“I don’t think ‘valuable’ quite covers it,” said Mary Fraser. “With the discovery of the gun they just got priceless.”

She sounded triumphant, as though the accomplishment was her own. And in a way it was. The find had vindicated her and Delorme. Thrust them into the spotlight at CSIS. They’d gone from low-level functionaries correlating useless information in the basement to valuable resources. Priceless in their own way.

“Governments would pay a great deal for the plans?” asked Isabelle.

“Not just governments. Anyone with money and a target.” Mary Fraser glanced quickly over to Professor Rosenblatt. “Have you wondered why he’s still here? He’s identified the gun, done what you asked. He’s supposed to be retired. Shouldn’t he be at home, or in Florida, or somewhere else? Relaxing.”

“What do you think?”

“I think weapons of mass destruction are a strange hobby,” said Mary Fraser. “Don’t you?”

Isabelle Lacoste had to agree.

*   *   *

“He worked for Gerald Bull, did he tell you that?” said Delorme, looking across the room to where Rosenblatt and Beauvoir were talking.

“He did,” said Gamache.

“He insinuates that he was more than just some assistant, but he hasn’t contributed a thing to the field.”

Again with the “field,” thought Gamache. For something that was supposed to be covert, that field seemed surprisingly large and crowded.

“Was he good at what he did?” Armand asked.

“Rosenblatt?” said Delorme. “We studied him, you know, thinking with Dr. Bull dead then Rosenblatt might be the next best thing, and perhaps even better. But all his research hit dead ends.”

“I thought he helped design the Avro Arrow jet fighter,” said Gamache.

“Peripherally, yes. But it wasn’t a contribution someone else couldn’t have made. And the Arrow was scrapped, so again, we’re back to nothing. Professor Rosenblatt has nothing to show for fifty years’ work. Had he never lived, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

It was such a brutal thing to say, and said so casually, that Gamache found himself reassessing this man. Perhaps it was just the unthinking utterance of a socially and emotionally inept person. Or maybe it was more than that. Maybe he genuinely loathed the man.

“Michael Rosenblatt’s genius is attaching himself to brilliant people,” said Delorme. “He’s a leech. And now he’s trying to take credit for the Supergun.”

“Credit?” asked Gamache. “Can such a word be applied to such a thing?”

“You might not like it,” said Delorme, “and I might not, but the Supergun is a remarkable achievement. That’s just a fact. What we don’t really know is what Gerald Bull planned to do with it. The problem is that it’s an ever-changing world. Friends become enemies, and the weapons you sold them are suddenly killing your own people.”

“Non,” said Gamache. “The problem is that these weapons are built in the first place and people like Gerald Bull have no allegiances.”

“There’ve been weapons since there’s been man,” said Delorme. “Neanderthals had them. It’s the nature of the beast. Whoever can make a better one wins. Where do you think weapons come from?”

They grow in a field, thought Gamache, though no one was suggesting hammering their swords into plowshares.

“We can’t predict the future,” said Delorme. “So we do our best to choose our allies.”

“And your weapons,” said Gamache. “You said ‘we.’ I thought you were a file clerk.”

“I’m sorry, I meant the collective ‘we.’”

“Of course, forgive me.”

But for just a moment, Sean Delorme no longer looked or sounded like a low-level office worker. He no longer seemed maladroit or ill at ease. An unexpected edge had appeared in this rather dull, almost comical, clerk.

There was an act going on here, Gamache was sure of it. Sean Delorme was alternately plodding and sly. A slightly muddled bureaucrat one moment, and in the next he was implying he was himself involved in the secretive world of arms dealing.

Was it more fantasy? Like Laurent playing soldier on the village green?

Was Sean Delorme playacting in a dangerous field? And then going home for dinner?

Armand Gamache looked at Sean Delorme and suddenly felt some concern that what had happened to Laurent, what happened to Gerald Bull, might happen to him. That reality would come calling. And once found, it would take his life. As it had taken theirs.