All the Devils Are Here(107)

“I’ll go with you,” said Séverine Arbour. “I can help.”

“Non,” said Armand. “Jean-Guy, can you go with Reine-Marie?”

“Absolument.”

“You come with me,” he said to Arbour. “I think we can rattle them a bit more.”

“How?” she asked.

“By going to the H?tel Lutetia.”

“A punch in the face?” asked Jean-Guy.

“Let’s start with a tap on the shoulder,” said Gamache, with a smile. “Sometimes more frightening. Besides”—he turned to Madame Arbour—“I need more information from you about the Patagonia and Luxembourg projects before I see Claude Dussault.”

“You’re still going to meet him?” asked Reine-Marie.

“Unless something changes, yes. If Claude wants to talk, I want to listen.”

“What if he wants to do more than talk?” she asked, trying to keep her tone casual. But the stress was obvious.

“Then he wouldn’t have chosen such a public place,” said Armand. “A side street. A private home. I’d be worried. But Place de la Concorde? It’s far too public to do anything other than stroll and talk.” He held her eyes. “Believe me.”

Reine-Marie nodded. She believed him. She trusted him. It was Claude Dussault she didn’t trust.

“Jean-Guy?” she said, turning to her son-in-law.

“I agree. It’s safe. I think Dussault wants to see how much we know without revealing his own position. They’re worried.”

Armand handed Reine-Marie the scrap of paper from Stephen’s agenda after first taking a photo of it.

“You might look up those dates, too. See if anything significant happened.” He got to his feet. “We need to go up.”

“So soon?” asked Jean-Guy.





CHAPTER 34




Monsieur Beauvoir?” asked the concierge, crossing the lobby of the grand hotel.

“Oui?”

Up from that crypt, Jean-Guy was breathing in the sweet scent of the fresh flowers in the lobby and almost tearing up at the sight of the fading daylight beyond the doors of the George V.

“A man dropped this off for you.”

She handed him an envelope. Beauvoir opened it. On the slip of paper was written one word.

Neodymium.

And below that the letters XL.

He showed it to the others. “What does this mean?”

They crowded around.

“Neodymium is a rare earth element,” said Séverine Arbour.

“Extra large?” asked Daniel. “Oh, right, it’s—”

But a look from his father stopped him.

The message was from Xavier Loiselle. He’d managed to get into Carole Gossette’s files and find the water sample results.

“So he is on our side,” said Reine-Marie.

Though it looked like it, Armand wasn’t totally convinced. He’d used agents to infiltrate organizations, and part of the technique of a spy was to hand over legitimate information as proof they could be trusted.

What he did think was that this information, at least, was correct.

GHS Engineering had discovered neodymium in the abandoned mine.

“What’s it used for?” he asked Madame Arbour.

“Magnets.”

“Magnets?” repeated Jean-Guy. “Fridge magnets?”

The engineer stared at him.

“Yes,” said Madame Arbour. “People are being murdered in an epic battle for control of the fridge magnet empire. Look, magnets are used in all sorts of things, not just to stick hockey logos on your fridge.”

“A simple ‘no’ …,” said Beauvoir.

Though it was true. He had several Montréal Canadiens up there.

“What else are they used for?” he asked.

“Computers, I think,” she said. “But there must be a lot of other things. I’m no expert.”

“We need to find out more about this neodymium,” said Armand.

“Shouldn’t be hard.” Séverine pulled out her phone.

“Non,” he said. “We need someplace more private.”

“Then I can go to the archives.”

Jean-Guy glanced at her. This was the second time she’d suggested that.

Why was she so determined to go there, and why was Gamache so determined she should not?

He thought he knew why.

If Madame Arbour was an infiltrator, she must not be there when they found out which board member sold their spot to Stephen.

They were close. So close. They couldn’t take any chances.

“No,” Gamache said to Madame Arbour. “I need you with me at the Lutetia, if you don’t mind.”

There was, as always, courtesy in his words, but their meaning was clear.

Allida Lenoir hung up the phone and turned to her wife. “Back to the mines.”

Far from a derogatory way to describe her work, the head archivist considered the miles and miles of files a gold mine. Filled with treasures, with adventure. The unknown waiting to be unearthed.

“I’m coming with you,” said Judith de la Granger.

As the Chief Librarian for France, Judith de la Granger knew, better than most, that the documents contained in the glorious old buildings were both fascinating and dangerous.