Penny, Louise - All the Devils Are Here

The SecurForte guards converged on the room. Assault weapons raised, they entered in combat formation.

He didn’t wait to see what happened next. Taking off in the opposite direction, Gamache raced down the stairs, chased by the familiar gunfire. The familiar explosions licked at his heels. The familiar orders given. His orders. The hot breath on his neck was his own. His voice on the recording. Commanding his people forward. Deeper into the factory.

And then the familiar screams of agony. As his own agents were cut down. Like wraiths, they pursued Gamache. As they had, every day, for years.

He flung himself against the metal panic bar of the side door and flew out into the sunshine.

* * *

“Cease fire,” the leader commanded. “There’s no one here. It’s a recording. Bring it to me.”

Loiselle, on his belly, retrieved the phone. As he handed it over, he saw a man sprinting down the side of the château.

“There he is,” shouted Loiselle and, using the butt of his rifle, he broke the glass and started shooting.

Gamache didn’t swerve. Didn’t look back. He just kept running, even as the bullets struck the columns and walls and ground around him.

“Fuck, Loiselle, get him,” shouted his commander.

Gamache was at the huge wrought iron gates. Loiselle sighted him, but it was too late. Gamache had pushed through and, stumbling, he disappeared down rue des Archives.

“Well, you fucked that up,” said the commander, glaring at his foot soldier. “But at least we know where he’s headed. Better get there, and do it right this time.”

“Yessir.”

Loiselle looked down at the video, still playing on the phone in the commander’s hand.

He watched the familiar images, of Chief Inspector Gamache dragging his second-in-command across the factory floor to safety. After quickly staunching Beauvoir’s abdominal wound, Gamache bent and kissed him on the forehead, whispering to the man he feared was dying, “I love you.”

Then the phone died.

Who would rescue him, Xavier Loiselle wondered, if he was badly wounded?

None of them, he knew as he looked around.

Who, he wondered, would whisper to him in his final moments, I love you ?

CHAPTER 41

You okay, man?” the taxi driver asked, glancing in his rearview mirror.

His passenger was twisted in his seat, staring out the back window and trying to catch his breath.

“Fine, fine,” said Gamache, in a sort of gasp, as he turned to the driver. “As fast as you can.”

It was 7:19. They’d threatened to kill Daniel at 7:30. Gamache had little doubt they meant it.

Of course, they’d kill them both once they got what they needed.

He clutched the dossier to him and deliberately slowed his breathing.

Hyperventilating and passing out rarely made things better.

Deep breath in. Hold. Long slow breath out.

They were in the narrow streets, clogged with Paris’s Monday morning rush hour. They had to get across the Seine, over île de la Cité, from the Third Arrondissement to the Seventh. From the Marais, all the way over to the far side of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

They were, he could see by the driver’s satnav, twelve minutes away. At this rate, it would be too late.

“I’ll give you all the money I have if you get me there before seven thirty.”

“Rush hour,” said the driver, then glanced down at the hand thrust between the seats clutching a fistful of euro notes.

The driver leaned on the horn and sped up.

Armand sat back and reached for his phone to call Reine-Marie, then remembered where it was.

“May I use your phone?”

“What? No. I need it for directions. You want to get there or not?”

Gamache tossed a hundred-euro note at the driver and said, “You have a second one. Give it to me.”

He was moments away from pulling the gun out of his coat pocket when the driver handed him his personal phone. “Okay, man, calm down.”

Gamache placed the call, but there was no answer. Reine-Marie was either too busy or wasn’t picking up a call from a number she didn’t recognize.

He tried Jean-Guy. No answer.

Then he tried Reine-Marie again. This time she answered. “Oui?”

“It’s me.”

“Armand, where are you?”

“How’s Annie?”

“She and Jean-Guy are in surgery. They’ve decided on the caesarean.”

“Is she all right?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“The baby?”

“I don’t know.” There was a pause as Reine-Marie fought for control. Then repeated, “Where are you?”

He looked to his right and could see the hôpital Hôtel-Dieu. His heart threw itself against his rib cage. Squeezing against it. Pushing toward the hospital. He thought for a moment it might break through.

“I’m in a taxi, on my way to Daniel. We’ll be with you as soon as we can.”

“Are you all right? Is Daniel? Armand, what’s happening? Whose phone are you on?”

“Mine lost power. I’m using the taxi driver’s. I love you. I’ve got to go.”

“I love you,” she said, and then the line went dead in her hand.

Armand gave the phone to the driver, who handed back the money.

“I have a daughter, too.” And turning down an alley, he cut three minutes off the drive.

Armand stared straight ahead, trying to see the way forward and through. The exact sequence of events that had to happen. Had he guessed right?

If not, no amount of planning could possibly work.

They arrived at Stephen’s building with just over a minute to spare.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Gamache got to the door of Stephen’s apartment and pounded on it.

The door was opened by one of the SecurForte guards. Armand looked past him and saw Daniel on his feet in the middle of the living room. Girard was beside him, pressing a gun to Daniel’s temple.

Daniel’s eyes were squeezed shut, and he was trembling.

“No,” shouted Armand.

Daniel opened crazed eyes. “Dad?”

“Seconds,” said Girard, lowering the gun.

“You came back,” said Daniel as his legs buckled.

Armand stepped forward and caught his son, lowering him to the floor so that both were kneeling.

“That was probably a mistake, Armand.”

Claude Dussault’s voice, languid and soft, came across the room. He was sitting on the sofa. Legs crossed. His hand resting on the gun beside him. Perfectly at ease. Apparently not caring if Daniel was executed.

He got up slowly and, walking over to Gamache, picked the file up from where Armand had dropped it. “Let’s see what you’ve found.”

“Are you all right?” Armand asked Daniel.

He didn’t ask if they’d hurt him. Of course they had. Few knew better than Gamache that the worst wounds were not always visible. Or physical.

Daniel’s hands were trembling, and his breathing shallow. His eyes bloodshot and steady, on his father.

“You came back,” he whispered.

Armand gripped Daniel to him. Tight.

And whispered, “Always.”

Then he leaned back and, looking into Daniel’s eyes, he said, “We can do this.”

He could see that Daniel understood what “this” now might mean.

It was the tumble down the ice slide. It was the void beyond the balcony. It was the headlong fall over the edge.

But they wouldn’t have to face it alone. There was some calm, even comfort, in that.

Armand helped Daniel to his feet and shifted his gaze to Claude Dussault. His nerve endings tingling as he watched Dussault return to the sofa and open the file.

Just then Xavier Loiselle appeared at the door. Without hesitating he strode across the room, lifted his rifle, and hit Gamache across the head with the butt end, dropping him to the floor.