Staring at him now was a short, slightly dumpy, young woman with sallow skin marked by old blemishes. Her hair was dull and mousy and her eyes squinted to adjust to the sudden light.
“Why’d you do that?” she demanded.
“Sir,” he snapped. “You’re a disgrace but you’re still a Surete officer. You’ll call me ‘sir’ and the Chief Inspector by his full rank. And you’ll do as you’re ordered. Here.”
He thrust the note at the agent who now looked very young, and very angry. Like a petulant child. Beauvoir smiled remembering his initial disquiet. She was pathetic. A sorry little person. Nothing more.
Then he remembered why he was there.
She might be a sorry little person, but Chief Inspector Gamache was risking his entire career in bringing her secretly into the investigation.
Why?
“Tell me what you know.” She lowered the note and stared Beauvoir in the eye. “Sir.”
It was a disconcerting look. Far smarter, far brighter, than he would have expected. A keen stare, and deep inside, still, a flash of green.
He bristled at her use of words. At that particular phrase. “Tell me what you know.” It’s what the Chief always asked when first arriving at a murder scene. Gamache would listen carefully, respectfully. Thoughtfully.
The antithesis of this willful, warped agent.
Surely she was mocking the Chief. But there were more important things than challenging her on that.
He told her what he knew.
The shooting, the kidnapping, the claims of the farmer to have attached a bomb. To go off the next morning at 11:18.
Instinctively they both glanced at the clock. Ten past six in the evening. Seventeen hours left.
“Chief Superintendent Francoeur believes the kidnapper’s a frightened backwoods farmer, probably with a small marijuana operation, who panicked. They think there’s no bomb and no other plan.”
“But Chief Inspector Gamache doesn’t agree,” said Agent Nichol, reading from the note. “He wants me to monitor closely.” She looked up after a moment digesting the Chief’s instructions. “They’re monitoring closely upstairs I presume?”
She was unable, or unwilling, to rid her voice of bitterness. It was an annoying and annoyed little voice.
At a curt nod from Beauvoir she smiled and carefully folded the note. “Well I guess the Chief Inspector thinks I’m better.”
Agent Nichol stared at Beauvoir, willing him to contradict her. He glared at her.
“Must be,” he finally managed.
“Well, he’s going to have to do more than talk about dog toys. Tell him to pause.”
“Haven’t you been listening? A pause and the bomb will go off.”
“Does anyone really believe there’s a bomb?”
“And you’d risk it?”
“Hey, I’m safe and warm here. Why not.”
At a glare from Beauvoir she continued. “Look, I’m not asking him to go make a cup of coffee. Just a second here and there. Lets me record the ambient sound. Got it? Sir?”
Agent Yvette Nichol had started in homicide. Been chosen by Chief Inspector Gamache. Mentored by him. And had been a near complete failure. Beauvoir had begged the Chief to fire her. Instead, after many chances, he’d transferred her. To do something she needed to learn.
The one thing she clearly could not do.
Listen.
That was her job now. Her only job. And now Chief Inspector Gamache was putting his whole career, and perhaps Agent Morin’s life, into these incompetent hands.
“Why haven’t they traced the call yet?” Agent Nichol asked, swinging her seat back to the monitors and hitting some keys on her computer. The Chief’s voice was crisper now, clear. As though he was standing with them.
“They can’t seem to get a fix,” said Beauvoir, leaning over her chair, staring almost mesmerized at the dancing waves on the screens. “When they do it shows Morin in a different place as though he’s moving.”
“Maybe he is.”
“One moment he’s by the U.S. border the next he’s in the Arctic. No, he’s not moving. The signal is.”
Nichol made a face. “I think the Chief Inspector might be right. This doesn’t sound like something rigged up by a panicked farmer.” She turned to Beauvoir. “What does the Chief think it is?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“It would have to be something big,” Nichol mumbled as she focused on the screen and the voices. “To kill an agent and kidnap another then to call the Chief Inspector.”
“He needs to be able to communicate with us without Chief Superintendent Francoeur knowing,” said Inspector Beauvoir. “Right now all his messages are monitored.”
