable from him and was attaching it to the first of the metal boxes.
“Wait.” He yanked it back. “You can’t connect it.” He gripped the cable in both hands and tried to bring his sudden panic under control.
“Of course I can.” She almost swiped it from him and might have, had Superintendent Brunel not cut in.
“Agent Nichol,” she commanded. “Get out from there.”
“But—”
“Do as you’re told,” she said, as though speaking to a willful child.
Both Jér?me and Nichol crawled out from under the desk, Jér?me still gripping the black cable. Behind them they could hear the hiss as Gilles, still outside, sprayed the hole he’d made with foam insulation.
“What’s the problem?” Gamache asked.
“We can’t connect it,” said Jér?me.
“Yes we ca—”
But the Chief raised his hand and cut Nichol off.
“Why not?” he asked Jér?me. They’d come so far. Why not the last few inches?
“Because we don’t know what’ll happen once we do.”
“Isn’t tha—”
But again, Nichol was cut off. She shut her mouth, but fumed.
“Why not?” Gamache asked again, his voice neutral, assessing the situation.
“I know it sounds overcautious, but once this is plugged in, we have the ability to connect to the world. But it also means the world can connect to us. This”—he held up the cable—“is a highway that goes in both directions.”
Agent Nichol looked like she was about to wet her pants.
Chief Inspector Gamache turned to her and nodded.
“But the power isn’t on.” The dam broke and the words rushed from her. “That might as well be rope for all the connecting it’ll do. We have to attach it to the computers and we have to turn the power on. We have to make sure it works. Why wait?”
Gamache felt a chill on his neck and turned to see Gilles walking into the tense atmosphere. He shut the door, took off his tuque and mitts and coat, and sat by the door as though guarding it.
Gamache turned to Thérèse.
“What do you think?”
“We should wait.” On seeing Nichol open her mouth again, Thérèse headed off any comment. Looking directly at the young agent she spoke. “You’ve just arrived, but we’ve been living with this for weeks, months. We’ve risked our careers, our friendships, our homes, perhaps even more. If my husband says we pause, then we pause. Do you understand?”
Nichol gave in with bad grace.
As they left, Gamache turned the key in the Yale lock and put it in his breast pocket. Gilles joined him for the short walk through the dark, back to Emilie’s home.
“You know that young woman’s right?” Gilles said, his voice low and his eyes on the snowy ground.
“We need to test it?” said Gamache, also in a whisper. “Oui, I know.”
He watched Nichol, up ahead, and behind her Jér?me and Thérèse.
And he wondered what Jér?me was really afraid of.