Page 178 of All the Devils Are Here

She looked around at the other patrons. Well-heeled, well-dressed. Mostly white, mostly French. Mostly older. They looked like them.

“No.”

But Gamache did. Over there, in a quiet corner, was the former head of the UN Security Council. She now sat on the GHS Engineering board. Joining her was another member of that board.

And there in the center of the room, holding court, was the head of a media conglomerate who also sat on the GHS board.

Loud and laughing, corpulent and confident, the man commanded attention.

Gamache continued to study the room. He’d become, through practice and necessity, very good at faces. He recognized most of the members of the board from news reports over the years. And their photographs in the annual report.

He suspected some, if not most, would have no idea that anything untoward was going on. They’d been flown to Paris on private jets, put up in a luxury hotel, were being pampered in advance of an annual rubber-stamp board meeting.

But some would know what was really happening. The question was, which ones? And which one had Stephen approached with a sackful of money?

As he looked around, not trying to conceal his interest, a few caught his eye and paused. Returning the stare of the distinguished stranger before turning away.

Yes, some in that room definitely knew what was going on.

He just wished he was one of them.

“I’ve never been to this hotel,” Séverine Arbour was saying. “I’d have expected it to feel different. Not so inviting.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, isn’t this where the Nazi interrogations happened?” She fixed him with a hard gaze. “Seems appropriate.”

He raised his brows. “You think you’re here for an interrogation?”

“Aren’t I? Not torture, you’re far too civilized for that. But you are trying to work out whose side I’m on, isn’t that right?”

Armand smiled and tilted his head slightly.

She was smart. Clever. He’d have to be even more careful than he’d thought.

“My job has made me suspicious,” he admitted. “But it’s also taught me not to prejudge. I am curious that by your own admission you began to suspect something months ago, but hadn’t yet found the results of the water test. Something this Xavier Loiselle found in minutes.”

“I wasn’t initially looking in that direction,” said Madame Arbour. “As I told you, at first I thought it was something to do with building the plant. Contractors dragging it out. It’s only recently that I realized the issue isn’t the plant, but the mine.”

Gamache nodded and opened his hands. “That explains it then.”

“Listen—” She dropped her voice. “Beauvoir came to me, remember? Practically dragged me from my home. Believe me, I’d much rather be in my living room drinking wine and watching reruns of Call My Agent. I’m an engineer, not”—she waved her hands and looked around—“whatever this is.”

“Then why did you agree to help?”

“Honestly? If I’d known it was this bad, I’d never have answered the door. I was curious. I thought GHS was involved in some scam, not”—she dropped her voice still further—“murder.”

She was certainly stressed. Afraid. Perhaps because she knew her people were also in bar Joséphine. Watching, listening. And she knew what they were capable of.

Or perhaps because she’d woken up in her nice bed, in a nice neighborhood of Paris, expecting a nice quiet Sunday, and had instead been swept up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, then down into the bowels of the George V. Swept into another world. One where people killed other people. For reasons as yet obscure.

And now, instead of letting her go with the others to the relative safety of the Archives nationales, he’d brought her here. Exposing her to the very people she’d been trying so hard to avoid.

All good reasons to be afraid. But was she afraid of them, or him?

“Well, I am used to this.” He didn’t bother to drop his voice. “It’s what I’ve done, all day, every day. For decades. You find problems and solve them, I also find problems and solve them. It’s what we both do best.”

“Yeah, well, your problems kill people.”