Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (12 page)

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

J
ack was up early again the next morning. Having made his choice about Effrem Likkel, he didn’t want to waste any more time. After making a stop at Starbucks, he drove to the Embassy Suites and was knocking on Effrem’s door shortly before seven. The Belgian answered the door in flannel pajamas. He rubbed his eyes and blinked at Jack. Effrem was sporting a severe case of bed head, his shaggy blond hair flattened on one side.

“I told you not to open the door,” Jack said.

“I saw you through the peephole.”

“You drink coffee?”

“Copious amounts.”

He stepped into the room, handed Effrem one of the cups, then took one of the seats beneath the window. He
parted the draperies slightly to let in some morning sun. The rain had stopped falling the night before and temperatures were going to reach the mid-seventies. Outside, the pavement was already steaming.

Yawning, Effrem shuffled to the table and sat down across from Jack, who said, “I checked into you. You’ve got some big shoes to fill.”

Effrem smiled. “At least she didn’t wear high heels. Of course, you’re living in a shadow of your own, aren’t you? I checked into you as well. I thought you looked familiar. You don’t look much like you do in the official family portrait.”

“You’re a journalist, and pretty good, from what I gather. If you’re after a juicy story, you’ve already got one. If you run with what happened yesterday—”

“I’m not,” Effrem said, taking a sip of coffee.

“Why?”

“Will you be offended if I say I’m after bigger fish?”

“If it’s true, no,” said Jack.

“Plus, cliché as it is, you did save my life. What kind of man would I be if I repaid that by feeding you to the wolves?”

“There are a lot of your colleagues who wouldn’t give it a second thought.”

“I’m not them, Jack. You have a saying here, yes? It’s not who wins or loses, but how you play the game. My mother believed that, and so do I.”

In theory Jack agreed, but in his business you didn’t
always have the luxury of being a good sport. In journalism you certainly had that choice, though it probably tended to make the job much harder.

“So, what game are you playing?” asked Jack.

“Are we still quid pro quo?”

“Yes.”

Effrem took a sip of coffee, then stared into space for a few seconds as though assembling his thoughts. “Have you heard the name René Allemand?”

“It’s familiar. French soldier, right?”

“Correct, though he’s far from typical. I’ll get to that later. Last year Allemand disappeared from his post, Port-Bouët, in Ivory Coast. He was there as part of Operation Unicorn—a peacekeeping mission after the civil war began. Initially there were rumors he’d deserted, but they were discounted. The consensus is that he was captured by one faction or another and then executed.”

“No ransom or video?” Jack asked. “No one claiming credit?”

“Not that I’ve found. And no unidentified bodies in the area that might match him. I’ve got a couple more leads I’m checking.”

“You said ‘disappeared.’ Does that mean he wasn’t on patrol at the time? He was on the base?”

“That’s another point of fuzziness,” Effrem replied. “I’ll come back to that. Anyway, I have reason to believe that not
only is René Allemand alive, but his disappearance was staged.”

“For what reason?”

“Quid pro quo, Jack,” Effrem replied.

Though Jack had already decided to join forces with the journalist, the absurdity of the situation wasn’t lost on him. Nor were the pitfalls. But nothing was certain in life, was it?

“A few nights ago the man you know as Eric Schrader tried to kill me.”

Effrem leaned forward. “You’re serious.”

“Yes. And the man in the white Nissan is named Peter Hahn. Both he and Schrader are dead now.”

“How?”

“Schrader walked into traffic and was hit by a truck. Hahn was killed by Möller at the preserve about ten minutes before he tried to kill you. I was following Hahn.”

“Go back, start from the beginning. Leave nothing out.”

Jack did this, starting with the incident at the Supermercado and ending with his and Effrem’s encounter with Möller at the preserve. He added Doug Butler’s revelation about the murder of Mark Macloon.

“So many questions,” Effrem muttered.

“That makes two of us.”

“Why were they trying to kill you? Why didn’t this Peter Hahn finish the job? Why—”

Jack held up his hand. “To answer your first question: I have no idea. I’ve looked at this from all angles. I had a hunch, but that’s looking less likely all the time. In all your digging you never came across my name?”

“Never. What about Hahn? What’s his story?”

“Hard to say. He could have killed me twice and didn’t. My guess is he was acting under duress. I also think he went to the preserve knowing he might not be coming back out.”

“Pardon me?”

“I think he wanted me there as a witness. I’ve got some data from his computer. Once I sift through it we might have a better sense of things.”

We
. He had to admit feeling a certain relief having a . . . what? Partner? Ally? It wasn’t the same as having Dom or Chavez watching his back, but Effrem Likkel was sharp and, unless Jack’s character radar was flawed, trustworthy. And crafty. Effrem had been swimming with sharks for quite a while and was still alive. He could have worse allies.

“I have to say, Jack, you seem very resourceful for a financial adviser. That’s what you do, yes?”

“More or less.”

“You’re good at saying a lot but imparting nothing.”

Jack shrugged. “How am I supposed to answer the question?”

“You’re not. It was an observation. I’m curious by nature;
too much so, if you ask my friends. Jack, we’re going to have secrets from each other, I think. It’s inevitable. As long as they don’t impact our mutual goal, so be it.”

“Agreed. Let’s get back on track: You were following Schrader—is that his real name, by the way?” When Effrem nodded, Jack asked, “How did you come in contact with him?”

“Through René Allemand—or at least I’m fairly certain it was him. He and Schrader met in Lyon, France, in the first week of January.”

Jack thought:
Lyon . . . January.
“Wait. Are you—”

Effrem was nodding. “I believe Eric Schrader and René Allemand met in secret, a week before the Lyon terrorist attacks.”

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

J
ack had already separated from The Campus by the time the attacks occurred, so his only information had come from the media, which had swarmed on not just the similarities to the Paris attacks but also the timing; Lyon had taken place almost exactly two months after Paris. The scale and casualties of the Lyon attacks had been smaller than those in Paris, but both had involved closely timed bomb detonations and mass shootings at restaurants and in the Metro. While no group had claimed credit and French authorities had named no suspects, there was no mistaking the modus operandi, which had uniformly been seen as an attempt to rub France’s nose in it: Despite all your preparations, we can attack you in the same way, in any place, at any time. In many ways the Lyon attacks had had a
greater impact on the psyche of the French populace and government alike.

Jack asked, “And you don’t think this was a coincidence?”

“No,” said Effrem. “How exactly, I’m not sure, but I think Allemand was involved in the attacks, but perhaps not of his own volition.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I think he was false-flagged. That’s the right word for it, yes? When you’re recruited by an enemy posing as an ally?”

“More or less. You think Schrader was ultimately pulling his strings?”

“My guess is no. I think he was simply acting as a handler. For whom, I don’t know. Maybe for this Möller fellow. He sounds like a big question mark for both of us. By the way, do you know where he is?”

“No, but with any luck we will soon. I’m tracking his credit card. I’ve got his passport, so he may be desperate for options. Back to Eric Schrader: What can you tell me about him?”

“German national, age forty-one, former
Feldwebel
—first sergeant, I think you would call him—with the
Heer
.”

Jack could guess the rest. “He belonged to Kommando Spezialkräfte—Special Forces Command.”

“Yes. KSK. How did you know?”

Jack told him about the Eickhorn Solingen knife he’d taken from Schrader—or, more accurately, after Schrader
smashed his head into a chunk of concrete and dropped the knife.

Effrem whistled softly. “Have you considered, Jack, that you may be part cat?”

“Cats land on their feet. So far I haven’t been that graceful. Just lucky. What else do you have?”

“Two apartments Schrader had visited in the past few months, one in Zurich and one in Munich. The former seemed like a . . . temporary arrangement, I think, but the one in Munich might be his home base.”

“Munich,” Jack repeated. “That’s where Hahn’s daughter lives.”

“No kidding.”

“What makes you think Zurich was temporary?” asked Jack.

“I tracked him there after his first meeting with Allemand in Lyon. The place was luxurious, and in a well-to-do neighborhood. Schrader’s place in Munich is a far cry from that. Unless he is slumming, the Zurich apartment belongs to someone else.”

“Was Schrader in Munich when he left to come here?” Effrem nodded and Jack said, “At some point I’ll want to see a detailed timeline of all this.”

“I have one. Great minds think alike.”

“And I’ll want to know how you got from Allemand going missing in Ivory Coast to him and Schrader meeting in Lyon.”

“Of course. We can meet again after you’ve had a look at Hahn’s e-mails.”

Still quid pro quo
. While Jack didn’t blame Effrem for it, he hoped the parrying wouldn’t last much longer. The sooner they put their respective puzzle pieces together on a table, the better.

However, Jack wasn’t confident he could make full use of Hahn’s data. Even the simplest of e-mails was an alphanumeric stew that made Jack’s brain hurt. He could parse only a fraction of the available information, and his go-to expert, Gavin Biery, wasn’t an option. He’d have to come up with something else.

A thought occurred to Jack. “You said you’re working the story freelance. Have you got anyone looking at this?”

“An editor, you mean? No one’s seen any of it—with the exception of you now. This is my story. I’m going to deliver it whole.”

“Who’s footing the bill?”

“I am. Through credit cards.”

Jack decided to twist the knife a bit, see if he could rattle Effrem. “You’re practically Belgian Fourth Estate royalty. No gratuitous allowance? No trust fund?”

“Not until I’m thirty. By then, I expect to have my Pulitzer,” Effrem said with a grin. “Jack, when I graduated from university my mother gave me a box of red pencils and a card that said ‘Edit in good health.’ So the answer to your
question is no. No allowance. Just three nearly maxed-out credit cards and a box of red pencils.”

Jack laughed. He couldn’t help liking Effrem. Clearly Marie Likkel and Jack’s parents had gone to the same parenting school—the University of Stand on Your Own Two Feet. For Jack that had meant joining The Campus; for Effrem Likkel, chasing down a story most journalists wait a lifetime to find. The guy had balls, no doubt about it.

Jack had to wonder if his getting involved in all this would help or hurt the Belgian. At least three people were dead so far and Jack had come damned close to being the fourth. If he included the casualties from the Lyon attacks the tally skyrocketed. The players involved seemed snatched from a grab bag: a missing and possibly traitorous French soldier, a German Special Forces operator posing as a crackhead, a widowed and lonely man from Rose Hill, and a terrorist group who, despite striking the second-deadliest blow on French soil in history, had disappeared from the world terrorism stage.
Then there’s me,
Jack thought. He was the outlier. Why?

“What about you, Jack?” asked Effrem. “Aren’t you supposed to have bodyguards or something? Oh, wait, is there a helicopter on the roof as we speak?”

Jack laughed again. “If there is, it’s not for me.”

Effrem finished his coffee, tossed the empty cup into the garbage can beside the dresser. “So what now? Do we keep going together, or separately?”

Jack considered this for a few seconds. “I hope I don’t live to regret this, but I vote for the former.”

Effrem nodded. “Seconded.”

—

J
ack left Effrem with two chores: One, inspect his rental SUV for any trace of the second round Möller had fired. It was beyond a long shot and would almost certainly turn out to be worthless, but Stephan Möller had in front of witnesses committed murder and attempted murder on a government nature preserve. Jack had an unspent, custom-made bullet from the murder weapon, and if one of Möller’s frangibles had embedded itself in Effrem’s SUV they also had a spent round for comparison. The chances of Stephan Möller seeing the inside of any courtroom were virtually nonexistent, but it was an avenue Jack wasn’t going to ignore.