Page 214
His phone, with one percent battery left, slid to the far end of the room and came to rest under a display case as the sound of shouts and gunfire filled the empty map room.
It reverberated off the marble walls and floors. Echoing, magnifying the sound of a terrible battle being fought amid the sea creatures and dragons, the Sirens and the demons.
The SecurForte guards converged on the room. Assault weapons raised, they entered in combat formation.
He didn’t wait to see what happened next. Taking off in the opposite direction, Gamache raced down the stairs, chased by the familiar gunfire. The familiar explosions licked at his heels. The familiar orders given. His orders. The hot breath on his neck was his own. His voice on the recording. Commanding his people forward. Deeper into the factory.
And then the familiar screams of agony. As his own agents were cut down. Like wraiths, they pursued Gamache. As they had, every day, for years.
He flung himself against the metal panic bar of the side door and flew out into the sunshine.
* * *
“Cease fire,” the leader commanded. “There’s no one here. It’s a recording. Bring it to me.”
Loiselle, on his belly, retrieved the phone. As he handed it over, he saw a man sprinting down the side of the château.
“There he is,” shouted Loiselle and, using the butt of his rifle, he broke the glass and started shooting.
Gamache didn’t swerve. Didn’t look back. He just kept running, even as the bullets struck the columns and walls and ground around him.
“Fuck, Loiselle, get him,” shouted his commander.
Gamache was at the huge wrought iron gates. Loiselle sighted him, but it was too late. Gamache had pushed through and, stumbling, he disappeared down rue des Archives.
“Well, you fucked that up,” said the commander, glaring at his foot soldier. “But at least we know where he’s headed. Better get there, and do it right this time.”
“Yessir.”
Loiselle looked down at the video, still playing on the phone in the commander’s hand.
He watched the familiar images, of Chief Inspector Gamache dragging his second-in-command across the factory floor to safety. After quickly staunching Beauvoir’s abdominal wound, Gamache bent and kissed him on the forehead, whispering to the man he feared was dying, “I love you.”
Then the phone died.
Who would rescue him, Xavier Loiselle wondered, if he was badly wounded?
None of them, he knew as he looked around.
Who, he wondered, would whisper to him in his final moments, I love you?
CHAPTER 41
You okay, man?” the taxi driver asked, glancing in his rearview mirror.
His passenger was twisted in his seat, staring out the back window and trying to catch his breath.
“Fine, fine,” said Gamache, in a sort of gasp, as he turned to the driver. “As fast as you can.”
It was 7:19. They’d threatened to kill Daniel at 7:30. Gamache had little doubt they meant it.
Of course, they’d kill them both once they got what they needed.
He clutched the dossier to him and deliberately slowed his breathing.
Hyperventilating and passing out rarely made things better.
Deep breath in. Hold. Long slow breath out.
