“No,” he said. “Dr. Bull didn’t have them. He didn’t need them. They weren’t his plans, after all. They were Couture’s. The plans never left Québec.”

“You’re getting closer,” Fleming said in a singsong voice, a parody of a children’s game of hide and seek.

Fleming sat back down.

“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?” he said to Gamache. “You have the gun but not the plans. Funny, isn’t it? That little village has so many hiding places, and so much to hide. I wonder if it really is Paradise, or something else? What would hell look like? Fire and brimstone, or some beautiful place, in a glade or valley? Luring you in with the promise of peace and protection, before turning into a prison. The cheerful grandmother with the lock and key.”

Fleming examined Gamache.

“I know where the plans are. You might find them without me. Or you might not. Or…” Fleming paused, and smiled. “While you’re turning over every stone, someone else might find the plans to Project Babylon. And then what?”

“What do you want?” Gamache asked.

“You know what I want. And you’re going to give it to me. Why else would you be here?”

“You thought I was someone else,” said Gamache. “Someone you’ve been waiting for all these years. Someone who terrifies you.”

He looked at the black-and-white photo of the fathers of Project Babylon. Two dead men and one imprisoned for life. But there had been someone else in Brussels that day, Gamache realized. There had to have been.

“Who took the picture?” he asked.

Fleming leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. But something had shifted. Fleming’s fingers were closed tight around the bones of his arms. The sardonic smile was forced.

Gamache had hit on something.

“You helped create Project Babylon,” Gamache pressed. “On the orders of someone who wanted you to keep an eye on Gerald Bull. The same person who took the photograph. Who was there with you all in Brussels. But you lied to them, didn’t you, John? You told them about Highwater, but not the other. You killed Bull when he got too dangerous, started talking, starting hinting there was another gun. Then you stole the plans and hid them. Believe me, John, you don’t want freedom. You wouldn’t live a day outside these walls. You’re a polio victim and this is your iron lung.”

“You think they’d harm me?” Fleming asked. “I’m their creation. I might’ve made my own Whore of Babylon, but they made me. They need me to do what they will not.”

“They don’t need you. You’ve been discarded, left here to rot.”