Duty and Honor

28

We’ve been looking for you,” Jack said.

“Many people have been looking for me,” Allemand replied. He sat upright and began massaging his shin and foot. “Can you stop shining that light in my eyes?”

Jack lowered the beam slightly. He keyed his radio and said, “What’s happening out there? Do we have any more company?”

Effrem replied, “No. What’s happening in there?”

“Everything’s fine. Stand by.”

Allemand asked Jack, “Who are you? Who are you talking to?”

Jack paused to consider his answers. While he tended to agree with Effrem that René Allemand was a victim in all this, there was a chance they were both wrong. “I can tell you who I’m not,” he replied. “I’m not one of Jürgen Rostock’s people.”

This got Allemand’s attention. He looked up at Jack with narrowed eyes. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’re not the only one who’s pissed off Herr General. Do you know a man named Eric Schrader? Very tall, German…”

“Perhaps.”

“You met with him in Lyon.”

Allemand didn’t reply. Jack decided to go all in. “After you two parted company he flew to the United States and tried to slit my throat.”

Allemand offered a Gallic shrug. “Well. It appears he didn’t succeed.”

“No, but it was close. He’s dead now.”

“You killed him?”

“Not exactly, but the result was the same. Captain Allemand, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re still alive, and you’re not zip-tied in the trunk of a car. If I was with RSG we wouldn’t be talking.”

“What you say makes some sense, but it doesn’t explain why you’re here and why you’ve been looking for me.”

Jack was getting annoyed with their uneven information exchange. Then he reminded himself what René Allemand had been through. In fact, something told Jack he and Effrem probably knew only a fraction of the story.

“I know about Abidjan,” Jack said. “At least part of it. I don’t think you had anything to do with the attacks in Lyon. And I’d bet money there was a lot more to your kidnapping than anyone knows.”

Allemand smiled. “And now this is the part where I unburden myself and we become fast friends, yes?”

“That’s your call. As soon as I get done cloning the hard drive on the computer in that study — the one I believe belongs to Alexander Bossard — I’m leaving. You can either come with me and look at the data or go to ground again and pray you find a way to clear your name and get your life back. You decide.”

Jack was reasonably confident he’d gained a sliver of trust from Allemand, but not so confident he would risk turning his back on the man. After collecting Allemand’s weapon, a Walther P22, Jack returned to the study to find Mitch’s flash drive had nearly finished its task. Jack sat down before the computer and watched the progress bar inch closer to one hundred percent.

Allemand appeared in the study’s doorway. “Can I have my gun back?”

“I’ll leave it beside the wall by the front gate,” Jack replied. “Or you can join us for coffee and I’ll give it back to you then.”

“‘Us’? It’s not just you?”

“No. We come as a package deal, though. If you’re going to trust me, you’ll have to trust him.”

“I do not think we’re quite at trust yet, do you?”

Jack offered Allemand what he hoped was his best “couldn’t care less” shrug. They desperately needed Allemand’s cooperation, but Jack’s gut told him playing hard-to-get was the smart move. “There’s an all-night coffeehouse in Wädenswil, right off the Zugerstrasse and across from the police station. We’ll be there for the next hour.”

Jack removed the flash drive, powered down the computer, and stood up. “And you might want to retrace your steps before you leave.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re not wearing gloves. If you don’t want your fingerprints found here, I’d wipe down everything you touched.”

Jack and Effrem hadn’t gotten through their first cups of coffee when they saw, through their booth’s window, Allemand’s van pull into the parking lot. The electrician’s placard was gone. Jack said to Effrem, “Good call about that, by the way.”

Effrem smiled. “I’m a learner.”

Allemand walked inside and the hostess approached him. He gestured toward Jack and Effrem, then walked over. He grabbed a chair from a nearby table, plopped it down at the end of their booth, and sat.

To Jack he said, “This is your partner?”

“Yes.”

“Do I get my gun back now?”

Jack nodded at the folded newspaper on the table. “In there. It’s not loaded. Leave it that way until you’re back in the van.”

Allemand made no move to touch the newspaper. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

Jack made the introductions, first names only. Allemand shook their hands and said, “René. Jack, you said Eric Schrader is dead. Is that true?”

“Google it. Alexandria, Virginia. Unidentified man walks into oncoming traffic and is killed instantly.”

“That’s unfortunate. I was hoping to catch up to him. We were overdue for a chat.”

Allemand smiled when he said this, but there was none of it in his eyes. Jack suspected that if Schrader hadn’t died in Alexandria, he wouldn’t have survived his run-in with Allemand. Jack assumed their “chat” would have involved power tools and electricity. If so, Jack wondered, had Allemand already had that kind of brutality in him, or had his experiences since Ivory Coast taken him to that dark place?

The waitress appeared and asked if Allemand wanted anything. He waved her off. Once she was out of earshot he said, “So, how do we proceed, the three of us?”

Jack and Effrem had discussed this. They’d decided to lay everything out for René and hope they were bringing something valuable to the table.

Jack said, “Effrem tells you his story, then I tell you mine.”

“And if I do not want to share my own?”

Jack answered with a little steel in his voice: “Then that’s on you. Get in your van and leave, but stay out of our way. Effrem, tell him.”

Effrem took Allemand through his story, starting with Fabrice the café owner in Abidjan, then his tailing Eric Schrader after Allemand’s meeting with Madeline in the Parc de la Feyssine, then finally his encounter with Jack and Stephan Möller at the nature preserve.

“That was you in the Parc de la Feyssine?” asked Allemand. “I thought I might have picked up a tail, but after I left it was gone. Madeline brought you to our meeting? Truly?”

“She’s worried about you. She’s trying to help.”

Allemand frowned; it was almost a snarl. “I shouldn’t have called her. Sentimentality is weakness. So. You followed Schrader to Virginia, then found this Möller person…”

Jack asked, “You’ve never heard the name?” When Allemand shook his head, Jack showed him a screen capture from the West Haven gas station’s surveillance camera. “He’s since lost his beard.”

“Doesn’t look familiar. You think he’s with Rostock?”

“We have no evidence of a connection — to Möller or Schrader. Do you?”

“Nothing that would suffice in court.”

This statement surprised Jack. Was Allemand merely using a colloquialism, or did he really believe this situation could be resolved on the white side of the law?

“Please go on,” Allemand said. “After the nature preserve…”

Jack continued the story, but first backtracked to the attack at the Supermercado before recounting their hunt for Möller, his escape at the Vermont airstrip, their foray into Munich, then their meeting at the villa.

Effrem asked Allemand, “You were tailing us this morning. How did you know we’d be here tonight?”

“Like you, I had to leave Munich in a hurry. The only other trail I could follow was the same one that brought you here: Alexander Bossard and Schrader. I’ve been here for a week. I set up real-time game cameras in the trees across from the villa, hoping either Bossard or someone else would show up. He’s impossible to get to at his office or his apartment in the city. I saw you pass by the villa a few times, got curious, and drove down here. I picked you up on your way back to Zurich. Jack, why would Jürgen Rostock want you dead?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Effrem has a theory about you,” Jack said. “He thinks you were false-flagged. That’s when a—”

“I know what it is. What makes you think that, Effrem?”

“It’s what you said to Madeline—‘He isn’t who he claims to be.’”

Allemand shook his head, scratched furiously at his arm, then replied, “I don’t recall saying that.”

“Not good enough,” Jack replied. He shoved the newspaper toward Allemand. “Time for you to go.”

“Pardon me?”

“We’ve been straight with you. If you’re not going to reciprocate, we’ve got no use for you. In fact, from what I can tell, you’re more of a liability than an asset.” Jack intended this last comment to sting, and the change in Allemand’s eyes told him it’d worked. “We’ll be better off without you.”

Allemand said nothing for several seconds. “It’s difficult, you must realize. I don’t have a home, Madeline is the only person from my former life that knows I’m alive, and a good portion of my fellow Frenchmen think I died either a deserter or a traitor and therefore got what I deserved. Jürgen Rostock is a powerful man. I’ve been walking on a razor’s edge since Abidjan. I feel like I’m sometimes in a dream, other times not. And now, to find out my Madeline confided in a… reporter. Is it hard to see why trust is hard for me?”

“I get it, I do,” Jack replied. “But here’s what I know, René: Whatever your connection is to Rostock, it’s a miracle you’re still alive. I don’t think you’ll last out here on your own much longer. You’ve got to trust somebody sometime. Whether that’s us, only you can decide.”

Allemand, who’d been staring at his hands, clasping and unclasping them while Jack was talking, now looked up. He held Jack’s gaze for a long five seconds; Allemand’s eyes were twitching slightly. He said, “What do you want to know?”