Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

“Hello?”

Michael Rosenblatt opened the wooden door and stuck his head in, without great optimism.

This must be a mistake, he thought.

The place looked abandoned, like most of the old train stations in Québec. But the guy at the bistro had pointed him in this direction.

“Bonjour?” he called, louder this time.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw the outline of something large and it stopped him from going further into the gloomy building.

He peered at it. His eyes must’ve been playing tricks on him because it appeared to be a fire truck. Parked in the middle of an old train station. Which he’d been told was the Sûreté office. Nothing was making sense.

He turned around, unsure what to do next.

“That was fast,” said a man’s voice.

From behind the fire truck came a man with his arm extended.

“Professor Rosenblatt? I’m Jean-Guy Beauvoir,” he said. “We spoke on the phone.”

“How do you do?” said Rosenblatt, taking the strong hand.

Before him was a Sûreté officer in his late thirties. Attractive and well groomed. Slender but not thin, he gave the impression of immense suppressed energy. A slingshot about to be released.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir saw a short elderly man in a tweed jacket and bow tie. His white hair was wispy on top and his midsection was comfortably rounded.

With one soft hand, Professor Rosenblatt pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. With the other he clutched a battered leather satchel.

But the eyes were bright. Sharp. Assessing. Despite his appearance, there was nothing muddled, nothing befuddled about this man.

“Thank you for coming. I didn’t expect you so quickly,” Beauvoir said, and turned to walk back into the old railway station.

“I don’t live all that far from here.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I retired down here, though I have to say this village comes as a bit of a surprise. I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s difficult to find,” said Beauvoir. “Hope you didn’t have trouble.”

“I’m afraid I have no sense of direction,” said Rosenblatt, following Beauvoir. “It’s a source of some embarrassment. I suspect it undermines my credibility as a specialist in guided missiles.”

He described how he’d wandered the back roads, pulling over now and then to consult maps and his GPS. But no village called Three Pines seemed to exist. He grew more and more anxious, turning, turning, turning at random, trying this road, that dead end.

“Three Pines,” said Rosenblatt. “Even the name sounds slightly ridiculous in an area thick with pines.”

But then, just as he was about to give up, he crested a hill, along a rutted dirt road, and put on the brakes.

There appeared below him, like an apparition, a small village. And in the very center were three tall pine trees. Waving.