Page 120 of The Grey Wolf
Armand walked to the bar, his eyes scanning the rows of bottles on shelves behind Olivier.
“Salut, patron,” he said. “I’d like to see that bottle of Chartreuse that was given to you by your guest.”
“Don’t have it. No room on the shelves, and honestly, no one around here drinks it anyway. I offered it to Ruth, but even she didn’t want it. What?”
Armand’s face registered alarm. “What did you do with it?”
“I poured the liquid out and put the bottle in recycling.”
Armand’s mind worked quickly. The pickup was that day. He left the bistro, got in his car, and drove to the bin, which was at the crossroads outside the village. As he leaped out, he could hear a familiar rumble. The recycling truck.
Was it coming or going?
Opening the large container for glass, Armand saw that it hadn’t yet been emptied. He heaved a sigh of relief, then heaved himself over the edge. Dangling there, his body half in and half out of the smelly bin, he began digging.
It took just a minute or so. Thankfully, while some were broken, the Chartreuse bottle was intact.
Sitting in the car, he examined the label for a message from the monk. A drop of blood hit the label, and he realized the broken glass had nicked his finger. He quickly wiped it off and wrapped his handkerchief around the finger.
Putting on his glasses, he looked more closely at the bottle. Anything? Anything at all?
Nothing. Nothing at all.
He’d been so hopeful, almost convinced that Dom Philippe had left him a message. Though perhaps the message was the bottle itself.
He was just about to turn the car around and head home when he had an idea.
Jean-Guy could see why Bert Whitehead was the Chair of the Joint Chiefs.
Even being told that an attack might be imminent on the water supply of a major North American city, using a biotoxin perhaps weaponized by the United States, he was not fazed. He absorbed the news and was quickly breaking it down.
“I’ll send over a list of organizations, foreign and domestic, that might be behind this. The list is, of course, not just confidential but classified. For a reason.”
“I understand.”
Whitehead held Beauvoir’s eyes, making sure Jean-Guy did understand the risk he was taking.
“I haven’t heard anything, though we’re constantly stopping threats,” the General continued. “More than anyone realizes. A disconcerting number of them domestic. If this is really happening, whoever’s behind it isn’t your garden-variety crazy. They’re clever and connected. They’ve managed to keep it quiet for this long. Fortunately, someone’s left you a mud map.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but a what map?”
He could see why Whitehead and Gamache were friends.
“A mud map. Comes from when explorers or settlers would meet each other on the trail and ask directions. They’d take a stick and draw a map in the mud. Not detailed, but better than nothing.”
Beauvoir nodded. It was what Dom Philippe had left Gamache. A bottle. A torn page from an old recipe. A slight shove toward Frère Simon, who opened letters and knew more than he should.
But there must be more to the map. Other signposts to get them to where they needed to go.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Whitehead was saying. “The target doesn’t have to be Québec, or even Canada. Though the thinking is solid. Montréal or Québec City would be a soft target, easier to achieve than New York or Washington or London, and still have a huge knock-on effect internationally.”
Whitehead’s mind was moving rapidly over terrain he’d studied but hoped never to have to visit. Like a vulcanologist, intimately familiar with volcanoes, who never wanted to be inside one when it erupted.
But General Whitehead could smell sulfur and feel the ground shifting beneath his feet.
“Does ‘Chartreuse’ mean anything to you, sir?”
The General looked at Beauvoir as though he’d lost his mind. “The drink?” His eyes shifted to the bar, where, on the shelves, there was indeed a bottle of the liqueur.
