The Nature of the Beast

“Private?” he asked, sitting up.

“I’m an archivist,” she reminded him. “Like a priest, we never really retire.” She held up the sheaf of papers. “And I have the codes to the private McGill archives.”

“Bless you,” said Armand, reaching for the printouts and his glasses. “What did you find?”

“Well, Gerald Bull was considered a bit of a failure in both his own academic record and his work. He seems to have been a great big pain in the derrière. According to his personnel file at McGill, he sort of muddled along, alienating everyone who came into contact with him. He was a big personality, with big and what were considered crazy ideas. No one wanted to work with him.”

“Why didn’t they get rid of him?”

“They did eventually, though it’s couched in all sorts of diplomatic, nonactionable terms. But they kept him on for a long time in the hopes that one of his outlandish ideas might work.”

“Which, of course, it did,” said Armand. He studied the papers, then looked up at her. “But by then he was long gone. When was he born?”

Reine-Marie scanned her notes. “March 9, 1928.”

Gamache did a quick calculation. “That would put him well into his eighties now. Almost ninety.”

Reine-Marie looked at him, puzzled. “But he’s dead. You know that. Dr. Bull was killed in 1990, at the age of”—she worked it out—“sixty-two.”

“Yes,” said Armand, leaning back in his chair.

“What’re you thinking?”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s ridiculous.”

“You’re wondering if Gerald Bull is still alive?” she asked, astonished.

“I’ve spent too many years being suspicious,” he said with a smile. “Forget I said anything.” He held up his weak Scotch. “Blame it on the Lysol.”

“Armand, there is something odd in the files.”

She took a couple of the sheets from his hands and lowered her glasses from the top of her head where they rested, to her eyes. Words and sometimes whole lines had been blacked out, redacted, on the pages. Even the secret files continued to hold some secrets.

“I’m used to seeing this,” she said. “Notes and papers are sent to the archives, but are edited by security first. It’s often the personal diaries of politicians or scientists, so I wasn’t particularly surprised.”

“No,” said Armand. “Neither am I. Dr. Bull was doing research that obviously had weapons applications.”

“Right. What surprised me is this.”

Reine-Marie sifted through the pages. She’d put a pen behind her ear and her glasses had now slipped down her nose. She looked like Katharine Hepburn in Desk Set. All smart and efficient and completely unaware of how beautiful she was. Armand could watch her all day long.

Reine-Marie found what she was looking for, and handed him one of the sheets. It had been heavily blacked out.

“It’s part of an internal report on Dr. Bull’s work. It was written after his murder. Look at that.”

She pointed to one line. He put on his glasses and read it, then reread it, his brows drawing together. He sat up straight in the chair.

The censor had missed one reference to the Supergun. Not a huge omission, since Dr. Bull’s effort to create one was a kind of open secret.

“Do you think it’s a typo?” she asked.

“I hope so.”

He looked back down at the report. At the word. That should have been blacked out.

“Superguns.” Plural.

Jesus, he thought. Could there be more than one of them?

Reine-Marie pushed her glasses back up her nose and took the pen from behind her ear.

Katharine Hepburn was gone. Spencer Tracy was gone. This was no comedy. Armand and Reine-Marie looked at each other. Then Armand got up, and started pacing. Not frantically. He took long, measured, almost graceful steps, up and down the living room.

“It might mean nothing,” he said. “It might be just a typo, as you said. Almost certainly is. Let’s stick to what we know to be true.”

“Well, according to the files, we know Dr. Bull worked at McGill, doing research into long-range artillery. We know he moved to Brussels in the early eighties and was killed there on March 20, 1990.”

“Do the reports you found say who was responsible?”

“The main theory is Mossad. Gerald Bull was apparently also working on the Scud missile program for the Iraqis. But the main thrust of his work was to build a cannon for Saddam that could shoot a missile into low orbit.”