All the Devils Are Here(124)

“Huh?”

If Alain Pinot didn’t much like the taxi ride, he was about to meet something far worse.

Half an hour later they popped up at the station de métro H?tel de Ville stop. Gamache hurried through the dark, deserted streets of the Marais. Pinot trudging along behind.

“I thought we were going to AFP,” he said. For the tenth time. “This isn’t the way.”

“Just follow me.”

The roundabout journey had eaten precious time Armand couldn’t really spare, but he needed to throw off anyone tracking his movements on his phone, which wouldn’t work in the depths of the métro.

They’d know where he was now that they’d surfaced, but it would take a few minutes to catch up. Confusion was his friend. As long as he was not the one confused.

“This’s the Archives nationales,” said Pinot, looking up at the gates. “What’re we doing here?”

Armand asked the guard to ring Madame Lenoir, then turned to Pinot. “We’re getting help to look up those dates in your morgue and figure out what Stephen and Monsieur Plessner knew.”

Allida Lenoir hurried over and vouched for them.

“We haven’t found out anything more,” she said as she led them back to the reading room.

“Madame Arbour?” asked Gamache.

“Is still with us.”

“Good.”

She looked behind her at the large man lumbering to keep up. “You’re Alain Pinot, aren’t you? You run Agence France-Presse.”

“I own it,” he wheezed. “There’s some question as to whether I actually run it.” He stopped at the entrance to the reading room. “My God, is it …”

“Judith de la—”

“Granger,” he said, going forward, his arms out. “I haven’t seen you in years. Decades.” He kissed her on both cheeks, smiling broadly. “What’re you doing here?”

She explained, and he nodded approval, turning to Gamache. “Good. With Judith on board, we might have a chance. Best researcher in the business.”

While Allida and Judith got him organized at a terminal, Gamache waved Séverine Arbour over.

“Do you mind if I see your phone?”

Perplexed but not alarmed, she handed it over.

Alain Pinot talked as he logged in to the AFP’s own archives. “As you know, we store stories that’ve already run in the newspaper’s morgue. What you might not know is it’s where we also archive stories that were filed and never ran, as well as research and reporters’ notes.”

“My phone, please,” Madame Arbour said, holding out her hand. But instead of giving it back, he slipped it into his pocket.

She had, Gamache knew, been feeding Claude Dussault information all day. It would stop now.

All the way there on the métro, while Pinot had muttered expletives, he’d gone around and around what Dussault had said. And done.

What those coins in the Fontaine des Mers could possibly mean.

When he’d embraced Daniel, not the first but subsequent times, he’d slipped his hand into Daniel’s pockets. To get the magnetized coins away from his son.

But the nickels weren’t there.

He’d tried again, to be sure, when he’d taken the JSPS card. Still, he came away empty-handed.

And then, finally, on the Bridge of Hearts, he’d put it together. What Claude Dussault had thrown into the fountain.

Dussault had obviously found the coins on Daniel, but instead of handing them over, he’d kept them, then thrown them into the fountain.

That’s why he wanted to meet there. He needed to get rid of the nickels without being seen. Someplace where he could later retrieve them.

The coins were part of the proof that neodymium was involved.

What was the Prefect up to? Was he double-crossing his employers? Planning to blackmail them by keeping some of the proof himself?

Were the coins insurance, in case GHS turned on him?

Gamache was beginning to suspect that everything Dussault had said that evening, everything he’d done, had been calculated. But what was the sum? What did it add up to?

Armand knew if he came up with the wrong answer, it would be catastrophic.

But one thing he did know. Claude Dussault was the most cunning and therefore the most dangerous person in the picture.

By far.

Alain Pinot was typing away at the terminal. He’d also given Allida and Judith access to the AFP morgue. The three were deep into it now.

The stories and reporters’ notes from those dates were wide-ranging and global, from a plane crash in Ukraine to various road accidents to riots sparked by fears of both climate change and the new nuclear power stations coming online to help solve the problem.

There did not seem to be any common thread or theme.

“Give me my phone back,” said Séverine Arbour.

“Come with me,” Gamache said, leading her away.

When he stopped, he brought out her phone, removed the SIM card, and slipped it into his pocket.

“Why did you do that?” she asked as he handed her phone back. “This’s useless without the SIM.”

“Is it?” he asked. “What about the tracking app?”

He could have neutralized that, too, but didn’t want to alert whoever was monitoring the phone that Arbour had been discovered.