The Nature of the Beast
Page 148“Over there,” she pointed. “By the boys.”
“The boys,” the soldiers of the Great War, who lived forever in the stained-glass window. They marched through mud and chaos. This was no civilian monument to the glories of war. They were young and they were far from home and they were afraid.
But one young man had turned so that he was looking directly at the congregation. And on his face, alongside the terror, was something else.
Forgiveness.
Beneath the window were written the names of the dead from Three Pines. The boys who would never return to the old railway station, to the parents who waited.
And under their names the words “They Were Our Sons.”
Ruth had sat in the light pouring through their bodies. And wept.
And when she left? Someone came out of the shadows.
Gamache dropped to his knees and pushed the pew to one side. Beauvoir joined him and together they started prying up the wide wooden floorboards.
And there, in a long metal tube, they found what they were looking for. The plans for Armageddon hidden in the chapel of St. Thomas. The doubter.
Gamache looked at his watch. It was six o’clock.
“Good evening, I’m Susan Bonner and this is the World at Six.”
Adam Cohen could barely hear the words for the pounding in his ears.
“Our top story tonight, an astonishing find in Québec’s Eastern Townships.”
He checked his device. All electronics were blocked inside the penitentiary, but there was a code the guards used and Cohen had programmed it in. His device showed five bars. And no messages.
Closing his eyes for just a moment, Adam Cohen gathered himself and then got out of the car and walked, resolutely, toward the small door in the thick wall.
* * *
“Our top story tonight, an astonishing find in Québec’s Eastern Townships.”
“Merde,” said Isabelle Lacoste. The broadcast streamed over her laptop in the Incident Room.
It was six o’clock, and it was worse than they thought. The CBC did not yet know the exact location of Gerald Bull’s Supergun, but they’d narrowed it down to this region.
The story unfolded. One journalist had a report on Gerald Bull’s unlikely life and mysterious death. Another told the story of Project Babylon, and Saddam Hussein, and the coming together of two madmen.
* * *
“I heard you coming,” said Fleming in his soft, flawed voice. He studied the young man in front of him. “You used to be a guard here, didn’t you?”
But Adam Cohen heeded Gamache’s warning, not to tell Fleming anything. Not to engage the man.
“Does he need a change of clothes?” one of the five guards who’d accompanied Cohen asked.
“No,” said Cohen. “We won’t be gone for long. He’ll be back by midnight.”
“Before I turn into a pumpkin?” asked Fleming as they put the cuffs and restraints on him. “Or something.”
“You sure you want to do this?” asked another guard. The one who’d been Cohen’s friend when he’d worked at the SHU. The one Adam Cohen had gone to with the authorization. Because he knew this man would trust him.
And he had. He’d accepted without question the letter from the Sûreté authorizing Cohen to take Fleming.
Fleming was watching this exchange, his reptile eyes sliding from one man to the other, sensing, perhaps, a betrayal in progress.
* * *
“Where’re you going?” he called after Gamache, who’d missed the turn and was running, plans in hand, toward the bistro.
“We have to make sure these are the plans.” Gamache held them up but didn’t stop running.
“They say Project Babylon, patron. What else could they be?”
“Highwater, that’s what. More misdirection.”
Beauvoir looked at the old railway station behind him, then at Gamache in front of him.
“Shit,” said Jean-Guy, and raced to catch up with Gamache.
In the bistro, Armand hurried over to Professor Rosenblatt, who’d moved to the sofa by the fire.
“You found them?” the elderly scientist said, standing up.
“We hope so.”
Gamache opened the tube and tipped the scroll out. He sat down and unrolled it onto the blanket box. Rosenblatt joined him, bending over the paper.