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Don Moretti stared at her, then laughed. He didn’t like her any more than she liked him. But she was amusing. And useful. For now.

Caron studied him for a moment. “It’s one thing to kill Chalifoux, but you ordered incaprettamento? You’d better start praying they never find her. The New York mob will kill you for this, and incaprettamento will look humane.”

The corte de florero came to mind.

“They can’t. They need me.”

Sadly, that much was true. For now.

They were strolling through the forest on mont Royal, kicking the decaying leaves ahead of them. Moretti’s soldiers, in front and behind them, were trying to look like locals out for a stroll. And failing. Miserably.

Yeah, you blend.

They came to the lookout and stopped. A few tourists were milling around, trying to figure out the landmarks, though the infamous Olympic Stadium was all too obvious.

“The Olympics could no more have a deficit,” declared the Mayor of Montréal in 1976, “than a man can have a baby.”

For the rest of his life, he was portrayed in cartoons as heavily pregnant.

Caron’s phone pinged and she glanced down. “A message from Gamache. He wants to meet.”

“What’s that about?”

“He says he needs my help.” She replied to the message: Yes, where and when?

“I’m not surprised. Have you seen the feeds?” said Moretti.

Tardiff had done well to get it out so quickly, and so effectively. The posts were going viral. Thousands, soon millions, would read that the revered head of the Sûreté’s Homicide division believed the US was about to invade Canada. He’d have been better off claiming he’d seen little green men in the woods.

Armand Gamache was fast becoming a laughingstock.

Caron had to admit it had been an unexpected stroke of genius from a man more accustomed to a sledgehammer than a stiletto.

But the thrust had been effective. Gamache’s credibility was bleeding out all over social media.

Jeanne Caron had worried for a while now that her sudden decision to save Gamache in the water-treatment plant had been a rare mistake. She’d done it because the poisoning plot had clearly failed. The perpetrators exposed.

In saving him, she’d saved herself. And allowed the second part of the plan, the real plan, to also survive. It had been a risk that looked, when Gamache realized there was more to come, as though it would not pay off. But now …

I need your help.

Now her phone vibrated with his reply. In Parliament now, needs to be later. Someplace private. Haskell Opera House? 4 p.m.?

“Don’t fuck this up,” said Moretti.

“Like you fucked up the whole Frederick Castonguay fiasco? The kid’s dead, his body found, and they have the laptop. And now this attack in the White House. It’s sloppy. If Whitehead had been able to tell her how far they’d gotten and made his request—”

“Well, he didn’t. Once again God is smiling on us.”

Caron shook her head. She knew that Moretti went to church every Sunday. His wife and mother more often. He’d better pray there is no God, she thought, because if there is, there won’t be a lot of smiling when Joe Moretti stands at the pearly gates.

Caron couldn’t wait for the moment when this shit-head would meet his maker. That day was coming, it was close. But for now, Joe Moretti still had his uses. Mostly as a distraction.

Gamache had stood right beside the Black Wolf and never realized it.

“You wanted to see me, Chief Inspector?”

An older man was standing beside Inspector Lacoste.