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Whitehead’s own levee had broken and out poured this no-doubt classified information.

“Be prepared?” said Gamache. “You make it sound reasonable, as though you’re leading a Boy Scout troop. You hoping to get your ‘invading an innocent country’ badge, Bert? Oh, wait, you already have that.”

All-out war threatened to break out now between the two men. But both got to where they were by choosing their battles carefully. And controlling their emotions. This was not a fight either wanted.

Both stepped back.

“Désolé,” said Armand, with a tight smile. “That went too far.”

“And so might we,” General Whitehead admitted. “If someone has their way.”

“Do you have any idea who?”

“No. But having a plan and implementing it are two very different things. Is the US going to invade Canada tomorrow? No. No chance. Will we if necessary? I think so. Don’t look so shocked. We’re both realists, we have to be. What happens when you’re low on water but have missiles up the yin-yang? You use one to get the other. What would you do, Armand, if you and your family were dying of thirst and your neighbor had plenty of water?”

“I’d knock on the door and ask for whatever they could spare. I wouldn’t organize a home invasion.”

“We’d do the same thing. Ask for help, politely. And I’m sure Canada would share. Even open its doors to the first few thousand environmental refugees. The first hundred thousand. Maybe even the first million Americans who came knocking, asking for a cup of your pure spring water. But ten, twenty, a hundred million Americans needing your water? Your food? Your power? Your hospitals and housing?” He shook his head. “No, Armand. We know what would happen.”

“Okay, walk me through it.”

General Whitehead hesitated. Armand was asking him to go even further. To divulge their invasion plan. To give the enemy forewarning. To commit treason.

Whitehead took a deep breath, then took the plunge.

“We’ve run the scenarios. It would be little use asking for your help. We would at first, mostly to show the international community we’re reasonable. But eventually, as I said, we’d be forced to take what we need. Ninety percent of your population lives within a hundred miles of the border.” He looked down at the black line on the floor that, to Armand’s tired eyes, seemed to be thinning. “It would not take long.”

Armand was quiet. Trying to absorb what was being said. Trying, he knew, to marshal arguments. And he found one.

“But you have the Great Lakes. Why would the US need to take over Canada when it has the largest supply of fresh water in the world right there?”

“And what would Canada do if we started to drain the Great Lakes? It’s a shared resource, as you know.”

“What could Canada do?” Armand’s voice had risen slightly in pitch. “We wouldn’t shoot you.”

“Not at first, no.”

“We’d protest, but we’d be powerless to stop it. We would not attack. What? Did I say something funny?”

Whitehead was smiling. “We’ve run the scenarios in war games. Not, of course, on the ground, but in computer models. I’ve played all sides many times. Sometimes I’m in charge of the American response to the crisis. Sometimes I’m Canada. I’ve been the UK. Once I was the UN. That was boring. I just sat there writing stern letters of protest. The outcome was always the same. Shall I tell you?”

Armand wanted to decline. Wanted to pick up his coat and go home to Reine-Marie and the dogs. And Gracie. To have a drink by the fire and read a book. And not know.

He nodded.

“In our war games, when Canada found out we were taking huge amounts of water from the Great Lakes and other sources, there’d first be a diplomatic response. A polite, then not-so-polite request from your country to stop. When that didn’t work, there’d be a trade war. We depend on you for more things than most know. Minerals, for instance. Cement. Imagine if we no longer had cement? But more than that—”

“Oil,” said Armand, with some sadness, seeing where this was going.

“Yes.”

“If you started to drain the Great Lakes, we’d turn off the tap.”

“Bingo.” Whitehead tapped the side of his nose, then turned his finger toward Armand, like a pointed gun. “And that would be it. The trigger. Even the threat of it would be enough to provoke an invasion. You’d be framed in our media as the aggressors. As the enemy. Not helping an ally in need. Not sharing your abundant water, and even turning off our supply of oil. Stopping shipment of valuable minerals. We get most of our uranium, aluminum, nickel, potash from Canada. When faced with drought, with abandoned cities, with an energy crisis and food shortages? When looking north and seeing the ready riches just on the other side of the longest undefended border in the world?” Once again General Whitehead looked down at the black line between them. “Don’t you think desperate people pushed to the limit would readily, happily even, get behind taking those resources? To survive? People break into homes when they’re starving. This would be framed as the same thing. Just a very big home.”

Gamache was shaking his head. “I refuse to believe it.”

“For God’s sake, man, take your head out of your own ass before it’s too late.”