The Black Wolf: A Novel By Louise Penny - 35

As Armand bit into the cannoli, cream squeezed out of the pastry onto his fingers.

Reine-Marie shook her head in amusement as he licked it off. “I can see where Florence gets it from.” Their granddaughter loved being brought to Open Da Night by her grandfather.

They’d been joined by their son and daughter, Daniel and Annie, along with Jean-Guy and Isabelle. Evelyn Tardiff and Yvette Nichol, who seemed to be a couple, were also there for this very informal debrief two days later.

The door opened and Shona arrived, followed by a very familiar face. Paul Workman had come from Toronto. He and his protégée had been promised the exclusive.

They dragged over another round table and a couple of chairs.

So far, what had happened hadn’t gotten out. Prime Minister Woodford had assembled a hastily put-together committee, made up of all parties, to begin the task of investigating what had happened. And quickly assessing the fallout.

The PM had also prevailed on his people, and those in Washington, to allow the police and intelligence services to quietly finish their job before making anything public.

They didn’t want any of the conspirators to go to ground. Or South America.

But Armand trusted everyone at the table, including the journalists. Should anything go wrong, and there was a possibility it still could, the best protection wasn’t force but truth.

Transparency.

“How did you know?” Workman asked, placing his iPhone next to Shona’s. Both recording.

“That it was Lauzon all along?” asked Armand.

“No. We’ve read the document.” Shona nodded to the file on the table, sitting innocently among the demitasses of espresso and the plates of cannoli and bomboloni.

She looked haggard. She woke up screaming every night, and was followed every hour of every day by the image of being tossed out of the helicopter into the fire below. It was a waking, walking nightmare. Made worse by the fear that it might still happen. If they didn’t get this right. Shona had told no one about those dreams. But she didn’t have to. They knew.

The Sûreté officers recognized the signs. That terror that clung like a caul. It was called post-traumatic stress by doctors who had no idea what they were talking about. There was nothing “post” about it. The trauma was still present, ever present. Evergreen. A perpetual, perennial horror, relived every day and through the night.

It might lessen, but it never left.

“The document makes it clear that they meant to set up Woodford and the American President,” Shona continued.

“Did Marie Lauzon realize what the file was saying?” Paul Workman asked.

“That if it wasn’t Woodford, the Black Wolf was almost certainly her father after all?” asked Beauvoir.

“No, I don’t think she did,” said Gamache. “At least not consciously.”

It was one of the more difficult things he’d had to do. Tell Marie that they’d once again arrested her father, using the dossier she’d found containing the plans. And this time the evidence against him, including Jeanne Caron’s and the Minister of Public Safety’s testimonies, would stick.

“It’s obvious that once Woodford was either arrested or killed, Marcus Lauzon would be released from a wrongful conviction,” said Gamache, wiping the last of the cream off his hands. “That was why we had to get him out of Parliament. It seemed the most likely course was to murder him so he couldn’t defend himself.”

“Since Marcus Lauzon would be one of the few now beyond suspicion, he’d be placed at the head of the emergency government,” said Isabelle.

Her ribs were bound, and she was on painkillers and bomboloni.

“And Giselle Trudel?” asked Reine-Marie. “How does she fit in? This file was in her office, after all.”

“Robert Ferguson’s admitted he put it there,” said Jean-Guy. “Trudel had no idea. It was a perfect hiding place. People rarely go into paper files anymore.”

“But why did they even keep it?” Shona asked. “It seems foolish.”

“Electronic files can be hacked,” Nichol pointed out. “Hard copies are easier to control.”

Both Workman and Shona looked dubious, though the conspirators, who’d been so careful, had obviously made that one fatal mistake.

“I feel awful for Lauzon’s daughter,” said Isabelle. “Without her we’d never have survived.”

She herself had been barely aware of what was happening on the helicopter. It was only later she learned what Ferguson had planned for them. And that Captain Pinsent had been in the copilot’s seat. And the pilot was also on their side.

After Marie Lauzon had had Pinsent released, the Captain had rounded up her squad and waited in the tunnel for Marie and Armand to show up with Prime Minister Woodford. While she waited, she’d read the file they’d hidden there.

It had been a shock.

It had become clear to the senior RCMP officer, as the strange day had progressed, that something was very wrong. But she never, ever expected this. A deliberate firebombing of the forests by elements within their own government and military. In order to provoke an action by the United States. And setting up the Prime Minister to take the blame.

Pinsent had gone to the airfield named in the report, leaving her lieutenant behind in the tunnel to wait for Gamache and Marie Lauzon.

Once out, Gamache had driven south to his rendezvous with Jeanne Caron in the Haskell Opera House, while Pinsent had assembled a team of trusted colleagues within both the RCMP and Canadian Armed Forces and headed to Mont-Laurier.

“How did you get Chief Petty Officer Flores to the opera house to arrest Caron?” asked Shona. “You couldn’t have had his contact information.”

“True. I wrote Bert’s number two and told him what was needed, and asked that Flores be sent.”

Jean-Guy smiled. There were many ways, he now knew, to be a poet. Not all of them rhymed.

Captain Pinsent had been invited to join them at Open Da Night, but was in Ottawa answering questions about her own actions. Defying orders and allowing prisoners to escape. No matter the happy outcome, it was still, to the RCMP, disturbing.

Armand had also been summoned and was heading there the next day to be grilled.

But nothing those on the quickly struck Parliamentary committee did to him could be worse than being dragged over the coals by Jean-Guy. Nothing would be worse than seeing the look in those eyes. Not anger but hurt when Jean-Guy realized Armand had withheld information and deliberately allowed him to go to the wrong airport.

Armand and Jean-Guy had sat in the bistro by the muttering fire, exhausted. Their limbs and lids heavy.

Marcus Lauzon had been sent back to prison. The Prime Minister had been sent back home to Ottawa. The Americans had been alerted. The conspirators were hearing knocks on their doors. Woken up with warrants.

But there was one more thing that had to be done before the two comrades could finally go to bed.

They were alone in the bistro. It was, in fact, closed, but Gabri had left them the key. Most of the lights around the village green were out and the villagers snug and safe in their homes.

“You could have told me.” Jean-Guy’s words came out black and blue with hurt.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I made a split-second decision not to. By then I’d grasped that Lauzon was, in fact, behind all this. I couldn’t take the chance that he’d see the message and realize that we’d found the file and knew about Mont-Laurier. About him.”

Armand watched Jean-Guy as he spoke, to see if his own words might act as a balm. They did not.

“Why not? Why couldn’t you take the chance on me? Trust me?”

Now the anger appeared. It bubbled to the surface and poured out of Jean-Guy in his expression. In the balled-up fists thrust into his lap. In the hunched shoulders of a wounded animal protecting its core.

Armand shook his head and heaved an exhausted sigh with the effort to remember his thinking. His reasoning. It wasn’t even that. It was instinct. Jean-Guy was standing beside the man responsible for all this. A man so cunning he’d seen and foreseen every twist and turn.

A creature who’d not only been one step ahead of them the entire time, from the moment that note had been slipped into Armand’s jacket pocket months ago, but who’d also been behind them, inching them in the direction he wanted them to go.

Toward Woodford.

Marcus Lauzon had been everywhere. In their heads, infecting their instincts and reason. Influencing their every thought. Choreographing their every step. Manipulating them.

Manipulating him. Armand now realized that.

He could not risk Lauzon seeing, sensing, even the slightest change in Jean-Guy. For all he knew, the Black Wolf was still playing them. Even now. The thought terrified him.

He held his suddenly cold hands toward the fire dying in the bistro grate.

Their only chance, Armand had felt, was to do the unexpected. Marcus Lauzon obviously knew him well. Well enough to know he would always, always trust Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Would always, always tell him everything.

And so, in a double sin of omission and commission, he’d withheld vital information and fed him false information. Only if Jean-Guy believed him to be an ally would Marcus Lauzon feel safe. And maybe, maybe lower his defenses.

As Inspector Beauvoir’s commanding officer, as the head of homicide for the Sûreté, Chief Inspector Gamache did not need to explain his decisions to a subordinate. But as Jean-Guy’s father-in-law, as his friend, he did. Especially since his decisions had put the man beside him in danger.

He’d have felt the same way, had Jean-Guy done that to him. Rationally, he’d understand, but the head and the heart did not always align.

Armand quietly explained why he’d done it. When he’d finished, Jean-Guy nodded. Then he stood up to leave and Armand felt his heart sink.

He too got to his feet. They faced each other. Two tired warriors.

Then Jean-Guy reached out and pulled the larger, older man forward. And held him, tight. So that their chests pressed against each other and Armand could feel Jean-Guy’s heart. Beating in rhythm with his own.

Then the two comrades slowly made their way across the village green, pausing to look at the three tall pines. The code that told them they were safe. They were home.

And then they joined their wives in bed. And slept soundly for the first time in months.

“No, I mean how did you know there was more going on after the poisoning plot,” pressed Workman. “Everyone thought that was the end of it.”

“We have a problem,” said Lacoste, and everyone at the table turned to her.

“What?” said Chief Inspector Tardiff. “Again?”

“Still?” said Nichol.

“ Non, non, désolée. That was the message the Chief Inspector sent Jean-Guy and me.” She turned to Armand. “You’d gone back over Charles Langlois’s two notebooks and realized we had them in the wrong order. The one we thought was second, that held his conclusions and the key to the poisoning, was actually the first.”

“The stepping stone to the real plot,” said Beauvoir. “Only we couldn’t figure out what it was, just that something else, something bigger, was going to happen.”

“So we had to dig deeper,” said Lacoste. “Go back over what Charles left behind. Go back to the map and pore over the notebooks.”

“And we had to find the laptop,” said Jean-Guy.

“So you knew something was up,” said Workman. “How did you figure out what?”

“Yvette here realized the numbers and symbols Charles had written on the lake were passwords,” said Isabelle. “They took us to .family and eventually to War Plan Red.”

Yvette. She called me Yvette. Not Nichol. Yvette. She looked around and realized she was part of the circle.

Workman shook his head. “Hard to believe War Plan Red actually exists.”

“Agreed,” said Gamache. “After the shock of the First World War, the US decided it needed plans, defenses, should it happen again. So it created various plans. Each with a different color. They were collectively called the Rainbow Plans.”

“War Plan Black for war with Germany,” said Nichol. “War Plan Grey for Central America. War Plan Orange for war with Japan. There were others.”

“Marcus Lauzon, as Deputy PM, had access to the classified files,” said Evelyn Tardiff. “He knew that WPR had been resurrected as military exercises. Updated constantly, but never, as General Whitehead said, meant to be put into action. But Lauzon saw the potential.”

“He saw how fragile water security was becoming,” said Reine-Marie.

“And how desperate the Americans might become,” agreed Isabelle. “All they needed was a shove in the right direction.”

“Toward Canada,” said Jean-Guy.

He was shocked by how easy it had been to turn Canada into an enemy. There were still millions who considered the megafires a deliberate assault. Once that perception was planted, it was almost impossible to refute. The Ministry of Truth at work.

Jean-Guy had just read Nineteen Eighty-Four , after first finishing Animal Farm .

Now he was reading the biography of Maurice “The Rocket” Richard. A hockey legend who had nothing to do with any of this.

“But how do we know that this thing”—Workman tapped the file—“is real? Maybe it was planted. It all seems too easy.”

“Robert Ferguson has admitted it’s real,” said Isabelle. “Besides, everything in it was proven true.”

“War Plan Red. Sounds ridiculous,” said Nichol, shaking her head. “And we all thought you were nuts.”

Armand had dropped his eyes to the document. He’d been silent through this. Partly remembering the steps to get there. Mostly remembering the missteps.

“I really thought it was Woodford,” said Lacoste. “That makes the most sense.”

“That’s what Lauzon said to me. That only Woodford had the power and contacts to organize all this,” said Jean-Guy. “I have to admit it’s one of the things that convinced me I’d been wrong about Lauzon. And then, when he saved us in the caves—”

“If he’s behind all this, why would he save you?” Workman interrupted.

“He needed you alive,” Beauvoir said to Evelyn Tardiff. “To tell us what you knew about Joe Moretti and Mirabel. He needed us to go to the wrong airport.”

“It was Lauzon who told us about the caves and got us to go there, remember,” said Nichol. “He wanted us to save you.” She took Evelyn’s hand. “And really, thank God he did.”

“What is it?” Jean-Guy asked. He’d noticed that Armand was still staring at the document.

Now the Chief raised his eyes. Though he said nothing, Jean-Guy could read that look.

Oh, merde , he thought. We have a problem.

As they left the café, Armand paused on the terrace and looked at the spot where Charles Langlois, the young biologist, had been mown down and died, as Armand held his bloody hand.

This was where it all began. And Armand knew now, it wasn’t over yet.

“What is it, patron ?” asked Beauvoir.

“Workman was right. This is too easy.”

“You consider what happened easy?” asked Isabelle, still in pain from the beating. She watched Shona walking with her mentor down the street. The young journalist’s torment all too obvious.

“I’m sorry,” said Armand. “I didn’t mean that. But Workman was right. Shona also said it. We should never have been able to find this.” He held up the document, then looked at Isabelle. “And we should never have been able to escape. They wanted us to. Why let Captain Pinsent go? I was so relieved to be out, and with the proof, I never really thought about it.”

“They made a mistake, that’s all. Were overconfident.” Though even as he said it, Jean-Guy heard the desperation in his voice.

He was tired and sore and desperate to get back to Maurice “The Rocket” Richard. To lose himself in the glory days of Les Habs, and not worry about the present or the future.

But in his heart, he knew the truth. “We were wrong.”

“I think so. I think we were set up. I think they relied on my willingness, perhaps even eagerness, to distrust Marcus Lauzon. My desire to believe he’s the Black Wolf.”

“But if he’s not?” said Isabelle. When he didn’t answer, she said it out loud. “It’s the Prime Minister? It’s Woodford after all?”

Armand looked down at the document he held. The document he was always supposed to hold. And use.

To arrest, yet again, the wrong person.

He met their eyes. “I think so.”

The next day Inspectors Beauvoir and Lacoste accompanied Chief Inspector Gamache to Ottawa, to answer questions about the role Marcus Lauzon had played in the attempted coup.

And Armand did. He looked the members of Parliament and senators in the face and lied. Over and over.

A week later they flew to Washington, where Armand was an honorary pallbearer at the state funeral of General Albert Whitehead.

After the private reception with the family, Armand and Reine-Marie, along with Jean-Guy and Isabelle, sat in the dim bar in the basement of the Hay-Adams hotel.

“To a man who had the courage to feed the grey wolf,” said Armand.

They lifted their Shirley Temples, with two cherries.

The next day Chief Inspector Gamache appeared before the private House committee that had been struck to investigate what had happened and to uncover just how deep the corruption went.

Once again Chief Inspector Gamache was grilled.

Once again he lied. Over and over.

Explaining that, yes, Marcus Lauzon was behind the plot and that as far as they knew, the American President was blameless, though others high up in the administration must have been involved.

No, he didn’t know who. And neither did Prime Minister Woodford. And Lauzon wasn’t talking. He was in solitary.

Gamache chose not to tell the former Deputy Prime Minister that they now knew he’d been telling the truth. That he’d been, once again, wrongly arrested. By Gamache. Armand couldn’t risk it getting out. Woodford had to believe they’d fallen for it.

Instead, the head of homicide for the Sûreté chose to keep a person he knew was not guilty in a hellhole of a prison. In a hellhole of despair.

It was the only way to put the PM at ease, and the best way to see that Marcus Lauzon would one day die of old age, in bed, instead of bleeding out on some disinfected tile floor. Still, Armand had prevailed on two of the men he’d arrested for especially gruesome murders, who were also in the prison within a prison, to watch over Marcus Lauzon.

In exchange, the head of homicide had agreed to watch over the convicts’ families, especially their children.

With Lauzon as safe as possible, Gamache and his people rushed to gather evidence against the Prime Minister before it was buried too deep.

They moved at a near-panicked pace, while appearing as calm as the ocean. All the while looking over their shoulders. Knowing they were being watched.

But they were not moving fast enough. In frustration Gamache and his people saw each promising lead evaporate. Evidence was disappearing, being destroyed, just before they got to it. It was a race against time. A race Armand feared they were losing.

Armand and Reine-Marie flew to the UK, apparently to go to his reunion at Cambridge, but actually to quietly meet Sherry Caufield. Over tea and scones in a small shop in the Suffolk village of Eye, Armand asked the head of UK counterintelligence to do her own investigation, since she might find what they could not.

Turned out, Caufield had never believed the official story and was re lieved to know that Gamache didn’t either. Unasked, unobserved, she’d already started digging deeper.

“Lauzon could never have put all that together,” she said. “You’re doing that wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” said Reine-Marie.

“You put the clotted cream on the scone first, then the strawberry jam. Not the other way around.”

Caufield seemed as incensed about the scone issue as the plot to provoke mass murder and a regional war.

“ Désolée ,” said Reine-Marie and, turning to Armand, she grimaced.

“Lauzon’s slimy, but more interested in immediate gains. He has no patience. This plot took patience and a master tactician with all the necessary contacts and access. You’re doing that wrong.”

“I’m sorry?” said Armand.

“You put the milk in first, then pour the tea.” The head of British Intelligence huffed, indignant.

“If she calls us colonials, I’m leaving,” muttered Reine-Marie. Though, choosing her battles, she put the clotted cream onto her next scone first.

And in his next cup of tea, Armand poured the milk first.

“So it is Woodford.” He realized as he said it that up until that moment, he’d clung onto a thread of hope that Marcus Lauzon was, in fact, guilty.

“It is.” Sherry Caufield leaned forward and dropped her voice. “You need to stop him, Armand. If he gets control of North America, we’ll all be fucked.”

They’d hoped that the danger was past. But they were wrong. While the forests were not deliberately set on fire, the internet was. Conspiracy theories were gaining ground, fueling wilder and wilder claims. More fear, more fuel, more converts.

Clearly the truth was not effective, so Chief Inspector Gamache did the only thing possible. He lied. And lied. And dug and dug. And lied some more when interviewed, when asked. And hoped the lies would buy them time.