Duty and Honor

30

Halfway through Allemand’s revelation Jack had decided it was time to get Belinda Hahn out of harm’s way. He’d been leaning in that direction already, but René’s instability forced the issue. Plus, Allemand’s trust of Jack and Effrem was tenuous. Belinda’s presence might be too much for the soldier.

As it turned out, Allemand van had been serving as his command post and mobile living quarters. Jack convinced him to follow them back to the motel, then sent Effrem up to the room while he and Allemand sat in the van. During the drive Effrem had called his mother in Brussels to arrange for Belinda’s safekeeping.

Effrem called a few minutes later. “She’s ready to go. There’s a red-eye leaving in a few hours. I’ll drive her, then come back. We’re coming down now.”

“Good. Drive safe.”

Jack waited a few minutes to ensure Effrem and Belinda were gone, then led René up to the room. Jack ordered pizza, and then while René took a shower he plugged the flash drive into his laptop and uploaded the data to Mitch’s private server. Mitch called a few minutes later as René emerged from the bathroom.

Mitch said, “Jack, there were no documents of interest on that computer, but I did find something interesting in the browser history — looks like a business portal. Is this guy an attorney? In Zurich?”

“Yes.”

“Then, yeah, it fits. I don’t know what kind of encryption and firewalls I’ll find on the portal’s server side, but I’ll get started and keep you posted. Anything specific I should be keying on?”

“For starters, any mention of Jürgen Rostock or Rostock Security Group, or similar combinations. Throw my name in the mix, too.” Jack lowered his voice, then added, “And any mention of a Janine Périer. She may have worked for the Red Cross.”

“Got it.”

Jack disconnected.

Allemand asked, “Who was that?”

“We’ve got a guy working on the data from the villa,” Jack replied.

“Why are there three toothbrushes in the bathroom?”

“What?”

“There are two of you, but three toothbrushes,” said René. “Is there someone else staying with you?”

“No,” said Jack. “I must have packed two by mistake.”

René considered this, then nodded. “Mind if I use one? I have no running water in the van. My teeth feel like they’re wearing socks.”

Effrem returned three hours later. René had fallen asleep in the armchair an hour earlier, which Jack took as a good sign. You don’t sleep around people you can’t trust, especially someone in Allemand’s condition.

Jack was sitting at the table, willing his phone to ring. “There’s a few pieces of pizza left,” he whispered, nodding at the box. Effrem sat down, fished out a piece, and took a bite.

Jack asked, “What do you think about Lyon?”

“You mean about Schrader being involved in the attacks? If it’s true, there’s no way a guy like Schrader could orchestrate something like that. Rostock could, though.”

“I agree.” Rostock’s kidnapping and rescue of Allemand was a type of false-flag operation. Staging a terrorist attack and then pinning it on another group, though more complex in scope, wasn’t dissimilar in principle. “The group that claimed credit, the Sahrawi Islamic Liberation Army, dropped off the radar, didn’t it?”

Effrem nodded. “Officials I talked to in both Lyon and Paris claimed to know nothing about SILA. Then again, it’s not uncommon for smaller factions to dissolve, then reconstitute under a different name.”

“True, but after the second-deadliest attack on French soil? I don’t buy it.”

“Me neither, come to think of it.”

Jack wondered if there was a part of René’s mind that had already come to a similar conclusion: SILA was a construct of Jürgen Rostock’s, both fuel and another target for antiterrorist rage in Europe. There was, Jack thought, already plenty of that to go around — and rightly so. No Western nation would deny that the threat of Islamic terrorism was dire. Hell, the majority of the Muslim world felt the same way, so said all the intelligence he had analyzed.

If Lyon had been a Rostock operation, there had to be more to it than simple pot-stirring. What, though? And again, the as yet unanswered question that had been nagging Jack from the beginning: Why did Rostock want him dead?

Mitch called an hour later. The ringing of Jack’s phone woke Effrem and René. Jack put Mitch on speaker.

“I’m not calling about Bossard. But I can tell you where to find Gerhard Klugmann.”

Allemand asked, “Who the hell is Gerhard Klugmann?”

“A hacker we think works for Rostock,” Jack replied. “Where can we find him, Mitch?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

Effrem replied, “I haven’t liked much of anything in the past few weeks, so what’s the harm? Where is he?”

“In Windhoek, Namibia.”

“Namibia,” Effrem repeated. “What the hell’s in Namibia?”