THIRTY-THREE
Beauvoir and Clara were up half the night, discussing, considering. Emailing, searching and plotting a course.
Finally, about two in the morning, they had it organized and went to their beds, only to wake up at six when their alarms sounded.
“What time is it?” came Myrna’s sleepy voice. “God, Clara, it’s just after six. Is the house on fire?”
“We need to leave if we’re going to catch the nine o’clock plane.”
“What?”
Myrna sat up in bed, completely alert and slightly alarmed.
Down the hall, Gamache was already sitting on the side of the bed. He’d offered to stay up with Clara and Beauvoir, to help them, but had been persuaded that his presence wasn’t necessary. At all.
“You were successful?” he said to Jean-Guy, who was looking bleary but eager.
“There’s a flight out of La Malbaie in three hours. It’ll take us to Tabaquen.”
“Really?” said Myrna, when Clara explained it. “Can’t we just drive?”
“There’re no roads,” said Clara, trying to coax the large woman out of the small bed. “It’s a fishing village. The only way in is by boat or plane.”
“We chose the plane,” Beauvoir was explaining to Gamache, who was in the shower. “It stops at all the villages and will take all day, but we’ll be there in time for dinner.”
They were dressed and out the door by seven.
Chartrand was standing by his van.
“We’re taking our car,” said Jean-Guy, tossing his bag into the trunk.
“I’m going with you,” Chartrand said. “No need to take two vehicles. You can come back for yours when we get back.”
The two men stared at each other.
“Get in,” said Clara.
She climbed into the van, looked at Jean-Guy and patted the seat next to her.
Beauvoir looked at her, then at Chartrand. And finally at Gamache, who shrugged.
“You heard her, Jean-Guy. Grab your things.”
“Patron,” Jean-Guy started to say, but Gamache put his hand on Beauvoir’s arm to stop him.
“Clara’s in charge. She knows what she’s doing.”
“She once ate potpourri thinking it was chips,” said Jean-Guy. “She took a bath in soup, thinking it was bath salts. She turned a vacuum cleaner into a sculpture. She has no idea what she’s doing.”
Gamache smiled. “At least if it all goes south, we have someone else to blame for once.”
“You do,” mumbled Beauvoir, tossing his bag into the back of the van. “I always blamed you anyway. I’m no further ahead.”
Twenty minutes later, Chartrand turned into the tiny airport at La Malbaie and pulled up to the shack.
“Is that it?” asked Myrna, eyeing the small plane on the tarmac.
“I guess so,” Gamache said, and tried not to think about it. He was used to taking tiny planes into remote villages and landing on what most pilots would not consider a runway. But it was never fun.
“Dibs on the exit row,” said Myrna.
A young man came out of the shack and looked at them, assessing them like cargo. “I’m Marc Brossard, the pilot. You the ones who emailed last night?”
“That’s right,” said Jean-Guy. “Four to go to Tabaquen.”
“Five,” Chartrand said.
Beauvoir turned to face him. “You dropped us off. That’s far enough. You can’t come with us.”
“But I can. All I have to do is buy a ticket.” He handed over his credit card to the young pilot. “There. Easy. I can fly.”
He said it in such a Peter Pan way that Myrna laughed. Beauvoir did not. He scowled at the gallery owner and turned to Gamache.
“Nothing we can do, Jean-Guy.”
“Not if we don’t try,” he said. “Sir.”
Gamache leaned in to Beauvoir and said, “We can’t stop him. And do we want to?”
But Beauvoir hadn’t given up. “Is there even room?”
“Always room for one more, my mother says,” said the pilot, returning Chartrand’s card to him and looking to the east. “Better hurry.”
“Why?” Myrna asked, and wished she hadn’t. Sometimes it was best not to know.
“Red sky in the morning.” The pilot gestured to the violent red sky. “Sailors take warning.”
“Something else your mother says?” asked Beauvoir.
“No. My uncle.”
“But you’re a pilot, and this isn’t a boat,” said Clara.
“Same difference. Means bad weather. We’d be better off in a boat.” He looked from Myrna to Gamache. “Ballast. Good in a bateau. Not so good in the air.”
“Maybe he should stay behind.” Jean-Guy gestured toward Chartrand.
The gallery owner was staring into the gaudy sunrise, his back to them.
“No,” said Clara. “He was kind to us. If he wants to come, he can.”
“Are you kidding me?” Beauvoir hissed at Gamache. “She’s making decisions based on what’s ‘nice’?”
“It’s worked so far, hasn’t it?” Gamache watched Beauvoir’s face flush with frustration.
Myrna approached, saw his red face and, taking warning, turned around.
“You coming?” The pilot had loaded their bags and was standing by the door of the plane.
They squeezed in, the pilot directing them where to sit so that the weight was fairly evenly distributed. Even so, the plane waddled into the air, one wing dipping dangerously and almost hitting the runway. Gamache and Clara, on that side, leaned toward the middle. Like mariners, after all, heaving ho.
And then they were airborne, and on their way. The plane circled, and Gamache, his face forced against the window as Jean-Guy’s body shifted in the turn, could see what was only visible from above.
The crater. The giant, and perfect, circle where the meteor had struck hundreds of millions of years ago. The cosmic catastrophe that had wiped out all life. And then had created life.
The plane banked again and headed east. Away from there. And into the red sky.
“Have you been flying this route for a while?” Clara shouted above the drone of the engines.
She’d finally stopped praying and felt it was safe to open her mouth without shrieking.
“A few years,” he called back. “Started when I was eighteen. Family business.”
“Flying?” asked Clara, feeling slightly more confident.
“Fruit.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Myrna shouted. “Leave well enough alone and let him concentrate on flying.”
“Oui, fruit. Not much fresh fruit along the coast, and the bateau can take too long, so we fly it in. Mostly bananas.”
What followed was a monologue on how long various fruit takes to rot. By the time he stopped talking they felt fairly certain they’d all gone bad.
“How often do you get passengers?” Jean-Guy asked, desperate to change the subject.
“A lot lately, but that’s unusual. Most people who want to go to the coast take the ship. Takes longer, but it’s safer.”
No one pursued that, and Clara went back to praying. Bless, oh Lord, this food to our use …
“Did you fly Luc Vachon recently?” Jean-Guy asked.
“The owner of La Muse? Oui. Few days ago. A bit early, but his annual trip to the coast.”
“Where’d he go?” Gamache asked.
“Tabaquen. To paint. Like he does every summer. This year I took him all the way there, but most summers I drop him in Sept-?les, to catch the boat. All the artists prefer the boat. It’s—”
“—safer, yes, we know,” said Beauvoir.
The pilot laughed. “I was going to say prettier. I think artists like pretty. Mais, franchement, it’s not really safer. There’s no safe way to get to the Lower North Shore. We have turbulence and the ship has the Graves. So it’s all a crapshoot.”
“Do not open your mouths,” hissed Myrna, catching their eyes with a searing look.
The small plane lurched in an air current. Dipping and falling, and climbing again. The pilot quickly turned his attention to flying. In the back, their eyes widened and Clara grabbed Myrna’s hand.
Jean-Guy, seeing this, envied the women, and he wondered how the Chief would take it if he held on to his.
The plane pitched again and Beauvoir grabbed, then let go of, Gamache’s hand when the plane righted itself.
Gamache looked at him, but said nothing. It was not, they both knew, the first time one had held on to the other, for dear life. And the way things were going it might not be the last.
“Peter,” Clara yelled with such force Beauvoir was tempted to look around in case the man had joined them.
Clara leaned forward. “Did you fly my husband? Peter Morrow?”
“Désolé, lady,” said the pilot, who was perfectly bilingual and seemed to speak in a mixture of both languages. Frenglish. “I don’t remember names. Just luggage. And fruit. Now, lemons—”
“He’d have gone to Tabaquen,” Clara quickly cut in. “Tall guy. English.”
The pilot shook his head. “Means nothing to me.”
Myrna pulled out her device and after a few clicks she handed it to Clara, who hesitated for a moment.
“Oh, what the hell,” she said. “We’re all going to die anyway.”
She showed the photo to the pilot, and when he stopped laughing he pointed. “Is that you?”
“That’s not important. You recognize the man?”
“Yeah. Tall, old. English.”
“Old?” said Clara.
“That might not be the most important thing he’s said,” said Myrna. “We all look old to him. He’s barely begun to rot.”
The plane gave a little shudder, as though nudged.
“Oh, Christ, here it comes,” said Jean-Guy.
“What’s that?” asked Clara.
“What?” demanded Myrna, looking frantically out the window where Clara was pointing.
“That’s the supply ship,” said the pilot.
“The one the artists take?” Clara asked.
Below them was the river, and on it they saw a ship. From above it looked like a cigar.
“Oui.”
“How long does it take for the ship to get to Tabaquen?” she asked.
“From Sept-?les?” The pilot considered. “About a day, maybe two. Depends on the weather.”
“Take us there.”
“Where?”
“Sept-?les.”
“Clara?” asked Myrna.
“Clara?” asked Gamache.
“If Peter took the boat, we will too.”
“Clara?” asked Jean-Guy.
“But Peter’s not still on it,” said Myrna.
“I know that. But there’s a reason he took it.”
“Maybe,” said Myrna. “But there’s a reason we shouldn’t. Wouldn’t it be best to get to Tabaquen as fast as we can?”
“Why?” asked Clara.
“To find Peter.”
“And suppose he got off the ship?” asked Clara. “Suppose he never made it? No. We need to retrace his steps, as closely as we can.”
Beauvoir turned to Gamache. Their noses almost touched, so tight was the squeeze. And there was no mistaking the glare in Beauvoir’s eyes. The desperation.
The joke was over. They’d had their fun. They’d let Clara lead them around.
But now it was time to take charge.
“Patron.” Beauvoir’s voice was filled with warning.
“Clara’s in charge, Jean-Guy,” said Gamache, his voice barely heard above the wail of the engines.
“We can fly to this village, find out what happened to Peter, and be home before the ship gets halfway there,” said Beauvoir. “Don’t you want that?”
Gamache looked down at the ship, so small in the huge river. “We gave Clara our word.” He turned back to Jean-Guy. “Besides, she might be right. She has been so far.”
Beauvoir took in the Chief’s deep brown eyes, the lines of his face. The deep scar by his temple. The hair almost completely gray now.
“Are you afraid?” Beauvoir asked.
“Of what?”
“Of being in charge again? Of being responsible?”
There is a balm in Gilead … The book in Gamache’s pocket dug into his side. A thorn. Not letting him forget.… to cure a sin-sick soul.
“We’re here to support Clara, nothing more,” Gamache repeated. “If I have to step in, I will. But not before.”
As Jean-Guy turned away, Gamache saw in those familiar eyes something unfamiliar.
Doubt.
* * *
The plane didn’t so much land as run out of air. It hit the tarmac with a thump and skidded to a stop.
“Phew,” said the immortal pilot with a grin. “Almost bruised the bananas.”
Myrna laughed, the heady amusement of one spared from certain death.
They climbed out of the tin can and stood on the runway. And looked at the river. The plane had come to a halt within meters of the St. Lawrence.
“Tabarnac,” said Chartrand, then turned to the women. “Sorry.”
“Merde,” said Myrna, then turned to Chartrand. “Sorry.”
“This isn’t the airport,” said Gamache, looking around.
Their pilot was dumping their bags on the tarmac.
“The airport’s big,” said Gamache. “It lands jets. This’s…”
He turned around. River, forest, river.
“This’s…”
“You’re welcome,” said the pilot, tossing the last bag onto the pile.
“Seriously,” said Gamache. “Where are we?”
The pilot pointed. There, on the horizon, was a dot. And as they watched, it grew. And took shape. Ship shape.
“The Loup de Mer. She docks there.” He pointed to a pier half a kilometer away. “This’s an old cargo runway. Better hurry.”
“Tabarnac,” said Myrna, as she picked up her bag.
“Merde,” said Chartrand.
They hurried across the rough landing strip, pausing to watch the plane rumble down the runway and lift off. From the ground it looked strangely graceful, as though something awkward was freed.
The plane, and the boy inside, seemed made for the skies and not really of this earth.
The plane bobbed and banked and flew into the sun. And disappeared.
Then they turned their backs on it and walked toward the pier, where the Loup de Mer was just arriving.
The Seawolf.
Gamache, who knew the coast well, wondered if Clara had any idea what they were in for.