Myrna watched him closely. “What just happened?”
Gamache shook his head a little. “I’m sorry. I’ll tell you one day.”
“But not today?”
“I don’t think so.”
The door closed behind them and the cold closed around them. The sun was still up, but they were on the edge of the shortest day and there wasn’t much light left.
“You’ll tell me,” said Thérèse as they walked rapidly across the village green. Past Ruth on the bench. Past families skating on the frozen pond. Past the three ancient white pines.
Thérèse Brunel was not asking, but commanding.
“Beauvoir was sent on another raid today.”
Thérèse Brunel absorbed the news. Gamache’s face, in profile, was grim.
“This must stop,” said Gamache.
Up the hill they strode, Thérèse hurrying to keep pace. At the edge of the forest they found their snowshoes stuck in a snow bank where they’d left them. Strapping them on, they made their way back down the trail, though they barely needed the snowshoes anymore. The trail was hard packed and easy to find.
Too easy? Thérèse Brunel wondered. But there was no way around it now.
As they approached, they saw Gilles apparently hovering in midair, twenty feet up and five feet from the tree trunk. The woods were getting dark, but as the two senior officers got closer Thérèse could see the platform, nailed to the tree of peace.
Jérôme was standing at the base of the white pine, staring up. He glanced at them as they approached, then back up into the branches above their heads. It was then Superintendent Brunel noticed that Gilles was not alone up there. Nichol was standing on the platform, a couple feet back from Gilles as he worked to position the satellite dish on the wooden railing.
“Anything?” Gilles asked, his voice muffled by frozen lips. His red beard was white and crusty, as though his words had frozen and stuck to his face.
“Close.” Nichol was studying something in her mittens.
Gilles adjusted the dish slightly.
“There. Stop,” said Nichol.
Everyone, including Thérèse and Armand, stopped. And waited. And waited. Gilles slowly, slowly released the dish.
“Still?” he asked.
Then waited. Waited.
“Yes,” she said.
“Let me see.” He held out his gloved hand.
“It’s locked onto the satellite. We’re fine.”
“Give it to me. I want to see for myself,” snapped the woodsman, the biting cold gnawing at his patience.
Nichol handed over whatever she held and he studied it.
“Good,” he said at last, and unseen below them three streams of steam were exhaled.
Once back on firm ground, Gilles smiled. His crystalline beard made him look like Father Christmas, and as he grinned some of it cracked off.
“Well done,” said Jérôme. He was stomping his feet and all but blue with cold.
Yvette Nichol stood a few feet away, separated from the main body of the team by what looked like a long, black umbilical cord. The transmission cable.
Thérèse, Jérôme, Gilles, and Nichol, thought Gamache, looking at the glum young agent. And Nichol. Attached to their own quintuplet by a slender thread.
And Nichol. How easy it would be to cut her loose.
“Are we connected?” Gamache asked Gilles, who nodded.
“We’ve found a satellite,” he replied through lips and cheeks numb with cold.
“The rest?”
He shrugged.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Thérèse demanded. “Will it do the job or not?”
Gilles turned to her. “And what is the job, madame? I still don’t know why we’re here, except that it probably has nothing to do with watching the last episode of Survivor.”
There was a stiff silence.
“Perhaps you can explain it to Gilles back at the schoolhouse,” said Gamache. He spoke matter-of-factly, as though suggesting hot chocolate after an afternoon of tobogganing. “I expect you’re ready to get inside.”
The Chief turned to Nichol, standing alone a few feet away. “You and I can finish what was started.”
They were clear, cold black-ice words.
He wants us to leave them alone, Thérèse thought. He’s cutting her from the pack.
Seeing the slight smile on Armand’s face, and hearing his hard voice, an alarm sounded inside her. A deep, dark gap had appeared between what Armand Gamache had said and what he meant. And Thérèse Brunel did not envy this young agent, who was about to discover what the Chief Inspector kept locked and hidden, deep inside.