All the Devils Are Here(111)

“The supply could not be guaranteed,” said Madame Arbour. “But a European company owning a rare earth mine in South America would be able to guarantee delivery.”

“You mentioned magnets. Is that neodymium’s main use?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds harmless.”

“You’re thinking of a normal magnet. But look at this.”

She hit play, and Gamache watched as a piece of metal shot through a cantaloupe and slammed into a metal sheet.

“Here’s another one.”

It showed a grown man—he looked like a weight lifter—trying to separate two steel rods stuck together.

“Can you go back to the other video?” After rewatching it, he said, “A neodymium magnet did that?”

“Yes, and a small one.”

“Can it be used as a weapon?” It sure looked like that shard would pass through a human body.

“It doesn’t say. In an earlier search I didn’t find any reference to rare earth minerals as weapons, but they might’ve found a new use. Listen to this,” Séverine read, “a neodymium magnet can lift a thousand times its own weight.”

“But it also says here,” Gamache was reading off her phone, “that there’s a problem with neodymium.”

“More like a caveat. When heated or frozen, it breaks down. And if under stress, it can shatter.”

“So it’s unstable?”

“Not if it’s used properly.”

“And what would those uses be?” asked Gamache.

She scrolled down. “Microphones, loudspeakers, computer hard drives. All the things we already know.”

“You mentioned cutting-edge telecommunications earlier. That’s exactly the sort of investment Stephen would notice.”

Gamache leaned back in the comfortable chair, staring at the small screen. It didn’t make sense. Nothing they’d discovered was, as far as he could tell, unethical, never mind illegal.

So why the secrecy? What were they hiding?

From what they could tell, GHS was mining the rare earth element, then shipping the raw ore to refineries. And then?

He took off his glasses and narrowed his eyes. “Can you go back to that second video?”

She did, and this time played it all the way through. The strongman finally managed to separate the bars, after a struggle that clearly left him embarrassed.

“The nickels,” Gamache said.

“Pardon?” asked Madame Arbour.

His irises were moving, as though he was watching a film no one else could see.

Then he looked at his watch.

Eight ten. Almost time to make his way to Place de la Concorde and his meeting with Claude Dussault. He had one stop to make first.

But what to do with Séverine Arbour?

Take her with him, or leave her here in the Lutetia?

If she came with him and she turned out to be a spy planted in their midst, he’d be putting them all at risk. But if she wasn’t a spy and he left her in the bar, something awful might happen to her.

There was, Chief Inspector Gamache knew as he stood up, no decision to be made.

“Come with me, please.”

More than one set of eyes watched them leave bar Joséphine.





CHAPTER 35




Nothing,” said Reine-Marie, staring at the screen as though accusing it of willfully withholding information.

While waiting for Mrs. McGillicuddy’s reply about Stephen and Pinot, she’d gone back over Agence France-Presse stories on the dates Stephen had jotted down.

She was getting frustrated. This was, after all, her forte. Tracking down information. Finding things hidden in full view but overlooked.

She was, she knew, overlooking something. It was the reflection in the screen she was annoyed at. Not the screen itself.

Then she had an idea. “Suppose the dates are when the thing actually happened?”

“Yes,” said Jean-Guy. “Isn’t that what we’re looking up?”

“No, we’re looking up the dates the Agence France-Presse stories ran.”

“Wouldn’t they be the same thing?”

“Not necessarily,” said Reine-Marie. “Sometimes it takes a while for an event to be discovered, or to be reported on. Especially an event in an isolated region like, say, Patagonia. We need to check stories on either side of the dates.”

A few minutes later she called Jean-Guy over to her terminal.

“Look at this. An Agence France-Presse reporter disappeared in Patagonia four years ago. It happened on the first date Stephen’s written down, but the story didn’t run until three days later. That’s why we didn’t find it the first time.”

Overhearing this, Judith and Allida went to look.

“Anik Guardiola. Twenty-four. Stringer for AFP,” Judith read. “Disappeared in the mountains of Patagonia while on a hiking trip.”

“Alone?” asked Jean-Guy.

“Apparently.”

“Who hikes in those mountains alone? Did they find her?” he asked.

“Just a moment,” said Reine-Marie as she put the young woman’s name in the search engine.

“Agence France-Presse sent representatives to the area,” she said, leaning into her screen and reading. “And pressured the local government.”