The Nature of the Beast

by Louise Penny

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, sitting down. Reluctantly. He was anxious to get going.

  “But you don’t seem surprised,” she said, watching him closely.

  “If this gun is what I think it is, it would not be the first death associated with it.”

  “You’re not going to tell me it’s cursed,” said Isabelle Lacoste.

  “No more than any gun.”

  Well, he thought. Perhaps a little more. For a gun that had never been fired, it had caused a shocking number of deaths. Of which the boy was just the latest, but not, perhaps, the last.

  “And what have we found?” she asked.

  “I need to see it first,” he said. “To confirm.”

  “What do you suspect it is?” she pressed.

  Through the mullioned windows, Professor Rosenblatt saw a man in his fifties walking over the stone bridge, toward the old train station. He was tall and more sturdy than heavy. He wore a cap and slacks and rubber boots and a warm waxed coat against the chilly September morning.

  And he looked familiar.

  Isabelle Lacoste turned to see who the professor was staring at with such intensity.

  “That’s Monsieur Gamache,” she said.

  Gamache, thought Rosenblatt. Chief Inspector Gamache. Of the Sûreté.

  Yes, now he placed him. From news reports.

  Watching the man approach with a strong, determined step, Rosenblatt suspected Gamache was no more retired than he himself was.

  * * *

  They walked through the woods, following bright yellow ribbons tied to the trees. Like crumbs leading to Grandma’s great big gun.

  Professor Rosenblatt was not used to forests. Or fields. Or lakes. Or nature of any kind. They’d walked for a few minutes and he was already tired. He skidded off another moss-covered rock and hugged a tree trunk to stop himself from falling.

  “All right?” Gamache asked, reaching out to steady the older man and to pick up his briefcase, again. He’d offered to carry it but the professor had politely, but firmly, declined and took it back, again.

  And so their progress through the forest became a sort of minuet, with Professor Rosenblatt lunging from tree to tree, like a drunk groping his way across a dance floor.

  Lacoste and Beauvoir were now a distance ahead, almost swallowed up by the trees.

  “This is not my natural habitat,” said the professor, unnecessarily. “I prefer four walls, a computer and a plate of madeleines.”

  Gamache smiled. “Chocolatines for me.”

  “Oui. They’d do, in an emergency. I don’t suppose…”

  “Sadly, no,” said Gamache with a smile.

  Far up ahead Rosenblatt could hear, between his raspy gasping breaths, the two officers talking. Words familiar from television shows drifted back to him.

  DNA. Forensics. Blood work.

  He wondered how the boy had died, though at that moment he was concentrating on not dying himself, as he huffed and wheezed and stumbled through the forest.

  And then, in the gloom, Rosenblatt saw something that made his heart leap. One of the trees moved. He stopped and removed his glasses, wiping sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand.

  Being a scientist, Professor Rosenblatt knew it could not possibly be a tree, walking. But he also knew that this forest contained other unbelievable things.

  And then his vision adjusted, and he saw that it wasn’t, of course, a tree at all, but another Sûreté officer, dressed in his moss-green uniform. And off to the side was another one.

  And coming around that hill, still another.

  And then his eyes adjusted some more, and focused on what it was they circled. And guarded.

  He thought he was prepared, but as he stared at the towering jumble of vines in front of them all rational thought escaped and left him light-headed.

  “Ready?” Isabelle Lacoste asked.

  One by one they went inside. First Inspector Beauvoir, then Chief Inspector Lacoste. Then it was Professor Rosenblatt’s turn.

  He hesitated and realized with some surprise that he was afraid. Afraid of what he’d find. Afraid it wasn’t what he thought it was. Afraid it was.

  Gamache held back the thick vines at the opening so that the professor could squeeze through on his hands and knees, pushing his briefcase ahead of him.

  The Sûreté officers had turned on their flashlights but they didn’t provide much light. And then there was a thump and huge floodlights were turned on.

  Michael Rosenblatt brought his hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the glare. And then his gaze traveled up. And up. And up.

  And his mouth went slack. He held his breath and then released it in a long, long exhale, at the tail end of which were two words, barely audible.

  “He didn’t.”

  And then Professor Rosenblatt dropped his briefcase.

  CHAPTER 12

  “My God,” Rosenblatt whispered.

  But he didn’t seem to Gamache, who stood beside the elderly professor, like a man who’d seen his God. Just the opposite.

  “Can I go closer? Am I allowed to touch it?”

  “Yes. But be careful,” said Lacoste.

  He handed his briefcase, no longer all that important, to Gamache and approached the gun. Slowly, carefully. His hands out in front of him, as though worried he might scare it off.

  “The main thing we need to know from you, Professor,” said Lacoste, as they followed him, “is whether it can be fired. We’d need to disable it.”

  “Yes,” said Rosenblatt, in a dream state.

  He walked up to the etching, and stopped. Considering the monster. Then he laid his palms flat on it. Feeling the cold metal. Almost expecting to feel a pulse.

  He leaned into it, and Gamache thought he heard a whisper, but couldn’t make out the words.

  Then Professor Rosenblatt stepped back. And back again. And another step. Craning his neck, dropping his head back until it could go no further. His mouth open, his eyes wide, he tried to take in the magnitude of what he was seeing. Not simply the size of the weapon, but the very fact of it.

  He turned his head to look along the barrel as it disappeared into the darkness. Not even the floodlights could reach to the end.

  Gamache watched as the professor closed his eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, then with one last exhale he turned to his companions.

  “I need to find the firing chamber, to see if it’s armed.”

  He was all business now.

  “It’ll be around here,” he said, walking to the rear of the gun. “Did you open this?”

  He pointed to a round metal door, large enough to walk into.

  “We tried, but couldn’t make it open,” said Lacoste. “We stopped, afraid we might inadvertently fire it.”

  Professor Rosenblatt was nodding. “You wouldn’t have. The firing mechanism is somewhere else. This is the breech. If there’s a missile, it would be in here.”

  They watched as the professor ran his hands over the latches and handles and knobs.

  “Careful,” warned Beauvoir, but Rosenblatt didn’t respond. He was too focused on the mechanism.

  “Do we know for sure he knows what he’s doing?” Lacoste asked Beauvoir.

  Before Beauvoir could answer, they saw the professor reach out and grasp a lever. Leaning into it, the elderly man pulled but nothing happened.

  “I need help,” he said. “It’s stuck.”

  Beauvoir joined him, and between them they pulled and pulled until it gave with such suddenness both men leapt back.

  There was a whirring, grinding sound, then a loud hiss.

  Gamache tensed. Afraid Rosenblatt had just set it off, but not at all sure what to do if he had.

  Then the massive door swung open, like a mouth. Like a maw. Inviting them in.

  The four of them stared. Gamache could hear heavy breathing and knew it came from Jean-Guy. Not because the effort had winded him, but because he was staring into his nightmare.

  While Gamache was afraid of heights, Beauvoir was terrified of holes. Armand stepped over to him.

  “Stay here,” he said. “If the door closes, please open it again.”

  Beauvoir didn’t answer, but continued to stare.

  “Do you need to write that down?” asked Gamache.

  “Huh? Pardon?” said Jean-Guy, coming out of his reverie. “Right. Wait, are you going in there?”

  He waved to the opening, where Professor Rosenblatt was already standing.

  “I am. And if we need to climb up on the thing?”

  “I’ll go,” said Beauvoir, with a smile.

  “You’d better.”

  Gamache followed Rosenblatt and Lacoste into the chamber.

  In the beams of their flashlights, Gamache could see the professor’s face. His eyes. Bright, but not overexcited. He seemed almost calm, in control.

  This was his natural environment. The belly of the beast. This was where the little professor belonged.

  “Incredible,” Rosenblatt murmured, shaking his head. “No electronics.” He looked back at his companions. “It’s like a Meccano set.”

  “But is it armed?” asked Lacoste. She was beginning to get antsy. She’d never suffered from claustrophobia, but then she’d never been crammed into the firing chamber of a giant weapon with two other people before.

  “No,” said Rosenblatt, and pointed toward the great long tube stretching out in front of them.

  Rosenblatt was studying the wall of the borehole.

  “Empty. There’s never even been a missile in here. It’s unmarked.”

  Gamache reached out and touched the side. It felt slightly greasy.

  “It’s been prepared,” he said.

  Rosenblatt looked at him and nodded. “You know guns.”

  “Sadly, yes,” said Gamache. “We all do. But never anything like this.”

  “No one has known anything like this,” said Rosenblatt, and even by the limited beam of the flashlight Gamache could see the wonder in the professor’s eyes.

  “Can it be fired?” Lacoste asked.

  “I need to find the firing mechanism before I can answer and for that, we need to leave.”

  He did not need to say it twice. Lacoste was out in a flash, following the professor around to the side of the machine.

  “That’s interesting. The trigger should be here.” He placed his fist in a large hole. “But it’s missing.”

  “Maybe it’s somewhere else,” Beauvoir suggested.

  “No, it would have to be here, given the configuration inside.”

  He looked behind him, toward the back wall of the camouflage netting, and shook his head.

  “But the main thing is,” said Lacoste. “It isn’t armed, and even if it was, it can’t be fired.”

  “Not without the mechanism, no.”

  “What would it look like?” Gamache asked.

  “The trigger would have cogs that fit onto this wheel.” The professor pointed to a circle with teeth, about a foot wide. “There’s nothing electronic on this thing. Not even the guidance system. It’s all done manually.”

  “Could it have fallen off?” asked Beauvoir, looking on the ground.

  “This isn’t a LEGO set. Things don’t just fall off. It’s intricate, perfectly made. Each piece fits snugly, exactly.”

  “So, no?” said Beauvoir.

  “No,” said Rosenblatt. “If it’s gone, someone took it, and by the looks of it, not recently. I need to see the etching again.”

  The elderly man spoke with determination and Gamache realized that while he was afraid of heights, and Beauvoir was afraid of confined spaces, Professor Michael Rosenblatt was afraid of the etching.

  They walked back to it, and Rosenblatt stepped back, taking in the winged monster as it reared and bucked. Its seven heads were straining, its long necks intertwining like serpents. There was a woman on its back, holding reins. Controlling the beast. She stared out at them, a strange expression on her face. It wasn’t wrath, thought Gamache. It wasn’t vengeance or blood lust. It was more sinister. Something Gamache couldn’t quite define.

  Professor Rosenblatt whispered under his breath.

  “What did you say?” asked Gamache, who was closest to the scientist.

  Rosenblatt pointed to what looked like scales on the monster’s body.

  Gamache stepped closer, then, putting on his glasses, he bent in. Straightening up, he looked at the professor.

  “Hebrew?”

  “Yes. Can you read it?” asked Rosenblatt.

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  Rosenblatt looked again at the creature. At the detailing, which were not scales at all, but words. And he read, out loud.

  Then he turned to his companions in this dark place. He looked both triumphant and terrified. As though his worst fear and greatest wish were one and the same. And had come true.

  “By the waters of Babylon,” he said, “we sat down and wept.”

  The blood rushed from Gamache’s face. In front of him the gun glowed, unnaturally, supernaturally, in the floodlights. Shadows were thrown on the canopy, a false sky above, a grotesque constellation.

  “Now,” said Professor Rosenblatt, “I can tell you what this is.”

  * * *

  They sat in the living room of the Gamache home, around the fireplace where flames leapt and danced and threw cheerful light on the somber faces.

  It had been cold in the forest, and the decision was made to return to someplace warm. And private.

  They sat with mugs of tea, warm and comforting, and plates of madeleines Armand had picked up at Sarah’s boulangerie as they’d passed by.

  “What you’ve found,” said Professor Rosenblatt, “is Project Babylon. When we spoke this morning and you described it, I barely believed you. Project Babylon is a tale physicists told to scare each other. It’s a Grimms’ tale for scientists.”

  He took a deep breath and tried to cover his discomfort by reaching for another pastry. But his unsteady hand betrayed him.

  Gamache couldn’t decide if the tremble was caused by fear or excitement.

  “What you have is a Supergun. No, not ‘a’ Supergun, it’s ‘the’ Supergun. The only one of its kind. Within the armaments community it’s a sort of legend. For years we’d heard rumors that it’d been built. Some people tried to find it, but gave up. Then the talk died away, as time passed.”

  “When you first saw it,” said Gamache, “you whispered, ‘He didn’t.’ Who did you mean?”

  Armand leaned forward, forearms on his knees, his large hands forming a sort of bow in front of him. Like a ship plowing through the seas.

  “I meant Gerald Bull,” said Rosenblatt, and seemed to expect some sort of reaction. A gasp, perhaps. But there was nothing beyond rapt attention.

  “Gerald Bull?” Rosenblatt repeated, looking from one to the other to the other.

  They shook their heads.

  “Look on my works, ye Mighty,” said Rosenblatt as he drew his battered leather briefcase toward him. “And despair.”

  “Oh no,” sighed Beauvoir. “Now we have two of them.”

  “‘Ozymandias,’” said Gamache, looking at Jean-Guy with despair. “The professor was quoting a sonnet by Shelley—”

  “—of course he was.”

  “—that speaks of arrogance, of hubris. A king who thought his achievements would stand for thousands of years, but all that remained of him was a broken statue in the desert.”

  “And yet he was finally immortalized,” said Rosenblatt. “Not because of his power, but because of a poem.”

  Beauvoir looked about to say something smart-ass, but stopped. And thought.

  “Who was Gerald Bull?” he finally asked.

  Professor Rosenblatt had unbuckled the briefcase and, after sorting through the contents, brought out some papers.

  “I found these in my files after we spoke. I thought they might be needed.”

  He put the papers, held together by a staple, on the coffee table.

  “This is Dr. Bull.”

  Isabelle Lacoste picked them up. What the professor had brought was yellowed and typewritten. There was also a grainy black-and-white photograph of a man in a suit and narrow tie, looking put upon.

  “He was an armaments engineer,” said Rosenblatt. “Depending on who you speak to, Dr. Bull was either a visionary or an amoral arms dealer. Either way, he was a brilliant designer.”

  “He made that thing in the woods?” asked Lacoste.

  “I think so, yes. I think it was part of what he called Project Babylon. His goal was to design and build a gun so powerful it could launch a missile into low Earth orbit, like a satellite. From there it would travel thousands of miles to its target.”

  “But don’t those exist?” asked Beauvoir. “ICBMs?”

  “Yes, but the Supergun is different,” said Rosenblatt.

  “The Meccano set,” said Lacoste. “No electronics.”

  “Exactly.” The professor beamed at her. “No computer guidance systems. Nothing that depends on software or even electricity. Just good old-fashioned armaments, not that far off the artillery used in the First World War.”

  “But why was that such an achievement?” asked Gamache. “It sounds like a step back, not forward. As Inspector Beauvoir says, if there’re ICBMs that can send nuclear warheads thousands of miles accurately, why would anyone want or need Gerald Bull’s Supergun?”

  “Think about it,” said Rosenblatt.

  They did, but nothing came to mind.

  “You’re too mired in the present, in thinking that newer must be better,” he said. “But part of Gerald Bull’s genius was recognizing that ancient design could not only work, but in some cases, work better.”

  “Did he also build a giant slingshot?” asked Beauvoir. “Should we be looking for one of those?”

  “Think,” said Rosenblatt.

  Gamache thought, and then he looked around their home. At the useless smartphone on the desk in the study. At the dial-up connection that barely worked.

  He looked at the crackling fireplace, feeling its heat, and he thought about the woodstove in the kitchen. In Clara’s kitchen. In Myrna’s bookstore.

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