had received a text from Superintendent Toussaint.
The equipment was assembled, the van was loaded. The assault team was ready.
“If we don’t hear otherwise,” Toussaint wrote, “we’ll leave Montréal in ten minutes and get into position before nightfall.”
“Merde,” wrote Gamache. The Québécois equivalent of “good luck,” and an internal Sûreté signal that all was proceeding well.
“Merde,” she replied. And went silent.
They wouldn’t see each other again until the action was under way.
Gamache looked at the dashboard clock. Six thirty. It would be dark by eight thirty. Superintendent Toussaint had timed it perfectly.
“What’s keeping her?” Jean-Guy asked, as he drove.
The “her” he meant was obvious.
“I don’t know.”
Picking up his iPhone, Gamache called home. And let it ring. And ring. Until he heard Reine-Marie’s recorded voice.
He left a cheerful message, saying he was on his way and that Jean-Guy was with him.
“No answer?” said Jean-Guy. “She’s probably at Clara’s or Myrna’s.”
“Probably.”
* * *
Once in the bathroom, Lacoste locked the door and hit the green talk button. Hoping, hoping the old handset signal reached that far.
She heard a dial tone and quickly punched in numbers.
“Chief?” she whispered when he picked up after half a ring.
“Isabelle, where’ve you been?”
“I couldn’t get away until now. I’m in the bistro. He’s here.”
“Who is?”
“The head of the cartel. Here in Three Pines.”
“We know that,” came Beauvoir’s voice over the speaker. “That’s why you’re there, right? To monitor.”
“No. I mean the American cartel.”
Gamache and Beauvoir looked at each other.
“Are you sure?” asked Gamache.
From anyone else, in any other circumstances, Lacoste would have been annoyed. But she understood his need to be absolutely clear.
“Yes. The American cartel.” The insistence in her voice made it sound like a hiss.
“Shit,” said Beauvoir. “Did he recognize you?”
“I don’t know. The other man with him, his bodyguard or counselor, kept staring. I think Anton told him who I am.”
“Fucking great,” said Beauvoir.
“But I made sure to order a drink and even waved at him.”
“Waved? You waved at the head of the drug cartel?” demanded Beauvoir.
“Well, I didn’t wave my gun,” she said. “I wanted him to know I’d seen him, and clearly had absolutely no idea who he was. It was a friendly little gesture. Maybe you’ve heard of them.”
Gamache nodded slowly. Few people had the presence of mind, the poise of Lacoste. It was exactly the right thing to do. And if the U.S. cartel had any doubts about the incompetence of the Sûreté, that would surely put them to rest. A senior officer not recognizing one of the top criminals in North America.
“What should we do?” she whispered.
The handle of the door rattled. Someone wanted in.
“Just a moment,” she sang out, and the handle went silent.
“How many are there?” Gamache asked.
“The Americans? None outside that I noticed. Only the two of them in the bistro.” Lacoste had dropped her voice even further. “The head of the cartel and an older guy. He’s the one watching closely.”
Yes, thought Gamache. Like in Canada. With the new opioids, the new dark economy, and new technology, there’d been a new leadership. Sometimes bloody, as in the States, sometimes generational, a passing of the torch, as in Canada.
It was a young person’s game now. And few people were more vicious, in Gamache’s experience, than young men. Or women. They hadn’t yet grown weary, grown disgusted with all the bloodshed. In fact, they seemed to revel in it. In their ability to order a kill, and have it carried out. To kidnap and torture and deliver adversaries back in pieces.
It was their own grotesque addiction.
No one was immune. Cops, judges, prosecutors. Children, mothers, fathers. All targets for the butchers.
Unfettered by conscience, they were all-powerful. Immortal. Not godfathers, but gods.
If the Sûreté action that night didn’t work, there’d be bedlam. And the payment would be in flesh and blood. Theirs. Their families’.
Gamache was under no illusion about what was at stake.
“Once you arrive we can take them,” said Lacoste. “I’m sure of it. How far away are you?”
“Twenty minutes,” said Beauvoir, and sped up. “Fifteen.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Gamache’s mind flew over the different possibilities.
He’d expected to confront them in the woods that night, not in the bistro.
But in some ways, this was even better. It meant Toussaint was right and the cartels had fallen for it completely. They were so convinced that the Sûreté was no threat that they’d come this far into the open.
It was rare, almost unheard of, for the actual head of a syndicate to be at the site of any criminal act.