“How much more rotten do you think I can get?” asked Fleming with a grin, and Gamache could almost smell the decay. “If I’m the child, what must the parent be like? If I’m a branch, imagine the taproot.”

The words seemed whispered directly into Gamache’s ear, on warm fetid breath.

“There’s a purpose to everything under the sun. Isn’t that what you believe?” Fleming said. “I have a purpose. And so do you. Now go back to your pretty little village with all those hiding places and think about that. And then I want you to come back and let me loose so I can give you the plans for Armageddon, and then disappear. Never bother you again. You said I’ve been waiting for someone, and you were right. I’ve been waiting for you.”

Gamache got up. It was over.

Chapter 37

CHAPTER 37

Jean-Guy wanted to say something, but couldn’t find any words that would make this better. And so he just drove while Gamache stared out the window.

The Chief had once told him about the behavior of gorillas when faced with an attack. They met it head on, staring down the enemy. But every now and then they’d reach out to touch the gorilla beside them. To make sure they were not alone.

Keeping his eyes on the road, Jean-Guy reached out and touched Gamache’s shoulder.

Armand turned and smiled at Jean-Guy.

“You all right?” Beauvoir asked.

“Are you? At least I knew what we were in for.”

“Did you?”

“No,” Armand admitted with a tired grin. “I thought I did, but you can’t really prepare for that. Still, we learned some things. Fleming was the one who killed Gerald Bull.”

“On someone’s orders. The ‘agency.’ I don’t suppose there’s much doubt which agency. He must mean CSIS.”

Gamache nodded but seemed distracted. “Maybe. Probably. He certainly knew about Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme.”

“Was one of them in Brussels?” asked Beauvoir. “Did Fraser or Delorme take that picture and then order the murder of Dr. Bull?”

“I was wondering the same thing, though there are other possibilities.”

“Professor Rosenblatt,” said Beauvoir. The elderly scientist who stood on the edge of so much of what had happened in the past, and was happening now. He glanced over at Gamache, whose eyes were narrowed, following a path, but not the road they were on.

“Is there someone else, patron?”

“There is one other person, Jean-Guy. Another possibility.”

Beauvoir went through all the people in the case who were of the right age to have been active in Brussels in the early 1990s.

“Monsieur Béliveau?” he asked. “He seems to know a lot about this, and really, what do we know about him? No one but Ruth even knew his first name.”

“I wasn’t thinking of him,” said Gamache. “I was thinking of Al Lepage.”