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“Armand.” They shook hands.

The General, on seeing Beauvoir, greeted him like an old comrade, though Jean-Guy’s greeting was less warm.

On the way there, as he drove and Isabelle worked in the back seat, Jean-Guy had wondered if he should say something. Prepare the Chief for disappointment. Though he knew that probably wasn’t necessary.

While Armand never gave up hope, neither did he divorce himself from reality. And the reality was that General Albert Whitehead, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would not show up. Again.

“I know,” said Armand.

“Know what?”

“What you’re thinking. And that you’re right. General Whitehead probably won’t show. But we have to try.”

When does “trying” become a waste of precious time? When does hope become delusion?

And then Armand said something completely unexpected: “I’m not sure I would, if I was him.”

In the rearview mirror, Jean-Guy saw Isabelle look up.

“Why not?”

“Do you wonder why he hasn’t told us all he knows? Because he clearly knows something.”

“It must be sensitive information,” said Beauvoir. “Classified?”

“I think so. Otherwise he’d have given it to you, or sent it to me.”

“In sending him the theater tickets, you’re asking him to commit treason,” said Lacoste.

“Oui.”

A few kilometers passed in darkness, and silence, except for the tap of Isabelle’s fingers on her keyboard.

“So no,” said Armand, quietly, “I don’t expect him to show.”

And yet, when they walked through the door, there he was. Not in uniform, of course. Bert Whitehead had his coat folded over his arm and was wearing a plaid flannel shirt and cords. He looked like a lumberjack meeting a university professor.

General Whitehead turned his incisive gaze on Isabelle and offered his hand. “You must be Inspector Lacoste. Armand speaks of you often. And highly.”

He held her eyes, and the two recognized each other, if not physically, then as veterans of similar battles. Then he spoke quietly to Armand. “I envy you them. I had two young adjuncts. Once.”

Once. Before. And now the eternal “after.”

Introductions over, Whitehead glanced around in astonishment. “What is this place?”

“Take your seats please,” said the elderly usher. “The show’s about to begin. If you can just…”

He reached out with his foot and tried to shove the General’s boot back over the thick black line painted across the floor of the ornate theater. Then the usher gave Gamache a stern look.

Without realizing it, the General was standing half in and half out of the United States, while the Chief Inspector was perfectly aware that he was standing half in and half out of Canada.

Whitehead raised an eloquent brow, and while staring, glaring, at Armand, he very slowly moved his foot. As did Gamache. For a moment the two large men, mirroring each other’s movements, looked like they were line dancing.

The Canadian head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec had invited the American Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the only place he could think of, the only place he knew of, where they could meet in person, anonymously, without crossing a border.

“Welcome to the Haskell Opera House,” said Armand.

“An opera house, here? In the middle of nowhere? You brought me all the way from DC for an opera?”