The boy nodded, his eyes wide.
“When this is over, I’ll be back to talk to you about the Sûreté and the academy.”
“Yessir.”
“You’ll be fine,” said Gamache.
“Yessir.”
But neither of them totally believed it.
At the door there was a moment’s anxiety when Chief Inspector Gamache handed the slip over and waited for his gun. But finally the Glock was handed back and Gamache walked quickly to his car. No more could be learned here.
Pierre Arnot was almost certainly dead. Killed six months ago, so that that man could take his place. Arnot couldn’t talk, because he was dead. His replacement couldn’t talk because he knew nothing. And any guard who would recognize Arnot had been transferred out.
Arnot’s disappearance told the Chief a great deal. It said that Pierre Arnot was once at the center of whatever was happening, but was no longer necessary.
Someone else had taken over. And Gamache knew who that was.
He got in the car and checked emails. There was a message from the zoo.
Georges Renard, now the Premier of Québec, had studied civil engineering at the École Polytechnique in the 1970s. His first job was with Les Services Aqueduct in the far north of Québec.
There it was. The link between Aqueduct and Renard. But why had Arnot’s name been connected to Aqueduct?
Gamache read on. Renard’s first job had been in La Grande, on the biggest engineering project in the world at that time. The construction of the massive hydroelectric dam.
And there it was. The link between Pierre Arnot and Georges Renard. As young men they’d worked in the same area. One policing the Cree reserve, the other building the dam that would destroy the reserve.
Is that where they’d first met? Is it possible this plan had started then? Was it forty years in gestation? A year ago a plot to bring down that same hydroelectric dam had almost succeeded. But Gamache had stopped it. It had taken him and Beauvoir and so many others into that factory.
And now the pieces were beginning to come together. How the bombers had known exactly where to hit the huge dam. It had always bothered the Chief Inspector that those young men, with their trucks filled with explosives, were able to get so far, and find the one soft spot in a monolithic structure.
This was how.Georges Renard. The Premier of Québec now, but then a young engineer. If Renard knew how to put the dam up, he also knew how to bring it down.
Pierre Arnot, an officer on the Cree reserve then but on track to become the Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté, had created the rage and despair necessary to drive two young Cree to an act of terrible domestic terrorism. And Renard had given them the vital information.
They’d almost succeeded.
But to what end? Why would the elected leader of the province not only destroy the dam that provided power, but in doing so wipe out towns and villages downriver, killing thousands.
To what end?
Gamache had hoped Arnot could tell him. But more than the why, Gamache needed to know what the next target was. What was their Plan B? Gamache knew two things. It was soon, and it was big.
Armand Gamache had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
The construction contracts to repair the tunnels, bridges, and overpasses hadn’t been done. In years and years. Billions of dollars in contracts had been awarded and put in pockets as the road system deteriorated, to the point of collapse.
Chief Inspector Gamache was almost certain the plan was to hurry that collapse. To bring down a tunnel. A bridge. A massive cloverleaf.
But to what end?
Again Gamache had to remind himself that the reason was far less important at the moment than the target. The attack was imminent, he knew. Within hours, almost certainly. He’d presumed the target was in Montréal, but it could also be in Quebec City. The capital. In fact, it could be anywhere in Québec.
There was one more message from the zoo, this one from Jérôme Brunel.
Audrey Villeneuve worked for the Ministry of Transportation in Montréal. Clerical.
He thought for a moment before writing the reply. Just two words. He hit send, started the car, and left the penitentiary behind.
* * *
“The Granby Zoo?” asked Lambert. “They’re getting in through the archives of the zoo. We’ve got them.”
Over the speakerphone in his office Sylvain Francoeur could hear the tap, tap, tap as Chief Inspector Lambert hit keys. Rapid footsteps chasing the intruder.
He punched the speakerphone off when Tessier entered his office.