All the Devils Are Here
- Автор: Пенни Луиза
- Серия: Chief Inspector Gamache #16
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Publishing Group
- ISBN: 9781250145253
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «All the Devils Are Here». Краткое содержание книги:
On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand's godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man's life.
When a strange key is found in Stephen's possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d'Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art.
It sends them deep into the secrets Armand's godfather has kept for decades.
A gruesome discovery in Stephen's Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized.
Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family.
For even the City of Light casts long shadows. And in that darkness devils hide.
“Great,” said Daniel. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” On seeing their expressions, he explained. “Mike Tyson said that.”
“You’re getting advice from Mike Tyson?” said Beauvoir.
“And you’re inviting someone who might be a killer to join us? What’s worse?”
At that moment, Jean-Guy was tempted to show Daniel what being punched in the face felt like.
And yet, maddeningly, he recognized that Daniel, and Mike, might be right. Only the most disciplined, or the most stubborn, stuck to a plan when the first blow landed.
The key was knowing when to adapt, and when to hold firm.
And he also recognized, somewhat grudgingly, that Daniel had a right to question. He had a lot at stake.
Was Xavier Loiselle an ally, or a spy?
Was he a member of their Resistance, or a collaborator?
“You’re right,” said Jean-Guy, to Daniel’s surprise. “But I think this’s a risk we need to take.” He turned to Séverine Arbour. “What was your impression of Loiselle?”
She thought about it, then nodded. “I agree. I think he’s sincere. He could’ve turned us in when we went to the office this afternoon, but he didn’t. I think he’s on our side. Is that a certainty?” She looked at Daniel. “No. As an engineer, I’m not at all comfortable with probabilities. The bridge will probably stay up. The plane will probably fly. No. We deal with as close to certainties as we can get. But life isn’t a schematic. It’s not an engineering project. Sometimes we need to take a risk. And sometimes, I guess, we need to be the one doing the punching.”
Beauvoir nodded to Daniel. And Daniel, after a pause, nodded back.
“Did you say you went back to GHS Engineering this afternoon?” asked Armand.
“Yes,” said Arbour. “All three of us. Loiselle pretended he was still tailing us.”
“Why did you do that?” asked Reine-Marie. “Isn’t that like walking right into the rat’s nest?”
“We wanted to try to get into Carole Gossette’s files,” said Madame Arbour. “She oversees both the Patagonia and Luxembourg projects. We thought we might find out what GHS Engineering was really doing.”
Armand sat forward. “You mentioned Patagonia earlier. What’s that about?”
“Seven years ago the regional government realized that an abandoned mine was poisoning the drinking water of a town downriver,” she explained. “GHS Engineering was contracted by the Chilean government to build a water treatment plant. Which they apparently did.”
“Apparently?” asked Reine-Marie.
“According to what I was seeing coming across my desk, it was taking a very long time to build. Far too long. I wasn’t suspicious of anything at first, except maybe government corruption, payoffs. The usual. Contractors prolonging construction to make more money. I did see that one of the first things GHS did before even beginning the project was to order a water sample taken and analyzed so they’d know what was coming down from the mine.”
“That makes sense, doesn’t it?” said Reine-Marie.
“Yes. What didn’t make sense is that the detailed results of that test were missing. What I did see was that GHS bought the mine and closed it.”
“But why buy it?” asked Daniel. “If it was already abandoned and closed?”
“Exactly,” said Madame Arbour. “So I began to look closer. What really triggered my suspicions were the containers coming back from Chile. The documentation said they were equipment, but the weights didn’t make sense, and the destinations didn’t either. They cleared customs in record time, then the containers moved from site to site, eventually ending up in smelters. You don’t melt down an excavator.”
“The mine had been reopened,” said Jean-Guy. “They were shipping back ore.”
“And hiding the fact,” said Madame Arbour.
“But why? What’s in the mine?” asked Daniel. “Gold?”
“Something even more precious.”
“Diamonds?” he asked, and when Madame Arbour shook her head, he said, “Uranium?”
Madame Arbour held up her hand to stop the cavalcade of guesses. “Rare earth minerals.”
Daniel leaned back on his crate. “Wow. Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. There was a mention, just in passing, in a report from a Chilean geologist. But it didn’t say what sort.”
“What’s a rare earth mineral?” asked Reine-Marie. “It sounds familiar.”
“The market went wild for them a few years ago,” Daniel explained, “when scientists realized what they could be used for.”
“Like?” asked Armand.
Séverine Arbour ran through some of the uses. Everything from laptops to medical equipment. From nuclear reactors to airplanes.
“And there’re experiments with next-generation telecommunications,” said Jean-Guy.
“Shit,” said Daniel. “If you could get in on the ground floor…”
“Yes,” said Séverine Arbour. “You could make a fortune. The thing with rare earth minerals is that they tend to be far stronger than other minerals. Last longer, are lighter and easily adaptable. Versatile. Pretty much an engineer’s dream.”
“What kind did they find?” Daniel asked.
“That’s the problem,” said Jean-Guy. “And that’s why we wanted to find the water test. We don’t know.”
“So you don’t know what it might be used for,” said Armand.
“Exactly,” said Arbour.
“Is that what they’re trying to cover up?” said Reine-Marie. “Not that they found the minerals, but what they’re doing with it? And that’s what Stephen and Monsieur Plessner found out?”
“I think so,” said Jean-Guy. “But when we went to GHS, Loiselle interrupted us.”
“But I thought—” began Daniel.
“He had no choice,” explained Jean-Guy. “Someone from SecurForte was with him. Someone way up the chain. It was clever of Loiselle to be there, too. He appeared to have informed on us, but I think he was playing the only hand he could. Solidifying his position with his superior while also protecting us. But there’s something else. I recognized the SecurForte officer. And so would you.”
“Me?” asked Gamache. “Who was he?”
“That man we saw on the security tape here at the hotel, having tea with Claude Dussault and Eugénie Roquebrune.”
Gamache absorbed that information quickly, then asked, “Did he tell you his name?”
“Yes. Thierry Girard.”
Jean-Guy Beauvoir wasn’t prepared for Gamache’s reaction. Rarely had he seen his former boss and mentor so surprised.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Thierry Girard?” Gamache asked. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Madame Arbour. “Why? Do you know him?”
Instead of answering, Gamache was quiet for a moment. Thinking. Slowly leaning back until he rested against the concrete wall. His hand went to his face, and his eyes narrowed in concentration.
“Thierry Girard used to be Claude Dussault’s second-in-command. He told us last night that Girard had left the Préfecture for a job in private industry. But I didn’t know it was with SecurForte.”
He looked at Beauvoir across the storeroom. As he had across so many rooms, across so many crimes, across so many corpses, across the years.
“They were both meeting with Eugénie Roquebrune yesterday,” said Jean-Guy. “It looks like he’s still Dussault’s second-in-command, only now in SecurForte.”
His voice was gentle, knowing that Claude Dussault and Gamache went way back. And that his father-in-law considered Dussault a friend.
Though evidence was now nearly overwhelming that that was no longer true.
It looked like Claude Dussault had quietly taken over as head of SecurForte, with Thierry Girard back as his loyal second-in-command. Running the day-to-day operations of the private army, while Dussault remained at the head of the Préfecture.