Chapter 24

C HAPTER 24

Isabelle Lacoste boarded the connecting flight to Rome. It wouldn't get her in until ten in the evening local time. Too late to go to the Vatican. It would have to wait until the next morning.

While she sat squeezed into a middle seat for the long flight, Jean-Guy Beauvoir stood in the records department of the main house of the Dominicans in Québec. Somewhere in their records was Frère Sébastien.

"Do many monks and priests change their names now?" he asked the registrar.

"Well, choosing a new name upon taking vows isn't as common as it once was."

"The man I'm looking for is fairly young, probably early thirties."

"His name's Sébastien, you say?"

"Well, I'm not sure whether that's the name he was born with or chose."

"‘Sébastien' is one of our more common choices." He made it sound like a pair of boots, or a vacation destination. "Guys love him. He's the patron saint of soldiers and, for some reason, cyclists. Considered very manly, though he had to be rescued by a woman. Saint Irène. I think many of our Frère Sébastiens forget that part."

Now they sounded like clones.

The Dominican brought up a photo on his computer. "It's in the Louvre."

Beauvoir barely suppressed a laugh. The painting showed a man tied to a post and shot full of arrows. That was not the funny part. But the expression on his face was. Sébastien looked, in a vast understatement, slightly worried.

Jean-Guy sat down and went through the records. Not yet computerized, they were on file cards. But the job was not quite as daunting as he thought since not that many Québécois men signed up to be monks anymore, never mind Dominican monks.

Across town, Armand Gamache was at the Archdiocese of Montréal, to start his search for Dom Philippe.

"The Gilbertine?" the young priest on the front desk asked. "From the recordings?"

" Oui. One and the same," said Gamache, at his most affable. He added, " Mon père ," as a sign of respect, though he was easily old enough to be the priest's père .

Young priests, Gamache knew, were similar to medical interns and police rookies. Treated by their elders with a strange mix of gratitude and disdain. Any sign of respect that did not come from their mothers was appreciated.

Gamache looked up at the large photo above the desk. It showed a distinguished man in a red mantle over simple black clothing and clerical collar. Gamache held the familiar eyes for a beat longer than would be considered normal, then turned back to the young priest.

"Is His Grace in? I'd like just a few minutes of his time."

"Archbishop Fleury is at a luncheon right now. He should be back in an hour, but I'm afraid he's all booked up today."

Gamache had hoped not to have to do it, but had no choice. He brought out his ID.

"I'm Chief Inspector Gamache. The head of homicide for the S?reté. I won't take much of the Archbishop's time, but I do need to speak with him."

"I thought you looked familiar. I see you in the news." He glanced around before saying, "Has the Archbishop done something wrong?"

" Non , nothing. I just need some information from him about Dom Philippe, who also has done nothing wrong."

"Oh." The young man went to put Gamache's name in the book, but the Chief Inspector stopped him.

"Perhaps we can keep this between ourselves. Discretion."

"Understood. Come back at two thirty."

" Merci. "

Chief Inspector Gamache strolled out of the diocese building as though in no hurry. Then his arm shot up to hail a cab.

"S?reté headquarters." After a couple of minutes, he changed his mind. "Pull over here and wait, please."

"I'll need to circle the block. I can't stop."

"Fine."

Gamache got out of the taxi and went into the Musée des beaux-arts in Montréal. From the double-height lobby, he placed a call. To London.

"Caufield, it's Gamache."

"Armand. God, I haven't heard from you since you were fired as head of the S?reté. What do you want? I'm busy."

Sherry Caufield was the head of counterintelligence in the UK. She ran the ad hoc international committee on current threats. It amazed Gamache that she had not yet started a war.

"Sherry, have you heard any chatter about threats to Montréal's drinking water?"

There was a pause. Her tone had changed. "You've got something?"

"Nothing solid. It's vague, but…"

It was, of course, the "buts" that needed investigating.

"Send me what you have and I'll take a closer look. I haven't heard anything, but…"

" Merci. If this is real, how would they do it?"

"You know how, from your time on the committee."

"That was a few years ago. I remember most, but probably not all, and things might have changed, evolved. Does ‘Chartreuse' mean anything to you?"

"The color?"

"Maybe, but more likely the drink."

"Only that Chartreuse would not be my poison of choice. Why?"

"It keeps coming up. I was wondering if any terrorist group was using it as a code."

"I'll look, but it doesn't sound familiar. You asked how drinking water could be contaminated."

" Oui. "

"It's not as easy as people think, certainly as conspiracy theorists think. An organization would have to have access to three things to even come close to success. They'd have to hack the computers and override security to bypass the filtration systems at the treatment plant. They'd need someone on the inside to physically put the contaminant into the system, and they'd need the poison. Probably in liquid form. Almost certainly in some small household container that wouldn't be questioned by security. Probably one of those pill bottles or a travel shampoo bottle, that sort of thing."

"And what would the poison be?"

"Not Chartreuse, I can tell you that much."

"Good to know."

"There's sarin gas, which is actually a liquid. It's water-soluble and has a history of use. Look at what happened in Japan. But it's unstable. The thinking now is that a bioweapon is most likely to be used in drinking water. Several have been weaponized. Anthrax. Q fever. Ricin. But if I was going to do it? I'd use botulinum."

"Botulism?"

"Right. A neurotoxin. Works on the muscles. Causes paralysis. According to the latest data, a gram can kill a million people."

Gamache walked over to a concrete block in the grand lobby of the Musée, barely making it before his legs gave way and he sat with a thump.

He stared straight ahead, absorbing what he had heard.

"And it can be put into water?" He knew that not all neurotoxins were effective in water.

"Yes. And remember, Armand, water splashes when it pours out, so the toxin would also become airborne."

He felt lightheaded but had to pull himself together. "Where would someone get botulinum?"

"It used to be called the miracle poison. That's where Botox comes from. But what we're talking about is a whole other class of toxin."

"Where, Sherry. Where would someone get enough to poison a whole city?"

There was a pause. "Well, it wouldn't take much, and—"

"Yes?"

"We don't know where it all went."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"When the Soviet Union fell, so did its bioweapons program. By the time the West thought to look, most was missing."

"Yes, I know about that. But that was decades ago. The thinking is, if any terrorist organization was going to use it, they'd have done it by now."

"There's domestic, state-sanctioned terrorism too."

Gamache, thinking about Caron and the Deputy PM, didn't respond.

"But, Armand, there's more. The West, especially the States, has its own bioweapons program. It was officially stopped as part of the UN Biological Weapons Convention, but not before there was a warehouse full of the stuff."

"But it was destroyed, right?"

"That's what they say."

Now Armand stood, so abruptly the docents at the Musée looked over at him. One began to approach but was stopped by someone who obviously recognized the senior police officer.

"What are you saying?"

"It's not official, but it's pretty common knowledge in the intelligence communities that the US has lost track of some of those weaponized toxins."

"Who would know?"

"Our mutual friend. But best not to contact him by phone. Do it over the secure texts, and then meet him in person. Can you tell me more? Who do you suspect? There is someone, isn't there."

"I can't say yet."

"That means it's someone I know. For a threat like this to get this far along without being detected, it would need someone familiar with anti-terror organizations. Someone who'd know how to hide it."

She waited for him to agree, but instead, he asked, "What's the antidote to botulinum?"

"It's called BAT. It's an antitoxin."

"Is there much?"

"Not enough."

He hung up and stared straight ahead. His face grey. Grim.

The docent who'd made to approach him now looked from Gamache to the statue across rue Sherbrooke, and saw an unsettling resemblance.

The sculpted man in tattered robes was staring straight ahead. His expression filled with despair. With horror.

Armand Gamache, in the bright lobby of the Musée, was staring straight ahead. His expression filled with horror.

There was little to distinguish the head of homicide for the S?reté and Rodin's Burghers of Calais .

Both were facing the unthinkable.