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“W.” Pause. “P.” Pause. “R.” Gamache’s voice was low now, little more than a whisper. He aimed each letter past the guards, past the baffled cabinet minister, to the man standing in the middle of his office.

Everything hung in the balance. And then the PM nodded.

“Let them in.”

Shona felt her legs turn to jelly.

“A message just came in from Chief Inspector Tardiff,” Nichol said, clicking on it.

There were no words, just a series of photographs.

“Proof,” said Lauzon, looking over her shoulder. “Caron was finally sloppy.”

“Or overconfident,” said Beauvoir. Or just confident.

On Nichol’s screen were the pictures taken of Jeanne Caron meeting with Moretti. It was not anything that a defense attorney could characterize as haphazard. They were clearly deep in conversation. Still, while damning, it was not actually illegal.

This was not proof enough to arrest, to convict. But it did make it clear to them, finally, that Jeanne Caron was deep in the conspiracy.

“That’s on mont Royal,” said Jean-Guy. “The lookout.”

“There’s one more. Just came—” Nichol fell silent.

“Merde,” whispered Beauvoir.

The photo showed Moretti’s soldiers, weapons drawn, bearing down on Tardiff through the forest.

“What is War Plan Red, sir?”

“I don’t know how you got through the lockdown—” Prime Minister Woodford gave his security detail a stern look.

“You can thank Canada’s not-so-latent racism,” said Shona.

The senior ministers and armed officers turned to the young woman, and Isabelle Lacoste vowed that the first thing she’d do, if they got out of this, was introduce her children to Shona.

“What is War Plan Red?” While still cordial, there was steel in Gamache’s tone.

He glanced over to the cabinet ministers. Robert Ferguson, the Minister of Public Safety, had joined Giselle Trudel, the Minister of Defense, in the PM’s office. Both immediately dropped their eyes to the carpet.

Tragically, the posts they’d all just read were right, and the Chief Inspector had lost his mind. Now he was babbling about some war plan.

Prime Minister Woodford turned to Isabelle Lacoste and Shona Dorion. His voice gentle now, kindly even. “I see he’s somehow convinced you that his fantasies are real. This has gone from pathetic to dangerous. Monsieur Gamache—”

“Chief Inspector Gamache,” said Shona.

“—is making no sense. You need to distance yourself from him in every way before he causes you harm. I beg you.”

“When we were here earlier, you seemed to agree with us,” said Lacoste.

“No. I asked you for proof. Instead of that, you come marching in here raving about some war plan that sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon. We have bigger problems.” He waved toward the TV screens, which showed armed activity around the White House. “I don’t have time to spend on your delusions.”

But Gamache was studying the Prime Minister. “You know what ‘WPR’ means.”

“Wasn’t that a sitcom?” said Ferguson, who was responsible for Canada’s intelligence service. “With Loni Anderson?”

“That’s WKRP,” said Giselle Trudel, the Minister of Defense.

“It’s a public radio station in Wisconsin,” said the head of the Parliamentary Protective Service, reading from his phone. “WPR.”