All the Devils Are Here(108)

And this night had the makings of both.

Ten minutes later they were greeting Reine-Marie at the main gate.

“Hope you don’t mind my bringing Judith along,” said Madame Lenoir.

“God, no,” said Reine-Marie.

The Chief Librarian was legendary in Reine-Marie’s universe.

From an old aristocratic family, Judith de la Granger’s ancestors had owned, almost a millennium ago, the original chateau where the archives and museum now stood.

Slight, fine-boned, she radiated a fierce energy and intelligence. A lioness stuffed into a gerbil’s body.

“I hope you don’t mind my bringing my son-in-law,” said Reine-Marie, introducing Jean-Guy.

Reine-Marie explained that while he now worked in private industry in Paris, Jean-Guy had been a senior officer in homicide in the S?reté du Québec.

As they made their way to the reading room, Reine-Marie followed Jean-Guy’s eyes out the window and saw what he was staring at.

A dark spot against the sunset. Like an astigmatism in the eye.

A drone.

The Banque Privée des Affaires, for security reasons since the recent terrorist attacks, did not encourage weekend visitors. And the guard was more than a little suspicious of a junior executive who urgently needed to get in at seven on a Sunday evening.

Even when, especially when, Daniel produced the JSPS card.

The guard looked at the card, then made a call.

“Can you come to the front desk please, patron. There’s someone here who has an ID in the name of Daniel Gamache. But he just gave me a card with someone else’s name. Yes, it is suspicious.”

“No—” Daniel began, then stopped when the guard put his hand up for him to be quiet.

A door opened and the supervisor came out. Not saying a word, he studied Daniel, then turned his attention to the card on the counter in front of the guard.

Picking it up, he looked at Daniel more closely, then, to the guard’s amazement, said, “Come with me.”

Séverine Arbour went over to the statue of Gustave Eiffel at the entrance to the Lutetia and was admiring this hero of France. A giant among engineers and innovators.

A man of vision, of courage, and of brute ambition.

While she studied the face of the great engineer, Gamache studied the faces of the hotel guests, to see if he recognized any from the annual reports. Reine-Marie had been right, of course. This was a rat’s nest.

At least one, probably more, of the people under that roof had been involved in the murder of Alexander Francis Plessner and the attack on Stephen.

They’d threatened, hounded, pursued, chased his family from their homes. All in an effort to make them go away.

And he wanted them to know it had not worked.

Far from going away, he’d come to them. For them.

“Madame Arbour?” he said, and together they walked down the long corridor, their footsteps echoing off the marble surfaces.

At bar Joséphine, they found a table against the wall and ordered drinks.

While Madame Arbour took a long sip of her red wine, Armand simply swirled his scotch, then put it back on the table.

“Recognize anyone?” he asked.

She looked around at the other patrons. Well-heeled, well-dressed. Mostly white, mostly French. Mostly older. They looked like them.

“No.”

But Gamache did. Over there, in a quiet corner, was the former head of the UN Security Council. She now sat on the GHS Engineering board. Joining her was another member of that board.

And there in the center of the room, holding court, was the head of a media conglomerate who also sat on the GHS board.

Loud and laughing, corpulent and confident, the man commanded attention.

Gamache continued to study the room. He’d become, through practice and necessity, very good at faces. He recognized most of the members of the board from news reports over the years. And their photographs in the annual report.

He suspected some, if not most, would have no idea that anything untoward was going on. They’d been flown to Paris on private jets, put up in a luxury hotel, were being pampered in advance of an annual rubber-stamp board meeting.

But some would know what was really happening. The question was, which ones? And which one had Stephen approached with a sackful of money?

As he looked around, not trying to conceal his interest, a few caught his eye and paused. Returning the stare of the distinguished stranger before turning away.

Yes, some in that room definitely knew what was going on.

He just wished he was one of them.

“I’ve never been to this hotel,” Séverine Arbour was saying. “I’d have expected it to feel different. Not so inviting.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, isn’t this where the Nazi interrogations happened?” She fixed him with a hard gaze. “Seems appropriate.”

He raised his brows. “You think you’re here for an interrogation?”

“Aren’t I? Not torture, you’re far too civilized for that. But you are trying to work out whose side I’m on, isn’t that right?”

Armand smiled and tilted his head slightly.

She was smart. Clever. He’d have to be even more careful than he’d thought.

“My job has made me suspicious,” he admitted. “But it’s also taught me not to prejudge. I am curious that by your own admission you began to suspect something months ago, but hadn’t yet found the results of the water test. Something this Xavier Loiselle found in minutes.”