The Black Wolf: A Novel By Louise Penny - 22

“The United States is going to attack Canada?” said Lacoste. “Come on.”

Gamache was studying the General. “What do you know, Bert?”

“I know the necessary first step in any war. And so do you. How do you get young people to sign up and fight? How do you get their parents to let them? How do you motivate them to risk and perhaps lose their lives?”

“You create a common enemy,” said Gamache, quietly. “A threat.”

“A clear and present danger, yes.”

“But why do it?” asked Beauvoir. “Why would anyone want to provoke a war between us?”

“For the water, of course,” snapped Whitehead. “Haven’t you been paying attention? The US is running out.”

Armand Gamache turned to Lacoste. “Call Nichol. Have her find out who’s behind the .family posts.”

To Beauvoir he said, “Contact the Chief Meteorologist. Send her that sequence of numbers and symbols from Charles Langlois’s map.”

“The password?”

“They’re not just a password, they’re an isobar. We need to know what specifically the sequence says. But don’t tell her where we got them.”

“I wouldn’t,” said Whitehead, and Beauvoir, his phone out, hesitated and looked at Gamache.

“Why not?” Armand asked.

“Because the isobar your young biologist put on his map must have come from some document he found. One that scared him. Someone in the know had to provide the sequence to whoever’s behind this. Who better than a meteorologist?”

“He’s right,” said Gamache, and Beauvoir clicked off his phone. “Come on, Bert. We need more. What’s going to happen?”

“I don’t know, not for sure. Not really. Or maybe I just refuse to believe it. Like January 6. We had warning, we saw the posts, we just never…” He wiped his hand across his face, then gave a huge exhale. “But this? I suspected something was up when you first asked for help with the poisoning plot. In digging deeper, I found those messages about a possible aggression by Canada. They were so in lockstep and yet so unbelievable. Hardly worth noting. But then they began spreading, appearing outside far-right conspiracy sites. It seemed someone powerful was trying to make Canada appear as our enemy. A threat. But why? And then I remembered the plan.”

“Plan?” said Gamache. “There’s a plan?”

But Whitehead was focused on his own train of thought. “Someone high up in our government, someone with clearance, must have found it and seen the possibilities. Though, of course, it doesn’t have to be our—”

“Wait.” Armand put up his hand and the General stopped. “Are you saying there’s an American plan? To what? Invade Canada for our water?”

“Of course we have one,” snapped Whitehead. “The fact a plan exists isn’t the point.”

“Really?”

“Don’t be so naïve, Armand. What makes you think the most powerful nation on earth wouldn’t have contingency plans for everything? Attack from North Korea, Russia, China. Terrorists. Nuclear and conventional attacks. Cyberattacks. We’ve had war games in case extraterrestrials invade, for God’s sake. And now there’s global warming. Heating. And with it extreme weather. Cat 5 hurricanes and predictions we’ll have to raise our measuring to Cat 6 and even 7. Tornadoes, earthquakes. Forest fires. Floods and, yes, drought. You think we wouldn’t be prepared for that? We will do what is necessary to survive. As would you.”

Whitehead’s own levee had broken and out poured this no-doubt classified information.

“Be prepared?” said Gamache. “You make it sound reasonable, as though you’re leading a Boy Scout troop. You hoping to get your ‘invading an innocent country’ badge, Bert? Oh, wait, you already have that.”

All-out war threatened to break out now between the two men. But both got to where they were by choosing their battles carefully. And controlling their emotions. This was not a fight either wanted.

Both stepped back.

“ Désolé ,” said Armand, with a tight smile. “That went too far.”

“And so might we,” General Whitehead admitted. “If someone has their way.”

“Do you have any idea who?”

“No. But having a plan and implementing it are two very different things. Is the US going to invade Canada tomorrow? No. No chance. Will we if necessary? I think so. Don’t look so shocked. We’re both realists, we have to be. What happens when you’re low on water but have missiles up the yin-yang? You use one to get the other. What would you do, Armand, if you and your family were dying of thirst and your neighbor had plenty of water?”

“I’d knock on the door and ask for whatever they could spare. I wouldn’t organize a home invasion.”

“We’d do the same thing. Ask for help, politely. And I’m sure Canada would share. Even open its doors to the first few thousand environmental refugees. The first hundred thousand. Maybe even the first million Americans who came knocking, asking for a cup of your pure spring water. But ten, twenty, a hundred million Americans needing your water? Your food? Your power? Your hospitals and housing?” He shook his head. “No, Armand. We know what would happen.”

“Okay, walk me through it.”

General Whitehead hesitated. Armand was asking him to go even further. To divulge their invasion plan. To give the enemy forewarning. To commit treason.

Whitehead took a deep breath, then took the plunge.

“We’ve run the scenarios. It would be little use asking for your help. We would at first, mostly to show the international community we’re reasonable. But eventually, as I said, we’d be forced to take what we need. Ninety percent of your population lives within a hundred miles of the border.” He looked down at the black line on the floor that, to Armand’s tired eyes, seemed to be thinning. “It would not take long.”

Armand was quiet. Trying to absorb what was being said. Trying, he knew, to marshal arguments. And he found one.

“But you have the Great Lakes. Why would the US need to take over Canada when it has the largest supply of fresh water in the world right there?”

“And what would Canada do if we started to drain the Great Lakes? It’s a shared resource, as you know.”

“What could Canada do?” Armand’s voice had risen slightly in pitch. “We wouldn’t shoot you.”

“Not at first, no.”

“We’d protest, but we’d be powerless to stop it. We would not attack. What? Did I say something funny?”

Whitehead was smiling. “We’ve run the scenarios in war games. Not, of course, on the ground, but in computer models. I’ve played all sides many times. Sometimes I’m in charge of the American response to the crisis. Sometimes I’m Canada. I’ve been the UK. Once I was the UN. That was boring. I just sat there writing stern letters of protest. The outcome was always the same. Shall I tell you?”

Armand wanted to decline. Wanted to pick up his coat and go home to Reine-Marie and the dogs. And Gracie. To have a drink by the fire and read a book. And not know.

He nodded.

“In our war games, when Canada found out we were taking huge amounts of water from the Great Lakes and other sources, there’d first be a diplomatic response. A polite, then not-so-polite request from your country to stop. When that didn’t work, there’d be a trade war. We depend on you for more things than most know. Minerals, for instance. Cement. Imagine if we no longer had cement? But more than that—”

“Oil,” said Armand, with some sadness, seeing where this was going.

“Yes.”

“If you started to drain the Great Lakes, we’d turn off the tap.”

“Bingo.” Whitehead tapped the side of his nose, then turned his finger toward Armand, like a pointed gun. “And that would be it. The trigger. Even the threat of it would be enough to provoke an invasion. You’d be framed in our media as the aggressors. As the enemy. Not helping an ally in need. Not sharing your abundant water, and even turning off our supply of oil. Stopping shipment of valuable minerals. We get most of our uranium, aluminum, nickel, potash from Canada. When faced with drought, with abandoned cities, with an energy crisis and food shortages? When looking north and seeing the ready riches just on the other side of the longest undefended border in the world?” Once again General Whitehead looked down at the black line between them. “Don’t you think desperate people pushed to the limit would readily, happily even, get behind taking those resources? To survive? People break into homes when they’re starving. This would be framed as the same thing. Just a very big home.”

Gamache was shaking his head. “I refuse to believe it.”

“For God’s sake, man, take your head out of your own ass before it’s too late.”

“If you crossed our border in an armed invasion, Canada would push back. It would be a losing proposition, we could never hold out, but we’d try.”

“I know you would. That happened every time in our war games. And you know what happened next? The first image of a Canadian soldier killing an American, and even those against an invasion would come onside. It’s human nature. Our nature. You kill one American and a hundred more take their place. It would quickly degenerate into all-out war, all along the border, from New England—”

“The Maritime Provinces.”

“To Washington State.”

“British Columbia.”

“And everywhere in between. They want you to push back. It would justify the invasion.”

“Who are ‘they’?” demanded Gamache. “You must have some idea.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t know.” Whitehead was exhausted and exasperated. “I’ve tried to find out, but…”

Gamache studied the large man in front of him. His friend. His colleague. Was he telling the truth? Did he really not know?

“Guess,” said Armand.

“I do wonder…”

Armand held his breath. Say it, say it. Tell me. But he saw Whitehead pull back. Though even that was telling. It suggested to Gamache that whoever Whitehead suspected of being behind this was prominent. Perhaps even someone he owed allegiance to.

“Someone’s trying to push us into a war with each other,” Gamache probed. Pushed. “If you have any idea who it might be, you need to tell me. I need to see that plan.”

“I’m sorry, Armand. I can’t. Not before I speak to someone.”

“The person who’s behind it?”

“I hope not. But I need to find out. Then I will give you what you need. I promise.”

It sounded so sincere, almost innocent. Armand was tempted to ask for a pinkie swear. Instead, he asked, “Is this really only about water?”

“Isn’t that enough? No water, no life. But it doesn’t hurt that we’d have access to your vast supply of hydroelectricity.”

In Québec, electricity came from the network of huge dams. From water. In Québec water literally meant power.

“But it doesn’t stop there,” said Armand. “You’d have our oil, minerals. Natural resources are the new currency. Power is measured in liters now. Not missiles. Not GDP.”

“Now you’re getting it,” said Whitehead. “The countries with the most water, the most oil, the most minerals are quickly becoming the most powerful. Canada is climbing to the top of the heap.”

“And becoming a target. Like walking around inner-city Montréal with a bag of heroin around our necks.”

“Now there’s an image, and oddly appropriate. With water comes another sort of power. Political power. And that’s a drug. It’s driven more than one decent person crazy. Power-mad. If this takeover happens, the person who leads it will become a despot, with all of North America under their control.”

“You’re talking about your President,” said Gamache.

“I didn’t say that,” General Whitehead snapped.

“But you suspect.”

Whitehead said nothing.

“You need to find out who, Bert. And we need proof.”

“It’s not just the US, Armand. There’re people in Canada involved. People who want this to happen. Who’ll benefit.”

“Moretti,” said Beauvoir, who’d been following this closely.

Finally, it was clear why Joseph Moretti was involved. What he’d get out of this unholy alliance. He would provide the muscle for the corrupt politicians and greedy corporations. He would do the assassinations, the murders, the intimidation. The dirty work. He would eliminate anyone standing in their way. He’d open the door for the Americans.

And when it was over, and the new government installed, he’d turn his soldiers loose on them.

Joe Moretti was not content to be the capo di tutti capi of Canada. His addiction demanded more. Always more.

Sitting in the calm of the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, with the soft sound of music drifting under the door, it was near impossible to believe it could happen.

But Armand suspected every country ever invaded had felt the same way. Every group ever targeted, ever rounded up, refused to believe their neighbors could do it.

Every people who found themselves under the thumb of a tyrant must wonder where it began, and how they didn’t see it coming. And what moment they missed, when it could have been stopped.

Armand was quiet, hesitating to voice what needed to be asked. “You’re the head of the Joint Chiefs, Bert. You control the forces. Would you…?”

“Invade Canada? If ordered by my Commander in Chief?”

The two men stared at each other. Armand Gamache was shocked that it had come to this. That he’d had to ask the question, and that Bert Whitehead was considering his answer.

One the hunter, one the hunted,

A life to live, a death confronted.

“Would you, Armand? If I was in your sights, would you fire?”

And for you the bell is ringing,

And for you my bullet’s stinging.

Oh, my friend, it’s you or I.

“Suppose American forces…” General Whitehead moved his foot slowly, slowly. Inch by inch. Approaching the black line.

Touching it. Penetrating it.

Slowly. A centimeter at a time. Then breaking through the other side. One foot, then the other. Until the head of the American armed forces stood, uninvited, in Canada.

Gamache watched this. A few paces away Beauvoir and Lacoste stepped closer until they were ranged behind their Chief.

Armand had raised his eyes from the violated border, from the boots on the ground, and was staring at the head of the Joint Chiefs. Whitehead was also staring. Daring Armand to retaliate.

There was complete silence. And then, in the face of Gamache’s unwavering glare, Whitehead stepped back with a laugh.

But it had been no joke. They had their answer.

“Where would an invasion start from?” Armand asked. “The commando base in Jericho?” Another piece had found its place in an increasingly ugly picture.

“You know about it? That’s a shame. I can’t confirm, of course.” Though he just had. “I’ve already broken my oath. If anyone finds out, I could be, will be, put in prison. At the very least.”

“I would hide you.” Armand was not actually kidding. “I would protect you. Just look for three pines planted in a cluster.”

Though both knew Bert Whitehead would never leave his country. He was doing this to save it, not betray it. And would take whatever punishment it meted out. Including a firing squad. But he would not run away.

“Are there any scenarios where we repel your attack?” When Whitehead shook his head, Armand gave one curt nod. “I need to know the rest.”

“You do know. If armed commandos came across and seized”—he looked around—“this place. Seized all the towns and villages along the border. And on our way to Montréal, Three Pines…”

“We’d fight back.”

“You’d lose.” The General looked at his friend, his confrère, and the two younger people standing resolute behind him. Whitehead’s eyes were beseeching. Begging. “Why not just give up? Would it be so bad to be the fifty-first state?”

Now Armand smiled. “ Animal Farm .”

“I’m sorry?”

“We’d fight back because in your new country, some would be more equal than others. Any nation that would invade a friendly country is not a friend and certainly cannot be trusted. How long before we were taken from our homes, because you’d need them too, and put on … let me think … reserves? You call them reservations, but it comes to the same thing. Or maybe camps—” He put up his hand to forestall the protest. “You know perfectly well, Bert, how easily the inconceivable becomes a reality. Becomes acceptable. Becomes the norm. Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about? As you said, never underestimate the power of groupthink. Non. We would fight. And once we lost, as you pointed out we inevitably would, then a guerilla war would start. A resistance would spring up. We might concede, but we’d never, ever surrender. It would become a mutual nightmare. For generations. Did your war games predict that?”

“Yes,” General Whitehead admitted. “But still, if given a choice between generations of conflict or slow death by starvation, I suspect Americans would hop on board the invasion train. Besides, you’d be the bad guys, remember? We’re the patient victims with a legitimate grievance, pushed to do something we really didn’t want to do, but had no choice. After all, you attacked us first. Or so people would believe. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. All that’s needed now for this to work is a common enemy.”

“Attack first?” said Lacoste. “Never.”

There was silence. Until Armand spoke.

“It’s already started, you said.” They saw Whitehead nod. “The wildfires. Those dark web sites are already sending out the narrative.”

“‘The worst attack on American soil since 9/11,’” said the General. “That’s how they’re framing the wildfires. They’re preparing. Grooming the population. Those photos are pretty convincing.”

“They’re AI-generated,” said Lacoste.

“You’re still living in a world where truth matters, where facts are important. They aren’t anymore. They’re fluid, and we’re losing facts as fast as we’re losing water.”

Armand felt the pit of his stomach drop out. For the first time, he could see how this could actually happen. How the common enemy would be created. How Americans, even reasonable ones, would be persuaded to come across the border.

“The frightening thing is, our water crisis isn’t manufactured.” Whitehead’s voice was soft, reasonable. “We really are facing a disaster. The Mississippi is drying up. It’s forecast that in a generation Palm Springs and Phoenix will be uninhabitable. Major cities are already in crisis, rationing water. The UN has declared a global emergency, and warning that all-out regional war over water is inevitable. Inevitable. Anyone who thinks we’re different from people in Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East is wrong. We’re all driven by the same need to survive.”

“Your President isn’t a warmonger,” said Gamache. “Would she really authorize an invasion?”

“If public sentiment swung that way? If Americans were suffering and scared and angry and reelection was in doubt. If powerful lobby groups like the National Association of Realtors—”

Beauvoir’s sudden laugh stopped Whitehead.

“What? You expected the NRA? The Realtors’ Association spends billions every year lobbying. Can you imagine what happens to their members when cities become uninhabitable? Add to that pastors in churches demonizing Canada and preaching that it’s America’s God-given right to protect itself—”

“If there was another megafire…,” said Lacoste.

“Another aggression,” said Beauvoir.

And with that twist of the prism, Gamache saw what Charles Langlois had tried to warn them about all those weeks ago.

But had Charles told him the US was preparing to invade Canada for their water, would he have believed the young biologist as they’d sat over bomboloni at Open Da Night?

No. He’d have dismissed him as a former cokehead with wet brain. As it was, it had taken Armand almost too long to believe there was a plot to poison Montréal’s water.

And now this.

“Another fire,” he said, working his way forward. Staring into Bert’s eyes as he spoke. “We know there will be one, eventually. But … but…” Still he held the stare. “But that’s not good enough. This thing has been planned. Carefully. Over years. They wouldn’t leave anything to chance. They wouldn’t wait, hoping another megafire would drop ash…” He paused, thinking. Thinking. Inching toward the border between the state of happy ignorance and the truth. “They could set a fire, of course. That would be easy enough, with incendiary bombs.” Whitehead’s eyes were pleading with him. Begging him. To continue? Or to stop? “But how would they know when and where…”

Now his face turned ashen. Even his lips lost color.

“Chief, what is it?” asked Lacoste.

Gamache turned to her and Jean-Guy. “The isobars. The ones Charles left behind. They tell us the flow of air.”

“Or ash,” said Jean-Guy. “Jesus.”

Gamache turned back to Whitehead. “FEDS. That’s why it’s so important. FEDS can predict where ash from the next megafire will fall.”

“It can predict the future,” said Lacoste. “And all someone has to do is light the match. Set the forest on fire when the isobars and FEDS line up.”

“The lake.” Lacoste turned to Gamache. “That’s why Charles was so interested in that particular one. It’s the first example of what’s possible. If it can happen by mistake, it can happen on purpose. That’s what the so-called ‘second notebook’ was saying. Trying to say. Trying to warn us.”

But Charles Langlois’s notes and notations and drawings and maps had been written for himself, in a sort of shorthand. He’d expected he’d have time to marshal his arguments, his evidence, and make it at least understandable and maybe even convincing. But time ran out. He’d made one last trip into the wilderness. To hide his laptop. Then he’d told Frederick that if something happened to him, to go there. To find it.

But Frederick had hesitated. Waited too long, and then asked the wrong person to accompany him.

“Is your President involved?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Our Prime Minister?”

“Not that I know of.”

Armand Gamache stared at Bert Whitehead and remembered what Reine-Marie had said, about how Animal Farm ended. Eventually, inevitably, the oppressed and the oppressors become indistinguishable. If not all of the oppressed, then enough.

Was Whitehead one of them? Was this meeting and everything Whitehead said part of the plan?

Am I making the same mistake Frederick Castonguay made, trusting the wrong person? Confiding in the wrong person?

Who better to be the Black Wolf than the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the one who controlled the hounds?

Armand had a decision to make. His days were filled with them, many of them life-and-death, but never had he been faced with one with such consequences.

“We need to figure out how to stop this, Bert.”

He’d come to his decision. And he really had no choice. If what Whitehead was saying was real, and it seemed to be, he had to trust him.

And if he was the Black Wolf? Well, that die was already cast.

“Agreed. That’s what I’ve been trying to do, but the bad actors aren’t just on my side of this border, Armand.”

“Agreed. You need to speak to your President, and I need to be clearer with Prime Minister Woodford.”

While Beauvoir and Lacoste made for the exit, General Whitehead and Chief Inspector Gamache shook hands over a line that should not be crossed.

Then they parted ways.

“Damn Americans,” said Beauvoir as they drove back to Three Pines.

“Why do you say that?” asked Armand.

“You heard what General Whitehead said.” He was astonished that the Chief would question his statement. “They plan to attack us, supposedly to defend the homeland.”

“It’s already happening,” said Lacoste. “Those posts. The news reports. Those are the first shots.”

“And you don’t think Canada would do the same thing?” said Gamache. “Don’t kid yourselves. If our lives were threatened? Do you think we’d just watch our children and grandchildren die of thirst, of starvation? We’d cross the border in no time. We’d fight tooth and nail for survival.”

I’m dreamin’ of the trees in Canada, Northern Lights are dancing in my head.

If I die, then let me die in Canada, where there’s a chance I’ll die in bed.

Once home, while Isabelle and Jean-Guy joined Nichol in the study to do more digging, Armand grabbed a book from their library, then called Henri, Fred, and Gracie and took them for a walk. Reine-Marie was still in the bistro. He stood outside in the darkness and saw her in the light, talking earnestly with Clara and Myrna and Ruth. With Gabri and Olivier. He tried to guess what they were saying. To read their lips, their bodies. But he couldn’t. It was chilly, and he was about to join her, to sit by the fire with a scotch and read, but he changed his mind and, pulling his coat more tightly around him, he whistled and heard the panting behind him. Up the hill they walked in procession to the church.

Half an hour later he sensed a presence and turned. Reine-Marie was sitting at the end of the pew.

“How long have you been there?”

“Not long.” She slid over and handed him a scotch and a wedge of lemon meringue pie.

“ Merci. ”

“Can you tell me?”

And he did. When he finished, she put out her hand. He passed her back the glass. She took a swig and gave it back.

“Do you believe it?” she asked.

“Iraq comes to mind,” he said.

“Who’d have thought so many reasonable, intelligent people could be convinced to invade a country that had not attacked them?”

“Saddam was a tyrant,” said Armand. “A madman who used poison gas on his own citizens. It was not that difficult to convince people that he’d helped the 9/11 conspirators and had weapons of mass destruction.”

“But he didn’t. There was absolutely no proof.”

“There doesn’t need to be proof. Fear replaces facts.” He fell silent, staring ahead. Following his own train of thought.

It was then that Reine-Marie noticed the book on the pew, with his finger at a certain page. “ Animal Farm ?”

“ Non. ” He held it up.

“ Nineteen Eighty-Four .” She understood. “Orwell.”

Armand opened it and read the section he’d been looking for.

“ The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. ”

“Can it be stopped?” she asked, quietly.

“Yes.”

“You’re not a member of the Ministry of Truth, are you?”

He laughed. It felt good. “ Non. I believe it. But keep that pitchfork handy.”

“I’ll do better than that. We can post Ruth at the border, then dare the commandos to come across.”

“Poor commandos.”

They sat quietly, and into that silence the dogs started snoring. And Armand started humming. It was a tune Reine-Marie recognized from a musical they’d seen together recently.

She sang, softly.

Friends ain’t supposed to die ’til they’re old.

And friends ain’t supposed to die in pain.

Driving through the night back to the Burlington airport, Bert Whitehead thought about the meeting and the play.

So when you fight, stay as calm as the ocean,

And watch what goes on behind your shoulder.

Remember war’s not a place for deep emotion,

And maybe you’ll get a little older.

Mostly the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff thought about the look in Armand’s eyes when he himself had stepped over the border. When he’d crossed the line. Went too far.

That look of determination. Of cold, calm resolve. Almost daring him to go further. And Armand’s two aides-de-camp standing firm behind him.

Any invasion might not be the cakewalk the computer models suggested. He’d have to run another scenario. After he reported to the President, that was.

In Three Pines, under the forgiving gaze of the stained-glass boys, Reine-Marie placed her hand on top of Armand’s.

No one should die alone when he is twenty-one.

And livin’ shouldn’t make you feel ashamed.