Page 47 of The Grey Wolf
“I mean a deliberate attack by terrorists, foreign or domestic, on the water supply of a major city.”
Jean-Guy and Isabelle looked at each other.
“God,” she said. “Is that possible?”
“Possible, yes. Probable?” He shrugged.
“It would be wholesale murder of civilians,” said Isabelle. “Children.”
“How?” Beauvoir asked.
“If we’re talking about chemical or biological weapons, neurotoxins—”
“And it looks like we are,” said Lacoste.
“—then the list of threats is unfortunately long. Most are airborne, but anthrax, ricin, plague, Q fever are stable and lethal in water.”
“How do we begin to guard against that?” demanded Isabelle. She put down her water glass.
Armand sent off another message to his contact, including a photo of the strange list. Then he slid his phone into his pocket.
The alarms in his head were turning into sirens, though he also knew this was all speculation. They needed facts.
“If it’s terrorists, why choose us?” asked Isabelle. “Why Québec?”
“Why not?” asked Beauvoir.
“Well, for one thing, we’re hardly the epicenter of world power. If terrorists were going to go to that much trouble, you’d expect them to hit the US or the UK, or, if Canada, it would be Toronto or Ottawa, the nation’s capital. Attacking us is horrific, for us. But there are much bigger, more effective targets.”
“Maybe they’re planning multiple attacks,” suggested Beauvoir. “Hoping one or more actually hit. Like with 9/11.”
“Voyons.We’re way out beyond our facts. This”—Gamache tapped the paper on the table beside his untouched lemon meringue pie—“might be someone’s shopping list. We know nothing. Let’s just take it one step at a time.”
And yet both could see he was rattled.
That’s the least of it.
Charles Langlois’s words came back to Gamache. If the Sûreté being compromised was the least of their problems, what was the worst?
This was.
“It’s curious that while we were together, he never mentioned his job at Action Québec Bleu,” said Armand.
“He did mention his boss,” Jean-Guy pointed out.
“True. And he talked repeatedly about The Mission. That was where he met his contact.”
As he spoke, Isabelle Lacoste looked from one to the other. How often, she wondered, had the three of them sat like this, discussing murder? In crappy hotel rooms, in shacks in the middle of nowhere that doubled as incident rooms. On boats. Once in a canoe in Northern Québec. In tents, as they’d camped out, searching the dense bush for a killer on the run.
Jean-Guy loved to tell her about the two-holer outhouse he and the Chief had once used as headquarters. She doubted it was true, though she enjoyed the story and was grateful she hadn’t been on that case.
But her favorite was when the trail of a killer took them to Gamache’s own village of Three Pines. They’d confer in the Old Train Station, set up as an incident room, or in the bistro. And sometimes in the Chief’s own home. At the worn pine table in his kitchen. Drinking coffee, or iced tea, or beer, or that delicious vibrant pink lemonade the Chief claimed to make for Florence and Zora.
They’d eat sandwiches, or burgers, or grilled salmon, and go over notes. Feeding the log fire on bitterly cold winter nights and hearing the crickets through the screen doors on steamy summer days.
While Isabelle Lacoste hated murder, she loved this process. She loved these people.
She realized the two men were looking at her. “Pardon?”
