Another raid. An unnecessary raid, ordered by Francoeur.
The Chief closed his eyes. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
Then he put on his coat. At the door to his office he watched Inspector Lacoste give orders to a group of agents. Or try to.
They were among the new agents, transferred in when Gamache’s own people had been transferred out and spread around the other divisions of the Sûreté. To everyone’s surprise, the Chief Inspector hadn’t protested. Hadn’t fought it. Had barely seemed to care or notice as his division was gutted.
It went beyond unflappable. Some had begun to wonder, quietly at first and then more boldly, whether Armand Gamache even cared anymore. But still, as he approached the group, they grew quiet and watchful.
“A word, Inspector,” he said, and smiled at the agents.
Isabelle Lacoste followed Gamache back to his office, where he closed the door.
“For chrissake, sir, why do we have to put up with that?” She jerked her head toward the outer office.
“We just have to make the best of it.”
“How? By giving up?”
“No one’s giving up,” he said, his voice reassuring. “You need to trust me. You’re a great investigator. Tenacious, intuitive. Smart. And you have limitless patience. You need to use that now.”
“It’s not limitless, patron.”
He nodded. “I understand.” Then, hands gripping the edges of his desk, he leaned toward her. “Don’t be bullied off course. Don’t be pushed from your center. And always, always trust your instinct, Isabelle. What does it tell you now?”
“That we’re screwed.”
He leaned back and laughed. “Then trust mine. All is not as I’d have wished, that much is certain. But it isn’t over. This isn’t inaction, this is simply a deep breath.”
She glanced out at the agents lounging at their desks, ignoring her orders.
“And while we’re catching our breath they’re taking over. Destroying the division.”
“Yes,” he said.
She waited for the “but,” but none came.
“Maybe I should threaten them,” she suggested. “The only thing a lion respects is a bigger lion.”
“Those aren’t lions, Isabelle. They’re irritating, but tiny. Ants, or toads. You step over them, or around them. But there’s no need to step on them. You don’t make war on toads.”
Toads, or turds. The droppings of some larger beast, thought Lacoste as she left. But Chief Inspector Gamache was right. These new agents weren’t worth her effort. She’d step around them. For now.
* * *
Gamache pulled his car into the reserved parking spot. He knew the employee who normally parked there wouldn’t need it. She was in Paris.
It was two o’clock. He paused, closing his eyes. Then he opened them, and with resolve he walked along the icy path to the rear entrance of the Bibliothèque nationale. At the door, he punched Reine-Marie’s code into the keypad and heard the clunk as the door unbolted.
“Monsieur Gamache.” Lili Dufour looked up from her desk, understandably perplexed. “I thought you were in Paris with Reine-Marie.”
“No, she went ahead.”
“What can I do for you?” She stood up and walked around to greet him. She was slender, self-contained. Pleasant but cool, bordering on officious.
“I have some research to do and I thought you might be able to help.”
“On what?”
“The Ouellet Quints.”
He saw her brows rise.
“Really. Why?”
“You don’t expect me to tell you that, do you?” asked Gamache, with a smile.
“Then you don’t expect me to help you, do you?”
His smile faded. Reine-Marie had told him about Madame Dufour, who guarded the documents in the National Library and Archives as though they were her own private collection.
“Police business,” he said.
“Library business, Chief Inspector,” she said, nodding toward the large, closed doors.
He followed her gaze. They were in the back offices, where the head librarians worked. Through those doors was the public area.
Most of the time, when he’d visited his wife, he’d contented himself with waiting in the huge new public library, where row after row of desks and reading lamps held students and professors, researchers and those simply curious. The desks had plugs for laptops, and wireless Internet gave access to the files.
But not all the files. The Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec contained tens of thousands of documents. Not just books, but maps, diaries, letters, deeds. Many of them hundreds of years old. And most of them not in the computer system yet.