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.
Gamache grabbed Claude Dussault, lifting him almost off the ground. Bringing the shorter man to eye level. Within millimeters of his face.
“Where’s my son?”
“Put me down.” Dussault’s voice was strangled by his coat. “Or it ends now.”
Gamache’s grip tightened. Then, against every instinct he possessed, his clenched and cramped fingers released the coat.
Dussault had all but admitted there were snipers aimed at him. If he went down, all was lost.
If Daniel was to have a chance, if any of them were, he had to think clearly. Act rationally.
Gamache took several deep breaths and brought the thudding in his chest under control. “You asked for this meeting before you took Daniel. You want something.”
Dussault raised his brows. Gamache had recovered his senses far faster than he’d expected.
“There is one possible way out of this.”
Gamache recognized what had just happened. It was a common technique. Scare, threaten, raise the pressure and the stakes until the person was out of their mind with terror.
Then offer them a way out.
Even as he recognized it, he also recognized that it worked. He was terrified and he was desperate. And he was listening.
“How?”
“There’s something they want. Something your godfather has.”
“What Thierry Girard was looking for in Stephen’s apartment. Something to do with the neodymium mine.”
Dussault pressed his lips together.
Armand could see that Dussault hadn’t expected him to know so much. This was not working out as Dussault had planned. But neither was it going as Armand had hoped.
Both had delivered punches. And now both were reeling.
But Armand knew he was by far the more bruised. Dussault had Daniel. And therefore Dussault had him.
But Claude had said there was a chance.
“You want me to find whatever evidence Stephen’s hidden. That’s why you’ve taken Daniel. To make sure I do it.”
“Added incentive, yes. It needs to be found before tomorrow morning’s board meeting.”
“And if I do?”
“I think I can convince them to release your son, and let you all leave Paris.”
Armand stared at his feet. Then, looking up, he gave a small nod. As though he believed him. “I’ll need to see Daniel.”
Dussault brought out his iPhone.
“Non. I mean in person. There must be”—the familiar phrase Armand had used so often in hostage negotiations now stuck in his throat, so that for a moment he tasted vomit—“proof of life.”
Dussault considered the man in front of him. “Follow me.”
He turned and walked briskly away from the ghosts of the Place de la Concorde.
They walked for ten minutes, in silence, Armand Gamache following Dussault along boulevard Saint-Germain. Past the young lovers and elderly men and women arm in arm.
Though one elderly woman caught his eye. And smiled reassuringly. As though she knew. That all would be well.
Daniel’s father clung to the look in those clear and kindly eyes long after she was gone. He knew it was an illusion, a delusion, but it comforted him as he walked through the darkness.
When they turned down boulevard Raspail, Armand knew where they were going. Where Daniel had been taken.
It was both cruel and kind. Armand was both sickened and relieved.
They were holding Daniel in Stephen’s apartment. A place Daniel had visited many times. Where his son had happy memories and where he might be less afraid.
But it was one more violation for Armand. His own safe place defiled beyond redemption.
When they arrived, Madame Faubourg came out to greet them.
“It’s wonderful to see Daniel. I hope you don’t mind my letting him and his friends into Monsieur Horowitz’s apartment. He did have the JSPS card.” She leaned closer to Armand. “Not that he needed it. I’d have let him in anyway.”
Light spilled from the open door to her apartment, and with it the scent of ginger and molasses.
“Any more news about Monsieur Horowitz?”
“I’m afraid not. I won’t be staying long, but I think Daniel and his friends might stay the night. Sort through things. Best not to disturb them.”
“Of course.”
She nodded to Dussault and wiped her hands on her apron as she watched them walk through the courtyard.
In the elevator, Gamache turned to Dussault. “How can you be part of this? What happened?”
“Don’t be so fucking sanctimonious, Armand. Have you looked around? What’s the difference between this and the tobacco companies? The pharmaceuticals that continue to sell drugs they know are killing people? Airlines that fly planes they know are dangerous, elevators that plunge to the ground? How about nuclear power stations coming online? Engineers who continue to use faulty and inferior materials? The governments that drop regulations in favor of profit? They’re killing thousands, hundreds of thousands. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t tell me you haven’t knowingly endangered innocent lives, justifying it as for the greater good. Where’s the line?”
“That’s your justification? I’ll tell you where the line is. It’s buried under that pile of corpses you helped make.”
The elevator jerked to a stop, and Dussault yanked the metal accordion door open.
“You can’t win. Since you refused to leave, what you’re fighting for now is how badly you’re going to lose. How much you’re going to lose. If they think you know what Horowitz has and aren’t telling them, they’ll kill Daniel now. In front of you. And then they’ll go to the archives, hunt down everyone there, and kill them. And then they’ll go to the George V—”
“Enough!”
“—and they’ll kill everyone there. One by one. Until you hand it over.”
“You’d do that?” demanded Armand, horrified. “You’d let them do that?”
“I can’t stop it even if I wanted to. Fuck, Armand, they’re the truck and you’re the bug. You and your family are about a millimeter away from that windshield now.”
“But I don’t know what Stephen found. Maybe nothing.” Armand felt himself sliding into panic. “Maybe he just had suspicions and no hard evidence. He might’ve hoped it would be enough to frighten the board. He might’ve thought coming from him, that would be enough.” He stared at Claude Dussault. Desperate now. “Maybe there’s nothing to find.”
“You’d better pray there is, and that you find it.”
Dussault knocked, then opened the door to Stephen’s apartment.
Four men stood up and turned to them. One of them, Gamache saw with near despair, was Xavier Loiselle.
He was holding an assault rifle. On Daniel.
CHAPTER 37
Armand pushed past Dussault.
Xavier Loiselle swung his weapon toward him, but Dussault simply gestured and Loiselle stepped back.
Armand grabbed Daniel and held him close, whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
He could feel Daniel trembling as he clutched his father. Then Armand pulled away and, holding Daniel at arm’s length, he examined the bruise and blood on his son’s face.
Then he turned to the three large men.
“Who did this?”
“I did,” came a voice from the dining room. And Thierry Girard appeared. “He wouldn’t tell us what he found at the bank. But then”—Girard smiled—“he did.”
“Dad, I’m sorry.”
“They already knew,” said Armand, his voice a snarl. He faced Girard. “You already knew what he found, didn’t you? But you beat him anyway, you sadistic shit.”