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.
Armand rubbed Daniel’s back, murmuring, “We’re safe. It’s over. We’re safe.”
“I thought you were dead. I thought I was about to die.” Daniel sobbed, coughing and spitting.
“Shhhh,” said his father. Not to stop his tears, but to comfort him.
“How?” Loiselle repeated, staring at the great red stains on Dussault’s chest, then over to the stains on Gamache’s chest, head, and back. “Dye?”
“No.” Dussault shoved up his sleeve and showed the puncture where his blood had been taken. “Girard would know fake blood. I loaded his gun with cartridges filled with real blood.”
“Girard’s gun?” Loiselle asked.
“No, his.” Dussault pointed to Armand, who had struggled to his feet and was bending over in pain. “I left it in your apartment, hoping you’d find it, Armand, and have it with you. When you didn’t—”
“When I first met you last night? No,” he said, straightening up. “It took me a while to work out what you were doing. Whose side you were on. Did you know about the attacks on Stephen and Monsieur Plessner?”
“Oui. But I couldn’t stop them.” The two men, who’d both had to make horrific choices in their lives, stared at each other. “I’m sorry, Armand.”
“You could see why I’d doubt,” said Armand.
“When did you know what I was really doing?” Dussault asked.
“When I found the coins in the fountain, I began to suspect you threw them there to get them away from Daniel and to keep them safe, as evidence. I couldn’t think of any other reason for you to not only do it, but do it in front of me. So I’d see. But it wasn’t really until you started reading the file that I was certain.”
“As late as that?” asked Dussault.
“Oui. There was almost no evidence in there. I’d taken most of it out and hidden it in the Musée. When you didn’t say anything, I knew. All the way over here I’d tried to figure out how this could possibly work. The only way I could see was if Girard frisked me and took the gun. Then used it to shoot me and Daniel. When he didn’t, I had to improvise.”
“By shooting me,” said Dussault.
“By pretending to, yes.”
“How did you know he was on our side?” asked Daniel, looking at Loiselle.
“When he hit me in the stomach, he’d obviously pulled the punch. I was pretty sure then. And even this”—he touched the side of his head—“was glancing, designed to draw blood but nothing more. But by then I knew.”
“How?” asked Loiselle.
“At the archives, when I was running to the street, you were shooting and missing. Believe me, no special-forces-trained commando would miss. I take it Arbour, Lenoir, and de la Granger are safe?”
“Yes,” said Loiselle. “Before I left, I arrested the commander. The others quickly gave up, as I knew they would. Their hearts aren’t in the job. There’s no loyalty.”
“Well,” said Dussault, looking at the young man. “There is some.”
“Yessir.”
“If you knew these two were on our side,” Daniel asked his father, “why not just end it then? Why take the risk Girard and the other guards would kill us?”
“They almost did,” said Gamache. “I think Girard would’ve killed me if you hadn’t come out. That distracted them. Gave me a chance. You saved my life.”
“We couldn’t stop them yet,” said Dussault. “We had evidence against Girard and Pinot, but not against GHS. They were setting up Carole Gossette to take the blame. We need Girard and Pinot to take the file to the CEO. We need her to accept it. We have to prove it goes much higher, much further. And we need Pinot to sit down at that table. Speaking of which, we have to go. The board meeting’s about to start.”
“You have to get the evidence first,” said Armand, and told them where he’d hidden it.
“Aren’t you coming?” Dussault asked.
“No.” He turned to Daniel. “You’re going in my place.”
After he told his son what needed to be done, he said, “Thank God you’re a banker. This has to be done exactly right, and you’re the one to do it. None better.”
Daniel turned a furious red and nodded. “It’ll be done.”
“What’re you going to do? Sit on a bench and sip Pernod?” asked Claude.
“Why do people keep asking me that?” said Armand. “No. I’m going to meet my granddaughter.”
Armand had stopped at their apartment for a quick shower, a change of clothing, and two extra-strength aspirin for his splitting headache. In fact, his whole body hurt.
Except his heart.
He’d called Reine-Marie and told her what had happened. She in turn had told Jean-Guy, but Annie had been resting.
“Dad? You’ve seen her?” Annie now asked, her voice thick. “Idola.”
“Idola,” her father whispered. “Perfect. She’s perfect.”
He looked at Jean-Guy. “May I?”
Idola’s father got up and carefully handed his daughter to her grandfather, looking him in the eyes. “We’re safe?”
“Oui.”
Armand cradled her, then reluctantly handed the baby back to her father.
Jean-Guy sat down and, closing his eyes, he rocked his daughter, feeling her heart against his. And her tiny feet resting against the jagged scar across his belly.
Daniel walked around the table to stand behind Alain Pinot. He bent down and whispered, “You’re in my seat.”
“What’s this about?” demanded the CEO.
“He sold his place on the board,” said Daniel.
“That’s not true,” said Pinot. “I have no idea who this man is.”
“Of course you do, sir. You tried to have me killed just a few minutes ago.”
“That’s absurd,” said Pinot, appealing to his fellow board members.
“You conspired to murder the Chief Archivist, the Chief Librarian, and one of GHS’s own engineers, Madame Séverine Arbour,” said Claude Dussault. “And you were party to negligence by GHS Engineering that has led to the deaths of tens of thousands.”
There was an immediate uproar in the room amid calls for the chair to do something.
“Quiet,” Dussault demanded.
He walked them through what had happened.
The derailment of the train in Colombia. The questions asked by the journalist. Her visit to the water treatment plant, and the old mine. Her subsequent murder in Patagonia. The recent attack on the financier Stephen Horowitz. The murder of Alexander Plessner.
“But why?” asked the former President of France.
Claude Dussault concisely, precisely, told them about the mine. The neodymium. The ore secretly shipped back. And used in planes that crashed.
As he listed the tragedies, the Prefect felt his control slipping. His voice rising. Bridges that collapsed. Trains that derailed and elevators that failed.
Until, at the final example, he lost all composure.
“And nuclear power plants.”
Pounding the table with both fists so that the board members startled, he shouted, his voice almost a scream. “For God’s sake,” he pleaded. “What. Were. You. Thinking?”
Tears had sprung to his eyes, and he had to stop himself. Bring himself back under control.
“You knew. Some of you knew.” He looked at Madame Roquebrune, who held his eyes without apology. Then to Alain Pinot. “You piece of shit, you knew. And you’d have let it happen.”
He saw the blood drain from the room. And he wondered how many of them were thinking of those who’d died and might still. Or of themselves.
“Stephen Horowitz came to you with his concerns a few years ago, didn’t he?” Daniel said to the CEO, giving the Prefect a chance to catch his breath. “You promised to look into it, but instead you covered it up. And when he realized that, and collected evidence himself, you began a campaign against him. Ending with an attempt on his life Friday night.”