All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #16) - Louise Penny Page 0,135
and listened.
He couldn’t afford to be stopped now. He touched the gun in his pocket.
Nor would he use that on one of the museum guards.
Crouching, he pushed the door open and moved quickly into the bedroom.
He heard a sound and ducked behind the high bedstead.
A guard walked by and paused at the open door. Not a museum guard. This one was in full combat gear and wore the SecurForte insignia.
And carried an automatic rifle.
Gamache backed farther away. And knelt. Placing the dossier on the floor, he opened it and took some photos. Using up precious battery power. Then he sent them to Jean-Guy, Isabelle Lacoste, and himself.
He knew now. Knew what they were hiding. And others needed to know also. In case.
Removing most of the documents, he spread them under the carpet, then checked his phone.
It was now down to three percent power. And the time said five to seven.
He had to get out of there.
He crawled forward to the doorway. The guard had stationed herself at the top of the marble stairs, and now he could see others.
Including one he recognized.
Xavier Loiselle. Cradling his assault rifle. And scanning the area.
For him.
Gamache peered into the room next door. It contained large exhibition boards with mariners’ maps. Extraordinary hand-drawn charts of the known world six hundred years earlier. The positions of land, and water, and dragons.
He heard boots on stairs. A small army on the march. Coming his way.
He had to act now, or never.
Bringing up a search engine on his phone, he put in Sûreté, factory raid. When the vile video on YouTube appeared, he made sure the volume was on high.
Pressing play, he slid his phone along the polished floor, into the next room, and silently blessed winters in his tiny Québec village, shivering on the frozen lake as neighbors tried to teach him the subtle art of curling.
His phone, with one percent battery left, slid to the far end of the room and came to rest under a display case as the sound of shouts and gunfire filled the empty map room.
It reverberated off the marble walls and floors. Echoing, magnifying the sound of a terrible battle being fought amid the sea creatures and dragons, the Sirens and the demons.
The SecurForte guards converged on the room. Assault weapons raised, they entered in combat formation.
He didn’t wait to see what happened next. Taking off in the opposite direction, Gamache raced down the stairs, chased by the familiar gunfire. The familiar explosions licked at his heels. The familiar orders given. His orders. The hot breath on his neck was his own. His voice on the recording. Commanding his people forward. Deeper into the factory.
And then the familiar screams of agony. As his own agents were cut down. Like wraiths, they pursued Gamache. As they had, every day, for years.
He flung himself against the metal panic bar of the side door and flew out into the sunshine.
* * *
“Cease fire,” the leader commanded. “There’s no one here. It’s a recording. Bring it to me.”
Loiselle, on his belly, retrieved the phone. As he handed it over, he saw a man sprinting down the side of the château.
“There he is,” shouted Loiselle and, using the butt of his rifle, he broke the glass and started shooting.
Gamache didn’t swerve. Didn’t look back. He just kept running, even as the bullets struck the columns and walls and ground around him.
“Fuck, Loiselle, get him,” shouted his commander.
Gamache was at the huge wrought iron gates. Loiselle sighted him, but it was too late. Gamache had pushed through and, stumbling, he disappeared down rue des Archives.
“Well, you fucked that up,” said the commander, glaring at his foot soldier. “But at least we know where he’s headed. Better get there, and do it right this time.”
“Yessir.”
Loiselle looked down at the video, still playing on the phone in the commander’s hand.
He watched the familiar images, of Chief Inspector Gamache dragging his second-in-command across the factory floor to safety. After quickly staunching Beauvoir’s abdominal wound, Gamache bent and kissed him on the forehead, whispering to the man he feared was dying, “I love you.”
Then the phone died.
Who would rescue him, Xavier Loiselle wondered, if he was badly wounded?
None of them, he knew as he looked around.
Who, he wondered, would whisper to him in his final moments, I love you?
CHAPTER 41
You okay, man?” the taxi driver asked, glancing in his rearview mirror.
His passenger was twisted in his seat, staring out the back window and trying to catch his breath.