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.
Neodymium.
And below that the letters XL.
He showed it to the others. “What does this mean?”
They crowded around.
“Neodymium is a rare earth element,” said Séverine Arbour.
“Extra large?” asked Daniel. “Oh, right, it’s—”
But a look from his father stopped him.
The message was from Xavier Loiselle. He’d managed to get into Carole Gossette’s files and find the water sample results.
“So he is on our side,” said Reine-Marie.
Though it looked like it, Armand wasn’t totally convinced. He’d used agents to infiltrate organizations, and part of the technique of a spy was to hand over legitimate information as proof they could be trusted.
What he did think was that this information, at least, was correct.
GHS Engineering had discovered neodymium in the abandoned mine.
“What’s it used for?” he asked Madame Arbour.
“Magnets.”
“Magnets?” repeated Jean-Guy. “Fridge magnets?”
The engineer stared at him.
“Yes,” said Madame Arbour. “People are being murdered in an epic battle for control of the fridge magnet empire. Look, magnets are used in all sorts of things, not just to stick hockey logos on your fridge.”
“A simple ‘no’…,” said Beauvoir.
Though it was true. He had several Montréal Canadiens up there.
“What else are they used for?” he asked.
“Computers, I think,” she said. “But there must be a lot of other things. I’m no expert.”
“We need to find out more about this neodymium,” said Armand.
“Shouldn’t be hard.” Séverine pulled out her phone.
“Non,” he said. “We need someplace more private.”
“Then I can go to the archives.”
Jean-Guy glanced at her. This was the second time she’d suggested that.
Why was she so determined to go there, and why was Gamache so determined she should not?
He thought he knew why.
If Madame Arbour was an infiltrator, she must not be there when they found out which board member sold their spot to Stephen.
They were close. So close. They couldn’t take any chances.
“No,” Gamache said to Madame Arbour. “I need you with me at the Lutetia, if you don’t mind.”
There was, as always, courtesy in his words, but their meaning was clear.
Allida Lenoir hung up the phone and turned to her wife. “Back to the mines.”
Far from a derogatory way to describe her work, the head archivist considered the miles and miles of files a gold mine. Filled with treasures, with adventure. The unknown waiting to be unearthed.
“I’m coming with you,” said Judith de la Granger.
As the Chief Librarian for France, Judith de la Granger knew, better than most, that the documents contained in the glorious old buildings were both fascinating and dangerous.
And this night had the makings of both.
Ten minutes later they were greeting Reine-Marie at the main gate.
“Hope you don’t mind my bringing Judith along,” said Madame Lenoir.
“God, no,” said Reine-Marie.
The Chief Librarian was legendary in Reine-Marie’s universe.
From an old aristocratic family, Judith de la Granger’s ancestors had owned, almost a millennium ago, the original château where the archives and museum now stood.
Slight, fine-boned, she radiated a fierce energy and intelligence. A lioness stuffed into a gerbil’s body.
“I hope you don’t mind my bringing my son-in-law,” said Reine-Marie, introducing Jean-Guy.
Reine-Marie explained that while he now worked in private industry in Paris, Jean-Guy had been a senior officer in homicide in the Sûreté du Québec.
As they made their way to the reading room, Reine-Marie followed Jean-Guy’s eyes out the window and saw what he was staring at.
A dark spot against the sunset. Like an astigmatism in the eye.
A drone.
The Banque Privée des Affaires, for security reasons since the recent terrorist attacks, did not encourage weekend visitors. And the guard was more than a little suspicious of a junior executive who urgently needed to get in at seven on a Sunday evening.
Even when, especially when, Daniel produced the JSPS card.
The guard looked at the card, then made a call.
“Can you come to the front desk please, patron. There’s someone here who has an ID in the name of Daniel Gamache. But he just gave me a card with someone else’s name. Yes, it is suspicious.”
“No—” Daniel began, then stopped when the guard put his hand up for him to be quiet.
A door opened and the supervisor came out. Not saying a word, he studied Daniel, then turned his attention to the card on the counter in front of the guard.
Picking it up, he looked at Daniel more closely, then, to the guard’s amazement, said, “Come with me.”
Séverine Arbour went over to the statue of Gustave Eiffel at the entrance to the Lutetia and was admiring this hero of France. A giant among engineers and innovators.
A man of vision, of courage, and of brute ambition.
While she studied the face of the great engineer, Gamache studied the faces of the hotel guests, to see if he recognized any from the annual reports. Reine-Marie had been right, of course. This was a rat’s nest.
At least one, probably more, of the people under that roof had been involved in the murder of Alexander Francis Plessner and the attack on Stephen.
They’d threatened, hounded, pursued, chased his family from their homes. All in an effort to make them go away.
And he wanted them to know it had not worked.
Far from going away, he’d come to them. For them.
“Madame Arbour?” he said, and together they walked down the long corridor, their footsteps echoing off the marble surfaces.
At bar Joséphine, they found a table against the wall and ordered drinks.
While Madame Arbour took a long sip of her red wine, Armand simply swirled his scotch, then put it back on the table.
“Recognize anyone?” he asked.
She looked around at the other patrons. Well-heeled, well-dressed. Mostly white, mostly French. Mostly older. They looked like them.
“No.”
But Gamache did. Over there, in a quiet corner, was the former head of the UN Security Council. She now sat on the GHS Engineering board. Joining her was another member of that board.
And there in the center of the room, holding court, was the head of a media conglomerate who also sat on the GHS board.
Loud and laughing, corpulent and confident, the man commanded attention.
Gamache continued to study the room. He’d become, through practice and necessity, very good at faces. He recognized most of the members of the board from news reports over the years. And their photographs in the annual report.
He suspected some, if not most, would have no idea that anything untoward was going on. They’d been flown to Paris on private jets, put up in a luxury hotel, were being pampered in advance of an annual rubber-stamp board meeting.
But some would know what was really happening. The question was, which ones? And which one had Stephen approached with a sackful of money?
As he looked around, not trying to conceal his interest, a few caught his eye and paused. Returning the stare of the distinguished stranger before turning away.
Yes, some in that room definitely knew what was going on.
He just wished he was one of them.
“I’ve never been to this hotel,” Séverine Arbour was saying. “I’d have expected it to feel different. Not so inviting.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, isn’t this where the Nazi interrogations happened?” She fixed him with a hard gaze. “Seems appropriate.”