The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #11) - Louise Penny Page 0,121
want to tell me?” Gamache asked.
“Why do you want to know? Can it possibly matter?”
“I wasn’t so sure before,” said Gamache. “But now I’m beginning to wonder.”
The two men stared at each other.
“Tell me about the Whore of Babylon.”
And now there was a reaction. A thinning of the lips, a narrowing of the eyes. And then the razor smile again.
“I wondered when someone would come asking.” Fleming regarded Gamache as though he was Fleming’s guest and not the other way around.
“And what’s the answer?” Gamache asked.
“Who are you?” Fleming asked.
He hadn’t moved since sitting down. Not a millimeter. His hands, his head, his body remained completely still, like a mannequin. As far as Gamache could tell, he wasn’t even breathing.
There was only that one blink. And the smile. And the soft, flawed voice.
“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,” said Gamache conversationally, “Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
Was there, from across the table, the slightest pulse of alarm?
Gamache leaned forward and whispered, “That’s who I am.”
“How do you know about the Whore of Babylon?” Fleming asked.
“Which one?” Gamache countered, and again Fleming blinked. And paused.
He has to think, thought Gamache. Which means I’m in his head now. It was not an altogether comforting thought.
“You obviously found the gun,” said Fleming.
“Obviously,” said Gamache. And waited.
“Where did you find it?” asked Fleming.
“Where you left it, of course. It’s not exactly mobile, is it?”
“Tell me where you found it,” said Fleming.
He’d become wary. He’d sensed something in Gamache. A slight hesitation, perhaps. A change of pallor, or breathing, or heartbeat. This man was a predator, with the heightened senses that went with a lifetime of stalking. And killing.
The only way to stop a predator was to be a bigger one, Gamache knew. He hadn’t survived a lifetime of catching killers by being meek or weak.
“We found Baby Babylon in Highwater,” he said casually. “Or at least what was left of the gun. The other was in the forest. As for the Whore of Babylon, well, it was hard to miss. Then we had a little chat with Al Lepage.”
He waited while Fleming digested this information.
“I told Bull he was the weak link,” said Fleming at last. “But Bull trusted the man.”
“Dr. Bull trusted you too. Seems he did not have good instincts,” said Gamache. “As it turned out, Dr. Bull was the weak link.”
Fleming studied him. Trying, Gamache sensed, to figure out how best to fillet him. Not, perhaps, physically, but intellectually, emotionally.
Gamache didn’t take his eyes off Fleming, but he was aware of Beauvoir at the door, a look of anxiety on his face. Sensing trouble.
“Yes,” said Fleming. “Gerald Bull had a good brain, but he had a huge ego and an even bigger mouth. Too many people were finding out about Project Babylon. He was even beginning to hint that Big Babylon had been built.”
Fleming shook his head slightly. It had the disconcerting effect of looking like the movement of a cheap wooden doll.
“Baby Babylon wasn’t really a secret, was it?” said Gamache. “It wasn’t meant to be. We all knew about it.”
The strategic use of “we” caught Fleming’s attention.
“That was my idea,” he said. “Build the gun on the top of a mountain, pointing into the States. Make it a ‘secret.’” His pallid hands did the air quotes.
“So that all eyes would be on it.” Gamache nodded in appreciation. “Not on the other one. The real one. And they said Gerald Bull was the genius.”
It was said sarcastically, and Fleming flushed.
“It fooled you, didn’t it?”
Gamache lifted his hands then dropped them to the cold metal table, so like an autopsy bench.
“You don’t really know who I am, do you?” said Gamache. It was like toying with a grenade. The guard at the door clutched his assault rifle tighter and even Beauvoir backed away a little.
“No one knew about Big Babylon,” said Fleming. “No one. They thought the Highwater gun was the only one, and when it failed they thought we’d failed.”
“You proved all the critics right,” said Gamache. “Project Babylon wouldn’t work. They laughed and stopped paying attention, and you quietly went about building the real thing.”
It was, Gamache had to admit, genius. A massive act of legerdemain, and the sleight of hand had worked. They were able to hide the biggest missile launcher in history because everyone was looking in the wrong direction. Until Gerald Bull’s ego roared to life.
“Of course, the real genius was Guillaume Couture,” said Gamache.