Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (16 page)

Kaitlin had borrowed Eunice’s car to get to the train station for her daily commute.

Effrem said, “Could it have been her boyfriend?”

“Maybe,” Jack replied. Then: “No. The guy said ‘wife.’ He was picking up his wife.”

Unless Kaitlin had failed to change her relationship status on Facebook, which seemed unlikely, given how much time she spent there, she was still single.

“So how can we be sure it’s Möller inside?”

The quickest way to answer the question was also the one Jack didn’t like: Break into Kaitlin Showalter’s house
and, if Möller was inside, snatch him up. Of course, as before, that approach left him with a captive and all the problems that came along with that. The other option was to wait until Möller moved again and follow. If the man was using Kaitlin’s house as an impromptu safe house/aid station, he was likely to make it brief.

For a moment, Jack reconsidered his approach to Möller. Maybe this was one of those times when violence would solve problems. Kill Möller and be done with it. It would make it harder to find the answers he needed, and if there was such a thing as good luck, Jack had already strained his. Committing cold-blooded murder on U.S. soil would give him a constellation of bigger problems, starting with a moral line he could never uncross.

Jack turned in his seat and reached into his rucksack, rummaged for a moment, then came up with a GPS tracker, the same kind he’d planted in Peter Hahn’s car.

“What’s that?” asked Effrem. Jack explained and Effrem said, “Let’s just hope he doesn’t switch cars again. Plus, we’re making a lot of assumptions about—”

“Welcome to my world,” Jack said. “Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

WOLCOTT, CONNECTICUT

W
ith the tracker in place, they found another all-night diner off Lakewood Road, ordered a late dinner/early breakfast, then settled in to wait. It was just after three a.m. If Möller didn’t move before dawn, they’d go back to the house.

They sipped their coffee in silence until Jack could feel the caffeine hit his bloodstream. He took a few moments to assemble his thoughts, then said, “Ready for some questions?”

Effrem replied, “As long as they don’t require deep thinking. If I don’t get my usual fourteen hours of sleep a night, I’m not at my best.”

“Tell me how you got onto the Allemand story.”

“I got curious. Of course, soldiers disappear all the time, especially in places like Afghanistan or Iraq. Or Ivory Coast.
It’s like your Old West out there. But it struck me that Allemand’s disappearance wasn’t getting the attention it warranted. In French military circles his family is renowned. And it’s a juicy mystery story. No one, not even his father, Marshal Allemand, spoke out very much.”

“Maybe the marshal simply accepted it. It comes with the job.”

“Would you accept it if your son went missing? You would want answers.”

“True,” Jack replied. “So you got curious and then what? Went down to Ivory Coast?”

“Exactly. I tried to get some interviews through military channels but got nowhere, so I managed to track down some of René’s friends that were still stationed at Port-Bouët Airport, Abidjan. That’s where Operation Unicorn was headquartered. What they said about René’s disappearance didn’t add up; he didn’t fit the profile as either a deserter or someone reckless enough to get kidnapped. They all knew the off-limits areas of Abidjan. In fact, René was usually the voice of reason, the one talking others out of straying.”

Jack noted Effrem’s use of Allemand’s first name. It was as though Effrem was speaking about a close friend. The young journalist was invested not only in discovering the truth behind Allemand’s disappearance, but also in finding the man. Did that mean Effrem had lost objectivity? Jack wondered.

“Keep going,” he said.

“In the previous eighteen months two other soldiers had gone missing. One had been kidnapped by COJEP—the Young Patriots, it’s an anti-UN group—and then released. The other deserted and was apprehended a week later in Korhogo.”

“In other words, you found no cases of a soldier simply vanishing.”

“Not one. But here’s where it gets interesting. After I’d interviewed all the military personnel willing to talk, I started visiting social hangouts favored by the soldiers—most of them in Koumassi commune—”

“Which is what?” asked Jack.

“Communes are sort of like boroughs in New York City. Koumassi is one of three on Little Bassam Island in the middle of Abidjan Harbor. It’s about two miles from Port-Bouët Airport.”

“Got it.”

“Eventually I found one local, a café owner in Koumassi named Fabrice, who claimed to have seen René kidnapped off the street by men in balaclavas.”

“Did he report it?”

“He claimed to have, but I couldn’t corroborate it. I believed him, though.”

“Why?” asked Jack.

“One, I did a little digging into the man; and two, instinct. I assume you did something similar after we met.”

Jack had indeed. He nodded. “So Fabrice gives you this story. What did you do with it?”

“Not much. Shortly after I interviewed Fabrice, I had to go back to France. When I started investigating the story, one of the first things I did was contact his fiancée, Madeline. Of everyone involved she seemed the most frustrated over René’s disappearance—or, more accurately, the lack of outcry. We hit it off, I suppose you could say. Anyway, Madeline claimed to have heard from René.”

“How?”

“Text message. It wasn’t from his phone, of course, but she was certain it was him. His phrasing, his punctuation, a few words here and there convinced her it was René.”

“What did he say?”

Effrem pulled a small brown leather notebook from his jacket pocket, opened it, then flipped to a page. “His first message was, ‘Am alive. Tell no one. Trouble. YIA, R.’”

“What’s that mean, ‘YIA’?”

“Yours in all. Yours in body, mind, and spirit. It was their shorthand for ‘I love you.’”

This was a credible detail. Not proof of life exactly, but it certainly had the ring of truth to it. “She got other messages, I assume?”

“Three others. One a message he wanted passed to his father, the other a time and place Madeline and he were to
meet. Before you ask, she refused to tell what the message was. She did give me the details of the meeting, though.”

“Why trust you with that but not the message to Marshal Allemand?”

“I don’t know,” replied Effrem. “At any rate, I went ahead of her to the meeting place—Parc de la Feyssine in Lyon. I kept my distance and took pictures. Here.” Effrem slid his phone across to Jack. “The first two pictures are of René before his deployment to Ivory Coast, then during. The last three are of him meeting with Madeline.”

Jack scrolled through the album. Each picture showed a young man in his late twenties with a lantern jaw and thin lips. In the first two images his black hair was buzz-cut; in the last three, longer, almost to his shoulders. Effrem was right: If these most recent images were not of René Allemand, then they were of his clone.

“I’m convinced,” Jack said.

“Good. René and Madeline met for about ten minutes before parting. I followed him to a brasserie near Claude Bernard University. That’s where I first saw Eric Schrader. I figured I already had a strong enough link to René through Madeline, so I decided to follow Schrader.”

“Which is how you eventually got here,” Jack finished.

“Correct. After Zurich and Munich.”

“Where Schrader did what?”

“In Zurich, he went to an office building in the business district. I don’t know which office specifically, however. I have a list. And he also stayed at that apartment I mentioned—”

“The one you don’t think belongs to him.”

“Yes. As far as Munich goes, aside from his apartment, Schrader went to the gym, a couple nightclubs, and a restaurant and market near his place.”

“Have you and Madeline talked since you left Lyon?”

“A few times, but she’s cooled off on me. Evasive. I think whatever René said to her scared her badly. And believe me, she’s no mouse. You have to be tough to get accepted by the Allemand clan—especially the marshal.”

Jack was nodding, but his mind was elsewhere, assembling a tentative plan of action. Once they’d taken the Möller pursuit as far as it could go, Jack would want to reinterview everyone Effrem had talked to, starting with Fabrice the café owner in Abidjan and Madeline in Lyon before scouting the locations in Zurich and Munich. So all he’d been doing was walking in the dark, grasping at whatever came into reach and hoping it would lead him to a light switch.

Jack realized he’d become so engrossed in the saga of René Allemand that he’d momentarily lost sight of his overriding objective: discovering who was trying to kill him and why. The truth was, the only direct connection between himself and René Allemand was Eric Schrader. Beyond that,
were the attempt on Jack’s life and the disappearance of Allemand interwoven, or were they simply a coincidence? If the former, how, exactly?

Jack had already asked Effrem this very question, and now he put it to him again. Effrem replied, “If there’s a deeper connection, I haven’t found it. As I said, you can study my notes. Maybe I’ve missed something.”

“You told me you thought Allemand might have been false-flagged. What makes you think that?”

“Madeline let slip something the last time we talked. She said René had told her, ‘He isn’t who he claims to be.’”

Jack’s cell phone beeped. He checked the screen, then said, “Möller’s on the
move.”

WOLCOTT, CONNECTICUT

O
nce in the car, Jack watched his phone’s screen as the red blip that represented Möller’s car—or what he hoped was Möller inside Eunice Miller’s car—left Willow Drive and slowly made its way to Highway 15, where it headed north. Jack let Möller get a mile’s head start, then followed.

Möller headed almost due north, making his way first to 84 before picking up I-91 at Hartford. An hour later they crossed the border into Massachusetts. An hour after that they were into Vermont, following 91 along the Connecticut River, which separated Vermont and New Hampshire. Soon swaths of snow began to appear in the ditches along the highway and in crescents around the bases of pine trees. City-limits signs for distinctly colonial-sounding towns
passed outside the Sonata’s windows—Putney, Walpole, Charleston—and with each passing mile the terrain grew more rural until each side of the highway was hemmed in by thick forest.

“Where the hell is he going?” Effrem asked. “Canada?”

“I don’t know, but I’m thinking about ending this,” Jack replied.

“What’s that mean?”

“Deserted rural road in the middle of the night,” Jack said. “Force him off the road and—”

“And what?” Effrem blurted, clearly alarmed. “Drag him into the forest and tie him to a tree? You’re kidding, right?”

“More or less.”

—

A
t five a.m. Jack’s phone trilled. Effrem checked it. “Google news alert?”

Jack felt his heart drop. “I set one for the Waterbury train station and the Metro-North. Read it.”

Effrem scanned the story. “It’s from WTNH. Let’s see . . . Oh, God, Jack.”

“What?”

“Unidentified woman found in bathroom of an out-of-service Metro-North train. Badly beaten, airlifted to Hartford. Police investigating.”

Jack clenched his hands on the steering wheel. “Bastard.”

—

T
wenty minutes later Effrem said, “He’s slowing down. Getting off the highway. He’s stopped. Turning east.”

Jack pressed down on the accelerator and soon the Sonata’s headlights panned over a sign: E
XIT
8
/
VT-131
/
A
SCUTNEY-
W
INDSOR
.
“That’s it,” said Effrem.

“Where is he?”

“Half-mile ahead, turning left onto . . . I don’t see a label. I’ll let you know when.”

Jack took the exit, then turned east. Another couple hundred yards brought them to a north-south intersection.

“Turn left.”