“We are prepared,” Nichol insisted. “Nothing more’s going to happen. No more equipment’s going to show up. No more help. You have everything you’re ever going to have. This is it.”

“Why’re you so impatient?” Jérôme demanded.

“Why aren’t you?” she replied.

“That’s enough,” said Gamache. “What can we do to help, Jérôme? What do you need?”

“I need to know about all that equipment she brought.” He glanced at Nichol, who was sitting with her arms across her chest. “Why do we need two computers?”

“One’s for me,” Nichol said. She decided to speak to them as though to Henri. “I’ll be encrypting the channel we use to access the Sûreté network. If anyone picks up your signal, they’ll need to break the encryption. It buys us time.”

That last bit they understood, even Henri, but they needed to think about the encryption part.

“What you’re saying,” said Thérèse, slowly picking her way through the technical talk, “is that when Jérôme types something on the keyboard it’s put into code? Then that code is scrambled?”

“Exactly,” said Nichol. “All before it leaves the room.” She paused and her arms closed even tighter across her body, like steel straps.

“What is it?” Gamache asked.

“They’ll still find you.” Her voice was soft. It held no triumph. “My programs only make it difficult for them to see you, but not impossible. They know what they’re doing. They’ll find us.”

It didn’t escape the Chief Inspector that within a breath, the “you” had become “us.” There were few more significant breaths.

“Will they know who we are?” he asked.

Gamache saw the vise grip loosen around the young agent’s chest. She leaned slightly forward.

“Now that’s an interesting question. I’ve intentionally created an encryption that appears clunky, unsophisticated.”

“Intentionally?” asked Jérôme, not convinced it was on purpose at all. “Why would anyone do that? We don’t need ‘clunky,’ for God’s sake. We need the best there is.”

He looked at Gamache, and the Chief Inspector could see the slight lash of panic.

Nichol was silent, either because she’d finally figured out the immense power of silence, or because she was miffed. Gamache suspected the latter, but it gave him time to consider Jérôme’s very good question.

Why appear unsophisticated?

“To throw them off,” he said at last, turning to the petulant little face. “They might see us, but they might not take us seriously.”

“C’est ça,” Nichol said, unwinding slightly. “Exactly. They’ll be looking for a sophisticated attack.”

“It’ll be like taking a stone to a nuclear war,” said Gamache.

“Yes,” said Nichol. “If found, we won’t be taken seriously.”

“For good reason,” said Thérèse. “How much damage can a stone do?”

The David and Goliath analogy aside, the reality was a stone wasn’t much of a weapon. She turned to Jérôme, expecting to see a dismissive look on his face, and was surprised to see admiration.

“We don’t need to do damage,” he said. “We just need to sneak past the guards.”

“That’s the hope,” said Nichol, and gave a great sigh. “I don’t think it’ll work, but it’s worth a try.”

“Jeez,” said Thérèse. “It’s like living with a Greek chorus.”

“My programs will make it difficult for them to see us, but we need a security code to even get in, and they’ll know as soon as you log in with your own codes.”

“And what could stop them from finding us?” Gamache asked.

“I told you that before. A different security code. One that won’t draw any attention. But even that won’t stop them for long. As soon as we break into a file they’re trying to protect, they’ll know it. They’ll hunt us down, and they’ll find us.”

“How long will that take, do you think?”

Nichol’s thin lips pouted as she thought. “Finesse won’t matter at that stage. All that’ll matter is speed. Get in, get what we need, and get out. It’s unlikely we’ll have more than half a day. Probably less.”