Page 145 of The Grey Wolf
Few messages traveled in and fewer still made it out. The world could end, and these Carthusian monks would never know. It had essentially ended for them already. They lived now in limbo, between this world and their reward.
Dussault brought his hand to his breast pocket. As the former head of the Paris police, few things worried Claude Dussault anymore. He’d seen the worst, and then worse still.
But now he was worried.
Violating the monastery could be, would be, a national scandal. And certainly a logistical nightmare. How to get inside and serve the search warrant without force?
Fortunately, the monks probably were not armed. But if the cops went in there, rifles raised against clerics with pitchforks and shovels, it would be worse than a scandal. It would be a disgrace.
And yet it might come to that. His hand dropped from his breast pocket.
“Armand better be right. This Brother Robert had better be in there,” said Dussault.
They looked at the nun, who also looked worried.
On the flight over Sister Irene had heard the other two conferring. She was now convinced they were who they said they were. They were trying to help, at considerable risk to themselves, professionally and personally. Their sincerity, their desperation, their own commitment and possible sacrifice, were clear.
But there was a fine line between helping and unintentionally lighting a fuse that could not be stopped.
“He is.”
It was the first information she’d volunteered. And it was what they needed.
Lacoste and Dussault looked at each other. Their cheeks puffed out in a long simultaneous exhale. They’ll actually have to do this thing.
“I hear you can drive a bulldozer,” said Dussault, in what struck Lacoste as a bizarre non sequitur.
The helicopter put down half a kilometer away, and they started walking.
“Look at this.”
Armand, realizing their schedules at the airport matched, met Jean-Guy’s flight before heading to his own.
Jean-Guy, barely off the plane, was shoving his phone at the Chief.
Armand exchanged it for the small paper bag he was carrying.
“A croissant?”
“Bought it at the café near HQ. A video?”
“Found on YouTube.”
Armand hit play, and while Beauvoir devoured the croissant, the Chief watched three achingly young people, including an almost unrecognizable Frère Sébastien, sing.
Armand had expected “Let It Be,” but instead, he got—
I’m goin’ down to St. James Infirmary,
See my baby there;
She’s stretched out on a long, white table,
She’s so sweet, so cold, so fair.
It was riveting. Far from the drunken, sloppy singing usually found in karaoke bars, the two monks and the nun had beautiful voices, in perfect harmony.
Let her go, let her go, God bless her,
