Page 160 of The Grey Wolf
“Do you have a copy of that, Monsieur Dussault?” Lacoste asked.
“Non.”
They watched the mulish monk step through an archway; then he, and the warrant, disappeared.
Gamache got back to the airport just as the plane’s door was closing. All the way back on the flight, he ignored the man next to him who was going on and on. How lucky he was that the seat had opened up. Then he segued into something about vaccinations and zombies.
“People do screwy things when they’re scared. That’s what the government’s trying to do. Scare people. Take global warming…”
Gamache wasn’t listening. He was looking out the window and willing the plane to get back to Montréal faster. Faster. And not just because he was seated beside an idiot.
Before they took off, Gamache had sent a quick text to Jean-Guy, telling him to have Customs and Immigration and Interpol do a search for a Raymond Rousseau. See where and when his passport had been used. And to track any charges on the credit card.
Once the plane landed, Jean-Guy was at the gate with news.
“Isabelle got into Grande Chartreuse.”
“Thank God for that.” The two of them were headed for the exit, Jean-Guy having to run slightly to keep up with the Chief Inspector’s longer strides. “Has she spoken to Frère Robert?”
“I’m waiting for word. Frère Sébastien is also there, acting as a lay monk and sort of bodyguard slash gatekeeper, but seems Robert has refused to tell him anything. But he did meet with Dom Philippe.”
“Robert did? So the Abbot knows what this is about. If we find him—”
“No, that’s just it. Seems the damned monk didn’t tell the Abbot everything.”
“Why not?”
“He said he didn’t trust him.”
“Why not?”
“A feeling, apparently.”
In the past Jean-Guy Beauvoir’s disdain of feelings would have been obvious. But since working with the Chief, since going to rehab, since loving Annie, since having two children, he’d come to see how powerful feelings were. In many ways, in every way that mattered, feelings were more real, more powerful than thoughts. They were the engine of perception, which drove thought, which became words and prompted action.
Feelings were where it all began. For better and worse. And since they were homicide investigators, it was often the worse that they knelt beside.
Gamache tossed his bag into the car and got in the passenger’s side. “Frère Robert had no actual reason to distrust him?”
“Apparently not.”
They pulled out into the chaotic traffic atl’aérogare de Montréal.
Brother Robert was no longer alone in his doubts about the Abbot. Dom Philippe’s presence at The Mission, his knowing both Parisi and Caron, was suspicious at best.
And Armand Gamache suspected they were not looking at the best.
“You will not serve this warrant on us.”
Standing in front of Isabelle Lacoste was a tall, powerfully built man. He wore a hood framing his face and radiated authority. He’d used the same tone as Obi-Wan Kenobi.
These are not the droids you’re looking for.
But of course they were the droids. And Lacoste had every intention of serving the warrant. If necessary.
“I hope,mon frère, it won’t be necessary.”
He bristled at being called “mon frère,” as though he and this young woman were equals. As though he was not the Abbot in charge of one of the most famous monasteries in the world. And she was, well, not.
