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Loiselle smiled. “You’re catching on.”
“You’re following me,” said Beauvoir. “Is someone following Gamache?”
“I think so. But I don’t know who, and I don’t know what their orders are.”
“You mean to just follow, or to do harm?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck,” said Beauvoir. He stared at Loiselle. He couldn’t hold the gun on the man and text Gamache at the same time.
Loiselle understood what he was thinking, and said, “I won’t move.”
Getting as far from Loiselle as he could in the tight office, Jean-Guy put the gun down and took out his phone. Keeping his eyes on Loiselle, he sent off the quick text, then picked the gun back up.
“What’s in Luxembourg? What’s so important about that project?”
“I have no idea, but I can try to find out.”
“Is Séverine Arbour involved?”
“Madame Arbour? In your department at GHS? Not that I know.”
“Is Carole Gossette?”
“I think so. I heard them talking about her. But I don’t know for sure.”
Jean-Guy stared at the man across from him. He had a decision to make that would affect the rest of his life, and the lives of those he loved.
Taking a deep breath, he gave the gun back to Loiselle.
CHAPTER 29
Gamache read the text from Jean-Guy. Then, replacing his phone in his pocket, he scanned the road.
Pedestrians walked by, some on their way from a service at the nearby Notre-Dame-des-Blancs-Manteaux. None looked in his direction.
“Monsieur Gamache?”
He turned just as the front gate to the archives building was unlocked. “Madame Lenoir. Merci.”
She shepherded him past security and down what looked like a dark alley, to the less-than-grand entrance to the archives.
The Musée des archives nationales, next door, was spectacular. In an old château, it was approached through a quadrangle of manicured lawn and garden.
But the archives themselves looked like they were housed in a bunker. In Moscow. In the fifties.
Reine-Marie greeted him.
“What is it?” he asked, seeing her face.
“Come with me.”
He followed her to a terminal in the reading room.
This building in the Paris archives held almost one hundred kilometers of documents, dating from 600 A.D. to 1958. But it all came down to one tiny entry.
One name.
