A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #12)(9)

But still, he wasn’t worried.

He got up, and turning his back on the door, he folded his arms across his broad chest and looked out the floor-to-ceiling window at the playing field below, covered in a layer of undisturbed snow.

*

Gamache waited.

He heard the agents beginning to shuffle and grow restless behind him. He could almost see them shooting glances at each other and frowning.

But still he waited, clasping his large hands behind his back. No need to knock again. The man inside had heard and now was playing a game. But it was a game of solitaire.

Gamache was declining to play. Instead, he used the time to think about the best way to implement his plans.

Serge Leduc was not an issue. He was not even an obstacle. He was, in fact, part of the plan.

*

Leduc stared out the window and waited for the next knock. A sharper rap. An impatient little tattoo on his door. But none came.

Had Gamache left?

Sylvain Francoeur had always declared that Chief Inspector Gamache was a weak man who hid it well behind a thin fa?ade often mistaken for wisdom.

“His one real talent is fooling others into believing that he has talent,” the head of the S?reté had proclaimed more than once. “Armand Gamache, filled with integrity and courage. Bullshit. You know why he hates me? Because I know him for what he is.”

By this time, Francoeur was usually a few Scotches in and had become voluble and more than usually aggressive. Most subordinates knew enough to excuse themselves and get the hell out after the third drink. But Serge Leduc stayed, excited by this game of chicken and because he had nowhere else to go.

Francoeur would lean across his desk, looking past the bottle of Ballantine’s, to whoever was left. His face suffused with blood and rage.

“He’s a coward. Weak, weak, weak. He hires the goddamned dregs, you know. The agents no one else wants. The ones better men have thrown out. Gamache picks up garbage. And you know why?”

Leduc knew why. He’d heard this story before. But just because the familiar words came out in a miasma of Scotch and malice didn’t make them untrue.

“Because he doesn’t like competition. He surrounds himself with sycophants and losers to make himself look better. He hates guns. Afraid of them. Fucking coward. Fooled a lot of people, but not me.”

Francoeur would shake his head and his hand would creep to his own handgun in the holster on his belt. The gun that Armand Gamache would one day use to kill him.

“This isn’t a ‘police gentle,’” Francoeur liked to say at convocation, when the students graduated from cadets to agents, streaming into the S?reté like water through a cracked hull. “It’s not a ‘police kindness.’ It’s a police force. It’s called that for a reason. We use force. We are a force. And one to be reckoned with.”

That always brought wild applause from the students and slight unease from the families gathered in the auditorium.

Chief Superintendent Francoeur didn’t care. His words weren’t for the parents and grandparents.

During the term, Francoeur would visit the academy once a month, staying overnight in the lavish quarters reserved for him. After dinner he’d invite a select few to join him for drinks in the large living room overlooking the vast playing field. He’d regale the wide-eyed cadets with harrowing tales of great danger, of investigations wildly perilous, expertly leavened by the odd story of ridiculous criminals and silly mistakes.

And then, when Francoeur judged the time was right, he’d insinuate the real message into his stories. That the S?reté du Québec wasn’t there to be on guard for the population, but to be on guard against them. The citizens were the enemy.

The only ones the recruits could really trust were their confrères in the S?reté. And even then, they had to be careful. There were some intent on weakening the force from within.

Serge Leduc would watch the unlined faces and wide eyes, and over the course of the months, the years, he’d see them change. And he would marvel at the skill of the Chief Superintendent, who could so easily create such little monsters.

Chief Superintendent Francoeur was gone now but his legacy remained, in flesh and blood and in glass and steel. In the cold hard surfaces and sharp edges of the academy and the agents he’d designed.

The new academy itself appeared simple, classic even. It was placed on land appropriated from the community of Saint-Alphonse, the S?reté’s needs judged far greater than the population’s.

It was designed as a quadrangle, with a playing field in the middle, enclosed by gleaming buildings on all four sides. The only way in was through a single gate.

It gave the appearance of both transparency and strength. But in actuality, it was a fortress. A fiefdom.

Serge Leduc stared out at the quadrangle. This was, he now suspected, his last day in that office. This was his final view of those fields.

The knock on the door had confirmed that.

But he would not leave meekly. If the new commander thought he could walk in there and take over his territory without a fight, then he wasn’t simply weak, he was stupid. And stupid people got what they deserved.

Adjusting the holster on his belt and putting on his suit jacket, Leduc walked to his door and opened it. And came face-to-face with Armand Gamache. Though Leduc had to tilt his head back a little.

“May I help you?”