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"As I told your young colleague, Inspector Beauvoir, orked at McGill at the same tiether, not in the sah no one really worked with Gerald Bull It ht start out that way, but eventually you found yourself working for hi for hiun?"

"No I left when he began using the Soviets as a back door to sell his arms He wasn’t very sht?"

"No I left because it rong It’s one thing to design weapons for your own country, it’s another to sell thehest bidder Gerald Bull was the consummate salesman, and completely without a conscience"

"Why did you just say that he wasn’t very smart?" asked Ga up to the Soviets He had an outsized ego that told hio lied?" asked Gamache

"Shocking, I know Dr Bull was bombastic The perfect personality for a reat salesman"

"Why would he have the Whore of Babylon etched into the cannon? Was it a sort of calling card? A signature? Did Dr Bull put it into all his designs?"

"Not that I know of It was probably another sales tool What else would appeal to a crazy despot like Saddam but a weapon etched with a symbol of the apocalypse? And one from ancient Iraq, no less It was perfect"

"But this wasn’t Saddaun, was it?" said Gamache "Gerald Bull didn’t build it in Iraq, he built it in Québec And he etched the Whore of Babylon on it Why?"

"Maybe it supports the mock-up theory," said Rosenblatt "He built it to show the Iraqis After all, by then all the intelligence agencies in the world were interested in Bull and Project Babylon but they’d never think to look for it here He could show it to the Iraqis and once the order was in, he could dishdad"

Gamache listened to this curiously detailed hypothesis He had to adh there was still another possibility The other one

"Or it could’ve been ," said Gamache "Saddaoal was never to hit Israel, or Iran, or any target in the region Maybe the target was the US Maybe those weapons of mass destruction that the Americans were so sure were there were actually here"

Maybe,Though he felt they were getting closer Maybe

Gaainst the banquette and looked across the table at his co else Reine-Marie had discovered while researching Gerald Bull