All the Devils Are Here(127)

But the problem wasn’t the design. The catastrophe would be caused by the material. A near-miraculous rare earth element that promised to make everything more efficient.

Safer.

If one or more of those reactors goes … ?

“We have to stop it,” said Allida.

“We have to find out what it is,” said Armand. “We need proof.”

“Can’t we just tell them it’s the neodymium?” demanded Pinot.

“Would you shut down power plants, ground planes, stop elevators in office buildings internationally based on us saying it’s neodymium?” asked Gamache. “Of course not. We need to know exactly what it is they’ve built into those things.”

“If Horowitz and Plessner had the proof, why didn’t they sound an alarm?” asked Judith. “Go to the authorities?”

“I think they suspected, but it took years and hundreds of millions of dollars to get the evidence,” said Gamache. “And it would have to be absolute, undeniable. Something the board members and the authorities, many of whom are in the pocket of GHS, couldn’t ignore.”

Out in the street they could hear sounds. Paris was stirring. The start of another working week. He checked his watch. It was 4:37 in the morning. Less than three hours now.

Gamache turned to Séverine Arbour. “I think you—”

But she wasn’t there. While they’d been focused on the computer, she’d disappeared into the shadows.

“Damn,” he said, standing up so quickly his chair fell over. “We have to find her.”

“Why?” asked Madame de la Granger. “You think she knows something?”

“She’s working with Claude Dussault,” said Gamache. “She’s been passing him information all day.”

“What?” demanded Judith, her face opening in horror.

“We’ll find her,” said Allida. “I know every inch of this building.”

“She can’t have gone far,” Gamache called after her. “I locked the door when we came in.”

Pinot took his arm and pulled him around. “You said Claude Dussault just now. Did you mean the head of the Paris police? That Dussault?”

“Oui.”

“Are you saying the head of the whole fucking police force is behind this?”

“The Prefect, yes. Do you know him?”

“Not well. I’ve met him socially, at the opera and fundraisers. We’ve done stories on him and his reorganization of the Préfecture after his predecessor died. He seems a good man, a decent man. Why would he be involved in this?”

“Money. Power,” said Gamache, staring at Pinot. “You understand those.”

Pinot’s shrewd face examined Gamache. “If you do find that evidence, what’ll you do with it?”

“You know.”

“You’ll hand it over to them, won’t you?”

“To save my son. Yes.”

“You know I can’t let you do that.”

Armand felt the weight of the gun in his pocket. “And you know you can’t stop me.”

“They’ll kill him anyway, Armand. And not just him. You. Me. Them.” Alain Pinot nodded toward the Chief Librarian, on her hands and knees now, looking under the tables, and the Chief Archivist appearing from, and disappearing into, dark aisles of books and maps and documents.

“And anyone else who’s touched this case,” said Armand. “Including my wife, daughter, son-in-law.”

“And the ‘accidents’ will continue.”

“Yes.”

“Damn,” came Allida’s voice from out of the darkness, followed milliseconds later by a thud, as Judith de la Granger went to stand up and knocked her head on the bottom of a table.

“What?” she called.

“The door connecting the archives to the museum is open. She must’ve gone out that way. She’s in the museum. But there’re guards there and the doors onto the quadrangle are locked. She still can’t leave.”

“But there are phones,” said Gamache. “She can call Dussault and tell him what we know.”

“Fuck,” said Madame de la Granger.

“I’ve never heard you swear before,” said Madame Lenoir. “You always said it was the refuge of a second-class mind.”

“I was wrong,” said Madame de la Granger.

“We have to get out of here,” said Pinot.

“Not yet,” said Gamache. “We have to find whatever proof Stephen and Plessner had.”

“Wait a minute,” said Judith, turning to Gamache. “You think it’s here? In the archives? We’re not just looking up references, you think the proof itself is hidden here.”

“Where would you hide a book?” Gamache asked her.

“In a library.”

“Where would you hide a document?” he asked.

“Here,” said Judith. “With other documents.”

“But this isn’t the only archive collection,” said Allida. “There’re different archives in buildings all over France. Why would you think Monsieur Horowitz would hide the proof here?”

“Because he’d want us to be able to find it, and this building is around the corner from our home. Reine-Marie knows it well. If he put it in any of the archives, it’d be this one.”