The Nature of the Beast

“As I told your young colleague, Inspector Beauvoir, we worked at McGill at the same time, but I’m afraid I wasn’t completely honest. We did work together, not in the same department but on some of the same projects. Though no one really worked with Gerald Bull. It might start out that way, but eventually you found yourself working for him.”

“Were you working for him when he came up with the plans for the Supergun?”

“No. I left when he began using the Soviets as a back door to sell his arms. He wasn’t very smart.”

“Is that why you left? Fear you’d get caught?”

“No. I left because it was wrong. It’s one thing to design weapons for your own country, it’s another to sell them to the highest bidder. Gerald Bull was the consummate salesman, and completely without a conscience.”

“Why did you just say that he wasn’t very smart?” asked Gamache.

“He made some stupid choices, like cozying up to the Soviets. He had an outsized ego that told him he was smarter than other people.”

“The ego lied?” asked Gamache.

“Shocking, I know. Dr. Bull was bombastic. The perfect personality for a man who sold cannons and Bull was, as I said, a great salesman.”

“Why would he have the Whore of Babylon etched into the cannon? Was it a sort of calling card? A signature? Did Dr. Bull put it into all his designs?”

“Not that I know of. It was probably another sales tool. What else would appeal to a crazy despot like Saddam but a weapon etched with a symbol of the apocalypse? And one from ancient Iraq, no less. It was perfect.”

“But this wasn’t Saddam’s gun, was it?” said Gamache. “Gerald Bull didn’t build it in Iraq, he built it in Québec. And he etched the Whore of Babylon on it. Why?”

“Maybe it supports the mock-up theory,” said Rosenblatt. “He built it to show the Iraqis. After all, by then all the intelligence agencies in the world were interested in Bull and Project Babylon but they’d never think to look for it here. He could show it to the Iraqis and once the order was in, he could dismantle it, and ship it piece by piece to Baghdad.”

Gamache listened to this curiously detailed hypothesis. He had to admit, it fit. Québec was a showroom. Though there was still another possibility. The other one.

“Or it could’ve been meant for Québec all along,” said Gamache. “Saddam couldn’t strike U.S. soil with a Scud. Maybe the goal was never to hit Israel, or Iran, or any target in the region. Maybe the target was the U.S. Maybe those weapons of mass destruction that the Americans were so sure were there were actually here.”

Maybe, maybe, thought Gamache. All maybes.

It was frustrating. Though he felt they were getting closer. Maybe.

Gamache leaned against the banquette and looked across the table at his companion, remembering something else Reine-Marie had discovered while researching Gerald Bull.

“Dr. Bull got his Ph.D. very young,” said Gamache. “In physics. A remarkable achievement. But I understand his marks weren’t very good.”

“I wouldn’t know about that. I didn’t know him as a student.”

“No. But you knew him afterward. He’d have been about twenty years older than you, is that about right?”

“About.” Now Rosenblatt was watching Gamache closely. He’d not be tricked again, but he couldn’t shake the feeling they were again wandering into the minefield.

“His marks weren’t terrific,” said Gamache, musing almost to himself. “And you’ve described him a few times as a great salesman. Not a great scientist. But a salesman.”

And now Michael Rosenblatt knew he was indeed in the middle of the minefield. Drawn there by this calm, reasonable, kindly man.

And he waited for the next, inevitable, question.

Gamache leaned forward and seemed almost apologetic.

“Was Gerald Bull smart enough to design the Supergun? Or was he just the salesman? Was there another genius at work we don’t know about?”

Ka-boom.

CHAPTER 19

Clara Morrow turned into the Lepages’ driveway. It was long and rutted, as most of the dirt drives were in this area.

She glanced down at the passenger-side foot well, where a casserole covered in foil sat, along with an apple crisp. Still warm. She could smell the brown sugar and cinnamon, and wondered if it was a bad thing that she was salivating. And tempted to turn around. And eat it all herself.

She parked in front of the small farmhouse.

A curtain moved in an upstairs window and she saw Evelyn’s face, a look of distress glancing across it, as though Clara was a germ and Evie an open sore.