“The winning ticket wasn’t hidden or lost, was it?” asked Beauvoir.

Gamache shook his head. “No, he kept it on the chain around his neck, remember? Where the crucifix once was.”

“Shit. What else, what else? Did anyone lose a key? A glove, anything?”

Beauvoir opened the script and turned the pages at random, with growing frenzy.

“Call Isabelle,” said Gamache. “Tell her about the CBC news at six, and get her to have every copy of that play picked up.”

“Mary Fraser and Sean Delorme have one,” Beauvoir reminded him, as the phone rang.

“Leave them alone,” said Gamache. “If they’ve read Fleming’s play then they’ve also missed the reference. Let’s keep it that way.”

Beauvoir got Lacoste on the line, put her on speaker and brought her up to speed.

“I know about the CBC,” she said. “Professor Rosenblatt was just in here. He had a call from a journalist asking about the Supergun. They’ve obviously done enough research to know he’s the expert on Gerald Bull.”

“What did he tell them?” Beauvoir asked.

“He says he told them he’s long retired and the case of Dr. Bull was long ago. They asked about finding Project Babylon and he said he thought that unlikely since it probably was never built and wouldn’t work anyway.”

“Did they buy it?”

“Not for a moment,” said Lacoste. “The professor’s afraid he might have even made it worse by denying what they already knew to be true.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to make it worse at this stage,” said Beauvoir.

“Well, the good news is, so far they don’t seem to know where the gun is, and I suspect they’ll zero in on Highwater to begin with. They might even stop there.”

But they all knew that wasn’t going to happen. “You’ll get all the copies of the play? But leave the CSIS agents out of it.”

“I’ll get Cohen on it,” she said.

“No,” Gamache interrupted. “Not Cohen. Can you get another agent to do it?”

“I can,” she said, her voice guarded. “Why?”

“I’d like Agent Cohen to stay in the Incident Room. Do you mind? I’ll explain when we get there.”

They hung up and Beauvoir glared at the phone, not daring to look at his father-in-law. He knew why Gamache wanted Cohen to stay behind.

It was a terrible thing he was about to do.

Chapter 38

CHAPTER 38

“That’s insane.” Then, after a tense pause, Isabelle Lacoste added, “Sir. Even if we could get Fleming out of the SHU and bring him here, it would be like releasing a plague.”

“We have”—Gamache looked at the clock on the train station wall—“three hours and five minutes until the news breaks and there’s no going back. It takes two hours to drive to the SHU. Agent Cohen will have to leave now.”