The Nature of the Beast
“Where did you find it?” He held it up.
When Lacoste didn’t answer, he looked back down at the thing in his hand. “Well, wherever it was, I’m glad you did. This could’ve been big trouble.”
“Big trouble,” Beauvoir repeated. “Maybe that’s why it’s called Big Babylon.”
“You think this is funny?” Mary Fraser asked in exactly the same clipped tone his teacher had used when he’d hit Gaston Devereau in the nose with a baseball. All that was missing was the “young man?”
“Do you know what the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was called?” she asked, confirming Beauvoir’s image of her.
“Big Boy.” Mary Fraser let that sink in. “Big Boy killed hundreds of thousands. Big Babylon would do worse. Unlike you, Gerald Bull knew his history and knew his clients would too. He also knew the power of symbolism. He comes from a long and proud tradition of making a weapon even more terrifying by appearing to belittle it.”
“Proud tradition?” asked Lacoste.
“Well, a long one.”
Lacoste walked to the window. “If it’s so dangerous, why haven’t you called in the army? The air force?” She scanned the skies. “There should be helicopters overhead and troops on the ground guarding the thing.”
She turned back to the CSIS agents.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
Sean Delorme smiled. “Don’t you think it might be better not to advertise? The bigger the weapon, the greater the need for secrecy.”
“The bigger the secret, the greater the danger,” said Lacoste. “Don’t you think?”
* * *
Armand listened to Clara and Myrna, his face opening with wonder.
“Are you sure?”
“No, not really,” Clara admitted. “I’d have to see them again. I was going to go over there.”
“You need to tell Chief Inspector Lacoste,” said Gamache. “She and Inspector Beauvoir are at the old train station. Whatever happens, don’t tell anyone else. Does Professor Rosenblatt know?”
“No. It didn’t come to me until later.”
“Good.”
Clara stood up. “Coming with us?”
They walked together to the door of the bistro.
“No, there’s someone else I want to see.”
“Want to?” asked Myrna, following his gaze.
“Have to,” admitted Armand.
They parted, Clara and Myrna walking over the bridge to the Incident Room and passing the CSIS agents just leaving. Gamache walked the few paces to the bench on the village green and took a seat beside Ruth and Rosa.
“What do you want?” Ruth asked. Rosa looked surprised.
“I want to know why you wrote those lines from the Yeats poem when you heard that Antoinette had been killed.”
The rain had stopped, and water beaded on the wood. It now soaked into his jacket and the legs of his slacks.
“I happen to know the poem and like it,” said Ruth. “I’ve heard you quote it often enough. About things falling apart.”
“True. But those weren’t the lines you chose.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” muttered either Rosa or Ruth. It was impossible to say which had just spoken. They were beginning to meld into one creature, though Ruth was more easily ruffled.
“You know more than you’re saying,” said Gamache.
“True. I know the whole poem. Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer. What’s a gyre?”
“I have no idea,” Gamache admitted. “I think I looked it up once.”
Ruth stared into the late-afternoon sky as the clouds broke up and the sun broke through. Sparrows and robins and crows descended, gathering on the green.
“No vultures,” she said. “Always a good sign.”
He smiled. “You needn’t worry. You’ll live forever.”
“I hope not.” She broke up some bread and pelted it at the head of a sparrow. “Poor Laurent. Who kills a child?”
“Who is slouching toward Bethlehem?” Gamache asked. “Who is the rough beast?”
When she didn’t answer, he stopped her hand before she could cast the morsel of bread, and held her gently, but firmly, until she looked at him.
“Yeats called that poem ‘The Second Coming,’” he said, letting go of her thin wrist. “It’s about hope, rebirth. But that only happens after a death, after the apocalypse, after the Whore of Babylon has arrived in Armageddon.”