All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #16) - Louise Penny Page 0,119
he realized, almost nothing.
He checked his watch.
Quarter to nine. Time he left for the rendezvous.
But he wasn’t armed, with information or anything else. He glanced at the bookcase. Had he just made a fatal error?
But it was done now.
He called Daniel at the bank again. And again, no answer.
“Something wrong?” Séverine Arbour asked.
“No.”
He stared at his phone, then hit the app. Within seconds it showed Daniel’s location.
Armand exhaled.
He was at the bank. Probably with his phone on silent.
“I’m going to meet Commissioner Dussault,” he said.
“Can I go home now?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not.”
“You still don’t trust me? What do I have to do?”
“It’s not that,” he said, though of course it was. “It won’t be safe for you at home. The only safety is in numbers. You need to join the others at the archives. You’ll be fine there.”
“Fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and egotistical?”
When he looked surprised, she explained. “Beauvoir told me about your Québec village. He talks about it a lot. Apparently it’s filled with fine people.”
They’d left the apartment and were walking quickly through the dark streets of the Marais, trying without success to avoid puddles on their way to the archives.
Armand laughed. “They’re certainly fine. And so am I.”
He called Reine-Marie, and when they approached the massive gates, he saw her and Jean-Guy waiting for them on the other side.
He was surprised by the wave of emotion that washed over him. And by the gulf that existed between them, the immeasurable distance between in there and out here.
“Let me come with you,” said Jean-Guy.
“Claude wants to speak to me alone.”
“I can still be there. Watch from a distance.”
“And do what?” asked Armand.
Without being more explicit, they both knew if it came to that, Armand would be dead before he hit the ground, and there’d be nothing Jean-Guy could do except get himself killed.
“Stay here,” said Armand. “I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
As he left them for his rendezvous, he felt very alone.
CHAPTER 36
Magnificent, isn’t it?” said Claude Dussault as he took his place beside Gamache. “Almost mesmerizing.”
The two men stared at the Fontaine des Mers, on the Place de la Concorde. It was lit up in the dark, so that what spouted from the leaping dolphins looked more like quicksilver than water.
“It is,” agreed Armand.
He hadn’t paused to admire the fountain in years, always passing right by on his way from the Champs-Élysées to the Tuileries Garden.
But now he stared. And noticed that the center of the huge fountain was supported by mythical figures representing the oceans, each sitting in the bow of a ship.
The symbol of Paris? The storm-tossed vessel, threatened, but never foundering.
“When I was growing up,” said Dussault, “no one threw coins in fountains to make wishes. Seems incredible anyone thinks that works.”
The next thing Gamache heard was a plop.
“Then again,” said Dussault, who was watching his coin sink to the bottom, “it probably couldn’t hurt. You might want to make a wish, too.”
“What do you want, Claude?”
Far from being put off by the abrupt question, Commissioner Dussault nodded. Appreciating that there was no longer a need for pretense.
“I thought it was time we talked. Alone.”
“Are we alone?” asked Gamache.
“What do you think?” Dussault looked this way, then that, then began strolling around the fountain.
“I think it’s time for the truth,” said Gamache, falling in beside him. “You’re involved in this, aren’t you.”
They were walking slowly, heads tilted toward each other. A moment of quiet companionship between two old friends.
That would be the perception. The reality was, as it so often is, far different.
“Perhaps,” said Dussault.
Gamache was struggling to remain civil when standing so close to a man who’d all but admitted his role in the attempt on Stephen’s life. In the cold-blooded murder of Alexander Plessner, an elderly, unarmed man.
Around them, floodlights lit up the magnificent monuments. Vehicles passed by. Distinctive French sirens sounded in the distance. Visitors took selfies in front of the statues.
Armand heard snippets of conversations and bursts of laughter.
But mostly he absorbed the words and subtle movements of the man beside him.
The Prefect stopped in front of the Luxor Obelisk. Etched into the base of the great column were what many mistook for ancient hieroglyphics, but which were actually diagrams describing the engineering involved in bringing the three-thousand-year-old monument from Egypt to Paris. Then erecting it on this site.
“Amazing what engineers can do,” said Dussault. “Where would we be without them? They’re the real magicians.”