All the Devils Are Here(109)

“I wasn’t initially looking in that direction,” said Madame Arbour. “As I told you, at first I thought it was something to do with building the plant. Contractors dragging it out. It’s only recently that I realized the issue isn’t the plant, but the mine.”

Gamache nodded and opened his hands. “That explains it then.”

“Listen—” She dropped her voice. “Beauvoir came to me, remember? Practically dragged me from my home. Believe me, I’d much rather be in my living room drinking wine and watching reruns of Call My Agent. I’m an engineer, not”—she waved her hands and looked around—“whatever this is.”

“Then why did you agree to help?”

“Honestly? If I’d known it was this bad, I’d never have answered the door. I was curious. I thought GHS was involved in some scam, not”—she dropped her voice still further—“murder.”

She was certainly stressed. Afraid. Perhaps because she knew her people were also in bar Joséphine. Watching, listening. And she knew what they were capable of.

Or perhaps because she’d woken up in her nice bed, in a nice neighborhood of Paris, expecting a nice quiet Sunday, and had instead been swept up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, then down into the bowels of the George V. Swept into another world. One where people killed other people. For reasons as yet obscure.

And now, instead of letting her go with the others to the relative safety of the Archives nationales, he’d brought her here. Exposing her to the very people she’d been trying so hard to avoid.

All good reasons to be afraid. But was she afraid of them, or him?

“Well, I am used to this.” He didn’t bother to drop his voice. “It’s what I’ve done, all day, every day. For decades. You find problems and solve them, I also find problems and solve them. It’s what we both do best.”

“Yeah, well, your problems kill people.”

“So do yours, I expect.” His thoughtful eyes held hers. And then he did drop his voice. “You’re doing fine.”

She lowered her eyes to her wine and took a deep breath in. A deep breath out.

This was making less and less sense. And she wondered if she should tell him. Everything.

“Now,” he said, his voice at a normal level again. “Neodymium?”

She hesitated for a moment, clearly considering her options. If she got up and walked out, he couldn’t stop her.

But Madame Arbour was smart enough to know there were no options left. She had to see this through.

“All I have is my phone,” she said. “Should I look it up? Suppose they’ve hacked it? That’s what you’re worried about, isn’t it? And aren’t they listening now?” She looked around.

“Probably. Don’t worry about your phone. If it’s all we have, then we have to use it.”

“You want them to know, don’t you.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I see no way around it. Time they felt our warm breath on the back of their necks.”

“If we’re that close to them,” she said, bringing out her phone, “aren’t they that close to us?”

“Yes, but they always were. What’s changed is our position, not theirs. And they know it. What do you have?”

He put his reading glasses on and leaned close.

She’d entered the name of the rare earth element into a specialized site for engineers. And up popped the information.

“Nothing,” said Jean-Guy, throwing himself onto the back of the chair and staring at the screen.

They’d divided up the members of the board and were searching the databases, looking for anything that could point them to the one Stephen might have approached.

“You?” he asked the others.

From their terminals scattered down the long tables of the reading room, he heard mumbled, “Non. Nothing yet.”

And more tapping.

“I’m going to look up the dates from Stephen’s notes,” said Jean-Guy. “Maybe there’s something there.”

“What notes?” Allida Lenoir was sitting across from him and glanced at the piece of paper. “Agence France-Presse stories?”

Beauvoir smiled. “Non. AFP are the initials of the dead man. Alexander Francis Plessner.”

“Are you sure?” said the head archivist.

“Pretty sure, but if you want to try Agence France-Presse, be my guest.”

A few minutes later Madame Lenoir sighed. “Nothing. I put the dates into the wire service site and nothing unusual came up. A protest in Washington. European Union in turmoil. And the usual series of tragedies. Refugees fleeing brutal regimes and being turned back. A plane crash in the Urals. A bridge collapse in Spain. Shootings in two American cities.”

“No mention of GHS?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“No stories out of Patagonia or Luxembourg?”

“No.”

“Let me see that.”

Madame de la Granger had wandered over, and without waiting for him to give it to her, she snatched the scrap from his hand.

Bet she could catch a fly with chopsticks, thought Jean-Guy.

He got up and walked over to his mother-in-law. “Anything?”

“Not yet. No scandals to do with the board members,” said Reine-Marie. “No bankruptcies. No obvious need for money. No sudden big purchases. But I haven’t finished yet. You?”