All the Devils Are Here(87)

Loiselle smiled. “You’re catching on.”

“You’re following me,” said Beauvoir. “Is someone following Gamache?”

“I think so. But I don’t know who, and I don’t know what their orders are.”

“You mean to just follow, or to do harm?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck,” said Beauvoir. He stared at Loiselle. He couldn’t hold the gun on the man and text Gamache at the same time.

Loiselle understood what he was thinking, and said, “I won’t move.”

Getting as far from Loiselle as he could in the tight office, Jean-Guy put the gun down and took out his phone. Keeping his eyes on Loiselle, he sent off the quick text, then picked the gun back up.

“What’s in Luxembourg? What’s so important about that project?”

“I have no idea, but I can try to find out.”

“Is Séverine Arbour involved?”

“Madame Arbour? In your department at GHS? Not that I know.”

“Is Carole Gossette?”

“I think so. I heard them talking about her. But I don’t know for sure.”

Jean-Guy stared at the man across from him. He had a decision to make that would affect the rest of his life, and the lives of those he loved.

Taking a deep breath, he gave the gun back to Loiselle.





CHAPTER 29




Gamache read the text from Jean-Guy. Then, replacing his phone in his pocket, he scanned the road.

Pedestrians walked by, some on their way from a service at the nearby Notre-Dame-des-Blancs-Manteaux. None looked in his direction.

“Monsieur Gamache?”

He turned just as the front gate to the archives building was unlocked. “Madame Lenoir. Merci.”

She shepherded him past security and down what looked like a dark alley, to the less-than-grand entrance to the archives.

The Musée des archives nationales, next door, was spectacular. In an old chateau, it was approached through a quadrangle of manicured lawn and garden.

But the archives themselves looked like they were housed in a bunker. In Moscow. In the fifties.

Reine-Marie greeted him.

“What is it?” he asked, seeing her face.

“Come with me.”

He followed her to a terminal in the reading room.

This building in the Paris archives held almost one hundred kilometers of documents, dating from 600 A.D. to 1958. But it all came down to one tiny entry.

One name.

Whatever Armand had expected to see, it wasn’t that.

“Oh, Daniel,” he whispered.

Jean-Guy looked out the window and tried to imagine he was not in a jam-packed elevator. Pushed up against the glass.

He shut his eyes and imagined himself sitting with Annie and Honoré in the bistro in Three Pines. Listening to friends and neighbors talking and laughing. The scent of wood smoke and coffee and sweet pine in the air.

He inhaled. But instead of pine, or coffee, or even the oddly comforting scent of mud, he smelled Sauvage by Dior. And felt elbows digging into him.

There was no escaping the fact he was in a crowded elevator, with Paris at his feet. Literally.

The elevator climbed higher and higher, and the space grew tighter and tighter. The scent grew more and more suffocating.

And then the elevator stopped, and he was expelled onto the very highest platform of the Tour Eiffel.

The wind was bracing. Going to the edge, he breathed in the fresh air.

“Why’re we here?” Séverine Arbour demanded.

Beauvoir was looking around, and then, spotting what he was looking for, he waved the man over.

“Xavier Loiselle, this is Séverine Arbour.”

“We’ve met,” said Loiselle, putting out his large hand.

Madame Arbour stared at it, then at Beauvoir.

“He’s a security guard at GHS. I’ve seen him when I’ve signed in. What’s this about? When you came to my house, you said something about the Luxembourg project. I thought we were going into the office, not coming here.”

She looked around.

Séverine Arbour was not afraid of heights, which was just as well. She was standing as high as a person could get in France without wings.

*

Le Comptoir was hopping when Reine-Marie and Armand pushed their way inside.

When they caught the owner’s eye, a spot was made for them at a small table at the back.

Armand and Reine-Marie knew this bistro in the Odéon well. Knew the patron. Knew the patrons. And would spot any strangers trying to overhear their conversation.

After they ordered two salade Ni?oise, Armand told her about Jean-Guy’s brief text.

UR followed.

It was not a huge surprise. He’d assumed. What perplexed him was how skilled his shadow was, and how ham-handed Jean-Guy’s had proved.

Even if he couldn’t spot the tail, Gamache knew they were almost certainly being watched and overheard. Listening devices were so sophisticated it was almost impossible to get far enough away to prevent someone from monitoring their conversation. But they could obscure it by being surrounded by other, louder conversations.

Once they reached Le Comptoir and could finally talk, all Reine-Marie needed to say was one word.

“Daniel.”

“They planted his name,” said Armand.