The Nature of the Beast

by Louise Penny

* * *

  Professor Rosenblatt studied one page, then the next, and the next. Looking at the schematics, pausing now and then to consider, then moving on.

  “I see how they solved the trajectory problem, just here,” he said, pointing at a diagram.

  “Are they genuine?” demanded Gamache, his own patience worn thin and finally worn through.

  Rosenblatt straightened up and nodded. “I believe so.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” said a woman’s voice, and they turned to see Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme at the door. “We saw you come over from the church. Is that what I think it is?”

  Gamache rolled the plans back up.

  “Yes.”

  Mary Fraser looked genuinely relieved. Then she held out her hand.

  For an instant Gamache thought it was a peace offering. Shaking hands to signal a truce. Perhaps even congratulations for doing what she could not.

  Then he saw her face and realized the hand wasn’t offering, it was demanding.

  Gamache handed the scroll to Beauvoir, then walked wordlessly past Mary Fraser to the telephone on the bar. He glanced at his watch.

  Twenty minutes past six.

  He was halfway through dialing Lacoste at the Incident Room when he heard a tiny, familiar click.

  He froze, then slowly turned and saw Sean Delorme holding a gun.

  In his peripheral vision he saw Jean-Guy with his hands up in hasty surrender. He’d taken a few steps away from Gamache.

  “It’s best that you hang up the phone.”

  Gamache did and turned to Mary Fraser. “Not CSIS?”

  “You really don’t understand our world, do you? And this is not the time for explanations.”

  She still looked like Mary Poppins, right down to the oversized handbag and the spoonful-of-sugar expression.

  “You took that picture,” said Gamache. “Of Gerald Bull and Dr. Couture. And John Fleming. You were the fourth person in Brussels.”

  He’d stepped to within feet of them but she didn’t seem concerned. She knew he was unarmed. She had nothing to fear from Armand Gamache.

  She nodded. “You’ve worked a lot out, Monsieur Gamache. I was young, of course. And now I’m making up for those mistakes. The plans, please.”

  Beauvoir lowered the hand holding the scroll.

  “No, you can’t,” said Professor Rosenblatt, stepping forward. Delorme and Fraser glanced over to him, and in the moment it took to turn back, Beauvoir had swung his arm behind him and was holding the plans for Project Babylon over the fire.

  Delorme raised the gun and took aim, but Gamache stepped between him and his son-in-law, spreading his arms out.

  “Non.”

  The act was so unexpected, the sequence of events so rapid, that Delorme hesitated.

  “You’ll have to kill us all,” said Gamache. “Are you prepared to do that?”

  “If you’re prepared to die, we’re prepared to do it,” said Mary Fraser. “The few for the many, remember?”

  “You have a warped idea of the greater good,” snapped Beauvoir. “For your information, this is what it looks like.”

  He dropped the plans in the fireplace just as Professor Rosenblatt stepped in front of Gamache. Behind him, Armand heard a whoooosh as the design for Project Babylon went up in flames.

  “Shit,” shouted Delorme, and shoving the professor aside, he scrambled toward the fireplace, but Gamache and Beauvoir grabbed him, knocking the gun from his hand.

  It was over in a matter of moments, the time it took for the plans to be fully consumed by the fire. Beauvoir held on to Delorme while Gamache’s eyes swept the room.

  Mary Fraser had taken a few steps forward but stopped when she saw it was too late. Now her eyes were on Professor Rosenblatt, who’d stooped and picked up the gun.

  Gamache turned to him too, and there was a pause. As long as a breath, it seemed to last forever, as the elderly scientist held the weapon and looked at them. And they looked at him.

  And then he handed the gun to Gamache.

  “Well, it’s over,” said Gabri, walking into the bistro from the kitchen. “Almost the whole newscast on the goddamned gun.”

  He stopped and Olivier, directly behind him, bumped into him and was about to say something when he saw what was happening.

  Mary Fraser looked at them, then she turned to Gamache. Her face was pale and she trembled with rage. “You have no idea what you’ve just done.”

  She looked from him to Beauvoir and finally to the elderly scientist.

  “Gabri’s right,” said Beauvoir. “It’s over.”

  He released Delorme, shoving him toward Mary Fraser.

  “You’re a fool,” said Mary Fraser. “It’s not over. It’s barely begun.”

  “Aren’t you going to stop them?” asked Rosenblatt as the CSIS agents made for the door.

  “Let them go,” said Gamache, walking swiftly to the bar and the telephone. “There’s something more important right now.”

  He dialed Lacoste.

  * * *

  John Fleming felt the full sun on his face for the first time in decades, without the shadow of bars and barbed wire and guard towers.

  It was getting late, later than the young agent knew, thought Fleming as he followed him to the unmarked car.

  Fleming had known this day would come. He knew he’d be free again, one day. He’d felt it in his bones. He’d waited patiently for it. Planned for it. And now he was about to execute that plan.

  He watched the young man’s back and heard the tall grasses sway in the meadow and smelled the distant pine forest in the cool evening air. His senses, dormant for years, were sharper, more powerful than ever.

  He could even smell the musky fear soaked into Adam Cohen’s uniform. Fleming drank all this in as he slouched toward the car.

  * * *

  Fraser and Delorme were barely out the door when Gamache heard Lacoste pick up the phone. Without waiting for hello, he spoke.

  “We found the plans. Call Cohen. Stop him.”

  In the Incident Room, Lacoste hung up and hit the speed dial. And listened to the first ring. The second.

  * * *

  “Wait,” said Cohen when they reached the car and the guard was about to transfer the prisoner into the backseat.

  He brought out his device.

  Still nothing.

  Cohen replaced it in his pocket and nodded to his friend.

  * * *

  Lacoste tried again, this time punching in the numbers herself, carefully.

  Cohen’s phone rang. And rang.

  After the fifth ring, she hung up. It hadn’t even switched over to voice mail.

  Then she tried texting. It bounced back.

  “Well?” asked Gamache, as he, Beauvoir and shortly after them an out-of-breath Professor Rosenblatt arrived in the Incident Room.

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?” Beauvoir demanded.

  “He’s not answering,” she said. “Not to the phone and the text bounced back.”

  “What could that mean?” Beauvoir asked, but Gamache did not. He knew what it could mean.

  * * *

  John Fleming was locked into the backseat of the secure vehicle, handcuffed to the metal plate, restraints around his arms and legs.

  The guard tested them, tugging on them to make sure they were secure.

  “He’s all yours,” said Cohen’s friend, handing him the keys. “You’ll have to sign for him.”

  He gave Cohen his own device and indicated where he needed to sign.

  Cohen did. “That’s new.”

  “I guess we got them after you left. Dedicated devices and network. Can’t be hacked.”

  In the backseat Fleming smiled. You can guard against anything, except, of course, a betrayal.

  “Merci,” said Cohen, shaking the guard’s hand. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”

  “No rush.”

  * * *

  “Something’s blocking th

e transmission,” said Professor Rosenblatt.

  “What does that mean?” asked Gamache.

  “It means your young agent might not even realize he’s not getting messages. All the bars would light up, everything would look normal, and is, but the messages wouldn’t be registering.”

  “How do we get around it?” Lacoste asked.

  “You can’t. It’s not a software issue,” said Rosenblatt. “It’s the hardware. He’d have to have one of their devices.”

  “Call the SHU,” said Gamache. “Get him back.”

  * * *

  Cohen put the car in gear, but kept his foot on the brake.

  His device was sitting in the cupholder.

  “Let’s go,” said Fleming. “What’re you waiting for?”

  Picking up his device, Cohen decided to call Chief Inspector Lacoste, to confirm. He punched her contact number and saw Dialing on the screen.

  And then the message Unable to Connect.

  Of course, he thought. She’s in Three Pines. There’s no cell phone service.

  “Come on,” said Fleming. “You’re wasting time. Your boss won’t like that.”

  Cohen put his phone down and the car rolled forward. And stopped.

  “Now what?”

  Cohen picked up his device and called the landline in the Incident Room.

  Dialing. Dialing.

  Unable to Connect.

  That was strange.

  “Time’s a-wasting,” said Fleming. “Every moment counts. You know that.”

  But his soft, flawed voice held an edge of anxiety.

  Agent Cohen looked in the rearview mirror at the glowing eyes and eager, hungry face. Then he looked down at his device. All five bars were lit up. The network was connected. And yet there were no messages. None at all. From anyone, in over forty-five minutes.

  And then he remembered his friend’s new device.

  With hands that trembled so badly he almost dropped the phone, he punched into the utilities mode, took out the penitentiary code, put in his own, and the device started lighting up.

  It vibrated, the red light flashed. And it started ringing.

  In the backseat, John Fleming saw this and started pulling, yanking, on the chains binding him to the vehicle.

  * * *

  The operator put Lacoste through to the guard room. The phone rang, and was picked up, just as her line indicated an incoming.

  She hung up and clicked over and for a moment all she heard, loud enough so that Gamache, Beauvoir and even Professor Rosenblatt, sitting at the next desk, heard …

  A shriek.

  Gamache’s face went white and his eyes widened, as the ungodly noise filled the Incident Room.

  “Chief?”

  They heard the young voice, straining to be heard over the scream.

  “Is that you?” Cohen yelled.

  “Where are you?” Lacoste shouted.

  “I can’t hear you. I have Fleming.”

  “Take him back,” yelled Lacoste. “We have the plans. Take him back.”

  All they heard now was the shriek. And then it descended into a growl.

  Some rough beast.

  “Adam?” Gamache leaned into the phone, shouting, “Can you hear me?”

  And then …

  “I hear you, Monsieur Gamache,” shouted Adam Cohen. “He’s going back.”

  CHAPTER 42

  “What’ll happen to the Supergun?” Reine-Marie asked. “Now that the plans are gone.”

  They were gathered in the bistro, the Gamaches, Lacoste, Jean-Guy, Clara, Myrna, Brian, Ruth and Monsieur Béliveau. Professor Rosenblatt was sitting in a comfortable armchair, nursing a large cognac.

  Olivier had locked the door, apologizing to his other patrons, “Désolé, but this is a private gathering.”

  The sun had long ago set, the night had drawn in. They sat around the fireplace, their faces lit by the glow.

  “It’ll be taken apart, and taken away,” said Chief Inspector Lacoste.

  “To be reassembled somewhere else?” Monsieur Béliveau asked.

  “Maybe,” said Gamache. “But with the plans gone, well, they’ll have quite a time of it. And unfortunately the firing mechanism seems to be missing again.”

  Beauvoir and Lacoste looked at him, then looked away.

  “The firing mechanism’s missing?” asked Brian. “Where’d it go?”

  “I have no idea,” said Armand with a smile.

  “Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme,” said Myrna. “They aren’t CSIS?”

  “I don’t know who they are,” said Lacoste.

  “Well, I’m sure they won’t get far,” said Clara.

  “What do you mean?” asked Lacoste.

  “Well, you’re going after them, aren’t you?”

  “For what?”

  Clara looked dumbfounded. “Well, for threatening to kill the professor and Armand and Jean-Guy, for starters.”

  “Delorme pulled a gun on us, yes,” said Armand. “But stood down. No one was hurt. Beyond that they did nothing wrong.”

  “Isn’t that enough?” asked Gabri.

  “We have to choose our battles,” said Beauvoir. “And if there’s a trial, we’d have to explain about Bull and the plans—”

  “And why you burned them,” said Gamache. He knew why Beauvoir had dropped them in the fire. It was a father’s instinct. Jean-Guy would rather die than have his child born into a world that contained Gerald Bull’s monstrosity.

  “It’s a dangerous game you’re playing, letting them go,” said Professor Rosenblatt.

  “It’s a dangerous world,” said Armand. “Even nine-year-old boys know that.”

  “But, but—” Clara sputtered.

  “But they killed Antoinette,” said Brian. “And Laurent. They must have. They all but admitted it by threatening to kill you too, for those goddamned plans.”

  He waved toward the fireplace, where the plans were no longer even ash. Project Babylon had disappeared into the atmosphere.

  “But how did Mary Fraser and Delorme know Laurent had found the gun?” Gabri asked. “They weren’t here. Someone must’ve told them.”

  “That’s true,” said Brian. “They were in Ottawa. Someone here must’ve called and told them about Laurent. That must be why it was a day between when Laurent found the gun and when he was killed. They had to drive down and find the boy.”

  “Yes, that was our thinking,” said Lacoste.

  “Was?” asked Reine-Marie.

  “The murders got all complicated by the gun itself,” said Lacoste. “And when Antoinette was killed and we found out about her uncle’s connection to Gerald Bull and Project Babylon, the case took on a whole other aspect. But I was trained that, at its heart, murder is always human and often simple.”

  She looked at Gamache, who nodded acknowledgment.

  “While you were reading the play this afternoon, I was going back over the case. It started here, as you said, when Laurent came running in.”

  She pointed to the door, and they saw again the boy, covered in dirt and pieces of bark and lichen. He was shouting about his find, opening his skinny arms wide, straining to capture the enormity of his find.

  A huge gun. In the woods. With a monster on it.

  Had it been any other child, had it been an adult, they might have listened.

  But it was Laurent Lepage. A boy who slew dragons and rode Pegasus, and fought back invading armies to protect the village.

  And did it again the next day. A new day, a new adventure, a new story of great danger and ever greater heroics.

  It had been funny, when he was six. By seven it was tiresome. By eight it was annoying. By nine it was too much. But it was in his nature, as his father said, and Laurent would not be stopped.

  “No one believed him,” said Lacoste. “Or so it seemed. But there was one person here that afternoon who did believe him. Who knew it could be true. He followed him the next day, knowing Laurent would probably return to the gun, which he did. Partly to see the thing again, but also because in his excitement Laurent had left one of his father’s cassette tapes behind. This person killed Laurent and took his body to the side of the road, making it look like an accident.”

  Once again, she looked over at Gamache.

  “We didn’t believe the boy,” she said. “We thought his death was an accident. We were wrong.”

  “I didn’t believe him either. His death didn’t seem like an accident, but finally it was something human and simple that confirmed it. Something you two asked about.” He looked at Gabri and Olivier, listening intently.

  “His stick,” said Olivier.

  “Oui. Whoever killed the boy didn’t know him well. Didn’t realize he carried that stick with him everywhere. It would be by his body.”

  Even more than “death,” even more than “murder,” the word “body” shook Armand. He paused to regain his composure.

  “But the stick wasn’t with him,” said Reine-Marie, jumping in to help her husband.

  “So who killed Antoinette?” asked Brian. “Was it the same person?”

  “Well, that brings us to Project Babylon,” said Lacoste.

  “Whoever killed Antoinette obviously knew that her uncle was Guillaume Couture,” said Jean-Guy Beauvoir, taking up the story. “And knew he worked with Gerald Bull. He might not have known Dr. Couture was the architect of Project Babylon, but probably suspected. It had long been rumored that Gerald Bull was more salesman than scientist. When no plans were found in his Brussels apartment or anywhere associated with Dr. Bull, most intelligence organizations and arms dealers gave up. They figured Project Babylon was a bust and its creator was both delusional and dead. But there were some people who suspected that Gerald Bull was telling the truth. Maybe even more than suspected. Maybe they knew because they were in the area when it was being built. And so when Laurent found the gun, this person believed him. And knew if the plans for Project Babylon were anywhere, they’d be in Guillaume Couture’s old home.”

  As Beauvoir spoke, first Myrna, then Reine-Marie and finally the rest began to glance over to the only one who fit the description. Who was in Three Pines when the massive weapon was being constructed. And who was in the bistro when, thirty years later, Laurent found it.

  Monsieur Béliveau.

  The grocer sat perfectly contained, apparently oblivious to the looks, to the facts that were beginning to pile up around him.

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