Penny, Louise - All the Devils Are Here

“This’s the Archives nationales,” said Pinot, looking up at the gates. “What’re we doing here?”

Armand asked the guard to ring Madame Lenoir, then turned to Pinot. “We’re getting help to look up those dates in your morgue and figure out what Stephen and Monsieur Plessner knew.”

Allida Lenoir hurried over and vouched for them.

“We haven’t found out anything more,” she said as she led them back to the reading room.

“Madame Arbour?” asked Gamache.

“Is still with us.”

“Good.”

She looked behind her at the large man lumbering to keep up. “You’re Alain Pinot, aren’t you? You run Agence France-Presse.”

“I own it,” he wheezed. “There’s some question as to whether I actually run it.” He stopped at the entrance to the reading room. “My God, is it …”

“Judith de la—”

“Granger,” he said, going forward, his arms out. “I haven’t seen you in years. Decades.” He kissed her on both cheeks, smiling broadly. “What’re you doing here?”

She explained, and he nodded approval, turning to Gamache. “Good. With Judith on board, we might have a chance. Best researcher in the business.”

While Allida and Judith got him organized at a terminal, Gamache waved Séverine Arbour over.

“Do you mind if I see your phone?”

Perplexed but not alarmed, she handed it over.

Alain Pinot talked as he logged in to the AFP’s own archives. “As you know, we store stories that’ve already run in the newspaper’s morgue. What you might not know is it’s where we also archive stories that were filed and never ran, as well as research and reporters’ notes.”

“My phone, please,” Madame Arbour said, holding out her hand. But instead of giving it back, he slipped it into his pocket.

She had, Gamache knew, been feeding Claude Dussault information all day. It would stop now.

All the way there on the métro, while Pinot had muttered expletives, he’d gone around and around what Dussault had said. And done.

What those coins in the Fontaine des Mers could possibly mean.

When he’d embraced Daniel, not the first but subsequent times, he’d slipped his hand into Daniel’s pockets. To get the magnetized coins away from his son.

But the nickels weren’t there.

He’d tried again, to be sure, when he’d taken the JSPS card. Still, he came away empty-handed.

And then, finally, on the Bridge of Hearts, he’d put it together. What Claude Dussault had thrown into the fountain.

Dussault had obviously found the coins on Daniel, but instead of handing them over, he’d kept them, then thrown them into the fountain.

That’s why he wanted to meet there. He needed to get rid of the nickels without being seen. Someplace where he could later retrieve them.

The coins were part of the proof that neodymium was involved.

What was the Prefect up to? Was he double-crossing his employers? Planning to blackmail them by keeping some of the proof himself?

Were the coins insurance, in case GHS turned on him?

Gamache was beginning to suspect that everything Dussault had said that evening, everything he’d done, had been calculated. But what was the sum? What did it add up to?

Armand knew if he came up with the wrong answer, it would be catastrophic.

But one thing he did know. Claude Dussault was the most cunning and therefore the most dangerous person in the picture.

By far.

Alain Pinot was typing away at the terminal. He’d also given Allida and Judith access to the AFP morgue. The three were deep into it now.

The stories and reporters’ notes from those dates were wide-ranging and global, from a plane crash in Ukraine to various road accidents to riots sparked by fears of both climate change and the new nuclear power stations coming online to help solve the problem.

There did not seem to be any common thread or theme.

“Give me my phone back,” said Séverine Arbour.

“Come with me,” Gamache said, leading her away.

When he stopped, he brought out her phone, removed the SIM card, and slipped it into his pocket.

“Why did you do that?” she asked as he handed her phone back. “This’s useless without the SIM.”

“Is it?” he asked. “What about the tracking app?”

He could have neutralized that, too, but didn’t want to alert whoever was monitoring the phone that Arbour had been discovered.

She tried to rally. “What tracking? Has someone tampered with my phone?”

He raised his brows and stared at her.

She paled. “It’s not what it seems.”

“Really? Because it seems you’ve been passing information to the very people who’ve murdered their way across Paris. The very people we’ve been desperate to avoid. You’ve given them information that led to my son being picked up, beaten, and now held at gunpoint.”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t mean—” Now she looked both panicked and confused.

“Tell me now, what do you know about GHS? What’ve you been hiding?”

“Nothing. I don’t know anything.”

“You’re lying.”

He took a step toward her and she cringed.

And Armand Gamache, a good, decent man, understood how good, decent people could resort to torture. If time was too short and the stakes too high.

Because he wanted to do that now. To do whatever was necessary to get the information out of her and save Daniel.

He was so shocked by this realization, so horrified by his temptation, that he took a step away. And clutched his hands behind his back, in case …

“Tell me what you know. Now.”

Séverine Arbour was looking at him, clearly terrified.

She thinks I’m going to beat the information out of her.

And yet, despite her terror, there was resolve. She would not talk. Not easily.

What could be so important that she’d endure torture rather than talk?

“Come with me,” he said and, taking her by the arm, they returned to the others.

“I’m sorry,” said Pinot. “There’s nothing.”

“We can’t find anything connecting any of these dates and stories,” said Judith de la Granger.

Pulling up a chair, Gamache sat down and scanned the pages, going from one date to the next to the …

Then he sat back, as though softly shoved. His mouth had dropped open slightly.

“What is it?” asked Madame de la Granger. She’d seen that look before when researchers finally found what they’d spent decades searching for. Usually some apparently trivial line in an obscure text that illuminated everything.

She leaned closer to read the story that had so struck the Chief Inspector.

It was about a plane crash in Ukraine a year and a half ago. She remembered reading about it. The passenger plane had hit the center of a town. Three hundred and thirty killed.

But Gamache was onto the next date and the next series of stories.

Then he turned to Arbour. “What’s GHS Engineering building in Luxembourg?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “It’s a funicular, isn’t it.”

“But there’s no story about a funicular, Armand,” said Pinot.

“Non,” he said. “Not yet. But there is that.”

It was a news brief, about an elevator that had plummeted thirty-two stories, in Chicago, killing the two people inside.

He got up and looked at his watch. Just over three hours left.

Séverine Arbour saw him coming and backed away, but he walked right by her, as though in a trance. And began pacing the reading room. Almost prowling. Like a great cat in captivity. Looking for the way out. Up and back. Up and back.

What did Claude Dussault say?

Think. Think.

Calm. Calm. Think. Think.

With every step forward he threw his mind back. To what the head of the Préfecture de Paris had said as they’d sat in the corridor of the section d’urgence.